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HARVARD

COLLEGE
LI BRARY

LITERATURE AND LIFE

Stnbtes

By W. D. HOWELLS

AUTBOs or

'*UTERARY PRIKNDS AND ACQUAINTANd
"HKROINBS OP FICTION**
**MY LmULAEY PASSIONS" KTC.

ILL US TRA TED

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

1902

-hw-F-^-:-i-6(^-. -, •■ i-

AL 17^3.5/3

jlAj.Yn»«u wUk-.>. »i-

1 1

UBBARY

MM 06 1992

AU rifkts rutrvtd

Publtahad October, 1901.

In compliance with current
copyright law, LBS Archival

Products produced this

replacement volume on. paper

that meets the ANSI Standard

Z39.48-1984 to replace the

irreparably deteriorated

original.

1992

A WORD OF EXPLANATION

PEREiAPS the reader may not feel in these papers
that inner solidarity 4vhich the writer is consdons
of ; and it is in this doubt that the writer wishes to offer
a word of explanation. He owns, as he must, that they
have every appearance of a group of desultory sketches
and essays, without palpable relation to one another,
or superficial allegiance to any central motive. Yet
he ventures to hope that the reader who makes his way
through them will be aware, in the retrospect, of some-
thing like this relation and this allegiance.

For my own part, if I am to identify myself with the
writer who is here on his defence, 1 have never been
able to see much difference between what seemed to
me Literature and what seemed to me Life. If I did
not find life in what professed to be Uterature, I dis-
abled its profession, and possibly from this habit, now
inveterate with me, I am never quite sure of life unless
I find literature in it. Unless the thing seen reveals
to me an intrinsic poetry, and puts on phrases that
clothe it pleasingly to the imagination, I do not much
care for it; but if it will do this, I do not mind how poor
or common or squalid it shows at first glance : it chal-
lenges my curiosity and keeps my sjmipathy. In-
stantly I love it and wish to share my pleasure in it
with some one else, or as many ones else as I can get
to look or listen. If the thing is something read, rather
than seen, I am not anxious about the matter: if it

• • •

A WORD OF EXPLANATION

is like life, I know that it is poetry, and take it to my
heart. There can be no oflfence in it for which its truth
will not make me amends.

Out of this way of thinking and feeling about these
two great things, about Literature and Life, there may
have arisen a confusion as to which is which. But I
do not wish to part them, and in their union I have
found, since I learned my letters, a joy in them both
which I hope will last till I forget my letters.

So was it when my life began;

So is it, now I am a man ;

So be it when I shall grow old.

It is the rainbow in the sky for me; and I have
seldom seen a sky without some bit of rainbow in it
Sometimes I can make others see it, sometimes not;
but I always like to try, and if I fail I harbor no worse
thought of them than that they have not had their eyes
examined and fitted with glasses which would at least
have helped their vision.

W. D. H.

CONTENTS

PAGE

The Man op Letters as a BIan op Business . . i

Worries op a Winter Walk 36

confessions op a Suumer Colonist 45

The Editor's Relations with the Young Con-
tributor 63

SuioiER Isles op Eden 78

Wild Flowers op the Asphalt 89

Last Days in a Dutch Hotel 95

Some Anomalies op the Short Stort .... ho

A Circus in the Suburbs 125

A She Hamlet 132

Spanish Prisoners op War 141

Midnight Platoon 154

Beach at Rockawat 161

American Ltterart Centres 173

Sawdust in the Arena 187

At a Dime Museum 193

American Literature in Exile 202

The Horse Show 206

The Problem op the Summer 216

iEsTHETic New York Fiptt-Odd Years Ago . . 222

From New York into New England 228

CONTENTS

PACE

The Standard Household-Effect Company . . 240

Staccato Notes of a Vanished Summer .... 253

The Art of the Adsmith 265

The Psychology of Plagla^rism 273

Puritanism in American Fiction 278

The What and the How in Art .... ^ .. 284

Politics of American Authors V 290

Storage 298

" Floating Down the River on the 0-hi-o" ... 309

ILLUSTRATIONS

•' ON THE DOWN EAST COAST " FromHspite*

" IT PROFESSED TO BE SUNNT, AND THERE
WAS REALLY SOllE SORT OP HARD GLIT-
TER IN THE AIR " Fmemg p. 38

" THE COTTAGES . . . ARE DROPPED AS

NEAR THE OCEAN AS MAY BE " . . . " " 50
" IN WHATEVER SORT OUR COLONISTS AUUSE
THEMSELVES. IT IS WITH THE LEAST POS-
SIBLE CEREMONY " " " 58

" IN THE PRETTY PUBUC GARDEN "... " " 80

THE TORTOISE AND HIS FRIENDS. ... " " 80

PADRE GIACOMO ISSAVERDENS " " 84

"... GROTESQUE WITH WIND-WORN AND

WAVE-WORN ROCKS " " " 86

A BERMUDA HOUSE " " 86

"... SUCH SWAMPY EXPANSES AS THE
CONVERGING SURFACE ROADS FORM AT

DEAD MAN'S CURVE " .... ^

" I CANNOT PROMISE THE VISITOR TO THE
ROOF GARDEN THAT HE WILL FIND GOLD-
EN-ROD THERE EVERY NIGHT " ... " " 94
ON THE DUNES AT SCHEVENINGEN .... " " 98

" PRETTY IS THE WORD FOR HER FACE " . . " " 106

WATTING FOR THEIR TURN " " I28

" YOU NEVER CEASED TO FEEL . . . THAT
TT WAS A WOMAN WHO WAS DOING THAT
MELANCHOLY DANE " " " 134

vii

ILLUSTRATIONS

SPANISH PRISONERS OP WAR Facing p. 144

150

AFTER DINNER «« *.

" THEY STOOD SLOUCHED IN DIM AND SOLEMN

PHALANX UNDER THE NIGHT SKY " . . " " 156

ROCKAWAY BEACH " " 162

" IT IS NOT PICTURESQUE, OR POETIC, OR

DRAMATIC; IT IS QUEER " " " I70

" ' I HOPE I'M NOT DISTURBING YOU ANY ' " . " " 198
" THE EFFECT IS THAT THEY ARE THERE

TO BE SEEN" " " 208

" WITH THE HORSES THEMSELVES I COULD

FIND NO FAULT " " " 212

" THE MOWING-LANDS ALONE ARE RICH " . " " 230

" THE GREAT SQUARE HOUSES . . . PAINTED

WHITE" " " 234

AN ASPECT OF PORTSMOUTH FROM THE PIS-

CATAQUA " " 238

" THE WEATHER-BEATEN MANSION OF SIR

WILLIAM PEPPERRELL "....... " "254

THE VILLAGE SMITHY, KITTERY POINT ... " " 256

SIR WILLIAM PEPPERRELL " " 260

" THE HILLS . . . THAT CHANGE WITH THE

STEAMER'S COURSE " " " 310

" IN THE SPRING . . . THE RIVER SCALES

ITS BANKS " " " 314

THE HOUSE - BOAT DWELLERS, WHOSE
SLUGGISH CRAFT LAY MOORED AMONG

THE WILLOWS " " " 318

TOWS OF COAL BARGES " " 320

. . . STOPPING TO PUT OFF OR TAKE ON

MERCHANDISE OR MEN " " " 322

LITERATURE AND LIFE

THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

I THINK that every man ought to work for his
living, without exception, and that, when he has
once avouched his willingness to work, society should
provide him with work and warrant him a living. I
do not think any man ought to live by an art. A
man's art should be his privilege, when he has proven
his fitness to exercise it, and has otherwise earned
his daily bread; and its results should be free to all.
There is an instinctive sense of this, even in the midst
of the grotesque confusion of our economic being;
people feel that there is something profane, something
impious, in taking money for a picture, or a poem, or
a statue. Most of all, the artist himself feels this.
He puts on a bold front with the world, to be sure, and
brazens it out as Business; but he knows very well
that there is something false and vulgar in it; and
that the work which cannot be truly priced in money
cannot be truly paid in money. He can, of course,
say that the priest takes money for reading the mar-
riage service, for christening the new-bom babe, and
for saying the last office for the dead ; that the ph3rsi-
cian sells healing; that justice itself is paid for; and
that he is merely a party to the thing that is and must
be. He can say that, as the thing is, unless he sells his

LITERATURE AND LIFE

art he cannot live, that society will leave him to starve
if he does not hit its fancy in a picture, or a poem, or a
statue ; and all this is bitterly true. He is, and he must
be, only too glad if there is a market for his wares.
Without a market for his wares he must perish, or turn
to making something that will sell better than pictures,
or poems, or statues. All the same, the sin and the
shamie remain, and the averted eye sees them still, with
its inward vision. Many will make believe otherwise,
but I would rather not make believe otherwise; and in
trying to write of Literature as Business I am tempted
to begin by saying that Business is the opprobriiun of
Literature.

Literature is at once the most intimate and the most
articulate of the arts. It cannot impart its efifect
through the senses or the nerves as the other arts can ;
it is beautiful only through the intelligence; it is the
mind speaking to the mind ; until it has been put into
absolute terms, of an invariable significance, it does
not exist at all. It cannot awaken this emotion in
one, and that in another ; if it fails to express precisely
the meaning of the author, if it does not say him, it
says nothing, and is nothing. So that when a poet
has put his heart, much or little, into a poem, and sold
it to a magazine, the scandal is greater than when a
painter has sold a pictiu^ to a patron, or a sculptor
has modelled a statue to order. These are artists less
articulate and less intimate than the poet; they are
more exterior to their work; they are less personally
in it; they part with less of themselves in Uie dicker.
It does not change the nature of the case to say that
Tennyson and Longf ellgw and Emerson sold the poems
in which they couched the most mystical messages

THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

their genius was charged to bear mankind. They
submitted to the conditions which none can escape;
but that does not justify the conditions, which are
none the less the conditions of hucksters because they
are imposed upon poets. If it will serve to make my
meaning a litUe clearer, we will suppose that a poet
has been crossed in love, or has sufifered some real
sorrow, like the loss of a wife or child. He pours out
his broken heart in verse that shall bring tears of sa-
cred sympathy from his readers, and an editor pays
him a hundred dollars for the right of bringing his
verse to their notice. It is perfectly true that the po«n
was not written for these dollars, but it is perfectly
true that it was sold for them. The poetmust use his
emotions to pay his provision bills; he has no other
means ; society does not propose to pay his bills for him.
Yet, and at the end of the ends, the unsophisticated wit-
ness finds the transaction ridiculous, finds it repulsive,
finds it shabby. Somehow he knows that if our huck-
stering civilization did not at every moment violate the
eternal fitness of things, the poet's song would have
been given to the world, and the poet would have been
cared for by the whole human brotherhood, as any man
should be who does the duty that every man owes it.

The instinctive sense of the dishonor which money-
purchase does to art is so strong that sometimes a
man of letters who can pay his way otherwise refuses
pay for his work, as Lord Byron did, for a while, from
a noble pride, and as Count Tolstoy has tried to do,
from a noble conscience. But Byron's publisher
profited by a generosity which did not reach his read-
ers; and the Countess Tolstoy collects the copyright
which her husband foregoes ; so that these two eminent
instances of protest against business in literature may
be said not to have shaken its money basis. I know
of no others ; but there may be many that I am culpa-

LITERATURE AND LIFE

bly ignorant of. Still, I doubt if there are enough to
affect the fact that Literature is Business as well as
Art, and almost as soon. At present business is the
only human solidarity; we are all bound together
with tisal-ehetin, whatever interests and tastes and
principles separate us, and I feel quite sure that in
writing of the Man of Letters as a Man of Business 1
shall attract far more readers than I should in writing
of him as an Artist. Besides, as an artist he has been
done a great deal already ; and a commercial state like
ours has really more concern in him as a business man.
Perhaps it may sometime be different ; I do not believe
it will till the conditions are di£[erent, and that is a long
way off.

In the mean time I confidently appeal to the read-
er's imagination with the fact that there are several
men of letters among us who are such good men of
business that they can conunand a hundred dollars
a thousand words for all they write, ft is easy to
write a thousand words a day, and, supposing one of
these authors to work steadily, it can be seen that his
net earnings during the year would come to some such
sum as the President of the United Stales gets for do-
ing far less work of a much more perishable sort. If the
man of letters were wholly a business man, this is what
would happen ; he would make his forty or fifty thou-
sand dollars a year, and be able to consort with bank
presidents, and railroad officials, and rich tradesmen,
and other Bowers of our plutocracy on equal terms.
But, unfortunately, from a business point wf view, he
is also an artist, and the verj- quahties that enable
him to delight the public disable him from delighting
it uninterruptedly. "No rose blooms right along,"
4

THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

as the English boys at Oxford made an American col-
legian say in a theme which they imagined for him
in his national parlance; and the man of letters, as
an artist, is apt to have times and seasons when he
cannot blossom. Very often it shall happen that his
mind wiU lie fallow between novels or stories for weeks
and months at a stretch ; when the suggestions of the
friendly editor shall fail to fruit in the essays or arti-
cles desired ; when the muse shall altogether withhold
herself, or shall respond only in a feeble dribble of
verse which he might sell indeed, but which it would
not be good business for him to put on the market.
But supposing him to be a very diligent and contin-
uous worker, and so happy as to have fallen on a theme
that delights him and bears him along, he may please
himself so ill with the result of his labors that he can
do nothing less in artistic conscience than destroy a
day's work, a week's work, a month's work. I know
one man of letters who wrote toKlay and tore up to-
morrow for nearly a whole summer. But even if part
of the mistaken work may be saved, because it is good
work out of place, and not intrinsically bad, the task
of reconstruction wants almost as much time as the
production; and then, when all seems done, comes
the anxious and endless process of revision. These
drawbacks reduce the earning capacity of what I may
call the high-cost man of letters in such measure that
an author whose name is known everywhere, and
whose reputation is commensurate with the bound-
aries of his coimtry, if it does not transcend them,
shall have the income, say, of a rising young phy-
sician, known to a few people in a subordinate city.

In view of this fact, so humiliating to an author in
the presence of a nation of business men like ours, I
do not know that I can establish the man of letters in
the popular esteem as very much of a business man,

LITERATURE AND LIFE

after all. He must still have a low rank among prac-
tical people ; and he will be regarded by the great mass
of Americans as perhaps a little off, a little funny^ a
little soft I Perhaps not; and yet I would rather not
have a consensus of pubhc opinion on the question;
I think I am more comfortable without it

There is this to be said in defence of men of letters
on the business side, that literature is still an infant
industry with us, and, so far from having been pro-
tected by our laws, it was exposed for ninety years
after the foundation of the republic to the vicious com-
petition of stolen goods. It is true that we now have
the international copyright law at last, and we can at
least begin to forget our ^hame j but literary property
has only forty-two years of life under our unjust stat-
utes, and if it is attacked by robbers the law does not
seek out the aggressors and punish them, as it would
seek out and punish the trespassers upon any other
kind of property ; it leaves the aggrieved^ owner to
bring suit against them, and recover damages, if
he can. This may be right enough in itself; but I
think, then, that all property should be defended by
civil suit, and should become public after forty-two
years of private tenure. The Constitution guaran-
tees us all equality before the law, but the law-makers
seem to have forgotten this in the case of our literary
industry. So long as this remains the case, we can-
not expect the best business talent to go into literature,
and the man of letters must keep his present low grade
among business men.

As I have hinted, it is but a little while that he has
had any standing at all. I may say that it is only since

THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

the Civil War that literature has become a business
with us. Before that time we had authors, and very
good ones; it is astonishing how good they were; but
I do not remember any of them who lived by litera-
ture except Edgar A. Poe, perhaps; and we all know
how he lived; it was largely upon loans. They were
either men of fortune, or they were editors or profess-
ors, with salaries or incomes apart from the small
gains of their pens; or they were helped out with pub-
lic offices ; one need not go over their names or classify
them. Some of them must have made money by their
books, but I question whether any one could have
lived, even very simply, upon the money his books
brought him. No one could do that ndw, unless he
wrote a book that we could not recognize as a work of
literature. But many authors live now, and live pret-
tily enough, by the sale of the serial publication of
their writings to the magazines. They do not live
so nicely as succ^sful Jtrad^people, of course, or as
men in the other professions when they begin to make
themselves names; the high state of brokers, bankers,
railroad operators, and the like is, in the nature of the
case, beyond their fondest dreams of pecimiary af-
fluence and social splendor. Perhaps they do not
want the chief seats in the synagoguej;^it is certain
they do not get them. Still, they do very fairly well,
as things go; and several have incomes that would
seem riches to the great mass of worthy Americans
who work with their hands for a living — ^when they
can get the work. Their incomes are mainly from se-
rial publication in the different magazines; and the
prosperity of the magazines has given a whole class
existence which, as a class, was whoUy unknown
among us before the Qvil War. It is not only the fa-
mous or fully recognized authors who live in Uiis way,
but the much larger number of clever people who arc

LITERATURE AND LIFE

as yet known chiefly to the editors, and who may never
make themselves a public, but who do well a kind of
acceptable work. These are the sort who do not get
reprinted from the periodicals; but the better recog-
nized authors do get reprinted, and then their serial
work in its completed form appeals to the readers who
say they do not read serials. The multitude of these
is not great, and if an author rested his hopes upon
their favor he would be a much more imbittered man
than he now generally is. But he understands perfectly
well that his reward is in the serial and not in the book ;
the return from that he may coimt as so much money
foimd in the road — a, few himdreds, a very few thou-
sands, at the most, unless he is the author of an his-
torical romance.

I doubt, indeed, whether the earnings of literary
men are absolutely as great as they were earlier in the
century, in any of the English-speaking coimtries;
relatively they are nothing like as great. Scott had
forty thousand dollars for Woodstock, which was not
a very large novel, and was by no means one of his
best; and forty thousand dollars then had at least the
purchasing power of sixty thousand now. Moore had
three thousand guineas for LaJla Rookh, but what
publisher would be rash enough to pay fifteen thou-
sand dollars for the masterpiece of a minor poet now?
The book, except in very rare instances, makes noth-
ing like the return to the author that the magazine
makes, and there are few leading authors who find
their account in that form of publication. Those who
do, those who sell the most widely in book form,
are often not at all desired by editors; with difficulty
they get a serial accepted by any principal maga-

THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

2dne. On the other hand, there are authors whose
books, compared with those of the popular favorites/
do not sell, and yet they are eagerly sought for by !
editors; they are paid the highest prices, and nothing \
that they offer is refused. These are literai^ardsts; \
and it ought to be plain from what I am saying that
in belles-lettres, at least, most of the best literature
now first sees the Ught in the magazines, and most
of the second-best appears first in book form. The
old-fashioned people who flatter themselves upon their
distinction in not reading magazine fiction or maga-
zine poetry make a great mistake, and simply class
themselves with the public whose taste is so crude that
they caimot enjoy the best. Of course, this is true
mainly, if not merely, of belles-lettres ; history, science,
politics, metaphysics, in spite of the many excellent
articles and papers in these sorts upon what used to
be called various emergent occasions, are still to be
foimd at their best in books. The most monumental
example of literature, at once light and good, which
has first reached the public in book form is in the dif-
ferent publications of Mark Twain; but Mr. Clemens
has of late turned to the magazines too, and now takes
their mint-mark before he passes into general circu-
lation. All this may change again, but at present
the magazines — ^we have no longer any reviews —
form the most direct approach to that part of our read-
ing public which likes the highest things in literary
art. Their readers, if we may judge from the quality
of the literature they get, are more refined than the
book readers in our community; and their taste has
no doubt been cultivated by that of the disciplined
and experienced editors. So far as I have known
these, they are men of sesthetic conscience and of gen-
erous sympathy. They have their preferences in
the different kinds, and they have their theory of what

LITERATURE AND LIFE

kind will be most acceptable to their readers ; but they
exercise their selective function with the wish to give
them the best things they can. I do not know one of
them — and it has been my good fortune to know
them nearly all — who would print a wholly inferior
thing for the sake of an inferior class of readers,
though they may sometimes decline a good thing
because for one reason or another they believe it
would not be Uked. Still, even this does not often
happen ; they would rather chance the good thing they
doubted of than imderrate their readers' judgment.

The yoimg author who wins recognition in a first-
class magazine has achieved a double success, first,
with the editor, and then with the best reading pub-
lic. Many factitious and fallacious literary reputa-
tions have been made through books, but very few
have been made through the magazines, which are
not only the best means of living, but of outliving,
with the author; they are both bread and fame to him.
If I insist a little upon the high office which this mod-
em form of publication fulfils in the literary world, it
is because I am impatient of the antiquated and igno-
rant prejudice which classes the magazines as ephem-
eral. They are ephemeral in form, but in substance
they are not ephemeral, and what is best in them
awaits its resurrection in the book, which, as the
first form, is so often a lasting death. An interest-
ing proof of the value of the magazine to literature
is the fact that a good novel will often have wider
acceptance as a book from having been a magazine
serial.

Under the rigitne of the great literary periodicals
the prosperity of literary men would be much g^reater

THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

than it actually is if the magazines were altogether
literary. But they are not, and this is one reason
why literature is still the hungriest of the professions.
Two-thirds of the magaasines are made up of material
which, however excellent, is without literary quality.
Very probably this is because even the highest class of
readers, who are the magazine readers, have small lovet
of pure Uterature, which seems to have been growing' *,'
less and less in all classes. I say seems, because there ^ '
are really no means of ascertaining the fact, and itv *'
may be that the editors are mistaken in making their .^
periodicals two-thirds popular science, politics, econom-
ics, and the timely topics which I will call contem-
poranics. But, however that may be, their efforts in
this direction have narrowed the field of literary in-
dustry, and darkened the hope of literary prosperity
kindled by the unexampled prosperity of their period-
icals. They pay very well indeed for literature; they
pay from five or six dollars a thousand words for the
work of the unknown writer to a hundred and fifty
dollars a thousand words for that of the most famous,
or the most popular, if there is a difference between /
fame and popularity ; but they do not, altogether, / /
want enough literature to justify the best business
talent in devoting itself to belles-lettres, to fiction, or
poetry, or humorous sketches of travel, or light es-
says; business talent can do far better in dry goods,
groceries, drugs, stocks, real estate, railroads, and
the like. I do not' think there is any danger of a ruin-
ous competition from it in the field which, though
narrow, seems so rich to us poor fellows, whose busi-
ness talent is small, at the best.

The most of the material contributed to the maga-
zines is the subject of agreement between the editor
and the author; it is either suggested by the author
or is the iixni of some suggestion from the editor; in

■^

LITERATURE AND LIFE

any case the price is stipulated beforehand, and it is
no longer the custom for a well-known contributor
to leave the payment to the justice or the generosity
of the pubhsher: that was never a fair thing to either,
nor ever a wise thing. Usually, the price is so much
a thousand words, a truly odious method of computing
literary value, and one well calculated to make the
author feel keenly the halefulness of selling his art
at all. It is as if a painter sold his picture at so much
a square inch, or a sculptor bargained away a group
of statuary by the pound But it is a custom that you
cannot always successfully quarrel with, and most
writers gladly consent to it, if only the price a thousand
words is large enough. The sale to the editor means
the sale of the serial rights only, but if the publisher
of the magazine is also a pubhsher of books, the re-

L publication of the material is supposed to be his right,
unless there is an understanding to the contrary; the
terms for this are another affair. Formerly some-
thing more could be got for the author by the simul-
taneous appearance of his work in an EngUsh maga-
zine; but now the great American magazines, which
pay far higher prices than any others in the world,
have ' a circulation in England so much exceeding
that of any Enghsh periodical that the simultane-
ous publication can no longer be arranged for from
this side, though I beheve it is still done here from the
other side.
°
:

I think this is the case of authorship as it now stands
with regard to the magazines, I am not sure that the
case is in every way improved for young authors. The
magazines all maintain a stafT for the careful exami-
nation of manuscripts, but as most of the material

THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

they print has been engaged, the number of volunteer
contributions that they can use is very small; one of
the greatest of them, I know, does not use fifty in the
course of a year. The new writer, then, must be very
good to be accepted, and when accepted he may wait
long before he is printed. The pressure is so great in
these avenues to the pubUc favor that one, two, three
years, are no uncommon periods of delay. If the young
writer has not the patience for this, or has a soul above
cooling his heels in the courts of fame, or must do his
best to earn something at once, the book is his im-
mediate hope. How sUght a hope the book is I have
tried to hint already, but if a book is vulgar enough
in sentiment, and crude enough in taste, and flashy
enough in incident, or, better or worse still, if it is a
bit hot in the mouth, and promises impropriety if not
indecency, there is a very fair chance of its success;
I do not mean success with a self-respecting publisher,
but with the public, which does not personally put its
name to it, and is not openly smirched by it. I w ill
not talk of that kind of book, however, but of the book

^'^Sc|^_^g_yQun^^attthQL has writtm JmL^l m, jyu>
spoiled heart and an untainted mind, suchas^jnost
young men anoTwomen write ;^ and I will suppose that
it has^'fOuxid'li^ piibEsH^. It is human nature, as com-
petition has deformed himian nature, for the pub-
Usher to wish the author to take all the risks, and he
possibly proposes that the author shall publish it at
his own expense, and let him have a perceptage of the
retail price for managing it. If not that, he proposes
that the author shall pay for the stereotype plates,
and take fifteen per cent of the price of the book; or
if this will not go, if the author caxmot, rather than
will not, do it (he is commonly only too glad to do any-
thing he can), then the publisher offers him ten per
cent, of the retail price after the first thousand copies

LITERATURE AND LIFE

have been sold. But if he fully believes in the book,
he will give ten per cent, from the first copy sold, and
pay all the costs of publication himself. The book
is to be retailed for a dollar and a half, and the pub-
lisher is not displeased with a new book that sells fif-
teen hundred copies. Whether the author has as
much reason to be pleased is a question, but if the book
does not sell more he has only himself to blame, and
had better pocket in silence the two hundred and twenty-
five dollars he gets for it, and bless his pubfisher,
and try to find work .somewhere at five dollars a week.
The publisher has not made any more, if quite as much
as the author, and until a book has sold two thousand
copies the division is fair enough. After that, the
heavier expenses of manufacturing have been de-
frayed and the book goes on advertising itself; there
is merely the cost of paper, printing, binding, and
marketing to be met, and the arrangement becomes
fairer and fairer for the pubhsher. The author has
no right to complain of this, in the case of his first
book, which he is only too grateful to get accepted at
all. If it succeeds, he has himself to blame for making
the same arrangement for his second or third ; it is his
fault, or else it is his necessity, which is practically
the same thing. It will be business for the publisher
to take advantage of his necessity quite the same as
if it were his fault ; but I do not say that he will always
do so; I believe he will very often not do so.

At one time there seemed a probabihty of the en-
largement of the author's gains by subscription pub-
hcalion, and one very well-known American author
prospered fabulously in that way. The percentage
offered by the subscription houses was only about
half as much as that paid by the trade, but the sales
were so much greater that the author could very well
afiord to take it. Where the book-dealer sold ten, the

THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

book-agent sold a hundred; or at^teasthe-did-^j^n the
case of Mark Twain's books; and we all thought it
reasonable he could do so with ours. Such of us as
made experiment of him, however, found the facts
illogical. No book of Uterary quality was made to
go by subscription except Mr. Clemens's books, and
I think these went because the subscription public
never knew what good literature they were. This sort
of readers, or buyers, were so used to getting some-
thing worthless for their money that they would not
spend it for artistic fiction, or, indeed, for any fiction
at all except Mr. Clemens's, which they probably sup-
posed bad. Some good books of travel had a measur-
able success through the book-agents, but not at all the
success that had been hoped for ; and I believe now the
subscription trade again publishes only compilations,
or such works as owe more to the skill of the editor
than the art of the writer. Mr. Clemens himself no
longer offers his books to the public in that way.

It is not common, I think, in this country, to pub-
lish on the half-profits system, but it is very common
in England, where, owing probably to the moisture
in the air, which lends a fairy outline to every pros-
pect, it seems to be peculiarly alluring. One of my
own early books was published there on these terms,
which I accepted with the insensate joy of the young
author in getting any terms from a publisher. The
book sold, sold every copy of the small first edition,
and in due time the publisher's statement came. I did
not think my half of the profits was very great, but it
seemed a fair division after every imaginable cost had
been charged up against my poor book, and ihat frail
venture had been made to pay the expenses of com-
position, corrections, paper, printing, binding, adver-
tising, and editorial copies. The wonder ought to
have been that there was an3^thing at all coming to

LITERATURE AND LIFE

me, but I was young and greedy then, and I really
thought there ought to have been more. I was dia-
appointed, but I made the best of it, of course, and
took the account to the junior partner of the house
which employed me, and said that I should like to
draw on hira for the sum due me from the London
publishers. He said. Certainly ; but after a glance
at the account he smiled and said he supposed 1 knew
how much the sum was? I answered. Yes; it was
eleven pounds nine shillings, was not it? But I owned
at the same time that I never was good at figures, and
that I found English money peculiarly baffling. He
laughed now, and said, It was eleven shillings and
ninepence. In fact, after aU those charges for com-
position, corrections, paper, printing, binding, adver-
tising, and editorial copies, there was a most ingen-
ious and wholly surprising charge of ten per cent.
commission on sales, which reduced my half from
pounds to shillings, and handsomely increased the
publisher's half in proportion. I do not now dispute
the justice of the charge, ll was not the fault of the
half-profits system ; it was the fault of the glad young
author who did not distinctly inform himself of its
mysterious nature in agreeing to it, and had only
to reproach himself if he was finally disappointed.

But there is always something disappointing in
the accounts of publishers, which I fancy is because
authors are strangely constituted, rather than be-
cause publishers are so. I will confess that I have
such inordinate expectations of the sale of my books,
which 1 hope I think modestly of, that the sales re-
ported to me never seem great enough. The copy-
right due me, no matter how handsome it is, appears
deplorably mean, and I feel impoverished for several
days after I get it. But, then, I ought to add that my
balance in the bank is always much less than I have
i6

THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

supposed it to be, and my own checks, when they come
back to me, have the air of having been in a conspir-
acy to betray me.

No, we hterary men must learn, no matter how we
boast ourselves in business, that the distress we feel
from our publisher's accounts is simply idiopathic;
and I for one wish to bear my witness to the constant
good faith and uprightness of publishers. It is sup-
posed that because they have the affair altogether
in their hands they are apt to take advantage in it;
but this does not follow, and as a matter of fact they
have the affair no more in their own hands than any
other business man you have an open accoimt with.
There is nothing to prevent you from looking at their
books, except your own innermost belief and fear
that their books are correct, and that your litera-
ture has brought you so little because it has sold so
htUe.

The author is not to blame for his superficial de-
lusion to the contrary, especially if he has written a
book that has set every one talking, because it is of a
vital interest. It may be of a vital interest, without
being at all the kind of book people want to buy; it
may be the kind of book that they are content to
know at second hand ; there are such fatal books ;
but hearing so much, and reading so much about it,
the author cannot help hoping that it has sold much
more than the publisher says. The publisher is un-
doubtedly honest, however, and the author had bet-
ter put away the comforting question of his integ-
rity.

The English writers seem largely to suspect their
publishers ; but I believe that American authors, when
not flown with flattering reviews, as largely trust
theirs. Of course there are rogues in every walk of
life. I will not say that I ever personally met them

LITERATURE AND LIFE

in the flowery paths of hterature, but I have heard of
other people meeting them there, just as I have heard
of people seeing ghosts, and I have to beheve in both
the rogues and the ghosts, without the witness of my
own senses. I suppose, upon such grounds mainly,
that there are wicked publishers, but, in the case of
our books that do not sell, I am afraid that it is the
graceless and inappreciative public which is far more
to blame than the wickedest of the pubhshers. It is
true that publishers will drive a hard bargain when
they can, or when they must; but there is nothing to
hinder an author from driving a hard bargain, too,
when he can, or when he must ; and it is to be said of
the publisher that he is always more willing to abide
by the bargain when it is made than the author is;
perhaps because he has the best of it. But he has
not always the best of it; I have known publishers
too generous to take advantage of the iimocence of
authors ; and I fancy that if publishers had to do with
any race less diffident than authors, they would have
won a repute for unselfishness that they do not now
enjoy. It is certain that in the long period when we
flew the black flag of piracy there were many among
our corsairs on the high seas of literature who paid
a fair price for the stranger craft they seized; still
oftener they removed the cargo and released their
capture with several weeks' provision; and although
there was undoubtedly a good deal of actual throat-
cutting and scuttUng, still I feel sure that there was
less of it than there would have been in any other line
of business released to the unrestricted plunder of the
neighbor. There was for a long time even a comity
among these amiable buccaneers, who agreed not to
interfere with each other, and so were enabled to pay
over to their victims some portion of the profit from
their stol m goods. Of all busines s men publishers

THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

are probably the most faithful a nd honorable^ and

are onl y surpassed in virtue when men of lettes turn
business men.

VII

Publishers have their little theories, their little super-
stitions, and their blind faith in the great god Chance
which we all worship. These things lead them into
temptation and adversity, but they seem to do fairly
well as business men, even in their own behalf. They
do not make above the usual ninety-five per cent, of
failures, and more publishers than authors get rich.

Some theories or superstitions publishers and au-
thors share together. One of these is that it is best
to keep your books all in the hands of one publisher
if you can, because then he can give them more atten-
tion and sell more of them. But my own experience
is that when my books were in the hands of three pub-
lishers they sold quite as well as when one had them ;
and a fellow -author whom I approached in question
of this venerable belief laughed at it. This bold
heretic held that it was best to give each new book to
a new pubUsher, for then the fresh man put all his
energies into pushing it; but if you had them all to-
gether, the pubUsher rested in a vain security that
one book would sell another, and that the fresh vent-
ure would revive the pubUc interest in the stale ones.
I never knew this to happen, and I must class it with
iViAjgiijyrgfitinnQ nf tViP fra/^p — H may be SO in other

and more constant countries, but in our fickle repub-
lic each last book has to fight its own way to public
favor, much as if it had no sort of literary lineage.
Of course this is stating it rather largely, and the truth
will be found inside rather than outside of my state-
ment; but there is at least truth enough in it to give

,^r

LITERATURE AND LIFE

the young author pause. While one is preparing to
sell his basket of glass, he may as well ask himself
whether it is better to part with all to one dealer or
not ; and if he kicks it over, in spuming the imaginary
customer who asks the favor of taking the entire stock,
that will be his fault, and not the fault of the customer.
However, the most important question of all with
the man of letters as a man of business is what kind
of book will sell the best of itself, because, at the end
of the ends, a book sells itself or does not sell at all;
kissing, after long ages of reasoning and a great deal
of culture, still goes by favor, and though innumer-
able generations of horses have been led to the water,
not one horse has yet been made to drink. With the
best, or the worst, will in the world, no pubUsher can
force a book into acceptance. Advertising will not
avail, and reviewing is notoriously futile. If the book
does not strike the popular fancy, or deal with some
universal interest, which need by no means be a pro-
found or important one, the drums and the cymbals
shaU be beaten in vain. The book may be one of the
best and wisest books in the world, but if it has not
this sort of appeal in it the readers of it, and, worse
yet, the purchasers, will remain few, though fit. The
secret of this, like most other secrets of a rather ridicu-
lous world, is in the awful keeping of fate, and we can
only hope to surprise it by some lucky chance. To
plan a surprise of it, to aim a book at the public favor,
is the most hopeless of all endeavors, as it is one of the
unworthiest; and I can, neither as a man of letters
nor as a man of business, counsel the young author
to do it. The best that you can do is to write the book
that it gives you the most pleasure to write, to put as
much heart and soul as you have about you into it,
and then hope as hard as you can to reach the heart
and soul of the great multitude of your fellow-men.

THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

That, and that alone, is good business for a man of
letters.

The mar| pf 1#>»iArc rmicf maJr^^itp liis.iiuiid lil^t in
the United States the fate of abppkj^.m.tbejhands of
the women. It is the women with us who have the
most leisure^ and they read the most books. They
are far better educated, for the most part, than our
men, and their tastes, if not their minds, are more
cultivated. Our men read the newspapers, but our
women read the books; the more refined among them
read the magazines. If they do not always know
what is good, they do know what pleases them, and
it is useless to quarrel with their decisions, for there
is no appeal from them. To go from them to the men
would be going from a higher to a lower court, which
would be honestly surprised and bewildered* if the
thing were possible. As I say, the author of Ught
literature, and often the author of solid literature,
must resign himself to obscurity unless the ladies
choose to recognize him. Yet it would be impossible
to forecast their favor for this kind or that. Who
could prophesy it for another, who guess it for himself?
We must strive bhndly for it, and hope somehow that
our best will also be our prettiest ; but we must remem-
ber at the same time that it is not the ladies' man who
is the favorite of the ladies.

There are, of course, a few, a very few, of our great-
est authors who have striven forward to the first place
in our Valhalla without the help of the largest read-
ing-class among us; but I should say that these were
chiefly the humorists, for whom women are said no-
where to have any warm liking, and who have gen-
erally with us come up through the newspapers, and
have never lost the favor of the newspaper readers.
They have become literary men, as it were, without
the newspaper readers' knowing it; but those who

LITERATURE AND LIFE

have approached Uterature from another direction
have won fame in it chiefly by grace of the women,
who first read them, and then made their husbands
and fathers read them. Perhaps, then, and as a mat-
ter of business, it would be well for a serious author,
when he finds that he is not pleasing the women, and
probably never will please them, to turn humorous
author, and aim at the countenance of the men. Ex-
cept as a humorist he certainly never will get it, for
youi American, when he is not making money, or try-
ing to do it, is making a joke, or trying to do it.

VIII

I hope that I have not been hinting that the author
who approaches literature through journalism is not
as fine and high a literary man as the author who
comes directly to it, or through some other avenue;
I have not the least notion of condemning myself by
any such judgment. But I think it is pretty certain
that fewer and fewer authors are turning from jour-
nalism to Uterature, though the entente cordiale be-
tween the two professions seems as great as ever. I
fancy, though I may be as mistaken in this as I am
in a good many other things, that most journalists
would have been literary men if they could, at the be-
ginning, and that the kindness they almost always
show to young authors is an effect of the self-pity they
feel for their own thwarted wish to be authors. When
an author is once warm in the saddle, and is riding
his winged horse to glory, the case is different : they
have then often no sentiment about him ; he is no longer
the image of their own young aspiration, and they
would willingly see Pegasus buck under him, or have
him otherwise brought to grief and shame. They

THE MAN OF LETfERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

are apt to gird at him for his unhallowed gains, and
they would be quite right in this if they proposed any
way for him to live without them ; as I have allowed
at the outset, the gains are unhallowed. Apparently
it is unseemly for two or three authors to be making
half as much by their pens as popular ministers often
receive in salary ; the public is used to the pecuniary
prosperity of some of the clergy, and at least sees noth-
ing droll in it ; but the paragrapher can always get a
smile out of his readers at the gross disparity between
the ten thousand dollars Jones gets for his novel and
the five pounds Milton got for his epic. I have al-
ways thought Milton was paid too httle, but I will
own that he ought not to have been paid at all, if it
comes to that. Again I sa y tha t no man ought to
live by any art; it is a shame to the art if not to the
artist; but as yet thweis no m^sins of the artist's-liv^
ing otherwise and continuing an artist.

The literary man has ceft^itily~~no^'xromplaint to
make of the newspaper man, generally speaking. I
have often thought with amazement of the kindness
shown by the press to our whole unworthy craft, and
of the help so lavishly and freely given to rising and
even risen authors. To put it coarsely, brutally, I
do not suppose that any other business receives si»
much gratuitous advertising, except the theatre. 1 1
is enormous, the space given in the newspapers to
literary notes, literary aimouncements, reviews, inter-
views, personal paragraphs, biographies, and all the
rest, not to mention the vigorous and incisive attacks
made from time to time upon different authors for
their opinions of romanticism, realism, capitalism,
socialism, Catholicism, and Sandemanianism. I have
sometimes doubted whether the public cared for so
much of it all as the editors gave them, but I have al-
ways said this under my breath, and I have thankfully

LITERATURE AND LIFE

taken my share of the common bounty. A curious
fact, however, is that this vast newspaper publicity
seems to have very little to do with an author's popu-
larity, though ever so much with his notoriety. Some
of those strange subterranesui fellows who never come
to the surface in the newspapers, except for a con-
temptuous psiragraph at long intervals, outsell the
famousest of the celebrities, and secretly have their
horses and yachts and country seats, while immodest
merit is left to get about on foot and look up summer
board at the cheaper hotels. That is probably right,
<jr it would not happen; it seems to be in the general
scheme, like millionairism and pauperism; but it be-
comes a question, then, whether the newspapers, with
all their friendship for Uterature, and their actual
generosity to literary men, can really help one much
to fortune, however much they help one to fame. Such
a question is almost too dreadful, and, though I have
asked it, I will not attempt to answer it. I would
much rather consider the question whether, if the
newspapers can make an author, they can also un-
make him, and I feel pretty safe in saying that I do not
think they can. The Afreet, once out of the bottle, can
never be coaxed back or cudgelled back; and the au-
thor whom the newspapers have made cannot be un-
made by the newspapers. Perhaps he could if they
would let him alone; but the art of letting alone the
creature of your favor* when he has forfeited your
favor, is yet in its infancy with the newspapers. They
consign him to oblivion with a rumor that fills the
land, and they keep visiting him there with an up-
roar which attracts more and more notice to him. An
author who has long enjoyed their favor suddenly
and rather mysteriously loses it, through his opin-
ions on certain matters of literary taste, say. For
the space of five or six years he is denoimced with a

THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

unanimity and an incisive vigor that ought to con-
vince him there is something wrong. If he thinks
it is his censors, he clings to his opinions with an
abiding constancy, while ridicule, obloquy, carica-
ture, burlesque, critical refutation, and personal detrac-
tion follow unsparingly upon every expression, for
instance, of his belief that romantic fiction is the
highest form of fiction, and that the base, sordid,
photographic, commonplace school of Tolstoy, Tour-
gu6nief , Zola, Hardy, and James is unworthy a mo-
ment's comparison with the school of Rider Haggard.
All this ought certainly to unmake the author in ques-
tion, but this is not really the effect. Slowly but sure-
ly the clamor dies away, and the author, without re-
linquishing one of his wicked opinions, or in any wise
showing himself repentant, remains apparently whole;
and he even returns in a measure to the old kindness —
not indeed to the earlier day of perfectly smooth things,
but certainly to as much of it as he merits.

I would not have the young author, from this im-
aginary case, believe that it is well either to court or
to defy the good opinion of the press. In fact, it will
not only be better taste, but it will be better business,
for him to keep it altogether out of his mind. There
is only one whom he can safely try to please, and that
is himself. If he does this he will very probably please
other people; but if he does not please himself he may
be sure that he will not please them ; the book which
he has not enjoyed writing no one will enjoy reading.
Still, I would not have him attach too little conse-
quence to the influence of the press. I should say,
let him take the celebrity it gives him gratefully but
not too seriously; let him reflect that he is often the
necessity rather than the ideal of the paragrapher,
and that the notoriety the joumaUsts bestow upon
him is not the measure of their acquaintance with his

LITERATURE AND LIFE

work, far less his meaning. They are good fellows,
those hard-pushed, poor fellows of the press, but the
very conditions of their censure, friendly or unfriend-
ly, forbid it thoroughness, and it must often have
more zeal than knowledge in it.

There are some sorts of light literature once greatly
in demand, but now apparently no longer desired by
magazine editors, who ought to know what their read-
ers desire. Among these is the travel sketch, to me
a very agreeable kind, and really to be regretted in its
decline. There are some reasons for its decline be-
sides a change of taste in readers, and a possible sur-
feit. Travel itself has become so universal that every-
body, in a manner, has been everywhere, and the
foreign scene has no longer the ch^rrm of strangeness.
We do not think the Old World either so romantic or
so ridiculous as we used; and perhaps from an in-
stinctive perception of this altered mood writers no
longer appeal to our sentiment or our humor with
sketches of outlandish people and places. Of course,
this can hold true only in a general way; the thing
is still done, but not nearly so much done as formerly.
When one thinks of the long line of American writers
who have greatly pleased in this sort, and who even
got their first fame in it, one must grieve to see it obso-
lescent. Irving, Ciulis, Bayard Taylor, Herman
Melville, Ross Browne, Warner, Ik Marvell, Long-
fellow, Lowell, Story, Mr. James, Mr. Aldrich, Mr.
Hay, Mrs. Hunt, Mr. C. W. Stoddard, Mark Twain,
and many others whose names will not come to me
at the moment, have in their several ways richly con-
tributed to our pleasure in it ; but I caimot now fancy

THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

a young author finding favor with an editor in a sketch
of travel or a study of foreign manners and customs;
his work would have to be of the most signal impor-
tance and brilliancy to overcome the editor's feeling
that the thing had been done already; and I believe
that a publisher, if offered a book of such things, would
look at it askance and plead the well-known quiet of
the trade. StiU, I may be mistaken.

1 am rather more confident about the decline of an-
other literary species — ^namely, the light essay. We
have esssiys enough and to spare of certain soberer
and severer sorts, such as grapple with problems and
deal with conditions; but the kind that I mean, the
slightly humorous, gentle, refined, and humane kind,
seems no longer to abound as it once did. I do not
know whether the editor discourages them, knowing
his readers' frame, or whether they do not offer them-
selves, but I seldom find them in the magazines. I
certainly do not believe that if any one were now to
write essays such as Warner's Backlog Studies, an
editor would refuse them; and perhaps nobody really
writes them. Nobody seems to write the sort that
Colonel Higginson formerly contributed to the peri-
odicals, or such as Emerson wrote. Without a great
name behind it, I am afraid that a volume of essays
would find few buyers, even after the essays had
made a public in the magazines. There are, of course,
instances to the contrary, but they are not so many or
so striking as to make me think that the essay could
be offered as a good opening for business talent

I suspect that good poetry by well-known hands
was never better paid in the magazines than it is now.
I must say, too, that I think the quality of the minor
poetry of our day is better than that of twenty-five or
thirty years ago. I could name half a score of yoimg
poets whose work from time to time gives me great

LITERATURE AND LIFE

pleasure, by the reality of its feeling and the delicate
perfection of its art, but I will not name them, for fear
of passing over half a score of others equally mer-
itorious. We have certainly no reason to be discour-
aged, whatever reason the poets themselves have to
be so, and 1 do not tliink that even in the short story
our younger writers are doing better work than they
are doing in the slighter forms of verse. Yet the notion
of inviting business talent into this field would be as
preposterous as that of asking it to devote itself to the
essay. What book of verse by a recent poet, if we
except some such peculiarly gifted poet as Mr. Whit-
corab Riley, has paid its expenses, not to speak of any
profit to the author? Of course, it would be rather
more ofltensive and ridiculous that it should do so
than that any other form of literary art should do
so; and yet there is no more provision in our eco-
nomic system for the support of the poet apart from
his poems than there is for the support of the novelist
apart from his novel. One could not make any more
money by writing poetry than by writing history,
but it is a curious fact that while the historians have
usually been rich men, and able to afford the luxury
of writing history, the poets have usually been poor
men, with no pecuniary justification in their devotion
to a calling which is so seldom an election.

To be sure, it can be said for them that it costs far
less to set up poet than to set up historian. There
is no outlay for copying documents, or visiting libra-
ries, or buying books. In fact, except as historian,
the man of letters, in whatever walk, has not only
none of the expenses of other men of business, but
none of the expenses of other artists. He has no such
outlay to make for materials, or models, or studio rent
as the painter or the sculptor has, and his income,
such as it is, is immediate. If he strikes the fancy

THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

of the editor with the first thing he ofiFers, as he very
well may, it is as well with him as with other men
after long years of apprenticeship. Although he will
alwajTS be the "better for an apprenticeship, and the
longer appirenticeship the better, he may practically
need none at all. Such are the strange conditions of
his acceptance with the public, that he may please
better without it than with it An author's first book
is too often not only his luckiest, but really his best ;
it has a brightness that dies out under the school he
puts himself to, but a painter or a sculptor is only the
gainer by all the school he can give himself.

In view of this fact it becomes again very hard to
establish the author's status in the business world,
and at moments I have grave question whether he
belongs there at all, except as a novelist. There is,
of course, no outlay for him in this sort, any more than
in any other sort of literature, but it at least supposes
and exacts some measure of preparation. A young
writer may produce a brilliant and very perfect ro-
mance, just as he may produce a briUiant and ver^^
perfect poem, but in the field of realistic fiction, or in j^
what we used to call the novel of manners, a writerj ^
can only produce an inferior book at the outset. For
this work he needs experience and observation, not
so much of others as of himself, for ultimately his char-
acters will all come out of himself, and he will need
to know motive and character with such thorough-
ness and accuracy as he can acquire only through
his own heart. A man remains in a measure strange
to himself as long as he lives, and the very sources
of novelty in his work will be within himself ; he can

LITERATURE AND LIFE

continue to give it freshness in no other way than by
knowing himself better and better. But a young
writer and an untrained writer has not yet begun to
be acquainted even with the lives of other men. The
world around him remains a secret as well as the world
within him, and both imfold themselves simultane-
ously to that experience of joy and sorrow that can
come only with the lapse of time. Until he is well on
towards forty, he will hardly have assimilated the
materials of a great novel, although he may have
amassed them. The novelist, then, is a man of let-
ters who is hke a man of business in the necessity of
{^reparation for his calling, though he does not pay
store-rent, and may carry all his affairs imder his hat,
as the phrase is. He alone among men of letters may
look forward tc that sort of continuous prosperity
which follows from capacity and diligence in other
vocations; for story-telling is now a fairly recognized
trade, and the story-teller has a money-standing in
the economic world. It is not a very high standing,
I think, and I have expressed the belief that it does not
bring him the respect felt for men in other lines of busi-
ness. Still our people cannot deny some considera-
tion to a man who gets a himdred dollars a thousand
words or whose book sells five hundred thousand copies
or less. That is a fact appreciable to business, and
the man of letters in the line of fiction may reason-
ably feel that his place in our civilization, though he
may owe it to the women who form the great mass of
his readers, has something of the character of a vested
interest in the eyes of men. There is, indeed, as yet
no conspiracy law which will avenge the attempt to
injure him in his business. A critic, or a dark con-
juration of critics, may damage him at will and to
the extent of their power, and he has no recourse but
to write better books, or worse. The law vnU do noth-

THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

ing for him, and a boycott of his books might be preach-
ed with immunity by any class of men not liking his
opinions on the question of industrial slavery or anti-
peedobaptism. Still the market for his wares is stead-
ier than the market for any other kind of hterary wares,
and the prices are better. The historian, who is a
kind of inferior r eahst, has something like the same
steadiness in the^mSrket, but the prices he can com-
mand are much lower, and the two branches of the
novehst's trade are not to be compared in a business
way. As for the essayist, the poet, the traveller, the
popular scientist, they are nowhere in the competition
for the favor of readers. The reviewer, indeed, has
a pretty steady call for his work, but I fancy the re-
viewers who get a hundred dollars a thousand words
could all stand upon the point of a needle without
crowding one another; I should rather like to see them
doing it. Another gratifying fact of the situaticm
is that the best writers of fiction, who are most in
demand with the magazines, probably get nearly as
much money for their work as the inferior novdists
who outsell them by tens of thousands, and who make
their appeal to the inntmierable multitude of the less
educated and less cultivated buyers of fiction in book
form. I think they earn their money, but if I did not
think all of the higher class of novelists earned so
much money as they get, I should not be so invidious
as to single out for reproach those who did not.

The difficulty about payment, as I have hinted, is
that Uterature has no objective value really, but only ^
a subjective value, if 1 may so express it. A poem,
an essay, a novel, even a paper on political economy,
may be worth gold untold to one reader, and worth
nothing whatever to another. It may be precious to
one mood of the reader, and worthless to another mood
of the same veader. How, then, is it to be priced, and

LITERATURE AND LIFE

how is it to be fairly marketed? All people must be
fed, and all people must be clothed, and all people
must be housed; and so meat, raiment, and shelter
are things of positive and obvious necessity, which
may fitly have a market price put upon them. But
there is no such positive and obvious necessity. 1 am
sorry to say, for fiction, or not for the higher sort of
fiction. The sort of fiction which corresponds in litera-
ture to the circus and the variety theatre in the show-
business seems essential to the spiritual health of the
masses, but the most cultivated of the classes can get
on, from time to time, without an artistic novel. This
IS a great pity, and 1 should be very willing that read-
ers might feel something like the pangs of hunger
and cold, when deprived of their finer fiction; but ap-
parently they never do. Their dumb and passive
need is apt only to manifest itself negatively, or in
the form of weariness of this author or that. The
publisher of books can ascertain the fact through the
declining sales of a writer; but the editor of a maga-
zine, who is the best customer of the best UTiters, must
feel the market with a much more delicate touch. Some-
times it may be years before he can satisfy himself that
his readers are sick of Smith, and are pining for Jones;
even then he cannot know how long their mood will last,
and he is by no means safe in cutting down Smith's
price and putting up Jones's. With the best will in the
world to pay justly, he cannot. Smith, who has been
boring his readers to death for a year, may write to-
morrow a thing that will please them so much that he
will at once be a prime favorite again; and Jones,
whom they have been asking for, may do something
so uncharacteristic and alien that it will be a flat fail-
ure in the magazine. The only thing that gives either
writer positive value is his acceptance with the reader;
but the acceptance is from month to month wholly
32

THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

uncertain. Authors are largely matters of fashion/
like this style of bonnet, or that shape of gown. Last
spring the dresses were all made with lace berthas,
and Smith was read; this year the butterfly capes are
worn, and Jones is the favorite author. Who shall
forecast the fall and winter modes?

In this inquiry it is always the author rather than
the publisher, always the contributor rather than the
editor, whom I am concerned for. I study the diffi-
ctilties of the pubhsher and editor only because they
involve the author and the contributor; if they did not,
I will not say with how hard a heart I should ttun from
them ; my only pang now in scrutinizing the ^usines s
co nditions of ' litera ture is for the makers of literature,
not the piui^eyors of it.

After all, and in spite of my vaunting title, is the
man of letters -ever a business man? I suppose that,
strictly^^peaking, he never is, except in those rare in-
stances where, through need or choice, he is the pub-
lisher as well as the author of his books. Then he
puts something on the market and tries to sell it there,
and is a man of business. But otherwise he is an
artist merely, and is allied to the great mass of wage-
workers who are paid for the labor they have put into
the thing done or the thing made; who live by doing
or making a thing, and not by marketing a thing after
some other man has done it or made it. The quality
of the thing has nothing to do with the economic nat-
ure of the case; the author is, in the last analysis,
merely a working-man, and is imder the nile that gov-
erns the working-man's Ufe. If he is sick or sad, and
cannot work, if he is lazy or tipsy, and will not, then

I 33

LITERATURE AND LIFE

he earns nothing. He cannot delegate his business
to a clerk or a manager; it will not go on while he is
sleeping. The wage he can command depends strictly
upon his skill and diligence.

I myself am neither sorry nor ashamed for this;
I am glad and proud to be of those who eat their bread
in the sweat of their own brows, and not the sweat of
other men's brows; I think my bread is the sweeter
for it. In the mean time, I have no blame for business
men; they are no more of the condition of things than
we working-men are; they did no more to cause it or
create it; but I would rather be in my place than in
theirs, and 1 wish that I could make all my fellow-
artists realize that economically they are the same as
mechanics, farmers, day-laborers. It ought to be our
glory that we produce something, that we bring into
the world something that was not choately there be-
fore; that at least we fashion or shape something
anew; and we ought to feel the tie that binds us to
all the toilers of the shop and field, not as a galling
chain, but as a mystic bond also uniting us to Him

>who works hitherto and evermore.

I know very well that to the vast multitude of our f el-
low-working-men we artists are the shadows of names,
or not even the shadows. I like to look the facts in the
face, for though their lineaments are often terrible,
yet there is light nowhere else; and I will not piretend,
in this light, that the masses care any more for us than
I we care for the masses, or so much. Nevertheless,

V and most distinctly, we are not of the classes. Except
in our work, they have no use for us ; if now and then
they fancy qualifying their material splendor or their
spiritual dulness with some artistic presence, the at-
tempt is always a failure that bruises and abashes.
In so far as the artist is a man of the world, he is the
less an artist, and if he fashions himself upon fashion,

THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

he deforms his art. We all know that ghastly type;
it is more absurd even than the figure which is really
of the world, which was bom and bred in it, and con-
ceives of nothing outside of it, or above it. In the
social world, as well as in the business world, the art-
ist is anomalous, in the actual conditions, and he is
perhaps a little ridiculous.

Yet he has to be somewhere, poor fellow, and I think
that he will do well to regard himself as in a transition
state. He is really of the masses, but they do not know
it, and what is worse, they do not know him; as yet
the common people do not hear him gladly or hear
him at all. He is apparently of the classes ; they know
him, and they listen to him; he often amuses them
very much; but he is not quite at ease among them;
whether they know it or not, he knows that he is not
of their kind. Perhaps he will never be at home any-
where in the world as long as there are masses whom
he ought to consort with, and classes whom he cannot
consort with. The prospect is not brilliant for any
artist now living, but perhaps the artist of the future
will see in the flesh the accomplishment of that himian
equality of which the instinct has been divinely planted
in the himian soul.

WORRIES OF A WINTER WALK

THE other winter, as 1 was taking a morning walk
down to the East River, I came upon a bit of our
motley life, a fact of our piebald civilization, which
has perplexed me from time to time, ever since, and
which I wish now to leave with the reader, for his or
her more thoughtful consideration.

The morning was extremely cold. It professed to
be simny, and there was really some sort of hard glit-
ter in the air, which, so far from being tempered by this
effulgence, seemed all the stonier for it. Blasts of
frigid wind swept the streets, and buffeted each other
in a fury of resentment when they met around the cor-
ners. Although I was passing through a populous
tenement-house quarter, my way was not hindered by
the sports of the tenement-house children, who com-
monly crowd one from the sidewalks; no frowzy head
looked out over the fire-escapes; there were no ped-
dlers' carts or voices in the road-way ; not above three
or four shawl-hooded women cowered out of the little
shops with small purchases in their hands; not so
many tiny girls with jugs opened the doors of the beer
saloons. The butchers' windows were painted with
patterns of frost, through which I could dimly see the
frozen meats hanging like hideous stalactites from

WORRIES OF A WINTER WALK

the roof. When 1 came to the river, 1 ached in synk-
pathy with the shipping painfully atilt on the rock-
like surface of the brine, which broke against the piers,
and sprayed itself over them like showers of powdered
quartz.

' But it was before I reached this final point that I re-
ceived into my consciousness the moments of the hu-
man comedy which have been an increasing burden to
it. Within a block of the river I met a child so small
that at first I almost refused to take any account of her,
imtil she appealed to my sense of htmior by her amus-
ing disproportion to the pail which she was lugging
in front of her with both of her little mittened hands.
I am scrupulous about mittens, though I was tempted
to write of her little naked hands, red with the pitiless
cold. This would have been more e£fective, but it
would not have been true, and the truth obliges me
to own that she had a stout, warm-looking knit jacket
on. The pail — which was half her height and twice
her bulk — was filled to overflowing with small pieces
of coal and coke, and if it had not been for this I might
have taken her for a child of the better classes, she
was so comfortably clad. But in that case she would
have had to be fifteen or sixteen years old, in order to
be doing so efficiently and responsibly the work which,
as the child of the worse classes, she was actually do-
ing at five or six. We must, indeed, allow that the
early self-helpfulness of such children is very remark-
able, and all the more so because they grow up into
men and women so stupid that, according to the the-
ories of all polite economists, they have to have their
discontent with their conditions put into their heads
by malevolent agitators.

From time to time this tiny creature put down her
heavy burden to rest ; it was, of course, only relatively
heavy; a man would have made nothing of it. From

LITERATURE AND LIFE

time to time she was forced to stop and pick up the bits
of coke that tumbled from her heaping pail. She
could not consent to lose one of them, and at last, when
she found she could not make all of them stay on the
heap, she thriftily tucked them into the pockets of her
jacket, and trudged sturdily on till she met a boy some
years older, who planted himself in her path and stood
looking at her, with his hands in his pockets. I do
not say he was a bad boy, but I could see in his furtive
eye that she was a sore temptation to him. The chance
to have fun with her by upsetting her bucket, and
scattering her coke about till she cried with vexation,
was one which might not often present itself, and I do
not know what made him forego it, but I know that
he did, and that he finally passed her, as I have seen
a yoimg dog pass a little cat, after having stopped it,
and thoughtfully considered worrying it.

I turned to watch the child out of sight, and when I
faced about towards the river again I received the sec-
ond instalment of my present perplexity. A cart,
heavily laden with' coke, drove out of the coal-yard
which I now perceived I had come to, and after this
cart followed two brisk old women, snugly clothed
and tightly tucked in against the cold like the child,
who vied with each other in catching up the lumps of
coke that were jolted from the load, and filling their
aprons with them; such old women, so hale, so spry,
so tough and tireless, with the withered apples red in
their cheeks, I have not often seen. They may have
been about sixty years, or sixty-five, the time of life
when most women are grandmothers and are relegated
on their merits to the cushioned seats of their chil-
dren's homes, softly silk-gowned and lace-capped, dear
visions of lilac and lavender, to be loved and petted by
their grandchildren. The fancy can hardly put such
sweet ladies in the place of those nimble beldams, who

WORRIES OF A WINTER WALK

hopped about there in the wind-swept street, plucking
up their day's supply of firing from the involuntary
bounty of the cart. Even the attempt is imseemly,
and whether mine is at best but a feeble fancy, not
bred to strenuous feats of any kind, it fails to bring
them before me in that figure. I cannot imagine ladies
doing that kind of thing ; I can only imagine women
who had lived hard and worked hard all their lives
doing it; who had begun to fight with want from their
cradles, like that little one with the pail, and must
fight without ceasing to their graves. But I am not
unreasonable; I understand and I understood what I
saw to be one of the things that must be, for the per-
fectly good and sufficient reason that they always
have been; and at the moment I got what pleasure I
could out of the stolid indifference of the cart-driver,
who never looked about him at the scene which inter-
ested me, but jolted onward, leaving a trail of pungent
odors from his pipe in the freezing eddies of the air be-
hind him.

•
It is still not at all, or not so much, the fact that
troubles me; it is what to do with the fact. The ques-
tion began with me almost at once, or at least as soon
as I faced about and began to walk homeward with the
wind at my back. I was then so much more comfort-
able that the aesthetic instinct thawed out in me, and
I foimd myself wondering what use I could make of
what I had seen in the way of my trade. Should I
have something very pathetic, like the old grandmoth-
er going out day after day to pick up coke for her sick
daughter's freezing orphans till she fell sick herself?
What should I do with the family in that case? They
could not be left at that point, and I promptly imagined

LITERATURE AND LIFE

a granddaughter, a girl of about eighteen, very pretty
and rather proud, a sort of belle in her humble neigh-
borhood, who should take her grandmother's place.
I decided that I should have her Italian, because I
knew something of Italians, and could manage that
nationality best, and I should call her Maddalena;
either Maddalena or Marina; Marina would be more
Venetian, and I saw that I must make her Venetian.
Here I was on safe ground, and at once the love-interest
appeared to help me out. By virtue of the law of con-
trasts, it appeared to me in the person of a Scandina-
vian lover, tall, silent, blond, whom I at once felt
I could do, from my acquaintance with Scandina-
vian lovers in Norwegian novels. His name was
Janssen, a good, distinctive Scandinavian name ; I
do not know but it is Swedish : and I thought he
might very well be a Swede ; I could imagine his
manner from that of a Swedish waitress we once
had.

Janssen — Jan Janssen, say — drove the coke-cart
which Marina's grandmother used to follow out of the
coke-yard, to pick up the bits of coke as they were
jolted from it, and he had often noticed her with deep
indifference. At first he noticed Marina — or Nina,
as I soon saw I must call her — with the same uncon-
cern; for in her grandmother's hood and jacket and
check apron, with her head held shamefacedly down-
ward, she looked exactly like the old woman. I thought
I would have Nina make her self-sacrifice rebelliously,
as a girl like her would be apt to do, and follow the coke-
cart with tears. This would catch Janssen's notice,
and he would wonder, perhaps with a little pang, what
the old woman was crying about, and then he would
see that it was not the old woman. He would see that
it was Nina, and he would be in love with her at once,
for she would not only be very pretty, but he would

WORRIES OF A WINTER WALK

know that she was good, if she were wiUing to help
her family in that way.

He would respect the girl, in his duU, sluggish.
Northern way. He would do nothing to betray him-
self. But httle by httle he would b^in to befriend her.
He would carelessly overload his cart before he left the
yard, so that the coke would fall from it more lavishly;
and not only this, but if he saw a stone or a piece of
coal in the street he would drive over it, so that more
coke would be jolted from his load.

Nina would get to watching for him. She must
not notice him much at first, except as the driver of
the overladen, carelessly driven cart. But after sev-
eral mornings she must see that he is very strong and
handsome. Then, after several mornings more, their
eyes must meet, her vivid black eyes, with the tears
of rage and shame in them, and his cold blue eyes.
This must be the climax ; and just at this point I gave
my fancy a rest, while I went into a drug-store at the
comer of Avenue B to get my hands warm.

They were abominably cold, even in my pockets,
and I had suffered past several places trying to think
of an excuse to go in. I now asked the druggist if
he had something which I felt pretty sure he had not,
and this put him in the wrong, so that when we fell
into talk he was very pohte. We agreed admirably
about the hard times, and he gave way respectfully
when I doubted his opinion that the winters wd'e get-
ting milder. I made him reflect that there was no
reason for this, and that it was probably an iUusion
from that deeper impression which aU experiences
made on us in the past, when we were younger; I ought
to say that he was an elderly man, too. I said I fancied
such a morning as this was not very mild for people
that had no fires, and this brought me back again to
Janssen and Marina, by way of the coke-cart. The

LITERATURE AND LIFE

thought of them rapt me so far from the druggist that
I listened to his answer with a glazing eye, and did
not know what he said. My hands had now got warm,
and I bade him good-morning with a parting regret,
which he civilly shared, that he had not the thing I
had not wanted, and I pushed out again into the cold,
which I found not so bad as before.

My hero and heroine were waiting for me there, and
I saw that to be truly modem, to be at once reahstic
and mystical, to have both delicacy and strength, I
must not let them get further acquainted with each
other. The affair must simply go on from day to day,
till one morning Jan must note that it was again the
grandmother and no longer the girl who was follow-
ing his cart. She must be very weak from a long
sickness — I was not sure whether to have it the grippe
or not, but I decided upon that provisionally — ^and she
must totter after Janssen, so that he must get down
after a while to speak to her imder pretence of arrang-
ing the tail-board of his cart, or something of that kind ;
I did not care for the detail. They should get into talk
in the broken English which was the only language
they could have in common, and she should burst into
tears, and teU him that now Nina was sick; I imagined
making this very simple, but very touching, and I
really made it so touching that it brought the lump
into my own throat, and I knew it would be effective
with the reader. Then I had Jan get back upon his
cart, and drive stolidly on again, and the old woman
limp feebly after.

There should not be any more, I decided, except
that one very cold morning, like that ; Jan should be
driving through that street, and should be passing
the door of the tenement house where Nina had lived,
just as a little procession should be issuing from it.
The fact must be told in brief sentences, with a total

WORRIES OF A WINTER WALK

absence of emotionality. The last touch must be
Jan's cart turning the street comer with Jan's figure
sharply silhouetted against the clear, cold morning
hght. Nothing more.

But it was at this point that another notion came
into my mind, so antic, so impish, so fiendish, that if
there were still any Evil One, in a world which gets
on so poorly without him, I should attribute it to his
suggestion; and this was that the procession which
Jan saw issuing from the tenement-house door was
not a funeral procession, as the reader will have rashly
fancied, but a wedding procession, with Nina at the
head of it, quite well again, and going to be married
to the little brown youth with ear-rings who had long
had her heart.

With a truly perverse instinct, I saw how strong
this might be made, at the fond reader's expense, to be
sure, and how much more pathetic, in such a case,
the silhouetted figure on the coke-cart would really
be. I should, of course, make it perfectly plain that no
one was to blame, and that the whole affair had been
so tacit on Jan's part that Nina might very well have
known nothing of his feeling for her. Perhaps at the
very end I might subtly insinuate that it was possible
he might have had no such feehng towards her as the
reader had been led to imagine.

The question as to which ending I ought to have
given my romance is what has ever since remained
to perplex me, and it is what has prevented my ever
writing it. Here is material of the best sort lying use-
less on my hands, which, if I could only make up my
mind, might be wrought into a short story as affect-

LITERATURE AND LIFE

ing as any that wring our hearts in fiction ; and I think
I could get something fairly unintelligible out of the
broken English of Jan and Nina's grandmother, and
certainly something novel. All that I can do now,
however, is to put the case before the reader, and let
him decide for himself how it should end.

The mere humanist, I suppose, might say that I
am rightly served for having regarded the fact I had
witnessed as material for fiction at all; that I had no
business to bewitch it with my miserable art; that 1
ought to have spoken to that Uttle child and those
poor old women, and tried to learn something of their
hves from them, that I might offer my knowledge again
for the instruction of those whose lives are easy and
happy in the indifference which ignorance breeds in
us. I own there is something in this, but then, on
the other hand, I have heard it urged by nice people
that they do not want to know about such squahd
lives, that it is offensive and out of taste to be always
bringing them in, and that we ought to be writing
about good society, and especially creating grandes
dames for their amusement. This sort of people could
say to the humanist that he ought to be glad there are
coke-carts for fuel to fall off from for the lower classes,
and that here was no case for sentiment; for if one is to
be interested in 8uch things at all, it must be aestheti-
cally, though even this is deplorable in the presence
of fiction already overloaded with low life, and so poor
in grandes dames as ours.

CONFESSIONS OF A SUMMER COLONIST

TliE season is ending in the little summer settlement
on the Down East coast where I liave been pass-
ing the last three months, and with each loath day
the sense of its peculiar charm grows more poignant.
A prescience of the home - sickness I shall feel for it
when I go already begins to torment me, and I find
myself wishing to imagine some form of words which
shall keep a likeness of it at least through the winter;
some shadowy semblance which 1 may turn to here-
after if any chance or change should destroy or trans-
form it, or, what is more likely, if I should never come
back to it. Perhaps others in the distant future may
turn to it for a glimpse of our actual life in one of its
most characteristic phases; I am sure that in the dis-
tant present there are many millions of our own in-
landers to whom it wotild be altogether strange.

In a certain sort fragile is written all over our colony ;
as far as the visible body of it is concerned it is inex-
pressibly perishable; a fire and a high wind could
sweep it all away; and one of the most American of
all American things is the least fitted among them to
survive from the present to the future, and impart to
it the significance of w^hat may soon be a "portion
and parcel" of our extremely forgetful past.

LITERATURE AND LIFE

It is also in a supremely transitional moment: one
might say that last year it was not quite what it is
now, and next year it may be altogether dififerent. In
fact, our summer colony is in that happy hour when
the rudeness of the first summer conditions has been
left far behind, and vulgar luxury has not yet cixm-
brously succeeded to a sort of sylvan distinction.

The type of its simple and sufficing hospitalities is
the seven-o'clock supper. Every one, in hotel or in
cottage, dines between one and two, and no less scru-
pulously sups at seven, unless it is a few extremists
who sup at half-past seven. At this function, which
is our chief social event, it is de rigueur for the men
not to dress, and they come in any sort of sack or jack-
et or cutaway, letting the ladies make up the pomps
which they forego. From this fact may be inferred the
informality of the men's day-time attire; and the same
note is soimded in the whole range of the cottage life,
so that once a visitor from the world outside, who had
been exasperated beyond endurance by the absence
of form among us (if such an effect could be from a
cause so negative), burst out with the reproach, "Oh,
you make a fetish of your informality I"

" Fetish " is, perhaps, rather too strong a word, but I
shotild not mind sajang that informality was the tute-
lary genius of the place. American men are every-
where impatient of form. It burdens and bothers
them, and they Uke to throw it ofif whenever they can.
We may not be so very democratic at heart as we seem,
but we are imp)atient of ceremonies that separate us
when it is our business or our pleasure to get at one
another; and it is pari of our splendor to ignore the
ceremonies as we do the expenses. We have all the
decent grades of riches and poverty in our colony, but
our informality is not more the treasure of the humble
than of the great. In the nature of things it cannot

CONFESSIONS OF A SUMMER COLONIST

last, however, and the only question is how long it
will last. I think, myself, until some one imagines
giving an eight-o'clock dinner; then all the informal-
ities will go, and the whole train of evils which such
a dinner connotes will rush in.

The cottages themselves are of several sorts, and
some still exist in the earlier stages of mutation from
the fishermen's and farmers' houses which formed
their germ. But these are now mostly let as lodg-
ings to bachelors and other single or semi-detached
folks who go for their meals to the neighboring hotels
or boarding-houses. The hotels are each the centre
of this sort of centripetal life, as well as the homes of
their own scores or hundreds of inmates. A single
boarding-house gathers about it half a dozen depend-
ent cottages which it cares for, and feeds at its table;
and even where the cottages have kitchens and all the
housekeeping facilities, their inmates sometimes pre-
fer to dine at the hotels. By far the greater number
of cottagers, however, keep house, bringing their ser-
vice with them from the cities, and settling in their
summer homes for three or four or five months.

The houses conform more or less to one type : a pict-
uresque structure of colonial pattern, shingled to the
groimd, and stained or left to take a weather-stain of
grayish brown, with cavernous verandas, and dor-
mer-windowed roofs covering ten or twelve rooms.
Within they are, if not elaborately finished, elaborate-
ly fitted up, with a constant regard to health in the
plumbing and drainage. The water is brought in a
system of pipes from a lake five miles away, and as it
is only for summer use the pipes are not buried from

LITERATURE AND LIFE

the frost, but wander along the surface, through the
ferns and brambles of the tough little sea-side knolls
on which the cottages are perched, and climb the old
tumbling stone walls of the original pastures before
diving into the cemented basements.

Most of the cottages are owned by their occupants,
and furnished by them; the rest, not less attractive
and hardly less tastefully furnished, belong to natives,
who have caught on to the architectural and domestic
preferences of the summer people, and have built them
to let. The rugosities of the stony pasture land end
in a wooded point seaward, and curve east and north
in a succession of beaches. It is on the point, and
mainly short of its wooded extremity, that the cottages
of our settlement are dropped, as near the ocean as
may be, and with as little order as birds' nests in the
grass, among the sweet-fem, laurel, bay, wild rasp-
berries, and dog-rose.s, which it is the ideal to leave
as untouched as possible. Wheel-worn lanes that
twist about among the hollows find the cottages from
the highway, but foot-paths approach one cottage
from another, and people walk rather than drive to
each other's doors.

From the deep-bosomed, well-sheltered httle harbor
the tides swim inland, half a score of winding miles,
up the channel of a river which without them would
be a trickhng rivulet. An irregular line of cottages
follows the shore a little way, and then leaves the river
to the schooners and barges which naWgate it as far
as the oldest pile-built wooden bridge in New Eng-
land, and these in their turn abandon it to the fleets
of row-boats and canoes in which summer youth of
both sexes explore it to its source over depths as clear
as glass, past wooded headlands and low, rush-bor-
dered meadows, through reaches and openings of pas-
toral fields, and under the shadow of dreaming groves.

CONFESSIONS OF A SUMMER COLONIST

If there is anything lovelier than the scenery of this
gentle river I do not know it ; and I doubt if the sky is
purer and bluer in paradise. This seems to be the
consensus, tacit or explicit, of the youth who visit it,
and employ the landscape for their picnics and their
water parties from the beginning to the end of summer.

The river is very much used for sunsets by the cot-
tagers who live on it, and who claim a superiority
through them to the cottagers on the point. An im-
partial mind obUges me to say that the sunsets are all
good in our colony ; there is no place from which they
are bad; and yet for a certain tragical simset, where
the d3ang day bleeds slowly into the channel till it is
filled from shore to shore with red as far as the eye
can reach, the river is unmatched.

For my own purposes, it is not less acceptable, how-
ever, when the fog has come in from the sea like a visi-
ble reverie, and blurred the whole valley with its white-
ness. I find that particularly good to look at from the
trolley-car which visits and revisits the river before
finally leaving it, with a sort of desperation, and hid-
ing its passion with a sudden plunge into the woods.

The old fishing and seafaring village, which has
now almost lost the recollection of its first estate in its
absorption with the care of the summer colony, was
sparsely dropped along the highway bordering the
harbor, and the shores of the river, where the piles of
the time-worn wharves are still rotting. A few houses
of the past remain, but the type of the summer cottage
has impressed itself upon all the later building, and
the native is passing architecturally, if not personally,
into abeyance. He takes the situation philosophical-
4 49

LITERATURE AND LIFE

ly, and in the season he caters to the summer colony
not only as the landlord of the rented cottages, and
the keeper of the hotels and boarding-houses, but as
livery-stableman, grocer, butcher, marketman, apoth-
ecary, and doctor; there is not one foreign accent in
any of these callings. If the native is a farmer, he
devotes himself to vegetables, poultry, eggs, and fruit
for the simuner folks, and brings these supplies to their
doors ; his children appear with flowers ; and there are
many proofs that he has accurately sized the cot-
;tagers up in their tastes and fancies as well as their
needs. I doubt if we have sized him up so well, or if
our somewhat conventionalized ideal of him is per-
iectly representative. He is, perhaps, more complex
ithan he seems; he is certainly much more self-sufficing
than might have been expected. The summer folks
are the material from which his prosperity is wrought,
but he is not dependent, and is very far from sub-
missive. As in all right conditions, it is here the em-
ployer who asks for work, not the employ^; and the
work must be respectfully asked for. There are many
fables to this effect, as, for instance, that of the lady
who said to a summer visitor, critical of the week's
wash she had brought home, "Til wash you and 111
iron you, but I won't take none of your jaw " A prim-
itive independence is the ke3niote of the native char-
acter, and it suffers no infringement, but rather boasts
itself. "We're independent here, I tell you," said the
friendly person who consented to take off the wire
door. " I was down Bangor way doin' a piece of work,
and a fellow come along, and says he, 'I want you'
should hurry up on that job. ' ' Hello I ' says I, ' 1 guess
rU puU out.' Well, we calculate to do our ia>rJb," he
added, with an accent which sufficiently implied that
their consciences needed no bossing in the perform-
ance.

CONFESSIONS OF A SUMMER COLONIST

The native compliance with any summer-visiting
request is commonly in some such form as, "Well,
I don't know but what I can," or, "I guess there ain't
an3rthing to hinder me. " This compliance is so rare-
ly, if ever, carried to the point of domestic service that
it may fairly be said that aL the domestic service, at
least of the cottagers, is imported. The natives will
wait at the hotel tables ; they will come in " to accom-
modate"; but they will not "live out." I was one
day witness of the extreme failure of a friend whose
city cook had suddenly abandoned him, and who ap-
plied to a friendly farmer's wife in the vain hope that
she might help him to some one who would help his
family out in their strait. "Why, there ain't a girl
in the Hollow that lives out! Why, if you was sick
abed, I don't know as I know anybody 't you could git
to set up with you." The natives will not hve out
because they cannot keep their self-respect in the con-
ditions of domestic service. Some people laugh at
this self-respect, but most summer folks like it, as I
own I do.

In our partly m3rthical estimate of the native and his
relation to us, he is imagined as holding a kind of car-
nival when we leave him at the end of the season, and
it is beheved that he hkes us to go early. We have
had his good offices at a fair price all simimer, but as
it draws to a close they are rendered more and more
fitfully. Prom some, perhaps flattered, reports of the
happiness of the natives at the departure of the so-
journers, I have pictured them dancing a sort of faran-
dole, and stretching with linked hands from the far-
thest summer cottage up the river to the last on the
wooded point. It is certain that they get tired, and I
could not blame them if they were glad to be rid of
their guests, and to go back to their own social life.
This includes church festivals of divers kinds, lectures

LITERATURE AND LIFE

and shows, sleigh - rides, theatricals, and reading-
clubs, and a plentiful use of books from the excellent-
ly chosen free village library. They say frankly that
the summer folks have no idea how pleasant it is when
they are gone, and I am sure that the gayeties to which
we leave them must be more tolerable than those which
we go back to in the city. It may be, however, that
I am too confident, and that their gayeties are only
different. I should really like to know just what the
entertainments are which are given in a building de-
voted to them in a country neighborhood three or four
miles from the village. It was once a church, but is
now used solely for social amusements.

The amusements of the summer colony I have al-
ready hinted at. Besides suppers, there are also teas,
of larger scope, both afternoon and evening. There are
hops every week at the two largest hotels, which are
practically free to all ; and the bathing - beach is, of
course, a supreme attraction. The bath-houses, which
are very clean and well equipped, are not very cheap,
either for the season or for a single bath, and there
is a pretty pavilion at the edge of the sands. This
is always full of gossiping spectators of the hardy
adventurers who brave tides too remote from the Gulf
Stream to be ever much warmer than sixty or sixty-
five degrees. The bathers are mostly young people,
who have the courage of their pretty bathing-costumes
or the inextinguishable ardor of their years. If it is
not rather serious business with them all, still I admire
the fortitude with which some of them remain in fif-
teen minutes.

Beyond our colony, which calls itself the Port, there

CONFESSIONS OF A SUMMER COLONIST

is a far more populous watering-place, east of the Point,
known as the Beach, which is the resorl of people sev-
eral grades of gentility lower than ours: so many, in
fact, that we never can speak of the Beach without
averting our faces, or, at the best, with a tolerant smile.
It is really a succession of beaches, all much longer
and, 1 am bound to say, more beautiful than ours,
lined with rows of the humbler sort of siumner cot-
tages known as shells, and with many hotels of cor-
responding degree. The cottages may be hired by
the week or month at about two dollars a day, and they
are supposed to be taken by inland people of little so-
cial importance. Very likely this is true; but they
seemed to be very nice, quiet people, and I commonly
saw the ladies reading, on their verandas, books and
magazines, while the gentlemen sprayed the dusty
road before them with the garden hose. The place
bad Jilso for me an agreeable alien suggestion, and in
paasing the long row of cottages 1 was sUghtly remind-
ed of Scheveningen.

Beyond the cottage settlements is a struggling little
park, dedicated to the only Indian saint I ever heard
of, though there may be others. His statue, colossal
in sheet-lead, and painted the copper color of his race,'
offers any heathen comer the choice between a Bible
in one of his hands and a tomahawk in the other, at
the entrance of the park; and there are other sheet--
lead groups and Sgurcs in the white of allegory at
different points. It promises to be a pretty enough
little place in future years, but as yet it is not much
resorted to by the excursions which largely form the
prosperity of the Beach. The concerts and the " high-
class vaude\-il]e " promised have not flourished in the
pavilion pro\ided for them, and one of two monkeys
in the zoological department has perished of the pub-
lic inattention. This has not fatally affected the
53

LITERATURE AND LIFE

captive bear, who rises to his hind legs, and eats pea-
nuts and doughnuts in that position like a f ellow-dti-
zen. With the cockatoos and parrots, and the dozen
deer in an inclosure of wire netting, he is no mean
attraction; but he does not charm the excursionists
away from the summer village at the shore, where
they spend long afternoons splashing among the waves,
or in lolling groups of men, women, and children
on the sand. In the more active gayeties, I have
seen nothing so decided during the whole season as
the behavior of three young girls who once came up
out of the sea, and obUged me by dancing a measure
on the smooth, hard beach in their bathing-dresses.

I thought it very pretty, but I do not believe such a
thing could have been seen on our beach, which is safe
from all excursionists, and sacred to the cottage and
hotel life of the Port.

Besides our beach and its bathing, we have a read-
ing-club for the men, evolved from one of the old na-
tive houses, and verandaed round for summer use;
and we have golf-Unks and a golf club-house within
easy trolley reach. The links are as energeticaUy,
if not as generally, frequented as the sands, and the
sport finds the favor which attends it everywhere in
the decay of tennis. The tennis-courts which I saw
thronged about by eager girl-crowds, here, seven years
ago, are now almost wholly abandoned to the lovers
of the game, who are nearly always men.

Perhaps the only thing (besides, of course, our com-
mon mortality) which we have in common with the
excursionists is our love of the trolley-line. This, by
its admirable equipment, and by the terror it inspires

CONFESSIONS OF A SUMMER COLONIST

in horses, has weUnigh abolished driving; and fol-
lowing the old country roads, as it does, with an occa-
sional short-cut through the deep, green-lighted woods
or across the prismatic salt meadows, it is of a pict-
uresque variety entirely satisfying. After a year of
fervent opposition and protest, the whole commimity
— ^whether of summer or of winter folks — now gladly
accepts the trolley, and the grandest cottager and the
lowliest hotel dweller meet in a grateful appreciation
of its beauty and comfort

Some pass a great part of every afternoon on the
trolley, and one lady has achieved celebrity by spend-
ing four dollars a week in trolley-rides. The exhil-
EU*ation of these is varied with an occasional appre-
hension when the car pitches down a sharp incline,
and twists almost at right angles on a sudden curve
at the bottom without slacking its speed. A lady
who ventured an appeal to the conductor at one such
crisis was reassured, and at the same time taught her
place, by his reply: "That motorman's life, ma'am,
is just as precious to him as what yours is to
you."

She had, perhaps, really ventured too far, for or-
dinarily the employes of the trolley do not find occa-
sion to use so much severity with their passengers.
They look after their comfort as far as possible, and
seek even to anticipate their wants in unexpected cases,
if I may beUeve a story which was told by a witness.
She had long expected to see some one thrown out
of the open car at one of the sharp curves, and one
day she actually saw a woman hurled from the seat
into the road. Luckily the woman alighted on her
feet, and stood looking round in a daze.

"Oh I oh I'' exclaimed another woman in the seat
behind, "she's left her umbrella!"

The conductor promptly threw it out to her.

LITERATURE AND LIFE

"Why," demanded the witness, "did that lady unA
to get out here?"

The conductor hesitated before he jerked the bell-
pull to go on. Then he said, "Well, she'll want her
umbrella, anyway."

The conductors are, in fact, very civil as well as kind.
If they see a horse in anxiety at the approach of the
car, they considerately stop, and let him get by with
his driver in safety. By such means, with their fre-
quent trips and low fares, and with the ease and com-
fort of their cars, they have conciliated public favor,
and the trolley has drawn travel away from the steam
railroad in such measure that it ran no trains last
winter.

The trolley, in fact, is a fad of the summer folks
this year; but what it will be another no one knows;
it may be their hissing and by-word. In the mean
time, as I have already suggested, they have other
amusements. These are not always of a nature so
general as the trolley, or so particular as the tea. But
each of the larger hotels has been fully supplied with
entertainments for the benefit of their projectors, though
nearly everything of the sort had some sort of char-
itable slant. I assisted at a stereopticon lecture on
Alaska for the aid of some youthful Alaskans of both
sexes, who were shown first in their savage state, and
then as they appeared after a merely rudimental edu-
cation, in the costumes and profiles of our own civili-
zation. I never would have supposed that education
could do so much in so short a time; and I gladly
gave my mite for their further development in classic
beauty and a final elegance. My mite was taken up
in a hat, which^ passed round among the audience,

CONFESSIONS OF A SUMMER COLONIST

is a common means of collecting the spectators' ex-
pressions of appreciation. Other entertainments, of a
prouder frame, exact an admission fee, but I am not
sure that these are better than some of the hat-shows,
as they are called.

The tale of our summer amusements would be sadly
incomplete without some record of the bull-fights given
by the Spanish prisoners of war on the neighboring
island, where they were confined the year of the war.
Admission to these could be had only by favor of the
officers in charge, and even among the £lite of the col-
ony those who went were a more elect few. Still, the
day I went, there were some fifty or seventy-five spec-
tators, who arrived by trolley near the island, and
walked to the stockade which confined the captives.
A real bull-fight, I believe, is always given on Sunday,
and Puritan prejudice yielded to usage even in the
case of a burlesque bull-fight; at any rate, it was on
a Sunday that we crouched in an irregular semicircle
on a rising ground within the prison pale, and faced
the captive audience in another semicircle, across a
little alley for the entrances and exits of the perform-
ers. The president of the bull-fight was first brought
to the place of honor in a hand-cart, and then came
the banderilleros, the picadores, and the espada, won-
derfully effective and correct in white muslin and
colored tissue-paper. Much may be done in personal
decoration with advertising placards; and the lofty
mural crown of the president urged the public on both
sides to Use Plug Cut. The picador's pasteboard
horse was attached to his middle, fore and aft, and
looked quite the sort of hapless jade which is or-
dinarily sacrificed to the bulls. The toro himself was
composed of two prisoners, whose horizontal backs were
covered with a brown blanket ; and his feet, sometimes
bare and sometimes shod with india-rubber boots, were

LITERATURE AND LIFE

of the human pattern. Practicable horns, of a some-
what too yielding substance, branched from a front of
pasteboard, and a cloth tail, apt to come off in the
charge, swung from his rear. I have never seen a
genuine corrida, but a lady present, who had, told me
that this was conducted with all the right circum-
stance; and it is certain that the performers entered
into their parts with the artistic gust of their race.
The picador sustained some terrific falls, and in his
quality of horse had to be taken out repeatedly and
sewed up ; the banderilleros tormented and eluded the
toro with table-covers, one red and two drab, till the
espada took him from them, and with due ceremony,
after a speech to the president, drove his blade home
to the bull's heart. I stayed to see three bulls killed;
the last was uncommonly fierce, and when his hind-
quarters came off or out, his forequarters charged
joyously among the aficionados on the prisoners' side,
and made havoc in their thickly packed ranks. The
espada who killed this bull was showered with cigars
and cigarettes from our side.

I do not know what the Sabbath-keeping shades of
the old Puritans made of our presence at such a f£te
on Sunday; but possibly they had got on so far in a
better life as to be less shocked at the decay of piety
among us than pleased at the rise of such Christianity
as had brought us, like friends and comrades, together
with our public enemies in this harmless fun. I wish
to say that the tobacco lavished upon the espada was
collected for the behoof of all the prisoners.

VII

Our fiction has made so much of our summer places
as the mise en seine of its love stories that I suppose

CONFESSIONS OF A SUMMER COLONIST

I ought to say something of this side of our colonial
life. But after sixty 1 suspect that one's eyes are
poor for that sort of thing, and I can only say that in
its earliest and simplest epoch the Port was particu-
larly famous for the good times that the young people
had. They still have good times, though whether on
just the old terms I do not know. 1 know that the
river is still here with its canoes and row-boats, its
meadowy reaches apt for dual solitude, and its groves
for picnics. There is not much bicycling — the roads
are rough and hilly — but there is something of it, and
it is mighty pretty to see the youth of both sexes
bicycling with their heads bare. They go about bare-
headed on foot and in buggies, too, and the young
girls seek the tan which their mothers used so anx-
iously to shun.

The sail-boats, manned by weather-worn and weath-
er-wise skippers, are rather for the pleasure of such
older simmier folks as have a taste for cod-fishing,
which is here very good. But at every age, and in
whatever sort our colonists amuse themselves, it is
with the least possible ceremony. It is as if. Nature
having taken them so hospitably to her heart, they
felt convention an affront to her. Around their cot-
tages, as I have said, they prefer to leave her primi-
tive beauty imtouched, and she rewards their for-
bearance with such a profusion of wild flowers as I
have seen nowhere else. The low, pink laurel flushed
all the stony fields to the edges of their verandas when
we first came; the meadows were milk-white with
daisies; in the swampy places delicate orchids grew,
in the pools the flags and flowering rushes; all the
paths and way-sides were set with dog-roses ; the hol-
lows and stony tops were broadly matted with groimd
juniper. Since then the golden-rod has passed from
glory to glory, first mixing its yellow-powdered plumes

LITERATURE AND LIFE

with the red-purple tufts of the iron-weed, and then
with the wild asters everywhere. There has come
later a dwarf sort, six or ten inches high, wonderfully
rich and fine, which, with a low, white aster, seems to
hold the field against everjrthing else, though the tall-
er golden-rod and the masses of the high, blue asters
nod less thickly above it. But these smaller blooms
deck the ground in incredible profusion, and have
an innocent air of being stuck in, as if they had
been fancifully used for ornament by children or Ind-
ians.

In a little while now, as it is almost the end of Sep-
tember, all the feathery gold will have faded to the
soft, pale ghosts of that loveliness. The summer birds
have long been silent; the crows, as if they were so
many exultant natives, are shouting in the blue sky
above the windrows of the rowan, in jubilant prescience
of the depopulation of our colony, which fled the hotels
a fortnight ago. The days are growing shorter, and
the red evenings falling earlier ; so that the cottagers'
husbands who come up every Saturday from town
might well be impatient for a Monday of final return.
Those who came from remoter distances have gone
back already ; and the lady cottagers, lingering hardily
on till October, must find the sight of the empty hotels
and the windows of the neighboring houses, which no
longer brighten after the chilly nightfall, rather de-
pressing. Every one says that this is the loveliest
time of year, and that it will be divine here all through
October. But there are sudden and unexpected de-
fections; there is a steady pull of the heart citjrward,
which it is hard to resist. The first great exodus was
on the first of the month, when the hotels were deserted
by four-fifths of their guests. The rest followed, half
of them within the week, and within a fortnight none
but an all but inaudible and invisible remnant were

CONFESSIONS OF A SUMMER COLONIST

left, who made no impression of summer sojourn in
the deserted trolleys.

The days now go by in moods of rapid succession.
There have been days when the sea has lain smiling
in placid derision of the recreants who have fled the
lingering simimer; there have been nights when the
winds have roared round the cottages in wild menace
of the faithful few who have remained.

We have had a magnificent storm, which came,
as an equinoctial storm should, exactly at the equinox,
and for a day and a night heaped the sea upon the
shore in thundering surges twenty and thirty feet
high. I watched these at their awfulest, from the
wide windows of a cottage that crouched in the very
edge of the surf, with the effect of clutching the rocks
with one hand and holding its roof on with the other.
The sea was such a sight as I have not seen on ship-
board, and while I luxuriously shuddered at it, I had
the advantage of a mellow log-fire at my back, purring
and softly crackling in a quiet indifference to the storm.

Twenty-four hours more made all serene again.
Blood-curdling tales of lobster-pots carried to sea filled
the air; but the air was as blandly unconscious of
ever having been a fury as a lady who has found
her lost temper. Swift alternations of weather are so
characteristic of our colonial climate that the other
afternoon I went out with my umbrella against the raw,
cold rain of the morning, and had to raise it against
the broiling sun. Three days ago I could say that the
green of the woods had no touch of hectic in it; but
already the low trees of the swamp-land have flamed
into crimson. Every morning, when 1 look out, this
crimson is of a fierier intensity, and the trees on the
distant uplands are beginning slowly to kindle, with
a sort of inner glow which has not yet burst into a
blaze. Here and there the golden-rod is rusting ; but

LITERATURE AND LIFE

there seems only to be more and more asters of all
sorts; and I have seen ladies coming home with sheaves
of blue gentians; I have heard that the orchids are
beginning again to light their tender lamps from the
burning blackberry vines that stray from the past-
ures to the edge of the swamps.

After an apparently total evanescence there has
been a like resuscitation of the spirit of summer so-
ciety. In the very last week of September we have
gone to a supper, which lingered far out of its season
like one of these late flowers, and there has been an
afternoon tea which assembled an astonishing number
of cottagers, all secretly surprised to find one another
still here, and professing openly a pity tinged with
contempt for those who are here no longer.

I bl£uned those who had gone home, but I myself
sniff the asphalt afar; the roar of the street calls to
me with the magic that the voice of the sea is losing.
Just now it shines entreatingly, it shines winningly,
in the sun which is mellowing to an October tender-
ness, and it shines under a moon of perfect orb, which
seems to have the whole heavens to itself in " the first
watch of the night," except for "the red planet Mars."
This begins to bum in the west before the flush of sun-
set has passed from it; and then, later, a few moon-
swashed stars pierce the vast vault with their keen
I points. The stars which so powdered the summer
.'sky seem mostly to have gone back to town, where no
^ doubt people take them for electric lights.

THE EDITOR'S RELATIONS WITH THE YOUNG

CONTRIBUTOR

ONE of the trustiest jokes of the humorous para-
grapher is that the editor is in great and con-
stant dread of the young contributor; but neither my
experience nor my observation bears out his theory
of the case.

Of course one must not say anjrthing to encourage
a young person to abandon an honest industry in the
vain hope of early honor and profit from literature;
but there have been and there will be literary men and
women always, and these in the beginning have near-
ly always been young; and I cannot see that there is
risk of any serious harm in saying that it is to the
young contributor the editor looks for rescue from the
old contributor, or from his failing force and charm.

The chances, naturally, are against the young
contributor, and vastly against him ; but if any peri-
odical is to live, and to live long, it is by the infusion
of new blood ; and nobody knows this better than the
editor, who may seem so unfriendly and uncareful to
the young contributor. The strange voice, the novel
scene, the odor of fresh woods and pastures new, the
breath of morning, the dawn of to-morrow — these are
what the editor is eager for, if he is fit to be an editor
at all ; and these are what the young contributor alone
can give him.

A man does not draw near the sixties without wish-
ing people to believe that he is as young as ever, and

LITERATURE AND LIFE

he has not written almost as many books as he has lived
years without persuading himself that each new work
of his has all the surprise of spring ; but possibly there
are wonted traits and familiar airs and graces in it
which forbid him to persuade others. I do not say
these characteristics are not charming; I am very far
from wishing to say that; but I do say and must say
that after the fiftieth time they do not charm for the
first time ; and this is where the advantage of the new
contributor lies, if he happens to charm at all.

The new contributor who does charm can have lit-
tle notion how much he charms his first reader, who
is the editor. That functionary may hide his pleas-
ure in a short, stiff note of acceptance, or he may mask
his joy in a check of slender figure ; but the contribu-
tor may be sure that he has missed no merit in his
work, and that he has felt, perhaps far more than the
public will feel, such delight as it can give.

The contributor may take the acceptance as a token
that his efforts have not been neglected, and that his
achievements will always be warmly welcomed; that
even his failures will be leniently and reluctantly
recognized as failures, and that he must persist long
in failure before the friend he has made will finally
forsake him.

I do not wish to paint the situation wholly rose col-
or; the editor will have his moods, when he will not
see so clearly or judge so justly as at other times; when
he will seem exacting and fastidious, and will want
this or that mistaken thing done to the story, or poem,
or sketch, which the author knows to be simply per-
fect as it stands; but he is worth bearing with, and

THE EDITOR AND YOUNG CONTRIBUTOR

he will be constant to the new contributor as long as
there is the least hope of him.

The contributor may be the man or the woman of
one story, one poem, one sketch, for there are such;
but the editor will wait the evidence of indefinite fail-
ure to this effect. His hope always is that he or she
is the man or the woman of many stories, many poems,
many sketches, all as good as the first.

From my own long experience as a magazine editor,
I may say that the editor is more doubtful of failure
in one who has once done well than of a second suc-
cess. After all, the writer who can do but one good
thing is rarer than people are apt to think in their love
of the improbable; but the real danger with a young
contributor is that he may become his own rival.

What would have been quite good enough from him
in the first instance is not good enough in the second,
because he has himself fixed his standard so high.
His only hope is to surpass himself, and not begin
resting on his laurels too soon; perhaps it is never
well, soon or late, to rest upon one's laurels. It is well
for one to make one's self scarce, and the best way to
do this is to be more and more jealous of perfection in
one's work.

The editor's conditions are that having found a
good thing he must get as much of it as he can, and
the chances are that he will be less exacting than the
contributor imagines. It is for the contributor to be
exacting, and to let nothing go to the editor as long
as there is the possibility of making it better. He
need not be afraid of being forgotten because he does
not keep sending; the editor's memory is simply re-
lentless ; he could not forget the writer who has pleased
him if he would, for such writers are few.

I do not believe that in my editorial service on the
AUatUic Monthly, which lasted fifteen years in all, I
» 65

LITERATURE AND LIFE

forgot the name or the characteristic quality, or even
the handwriting, of a contributor who had pleased
me, and I forgot thousands who did not. I never lost
faith in a contributor who had done a good thing; to
the end I expected another good thing from him, I
think I was always at least as patient with him as he
was with me, though he may not have known it.

At the time I was connected with that periodical it
had almost a monopoly of the work of Longfellow,
Emerson, Holmes, Lowell, Whittier, Mrs. Stowe, Park-
man, Higginson, Aldrich, Stedman, and many others
not so well known, but still well known. These dis-
tinguished writers were frequent contributors, and
they could be counted upon to respond to almost any
appeal of the magazine; yet the constant effort of the
editors was to discover new talent, and their wish was
to welcome it.

I know that, so far as I was concerned, the success
of a young contributor was as precious as if I had my-
self written his paper or poem, and I doubt if it gave
him more pleasure. The editor is, in fact, a sort of
second self for the contributor, equally eager that he
should stand well with the public, and able to pro-
mote his triumphs without egotism and share them
without vanity.

In fact, my curious experience was that if the pub-
lic seemed not to feel my delight in a contribution I
thought good, my vexation and disappointment were
as great as if the work had been my own. It was even
greater, for if I had really written it I might have had
my misgivings of its merit, but in the case of another
I could not console myself with this doubt. The sen-
timent was at the same time one which I could not
66

THE EDITOR AND YOUNG CONTRIBUTOR

cherish for the work of an old contributor; such a one
stood more upon his own feet; and the young contribu-
tor may be sure that the editor's pride, self-interest,
and sense of editorial infallibility will all prompt him
to stand by the author whom he has introduced to the
public, and whom he has vouched for.

I hope I am not giving the young contributor too
high an estimate of his value to the editor. After all,
he must remember that he is but one of a great many
others, and that the editor's affections, if constant, are
necessarily divided. It is good for the literary aspi-
rant to realize very early that he is but one of many ;
for the vice of our comparatively virtuous craft is that
it tends to make each of us imagine himself central,
if not sole.

As a matter of fact, however, the imiverse does not
revolve around any one of us; we make our circuit of
the Sim along with the other inhabitants of the earth,
a planet of inferior magnitude. The thing we strive
for is recognition, but when this comes it is apt to turn
our heads. I should say, then, that it was better it
should not come in a great glare and a loud shout, all
at once, but should steal slowly upco us, ray by ray,
breath by breath.

In the mean time, if this happens, we shall have
several chances of reflection, and can ask ourselves
whether we are really so great as we seem to other
people, or seem to seem.

The prime condition of good work is that we shall
get ourselves out of our minds. Sympathy we need,
of course, and encouragement ; but I am not sure that
the lack of these is not a very good thing, too. Praise
enervates, flattery poisons; but a smart, brisk snub
is always rather wholesome.

I should say that it was not at all a bad thing for
a young contributor to get his manuscript back, even

LITERATURE AND LIFE

after a first acceptance, and even a general newspa-
per proclamation that he is one to make the immor-
tals tremble for their wreaths of asphodel — or is it
amaranth? I am never sure which.

Of course one must have one's hour, or day, or week,
of disabling the editor's judgment, of calling him to
one's self fool, and rogue, and wretch; but after that,
if one is worth while at all, one puts the rejected thing
by, or sends it off to some other magazine, and sets
about the capture of the erring editor with something
better, or at least something else.

I think it a great pity that editors ever deal other
than frankly with yoimg contributors, or put them
off with smooth generaUties of excuse, instead of say-
ing they do not like this thing or that offered them.
It is impossible to make a criticism of all rejected man-
uscripts, but in the case of those which show prom-
ise I think it is quite possible; and if I were to sin my
sins over again, I think I should sin a little more on
the side of candid severity. I am sure I should do
more good in that way, and I am sure that when I
used to dissemble my real mind I did harm to those
whose feelings I wished to spare. There ought not,
in fact, to be question of feeling in the editor's
mind.

I know from much suffering of my own that it is
terrible to get back a manuscript, but it is not fatal,
or I should have been dead a great many times before
I was thirty, when the thing mostly ceased for me.
One survives it again and again, and one ought to
make the reflection that it is not the first business of
a periodical to print contributions of this one or of

THE EDITOR AND YOUNG CONTRIBUTOR

that, but that its first business is to amuse and in-
struct its readers.

To do this it is necessary to print contributions,
but whose they are, or how the writer will feel if they
are not printed, cannot be considered. The editor
can consider only what they are, and the young con-
tributor will do well to consider that, although the
editor may not be an infallible judge, or quite a good
judge, it is his business to judge, and to judge without
mercy. Mercy ought no more to qualify judgment
in an artistic result than in a mathematical result

I suppose, since I used to have it mjrself , that there
is a superstition with most young contributors con-
cerning their geographical position. I used to think
that it was a disadvantage to send a thing from a small
or unknown place, and that it doubled my insignifi-«
cance to do so. I believed that if my envelope had
borne the postmark of New York, or Boston, or some
other city of Uterary distinction, it would have arrived
on the editor's table with a great deal more authority.
But I am sure this was a mistake from the first, and
when I came to be an editor myself I constantly veri-
fied the fact from my own dealings with contributors.

A contribution from a remote and obscure place at
once piqued my curiosity, and I soon learned that the
fresh things, the original things, were apt to come
from such places, and not from the literary centres.

One of the most interesting facts concerning the
arts of all kinds is that those who wish to give their
lives to them do not appear where the appliances for
instruction in them exist. An artistic atmos^^ere
does not create artists a literary atmosfdiere does not

LITERATURE AND LIFE

create literators; poets and painters spring up where
there was never a verse made or a picture seen.

This suggests that God is no more idle now than He
was at the beginning, but that He is still and fore\-er
shaping the human chaos into the instruments and
means of beauty. It may also suggest to that scholar-
pride, that vanity of technique, which is so apt to vaunt
itself in the teacher, that the best he can do, after all,
is to let the pupil teach himself. If he comes with
divine authority to the thing he attempts, he will know
how to use the appliances, of which the teacher is only
the first.

The editor, if he does not consciously perceive the
truth, will instinctively feel it, and will expect the ac-
ceptable young contributor from the country, the vil-
lage, the small town, and he will look eagerly at any-
thing that promises literature from Montana or Texas,
for he will know that it also promises novelty.

If he is a wise editor, he will wish to hold his hand
as much as possible ; he will think twice before he asks
the contributor to change this or correct that; he will
leave him as much to himself as he can. The young
contributor, on his part, will do well to realize this,
and to receive all the editorial suggestions, which are
veiled commands in most cases, as meekly and as
imaginatively as possible.

The editor cannot always give his reasons, how-
ever strongly he may feel them, but the contributor,
if suflSciently docile, can always divine them. It be-
hooves him to be docile at all times, for this is merely
the willingness to leam ; and whether he learns that
he is wrong, or that the editor is wrong, still he gains
knowledge,

A great deal of knowledge comes simply from do-
ing, and a great deal more from doing over, and this
is what the editor generally means.
70

THE EDITOR AND YOUNG CONTRIBUTOR

I think that every author who is honest with him-
self must own that his work would be twice as good
if it were done twice. I was once so fortunately dr-
cumstanced that I was able entirely to rewrite one of
my novels, and I have always thought it the best writ-
ten, or at least indefinitely better than it woidd have
been with a single writing. As a matter of fact, near-
ly all of them have been rewritten in a certain way.
They have not actually been rewritten throughout,
as in the case I speak of, but they have been gone over
so often in manuscript and in proof that the effect has
been much the same.

Unless you are sensible of some strong frame with-
in your work, something vertebral, it is best to re-
nounce it, and attempt something else in which you
can feel it. If you are secure of the frame you must
observe the quality and character of everything you
build about it; you must touch, you must almost taste,
you must certainly test, every material you employ ;
every bit of decoration must undergo the same scru-
tiny as the structure.

It will be some vague perception of the want of this
vigilance in the yotmg contributor's work which causes
the editor to return it to him for revision, with those
suggestions which he will do well to make the most
of ; for when the editor once finds a contributor he can
trust, he rejoices in him with a fondness which the
contributor will never perhaps understand.

It will not do to write for the editor alone; the wise
editor understands this, and averts his countenance
from the contributor who writes at him ; but if he feels
that the contributor conceives the situation, and will
conform to the conditions which his periodical has
invented for itself, and will transgress none of its un-
written laws; if he perceives that he has put artistic
conscience in every general and detail, and though

LITERATURE AND LIFE

he has not done the best^ has done the best that he
can do, he will begin to liberate him from every tram-
mel except those he must wear himself, and will be
only too glad to leave him free. He understands, if
he is at all fit for his place, that a writer can do well
only what he likes to do, and his wish is to leave him
to himself as soon as possible.

In my own case, I noticed that the contributors who
could be best left to themselves were those who were
most amenable to suggestion and even correction, who
took the blue pencil with a smile, and bowed gladly
to the rod of the proof-reader. Those who were on
the alert for offence, who resented a marginal note as
a slight, and bumptiously demanded that their work
should be printed just as they had written it, were
commonly not much more desired by the reader than
by the editor.

Of course the contributor naturally feels that the
public is the test of his excellence, but he must not
forget that the editor is the begixming of the public ;
and I believe he is a faithf uller and kinder critic than
the writer will ever find again.

Since my time there is a new tradition of editing,
which I do not think so favorable to the young con-
tributor as the old. Formerly the magazines were
made up of volunteer contributions in much greater
measure than they are now. At present most of the
material is invited and even engaged ; it is arranged
for a long while beforehand, and the space that can
be given to the aspirant, the unknown good, the po-
tential excellence, grows constantly less and less.

A great deal can be said for dther tradition; per-

THE EDITOR AND YOUNG CONTRIBUTOR

haps some editor will yet imagine a return to the ear-
lier method. In the mean time we must deal with the
thing that is, and submit to it until it is changed. The
moral to the young contributor is to be better than ever,
to leave nothing undone that shall enhance his small
chances of acceptance.

If he takes care to be so good that the editor must ac-
cept him in spite of all the pressure upon his pages, he
will not only be serving himself best, but may be help-
ing the editor to a conception of his duty that shall be
more hospitable to all other young contributors. As
it is, however, it must be owned that their hope of ac-
ceptance is very, very small, Jind they will do well to
make stire that they love Uterature so much that they
can suffer long and often repeated disappointment in
its cause.

The love of it is the great and only test of fitness
for it. It is really inconceivable how any one should
attempt it without this, but apparently a great many
do. It is evident to every editor that a vast niunber
of those who write the things he looks at so faithful-
ly, and reads more or less, have no artistic motive.

People write because they wish to be known, or be-
cause they have heard that money is easily made in
that way, or because they think they will chance thai
among a number of other things. The ignorance of
technique which they often show is not nearly so dis-
heartening as the palpable factitiousness of their prod-
uct. It is something that they have made ; it is not
anything that has grown out of their hves.

I should think it would profit the yoimg contribu-
tor, before he puts pen to paper, to ask himself why he
does so, and, if he Ends that he has no motive in the
love of the thing, to forbear.

Am I interested in what I am going to write about?

Do 1 feel it strongly? Do I know it thoroughly? Do

LITERATURE AND LIFE

I imagine it clearly? The young contributor had bet-
ter ask himself all these questions, and as many more
like them aS'he can think of. Perhaps he ^dll end
by not being a young contributor.

But if he is able to answer them satisfactorily to
his own conscience, by aU means let him begin. He
may at once put aside all anxiety about style; that
is a thing that will take care of itself ; it will be added
unto him if he really has something to say; for style
is only a man's way of sa3dng a thing.

If he has not much to say, or if he has nothing to
say, perhaps he will try to say it in some other man's
way, or to hide his own vacuity with rags of rhetoric
and tags and fringes of manner, borrowed from this
author and that. He will fancy that in this disguise
his work will be more literary, and that there is some-
how a quality, a grace, imparted to it which will charm
in spite of the inward hoUowness. His vain hope
would be pitif id if it were not so shameful, but it is
destined to suffer defeat at the first glance of the edi-
torial eye.

If he really has something to say, however, about
something he knows and loves, he is in the best possi-
ble case to say it well. Still, from time to time he may
advantageously call a halt, and consider whether he
is saying the thing clearly and simply.

If he has a good ear he wUl say it gracefully and
musically; and I would by no means have him aim
to say it barely or sparely. It is not so that people
talk, who talk well, and literature is only the thought
of the writer flowing from the pen instead of the tongue.

To aim at succinctness and brevity merely, as some
teach, is to practice a kind of quackery almost as of-
fensive as the charlatanry of rhetoric. In either case
the life goes out of the subject.

ToL4)lease one's, self, -b^Mstly-^iid thoroughly, i^.

THE EDITOR AND YOUNG CONTRIBUTOR

the only way to please others in matters of art. I do
not mean to say that if you please yourself you will
always please others, but that unless you please your-
self you will please no one else. It is the sweet and
sacred privilege of work done artistically to delight
the doer. Art is the highest joy, but any work done
in the love of it is art, in a kind, and it strikes the note
of happiness as nothing else can.

We hear much of drudgery, but any sort of work
that is slighted becomes drudgery; poetry, fiction,
painting, sculpture, acting, architecture, if you do
not do your best by them, turn to drudgery sore as
Egging ditches, hewing wood, or drawing water ; and
these, by the same blessings of God, become arts if
they are done with conscience and the sense of beauty.

The young contributor may test his work before
the editor assays it, if he will, and he may know by a
rule that is pretty infallible whether it is good or not,
from his own experience in doing it. Did it give him
pleasure? Did he love it as it grew under his hand?
Was he glad and willing with it? Or did he force
himself to it, and did it hang heavy upon him?

There is nothing mystical in aU this; it is a mat-
ter of plain, every-day experience, and I think nearly
every artist will say the same thing about it, if he ex-
amines himself faithfully.

If the young contributor finds that he has no de-
light in the thing he has attempted, he may very well
give it up, for no one else wiU delight in it. But he
need not give it up at once ; perhaps his mood is bad : let
him wait for a better, and try it again. He may not
have learned how to do it well, and therefore he can-
not love it, but perhaps he can learn to do it well.

The wonder and glory of art is that it is without
formulas. Or, rather, each new piece of work re-
quires the invention of new formulas, which will not

LITERATURE AND LIFE

serve again for another. You must apprentice your-
self afresh at every fresh undertaking, and your mas-
tery is always a victory over certain unexpected difficul-
ties, and not a dominion of difficidties overcome before.
I believe, in other words, that mastery is merely
the strength that comes of overcoming, and is never
a sovereign power that smooths the path of all obsta-
cles. The combinations in art are infinite, and almost
never the same ; you must make your key and fit it to
each, and the key that imlocks one combination will
not imlock another.

There is no royal road to excellence in literature,
but the yoimg contributor need not be dismayed at
that. Royal roads are the ways that kings travel,
and kings are mostly dull fellows, and rarely have a
good time. They do not go along singing ; the spring
that trickles into the mossy log is not for them, nor

"The wildwood flower that simply blows."

But the traveller on the country road may stop for
each of these ; and it is not a bad condition of his prog-
ress that he must move so slowly that he can learn
every detail of the landscape, both earth and sky, by
heart

The trouble with success is that it is apt to leave
life behind, or apart. The successful writer especial-
ly is in danger of becoming isolated from the reali-
ties that nurtured in him the strength to win success.
When he becomes famous, he becomes precious to
criticism, to society, to all the things that do not exist
from themselves, or have not the root of the matter in
them.

THE EDITOR AND YOUNG CONTRIBUTOR

Therefore^ I think ihat a young writer's upward
course should be slow and beset with many obstacles,
even hardships. Not that I believe in hardships as
having inherent virtues ; I think it is stupid to regard
them in that way ; but they oftener bring out the virt-
ues inherent in the sufferer from them than what I
may call the softdiips ; and at least they stop him, and
give him time to think.

This is the great matter, for if we prosper forward
rapidly, we have no time for anything but prospering
forward rapidly. We have no time for art, even the
art by which we prosper.

I would have the young contributor above all things
realize that success is not his concern. Good work,
true work, beautiful work is his affair, and nothing
else. If he does this, success will take care of itself.

He has no business to think of the thing that will
take. It is the editor's business to think of that, and
it is the contributor's business to think of the thing
that he can do with pleasure, the high pleasure that
comes from the sense of worth in the thing done. Let
him do the best he can, and trust the editor to decide
whether it will take.

It will take far oftener than an3rthing he attempts
perfunctorily; and even if the editor thinks it will not
take, and feels obliged to return it for that reason, he
will return it with a real regret, with the honor and
affection which we cannot help feeling for any one
who has done a piece of good work, and with the will
and the hope to get something from him that will take
the next time, or the next, or the next

SUMMER ISLES OF EDEN

IT may be all an illusion of the map, where the Sum-
mer Islands glimmer a small and solitary little
group of dots and wrinkles, remote from continental
shores, with a straight line descending southeast-
wardly upon them, to show how sharp and swift the
ship's course is, but they seem so far and alien from
my wonted place that it is as if I had slid down a
steepy slant from the home-planet to a group of as-
teroids nebidous somewhere in middle space, and
were resting there, still vibrant from the rush of the
meteoric fall. There were, of course, facts and inci-
dents contrary to such a theory: a steamer starting
from New York in the raw March morning, and
lurching and twisting through two days of diagonal
seas, with people aboard dining and undining, and
talking and smoking and cocktailing and hot-scotch-
ing and beef-teaing; but when the ship came in
sight of the islands, and they began to lift their
cedared slopes from the turquoise waters, and to
explain their drifted snows as the white walls and
white roofs of houses, then the waking sense became
the dreaming sense, and the sweet impossibility of
that drop through air became the sole reality.

Everything here, indeed, is so strange that you
placidly accept whatever offers itself as the simplest

SUMMER ISLES OF EDEN

and "Ti a t m ales t ~f act Those low hills, that climb,
with their tough, dark cedars, from the summer sea
to the summer sky, might have drifted down across
the Gulf Stream from the coast of Maine; but when,
upon closer inspection, you find them skirted with
palms and bananas, and hedged with oleanders, you
merely wonder that you had never noticed these
growths in Maine before, where you were so familiar
with the cedars. The hotel itself, which has brought
the Green Mountains with it, in every detail, from the
dormer-windowed mansard-roof, and the white-painted,
green-shuttered walls, to the neat, school-mistressly
waitresses in the dining-room, has a clump of pal-
mettos beside it, swaying and sighing in the tropic
breeze, and you know that when it migrates back to
the New England hill-country, at the end of the sea-
son, you shall find it with the palmettos still before
its veranda, and equally at home, somewhere in the
Vermont or New Hampshire July. There will be the
same American groups looking out over them, and
rocking and smoking, though, alas I not so many
smoking as rocking.

But where, in that translation, would be the gold-
braided red or blue jackets of the British army and
navy which lend their lustre and color here to the ve-
randa groups? Where should one get the house walls
of whitewashed stone and the garden walls which
everywhere glow in the sun, and belt in little spaces
full of roses and lilies? These things must come
from some other association, and in the case of him
who here confesses, the lustrous tmiforms and the
glowing walls rise from waters as far away in time
as in space, and a long-ago apparition of Venetian
Junes haimts the coral shore. (They are beginning
to say the shore is not coral ; but no matter. ) To be
sure, the white roofs are not accounted for in this

LITERATURE AND LIFE

visionary presence ; and if one may not relate them to
the snowfalls of home winters, then one must frankly
own them absolutely tropical, together with the green-
pillared and green-latticed galleries. They at least
suggest the tropical scenery of Prue and I as one re-
members seeing it through Titbottom's spectacles;
and yet, if one supplies roofs of brown-red tiles, it is
all Venetian enough, with the lagoon -like expanses
that lend themselves to the fond effect. It is so Vene-
tian, indeed, that it wants but a few silent gondolas
and noisy gondoliers, in place of the dark, taciturn
oarsmen of the clumsy native boats, to complete the
coming and going illusion; and there is no good rea-
son why the rough little isles that fill the bay shoidd
not call themselves respectively San Giorgio and San
Qemente, and Sant' Elena and San Lazzaro: they
probably have no other names!

These summer isles of Eden have this advantage
over the scriptural Eden, that apparently it was not
woman and her seed who were expelled, when once she
set foot here, but the serpent and his seed : women now
abound in the Simuner Islands, and there is not a
snake an3rwhere to be found. There are some tor-
toises and a great many frogs in their season, but no
other reptiles. The frogs are fabled of a note so deep
and hoarse that its vibration almost springs the en-
vironing mines of dynamite, though it has never yet
done so ; the tortoises grow to a great size and a patri-
archal age, and are fond of Boston brown bread and
baked beans, if their preferences may be judged from
those of a colossal specimen in the care of an Amer-
ican family living on the islands. The observer who

SUMMER ISLES OF EDEN

ache for the dances of forty years ago), and knows
enough not to confuse the

In whatever way 3rou walk, at whatever hour, the
birds are sweetly calling in the way-side oleanders
and the wild sage-bushes and the cedar-tops. They
are mostly cat-birds, quite like our own ; and bluebirds,
but of a deeper blue than ours, and redbirds of as liquid
a note, but not so varied, as that of the redbirds of our
woods. How came they all here, seven hundred miles
from any larger land? Some think, on the stronger
wings of tempests, for it is not within the knowledge
of men that men brought them. Men did, indeed, bring
the pestilent sparrows which swarm about their hab-
itations here, and beat away the gentler and loveUer
birds with a ferocity unknown in the human occupa-
tion of the islands. Still, the sparrows have by no
means conquered, and in the wilder places the cat-
bird makes common cause with the bluebird and the
redbird, and holds its own against them. The Uttle
ground-doves mimic in miniature the form and mark-
ings and the gait and mild behavior of our turtle-doves,
but perhaps not their melancholy cooing. Nature
has nowhere anything prettier than these exquisite
creatures, unless it be the long-tailed white gulls which
sail over the emerald shallows of the land-locked seas,
and take the green upon their translucent bodies as
they trail their meteoric splendor against the mid-day
sky. Full twenty-four inches they measure from the beak
to the tip of the single pen that protracts them a foot be-
yond their real bulk; but it is said their tempers are
shorter than they, and they attack fiercely an3rthing they
suspect of too intimate a curiosity concerning their nests.

LITERATURE AND LIFE

They are probably the only short-tempered things
in the Summer Islands^ where time is so long that if
you lose your patience you easily find it again. Sweet-
ness, if not light, seems to be the prevailing himian
quality, and a good share of it belongs to such of the
natives as are in no wise light. Our poor brethren
of a different pigment are in the large majority, and
they have been seventy years out of slavery, with the
f tdl enjo3ntnent of all their civil rights, without lifting
themselves from their old inferiority. They do the
hard work, in their own easy way, and possibly do not
find life the burden they make it for the white man,
whom here, as in our own country, they load up with
the conundrum which their existence involves for
him. They are not very gay, and do not rise to a joke
with that flashing eagerness which they show for it
at home. If you have them against a backgroimd
of banana-stems, or low palms, or feathery canes,i
nothing could be more acceptably characteristic of
the air and sky; nor are they out of place on the box
of the little victorias, where visitors of the more in-
quisitive sex put them to constant question. Such
visitors spare no islander of any color. Once, in the
pretty Public Garden which the multiple had claimed
for its private property, three unmerciful American
women suddenly descended from the heavens and be-
gan to question the multiple's gardener, who was
peacefully digging at the rate of a spadeful every five
minutes. Presently he sat down on his wheelbarrow,
and then shifted, without relief, from one handle of it to
the other. Then he rose and braced himself desperately
against the tool-house, where, when his tormentors drift-
ed away, he seemed to the soft eye of pity pinned to the
wall by their cruel interrogations, whose barbed points
were buried in the stucco behind him, and whose feath-
ered shafts stuck out half a yard before his breast

SUMMER ISLES OF EDEN

Whether he was black or not, pity could not see,
but probably he was. At least the garrison of the
islands is all black, being a Jamaican regiment of
that color; and when one of the warriors conies down
the white street, with his swagpet-stick in his hand,
and flaming in scarlet and gold upon the ground of
his own blackness, it is as if a gigantic oriole were
coming towards you, or a mighty tulip. These gor-
geous creatures seem so much readier than the natives
to laugh, that you wish to test them with a joke.
But it might fail. The Summer Islands are a British
colony, and the joke does not flourish so luxuriantly
here as some other things.

To be sure, one of the native fruits seems a sort of
joke when you hear it first named, and when you are
offered a loqual, if you are of a frivolous mind you
search your mind for the cormection with loquor which
it seems to intimate. FaiHng in this, you taste the
fruit, and then, if it is not perfectly ripe, you are as
far from loquaciousness as if you had bitten a green
persimmon. But if it is ripe, it is delicious, and may
be consumed indefinitely. It is the only native fruit
which one can wish to eat at all, with an unpractised
palate, though it is claimed that with experience a
relish may come for the pawpaws. These break out
in clusters of the size of oranges at the top of a thick
pqle, which may have some leaves or may not, and
ripen as they fancy in the indefinite summer. They
are of the color and flavor of a very insipid little musk-
melon which has grown too near a patch of squashes.

One may learn to like this pawpaw, yes, but one
must study hard. It is best when plucked by a young
islander of Italian blood whose father orders him up
the bare pole in the sunny Sunday morning air to
oblige the signori. and then with a pawpaw in either
band stands talking with them about the tn-o bad

LITERATURE AND LIFE

years there have been in Bermuda, and the probabil-
ity of his doing better in Nuova York. He has not
imagined our winter, however, and he shrinks from
its boldly pictured rigors, and lets the signori go
with a sigh, and a bunch of pink and crimson roses.
The roses are here, budding and blooming in the
quiet bewilderment which attends the flowers and
plants from the temperate zone in this latitude, and
which in the case of the strawberries offered with cream
and cake at another public garden expresses itself in
a confusion of red, ripe fruit and white blossoms on
the same stem. They are a pleasure to the nose and
eye rather than the palate, as happens with so many
growths of the tropics, if indeed the Summer Islands
are tropical, which some plausibly deny ; though why
should not strawberries, fresh picked from the plant
in mid-March, enjoy the right to be indifferent sweet?

What remains? The events of the Summer Isl-
ands are few, and none out of the order of athletics
between teams of the army and navy, and what may
be called societetics, have happened in the past en-
chanted fortnight. But far better things than events
have happened : sunshine and rain of such like qual-
ity that one could not grumble at either, and gales,
now from the south and now from the north, with the
languor of the one and the vigor of the other in them.
There were drives upon drives that were always to
somewhere, but would have been delightful the same
if they had been mere goings and comings, past the
white houses overlooking Uttle lawns through the
umbrage of their palm-trees. The lawns professed to
be of grass, but were really mats of close little herbs

SUMMER ISLES OF EDEN

which were not grass; but which, where the sparse
cattle were grazing them, seemed to satisfy their in-
exacting stomachs. They are never very green, and
in fact the landscape often has an air of exhaustion
and pause which it wears with us in late Aug^ust; and
i^y not, after all its interminable, iimumerable sum-
mers? Everywhere in the gentle hollows which the
coral hills (if they are coral) sink into are the patches
of potatoes and lilies and onions drawing their geo-
metrical lines across the brown -red, weedless soil;
and in very sheltered spots are banana-orchards which
are never so snugly sheltered there but their broad
leaves are whipped to shreds. The white road winds
between gray walls crumbling in an amiable disin-
t^ration, but held together against ruin by a net-
work of maidenhair ferns and creepers of unknown
name, and overhung by trees where the cactus climbs
and hangs in spiky links, or if another sort, pierces
them with speary stems as tall and straight as the
stalks of the neighboring bamboo. The loquat-trees
cluster Uke quinces in Uie garden closes, and show
their pale golden, plum-shaped fruit

For the most part the road nms by stiU inland waters,
but sometimes it climbs to the high downs beside the
open sea, grotesque with wind-worn and wave-worn
rocks, and beautiful with opalescent beaches, and the
black legs of the negro children paddling in the tints
of the prostrate rainbow.

All this seems probable and natural enough at the
writing ; but how will it be when one has turned one's
back upon it? Will it not lapse into the gross fable
of travellers, and be as the things which the Uars who
swap them cannot themselves believe? What will
be said to you when you tell that in the Summer Isl-
ands one has but to saw a hole in his back yaid and
take out a house of soft, creamy sandstone and set it

WIU> FLOWERS OF THE ASPHALT

Snowbeny, and Adder's-tongue, and Wakerobin, and
Dragon-root, and Adam-and-Eve, and twenty more,
which must have got their names from some fairy of
genius. I should say it was a female fairy of genius
who called them so, and that she had her own sex
among mortals in mind when she invented their
nomenclature, and was thinking of little girls, and
slim, pretty maids, and happy young wives. The
author tells how they all look, with a fine sense of
their charm in her words, but one would know how
they looked from their names ; and when you call them
over they at once transplant themselves to the depths
of the dells between our sky-scrapers, and find a
brief sojourn in the cavernous excavations whence
other sky - scrapers are to rise.

That night on the Roof Garden, when the cricltet's
cry flowered the dome with golden-rod, the lall stems
of rye growing among the orchestra sloped all one way
at times, just like the bows of violins, in the half-dol-
lar gale that always blows over the city at that height.
But as one turns the leaves of Mrs. Creevey's magic
book — perhaps one ought to say turns its petals —
the forests and the fields come and make themselves
at home in the city eversrwhere. By virtue of it 1 have
been more in the country in a half-hour than if I had
hved all June there. When 1 lift my eyes from its
pictures or its letter-press my vision prints the eidolons
of wild flowers everywhere, as it prints the image of
the sun against the air after dwelling on his bright-
ness. The rose-mallow flaunts along Fifth Avenue
and the golden threads of the dodder embroider the
house fronts on the principal cross streets : and 1 might
9'

LITERATURE AND LIFE

think at times that it was all mere fancy, it has so
much the quality of a pleasing illusion.

Yet Mrs. Creevey's book is not one to lend itself to
such a deceit by any of the ordinary arts. It is rather
matter of fact in form and manner, and largely owes
what magic it has to the inherent charm of its sub-
ject. One feels this in merely glancing at the index,
and reading such titles of chapters as " Wet Meadows
and Low Grounds''; "Dry Fields— Waste Places-
Waysides " ; " Hills and Rocky Woods, Open Woods " ;
and "Deep, Cool, Moist Woods"; each a poem in it-
self, lyric or pastoral, and of a surpassing opulence of
suggestion. The spring and summer months pass in
stately processional through the book, each with her
fillet inscribed with the names of her characteristic
flowers or blossoms, and brightened with the blooms
themselves.

They are plucked from where nature bade them
grow in the wild places, or their own wayward wills
led them astray. A singidarly fascinating chapter
is that called "Escaped from Gardens,'' in which some
of these pretty runagates are catalogued. I supposed
in my liberal ignorance that the Bouncing Bet was
the only one of these, but I have learned that the Pansy
and the Sweet Violet love to gad, and that the Cara-
way, the Snapdragon, the Prince's Feather, the Sum-
mer Savory, tiie Star of Bethlehem, the Day-Lily, and
the Tiger-Lily, and even the sluggish Stone Crop are
of the vagrant, fragrant company. One is not sur-
prised to meet the Tiger -Lily in it ; that must al-
ways have had the jungle in its heart ; but that the
Baby's Breath should be found wandering by the
road-sides from Massachusetts and Virginia to Ohio,
gives one a tender pang as for a lost child. Per-
haps the poor hiunan tramps, who sleep in bams and
feed at back doors along those dusty ways, are mind-

WU-D FLOWERS OF THE ASPHALT

ful of the Baby's Breath, and keep a kindly eye
out for the little truant.

As I was writing those homely names I felt again
how fit and lovely they were, how much more fit and
lovely than the scientific names of the flowers. Mrs.
Creevey will make a botanist of you if you will let her,
and I fancy a very ^ooA botanist, though I cannot
speak from experience, but she will make a poet of
you in spite of yourself, as I very well know ; and she
will do this simply by giving you first the famihar
name of the flowers she loves to write of. I am not say-
ing that the Day-Lily would not smell as sweet by her
title of Hemerocallis Fultxi, or that the homely, hearty
Bouncing Bet would not kiss as deliciously in her
scholar's cap and gown of Saponaria Officinalis ; but
merely that their college degrees do not lend them-
selves so willingly to verse, or even melodious prose,
which is what the poet is often after nowadays. So
I like best to hail the flowers by the names that the
fairies gave them, and the children know them by.
especially when my longing for them makes them
grow here in the citj- streets. 1 have a fancy that
they would all vanish away if I saluted them in botan-
ical terms. As long as I talk of cat-tail rushes, the
homeless grimalkins of the areas and the back fences
help rae to a vision of the swamps thickly studded
with their stiff spears ; but if I called them Typha Lati-
folia, or even Tyf>ha Ang^stifolia, there is not the
hardiest and fiercest prowler of the roof and the fire-
escape but would fly the sound of my voice and leave
rae forlorn amtd the withered foliage of my dream.
The street sparrows, pestiferous and persistent as they
are, would forsake my sylvan pageant if 1 spoke of the
93

LITERATURE AND LIFE

machines were drawn down to the beach from the espla*
nade, where they were secured against the gale every
night: and every day a half-dozen hardy invalids
braved the rigors of wind and wave. At the discreet
distance which one ought always to keep one could
not always be sure whether these bold bathers were
mermen or mermaids; for the sea costimie of both
sexes is the same here, as regards an absence of skirts
and a presence of what are, after the first plunge, ef-
fectively tights. The first time I walked down to
the beach I was puzzled to make out some object roll-
ing about in the low surf, which looked like a barrel,
and which two bathing-machine men were watching
with apparently the purpose of fishing it out. Sud-
denly ihis object reared itself from the surf and floun-
dered towards the steps of a machine ; then I saw that
it was evidently not a barrel, but a lady, and after
that I never dared carry my researches so far. I sup-
pose that the bathing-tights are more becoming in some
cases than in others ; but I hold to a modest preference
for skirts, however brief, in the sea-gear of ladies.
Without them there may sometimes be the effect of
beauty, and sometimes the effect of barrel.

For the convenience and safety of the bathers there
were, even in the last half of September, some twenty
machines, and half as many bath-men and bath-womn
en, who waded into the water and watched that the
bathers came to no harm, instead of a solitary life-
guard showing his statuesque shape as he paced the
shore beside the life-lines, or cjmically rocked in his
boat beyond the breakers, as the custom is on Long
Island. Here there is no need of life-lines, and, unless
one held his head resolutely under water, I do not see
how he could drown within quarter of a mile of the
shore. Perhaps it is to prevent suicide that the bath*
men are so plentifully provided.

LITERATURE AND LIFE

ing SL solitary London Times, which even I do not read,
perhaps because I have no English-reading rival to
contend for it with. Till yesterday, an English artist
sometimes got it; but he then instantly offered it to
me; and I had to refuse it because I would not be out*
done in politeness. Now even he is gone, and on all
sides I find myself in an unbroken circle of Dutch and
German, where no one would dispute the Times with
me if he could.

Every night the corridors are fully lighted, and
some mornings swept, while the washing that goes
on all over Holland, night and morning, does not al-
ways spare our unfrequented halls and stairs. I note
these little facts, for the contrast with those of an Amer-
ican hotel which we once assisted in closing, and where
the elevator stopped two weeks before we left, and we
fell from electricity to naphtha-gas, and even this died
out before us except at long intervals in the passages ;
while there were hghtning changes in the service, and
a final failure of it till we had to go down and get our
o^n ice-water of the lingering room-clerk, after the last
bell-boy had winked out.

But in Europe everything is permanent, and in Amer-
ica everything is provisional. This is the great dis-
tinction which, if always kept in mind, will save a great
deal of idle astonishment. It is in nothing more appar-
ent than in the preparation here at Scheveningen for
centuries of smnmer visitors, while at our Long Island
hotel there was a losing bet on a scant generation of
them. When it seemed likely that it might be a win-
ning bet the sand was planked there in front of the
hotel to the sea with spruce boards. It was very hand-
somely planked, but it was never afterwards touched,

LAST DAYS IN A DUTCH HOTEL

apparently, for any manner of repairs. Here, for
half a mile the dune on which the hotel stands is shored
up with massive masonry, and bricked for carriages,
and tiled for foot-passengers ; and it is all kept as clean
as if wheel or foot had never passed over it. I am sure
that there is not a broken brick or a broken tile in the
whole length or breadth of it. But the hotel here is
not a bet ; it is a business. It has come to stay ; and
on Long Island it had come to see how it would hke it.

Beyond the walk and drive, however, the dunes are
left to the winds, and to the vegetation with which the
Dutch planting clothes them against the winds. First
a coarse grass or rush is sown; then a finer herbage
comes; then a tough brushwood, with flowers and
blackberry- vines; so that while the seaward slopes
of the dunes are somewhat patched and tattered, the
landward side and all the pleasant hollows between
are fairly held against such gales as on Long Island
blow the lower dunes hither and yon. The sheep
graze in the valleys at some points; in many a
little pocket of the dunes I found a potato -patch of
about the bigness of a city lot, and on week-days I
saw wooden-shod men slowly, slowly gathering in
the crop. On Sundays I saw the pleasant nooks and
comers of these sandy hillocks devoted, as the dunes
of Long Island were, to whispering lovers, who are
here as freely and fearlessly affectionate as at home.
Rocking there is not, and cannot be, in the nature of
things, as there used to be at Moimt Desert ; but what
is called Twoing at York Harbor is perfectly practicable.

It is practicable not only in the nooks and comers of
the dunes, but on discreeter terms in those hooded wil-
low chairs, so characteristic of the Dutch sea -side.
These, if faced in pairs towards each other, must be as
favorable to the exchange of vows as of opinions, and
if the crowd is ever very great, perhaps one chair could

LITERATURE AND LIFE

be made to hold two persons. It was distinctly a pang,
the other day, to see men canying them up from the
beach, and putting them away to hibernate in the base-
ment of the hotel. Not all, but most of them, were
taken; though I dare say that on fine days through-
out October they will go trooping back to the sands
on the heads of the same men, hke a procession of mon-
strous, two-legged crabs. Such a day was last Sun-
day, and then the beach oflfered a lively image of its
siunmer gayety. It was dotted with hundreds of
hooded chairs, w^hich foregathered in gossiping groups
or confidential couples; and as the sun shone quite
warm the flaps of the little tents next the dunes were
let down against it, and ladies in summer white saved
themselves from sunstroke in their shelter. The
wooden booths for the sale of candies and mineral
waters, and beer and sandwiches, were flushed with a
sudden prosperity, so that when I went to buy my
pound of grapes from the good woman who under-
stands my Dutch, I dreaded an indifference in her
which by no means appeared. She welcomed me as
warmly as if I had been her sole customer, and did
not put up the price on me ; perhaps because it was al-
ready so very high that her imagination could not rise
above it

The hotel showed the same admirable constancy.
The restaurant was thronged with new-comers, who
spread out even over the many-tabled esplanade be-
fore it; but it was in no wise demoralized. That night
we sat down in multiplied numbers to a table d'hdte
of serenely unconscious perfection ; and we perma-
nent guests — ^alasl we are now becoming transient,
too — were used with unfaltering recognition of our
superior worth. We shared the respect which, all over

100

LAST DAYS IN A DUTCH HOTEL

Europe, attaches to establishment, and which some-
times makes us poor Americans wish for a hereditaiy
nobility, so that we could all mirror our ancestral value
in the deference of our inferiors. Where we should
get our inferiors is another thing, but I suppose wc
could import them for the purpose, if the duties were
not too great under our tariff.

We have not yet imported the idea of a European
hotel in any respect, though we long ago imported
what we call the European plan. No travelled Amer-
ican knows it in the extortionate prices of rooms when
he gets home, or the preposterous charges of our restau-
rants, where one portion of roast beef swimming in a
lake of lukewarm juice costs as much as a diversi-
fied and deUcate dinner in Germany or Holland. But
even if there were any proportion in these things the
European hotel will not be with us till we have the
European portier, who is its spring and inspiration.
He must not, dear home-keeping reader, be at all im-
agined in the moral or material figure of our hotel
porter, who appears always in his shirt -sleeves, and
speaks with the accent of Cork or of Congo. The Eu-
ropean portier wears a uniform, I do not know why,
and a gold-banded cap, and he inhabits a Uttle office
at the entrance of the hotel. He speaks eight or ten
languages, up to certain limit, rather better than peo-
ple bom to them, and his presence commands an
instant reverence softening to affection under his uni-
versal helpfubiess. There is nothing he cannot tell
you, cannot do for you; and you may trust yourself
imphcitly to him. He has the priceless gift of making
each nationality, each personality, believe that he is
devoted to its service alone. He turns Ughtly from
one language to another, as if he had each under his
tongue, and he answers simultaneously a fussy French
woman, an angry English tourist, a stiff Prussian

LITERATURE AND LIFE

major, and a thin-voiced American girl in behalf of a
timorous mother, and he never mixes the repUes. He
is an inexhaustible bottle of dialects; but this is the
least of his merits, of his miracles.

Our portier here is a tall, slim Dutchman (most
Dutchmen are tall and slim), and in spite of the wan-
ing season he treats me as if I were multitude, while
at the same time he uses me with the distinction due
the last of his guests. Twenty times in as many
hours he wishes me good-day, putting his hand to his
cap for the purpose; and to obhge me he wears silver
braid instead of gilt on his cap and coat. I apologized
yesterday for troubling him so often for stamps, and
said that I. supposed he was much more bothered in
the season.

''Between the first of August and the fifteenth,"
he answered, ''you cannot think. All that you can
do is to say. Yes, No; Yes, No." And he left me to
imagine his responsibilities.

I am sure he will hold out to the end, and will smile
me a friendly farewell from the door of his office, which
is also his dining-room, as I know from often disturb-
ing him at his meals there. I have no fear of the wait-
ers either, or of the httle errand-boys who wear suits
of sailor blue, and touch their foreheads when they
bring you your letters like so many ancient sea-dogs.
I do not know why the elevator-boy prefers a suit of
snuff-color; but I know that he will salute us as we
step out of his elevator for the last time as unfalteringly
as if we had just arrived at the beginning of the sum-
mer.

It is our last day in the hotel at Scheveningen, and
I will try to recall in their pathetic order the events of
the final week.

102

LAST DAYS IN A DUTCH HOTEL

Nothing has been stranger throughout than the
fluctuation of the guests. At times they have dwin-
dled to so small a number that one must reckon chief-
ly upon their quahty for consolation; at other times
they swelled to such a tide as to overflow the table,
long or short, at dinner, and eddy round a second
board beside it. There have been nights when I have
walked down the long corridor to my seaward room
through a harking soUtude of empty chambers; there
have been mornings when I have come out to break-
fast past door-mats cheerful with boots of both sexes,
and door-post hooks where dangling coats and trousers
peopled the place with a Uvely if a somewhat flaccid
semblance of human presence. The worst was that,
when some one went, we lost a friend, and when some
one came we only won a stranger.

Among the fii^t to go were the kindly English folk
whose acquaintance we made across the table the first
night, and who took with them so large a share of
our facile affections that we quite forgot the ances-
tral enmities, and grieved for them as much as if they
had been Americans. There have been, in fact, no
Americans here but ourselves, and we have done what
we could with the Germans who spoke EngUsh. The

nicest of these were a charming family from F ,

father and mother, and son and daughter, with whom
we had a pleasant week of dinners. At the very first
we disagreed with the parents so amicably about Ibsen
and Sudermann that I was almost sorry to have the
son take our modem side of the controversy and de-
clare himself an admirer of those authors with us.
Our frank literary difference estabUshed a kindness
between us that was strengthened by our community
of English, and when they went they left us to the
sympathy of another German family with whom we
had mainly our humanity in common. They spoke

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LITERATURE AND LIFE

no English, and I only a German which they must
have understood with their hearts rather than their
heads, since it consisted chiefly of good-will. But
in the air of their sweet natures it flourished surpris-
ingly, and sufiSced each day for praise of the weather
after it began to be fine, and at parting for some fond
regrets, not unmixed with philosophical reflections,
sadly perplexed in the genders and the order of the
verbs : with me the verb will seldom wait, as it should
in German, to the end. Both of these families, very
different in social tradition, I fancied, were one in the
amiability which makes the ahen forgive so much
militarism to the German nation, and hope for its final
escape from the drill-sergeant. When they went, we
were left for some meals to our own American tongue,
with a brief interval of that English painter and his
wife with whom we spoke our language as nearly like
English as we could. Then followed a desperate lunch
and dinner where an unbroken forest of German, and
a still more impenetrable morass of Dutch, hemmed us
in. But last night it was our joy to be addressed in
our own speech by a lady who spoke it as admirably as

our dear friends from F . She was Dutch, and when

she found we were Americans she praised our histo-
rian Motley, and told us how his portrait is gratefully
honored with a place in the Queen's palace. The House
in the Woods, near Scheveningen.

She had come up from her place in the country,
four hours away, for the last of the concerts here, which
have been given throughout the summer by the best
orchestra in Europe, and which have been thronged
every afternoon and evening by people from The Hague.

104

LAST DAYS IN A DUTCH HOTEL

One honored day this week even the Queen and the
Queen Mother came dovm to the concert, and gave
us incomparably the greatest event of our waning
season. I had noticed all the morning a floral per-
turbation about the main entrance of the hotel, which
settled into the form of banks of autumnal bloom on
either side of the specially carpeted stairs, and put
forth on the roof of the arcade in a crown, much bigger
round than a barrel, of orange-colored asters, in honor
of the Queen's ancestral house of Orange. Flags of
blue, white, and red fluttered nerii'ously about in the
breeze from the sea, and imparted to us an agreeable
anxiety not to miss seeing the Queens, as the Dutch
succinctly call their sovereign and her parent; and at
three o'clock we saw them drive up to the hotel. Cer-
tain officials in civil dress stood at the door of the con-
cert-room to usher the Queens in, and a bareheaded,
bald-headed dignity of militarj- figure backed up the
stairs before them. I would not rashly commit my-
self to particulars concerning their dress, but I am
sure that the elder Queen wore black, and the younger
white. The mother has one of the best and wisest
faces I have seen any woman wear (and most of the
good, wise faces in this imperfectly balanced world
are women's) and the daughter one of the sweetest
and prettiest. Pretty is the word for her face, and
it showed pink through her blond veil, as she smiled
and bowed right and left; her features are small and
fine, and she is not above the middle height.

As soon as she had passed into the concert-room,
we who had waited to see her go in ran round to an-
other door and joined the two or three thousand peo-
ple who were standing to receive the Queens. These
had already mounted to the royal box, and they stood
there while the orchestra played one of the Dutch na-
tional airs. (One air is not enough for the Dutch;
105

LITERATURE AND LIFE

they must have two.) Then the mother faded some-
where into the background, and the daughter sat
alone in the front, on a gilt throne, with a gilt crown
at top, and a very uncomfortable carved Gothic back.
She looked so young, so gentle, and so good that the
rudest Republican could not have helped wishing
her well out of a position so essentially and irrepara-
bly false as a hereditary sovereign's. One forgot in
the presence of her innocent seventeen years that most
of the ruling princes of the world had left it the worse
for their having been in it; at moments one forgot her
altogether as a princess, and saw her only as a charmr
ing young girl, who had to sit up rather sti£9y.

At the end of the programme the Queens rose and
walked slowly out, while the orchestra played the
other national air.

I call them the Queens, because the Dutch do; and
I like Holland so much that I should hate to differ
with the Dutch in anything. But, as a matter of fact,
they are neither of them quite Queens; the mother is
the regent and the daughter will not be crowned till
next year.

But, such as they are, they imparted a supreme
emotion to our dying season, and thrilled the hotel
with a fulness of summer life. Since they went, the
season faintly pulses and respires, so that one can
just say that it is still alive. Last Sunday was fine,
and great crowds came down from The Hague to the
concert, and spread out on the seaward terrace of the
hotel, around the Uttle tables which I fancied that
the waiters had each morning wiped dry of the dew,
from a mere Dutch desire of cleaning something. The
hooded chairs covered the beach; the children played

io6

LAST DAYS IN A DUTCH HOTEL

in the edges of the surf and delved in the sand; the
lovers wandered up into the hollows of the dunes.

There was only the human life, however. I have
looked in vain for the crabs, big and Uttle, that swarm
on the Long Island shore, and there are hardly any
gulls, even; perhaps because there are no crabs for
them to eat, if they eat crabs; I never saw gulls doing
it, but they must eat something. Dogs there are, of
course, wherever there are people; but they are part
of the human life. Dutch dogs are in fact very hu-
man; and one I saw yesterday behaved quite as badly
as a bad boy, with respect to his muzzle. He did not
like his muzzle, and by dint of turning somersaults
in the sand he got it off, and went frohcking to his
master in triumph to show him what he had done.

It is now the last day, and the desolation is thicken-
ing upon our hotel. This morning the door-posts
up and down my corridor showed not a single pair of
trousers ; not a pair of boots flattered the lonely door-
mats. In the lower haU I found the tables of the great
dining-room assembled, and the chairs inverted on
them with their legs in the air; but decently, deco-
rously, not with the reckless abandon displayed by
the chairs in our Long Island hotel for weeks before it
closed. In the smaller dining-room the table was set
for limch as if we were to go on dining there forever ;
in the breakfast - room the service and the provision
were as perfect as ever. The coffee was good, the
bread deUcious, the butter of an unfaltering sweet-
ness; and the glaze of wear on the poUshed dress-
coats of the waiters as respectable as it could have
been on the first day of the season. All was correct,

107

LITERATURE AND LIFE

and if of a funereal correctness to me, I am sure this
efifect was purely subjective.

The little bell-boys in sailor suits (perhaps they
ought to be spelled bell-buoys) clustered about the
elevator-boy like so many Roman sentinels at their
posts; the elevator-boy and his elevator were ready
to take us up or down at any moment.

The portier and I ignored together the hour of part-
ing, which we had definitely ascertained and agreed
upon, and we exchanged some comphments to the
weather, which is now settled, as if we expected to
enjoy it long together. I rather dread going in to
lunch, however, for I fear the empty places.

All is over; we are off. The lunch was an heroic
effort of the hotel to hide the fact of our separation.
It was perfect, unless the boiled beef was a confession
of human weakness; but even this boiled beef was
exquisite, and the horseradish that went with it was
so mellowed by art that it checked rather than pro-
voked the parting tear. The table d'hdte had reserved
a final surprise for us; and when we sat down with
the fear of nothing but German aroimd us, we heard
the sound of our own speech from the pleasantest Eng-
lish pair we had yet encountered; and the travelling
English are pleasant; I will say it, who am said by
Sir Walter Besant to be the only American who hates
their nation. It was really an added pang to go, on
their account, but the carriage was waiting at the
door ; the domestique had already carried our baggage
to the steam -tram station; the kindly menial train
formed around us for an ultimate douceur, and we
were off, after the portier had shut us into our vehicle

io8

LAST DAYS IN A DUTCH HOTEL

and touched his oft-touched cap for the last time, while
the hotel facade dissembled its grief by architectural-
ly smiling in the soft Dutch sun.

I liked this manner of leaving better than carrying
part of my own baggage to the train, as I had to do
on Long Island, though that, too, had its charm ; the
charm of the whole fresh, pungent American life,
which at this distance is so dear.

SOME ANOMALIES OF THE SHORT STORY

THE interesting experiment of one of our great
publishing houses in putting out serially sev-
eral volumes of short stories, with the hope that a
courageous persistence may overcome the popular .
indifference to such collections when severally ad-
ministered, suggests some questions as to this eldest
form of fiction which I should like to ask the reader's
patience with. I do not know that I shall be able to
answer them, or that I shall try to do so ; the vitality
of a question that is answered seems to exhale in the
event; it palpitates no longer; curiosity flutters away
from the faded flower, which is fit then only to be fold-
ed away in the hortus siccus of accomplished facts. In
view of this I may wish merely to state the problems
and leave them for the reader's solution, or, more amus-
ingly, for his mystification.

One of the most amusing questions concerning the
short story is why a form which is singly so attrac-
tive that every one likes to read a short story when
he finds it alone is collectively so repellent as it is said
to be. Before now I have imagined the case to be
'.somewhat the same as that of a nimiber of pleasant
people who are most acceptable as separate house-
holders, but who lose caste and cease to be desirable
acquaintances when gathered into a boarding-house.

SOME ANOMALIES OF THE SHORT STORY

Yet the case is not the same quite, for we see that the
short story where it is ranged with others of its species
within the covers of a magazine is so welcome that
the editor thinks his number the more brilliant the
more short story writers he can call about his board,
or under the roof of his pension. Here the boarding-
house analogy breaks, breaks so signally that I was
lately moved to ask a distinguished editor why a book
of short stories usually failed and a magazine usu-
ally succeeded because of them He answered, gayly,
that the short stories in most books of them were bad :
that where they were good, they went; and he al-
leged several well-known instances in which books
of prime short stories had a great vogue. He was
so handsomely interested in my inquiry that I could
not well say I thought some of the short stories which
he had boasted in his last number were indifferent good ,
and yet, as he allowed, had mainly helped sell it. I
had in raind many books of short stories of the first
excellence which had failed as decidedly as those others
bad succeeded, for no reason that I could see; possiblj'
there is really no reason in any literary success or fail-
ure that can be predicted, or applied in another case,
I could name these books, if it would serve any pur-
pose, but, in my doubt. I will leave the reader to think
of them, for I believe that his indolence or intellectual
reluctance is largely to blame for the failure of good
books of short stories. He is commonly so averse to
any imaginative exertion that he finds it a hardship
to respond to that pecuhar demand which a book of
good short stories makes upon him. He can read one
good short story in a magazine with refreshment, and
a pleasant sense of excitement, in the sort of spur it
gives to his own constructive faculty. But, if this is
repeated in ten or twenty stories, he becomes fluttered
and exhausted by the draft upon his energies ; where-

LITERATURE AND LIFE

as a continuous fiction of the same quantity acts as
an^ agreeable -sedative. A condition that the short
story tacitly makes with the reader, through its limi-
tations, is that he shall subjectively fill in the details
and carry out the scheme which in its small dimen-
sions the story can only suggest; and the greater
number of readers find this too much for their feeble
powers, while they cannot resist the incitement to at-
tempt it.

My theory does not wholly account for the fact (no
theory wholly accoimts for any fact), and I own that
the same objections would he from the reader against
a number of short stories in a magazine. But it may
be that the effect is not the same in the magazine be-
cause of the variety in the authorship, and because
it would be impossibly jolting to read all the short
stories in a magazine seriatim. On the other hand,
the identity of authorship gives a continuity of at-
traction to the short stories in a book which forms
that exhausting strain upon the imagination of the
involimtary co-partner.

Then, what is the solution as to the form of pub-
lication for short stories, since people do not object to
them singly but collectively, and not in variety, but
in identity of authorship? Are they to be printed only
in the magazines, or are they to be collected in volimies
combining a variety of authorship? Rather, I could
wish, it might be found feasible to purvey them in
some pretty shape where each would appeal singly
to the reader and would not exhaust him in the sub-
jective after-work required of him. In this event many
short stories now cramped into undue limits by the
editorial exigencies of the magazines might expand

112

SOME ANOMALIES OF THE SHORT STORY

lo greater length and breadth, and without ceasing
to be each a short story might not make so heavy a
demand upon the subliminal forces of the reader. I

If any one were to say that all this was a little fan-
tastic, I should not contradict him : but I hope there is
some reason in it, if reason can help the short story to
greater favor, for it is a form which I have great pleas-
ure in as a reader, and pride in as an American. If
we have not excelled all other modems in it, we have
certainly excelled in it; possibly because we are in
the period of our Uterary development which corre-
sponds to that of other peoples when the short story
pre-eminently flourished among them. But when one
has said a thing like this, it immediately accuses one
of loose and inaccurate statement, and requires one
to refine upon it, either for one's own peace of con-
science or for one's safety from the thoughtful reader,
I am not much afraid of that sort of reader, for he is
very rare, but I do like to know myself what I mean,
if I mean anything in particular.

In this instance 1 am obliged to ask myself whether
our Uterary development can be recognized separalt-
ly from that of the whole English-speaking world. I
think it can, though, as I am always saying Amer- i
ican literature is merely a condition of English litera-
ture. In some sense every European literature is a
condition of some other European literature, yet the
impulse in each eventuates, if it does not originate
indigenously. A younger literature will choose, by a
sort of natural selection, some things for assimilation
from an eider literature, for no more apparent reason
than it will reject other things, and it will transform
them in the process so that it will give them the eflfect
of indigeneity. The short storj' among the Itahans,
who called it the novella, and supplied us with the
name devoted solely among us to fiction of epical mag-
« 113

LITERATURE AND LIFE

nitude, refined indefinitely upon the Greek romance, if
it derived from that ; it retrenched itself in scope, and
enlarged itself in the variety of its types. But still
these remained t3rpes, and they remained types with
the French imitators of the Italian novella. It was not
till the Spaniards borrowed the form of the novella and
transplanted it to their racier soil that it b^an to bear
character, and to fruit in the richness of their pica-
resque fiction. When the EngUsh borrowed it they
adapted it, in the metrical tales of Chaucer, to the ge-
nius of their nation, which was then both poetical and
humorous. Here it was full of character, too, and more
and more personaUty began to enlarge the bounds
of the conventional types and to imbue fresh ones.
But in so far as the novella was studied in the Italian
soiuxes, the French, Spanish, and English hteratuies
were conditions of Italian literature as distinctly,
though, of course, not so thoroughly, as American
Uterature is a condition of English Uterature. Each
borrower gave a national cast to the thing borrowed,
and that is what has happened with us, in the full
measure that our nationality has differenced itself
from the English.

Whatever truth there is in all this, and I wiU con-
fess that a good deal of it seems to me hardy conject-
ure, rather favors my position that we are in some
such period of our hterary development as those other
peoples when the short story flourished among them.
Or, if I restrict our claim, I may safely claim that they
abundantly had the novella when they had not the
novel at all, and we now abundantly have the novella,
while we have the novel only subordinately and of
at least no such quantitative importance as the Eng-
lish, French, Spanish, Norwegians, Russians, and
some others of our esteemed contemporaries, not to
name the Italians. We surpass the Germans, who,

114

SOME ANOMALIES OF THE SHORT STORY

like ourselves, have as distinctly exceUed in the mod-
em novella as they have fallen short in the novel.
Or, if I may not quite say this, I will make bold to say
that I can think of many German novelle that I should
like to read again, but scarcely one German novel;
and I could honestly say the same of American novelle,
though not of American novels.

The abeyance, not to say the desuetude, that the
novella fell into for several centuries is very curious,
and fully as remarkable as the modem rise of the short
story. It began to prevail in the dramatic form, for
a play is a short story put on the stage; it may have
satisfied in that form the early love of it, and it has
continued to please in that form; but in its original
shape it quite vanished, unless we consider the Uttle
studies and sketches and allegories of the Spectator
and Toiler and Idler and Rambler and their imita-
tions on the Continent as guises of the novella. The
germ of the modem short story may have survived
in these, or in the metrical form of the novella which
appeared in Chaucer and never wholly disappeared.
With Crabbe the novella became as distinctly the short
story as it has become in the hands of Miss Wilkins.
But it was not till our time that its great merit as a
form was felt, for imtil our time so great work was
never done with it. I remind myself of Boccaccio,
and of the Arabian Nights, without the wish to hedge
from my bold stand. They are all elemental; com-
pared with some finer modem work which deepens
inward immeasurably, they are all of their superficial
limits. They amuse, but they do not hold, the mind
and stamp it with large and profoimd impressions.

An Occidental cannot judge the literary quality

LITERATURE AND LIFE

of the Eastern tales ; but I wiU own my suspicion that
the perfection of the Itahan work is philological rather
than artistic, while the web woven by Mr. James or
Miss Jewett, by Kielland or BjBmson, by Maupas-
sant, by Palacio Vald6s, by Giovanni Verga, by Tour-
gudnief , in one of those Uttle frames seems to me of an
exquisite color and texture and of an entire Uterary
preciousness, not only as regards the diction, but as
regards those more intangible graces of form, tiaoae
virtues of truth and reahty, and those lasting signifi-
cances which distinguish the masterpiece.

The novella has in fact been carried so far in the
short story that it might be asked whether it had not
left the novel behind, as to perfection of form; though
one might not like to affirm this. Yet there have been
but few modem fictions of the novel's dimensions
which have the beauty of form many a novella em-
bodies. Is this because it is easier to give form in
the small than in the large, or only because it is easier
to hide formlessness? It is easier to give form in the
novella than in the novel, because the design of less
scope can be more definite, and because the persons
and facts are fewer, and each can be more carefully
treated. But, on the other hand, the slightest error
in execution shows more in the small than in the large,
and a fault of conception is more evident. The novella
must be clearly imagined, above all things, for there
is no room in it for those felicities of characterization or
comment by which the artist of faltering design saves
himself in the novel.

The question as to where the short story distin-
guishes itself from the anecdote is of the same nat-
ure as that which concerns the bound set between

Ii6

SOME ANOMALIES OF THE SHORT STORY

it and the novel. In both cases the difference of the
novella is in the motive, or the origination. The
anecdote is too palpably simple and single to be re-
garded as a novella, though there is now and then
a novella like The Father, by Bjornson, which is of
the actual brevity of the anecdote, but which, when
released in the reader's consciousness, expands to
dramatic dimensions impossible to the anecdote. Many
anecdotes have come down from antiquity, but not, I
beheve, one short story, at least in prose; and the Ital-
ians, if they did not invent the story, gave us some-
thing most sensibly distinguishable from the classic
anecdote in the novella. The anecdote offers an il-
lustration of character, or records a moment of action;
the novella embodies a drama and develops a type.

It is not quite so clear as to when and where a piece
of fiction ceases to be a novella and becomes a novel.
The frontiers are so vague that one is obliged to recog-
nize a middle species, or rather a middle magnitude,
which paradoxically, but necessarily enough, we
call the novelette. First we have the short story, or
novella, then we have the long story, or novel, and
between these we have the novelette, which is in name
a smaller than the short story, though it is in point of
fact two or three times longer than a short story. We
may realize them physically if we will adopt the maga-
zine parlance and speak of the novella as a one-number
story, of the novel as a serial, and of the novelette as
a two-number or a three-number story; if it passes
the three-number limit it seems to become a novel.
As a two-number or three-number story it is the de-
spair of editors and publishers. The interest of so
brief a serial will not mount sufficiently to carry strong-
ly over from month to month : when the tale is com-
pleted it will not make a book which the Trade (in-
exorable force!) cares to handle. It is therefore still
117

LITERATURE AND LIFE

awaiting its authoritative avatar, which it will be some
one's prosperity and glory to imagine ; for in the novel-
ette are possibiUties for fiction as yet scarcely divined.

The novelette can have almost as perfect form as
the novella. In fact, the novel has form in the meas-
ure that it approaches the novelette ; and some of the
most symmetrical modem novels are scarcdy more
than novelettes, like Tourgu6nief's Dmitri Rudine,
or his Smoke, or Spring Floods. The Vicar of Wake-
field, the father of the modem novel, is scarcely more
than a novelette, and I have sometimes fancied, but
•no doubt vainly, that the ultimated novel might be
of the dimensions of Hamlet. If any one should say
there was not room in Hamlet for ttie character and
incident requisite in a novel, I should be ready to an-
swer that there seemed a good deal of both in Hamlet.

But no doubt there are other reasons why the novel
should not finally be of the length of Hamlet, and I
must not let my enthusiasm for the novelette carry me
too far, or, rather, bring me up too short. I am dis-
posed to dwell upon it, I suppose, because it has not
yet shared the favor which the novella and the novel
have enjoyed, and because until somebody invents a
way for it to the public it cannot prosper like the one-
number story or the serial. I should like to say as
my last word for it here that I believe there are many
novels which, if stripped of their padding, would turn
out to have been all along merely novelettes in disguise.

It does not follow, however, that there are many
novelle which, if they were duly padded, would be
found novelettes. In that dim, subjective region
where the aesthetic origins present themselves almost
with the authority of inspirations there is nothing
clearer than the difference between the short -story
motive and the long-story motive. One, if one is in
that line of work, feels instinctively just the size and

Ii8

SOME ANOMALIES OF THE SHORT STORY

carrying power of the given motive. Or, if the reader
prefers a different figure, the mind which the seed
has been dropped into from Somewhere is mystically '
aware whether the seed is going to grow up a bush
or is going to grow up a tree, if left to itself. Of course,
the mind to which the seed is intrusted may play it
false, and wilfully dwarf the growth, or force it to
unnatural dimensions; but the critical observer will
easily detect the fact of such treasons. Almost in the
first germinal impulse the inventive mind forefeels
the ultimate difference and recognizes the essential
simplicity or complexity of the motive. There will
be a prophetic subdivision into a variety of motives
and a multiplication of characters and incidents and
situations: or the original motive will be divined in-
divisible, and there will be a small group of people
immediately interested and controlled by a single, or
predominant, fact. The uninspired may contend that
this is bosh, and I own that something might be said for
their contention, but upon the whole 1 think it is gospel.
The right novel is never a congeries of novelle, as
might appear to the uninspired. If it indulges even
in episodes, it loses in reaUty and vitaUty. It is one
stock from which its various branches put out, and
form it a living growth identical throughout. The
right novella is never a novel cropped back from the
size of a tree to a bush, or the branch of a tree stuck
into the ground and made to serve for a bush. It is
another species, destined by the agencies at work in the
realm of unconsciousness to be brought into being of ita
own kind, and not of another.

This was always its case, but in the process of time

the short story, while keeping the natural limits of

119

LITERATURE AND LIFE

the primal novella (if ever there was one), has shown
almost limitless possibilities within them. It has
shown itself capable of imparting the effect of every
sort of intention, whether of humor or pathos, of trag-
edy or comedy or broad farce or delicate irony, of
character or action. The thing that first made itself
known as a little tale, usually salacious, dealing with
conventionahzed types and conventionalized inci-
dents, has proved itself possibly the most flexible of
aU the literary forms in its adaptation to the needs
of the mind that wishes to utter itself, inventively or
constructively, upon some fresh occasion, or wishes
briefly to criticise or represent some phase or fact of
life.

The riches in this shape of fiction are effectively
inestimable, if we consider what has been done in the
short story, and is still doing ever3nvhere. The good
novels may be easily counts, but the good novelle,
since Boccaccio began (if it was he that first began)
to make them, cannot be computed. In quantity they
are inexhaustible, and in quality they are wonder-
fully satisfying. Then, why is it that so very, very
few of the most satisfactory of that innumerable mul-
titude stay by you, as the country people say, in char-
acterization or action? How hard it is to recall a
person or a fact out of any of them, out of the most
sig^nally good I We seem to be delightfully nourished
as we read, but is it, after all, a full meal? We become
of a perfect intimacy and a devoted friendship with
the men and women in the short stories, but not ap>-
parently of a lasting acquaintance. It is a single
meeting we have with them, and though we instantly
love or hate them dearly, reciurence and repetition
seem necessary to that familiar knowledge in which
we hold the personages in a novel.

It is here that the novella, so much more perfect in

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SOME ANOMALIES OF THE SHORT STORY

form, shows its irremediable inferiority to the novel,
and somehow to the play, to the very farce, which it
may quantitatively excel. We can all recall by name
many characters out of comedies and farces ; but how
many characters out of short stories can we recall?
Most persons of the drama give themselves away by
name for types, mere Qgments of allegory, and per-
haps oblivion is the penalty that the novella pays
for the fineness of its characterisations; but perhaps,
also, the dramatic form has greater facilities for repe-
tition, and so can stamp its persons more indehbly on
the imagination than the narrative form in the same
small space. The narrative must give to description
what the drama trusts to representation : but this can-
not account for the superior permanency of the dra-
matic types in so great measure as we might at first
imagine, for they remain as much in mind from read-
ing as from seeing the plays. It is possible that as
the novella becomes more conscious, its persons will
become more memorable; but as it is, though we now
vividly and with l^lsting delight remember certain
short stories, we scarcely remember by name any of
the people in them. I may be risking too much in
offering an instance, but who, in even such signal in-
stances as The Revolt of Mother, by Miss Wilkins, or
The Dulham Ladies, by Miss Jewett, can recall by
name the characters that made them delightful?

The defect of the novella which we have been ac-
knowledging seems an essential limitation ; but per-
haps it is not insuperable; and we may yet have short
stories which shall supply the delighted imagination
with creations of as much immortality as we can rea-
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LITERATURE AND LIFE

sonably demand. The structural change would not
be greater than the moral or material change which
has been wrought in it since it began as a yam, gross
and palpable, which the narrator spun out of the
coarsest and often the filthiest stuff, to snare the thick
fancy or amuse the lewd leisure of listeners willing
as children to have the same persons and the same
things over and over again. Now it has not only
varied the persons and things, but it has refined and
verified them in the direction of the natural and the
supernatural, until it is above all other literary forms
the vehicle of reality and spirituality. When one
thinks of a bit of Mr. James's psychology in this form,
or a bit of Verga's or Kielland's sociology, or a bit of
Miss Jewett's exquisite veracity, one perceives the im-
mense distance which the short story has come on the
way to the height it has reached. It serves equally
the ideal and the real ; that which it is loath to serve
is the imreal, so that among the short stories which
have recently made reputations for their authors
very few are of that peculiar cast which we have no
name for but romanticistic. The only distinguished
modem writer of romanticistic novelle whom I can
think of is Mr. Bret Harte, and he is of a period when
romanticism was so imperative as to be almost a con-
dition of fiction. I am never so enamoured of a cause
that I will not admit facts that seem to tell against it,
and I will allow that this writer of romanticistic short
stories has more than any other supplied us with mem-
orable types and characters. We remember Mr. John
Oakhurst by name; we remember Kentuck and Ten-
nessee's Pa tner, at least by nickname; and we re-
member their several qualities. These figures, if we
cannot quite consent that they are persons, exist in
our memories by force of their creator's imagination,
and at the moment I cannot think of any others that

122

SOME ANOMALIES OF THE SHORT STORY

do, out of the myriad of American short stories, ex-
cept Rip Van Winkle out of Irving's Legend of Sleepy
HoUow, and Marjorie Daw out of Mr. Aldrich's fa-
mous little caprice of that title, and Mr. James's Daisy
Miller.

It appears to be the fact that those writers who have
first distinguished themselves in the novella have
seldom written novels of prime order. Mr. Kipling is
an eminent example, but Mr. Kipling has yet a long
life before him in which to upset any theory about
him, and one can only instance him provisionally.
On the other hand, one can be much more confident
that the best novelle have been written by the greatest
novelists, conspicuously Maupassant, Verga, Bjom-
son, Mr. Thomas Hardy, Mr. James, Mr. Cable, Tour-
gu6nief , Tolstoy, Vald6s, not to name others. These
have, in fact, all done work so good in this form that
one is tempted to call it their best work. It is really
not their best, but it is work so good that it ought to
have equal acceptance with their novels, if that dis-
tinguished editor was right who said that short stories
sold well when they were good short stories. That
they ought to do so is so evident that a devoted reader
of them, to whom I was submitting the anomaly the
other day, insisted that they did. I could only allege
the testimony of publishers and authors to the con-
trary, and this did not satisfy him.

It does not satisfy me, and I wish that the general
reader, with whom the fault lies, could be made to say
why, if he likes one short story by itself and four short
stories in a magazine, he does not like, or will not have,
a dozen short stories in a book. This was the baffling
question which I began with and which I find myself
forced to end with, after all the light I have thrown
upon the subject. I leave it where I found it, but per-
haps that is a good deal for a critic to do. If I had

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left it anywhere else the reader might not feel bound
to deal with it practically by reading all the books of
short stories he could lay hands on, and either divin-
ing why he did not enjoy them, or else forever fore-
going his prejudice against them because of his pleas-
ure in themu

A CIRCUS IN THE SUBURBS

WE dwellers in cities and large towns, if we are
well-to-do, have more than our fill of pleasures
of all kinds; and for now many years past we have
been used to a form of circus where surfeit is nearly
as great misery as famine in that kind could be. For
our sins, or some of our friends' sins, perhaps, we have
now gone so long to circuses of three rings and two
raised platforms that we scarcely realize that in the
country there are still circuses of one ring and no plat-
form at all. We are accustomed, in the gross and
fooUsh superfluity of these city circuses, to see no feat
quite through, but to turn our greedy eyes at the most
important instant in the hope of greater wonders in
another ring. We have four or five clowns, in as many
varieties of grotesque costume, as well as a lady clown
in befitting dress; but we hear none of them speak,
not even the lady clown, while in the country circus
the old clown of our childhood, one and indivisible,
makes the same style of jokes, if not the very same
jokes, that we used to hear there. It is not easy to
beheve all this, and I do not know that I should quite
believe it myself if I had not lately been witness of
it in the suburban village where I was passing the
summer.

The circus announced itself in the good old way
weeks beforehand by the vast posters of former days
and by a profusion of small bills which fell upon the

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LITERATURE AND LIFE

village as from the clouds, and left it littered every-
where with their festive pink. They prophesied it in
a name borne by the first circus I ever saw, which was
also an animal show, but the animals must all have
died during the fifty years past, for there is now no
menagerie attached to it. I did not know this when
I heard the band braying through the streets of the
village on the morning of the performance, and for
me the mangy old camels and the pimpled elephants
of yore led the procession through accompanying
ranks of boys who have mostly been in their graves
for half a lifetime; the distracted ostrich thrust an
advertising neck through the top of its cage, and the
lion roared to himself in the darkness of his moving
prison. I felt the old thrill of excitement, the vain
hope of something preternatural and impossible, and
I do not know what could have kept me from that cir-
cus as soon as I had done limch. My heart rose at
sight of the large tent (which was yet so very httle in
comparison with the tents of the three-ring and two-
platform circuses); the alluring and illusory side-
shows of fat women and lean men ; the horses tethered
in the background and stamping under the fly-bites;
the old, weather - beaten grand chariot, which looked
like the ghost of the grand chariot which used to drag
me captive in its triiunph; and the canvas shelters
where the cooks were already at work over their ket-
tles on the evening meal of the circus folk.

I expected to be kept a long while from the ticket-
wagon by the crowd, but there was no crowd, and per-
haps there never used to be much of a crowd. I bought
my admittances without a moment's delay, and the
man who sold me my reserve seats had even leisure
to call me back and ask to look at the change he had
given me, mostly nickels. "I thought I didn't give
you enough," he said, and he added one more, and

126

A CIRCUS IN THE SUBURBS

sent me on to the doorkeeper with my faith in human
nature con&rmed and refreshed.

It was cool enough outside, but within it was very
warm, as it should be, lo give the men with palm-leaf
fans and ice-cold lemonade a chance. They were
already making their rounds, and crying their wares
with voices from the tombs of the dead past ; and the
child of the young mother who took my seat-ticket
from me was going to sleep at full length on the lower*
most tread of the benches, so that I had to step across
its prostrate form. These reserved seats were car-
peted; but r had forgotten how little one rank was
raised above another, and how very trying they were
upon the back and legs. But for the carpeting, I
could not see how 1 was advantaged above the com-
moner folk in the unreserved seats, and I reflected how
often in this world we paid for an inappreciable splen-
dor. 1 could not see but they were as well off as I ;
they were much more gayly dressed, and some of them
were even smoking cigars, while they were nearly all
younger by ten, twenty, forty, or fifty years, and even
more. They did not look like the country people whom
I rather hoped and expected to see, but were appar-
ently my fellow-villagers, in different stages of ex-
citement. They manifested by the usual signs their
impatience to have the performance begin, and I con-
fess that I shared this, though I did not take part in
the demonstration.

I have no intention of following the events seriatint.
From time to time during their progress i renewed
my old one-sided acquaintance with the circus-men.
They were quite the same people, I believe, but strange-
ly softened and ameliorated, as I hope I am, and look-
ing not a day older, which 1 cannot say of myself,
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LITERATURE AND LIFE

exactly. The supernumeraries were patently fanner
boys who had entered newly upon that life in a spirit
of adventure, and who wore their partial liveries, a
braided coat here and a pair of striped trousers there,
with a sort of timorous pride, a deprecating bravado,
as if they expected to be hooted by the spectators and
were very glad when they were not. The man who
went round with a dog to keep boys from hooking in
imder the curtain had grown gentler, and his dog did
not look as if he would bite the worst boy in town.
The man came up and asked the young mother about
her sleeping child, and I inferred that the child had
been sick, and was therefore unusually interesting
to all the great, kind-hearted, simple circus family.
He was good to the poor supes, and instructed them,
not at all sneeringly, how best to manage the guy-
ropes for the nets when the trapeze events began.

There was, in fact, an air of pleasing domesticity
diffused over the whole circus. This was, perhaps,
partly an effect from our extreme proximity to its per-
formances; I had never been on quite such intimate
terms with equitation and aerostation of all kinds;
but I think it was also largely from the good hearts
of the whole company. A circus must become, dur-
ing the season, a great brotherhood and sisterhood,
especially sisterhood, and its members must forget
finally that they are not united by ties of blood. I
dare say they often become so, as husbands and wives
and fathers and mothers, if not as brothers.

The domestic effect was heightened almost poig-
nantly when a young lady in a Turkish -towel bath-
gown came out and stood close by the band, waiting
for her act on a barebacked horse of a conventional
pattern. She really looked like a young goddess in
a Turkish - towel bath -gown: goddesses must have
worn bath-gowns, especially Venus, who was often

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LITERATURE AND LIFE

all sorts and degrees, these delusions, and I suppose
that in the last analysis it was not pleasure I got from
the clown and his clowning, clowned he ever so mer-
rily. I remember that I liked hearing his old jokes,
not because they were jokes, but because they were old
and endeared by long association. He sang one song
which I must have heard him sing at my first circus
(I am sure it was he), about "Things that I don't like
to see," and I heartily agreed with him that his book
of songs, which he sent round to be sold, was fully
worth the half-dime asked for it, though I did not buy it.
Perhaps the rival author in me withheld me, but,
as a brother man, I will not allow that I did not feel
for him and suffer with him because of the thick,
white pigment which plentifully coated his face, and,
with the sweat drops upon it, made me think of a
newly painted wall in the rain. He was infinitely
older than his personality, than his oldest joke (though
you never can be sure how old a joke is), and, repre-
sentatively, I dare say he outdated the pjrramids. They
must have made clowns whiten their faces in the dawn
of time, and no doubt there were drolls among the
antediluvians who enhanced the effect of their fun by
that means. All the same, I pitied this clown for it,
and I fancied in his wildest waggery the note of a
real irascibility. Shall I say that he seemed the only
member of that little circus who was not of an ami-
able temp)er? But I do not blame him, and I think
it much to have seen a clown once more who jested
audibly with the ringmaster and always got the better
of him in rep)artee. It was long since I had known that
pleasure.

Throughout the performance at this circus I was
troubled by a curious question, whether it were really

130

A CIRCUS IN THE SUBURBS

of the same moral and material grandeur as the cir-
cuses it brought to memory, or whether these were
thin and slight, too. We all know how the places of
our childhood, the heights, the distances, shrink and
dwindle when we go back to them, and was it px>ssible
that I had been deceived in the splendor of my early
circuses? The doubt was painful, but I was forced
to own that there might be more truth in it than in a
bUnd fealty to their remembered magnificence. Very
likely circuses have grown not only in size, but in the
richness and variety of their entertainments, and I
was spx>iled for the simple joys of this. But I could
see no reflection of my dissatisfaction on the yoimg
faces around me, and I must confess that there was
at least so much of the circus that I left when it was
half over. I meant to go into the side-shows and see
the fat woman and the living skeleton, and take the
giant by the hand and the armless man by his friendly
foot, if I might be so honored. But I did none of these
things, and I am willing to believe the faidt was in
me, if I was disappointed in the circus. It was I who
had shnmk and dwindled, and not it. To real boys it
was still the size of the firmament, and was a world
of wonders and delights. At least I can recognize
this fact now, and can rejoice in the peacef id progress
all over the coimtry of the simple circuses which the
towns never see, but which help to render the summer
fairer and brighter to the imspx>iled eyes and hearts
they appeal to. I hope it will be long before they cease
to find profit in the pleasure they give.

A SHE HAMLET

THE other night as I sat before the curtain of the
Garden Theatre and waited for it to rise upon
the Hamlet of Mme. Bernhardt, a thrill of the rich ex-
pectation which cannot fail to precede the rise of any
curtain upon any Hamlet passed through my eager
frame. There is, indeed, no scene of drama which
is of a finer horror (eighteenth-century horror) than
that which opens the great tragedy. The sentry
pacing up and down upon the platform at Elsinore
under the winter night; the greeting between him
and the comrade arriving to relieve him, with its hints
of the bitter cold; the entrance of Horatio and Mar-
cellus to these before they can part; the mention of
the ghost, and, while the soldiers are in the act of pro-
testing it a veridical phantom, the apparition of the
ghost, taking the word from their lips and hushing
all into a pulseless awe: what could be more sim-
ply and sublimely real, more naturally supernatural?
What promise of high mystical things to come there
is in the mere syllabling of the noble verse, and how
it enlarges us from ourselves, for that time at least,
to a disembodied unity with the troubled soul whose
martyry seems foreboded in the solemn accents! As
the many Hamlets on which the curtain had risen in
my time passed in long procession through my mem-
ory, I seemed to myself so much of their world, and so
little of the world that arrogantly calls itself the actual
one, that I should hardly have been surprised to find

132

A SHE HAMLET

myseltjane of the less considered persons of the drama
who were seen, but not heard in its coi«-se.

The trouble in judging anything is that if you have
the materials for an intelligent criticism, the case is
already prejudiced in your hands. You do not bring
a free mind to it, and all your efforts to free your mind
are a species of gymnastics more or less admirable,
but not really effective (or the purpose. The best
way is to own yourself unfair at the start, and then
you can have some hope of doing yourself justice,
if not your subject. In other words, if you went to
see the Hamlet of Mme. Bernhardt frankly expecting
to be disappointed, you were less likely in the end to
be disappointed in your expectations, and you could
not blame her if you were. To be ideally fair to that
representation, it would be better not to have known
any other Hamlet, and, above all. the Hamlet of Shake-
speare.

From the first it was evident that she had three
things overwhelmingly against her — her sex, her race,
and her speech. You never ceased to feel for a mo-
ment that it was a woman who was doing that melan- ,
choly Dane, and that the woman was a Jewess, and
the Jewess a French Jewess. These three removes
put a gulf impassable between her utmost skill and
the impassioned irresolution of that inscrutable North-
em nature which is in nothing so masculine as its
feminine reluctances and hesitations, or so little French
as in those obscure emotions which the English poetry
expressed with more than Gallic clearness, but which
the French words always failed to convey. The battle
was lost from the first, and all you could feel about
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LITERATURE AND LIFE

it for the rest was that if it was magnificent it was
not war.

While the battle went on I was the more anxious
to be fair, because I had, as it were, pre-espoused the
winning side ; and I welcomed, in the interest of criti-
cal impartiality, another Hamlet which came to mind,
through readily traceable associations. This was a
Hamlet also of French extraction in the skill and
school of the actor, but as much more deeply derived
than the Hamlet of Mme. Bernhardt as the large im-
agination of Charles Fechter transcended in its virile
range the effect of her subtlest womanish intuition.
His was the first blond Hamlet known to our stage,
and hers was also blond, if a reddish-yellow wig may
stand for a complexion ; and it was of the quality of
his Hamlet in masterly technique.

The Hamlet of Fechler, which rose ghostlike out
of the gulf of the past, and cloudily possessed the stage
where the Hamlet of Mme. Bernhardt was figuring,
was called a romantic Hamlet thirty years ago; and
so it was in being a break from the classic Hamlets of
the Anglo-American theatre. It was romantic as
Shakespeare himself was romantic, in an elder sense
of the word, and not romanticistic as Dumas was ro-
manticistic. It was, therefore, the most realistic Ham-
let ever yet seen, because the most naturally poetic.
Mme. Bernhardt recalled it by the perfection of her
school ; for Fechter 's poetic naturalness differed from
the conventionality of the accepted Hamlets in nothing
so much as the superiority of its self-instruction. In
Mme. Bernhardt s Hamlet, as in his, nothing was
trusted to chance, or "inspiration." Good or bad,

134

A SHE HAMLET

what one saw was what was meant to be seen. When
Fechter played Edmond Dantes or Claude Melnotte,
he put reality into those preposterous inventions, and
in Hamlet even his alien accent helped him vitahze
the part; it might be held to be nearer the Elizabethan
accent than ours, and after all, you said, Hamlet was
a foreigner, and in your high content with what he gave
you did not mind its being in a broken vessel. When
he challenged the ghost with " I call thee keeng, father,
rcMV-Danc," you would hardly have had the erring
utterance bettered. It sufficed as it was; and when
he said to Rosencrantz, "Will you pleh upon this
pyip?" it was with such a princely authority and com-
radely entreaty that you made no note of the slips in
the vowels except to have pleasure of their quaintness
afterwards. For the most part you were not aware of
these bewrayals of his speech ; and in certain high
things it was soul interpreted to soul through the poetry
of Shakespeare so finely, so directly, that there was
scarcely a sense of the histrionic means.

He put such divine despair into the words, "Ex-
cept my life, except my life, except my life!" following
the mockery with which he had assured Polonius there
was nothing he would more willingly part withal than j
his leave, that the heart-break of them had lingered j
with me for thirty years, and I had been alert for them
with every Heunlet since. But before I knew, Mme.
Bernhardt had uttered them with no effect whatever.
Her Hamlet, indeed, cut many of the things that we
have learned to think the points of Hamlet, and it so
transformed others by its interpretation of the trans-
lator's interpretation of Shakespeare that they passed
unrecognized. Soliloquies are the weak invention
of the enemy, for the most part, but as such things
go that soliloquy of Hamlet's, "To be or not to be,"
is at least very noble poetry ; and yet Mme. Bernhardt
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LITERATURE AND LIFE

was so unimpressive in it that you scarcely noticed
the act of its delivery. Perhaps this happened be-
cause the sumptuous and sombre melancholy of Shake-
speare's thought was transmitted in phrases that re-
fused it its proper mystery. But there was always a
hardness, not always from the translation, upx>n this
feminine Hamlet. It was like a thick shell with no
crevice in it through which the tenderness of Shake-
speare's Hamlet could show, except for the one mo-
ment at Ophelia's grave, where he reproaches Laertes
with those pathetic words :

" What is the reason that you use me thus ?
I loved you ever; but it is no matter."

Here Mme. Bernhardt betrayed a real grief, but as
a woman would, and not a man. At the close of the
Gonzago play, when Hamlet triiunphs in a mad whirl,
her Hamlet hopped up and down like a mischievous
crow, a mischievous she-crow.

There was no rejx)se in her Hamlet, though there
were moments of leaden lapse which suggested phys-
ical exhaustion; and there was no range in her elo-
cution expressive of the large vibration of that tor-
mented spirit. Her voice dropped out, or jerked itself
out, and in the crises of strong emotion it was the voice
of a scolding or a hysterical woman. At times her
movements, which she must have studied so hard to
master, were droUy womanish, especially those of the
whole person. Her quickened pace was a woman's
nervous little run, and not a man's swift stride; and
to give herself due stature, it was her foible to wear
a woman's high heels to her shoes, and she could not
help tilting on them.

In the scene with the queen after the play, most
English and American Hamlets have required her to
look upon the counterfeit presentment of two brothers

136

A SHE HAMLET

in miniatures something the size of tea - plates ; but
Mme. Bemhardt's preferred full-length, life-size fam-
ily portraits. The dead king's efifigy did not appear
a flattered likeness in the scene-painter s art, but it
was useful in disclosing his ghost by giving place to
- it in the wall at the right moment. Sht achieved a
novelty by this treatment of the portraits, and she
achieved a novelty in the tone she took with the wretch-
ed queen. Hamlet appeared to scold her mother,
but though it could be said that her mother deserved
a scolding, was it the peirt of a good daughter to give
it her?

One should, of course, say a good son, but long be-
fore this it had become impossible to think at all of
Mme. Bemhardfs Hamlet as a man, if it ever had been
possible. She had traversed the bounds which tra-
dition as well as nature has set. and violated the only
condition upon which an actress may personate a
man. This condition is that there shall be always a
hint of comedy in the part, that the spectator shall
know ail the time tliat the actress is a woman, and
that she shall confess herself such before the play is
over; she shall be fascinating in the guise of a man
only because she is so much more intensely a woman in
in it. Shakespeare had rather a fancy for women in
men's r61es, which, as women's rfiles in his time were
always taken by pretty and clever boys, could be more
naturally managed then than now. But when it came
to the iciaircissement. and the pretty boys, who had
been playing the parts of women disguised as men,
had to own themselves women, the effect must have
been confused if not weakened. If Mrae. Bernhardt,
in the necessity of doing something Shakespearean,
had chosen to do Rosalind, or Viola, or Portia, she
could have done it with all the modem advantages
of women in men's rdles. These characters arc, of
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LITERATURE AND LIFE

course, " lighter motions bounded in a shallower brain "
than the creation she aimed at ; but she could at least
have made much of them, and she does not make much
of Hamlet.

The strongest reason against any woman Hamlet
is that it does violence to an ideal. Literature is not
so rich in great imaginary masculine types that we
can afford to have them transformed to women; and
after seeing Mme. Bernhardt's Hamlet no one can
altogether liberate himself from the fancy that the
Prince of Denmark was a girl of uncertain age, with
crises of mannishness in which she did not seem quite
a lady. Hamlet is in nothing more a man than in
the things to which as a man he found himself un-
equal ; for as a woman he would have been easily su-
perior to them. If we could suppose him a woman
as Mme. Bernhardt, in spite of herself, invites us to
do, we could only suppose him to have solved his per-
plexities with the delightful precipitation of his puta-
tive sex. As the niece of a wicked uncle, who in that
case would have had to be a wicked aunt, wedded to
Hamlet's father hard upon the murder of her mother,
she would have made short work of her vengeance.
No fine scruples would have delayed her; she would
not have had a moment's question whether she had
not better kill herself; she would have out with her
bare bodkin and ended the doubt by first passing it
through her aunt's breast.

To be sure, there would then have been no play of
" Hamlet," as we have it ; but a Hamlet like that imag-
ined, a frankly feminine Hamlet, Mme. Bernhardt could
have rendered wonderfully. It is in attempting a mas-
culine Hamlet that she transcends the imaginable and

138

A SHE HAMLET

violates an ideal. * It is not thinkable. After you have
seen it done, you say, as Mr. Clemens is said to have
said of bicycling : " Yes, I have seen it, but it's impos-
sible. It doesn't stand to reason."

Art, like law, is the perfection of reason, and what-
ever is unreasonable in the work of an artist is inar-
tistic. By the time I had reached these bold conclu-
sions I was ready to deduce a principle from them,
and to declare that in a true civilization such a thing
as that Hamlet would be forbidden, as an ofiFence against
public morals, a violence to something precious and
sacred.

In the absence of any public regulation the precious
and sacred ideals in the arts must be trusted to the
several artists, who bring themselves to judgment when
they violate them. After Mme. Bernhardt was per-
versely willing to attempt the part of Hamlet, the ques-
tion whether she did it well or not was of slight conse-
quence. She had already made her failure in wishing
to play the part. Her wish impugned her greatness
as an artist; of a really great actress it would have
been as unimaginable as the assumption of a sublime
feminine r61e by a really great actor. There is an ob-
scure law in this matter which it would be interesting
to trace, but for the present I must leave the inquiry
with the reader. I can note merely that it seems some-
how more permissible for women in imaginary actions
to figure as men than for men to figure as women. In
the theatre we have conjectured how and why this
may be, but the privilege, for less obvious reasons,
seems yet more liberally granted in fiction. A woman
may tell a story in the character of a man and not give
offence, but a man caimot write a novel in autobio-
^aphical form from the personahty of a woman with-
out imparting the sense of something unwholesome.
One feels this true even in the work of such a master

139

LITERATURE AND LIFE

as Tolstoy, whose KcUia is a case in point. Perhaps a
woman may play Hamlet with a less shocking effect
than a man may play Desdemona, but all the same
she must not play Hamlet at all. That sublime ideal
is the property of the human imagination, and may
not be profaned by a talent enamoured of the impossi-
ble. No harm could be done by the broadest bur-
lesque, the most irreverent travesty, for these would
still leave the ideal untouched. Hamlet, after all the
horse-play, would be Hamlet; but Hamlet played by
a woman, to satisfy her caprice, or to feed her famine
for a fresh effect, is Hamlet disabled, for a long time,
at least, in its vital essence. I felt that it would take
many returns to the Hamlet of Shakespeare to efface
the impression of Mme. Bemhardt's Hamlet; and as
I prepared to escape from my row of stalls in the dark-
ening theatre, I experienced a noble shame for having
seen the Dane so disnatured, to use Mr. Lowell's word.
I had not been obliged to come ; I had voluntarily shared
in the wrong done ; by my presence I had made myself
an accomplice in the wrong. It was high ground,
but not too high for me, and I recovered a measure of
self-respect in assuming it.

SPANISH PRISONERS OF WAR

CERTAIN summers ago our cruisers, the St.
Louis and the Harvard, arrived at Portsmouth,
New Hampshire, with sixteen or seventeen hundred
Spanish prisoners from Santiago dc Cuba. They
were partly soldiers of the land forces picked up by
our troops in the fights before the city, but by far the
greater part were sailors and marines from Cervera's
ill-fated fleet. I have not much stomach for war, but
the poetry of the fact I have stated made a very potent
appeal to me on my literary side, and I did not hold
out against it longer than to let the St, Louis get away
with Cervera to Annapx>lis, when only her less digni-
fied captives remained with those of the Harvard to
feed either the vainglory or the pensive curiosity of the
spectator. Then I went over from our summer colony
to Kittery Point, and got a boat, and sailed out to have
a look at these subordinate enemies in the first hours
of their imprisonment.

It was an afternoon of the brilliancy known only to
an afternoon of the American summer, and the water
of the swift Piscataqua River glittered in the sun with
a really incomparable brilliancy. But nothing could
light up the great monster of a ship, piainted the dis-
mal lead-color which our White Squadrons put on with
the outbreak of the war, and she lay sullen in the stream

141

LITERATURE AND LIFE

with a look of px>nderous repx>se, to which the activities
of the coaling-barges at her side, and of the sailors wash-
ing her decks, seemed quite unrelated. A long gun for-
ward and a long gun aft threatened the fleet of launches,
tugs, dories, and cat-boats which fluttered about her,
but the Harvard looked tired and bored, and seemed
as if asleep. She had, in fact, finished her mission.
The captives whom death had released had been car-
ried out and sunk in the sea ; those who survived to a
further imprisonment had all been taken to the pretty
island a mile farther up in the river, where the tide
rushes back and forth through the Narrows like a tor-
rent. Its defiant rapidity has won it there the graphic
name of PuU-and-be-Damned ; and we could only hope
to reach the island by a series of skilful tacks, which
should humor both the wind and the tide, both dead
against us. Our boatman, one of those shore New-
Englanders who are bom with a knowledge of sail-
ing, was easily master of the art of this, but it took
time, and gave me more than the leisure I wanted for
trying to see the shore with the strange eyes of the
captives who had just looked upon it. It was beau-
tiful, I had to own, even in my quality of exile and
prisoner. The meadows and the orchards came down
to the water, or, where the wandering Une of the land
was broken and lifted in black fronts of rock, they crept
to the edge of the cliff and peered over it. A siun-
mer hotel stretched its verandas along a lovely level ;
everywhere in clovery hollows and on breezy knolls
were gray old farm-houses and summer cottages — like
weather-beaten birds' nests, and like freshly painted
marten-boxes; but all of a cold New England neat-
ness which made me homesick for my malodorous
Spanish fishing - village, shambling down in stony
lanes to the warm tides of my native seas. Here,
every place looked as if it had been newly scrubbed

142

SPANISH PRISONERS OF WAR

with soap and water, and rubbed down with a coarse
towel, and was of an antipathetic alertness. The
sweet, keen breeze made me shiver, and the northern
sky, from which my blinding southern sun was blaz-
ing, was as hard as sapphire.

I tried to bewilder myself in the ignorance of a Cata-
lonian or Asturian fisherman, and to wonder with his
darkened mind why it should all or any of it have been,
and why 1 should have escaped from the iron hell in
which I had fought no quarrel of my own to fall into
the hands of strangers, £Uid to be haled over seas to
these aUen shores for a captivity of unknown term.
But I need not have been at so much pains; the intelli-
gence (I do not wish to boast) of an American author
would have sufficed; for if there is anything more
grotesque than another in war it is its monstrous in-
consequence. If we had a grief with the Spanish
government, and if it was so mortal we must do mur-
der for it, we might have sent a joint committee of the
House and Senate, and, with the improved means of
assassination which modem science has put at our
command, killed off the Spanish cabinet, and even
the queen -mother and the little king. This would
have been consequent, logical, and in a sort reason-
able; but to butcher and capture a lot of wretched
Spanish peasants and fishermen, hapless conscripts
to whom personally and nationally we were as so many
men in the moon, was that melancholy and humiliating
necessity of war which makes it homicide in which there
is not even the saving grace of hate, or the excuse of
hot blood.

I was able to console myself perhaps a little better
for the captivity of the Spaniards than if 1 had really
been one of them, as we drew nearer and nearer their
prison isle, and it opened its knotty points and little
ravines, ovemm with sweet-fern, blueberry -bushes,
143

LITERATURE AND LIFE

bay, and low blackbeny-vines, and rigidly traversed
with a high stockade of yellow pine boards. Six or
eight long, low, wooden barracks stretched side by side
across the general slope, with the captive officers'
quarters, sheathed in weather-proof black paper, at
one end of them. About their doors swarmed the
common prisoners, spilling out over the steps and on
the grass, where some of them lounged smoking. One
operatic figure in a long blanket stalked athwart an
open space; but there was such poverty of drama in
the spectacle at the distance we were keeping that we
were glad of so much as a shirt-sleeved contractor
driving out of the stockade in his buggy. On the
heights overlooking the enclosure Gatling guns were
px>sted at three or four points, and every thirty or forty
feet sentries met and parted, so indifferent to us, ap-
parently, that we wondered if we might get nearer.
We ventured, but at a certain moment a sentry called
to us, "Fifty yards ofif, please I" Our young skipper
answered, "All right," and as the sentry had a gun
on his shoulder which we had every reason to beUeve
was loaded, it was easily our pleasure to retreat to the
specified limit. In fact, we came away altogether,
after that, so little promise was there of our being able
to satisfy our curiosity further. We came away care-
fully nursing such impression as we had got of a spec-
tacle whose historical quality we did our poor best to
feel. It related us, after solicitation, to the wars against
the Moors, against the Mexicans and Peruvians, against
the Dutch; to the Italian campaigns of the Gran Cap-
itan, to the Siege of Florence, to the Sack of Rome,
to the wars of the Spanish Succession, and I do not
know what others. I do not deny that there was a
certain aesthetic joy in having the Spanish prisoners
there for this effect; we came away duly grateful for
what we had seen of them; and we had long duly re-

144

LITERATURE AND LIFE

for a moment to ask for our permit, and then went back
satisfied. Then we found ourselves in the presence
of a sentry with a rifle on his shoulder, who was rather
more exacting. Still, he only wished to be convinced,
and when he had pointed out the headquarters where we
were next to go, he let us over his beat. At the head-
quarters there was another sentry, equally serious,
but equally civil, and with the intervention of an or-
derly our leader saw the officer of the day. , He came
out of the quarters looking rather blank, for he had
learned that his pass admitted our party to the lines,
but not to the stockade, which we might approach,
at a certain point of vantage and look over into, but
not penetrate. We resigned ourselves, as we must,
and made what we could of the nearest prison barrack,
whose door overflowed and whose windows swarmed
with swarthy captives. Here they were, at such close
quarters that their black, eager eyes easily pierced the
pockets full of cigarettes which we had brought for
them. They looked mostly very young, and there
was one smiling rogue at the first window who was
obviously prepared to catch anything thrown to him.
He caught, in fact, the first box of cigarettes shied
over the stockade; the next box flew open, and spilled
its precious contents outside the dead-line under the
window, where I hope some compassionate guard
gathered them up and gave them to the captives.

Our fellows looked capable of any kindness to their
wards short of letting them go. They were a most
friendly company, with an effect of picnicking there
among the sweet-fern and blueberries, where they had
pitched their wooden tents with as little disturbance
to the shrubbery as possible. They were very polite
to us, and when, after that misadventure with the
cigarettes (I had put our young leader up to throwing
the box, merely supplying the corpus delicti myself),

146

SPANISH PRISONERS OF WAR

I wandered vaguely towards a Gatling gun planted
on an earthen platform where the laurel and the dog-
roses had been cut away for it, the man in charge ex-
plained with a smile of apology that I must not pass
a certain path I had already crossed.

One always accepts the apologies of a man with a
Gatling gun to back them, and I retreated. That
seemed the end ; and we were going crestfallenly away
when the o£6cer of the day came out and allowed us to
make his acquaintance. He permitted us, with laugh-
ing reluctance, to learn that he had been in the fight
at Santiago, and had come with the prisoners, and he
was most obligingly sorry that our permit did not
let us into the stockade. 1 said I had some cigarettes
for the prisoners, and I supposed I might send them
in, but he said he could not allow this, for they had
money to buy tobacco; and he answered another of
our party, who had not a soul above buttons, and who
asked if she could get one from the Spaniards, that
so far from promoting her wish, he would have been
obliged to take away any buttons she might have got
from them,

"The fact is," he explained, "you've come to the
wrong end for transactions in buttons and tobacco."

Rut perhaps innocence so great as ours had wrought
upon him. When we said we were going, and thanked
him for his unavailing good-will, he looked at his
watch and said they were just going to feed the pris-
oners; and after some parley he suddenly called out,
" Music of the guardi" Instead of a regimental band,
which I had supposed summoned, a single corporal
ran out the barracks, touching his cap.

"Take this party round to the gate," the officer said.

and he promised us that he would see us there, and

hoped we would not mind a rough walk. We could

have answered that to see his prisoners fed we would

147

LITERATURE AND LIFE

wade through fathoms of red-tape; but in fact we were
arrested at the last point by nothing worse than the
barbed wire which fortified the outer gate. Here two
marines were willing to tell us how well the prisoners
lived, while we stared into the stockade through an
inner gate of plank which was run back for us. They
said the Spaniards had a breakfast of cofiFee, and hash
or stew and potatoes, and a dinner of soup and roast;
and now at five o'clock they were to have bread and
cofiFee, which indeed we saw the white-capped, white^
jacketed cooks bringing out in huge tin wash-boilers.
Our marines were of opinion, and no doubt rightly,
that these poor Spaniards had never known in thdr
lives before what it was to have full stomachs. But
the marines said they never acknowledged it, and the
one who had a German accent intimated that grati-
tude was not a virtue of any Roman (I suppose he meant
Latin) people. But I do not know that if I were a pris-
oner, for no fault of my own, I should be very exphcit-
ly thankful for being unusually well fed. I thought
(or I think now) that a fig or a bunch of grapes would
have been more acceptable to me under my own vine
and fig-tree than the stew and roast of captors who
were indeed showing themselves less my enemies than
my own government, but were still not quite my hosts.

How is it the great pieces of good luck fall to us?
The clock strikes twelve as it strikes two, and with no
more premonition. As we stood there expecting noth-
ing better of it than three at the most, it suddenly struck
twelve. Our officer appeared at the inner gate and
bade our marines sUde away the gate of barbed wire
and let us into the enclosure, where he welcomed us to

148

SPANISH PRISONERS OF WAR

seats on the grass against the stockade, with many
pohte regrets that the tough little knots of earth beside
it were not chairs.

The prisoners were already filing out of their quar-
ters, at a rapid trot towards the benches where those
great wash-boilers of co£Fee were set. Each man had
a soup-plate and bowl of enamelled tin, and each in
his turn received quarter of a loaf of fresh bread and a
big ladleful of steaming coffee, which he made off with
to his place at one of the long tables under a shed at
the side of the stockade. One yoimg fellow tried to
get a place not his own in the shade, and our officer
when he came back explained that he was a guerriL-
lero, and rather unruly. We heard that eight of the
prisoners were in irons, by sentence of their own officers,
for misconduct, but all save this guerrillero here were
docile and obedient enough, and seemed only too glad
to get peacefully at their bread and cofFee.

First among them carae the men of the CristHbat
CoUin, and these were the best looking of all the cap-
tives. From their pretty fair average the others varied
to worse and worse, till a very scrub lot, said to be ex-
convicts, brought up the rear. They were nearly all
little fellows, and very dark, though here and there a
six-footer towered up, or a blond showed among them.
They were joking and laughing together, harmlessly
enough, but 1 must own that they looked a crew of
rather sorry jail-birds; though whether any run of
humanity clad in misfits of our navy blue and white,
and other chance garments, with close-shaven heads,
and sometimes bare feet, would have looked much less
like jail-birds I am not sure. Still, they were not pre-
possessing, and though some of them were pathetically
young, they had none of the charm of boyhood No
doubt they did not do themselves justice, and to be herd-
ed there like cattle did not improve their chances of
149

SPANISH PRISONERS OF WAR

they did not wish. They were simple, straightfor-
ward, and adequate. There was some dry joking
about the superiority of the prisoners' rations and
lodgings, and our officer ironically professed his in-
tention of messing with the Spanish officers. But
there was no grudge, and not a shadow of ill will, or
of that stupid and atrocious hate towards the public
enemy which abominable newspapers and politicians
had tried to breed in the popular mind. There was
nothing manifest but a sort of cheerful purpose to live
up to that military ideal of duty which is so much
nobler than the civil ideal of seU-interest. Perhaps
duty will yet become the civil ideal, when the peoples
shall have learned to live for the common good, and
are united for the operation of the industries as they
now are for the hostilities.

Shall I say that a sense of something domestic,
something homeUke, imparted itself from what I had
seen? Or was this more properly an efiFect from our
visit, on the way back to the hospital, where a him-
dred and fifty of the prisoners lay sick of wounds and
fevers? I cannot say that a humaner spirit prevailed
here than in the camp; it was only a more positive
humanity which was at work. Most of the sufferers
were stretched on the clean cots of two long, airy, wooden
shells, which received them, four days after the orders
for their reception had come, with every equipment
for their comiort. At five o'clock, when we passed
down the aisles between their beds, many of them had
a gay, nonchalant effect of having toothpicks or cigar-
ettes in their mouths; but it was really the thermom-
eters with which the nurses were taking their tem-

151

LITERATURE AND LIFE

perature. It suggested a possibility to me, however,
and I asked if they were allowed to smoke, and being
answered that they did smoke, anyway, whenever
they could, I got rid at last of those boxes of cigarettes
which had been burning my pockets, as it were, all
afternoon. I gave them to such as I was told w^re the
most deserving among the sick captives, but Heaven
knows I would as willingly have given them to the
least. They took my largesse gravely, as became
Spaniards ; one said, smiling sadly, " Miuhas gracias,"
but the others merely smiled sadly; and I looked in
vain for the response which would have twinkled up
in the faces of even moribund Italians at our looks
of pity. Italians would have met our sympathy half-
way ; but these poor fellows were of another tradition,
and in fact not all the Latin peoples are the same,
though we sometimes conveniently group them to-
gether for our detestation. Perhaps there are even
personal distinctions among their several nationali-
ties, and there are some Spaniards who are as true
and kind as some Americans. When we remember
Cortez let us not forget Las Casa^.

They lay in their beds there, these little Spanish
men, whose dark faces their sickness could not blanch
to more than a sickly sallow, and as they turned their
dull black eyes upon us I must own that I could not
"support the government" so fiercely as I might have
done elsewhere. But the truth is, I was demoralized
by the looks of these poor Uttle men, who, in spite of
their character of public enemies, did look so much
like somebody's brothers, and even somebody's chil-
dren. I may have been infected by the air of com-
passion, of scientific compassion, which prevailed in
the place. There it was as wholly business to be kind
and to cure as in another branch of the service it was
business to be cruel and to kill. How droll these things

152

SPANISH PRISONERS OF WAR

are I The surgeons had their favorites among the
patients, to all of whom they were equally devoted;
inarticulate friendships had sprimg up between them
and certain of their hapless foes, whom they spoke of
as "a sort of pets." One of these was very useful in
making the mutinous take their medicine; another
was liked apparently because he was so likable. At
a certain cot the chief surgeon stopped and said, " We
did not expect this boy to live through the night."
He took the boy's wrist between his thumb and finger,
and asked tenderly as he leaned over him, " Poco
mejor?" The boy could not speak to say that he
was a little better; he tried to smile — such things
do move the witness; nor does the sight of a man
whose bandaged cheek has been half chopped away
by a machete tend to restore one's composure.

THE MIDNIGHT PLATOON

HE had often heard of it. Connoisseurs of such
matters, young newspaper men trying to make
hterature out of life and smuggle it into print under
the guard of unwary editors, and young authors eager
to get life into their literature, had recommended it to
him as one of the most impressive sights of the city;
and he had willingly agreed with them that he ought
to see it. He imagined it very dramatic, and he was
surprised to find it in his experience so largely sub-
jective. If there was any drama at all it was wholly
in his own consciousness. But the thing was certain-
ly impressive in its way.

He thought it a great piece of luck that he should
come upon it by chance, and so long after he had for-
gotten about it that he was surprised to recognize it
for the spectacle he had often promised himself the
pleasure of seeing.

Pleasure is the right word ; for pleasure of the pain-
ful sort that all hedonists will easily imagine was
what he expected to get from it ; though upon the face
of it there seems no reason why a man should delight
to see his fellow-men waiting in the winter street for
the midnight dole of bread which must in some cases
be their only meal from the last midnight to the next

154

THE MIDNIGHT PLATOON

midnight. But the mere thought of it gave hira pleas-
ure, and the sight of it, from the very first instant.
He was proud of knowing just what il was at once,
with the sort of pride which one has in knowing an
earthquake, though one has never felt one before.
He saw the double file of men stretching up one street,
and stretching down the other from the corner of the
bakery where tlie loaves were to be given out on the
stroke of twelve, and he hugged himself in a luxurious
content with his perspicacity.

It was all the more comfortable to do this because
he was in a coup6, warmly shut against the sharp,
wholesome Christmas-week weather, and was wrapped
to the chin in a long fur overcoat, which he wore that
night as a duty to his family, with a conscience against
taking cold and alarming them (or his health. He
now practised another piece of self-denial : he let the
cabman drive rapidly past the interesting spectacle, and
carry him to the house where he was going to fetch
away the child from the Christmas party. He wished
to be in good time, so as to save the child from anx-
iety about his coming; but he promised himself to
stop, going back, and glut his sensibility in a leisurely
study of the scene. He got the child, with her arms
full of things from the Christmas-tree, into the coup6,
and then he said to the cabman, respectfully leaning
as far over from his box to listen as his thick great-
coat would let him : " When you get up there near that
bakery again, drive slowly. I want to have a look at
those men,"

"All right, sir," said the driver intelligently, and he
found his way skilfully out of the street among the
high banks of the seasonable Christmas-week snow,
which the street-cleaners had heaped up there till they
could get round to it with their carls.

When they were in Broadway again it seemed lone-
155

THE MIDNIGHT PLATOON

in that way : the next day it could not be sold, and he
preferred to give it away to those who needed it, rather
than try to find his account in it otherwise. She un-
derstood, and he tried to think that sometimes coffee
was given with the bread, but he could not make sure
of this, though he would have liked very much to have
it done ; it would have been much more dramatic. After-
wards he learned that it was done, and he was proud
of having fancied it.

He decided that when he came alongside of the Broad-
way file he would get out, and go to the side door of the
bakery and watch the men receiving the bread. Per-
haps he would find courage to speak to them, and ask
them about themselves. At the time it did not strike
him that it would be indecent.

A great many things about them were open to rea-
sonable conjecture. It was not probable that they were
any of them there for their health, as the saying is.
They were all there because they were hungry, or else
they were there in behalf of some one else who was
hungry. But it was always possible that some of them
were impostors, and he wondered if any test was ap-
plied to them that would prove them deserving or un-
deserving. If one were poor, one ought to be deserving ;
if one were rich, it did not so much matter.

It seemed to him very likely that if he asked these
men questions they would tell him lies. A fantastic
association of their double files and those of the gal-
ley-slaves whom Don Quixote released, with the tongue}'
Gines de Passamonte at their head, came into his mind.
He smiled, and then he thought how these men were
really a sort of slaves and convicts — slaves to want and
self-convicted of poverty. All at once he fancied them
actually manacled there together, two by two, a coffle
of captives taken in some cruel foray, and driven to a
market where no man wanted to buy. He thought

157

LITERATURE AND LIFE

how old their slavery was ; and he wondered if it would
ever be abolished, as other slaveries had been. Would
the world ever outlive it? Would some New- Year's
day come when some President would proclaim, amid
some dire struggle, that their slavery was to be no
more? That would be fine.

He noticed how still the most of them were. A few
of them stepped a little out of the line, and stamped to
shake off the cold; but all the rest remained motion-
less, shrinking into themselves, and closer together.
They might have been their own dismal ghosts, they
were so still, with no more need of defence from the
cold than the dead have.

He observed now that not one among them had a fur
overcoat on ; and at a second glance he saw that there
was not an overcoat of any kind among them. He
made his reflection that if any of them were impostors,
and not true men, with real hunger, and if they were
alive to feel that stiff, wholesome, Christmas - week
cold, they were justly punished for their deceit.

He was interested by the celerity, the simultaneity
of his impressions, his reflections. It occurred to him
that his abnormal alertness must be something like
that of a drowning person, or a p)erson in mortal p)eril,
and being perfectly safe and well, he was obscurely
flattered by the fact.

To test his condition further he took note of the fine
mass of the great dry-goods store on the hither cor-
ner, blocking itself out of the blue-black night, and of
the Gothic beautv of the church bevond, so near that
the coffle of captives might have issued from its sculpt-
ured portal, after vain prayer.

158

THE MIDNIGHT PLATOON

Fragments of conjecture, of speculation, drifted
through his mind. How early did these files begin
to form themselves for the midnight dole of bread?
As early as ten, as nine o'clock? If so, did the fact
argue habitual destitution, or merely habitual leisure?
Did the slaves in the coffle make acquaintance, or re-
main strangers to one another, though they were close-
ly neighbored night after night by their misery? Per-
haps they joked away the weary hours of waiting;
they must have their jokes. Which of them were old-
comers, and which novices? Did they ever quarrel
over questions of precedence? Had they some comity,
some etiquette, which a man forced to leave his place
could appeal to, and so get it back? Could one say to
his next-hand man, " Will you please keep my place?"
and would this man say to an interloper, " Excuse me,
this place is engaged "1 How was it with them, when
the coffle worked slowly or swiftly past the door where
the bread and coffee were given out, and word passed
to the rear that the supply was exhausted? This
must sometimes happen, and what did they do then?

My friend did not quite like to think. Vague, re-
proachful thoughts for all the remote and immediate
luxury of his life passed through bis mind. If he re-
formed that and gave the saving to hunger and cold?
But what was the use? There was so much hunger,
so much cold, that it could not go roimd.

The cabman was obeying his orders too faithfully.
He was not only walking by the Broadway coffle, he
was creeping by. His action caught the notice of the
slaves, and as the coup6 passed them they all turned
and faced it, like soldiers imder review making ready

159

LITERATURE AND LIFE

to salute a superior. They were perfectly silent, per-
fectly respectful, but their eyes seemed to pierce the
coup6 through and through.

My friend was suddenly aware of a certain quaUty
of representivity ; he stood to these men for all the ease
and safety that they could never, never hope to know.
He was Society : Society that was to be preserved be-
cause it embodies Civihzation. He wondered if they
hated him in his capacity of Better Classes. He no
longer thought of getting out and watching their be-
havior as they took their bread and cofiFee. He would
have hked to excuse that thought, and protest that he
was ashamed of it ; that he was their friend, and wished
them well — as well as might be without the sacrifice
of his own advantages or superfluities, which he could
have p)ersuaded them would be perfectly useless. Kfe
put his hand on that of his companion trembling on
his arm with sympathy, or at least with intelligence.

" You mustn't mind. What we are and what we do
is all right. It's what they are and what they suffer
that's all wrong."

"Does that view of the situation still satisfy you?"
I asked, when he had told me of this singular experi-
ence; I liked his apparently not coloring it at all.

" I don't know," he answered. " It seems to be the
only way out."

" Well, it's an easy way," I admitted, " and it's an
idea that ought to gratify the midnight platoon."

THE BEACH AT ROCKAWAY

I CONFESS that I cannot hear people rejoice in their
stunmer sojourn as beyond the reach of excur-
sionists without a certain rebeUion; and yet I have
to confess also that after spending a Sunday afternoon
of late July, four or five years ago, with the excur-
sionists at one of the beaches near New York, I was
rather glad that my own summer sojourn was not
within reach of them. I know very well that the ex-
cursionists must go somewhere, and as a man and a
brother I am willing they should go anywhere, but as
a friend of quiet and seclusion I should be sorry to
have them come much where I am. It is not because
I would deny them a share of any pleasure I enjoy,
but because they are so many and I am so few that I
think they would get all the pleasure and I none. I
hope the reader will see how this attitude distinguishes
me from the selfish people who inhtunanly exult in
their remoteness from excursionists.

It was at Rockaway Beach that I saw these fellow-
beings whose mere multitude was too much for me.
They were otherwise wholly without ofifence towards
me, and so far as I noted, towards each other; they
were, in fact, the most entirely peaceable multitude
I ever saw in any country, and the very quietest.
" i6i

LITERATURE AND LIFE

There were thousands, mounting well up towards tens
of thousands, of them, in every variety of age and
sex; yet I heard no voice lifted above the conversa-
tional level, except that of some infant ignorant of its
privileges in a day at the sea-side, or some showman
cr3ring the attractions of the spectacle in his charge.
I used to think the American crowds rather boister-
ous and unruly, and many years ago, when I Uved
in Italy, I celebrated the greater amiabiUty and self-
control of the Italian crowds. But we have certainly
changed all that within a generation, and if what I
saw the other day was a typical New York crowd,
then the popular joy of our poorer classes is no longer
the terror it once was to the peaceful observer. The
tough was not visibly present, nor the toughness,
either of the pure native East Side stock or of the Celtic
extraction; yet there were large numbers of Amer-
icans with rather fewer recognizable Irish among the
masses, who were mainly Germans, Russians, Poles,
and the Jews of these several nationalities.

There was eating and drinking without limit, on
every hand and in every kind, at the booths abound-
ing in fried sea-food, and at the tables under all the
wide-spreading verandas of the hotels and restaurants ;
yet I saw not one drunken man, and of course not
any drunken women. No one that I saw was even
affected by drink, and no one was guilty of any rude
or unseemly behavior. The crowd was, in short, a
monument to the democratic ideal of life in that very
important expression of life, personal conduct, I have
not any notion who or what the people were, or how
virtuous or vicious they privately might be; but I
am sure that no society assemblage could be of a
goodlier outside; and to be of a goodly outside is all
that the mere spectator has a right to ask of any
crowd.

162

THE BEACH AT ROCKAWAY

I fancied, however, that great numbers of this crowd,
or at least all the Americans in it, were Long-Islanders
from the inland farms and villages within easy dis-
tance of the beach. They had probably the heredi-
tary habit of coming to it, for it was a favorite resort
in the time of their fathers and grandfathers, who
had—

— "many an hour whiled away
Listening to the breakers' roar
That washed the beach at Rockaway."

But the clothing store and the paper pattern have
equaUzed the cheaper dress of the people so that you
can no longer know citizen and countryman apart by
their clothes, still less citizeness and countrywoman ;
and I can only conjecture that the foreign-looking folk
I saw were from New York and Brooklyn. They
came by boat, and came and went by the continual-
ly arriving and departing trains, and last but not
least by bicycles, both sexes. A few came in the
public carriages and omnibuses of the neighborhood,
but by far the vaster number whom neither the boats
nor the trains had brought had their own vehicles,
the all-pervading bicycles, which no one seemed so
poor as not to be able to keep. The bicyclers stormed
into the frantic village of the beach the whole after-
noon, in the proportion of one woman to five men,
and most of Uiese must have ridden down on their
wheels from the great cities. Boys ran about in the
roadway with bunches of brasses, to check the wheels,
and put them for safe-keeping in what had once been
the stable-yards of the hotels; the restaurants had
racks for them, where you could see them in solid
masses, side by side, for a hundred feet, and no shop
was without its door-side rack, which the wheelman
might slide his wheel into when he stopped for a soda.

163

LITERATURE AND LIFE

a cigar, or a sandwich. All along the road the gay
bicycler and bicycless swarmed upon the piazzas of
the inns, munching, lunching, while their wheels
formed a fantastic decoration for the underpinning
of the house and a novel balustehng for the steps.

The amusements provided for these throngs of peo-
ple were not different from those provided for throngs
of people everywhere, who must be of much the same
mind and taste the world over. I had fine moments
when I moved in an illusion of the Midway Plaisance;
again I was at the F6te de Neuilly, with all of Paris
but the accent about me; yet again the county agri-
cultural fairs of my youth spread their spectral joys
before me. At none of these places, however, was
there a sounding sea or a mountainous chute, and I
made haste to experience the variety these afiforded,
beerinning with the chute, since the sea was always
there, and the chute might be closed for the day if I
waited to view it last. I meant only to enjoy the pleas-
ure of others in it, and I confined my own participation
to the ascent of the height from which the boat plunges
down the watery steep into the oblong pool below.
When I bought my ticket for the car that carried pas-
sengers up, they gave me also a pasteboard medal,
certifying for me, "You have shot the chute," and I
resolved to keep this and show it to doubting friends
as a proof of my daring; but it is a curious evidence
of my unfitness for such deceptions that I afterwards
could not find the medal. So I will frankly own that
for me it was quite enough to see others shoot the chute,
and that I came tamely down myself in the car. There
is a very charming view from the top, of the sea with

164

THE BEACH AT ROCKAWAY

its ships, and all the mad gayety of the shore, but of
course ray main object was to exult in the wild ab-
surdity of those who shot the chute. There was al-
ways a lady among the people in the clumsy Sat-boat
that flew down the long track, and she tried usually
to be a pretty girl, who clutched her friends and lovers
and shrieked aloud in her flight; but sometimes il was
a sober mother of a family, with her brood about her,
who was probably meditating, all the way, the incul-
pation of their father for any harm that came of it.
Apparently no harm came of it in any case. The boat
struck the water with the impetus gained from a half-
perpendicular slide of a hundred feet, bounded high
into the air, struck again and again, and so flounced
awkwardly across the pond to the farther shore, where
the passengers debarked and went away to commune
with their viscera, and to get their breath as they could.
I did not ask any of them what their emotions or sen-
sations were, but, so far as I could conjecture, the
experience of shooting the chute must comprise the
rare transport of a fall from a ten-story building and
the delight of a tempestuous passage of the Atlantic,
powerfully condensed.

The mere sight was so athletic that it took away
any appetite I might have had to witness the feats of
strength performed by Madame La Noire at the near-
est booth on my coming out, though madame herself
was at the door to testify, in her own living picture,
how much muscular force may be masked in vast
masses of adipose. She had a weary, bored look,
and was not without her pathos, poor soul, as few of
those are who amuse the public ; but I could not find
her quite justiflable as a Sunday entertainment. One
forgot, however, what day it was, and for the lime
I did not pretend to be so much better than my neigh-
bors that I would not compromise upon a visit to an

165

LITERATURE AND LIFE

animal show a little farther on. It was a pretty fair
collection of beasts that had once been wild, perhaps,
and in the cage of the lions there was a slight, sad-
looking, long-haired young man, exciting them to
madness by blows of a whip and pistol-shots, whom
I was extremely glad to have get away without being
torn in pieces, or at least bitten in two. A little later
I saw him at the door of the tent, very breathless, di-
shevelled, and as to his dress not of the spotlessness
one could wish. But perhaps spotlessness is not com-
patible with the intimacy of lions and lionesses. He
had had his little triumph; one spectator of his feat
had declared that you would not see anything like that
at Coney Island; and soiled and dusty as he was in
his cotton tights, he was preferable to the living pict-
ure of a young lady whom he replaced as an attrac-
tion of the show. It was professedly a moral show;
the manager exhorted us as we came out to say whether
it was good or not; and in the box-office sat a kind
and motherly faced matron who would have appar-
ently abhorred to look upon a living picture at any
distance, much less have it at her elbow.

Upon the whole, there seemed a melancholy mis-
take in it all ; the people to whom the showmen made
their appeal were all so much better, evidently, than
the showmen supposed; the showmen themselves ap-
peared harmless enough, and one could not say that
there was personally any harm in the living picture;
rather she looked listless and dull, but as to the face
respectable enough.

I would not give the impression that most of the
amusements were not in every respect decorous. As
a means of pleasure, the merry-go-round, both hori-
zontal with horses and vertical with swinging cradles,
prevailed, and was none the worse for being called
bv the French name of carrousel, for our people an-

l66

THE BEACH AT ROCKAWAY

glicize the word, and squeeze the last drop of Gallic
wickedness from it by pronouncing it carousal. At
every other step there were machines for weighing
you and ascertaining your height; there were pho-
tographers' booths, and X-ray apparatus for show-
ing you the inside of your watch; and in one open
tent I saw a gentleman (with his back to the public)
having his fortune read in the lines of his hand by
an Egyptian seeress. Of course there was everywhere
soda, and places of the softer drinks abounded.

I think you could only get a hard drink by order-
ing something to eat and sitting down to your wine
or beer at a table. Again I say that I saw no efifects
of drink in the crowd, and in one of the great restau-
rants built out over the sea on piers, where there was
perpetual dancing to the braying of a brass-band, the
cotillon had no fire imparted to its figures by the fumes
of the bar. In fact it was a very rigid sobriety that
reigned here, governing the common behavior by
means of the placards which hung from the roof over
the heads of the dancers, and repeatedly announced
that gentlemen were not allowed to dance together,
or to carry umbrellas or canes while dancing, while
all were entreated not to spit on the floor.

The dancers looked happy and harmless, if not
very wise or splendid ; they seemed people of the same
simple neighborhoods, village lovers, young wives
and husbands, and parties of friends who had come
together for the day's pleasure. A slight mother,
much weighed down by a heavy baby, passed, rapt
in an innocent envy of them, and I think she and the
child's father meant to join them as soon as they could

167

LITERATURE AND LIFE

find a place where to lay it. Almost any place would
do ; at another great restaurant I saw two chairs faced
together, and a baby sleeping on them as quietly amid
the coming and going of lagers and frankfurters as
if in its cradle at home.

Lagers and frankfurters were much in evidence
everywhere, especially frankfurters, which seemed to
have whole booths devoted to broiling them. They
disputed this dignity with soft-shell crabs, and sec-
tions of eels, piled attractively on large platters, or
sizzling to an impassioned brown in deep skillets of
fat. The old acrid smell of frying brought back many
holidays of Italy to me, and I was again at times on
the Riva at Venice, and in the Mercato Vecchio at Flor-
ence. But the Continental Sunday cannot be felt to
have quite replaced the old American Sabbath yet;
the Puritan leaven works still, and though so many
of our own people consent willingly to the transforma-
tion, I fancy they always enjoy themselves on Sunday
with a certain consciousness of wrong-doing.

I have already said that the spectator quite lost
sense of what day it was. Nothing could be more
secular than all the sights and sounds. It was the
Fourth of July, less the fire -crackers and the drunk-
enness, and it was the high day of the week. But
if it was very wicked, and I must recognize that the
scene would be shocking to most of my readers, I feel
bound to say that the people themselves did not look
wicked. They looked harmless; they even looked
good, the most of them. I am sorry to say they were
not very good-looking. The women were pretty enough,
and the men were handsome enough; perhaps the

i68

THE BEACH AT ROCKAWAY

average was higher in respect of beauty than the
average is anywhere else; I was lately from New
England, where the people were distinctly more hard-
favored; but among all those thousands at Rocka-
way I found no striking types. It may be that as we
grow older and our satisfaction with our own looks
wanes, we become more fastidious as to the looks of
others. At any rate, there seems to be much less
beauty in the world than there was thirty or forty
years ago.

On the other hand, the dresses seem indefinitely
prettier, as they should be in compensation. When
we were all so handsome we could well afford to wear
hoops or peg-top trousers, but now it is different, and
the poor things must eke out their personal ungainli-
ness with all the devices of the modiste and the tailor.
I do not mean that there was any distinction in the
dress of the crowd, but I saw nothing positively ugly
or grotesquely out of taste. The costumes were as
good as the customs, and I have already celebrated
the manners of this crowd. 1 believe I must except
the costumes of the bicyclesses, who were unfailingly
dumpy in effect when dismounted, and who were all
the more lamentable for tottering about, in their short
skirts, upon the tips of their narrow little, sharp-point-
ed, silly high-heeled shoes. How severe I ami But
those high heels seemed to take all honesty from
their daring in the wholesome exercise of the wheel,
and to keep them in the tradition of cheap coquetry
still, and imbecilly dependent

I have almost forgotten m the interest of the human
spectacle that there is a sea somewhere about at Rock-

169

THE BEACH AT ROCKAWAY

It was indeed like one of those uncomfortable dreams
where you are not dressed sufficiently for company,
or perhaps at all, and yet are making a very pub-
lic appeau'ance. This promiscuous bathing was not
much in excess of the convention that governs the
sea-bathing of the politest people; it could not be;
and it was marked by no grave misconduct. Here
and there a gentleman was teaching a lady to swim,
with his arms round her; here and there awild nereid
was splashing another ; a young Jew pursued a flight
of naiads with a section of dead eel in his hand. But
otherwise all was a damp and dreary decorum. I
challenged my philosopher in vain for a specific cause
of his dislike of the scene.

Most of the people on the sand were in bathing-
dress, but there were a multitude of others who had
apparently come for the sea-air and not the sea-bath-
ing. A mother sat with a sick child on her knees;
babies were cradled in the sand asleep, and people
walked carefully round and over them. There were
everywhere a great many poor mothers and children,
who seemed getting the most of the good that was
going.

But upon the whole, though I drove away from the
beach cdebrating the good temper and the good order
of the scene to an applausive driver, I have since thought
of it as rather melancholy. It was in fact no wiser or
livelier than a society function in the means of enjoy-
ment it afforded. The best thing about it was that it
left the guests very much to their own devices. The
established pleasures were clumsy and tiresome-look-
ing; but one could eschew them. The more of them
one eschewed, the merrier perhaps; for I doubt if the

171

LITERATURE AND LIFE

race is formed for much pleasure; and even a day's
rest is more than most people can bear. They endure
it in passing, but they get home weary and cross, even
after a twenty-mile run on the wheel. The road, by-
the-by, was full of homeward wheels by this time,
single and double and tandem, and my driver pro-
fessed that their multitude greatly increased the diffi-
culties of his profession.

AMERICAN LITERARY CENTRES

ONE of the facts which we Americans have a diffi-
culty in making clear to a rather inattentive
world outside is that, while we have apparently a ht-
erature of our own, we have no Hterary centre. We
have so much Uterature that from time to time it seems
even to us we must have a hterary centre. We say to
ourselves, with a good deal of logic. Where there is so
much smoke there must be some fire, or at least a fire-
place. But it is just here that, misled by tradition, and
even by history, we deceive ourselves. Really, we have
no fireplace for such fire as we have kindled; or, if any
one is disposed to deny this, then I say, we have a dozen
fireplaces ; which is quite as bad, so far as the notion
of a hterary centre is concerned, if it is not worse.

I once proved this fact to my own satisfaction in some
papers which I wrote several years ago ; but it appears,
from a question which has lately come to me from Eng-
land, that I did not carry conviction quite so far as that
island ; and I still have my work all before me, if I un-
derstand the London friend who wishes "a comparative
view of the centres of literary production " among us ;
" how and why they change ; how they stand at present ;
and what is the relation, for instance, of Boston to other
such centres."

Here, if I cut my coat according to my cloth, I should
have a garment which this whole volume would hard-

173

LITERATURE AND LIFE

ly stuff out with its form ; and I have a fancy that if I
begin by answering, as I have sometimes rather too
succinctly done, that we have no more a single liter-
ary centre than Italy or than Germany has (or had be-
fore their imification), I shall not be taken at my word.
I shall be right, all the same, and if I am told that
in those countries there is now a tendency to such a
centre, I can only say that there is none in this, and
that, so far as I can see, we get further every day from
having such a centre. The fault, if it is a fault, grows
upon us, for the whole present tendency of American
life is centrifugal, and just so far as literature is the
language of our life, it shares this tendency. I do not
attempt to say how it will be when, in order to spread
ourselves over the earth, and convincingly to preach
the blessings of our deeply incorporated civilization
by the mouths of our eight-inch guns, the mind of the
nation shall be politically centred at some capital;
that is the function of prophecy, and I am only writ-
ing literary history, on a very small scale, with a some-
what crushing sense of limits.

Once, twice, thrice there was apparently an Amer-
ican literary centre: at Philadelphia, from the time
Franklin went to live there until the death of Charles
Brockden Brown, our first romancer; then at New
York, during the period which may be roughly de-
scribed as that of Irving, Poe, Willis, and Bryant;
then at Boston, for the thirty or forty years illumined
by the presence of Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Haw-
thorne, Emerson, Holmes, Prescott, Parkman, and
many lesser lights. These are all still great publish-
ing centres. If it were not that the house with the
largest list of American authors was still at Boston,
I should say New York was now the chief publishing
centre; but in the sense that London and Paris, or
even Madrid and Petersburg, are literary centres, with

174

AMERICAN LITERARY CENTRES

a controlling influence throughout England and Prance,
Spain and Russia, neither New York nor Boston is
now our hterary centre, whatever they may once have
been. Not to take Philadelphia too seriously, I may
note that when New York seemed our literary centre
Irving alone among those who gave it lustre was a
New-Yorker, and he mainly lived abroad; Bryant,
who was a New-Bnglander, was alone constant to the
city of his adoption ; Willis, a Bostonian, and Poe, a
Marylander, went and came as their poverty or their
prosperity compelled or invited; neither dwelt here
unbrokenly, and Poe did not even die here, though
he often came near starving. One cannot then strict-
ly speak of any early American hterary centre except
Boston, and Boston, strictly speaking, was the New
England hterary centre.

However, we had really no use for an American
hterary centre before the Civil War, for it was only
after the Civil War that we really began to have an
American literature. Up to that time we had a Co-
lonial hterature, a Knickerbocker Uterature, and a
New England hterature. But as soon as the country
began to feel its life in every limb with the coming of
peace, it began to speak in the varying accents of all
the different sections — North, East, South, West, and
Farthest West ; but not before that time.

Perhaps the first note of this national concord, or
discord, was sounded from California, in the voices
of Mr. Bret Harte, of Mark Twain, of Mr. Charles
Warren Stoddard (I am sorry for those who do not
know his beautiful Idyls of the South Seas), and others
of the remarkable group of poets and humorists whom

175

LITERATURE AND LIFE

these names must stand for. The San Francisco
school briefly flourished from 1867 till 1872 or so, and
while it endured it made San Francisco the first na-
tional literary centre we ever had, for its writers were
of every American origin except Califomian.

After the Pacific Slope, the great Middle West found
utterance in the dialect verse of Mr. John Hay, and
after that began the exploitation of all the local par-
lances, which has sometimes seemed to stop, and tlien
has begun again. It went on in the South in the
fables of Mr. Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus,
and in the fiction of Miss Murf ree, who so long mas-
queraded as Charles Egbert Craddock. Louisiana
found expression in the Creole stories of Mr. G. W.
Cable, Indiana in the Hoosier poems of Mr. James
Whitcomb Riley, and central New York in the novels
of Mr. Harold Frederic ; but nowhere was the new im-
pulse so firmly and finely directed as in New England,
where Miss Sarah Ome Jewett's studies of country
life antedated Miss Mary Wilkins's work. To be
sm'e, the portrayal of Yankee character began before
either of these artists was known; Lowell's Bigehw
Papers first reflected it ; Mrs. Stowe's Old Taum Stories
caught it again and again; Mrs. Harriet Prescott
SpofiFord, in her unromantic moods, was of an excel-
lent fidelity to it; and Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke was
even truer to the New England of Connecticut. With
the later group Mrs. Lily Chase Wyman has pictured
Rhode Island work-life with truth pitiless to the be^
holder, and full of that tender humanity for the ma-
terial which characterizes Russian fiction.

Mr. James Lane Allen has let in the light upon
Kentucky ; the Red Men and White of the great plains
have found their interpreter in Mr. Owen Wister, a
young Philadelphian witness of their dramatic con-
ditions and characteristics; Mr. Hamlin Garland had

176

AMERICAN LITERARY CENTRES

already expressed the sad circumstances of the rural
Northwest in his pathetic idyls, colored from the ex-
perience of one who had been part of what he saw.
Later came Mr. Henry B. Fuller, and gave us what
was hardest and most sordid, as well as something
of what was most touching and most amusing, in the
hurly-burly of Chicago.

Ill

A survey of this sort imparts no just sense of the
facts, and I own that I am impatient of merely nam-
ing authors and books that each tempt me to an ex-
pansion far beyond the limits of this essay; for, if I
may be so personal, I have watched the growth of our
Uterature in Americanism with intense sympathy.
In my poor way I have always liked the truth, and in
times past I am afraid that I have helped to make it
odious to those who believed beauty was something
different ; but I hope that I shall not now be doing our
decentraUzed literature a disservice by sa3mig that its
chief value is its honesty, its fidelity to our decentral-
ized life. Sometimes I wish this were a little more
constant ; but upon the whole I have no reason to com-
plain ; and I think that as a very interested spectator of
New York I have reason to be content with the verac-
ity with which some phases of it have been rendered.
The hghtning — or the flash-light, to speak more ac-
curately — has been rather late in striking this un-
gainly metropolis, but it has already got in its work
with notable efiFect at some points. This began, I
believe, with the local dramas of Mr. Edward Har-
rigan, a species of farces, or sketches of character,
loosely himg together, with little sequence or relevancy,
upon the thread of a plot which would keep the stage
for two or three hours. It was very rough magic, as

177

LITERATURE AND LIFE

a whole, but in parts it was exquisite, and it held the
mirror up towards politics on their social and political
side, and gave us East-Side types — Irish, German,
negro, and Italian — which were instantly recognizable
and deliciously satisf3dng. I never could tmderstand
why Mr. Harrigan did not go further, but perhaps he
had gone far enough; and, at any rate, he left the
field open for others. The next to appear noticeably
in it was Mr. Stephen Crane, whose Red Bddge of
Courage wronged the finer art which he showed in
such New York studies as Maggie: A Girl of the Streets,
and George's Mother, He has been followed by Abra-
ham Cahan, a Russian Hebrew, who has done por-
traits of his race and nation with uncommon power.
They are the very Russian Hebrews of Hester Street
translated from their native Yiddish into English,
which the author mastered after coming here in his
early manhood. He brought to his work the artistic
quahties of both the Slav and the Jew, and in his Jekl:
A Story of the Ghetto, he gave proof of talent which
his more recent book of sketches — The Imported Bride-
groom — confirms. He sees his people himiorously,
and he is as unsparing of their sordidness as he is
compassionate of their hard circumstance and the
somewhat frowsy pathos of their lives. He is a Social-
ist, but his fiction is wholly without " tendentious-
ness."

A good many years ago — ^ten or twelve, at least —
Mr. Harry Harland had shown us some politer New
York Jews, with a romantic coloring, though with
genuine feeling for the novelty and pictm-esqueness
of his material ; but I do not think of any one who has
adequately dealt with our Gentile society. Mr. James
has treated it historically in Washin^on Square, and
more modemly in some passages of The Bostonians, as
well as in some of his shorter stories ; Mr. Edgar Faw-

178

AMERICAN LITERARY CENTRES

cett has dealt with it intelligently and authoritatively
in a novel or two; and Mr. Brander Matthews has
sketched it, in this aspect, and that with his Gallic I
cleverness, neatness, and point. In the novel. His Fa-
ther's Son, he in fact faces it squarely and renders cer-
tain forms of it with masterly skill. He has done
something more distinctive still in The Action and the
Word, one of the best American stories I know. But
except for these writers, our literature has hardly taken
to New York society.

It is an even thing: New York society has not taken
to our literature. New York pubUshes it, criticises it,
and circulates it, but I doubt if New York society much
reads it or cares for it, and New York is therefore by n
means the literary centre that Boston once was, though I
a large number of our literary men live in or about
New York. Boston, in my time at least, had dis-
tinctly a Hterary atmosphere, which more or less per-
vaded society; but New York has distinctly notliing
of the kind, in any pervasive sense. It is a vast mart,
and literature is one of the things marketed here; but
our good society cares no more for it than for some
other products bought and sold here ; it does not care
nearly so much for books as for horses or for stocks,
and ! suppose it is not unlike the good society of any
other metropohs in this. To the general, here, jour-
nalism is a far more appreciable thing than Uterature,
and has greater recognition, for some very good rea-
sons; but in Boston literature had vastly more honor,
and even more popular recognition, than journalisni.
There journalism desired to be Lterary, and here Ut-
erature has to try hard not to be joumaUstic. H New
York is a literary centre on the business side, as Lon-
179

LITERATURE AND LIFE

don is, Boston was a literary centre, as Weimar was,
and as Edinburgh was. It felt literature, as those
capitals felt it, eind if it did not love it quite so much
as might seem, it always respected it.

To be quite clear in what I wish to say of the present
relation of Boston to our other Uterary centres, I must
repeat that we have now no such literary centre as
Boston was. Boston itself has perhaps outgrown the
literary consciousness which formerly distinguished
it from all our other large towns. In a place of near-
ly a million people (I count in the ouU3dng places)
newspapers must be more than books; eind that alone
says everything.

Mr. Aldrich once noticed that whenever an author
died in Boston, the New-Yorkers thought they had
a Uterary centre; and it is by some such means that
the primacy has passed from Boston, even if it has
not passed to New York. But still there is enough
literature left in the body at Boston to keep her first
among equals in some things, if not easily first in aU.

Mr. Aldrich himself lives in Boston, and he is, with
Mr. Stedman, the foremost of our poets. At Cam-
bridge live Colonel T. W. Higginson, an essayist in a
certain sort without rival among us; and Mr. William
James, the most interesting and the most Uterary of
psychologists, whose repute is European as weU as
American. Mr. Charles EUot Norton alone survives
of the earUer Cambridge group — Longfellow, Lowell,
Richard Henry Dana, Louis Agassiz, Francis J. Child,
and Henry James, the father of the noveUst and the
psychologist.

To Boston Mr. James Ford Rhodes, the latest of our
abler historians, has gone from Ohio; and there Mr.
Henry Cabot Lodge, the Massachusetts Senator, whose
work in Uterature is making itself more and more
known, was bom and belongs, politically, sociaUy, and

i8o

AMERICAN LITERARY CENTRES

intellectually. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, a poet of wide
fame in an elder generation, lives there ; Mr. T. B. Al-
drich lives there; and thereabouts live Mrs. Elizabeth
Stuart Phelps Ward and Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spof-
ford, the first of a fame beyond the last, who was
known to us so long before her. Then at Boston, or
near Boston, live those artists supreme in the kind of
short story which we have carried so far : Miss Jewett,
Miss Wilkins, Miss Alice Brown, Mrs. Chase- Wyman,
and Miss Gertrude Smith, who comes from Kansas,
and writes of the prairie farm-life, though she leaves
Mr. E. W. Howe (of The Story of a Country Town
and presently of the Atchison Daily Globe) to consti-
tute, with the humorous poet Ironquill, a frontier lit-
erary centre at Topeka. Of Boston, too, though she
is of western Pennsylvania origin, is Mrs. Margaret
Deland, one of our most succ^sful novelists. Miss
Wilkins has married out of Massachusetts into New
Jersey, and is the neighbor of Mr. H. M. Alden at
Metuchen.

All these are more or less embodied and represented
in the AUatUic Monthly, still the most Uterary, and in
many things still the first of our magazines. Finally,
after the chief publishing house in New York, the
greatest American pubUshing house is in Boston, with
by far the largest list of the best American books.
Recently several firms of yoimger vigor and valor have
recruited the wasted ranks of the Boston publishers,
and are especially to be noted for the number of rather
nice new poets they give to the Ught

Dealing with the question geografAncaJly, in the
right American way, we descend to Hartford oblique-

l8i

LITERATURE AND LIFE

ly by way of Springfield, Massachusetts, where, in a
little city of fifty thousand, a newspaper of metropol-
itan influence and of distinctly Uterary tone is pub-
lished. At Hartford while Charles Dudley Warner
Uved, there was an indisputable literary centre; Mark
Twain lives there no longer, and now we can scarcdy
count Hartford among our Uterary centres, though it
is a publishing centre of much activity in subscription
books.

At New Haven, Yale University has latterly at-
tracted Mr. William H. Bishop, whose novels I always
liked for the best reasons, and has long held Professor
J. T. Lounsbury, who is, since Professor Child's death
at Cambridge, our best Chaucer scholar. Mr. Donald
G. Mitchell, once endeared to the whole fickle Amer-
ican public by his Reveries of a Bachelor and his Dream
Life, dwells on the borders of the pleasant town, which
is also the home of Mr. J. W. De Forest, the earliest
real American novelist, and for certain gifts in seeing
and telling our life also one of the greatest.

As to New York (where the imagination may ar-
rive daily from New Haven, either by a Sound boat
or by eight or ten of the swiftest express trains in the
world), I confess I am more and more puzzled. Here
abide the poets, Mr. R. H. Stoddard, Mr. E. C. Sted-
man, Mr. R. W. Gilder, and many whom an envious
etcetera must hide from view; the fictionists, Mr. R.
H. Davis, Mrs. Kate Douglas Wiggin, Mr. Brander
Matthews, Mr. Frank Hopkinson Smith, Mr. Abraham
Cahan, Mr. Frank Norris, and Mr. James Lane Allen,
who has left Kentucky to join the large Southern
contingent, which includes Mrs. Burton Harrison
and Mrs. McEnery Stuart; the historians. Professor
William M. Sloane and Dr. Eggleston (reformed from
a novelist); the literary and religious and economic
essayists, Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie, Mr. H. M. Alden^

182

AMERICAN LITERARY CENTRES

Mr. J. J. Chapman, and Mr. E. L. Godkin, with critics,
dramatists, satirists, magazinists, and journalists of
Uterary stamp in nimiber to convince the wavering
reason against itself that here beyond all question is
the great literary centre of these States. There is
an Authors' Club, which alone includes a hundred
and fifty authors, eind, if you come to editors, there is
simply no end. Magazines are pubUshed here and
circulated hence throughout the land by millions ; and
books by the ton are the daily output of oiu* publishers,
who are the largest in the country.

If these things do not mean a great literary centre,
it would be hard to say what does ; and I am not going
to try for a reason against such facts. It is not qual-
ity that is wanting, but perhaps it is the quantity of
the quaUty ; there is leaven, but not for so large a lump.
It may be that New York is going to be our literary
centre, as London is the Uterary centre of England,
by gathering into itself all our writing talent, but it
has by no mean3 done this yet. What we can say
is that more authors come here from the West and
South than go elsewhere ; but they often stay at home,
and I fgincy very wisely. Mr. Joel Chandler Harris
stays at Atlanta, in Georgia; Mr. James Whitcomb
Riley stays at Indianapolis; Mr. Maurice Thompson
spent his whole Uterary life, and General Lew. Wallace
stiU Uves at Crawfordsville, Indiana; Mr. Madison
Cawein stays at Louisville, Kentucky ; Miss Murf rec
stays at St. Louis, Missouri; Francis R. Stockton
spent the greater part of the year at his place in West
Virginia, and came only for the winter months to New
Y^'ork; Mr. Edward Bellamy, until his failing health
exiled him to the Far West, remained at Chicopee,
Massachusetts; and I cannot think of one of these
writers whom it would have advantaged in any Ut-
erary wise to dweU in New York. He would not have

1.83

LITERATURE AND UFE

found greater incentive than at home; and in society
he would not have fotmd that literary tone which all
society had, or wished to have, in Boston when Boston
was a great town and not yet a big town.

In fact, I doubt if anywhere in the world there was
ever so much taste and feeling for Uterature as there
was in that Boston. At Edinburgh (as I imagine it)
there was a large and distinguished hterary class,
and at Weimar there was a cultivated court circle;
but in Boston there was not only such a group of
authors as we shall hardly see here again for hundreds
of years, but there was such regard for them and their
calling, not only in good society, but among the ex-
tremely well-read people of the whole intelligent dty,
as hardly another commtmity has shown. New York,
I am quite sure, never was such a centre, and I see
no signs that it ever will be. It does not influence
the Uterature of the whole cotmtry as Boston once did
through writers whom all the young writers wished
to resemble; it does not give the law, and it does not
inspire the love that literary Boston inspired. There
is no ideal that it represents.

A glance at the map of the Union will show how
very widely our smaller literary centres are scattered ;
and perhaps it will be useful in following me to other
more populous hterary centres. Dropping southward
from New York, now, we find ourselves in a hterary
centre of importance at Philadelphia, since that is the
home of Mr. J. B. McMasters, the historian of the
American people; of Mr. Owen Wister, whose fresh
and vigorous work I have mentioned ; and of Dr. Weir
Mitchell, a novehst of power long known to the better
pubhc, and now recognized by the larger in the im-
mense success of his historical romance, Hugh Wynne,

If I skip Baltimore, I may ignore a hterary centre
of great promise, but while I do not forget the ezcel-

184

AMERICAN LITERARY CENTRES

lent work of Johns Hopkins University in training
men for the soUder Uterature of the future, no Balti-
more names to conjiu'e with occur to me at the mo-
ment ; and we must really get on to Washington. This,
till he became ambassador at the Court of St. James,
was the home of Mr. John Hay, a poet whose biog-
raphy of Lincoln must rank him with the historians,
and whose public service as Secretary of State classes
him high among statesmen. He blotted out one Ut-
erary centre at Cleveland, Ohio, when he removed to
Washington, and Mr. Thomas Nelson Page another at
Richmond, Virginia, when he came to the national
capital. Mr. Paul Dunbar, the first negro poet to di*
vine guid utter his race, carried with him the literary
centre of Dayton, Ohio, when he came to be an em-
ploy6 in the Congressional Library; and Mr. Charles
Warren Stoddard, in settUng at Washington as Pro-
fessor of Literature in the CathoUc University, brought
somewhat indirectly away with him the last traces of
the old Uterary centre at San Francisco.

A more recent hterary centre in the Califomian
metropoUs went to pieces when Mr. Gelett Burgess
came to New York and silenced the Lark, a bird of
as new and rare a note as ever made itself heard in
this air; but since he has returned to California, there
is hope that the literary centre may form itself there
again. I do not know whether Mrs. Charlotte Per-
kins Stetson wrecked a Uterary centre in leaving Los
Angeles or not. I am sure only that she has enriched
the Uterary centre of New York by the addition of a
talent in sociological satire which would be extraordi-
nary even if it were not altogether unnvalled among us.

Could one say too much of the Uterary centre at
Chicago? I fancy, yes; or too much, at least, for the
taste of the notable people who constitute it. In Mr.
Henry B. Fuller we have reason to hope, from what

185

LITERATURE AND LIFE

he has abready done, an American novelist of such
greatness that he may well leave being the great
American novelist to any one who likes taking that
rdle. Mr. Hamlin Garland is another writer of gen-
uine and original gift who centres at Chicago; and
Mrs. Mary Catherwood has made her name well known
in romantic fiction. Miss Edith Wyatt is a talent,
newly known, of the finest quality in minor fiction;
Mr. Robert Herrick, Mr. Will Payne in their novels,
and Mr. George Ade and Mr. Peter Duim in their sat-
ires form with those named a group not to be matched
elsewhere in the country. It would be hard to match
among our critical journals the Dial of Chicago ; and
with a fair amount of publishing in a sort of books
often as good within as they are uncommonly pretty
without, Chicago has a claim to rank with our first
literary centres.

It is certainly to be reckoned not so very far below
London, which, with Mr. Henry James, Mr. Harry
Harland, and Mr. Bret Harte, seems to me an Ameri-
can literary centre worthy to be named with contem-
porary Boston. Which is our chief literary centre,
however, I am not, after all, ready to say. When I
remember Mr. G. W. Cable, at Northampton, Massa-
chusetts, I am shaken in all my preoccupations; when
I think of Mark Twain, it seems to me that our great-
est literary centre is just now at Riverdale-^on-the-
Hudson.

SAWDUST IN THE ARENA

IT was in the old Roman arena of beautiful Verona
that the circus events I wish to speak of took place;
in fact, I had the honor and profit of seeing two cir-
cuses there. Or, strictly speaking, it was one entire
circus that I saw, and the unique speciality of another,
the dying glory of a circus on its last legs, the trium-
phal fall of a circus superb in adversity.

The entire circus wks altogether Italian, with the
exception of the clowns, who, to the credit of our na-
tion, are always Americans, or advertised as such,
in Italy. Its chief and almost absorbing event was
a reproduction of the tournament which had then
lately been held at Rome in celebration of Prince Tom-
maso's coming of age, and for a copy of a copy it was
really fine. It had fitness in the arena, which must
have witnessed many such medisval shows in their
time, and I am sensible still of the pleasure its effects
of color gave me. There was one beautiful woman,
a red blonde in a green velvet gown, who might have
ridden, as she was, out of a canvas of Titian's, if he
had ever painted equestrian pictures, and who at any
rate was an excellent Carpaccio. Then, the Clowns
Americani were very amusing, from a platform de-
voted solely to them, and it was a source of pride if

187

LITERATURE AND LIFE

not of joy with me to think that we were almost the
only people present who understood their jokes. In
the vast oval of the arena, however, the circus ring
looked very little, not half so large, say, as the rim
of a lady's hat in front of you at the play; and on
the gradines of the ancient amphitheatre we were all
such a great way off that a good field -glass would
have been needed to distinguish the features of the
actors. I could not make out, therefore, whether the
Cloums Americani had the national expression or
not, but one of them, I am sorry to say, spoke the
United States language with a cockney accent. I
suspect that he was an Englishman who had passed
himself off upon the Italian management as a true
Yankee, and who had formed himself upon our school
of clowning, just as some of the recent English hu-
morists have patterned after certain famous wits of ours.
I do not know that I would have exposed this impos-
tor, even if occasion had offered, for, after all, his fraud
was a tribute to our own primacy in clowning, and the
Veronese were none the worse for his erring aspirates.
The audience was for me the best part of the spec-
tacle, as the audience always is in Italy, and I indulged
my fancy in some cheap excursions concerning the
place and people. I reflected that it was the same
race essentially as that which used to watch the glad-
iatorial shows in that arena when it was new, and that
very possibly there were among these spectators per-
sons of the same blood as those Veronese patricians
who had left their names carved on the front of the
gradines in places, to claim this or that seat for their
own. In fact, there was so httle difference, probably,
in their qualities, from that time to this, that I felt the
process of the generations to be a sort of impertinence ;
and if Nature had been present, I might very well
have asked her why, when she had once arrived at a

i88

SAWDUST IN THE ARENA

given expression of humanity, she must go on repeat-
ing it indefinitely? How were all those similar souls
to know themselves apart in their common eternity?
Merely to have been differently circumstanced in time
did not seem enough ; and I think Nature would have
been puzzled to answer me. But perhaps not : she may
have had her reasons, as that you cannot have too
much of a good thing, and that when the type was so
fine in most respects as the Italian you could not do
better than go on repeating impressions from it.

Certainly I myself could have wished no variation
from it in the young oflBcer of bersa^ieri, who had
come down from antiquity to the topmost gradine of
the arena over against me, and stood there defined
against the clear evening sky, one hand on his hip,
and the other at his side, while his thin cockerel plumes
streamed in the light wind. I have since wondered
if he knew how beautiful he was, and I am sm'e that,
if he did not, all the women there did, and that was
doubtless enough for the young officer of bersa^ieri.

I think that he was preliminary to the sole event of
that partial circus I have mentioned. This event was
one that I have often witnessed elsewhere, but never
in such noble and worthy keeping. The top of the
outer arena wall must itself be fifty feet high, and the
pole in the centre of its oval seemed to rise fifty feet
higher yet. At its base an immense net was stretched,
and a man in a Prince Albert coat and a derby hat
was figuring about, anxiously directing the work-
men who were fixing the guy-ropes, and testing every^
particular of the preparation with his own hands.
While this went on, a young girl ran out into the arena,

i89

LITERATURE AND LIFE

and, after a bow to the spectators, quickly mounted to
the top of the pole, where she presently stood in stat-
uesque beauty that took all eyes even from the love-
liness of the officer of bersa^ieri. Then the man in
the Prince Albert coat and the derby hat stepped back
from the net and looked up at her.

She called down, in English that sounded like some
delocalized, denaturalized speech, it was so strange
then and there, " Is it all right?"

He shouted back in the same alienated tongue,
"Yes; keep to the left," and she dived straight down-
ward in the long plunge, till, just before she reached
the net, she turned a quick somersault into its elastic
mesh.

It was all so exquisitely graceful that one forgot
how wickedly dangerous it was; but I think that the
brief English colloquy was the great wonder of the
event for mc, and I doubt if I could ever have been
perfectly happy again, if chance had not amiably
sufiFered me to satisfy my curiosity concerning the
speakers. A few evenings after that, I was at that
copy of a copy of a tournament, and, a few gradines
below me, 1 saw the man of the Prince Albert coat and
the derby hat. I had already made up my mind that
he was an American, for I supposed that an English-
man would rather perish than wear such a coat with
such a hat, and as I had wished all my life to speak
to a circus-man, I went down and boldly accosted
him. "Are you a brother Yankee?" I asked, and
he laughed, and confessed that he was an English-
man, but he said he was glad to meet any one who
spoke English, and he made a place for me by his side.
He was very willing to tell how he happened to be
there, and he explained that he was the manager of
a circus, which had been playing to very good business
all winter in Spain. In an evil hour he decided to

190

SAWDUST IN THE ARENA

come to Italy, but he found the prices so ruinously
low that he was forced to disband his company. This
diving-girl was all that remained to him of its many
attractions, and he was trying to make a living for
both in a country where the admission to a circus was
six of our cents, with fifty for a reserved seat. But
he was about to give it up and come to America, where
he said Bamiun had ofifered him an engagement. I
hope he found it profitable, and is long since an Amer-
ican citizen, with as good right as any of us to wear a
Prince Albert coat with a derby hat.

There used to be very good circuses in Venice, where
many Venetians had the only opportunity of their
lives to see a horse. The horses were the great at-
traction for them, and, perhaps in concession to their
habitual destitution in this respect, the riding was
providentially very good. It was so good that it did
not bore me, as circus-riding mostly does, especially
that of the silk-clad jockey who stands in his high
boots, on his backbared horse, and ends by waving an
American flag in triumph at having been so tiresome.

I am at a loss to know why they make such an ado
about the lady who jumps through paper hoops, which
have first had holes poked in them to render her tran-
sit easy, or why it should be thought such a merit in
her to hop over a succession of banners which arc
swept under her feet in a manner to minify her exer-
tion almost to nothing, but I observe it is so at all cir-
cuses. At my first Venetian circus, which was on a
broad expanse of the Riva degli Schiavoni, there was
a girl who flung herself to the ground and back to her
horse again, holding by his mane with one hand,

191

LITERATURE AND LIFE

quite like the goddess out of the bath-gown at my
village circus the other day; and apparently there
are more circuses in the world than circus events. It
must be as hard to think up an3rthing new in that
kind as in romanticistic fiction^ which circus -acting
otherwise largely resembles.

At a circus which played all one winter in Florence
I saw for the first time — outside of polite society — the
clown in evening dress, who now seems essential to
all circuses of metropolitan pretensions, and whom I
missed so gladly at my village circus. He is nearly as
futile as the lady clown, who is one of the saddest and
strangest developments of New Womanhood.

Of the clowns who do not speak, I beUeve I like most
the clown who catches a succession of peak-crowned
soft hats on his head, when thrown across the ring by
an accomplice. This is a very pretty sight always,
and at the Hippodrome in Paris I once saw a gifted
creature take his stand high up on the benches among
the audience and catch these hats on his head from a
flight of a hundred feet through the air. This made
me proud of human nature, which is often so humiU-
ating; and altogether I do not think that after a real
country circus there are many better things in life
than the Hippodrome. It had a state, a dignity, a
smoothness, a polish, which I should not know where
to match, and when the superb coach drove into the
ring to convey the lady performers to the scene of
their events, there was a majesty in the effect which
I doubt if courts have the power to rival. Still, it
should be remembered that I have never been at court,
and speak from a knowledge of the Hippodrome only.

AT A DIME MUSEUM

SEE," said my friend, " that you have been writ-
ing a good deal about the theatre during the
past winter. You have been attacking its high hats
and its high prices, and its low morals; and I suppose
that you think you have done good, as people call it."

This seemed like a challenge of some sort, and I
prepared myself to take it up warily. I said I should
be very sorry to do good, as people called it; because
such a Une of action nearly always ended in spiritual
pride for the doer and general demoralization for the
doee. Still, I said, a law had lately been passed in
Ohio giving a man who found himself behind a high
hat at the theatre a claim for damages against the
manager ; and if the passage of this law could be traced
ever so faintly and indirectly to my teachings, I should
not altogether grieve for the good I had done. I added
that if all the States should pass such a law, and other
laws fixing a low price for a certain number of seats
at the theatres, or obUging the managers to give one
free performance every month, as the law does in Paris,
and should then forbid indecent and immoral plays —

"I see what you mean," said my friend, a little im-
patiently. "You mean sumptuary legislation. But
I have not come to talk to you upon that subject, for
u 193

LITERATURE AND LIFE

then you would probably want to do all the talking
yourself. I want to ask you if you have visited any
of the cheaper amusements of this metropolis, or know
anything of the really clever and charming things
one may see there for a very little money."

"Ten cents, for instance?"

"Yes."

I answered that I would never own to having come
as low down as that; and I expressed a hardy and
somewhat inconsistent doubt of the quality of the
amusement that could be had for that money. I ques-
tioned if anything intellectual could be had for it

"What do you say to the ten-cent magazines?" my
friend retorted. "And do you pretend that the two-
dollar drama is intellectual?"

I had to confess that it generally was not, and that
this was part of my grief with it.

Then he said : " I don't contend that it is intellect-
ual, but I say that it is often clever and charming at
the ten-cent shows, just as it is less often clever and
charming in the ten-cent magazines. I think the aver-
age of propriety is rather higher than it is at the two-
dollar Uieatres ; and it is much more instructive at the
ten-cent shows, if you come to that. The other day,"
said my friend, and in squaring himself comfortably
in his chair and finding room for his elbow on the cor-
ner of my table he knocked off some books for review,
" I went to a dime museum for an hour that I had be-
tween two appointments, and I must say that I never
passed an hour's time more agreeably. In the curio
hall, as one of the lecturers on the curios called it —
they had several lecturers in white wigs and scholars'
caps and gowns — there was not a great deal to see, I
confess; but everything was very high-class. There
was the inventor of a perpetual motion, who lectured
upon it and explained it from a diagram. There was

194

AT A DIME MUSEUM

a fortune-teller in a three-foot tent whom I did not
interview; there were five macaws in one cage, and
two gloomy apes in another. On a platform at the
end of the hall was an Australian family a good deal
gloomier than the apes, who sat in the costume of our
latitude, staring down the room with varying expres-
sions all verging upon melancholy madness, and who
gave me such a pang of compassion as I have seldom
got from the tragedy of the two-dollar theatres. They
allowed me to come quite close up to them, and to feed
my pity upon their wild dejection in exile without
stint. I couldn't enter into conversation with them,
and express my regret at Ending them so far from
their native Ixjomerangs and kangaroos and pine-
tree grubs, but 1 know they felt my sympathy, it was
so eiHdent. I didn't see their performance, and I don't
know that they had any. They may simply have
been there ethnologically, but this was a good object,
and the sight of their spiritual misery was alone worth
the price of admission.

" After the inventor of the perpetual motion had
brought his harangue to a close, we all went round
to the dais where a lady in blue spectacles lectured
us upon a fire-escape which she had invented, and
operated a small model of it. None of the events were
so exciting that we could regret it when the chief
lecturer announced that this was the end of the en-
tertainment in the curio hall, and that now the per-
formance in the theatre was about to begin. He in-
vited us to buy tickets at an additional charge of five,
ten, or fifteen cents for the gallery, orchestra circle,
or orchestra.

"1 thought I could afford an orchestra stall, for

once. We were three in the orchestra, another man

and a young mother, not counting the httle boy she

had with her; there were two people in the gallery,

195

LITERATURE AND LIFE

and a dozen at least in the orchestra circle. An at-
tendant shouted, 'Hats off I' and the other man and
I uncovered, and a lady came up from under the stage
and began to play the piano in front of it. The cur-
lain rose, and the entertainment began at once. It
was a passage apparently from real life, and it in-
volved a dissatisfied boarder and the daughter of the
landlady. There was not much coherence in it, but
there was a good deal of conscience on the part of the
actors, who toiled through it with unflagging energy.
The yoimg woman was equipped for the dance she
brought into it at one point rather than for the part
she had to sustain in the drama. It was a very blame-
less dance, and she gave it as if she was tired of it,
but was not going to falter. She dehvered her lines
with a hard. Southwestern accent, and I Uked fancy-
ing her having come up in a simpler-hearted section
of the country than ours, encouraged by a strong local
behef that she was destined to do JuHet and Lady
Macbeth, or Peg Wofl&ngton at the least; but very
likely she had not.

"Her performance was followed by an event in-
volving a single character. The actor, naturally, was
blackened as to his sldn, but as to his dress he was
all in white, and at the first glance I could see that he
had temperament. I suspect that he thought I had,
too, for he began to address his entire drama to me.
This was not surprising, for it would not have been
the thing for him to single out the young mother;
and the other man in the orchestra stalls seemed a
vague and inexperienced youth, whom he would hard-
ly have given the preference over me. I felt the com-
phment, but upon the whole it embarrassed me ; it was
too intimate, and it gave me a publicity I would will-
ingly have forepTone. I did what I could to reject it,
by feigning an indifference to his jokes; I even frowned

196

AT A DIME MUSEUM

a measure of disapproval ; but this merely stimulated
his ambition. He was really a merry creature, and
when he had got ofif a number of very good things
which were received in perfect silence, and looked over
his audience with a woe-begone eye, and said, with
an effect of delicate apology, 'I hope I'm not disturb-
ing you any,' I broke down and laughed, and that
delivered me into his hand. He immediately said
to me that now he would tell me about a friend of his,
who had a pretty large family, eight of them h^'ing,
and one in Philadelphia ; and then for no reason he
seemed to change his mind, and said he would sing
me a song written expressly for him — by an express-
man; and he went on from one wild gayety to an-
other, until he had worked his audience up to quite a
frenzy of enthusiasm, and ahnost had a recall when
he went off,

"I was rather. glad to be rid of him, and 1 was glad
that the next performers, who were a lady and a gen-
tleman contortionist of Spanish- American extraction,
behaved more impartially. They were really remark-
able artists in their way, and though it's a pain-
ful way, 1 couldn't help admiring their gift in bow-
knots and other difBcult poses. The gentleman got
abtmdant applause, but the lady at first got none. 1
think perhaps it was because, with the correct feeling
that prevailed among us, we could not see a lady con-
tort herself with so much approval as a gentleman,
and that there was a wound to our sense of propriety
in witnessing her skill. But I could see that the poor
girl was hurt in her artist pride by our severity, and
at the next thing she did 1 led off the applause willi
my umbrella. She instantly lighted up with a joy-
ful smile, and the young mother in the orchestra leaned
forward to nod her sympathy to me while she clapped.
We were fast becommg a domestic circle, and it was
^97

LITERATURE AND LIFE

very pleasant, but I thought that upon the whole I
had better go."

"And do you think you had a profitable hour at
that show?" I asked, with a smile that was meant to
be sceptical.

"Profitable?" said my friend. "I said agreeable.
I don't know about the profit. But it was very good
variety, and it v/as very cheap. I understand that
this is the kind of thing you want the two-dollar the-
atre to come down to, or up to."

"Not exactly, or not quite," I returned, thought-
fully, " though I must say I think your time was as
well spent as it would have been at most of the plays
I have seen this winter."

My friend left the point, and said, with a dreamy
air: "It was all very pathetic, in a way. Three out
of those five people were really clever, and certainly
artists. That colored brother was almost a genius,
a very common variety of genius, but still a genius,
with a gift for his calling that couldn't be disputed.
He was a genuine humorist, and I sorrowed over him
— after I got safely away from his intimacy — ^as I
should over some author who was struggUng along
without winning his public. Why not? One is as
much in the show business as the other. There is
a difference of quality rather than of kind. Perhaps
by-and-by my colored humorist will make a strike
with his branch of the public, as you are always hop-
ing to do with yours. "

"You don't think you're making yoiu'self rather
offensive?" I suggested.

"Not intentionally. Aren't the arts one? How
can you say that any art is higher than the others?
Whv is it nobler to contort the mind than to contort
the body?"

"I am always saying that it is not at all noble to

198

AT A DIME MUSEUM

contort the mind," I returned, "and I feel that to aim
at nothing higher than the amusement of your readers
is to bring yourself most distinctly to the level of the
show business."

"Yes, I know that is your pose," said my friend.
"And I dare say you really think that you make a
distinction in facts when you make a distinction in
terms. If you don't amuse your readers, you don't
keep them ; practically, you cease to exist. You may
call it interesting them, if you like; but, really, what
is the difference? You do your httle act, and because
the stage is large and the house is fine, you fancy you
are not of that sad brotherhood which aims to please
in htunbler places, with perhaps cruder means — "

"I don't know whether I hke your saws less than
your instances, or your instances less than your saws,"
I broke in. " Have you been at the circus yet?"

"Yet?" demanded my friend. "I went the first
night, and I have been a good deal interested in the
examination of my emotions ever since. I can't find
out just why I have so much pleasure in the trapeze.
Half the time I want to shut my eyes, and a good part
of the time I do look away; but I wouldn't spare any
actor the most dangerous feat. One of the poor girls,
that night, dropped awkwardly into the net after her
performance, and limped off to the dressing-room with
a sprained ankle. It made me rather sad to think that
now she must perhaps give up her perilous work for
a while, and pay a doctor, and lose her salary, but
it didn't take away my interest in the other trapezists
flying through the air above another net.

" If I had honestly complained of an3rthing it would

199

LITERATURE AND LIFE

have been of the superfluity which glutted rather than
fed me. How can you watch three sets of trapezists
at once? You really see neither well. It's the same
with the three rings. There should be one ring, and
each act should have a fair chance with the spectator,
if it took six hours; I would willingly give the time.
Fancy three stages at the theatre, with three plays
going on at once!"

"No, dont fancy that!" I entreated. "One play is
bad enough."

"Or fancy reading three novels simultaneously,
and listening at the same time to a lecture and a ser-
mon, which could represent the two platforms between
the rings," my friend calmly persisted. "The three
rings are an abuse and an outrage, but I don't know
but I object still more to the silencing of the clowns.
They have a great many clowns now, but they are
all dumb, and you only get half the good you used to
get out of the single clown of the old one-ring circus.
Why, it s as if the hterary humorist were to lead up
to a charming conceit or a subtle jest, and then put
asterisks where the humor ought to come in."

" Don't you think you are going from bad to worse?"
I asked.

My friend went on : " I 'm afraid the circus is spoiled
for me. It has become too much of a good thing; for
it w a good thing ; almost the best thing in the way of
an entertainment that there is. I'm still very fond
of it, but I come away defeated and defrauded because
I have been embarrassed with riches, and have been
given more than I was able to grasp. My greed has
been overfed. I think I must keep to those entertain-
ments where you can come at ten in the morning and
stay till ten at night, with a perpetual change of bill,
only one stage, and no fall of the curtain. I suppose
you would object to them because they're getting rather

200

AT A DIME MUSEUM

dear; at the best of them now they ask you a dollar
for the first seats."

I said that I did not think this too much for twelve
hours, if the intellectual character of the entertain-
ment was correspondingly high.

"It's as high as that of some magazines/' said my
friend, '' though I could sometimes wish it were higher.
It's hke the matter in the Sunday papers — ^about that
average. Some of it's good, and most of it isn't. Some
of it could hardly be worse. But there is a great deal
of it, and you get it consecutively and not simultane-
ously. That constitutes its advantage over the cir-
cus." ,

My friend stopped, with a vague smile, and I asked :
"Then, do I understand that you would advise me
to recommend the dime museums, the circus, and
the perpetual-motion varieties in the place of the the-
atres?"

"You have recommended books instead, and that
notion doesn't seem to have met with much favor,
though you urged their comparative cheapness. Now,
why not suggest something that is really level with
the popular taste?"

AMERICAN LITERATURE IN EXILE

A RECENTLY lecturing Englishman is reported
to have noted the unenviable primacy of the
United States among countries where the struggle
for material prosperity has been disastrous to the pur-
suit of literature. He said, or is said to have said
(one cannot be too careful in attributing to a public
man the thoughts that may be really due to an im-
aginative frame in the reporter), that among us, "the
old race of writers of distinction, such as Longfellow,
Bryant, Holmes, and Washington Irving, have (sic)
died out, and the Americans who are most prominent
in cultivated European opinion in art or literature,
like Sargent, Henry James, or Marion Crawford, hve
habitually out of America, and draw their inspiration
from England, France, and Italy."

If this were true, I confess that I am so indifferent
to what many Americans glory in that it would not
distress me, or wound me in the sort of self-love which
calls itself patriotism. If it would at all help to put
an end to that struggle for material prosperity which
has eventuated with us in so many millionaires and
so many tramps, I should be glad to believe that it was
driving our literary men out of the country. This
would be a tremendous object-lesson, and might be a

202

AMERICAN LITERATURE IN EXILE

warning to the millionaires and the tramps. But I
am afraid it would not have this effect, for neither
our very rich nor our very poor care at all for the state
of pohte learning among us; though for the matter
of that, I believe that economic conditions have little
to do with it ; and that if a general mediocrity of fort-
une prevailed and there were no haste to be rich and
to get poor, the state of polite learning would not be
considerably affected. As matters stand, I think we
may reasonably ask whether the Americans "most
prominent in cultivated European opinion," the Amer-
icans who "hve habitually out of America," are not
less exiles than advance agents of the expansion now
advertising itself to the world. They may be the
vanguard of the great army of adventurers destined
to overrun the earth from these shores, and exploit
all foreign countries to our advantage. They proba-
bly themselves do not know it, but in the act of '* draw-
ing their inspiration" from alien scenes, or taking
their own where they find it, are not they simply trans-
porting to Europe " the struggle for material prosper-
ity " which Sir Lepel supposes to be fatal to them here?
There is a question, however, which comes before
this, and that is the question whether they have quitted
us in such numbers as justly to alarm our patriotism.
Qualitatively, in the authors named and in the late Mr.
Bret Harte, Mr. Harry Harland, and the late Mr. Harold
Frederic, as well as in Mark Twain, once temporarily
resident abroad, the defection is very great; but quan-
titatively it is not such as to leave us without a 4cdr
measure of home-keeping authorship. Our destitution
is not nearly so great now in the absence of Mr. James
and Mr. Crawford as it was in the times before the
"struggle for material prosperity" when Washington
Irving went and lived in England and on the Euro-
pean continent wellnigh half his life.

203

LITERATURE AND LIFE

Sir Lepel Griffin — or Sir Lepd Griffin's reporter^*
seems to forget the fact of Irving's long absentedsm
when he classes him with "the old race'' of eminent
American authors who stayed at home. But really
none of those he names were so constant to our air as
he seems — or his reporter seems — ^to think. Longfellow
sojourned three or four years in Germany, Spain, and
Italy; Holmes spent as great time in Paris; Bryant
was a frequMit traveller, and each of them "drew his
inspiration" now and then from alien sources. Lowell
was many years in Italy, Spain, and England; Mot-
ley spent more than half his life abroad; Hawthorne
was away from us nearly a decade.

If I seem to be proving too much in one way, I do
not feel that I am proving too much in another. My
facts go to show that the literary spirit is the true world-
citizen, and is at home everywhere. If any good Amer-
ican were distressed by the absenteeism of our authors,
I should first advise him that American literature was
not derived from the folk-lore of the red Indians, but
was, as I ha^ said once before, a condition of English
literature, and was independent even of our indepen-
dence. Then I should entreat him to consider the case
of foreign authors who had foimd it more comfortable
or more profitable to live out of their respective coun-
tries than in them. I should allege for his consolation
the case of Byron, Shelley, and Leigh Hunt, and more
latterly that of the Brownings and Walter Savage
Landor, who preferred an Italian to an English so-
journ; and yet more recently that of Mr. Rudyard
Kipling, who voluntarily lived several years in Ver-
mont, and has "drawn his inspiration" in notable

204

AMERICAN LITERATURE IN EXILE

instances from the life of these States. It will serve
him also to consider that the two greatest Norwegian
authors, Bjornsen and Ibsen, have both lived long in
France and Italy. Heinrich Heine loved to live in
Paris much better than in DUsseldorf , or even in Ham-
burg; and Tourgu6nief himself, who said that any
man's country could get on without him, but no man
could get on without his country, managed to dis-
pense with his own in the French capital, and died
there after he was quite free to go back to St. Peters-
burg. In the last century Rousseau lived in France
rather than Switzerland ; Voltaire at least tried to hve
in Prussia, and was obliged to a long exile elsewhere ;
Goldoni left fame and friends in Venice for the favor
of princes in Paris.

Literary absenteeism, it seems to me, is not pecul-
iarly an American vice or an American virtue. It is
an expression and a proof of the modem sense which
enlarges one's country to the bounds of civilization.
I cannot think it justly a reproach in the eyes of the
world, and if any American feels it a grievance, I sug-
gest that he do what he can to have embodied in the
platform of his party a plank affirming the right of
American authors to a pubUc provision that will en-
able them to live as agreeably at home as they can
abroad on the same money. In the mean time, their
absenteeism is not a consequence of "the struggle
for material prosperity," not a high disdain of the strife
which goes on not less in Europe than in America,
and must, of course, go on everywhere as long as
competitive conditions endure, but is the result of
chances and preferences which mean nothing nation-
ally calamitous or discreditable.

THE HORSE SHOW

"AS good as the circus — not so good as the circus —
f\ better than the circus." These were my vary-
ing impressions, as I sat looking down upon the tan-
bark, the other day, at the Horse Show in Madison
Square Garden ; and I came away with their blend for
my final opinion.

I might think that the Horse Show (which is so
largely a Man Show and a Woman Show) was better
or worse than the circus, or about as good ; but I could
not get away from the circus, in my impression of it.
Perhaps the circus is the norm of all splendors where
the horse and his master are joined for an effect upon
the imagination of the spectator. I am sure that I
have never been able quite to dissociate from it the
picturesqueness of chivalry, and that it will hereafter
always suggest to me the last correctness of fashion.
It is through the horse that these far extremes meet;
in all times the horse has been the supreme expression
of aristocracy; and it may very well be that a dream
of the elder world prophesied the ultimate type of the
future, when the Swell shall have evolved into the
Centaur.

Some such teasing notion of their mystical a£Snity
is what haunts you as you make your round of the
vast ellipse, with the well-groomed men about you and
the well-groomed horses beyond the barrier.

206

THE HORSE SHOW

In this first affair of the new-comer, the horses
are not so much on show as the swells ; you get only
glimpses of shining coats and tossing manes, with
a glint here and there of a flying hoof through the
lines of people coming and going, and the ranks of
people, three or four feet deep, against the rails of the
elhpse; but the swells are there in perfect relief, and
it is they who finally embody the Horse Show to you.
The fact is that they are there to see, of course, but
the effect is that they are there to be seen.

The whole spectacle had an historical quahty, which
1 tasted with pleasure. It was the thing that had
eventuated in every civihzation, and the American
might feel a characteristic pride that what came to
Rome in five hundred years had come to America in
a single century. There was something fine in the
absolutely fatal nature of the result, and I perceived
that nowhere else in our life, which is apt to be seclu-
sive in its exclusiveness. is the prime motive at work
in it so dramatically apparent. "Yes," 1 found my-
self thinking, "this is what it all comes to : the subili
guadagni of the new rich, made in large masses and
seeking a swift and eager exploitation, and the slowly
accumulated fortunes, put together from sparing and
scrimping, from slaving and enslaving, in former
times, and now in the stainless white hands of the
second or third jreneration, they both meet here to the
purpose of a common ostentation, and create a Horse
Show."

I cannot say that its creators looked much as if they
liked it, now they had got it : and, so far as I have been
able to observe them, people of wealth and fashion al-
ways dissemble their joy, and have the air of being
bored in the midst of their amusements. This re-
serve of rapture may be their delicacy, their unwill-
ingness to awaken envy in the less prospered; and I

207

THE HORSE SHOW

that the result was necessarily a species of indistinc-
tion. But in the complexion of any social assembly
we Americans are at a disadvantage with Europeans
from the want of uniforms. A few military scattered
about in those boxes, or even a few sporting bishops in
shovel-hats and aprons, would have done much to re-
lieve them from the reproach 1 have been heaping
upon them. Our women, indeed, poor things, always
do their duty in personal splendor, and it is not of a
poverty in their modes at the Horse Show that I am
complaining. If the men had borne their part as
well, there would not have been these tears ; and yet,
what am I saying? There was here and there a clean-
shaven face (which I will not believe was always an
actor's), and here and there a figure superbly set up,
and so faultlessly appointed as to shoes, trousers,
coat, tie, hat, and gloves as to have a salience from
the mass of good looks and good clothes which I will
not at last call less than distinction.

At any rate, I missed these marked presences when
I left the lines of the promenaders around the ellipse,
and cUmbed to a seat some tiers above the boxes. I
am rather anxious to have it known that my seat was
not one of those cheap ones in the upper gallery, but
was with the virtuous poor who could afford to pay a
dollar and a half for their tickets. I bought it of a
speculator on the sidewalk, who said it was his last,
so that I conceived it the last in the house : but I found
the chairs by no means all filled, though it was as
good an audience as I have sometimes seen in the
same place at other circuses. The people about me
were such as 1 had noted at the other circuses, hotel-
>4 209

LITERATURE AND LIFE

sojourners, kindly - looking comers from provincial
towns and cities, whom I instantly felt mysdi at home
with, and free to put off that gloomy severity of as-
pect which had grown upon me during my association
with the swells below. My neighbors were sufficiently
well dressed, and if they had no more distinction than
their betters, or their richers, they had not the burden
of the occasion upon them, and seemed really glad of
what was going on in the ring.

There again I was sensible of the vast advantage of
costume. The bugler who stood up at one end of the
central platform and blew a fine fanfare (I hope it was
a fanfare) towards the gates where the horses were to
enter from their stalls in the basement was a hussar-
like shape that filled my romantic soul with joy; and
the other figures of the management I thought very
fortunate compromises between grooms and ring-
masters. At any rate, their nondescript costumes
were gay, and a relief from the fashions in the boxes
and the promenade; they were costumes, and cos-
tumes are always more sincere, if not more effective,
than fashions. As I have hinted, I do not know just
what costumes they were, but they took the light well
from the girandole far aloof and from the thousands
of little electric bulbs that beaded the roof in long lines,
and dispersed the sullenness of the dull, rainy after-
noon. When the knights entered the Usts on the seats
of their dog-carts, with their squires beside them, and
their shining tandems before them, they took the light
well, too, and the spectacle was so brilliant that I trust
my imagery may be forgiven a noveUst pining for
the pageantries of the past. I do not know to this
moment whether these knights were bona fide gentle-
men, or only their deputies, driving their tandems for
them, and I am equally at a loss to account for the
variety of their hats. Some wore tall, shining silk

210

THE HORSE SHOW

hats; some flat-topped, brown derbys; some simple
black pot-hats; — and is there, then, no rigor as to the
head- gear of people driving tandems? I felt that ,
there ought to be, and that there ought to be some rule
as to where the number of each tandem should be dis-
played. As it was, this was sometimes carelessly
stuck into the seat of the cart; sometimes it was worn
at the back of the groom's waist, and sometimes full
upon his stomach. In the last position it gave a touch
of burlesque which wounded me; for these are vital
matters, and I found myself very exacting in them.

With the horses themselves I could find no fault
upon the grounds of my censure of the show in some
other ways. They had distinction; they were patri-
cian; they were swell. They felt it, they showed it,
they rejoiced in it; and the most reluctant observer
could not deny them the glory of blood, of birth, which
the thoroughbred horse has expressed in all lands and
ages. Their lordlj' port was a thing that no one could
dispute, and for an aristocracy 1 suppose that they
had a high average of intelligence, though there might
be two minds about this. They made me think of
mettled youths and haughty dames; they at>ashed
the humble spirit of the beholder with the pride of their
high - stepping, their curvetting and caracoling, as
they jingled in their shining harness around the long
ring. Their noble uselessness took the fancy, for I
suppose that there is nothing so superbly superfluous
as a tandem, outside or inside of the best society. It
is something which only the ambition of wealth and
unbroken leisure can mount to ; and I was glad that the
display of tandems was the first event of the Horse
Show which I witnessed, for it seemed to me that it
must beyond all others typify the power which created
the Horse Show. I wished that the human side of
it could have been more imquestiooably adequate.

THE HORSE SHOW

at peace in it, or fully consoled in my habitual ethicism
till the next event brought the hunters with their high-
jumping into the ring. These noble animals unite
use and beauty in such measure that the censor must
be of Catonian severity who can refuse them his praise.
When I reflected that by them and their devoted riders
our civihzation had been assimilated to that of the
mother-country in its finest expression, and another
tie added to those that bind us to her through the lan-
guage of Shakespeare and Milton ; that they had tamed
the haughty spirit of the American farmer in several
parts of the country so that he submitted for a con-
sideration to have his crops ridden over, and that they
had all but exterminated the ferocious anise-seed bag,
once so common and destructive among us, I was in
a fit mood to welcome the bars and hurdles which were
now set up at four or five places for the purposes of the
high-jumping.

As to the beauty of the hunting-horse, though, I
think I must hedge a hllle. while 1 stand firmly to
my admiration of his use. To be honest, the tandem
horse is more to my taste. He is better shaped, and he
bears himself more proudly. The hunter is apt to
behave, whatever his reserve of intelligence, like an
excited hen ; he is apt to be ewe-necked and bred away
to nothing where the ideal horse abounds ; he has the
behavior of a turkey-hen when not behaving like the
common or garden hen. But there can be no ques-
tion of his jumping, which seems to be his chief busi-
ness in a world where we are all appointed our several
duties, and I at once began to take a vivid pleasure in
his proficiency. I have always felt a blind and in-
sensate joy in running races, which has no relation
to any particular horse, and I now experienced an im-
partial rapture in the performances of these hunters.
They looked very much alike, and if it had not been
213

LITERATURE AND LIFE

for the changing numbers on the sign-board in the
centre of the ring announcing that 650, 675, or 602
was now jumping, I might have thought it was 650
all the time.

A high jiunp is not so fine a sight as a running race
when the horses have got half a mile away and look
Uke a covey of swift birds, but it is still a fine sight.
I became very fastidious as to which moment of it was
the finest, whether when the horse rose in profile, or
when his aerial hoof touched the ground (with the
effect of half jerking his rider's head half off), or when
he showed a flying heel in perspective; and I do not
know to this hour which I prefer. But I suppose I
was becoming gradually spoiled by my pleasure, for
as time went on I noticed that I was not satisfied with
the monotonous excellence of the horses' execution.
Will it be credited that I became willing something
should happen, anything, to vary it? I asked myself
why, if some of the more exciting incidents of the hunt-
ing-field which I had read of must befall, I should not
see them. Several of the horses had balked at the
barriers, and almost thrown their riders across them
over their necks, but not quite done it; several had
carried away the green-tufted top rail with their heels;
when suddenly there came a loud clatter from the
farther side of the ellipse, where a whole panel of fence
had gone down. I looked eagerly for the prostrate
horse and rider under the bars, but they were canter-
ing safely away

It was enough, however. I perceived that I was
becoming demoralized, and that if I were to write of
the Horse Show with at all the superiority one likes
to feel towards the rich and great, I had better come

214

THE HORSE SHOW

away. But I came away critical, even in my down-
fall, and feeling that, circus for circus, the Greatest
Show on Earth which I had often seen in that place
had certain distinct advantages of the Horse Show.
It had three rings and two platforms ; and, for another
thing, the drivers and riders in the races, when they
won, bore the banner of victory aloft in their hands,
instead of poorly letting a blue or red ribbon flicker at
their horses' ears. The events were more frequent
and rapid; the costumes infinitely more varied and
picturesque. As for the people in the boxes, I do not
know that they were less distinguished than these at
the Horse Show, but if they were not of the same high
level in which distinction was impossible, they did
not show it in their looks.

The Horse Show, in fine, struck me as a circus of
not all the first qualities; and I had moments of sus-
pecting that it was no more than the evolution of the
county cattle show. But in any case I had to own
that its great success was quite legitimate; for the
horse, upon the whole, appeals to a wider range of
humanity, vertically as well as horizontally, than
any other interest, not excepting politics or religion.
I cannot, indeed, regard him as a civilizing influence ;
but then we cannot be always civilizing.

THE PROBLEM OF THE SUMMER

IT has sometimes seemed to me that the solution of
the problem how and where to spend the summer
was simplest with those who were obliged to spend it
as they spent the winter, and increasingly difficult in
the proportion of one's ability to spend it wherever
and however one chose. Few are absolutely released
to this choice, however, and those few are greatly to
be pitied. I know that they are often envied and hated
for it by those who have no such choice, but that is a
pathetic mistake. If we could look into their hearts,
indeed, we should witness there so much misery that
we should wish rather to weep over them than to re-
proach them with their better fortune, or what ap-
peared so.

For most people choice is a c nrse, and it is ihis curse
that the summer brings upon -great -nmnb^s' who
would not perhaps otherwise be afflicted. They are
not in the happy case of those who must stay at home;
their hard necessity is that they can go away, and try

^ to be more agreeably placed somewhere else; but al-
though I say they are in great numbers, they are an
infinitesimal minority of the whole bulk of our popur

. lation. Their bane is not, in its highest -form, that
of the average American who has no choice -of -the -
kind; and -when one begins to speak of the summer

216

THE PROBLEM OF THE SUMMER

problem, one must begin at once to distinguish. It
is the problem of the East rather than of the West
{where people are much more in the habit of staying
at home the year round), and it is the problem ol the
city and not of the country. 1 am not sure that there
is one practical farmer in the whole United States
who is obUged to witness in his household those sad
dissensions which almost separate the families of pro-
fessional men as to where and how they shall pass the
summer. People of this class, which is a class with
some measure of money, ease, and taste, are common-
ly of varying and decided minds, and I once knew a
family of tlie sort whose combined ideal for their sum-
mer outing was summed up in the simple desire for
society and sohtude. mountain -air and sea-bathing.
They spent the whole months of April, May, and June
in a futile inquiry for a resort uniting these attrac-
tions, and on the first of July they drove to the station
with no definite point in view. But they found that
they could get return tickets for a certain place on an
inland lake at a low figure, and they took the first
train for it. There they decided next morning to
push on to the mountains, and sent their baggage to
the station, but before it was checked they changed
their minds, and remained two weeks where they were.
Then they took train for a place on the coast, but in
the cars a friend told them they ought to go to another
place; they decided to go there, but before arriving at
the junction they decided again to keep on. They
arrived at their original destination, and the follow-
ing day telegraphed for rooms at a hotel farther down
the coast. The answer came that there were no rooms,
and being by this time ready to start, they started,
and in due time reported themselves at the hotel. The
landlord saw that something must be done, and he
got them rooms, at a smaller house, and nualed them
217

LITERATURE AND LIFE

(as it used to be called at Mt. Desert) in his own. But
upon experiment of the fare at the smaller house they
liked it so well that they resolved to live there alto-
gether, and they spent a summer of the greatest com-
fort there, so that they would hardly come away when
the house closed in the fall.

This was an extreme case, and perhaps such a vent-
ure might not always turn out so happily ; but I think
that people might oftener trust themselves to Provi-
•dence in these matters than they do. There is really
an infinite variety of pleasant resorts of all kinds now,
and one could quite safely leave it to the man in the
ticket-office where one should go, and check one's
baggage accordingly. I think the chances of an
agreeable summer would be as good in that way as
in making a hard-and-fast choice of a certain place
and sticking to it. My own experience is that in these
things chance makes a very good choice for one, as
it does in most non-moral things.

A joke dies hard, and I am not sure that the life is
yet quite out of the kindly ridicule that was cast for a
whole generation upon the people who left their com-
fortable houses in town to starve upon farm-board
or stifle in the narrow rooms of mountain and sea-
side hotels. Yet such people were in the right, and
their mockers were in the wrong, and their patient
persistence in going out of town for the summer in
the face of severe discouragements has multiplied
indefinitely the kinds of summer resorts, and reformed
them altogether. I beUeve the city boarding-house
remains very much what it used to be ; but I am bound
to say that the country boarding-house has vastly
improved since I began to know it. As for the sum-

218

THE PROBLEM OF THE SUMMER

mer hotel, by steep or by strand, it leaves little to be
coinplained of except the prices. I take it for granted,
therefore, that the out-of-town summer has come to
stay, for all who can aflford it, and that the chief sor-
row attending it is that curse of choice, which I have
already spoken of.

I have rather favored chance than choice, because,
whatever choice you make, you are pretty sure to re-
gret it, with a bitter sense of responsibility added,
which you cannot feel if chance has chosen for you.
I observe that people who own summer cottages are
often apt to wish they did not, and were foot-loose to
roam where they listed, and I have been told that even
a yacht is not a source of unmixed content, though so
eminently detachable. To great numbers Europe looks
from this shore like a safe refuge from the American
summer problem ; and yet I am not sure that it is alto-
gether so ; for it is not enough merely to go to Europe;
one has to choose where to go when one has got there.
A European city is certainly always more tolerable
than an American city, but one cannot very well pass
the stunmer in Paris, or even in London. The heart
there, as here, will yearn for some blessed seat

" Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow.
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea,''

and still, after your keel touches the strand of that
alluring old world, you must buy your ticket and reg-
ister your trimk for somewhere in particular.

It is truly a terrible stress, this summer problem,
and, as I say, my heart aches much more for those who

219

LITERATURE AND LIFE

have to solve it and suffer the consequences of their
choice than for those who have no choice, but must
stay the summer through where their work is, and be
humbly glad that they have any work to keep them
there. I am not meaning now, of course, business
men obliged to remain in the city to earn the bread— or,
more correctly, the cake — of their famiUes in the coun-
try, or even their clerks and bookkeepers, and porters
and messengers, but such people as I sometimes catch
sight of from the elevated trains (in my reluctant
midsummer flights through the city), sweltering in
upper rooms over sewing-machines or lap-boards, or
stewing in the breathless tenement streets, or driving
clangorous trucks, or monotonous cars, or bending
over wash-tubs at open windows for breaths of the
no-air without.

These all get on somehow, and at the end of the
summer they have not to accuse themselves of folly
in going to one place rather than another. Their
fate is decided for them, and they submit to it ; whereas
those who decide their fate are always rebelling against
it. They it is whom I am truly sorry for, and whom I
write of with tears in my ink. Their case is hard, and
it will seem all the harder if we consider how foolish
they will look and how flat they will feel at the judg-
ment-day, when they are asked about their summer
outings. I do not really suppose we shall be held to
a very strict account for our pleasures because every-
body else has not enjoyed them, too ; that would be a
pity of our lives; and yet there is an old-fashioned
compunction which will sometimes visit the heart if
we take our pleasures ungraciously, when so many
have no pleasures to take. I would suggest, then,
to those on whom the curse of choice between pleasures
rests, that they should keep in mind those who have
chiefly pains to their portion in life.

220

THE PROBLEM OF THE SUMMER

I am not, I hope, urging my readers to any active
benevolence, or counselling them to share their pleas-
ures with others; it has been accurately ascertained
that there are not pleasures enough to go round, as
things now are; but I would seriously entreat them
to consider whether they could not somewhat alleviate
the hardships of their own lot at the sea-side or among
the mountains, by contrasting it with the lot of others
in the sweat-shops and the boiler-factories of life. I
know very well that it is no longer considered very
good sense or very good morality to take comfort in
one's advantages from the disadvantages of others,
and this is not quite what I mean to teach. Perhaps
I mean nothing more than an overhauling of the whole
subject of advantages and disadvantages, which would
be a light and agreeable occupation for the leisure of
the summer outer. It might be very interesting, and
possibly it might be amusing, for one stretched upon
the beach or swa3dng in the hammock to inquire into
the reasons for his or her being so favored, and it is
not beyond the bounds of expectation that a consensus
of simmier opinion on this subject would go far to en-
lighten the world upon a question that has vexed the
world ever since mankind was divided into those who
work too much and those who rest too much.

iESTHETIC NEW YORK FIFTY-ODD YEARS AGO

A STUDY of New York civilization in 1849 has
lately come into my hands, with a mortif3dng
eflfect, which I should like to share with the reader,
to my pride of modernity. I had somehow beUeved
that after half a century of material prosperity, such
as the world has never seen before. New York in 1902
must be very diflferent from New York in 1849, but if
I am to trust either the impressions of the earlier stu-
dent or my own. New York is essentially the same
now that it was then. The spirit of the place has not
changed ; it is as it was, splendidly and sordidly com-
mercial. Even the body of it has undergone Uttle or
. no alteration ; it was as shapeless, as incongruous, as
ugly when the author of New York in Slices wrote as
it is at this writing ; it has simply grown, or overgrown, -
on the moral and material lines which seem to have
been structural in it from the beginning. He felt in
his time the same vulgarity, the same violence, in its
architectural anarchy that I have felt in my time,
and he noted how all dignity and beauty perished,
amid the warring forms, with a prescience of my own
afiSiction, which deprives me of the satisfaction of a
discoverer and leaves me merely the sense of being
rather old-fashioned in my painful emotions.

I wish I could pretend that my author philosophized
the facts of his New York with something less than

iESTHETIC NEW YORK FIFTY-ODD YEARS AGO

the raw haste of the young journalist : but 1 am afraid
I must own that iVeio York in Slices affects one as
having first been printed in an evening paper, and |
that the writer brings to the study of the metropolis I
something like the eager horror of a country visitor.
This probably enabled him to heighten the effect he
wished to make with readers of a kindred tradition,
and for me it adds a certain innocent charm to his
work. I may make myself better understood if I say
that his attitude towards the depravities of a smaller
New York is much the same as that of Mr. Stead tow-
ards the wickedness of a much larger Chicago. He i
seizes with some such avidity upon the darker facta \
of the prisons, the slums, the gam bUng- houses, the
mock auctions, the toughs (who then called them-
selves b'hoys and g'hals), the quacks, the theatres,
and even the intelligence offices, and exploits their
iniquities with a ready virtue which the wickedest reader
can enjoy with him.

But if he treated of these things alone, I should not
perhaps have brought his curious little book to the
polite notice of my readers. He treats also of the press,
the drama, the art, and, above all, " the literary soirfies "
of that remote New York of his m a manner to make
us latest New-Yorkers feel our close proximity to it.
Fifty-odd years ago journalism had already become
"the absorbing, remorseless, clamorous thing" we
now know, and very different from the thing it was
when "expresses were unheard of, and telegraphs
were uncrystaUized from the lightning's blue and fiery
film." Reporterism was beginning to assume its
present importance, but it had not yet become the
paramount intellectual interest, and did not yet " stand
shoulder to shoulder" with the counting-room in au-
thority. Great editors, then as now, ranked great
authors in the public esteem, or achieved a double
22i

LITERATURE AND LIFE

primacy by uniting journalism and literature in the
same personality. They were often the owners as well
as the writers of their respective papers, and they in-
dulged for the advantage of the community the ran-
corous rivalries, recriminations, and scurrihties which
often form the charm, if not the chief use, of our contem-
poraneous journals. Apparently, however, notarially
authenticated boasts of circulation had not yet been
made the delight of their readers, and the press had
not become the detective agency that it now is, nor the
organizer and distributer of charities.

But as dark a cloud of doubt rested upon its
relations to the theatre as still eclipses the popular
faith in dramatic criticism. "How can you expect,"
our author asks, "a frank and unbiassed criticism
upon the performance of George Frederick Cooke
Snooks . . . when the editor or reporter who is to write
it has just been supping on beefsteak and stewed
potatoes at Windust's, and regaUng himself on brandy-
and-water cold, without, at the expense of the afore^
said George Frederick Cooke Snooks?" The severest
censor of the press, however, would hardly declare
now that "as to such a thing as impartial and inde-
pendent criticism upon theatres i^ the present state
of the relations between editors, reporters, managers,
actors — ^and actresses — the thing is palpably out of
the question," and if matters were really at the pass
hinted, the press has certainly improved in fifty years,
if one may judge from its present frank condemna-
tions of plays and players. The theatre apparently
has not, for we read that at that period " a very great
majority of the standard plays and farces on the stage
depend mostly for their piquancy and their power of
interesting an audience upon intrigues with married
women, elopements, seductions, bribery, cheating, and
fraud of every description. . . . Stage costiune, too,

224

ESTHETIC NEW YORK FIFTY- ODD YEARS AGO

wherever there is half a chance, is usually made as
lascivious and immodest as possible; and a freedom
and impropriety preraib among the characters of the
[nece which would be kicked out of private society
the instant it would have the audacity to make its
appearance there."

I hope private society in New York would still be
found as correct if not quite so violent ; and 1 wish 1
could believe that the fine aits were presently in as
flourishing a condition among us as they were in 1S49.
That was the prosperous day of the Art Unions, in
which the artists clubbed their output, and the sub-
scribers parted the works among themselves by some-
thing so very like raEBing that the Art Unions were
finally suppressed under the law against lotteries.
While they lasted, however, they had exhibitions
thronged by our wealth, fashion, and intellect (to
name them in the order they hold the New York mind),
as our private views now are, or ought to be; and the
author "devotes an entire number" of his series "to
a single institution — fearless of being accused of par-
tiality by any who rightly appreciate the influences
of the fine arts upon the morals and refinement of
mankind."

He devotes even more than an entire number to ht-
erature ; for, besides treating of various literary celeb-
rities at the "literary soirees," he imagines encoun- ,
tering several of them at the high-class restaurants.
At Delmonico's, where if you had " French and money "
you could get in that day " a dinner which, as a work
of art, ranks with a picture by Huntington, a poem
by Willis, or a statue by Powers." he meets such a
musical critic as Richard Grant White, such an in-
■1 225

LITERATURE AND LIFE

tellectual q^icurean as N. P. Willis, such a Ijnic poet
I as Charles Fenno Hofifman. But it would be a warm
day for Delmonico's when the observer in this epoch
could chance upon so much genius at its tables, per-
haps because genius among us has no longer the
French or the money. Indeed, the author of New
York in Slices seems finally to think that he has gone
too far, even for his own period, and brings himself
up with the qualifying reservation that if WiUis and
Hoffman never did dine together at Delmonico's, they
ought to have done so. He has apparently no mis-
givings as to the famous musical critic, and he has no
scruple in assembling for us at his "Uterary soirde''
a dozen distinguished - looking men and " twice as
many women . . . listening to a tall, deaconly man,
who stands between two candles held by a couple of
sticks summoned from the recesses of the back par-
lor, reading a basketful of gilt-edged notes. It is . . .
the annual Valentine Party, to which all the male
and female authors have contributed for the purpose
of saying on paper charming things of each other,
and at which, for a few hours, all are gratified with
the full meed of that praise which a cold world is chary
of bestowing upon its literary cobweb-spinners."

It must be owned that we have no longer anything
so like a saUm as this. It is, indeed, rather terrible,
and it is of a quahty in its celebrities which may well
carry dismay to any among us presently intending
immortality. Shall we, one day, we who are now in
the rich and full enjoyment of our far-reaching fame,
affect the imagination of posterity as these phantoms
of the past affect ours? Shall we, too, appear in some
pale limbo of unimportance as thin and faded as " John
Inman, the getter-up of innumerable things for the
annuals and magazines," or as Dr. Rufus Griswold,
supposed for picturesque purposes to be ''stalking

226

iESTHETIC NEW YORK FIFTY- ODD YEARS AGO

about with an immense quarto volume under his arm
... an early copy of his forthcoming Female Poets
of America " ; or as Lewis Gaylord Clark, the " simny-
faced, smiling" editor of the Knickerbocker Maga-
zine, "who don't look as if the Ink-Fiend had ever
heard of him/' as he stands up to dance a polka with
"a demure lady who has evidently spilled the ink-
stand over her dress"; or as "the stately Mrs. Seba
Smith, bending aristocratically over the centre-table,
and talking in a bright, cold, steady stream, like an
antique f oimtain by moonlight " ; or as " the spiritual
and dainty Fanny Osgood, clapping her hands and
crowing like a baby," where she sits "nestled under
a shawl of heraldic devices, like a bird escaped from
its cage"; or as Margaret Fuller, "her large, gray
eyes lamping inspiration, and her thin, quivering
lip prophesying like a Pythoness"?

I hope not; I earnestly hope not. Whatever I said
at the outset, affirming the persistent equality of New
York characteristics and circumstances, I wish to take
back at this point; and I wish to warn maUgn foreign
observers, of the sort who have so often refused to see
us as we see ourselves, that they must not expect to
find us now grouped in the taste of 1849. Possibly
it was not so much the taste of 1849 as the author of
New York in Slices would have us believe; and per-
haps any one who trusted his pictures of life among
us otherwise would be deceived by a parity of the spirit
in which they are portrayed with that of our modem
"society joumaUsm."

FROM NEW YORK INTO NEW ENGLAND

THERE is, of course, almost a world s difference
between England and the Continent anywhere;
but I do not recall just now any transition between
G)ntinental countries which involves a more distinct
change in the superficial aspect of things than the pas-
sage from the Middle States into New England. It is
all American, but American of diverse ideals; and you
are hardly over the border before you are sensible of
diverse effects, which are the more apparent to you
the more American you are. If you want the con-
trast at its sharpest you had better leave New York
on a Sound boat; for then you sleep out of the Middle
State civilization and wake into the civilization of
New England, which seems to give its stamp to nature
herself. As to man, he takes it whether native or
aUen; and if he is foreign-born it marks him another
Irishman, ItaUan, Canadian, Jew, or negro from his
brother in any other part of the United States.

When you have a theory of any kind, proofs of it are
apt to seek you out, and I, who am rather fond of my
faith in New England's influence of this sort, had as
pretty an instance of it the day after my arrival as I
could wish. A colored brother of Massachusetts birth,
as black as a man can well be, and of a merely an-

228

FROM NEW YORK INTO NEW ENGLAND

thropoidat profile, was driving me along shore in search
of a sea-side hotel when we came upon a weak-minded
young chicken in the road. The natural expecta-
tion is that any chicken in these circumstances will
wait for your vehicle, and then fly up before it with a
loud screech ; but this chicken may have been over-
come by the heat (it was a land breeze and it drew like
the breath of a furnace over the hay-cocks and the
clover), or it may have mistimed the wheel, which
passed over its head and left it to tlop a moment in the
dust and then fall still. The poor little tragedy was
sufficiently distressful to me, but I bore it well, com-
pared with my driver. He could hardly stop lamenting
it ; and when presently we met a young fanner, he
pulled up. "You goin' past Jim Marden's?" "Yes."
"Well, 1 wish you'd tell hira I just run over a chicken
of his, and 1 killed it, 1 guess. I guess it was a pretty
big one." "Oh no," 1 put in, "it was only a broiler.
What do you think it was worth?" 1 took out some
money, and the farmer noted the largest coin in my
hand ; " About half a dollar. I guess." On this I put
it all back in ray pocket, and then he said, " Well, if
a chicken don't know enough to get out of the road,
I guess you ain't to blame." I expressed that this was
my own view of the case, and we drove on. When we
parted 1 gave the half-dollar to my driver, and begged
him not to let the owner of the chicken come on me for
d2images ; and though he chuckled his pleasure in the
joke, I could see that he was still unhappy, and I have
no doubt that he has that pullet on his conscience yet,
unless he has paid for it. He was of a race which else-
where has so immemorially plundered hen-roosts that
chickens are as free to it as the air it breathes, without
any conceivable taint of private ownership. But the
spirit of New England had so deeply entered into him
that the imtiecile broiler of another, slain by pure ac-
229

LITERATURE AND LIFE

cident and by its own contributory negligence, was
saddening him, while I was off in my train without a
pang for the owner and with only an agreeable pathos
for the pullet.

The instance is perhaps extreme ; and, at any rate,
it has carried me in a psychological direction away
from the simpler differences which I meant to note in
New England. They were evident as soon as our
train began to run from the steamboat landing into
the coimtry, and they have intensified, if they have not
multiplied, themselves as I have penetrated deeper
and deeper into the beautiful region. The land is
poorer than the land to the southward — one sees that
at once ; the soil is thin, and often so thickly burdened
with granite bowlders that it could never have borne
any other crop since the first Puritans, or Pilgrims,
cut away the primeval woods and betrayed its hope-
less sterility to the light. But wherever you come to
a farm-house, whether standing alone or in one of the
village groups that New England farm-houses have
always liked to gather themselves into, it is of a neat-
ness that brings despair,- and of a repair that ought to
bring shame to the beholder from more easy-going
conditions. Everything is kept up with a strenuous
virtue that imparts an air of self-respect to the land-
scape, which the bleaching and blackening stone
walls, wandering over the hill-slopes, divide into wood
lots of white birch and pine, stony pastures, and
little patches of potatoes and com. The mowing-
lands alone are rich; and if the New England year
is in the glory of the latest June, the breath of the
clover blows honey -sweet into the car windows,
and the fragrance of the new -cut hay rises hot

230

FROM NEW YORK INTO NEW ENGLAND

{rom the heavy swaths that seem to smoke in the
sun.

We have struck a hot spcU, one of those torrid moods
of continental weather which we liave telegraphed us
ahead to heighten our suffering by anticipation. But
the farmsteads and village houses are safe in the shade
of their sheltering trees amid the fluctuation of the
grass that grows so tall about them that the June roses
have to strain upward to get themselves free of it. Be-
hind each dwelling is a billowy mass of orchard, and
before it the Gothic archway of the elms stretches
above the quiet street. There is no tree in the world
so full of sentiment as the American elm, and it is no-
where so graceful as in these New England villages,
which are themselves, I think, the prettiest and whole-
soraest of mortal sojourns. By a happy instinct,
their wooden houses are all painted white, to a marble
effect that suits our meridional sky, and the contrast
of their dark-green shutters is deliciously refreshing.
There was an evil hour, the terrible moment of the
aesthetic revival now happily past, when white walls
and green blinds were thought in bad taste, and the
village houses were often tinged a dreary ground color,
or a doleful ohve, or a gloomy red, but now they have
returned to their earlier love. Not the first love ; that
was a pale buff with white trim ; but I doubt if it were
good for all kinds of village houses ; the eye rather
demands the white. The pale buff does very well for
large colonial mansions, like Lowell's or Longfellow's
in Cambridge ; but when you come, say, to see the great
square houses built in Portsmouth. New Hampshire,
early in this century, and painted white, you find that
while, after all, is the thing for our cUmate, even in
the towns.

In such a village as my colored brother drove me

through on the way to the beach it was of an absolute

231

LITERATURE AND LIFE

fitness ; and I wish I could convey a due sense of the
exquisite keeping of the place. Bach white house
was more or less closely belted in with a white fence,
of panels or pickets; the grassy door-yards glowed
with flowers, and often a climbing rose embowered
the door-way with its bloom. Away backward or
sidewise stretched the woodshed from the dwelling
to the bam, and shut the whole under one cover; the
turf grew to the wheel-tracks of the road-way, over
which the elms rose and drooped; and from one end
of the village to the other you could not, as the saying
is, find a stone to throw at a dog. I know Holland;
I have seen the wives of Scheveningen scrubbing up
for Sunday to the very middle of their brick streets,
but I doubt if Dutch cleanliness goes so far without,
or comes from so deep a scruple within, as the cleanli-
ness of New England. I felt so keenly the feminine
quality of its motive as I passed through that village,
that I think if I had dropped so much as a piece of pa-
per in the street I must have knocked at the first door
and begged the lady of the house (who would have
opened it in person after wiping her hands from her
work, taking off her apron, and giving a glance at
herself in the mirror and at me through the window-
blind) to report me to the selectmen in the interest of
good morals.

I did not know at once quite how to reconcile the
present foulness of the New England capital with the
fairness of the New England country; and I am still
somewhat embarrassed to own that after New York
(even imder the relaxing rule of Tammany) Boston
seemed very dirty when we arrived there. At best I
was never more than a natiu-alized Bostonian; but it

232

FROM NEW YORK INTO NEW ENGLAND

used to give me great pleasure — so penetratingly does
the place qualify even the sojourning Westerner — to
think of the defect of New York in the virtue that is
next to godliness; and now 1 had to hang my head
for shame at the mortifying contrast of the Boston
streets to the well-swept asphalt which I had left frying
in the New York sun the afternoon before. Later,
however, when I began to meet the sort of Boston -faces
I remembered so well — good, just, pure, but set and
severe, with their look of challenge, of interrogation,
almost of reproof — they not only ignored the disgrace-
ful untidiness of the streets, but they convinced me of
a state of transition which would leave the place swept
and garnished behind it; and comforted me against
the litter of the winding thoroughfares and narrow
lanes, where the dust had blown up against the brick
walls, and seemed permanently to have smutched and
discolored them.

In New York you see the American face as Europe
characterizes it; in Boston you see it as it characterizes
Europe; and it is in Boston that you can best imagine
the strenuous grapple of the native forces which all
alien things must yield to till they take the American
cast. It is almost dismaying, that physiognomy, be-
fore it familiarizes itself anew : and in the brief first
moment while it is yet objective, you ransack your
conscience for any sins you may have committed id
your absence from it and make ready to do penance
for them. I felt almost as if I had brought the dirty
streets with me, and were guilty of having left them
lying about, so impossible were they with reference
to the Boston face.

It is a face that expresses care, even to the point of

anxiety, and it looked into the window of our carriage

with the serious eyes of our elderly hackman to make

perfectly sure of our destination before we drove away

233

LITERATURE AND LIFE

from the station. It was a little rigorous with us, as
requiring us to have a clear mind; but it was not un-
friendly, not unkind, and it was patient from long
experience. In New York there are no elderly hack-
men ; but in Boston they abound, and I cannot believe
they would be capable of bad faith with travellers. In
fact, I doubt if this class is anywhere as predatory as
it is painted ; but in Boston it appears to have the pub-
lic honor in its keeping. I do not mean that it was
less mature, less self-respectful in Portsmouth, where
we were next to arrive; more so it could not be; an
equal sense of safety, of ease, began with it in both
places, and all through New England it is of native
birth, while in New York it is composed of men of many
nations, with a weight in numba's towards the Celtic
strain. The prevalence of the native in New Eng-
land helps you sensibly to realize from the first mo-
ment that here you are in America as the first Amer-
icans imagined and meant it; and nowhere in New
England is the original tradition more purely kept
than in the beautiful old seaport of New Hampshire.
In fact, without being quite prepared to defend a thesis
to this effect, I believe that Portsmouth is pre-emi-
nently American, and in this it differs from Newbury-
port and from Salem, which have suffered from differ-
ent causes an equal commercial decUne, and, though
among the earUest of the great Puritan towns after
Boston, are now largely made up of aliens in race and
rehgion ; these are actually the majority, I believe, in
Newburyport.

The adversity of Portsmouth began early in the
century, but before that time she had prospered so
greatly that her merchant princes were able to build

234

FROM NEW YORK INTO NEW ENGLAND

themselves wooden palaces with white walls and green
shutters, of a grandeur and beauty unmatched else-
where in the country. I do not know what architect
had his way with them, though his name is richly
worth remembrance, but they let hmi make them hab-
itations of such graceful proportion and of such deU-
cate ornament that they have become shrines of pious
pilgrimage with the young architects of our day who
hope to house our well-to-do people fitly in country
or suburbs. The decoration is oftenest spent on a
porch or portal, or a frieze of peculiar refinement: or
perhaps it feels its way to the carven casements or
to the delicate iron-work of the transoms; the rest is
a simplicity and a faultless propriety of form in the
stately mansions which stand under the arching elms,
with their gardens sloping, or dropping by easy ter-
races behind them to the river, or to the borders of
other pleasances. They are all of wood, except for
the granite foundations and doorsteps, but the stout
edifices rarely sway out of the true line given them,
and they look as if they might keep it yet another
century.

Between them, in the sun-shotten shade, lie the
quiet streets, whose gravelled stretch is probably never
cleaned because it never needs cleaning. Even the
business streets, and the quaint square which gives
the most American of towns an air so foreign and
Old Worldly, look as if the wind and rain alone cared
for them ; but they are not foul, and the narrower ave-
nues, where the smaller houses of gray, un[>ainted
wood crowd each other, flush upon the pavements,
towards the water -side, are doubtless unvisited by
the hoe or broom, and must be kept clean by a New
England conscience against getting them untidy.

When you get to the river-side .there is one stretch

of narrow, high-shouldered warehouses which recall

23S

LITERATURE AND LIFE

Holland, especially in a few with their gables broken
in steps, after the Dutch fashion. These, with their
mouldering piers and grass-grown wharves, have their
pathos, and the whole place embodies in its architecture
an interesting record of the past, from the time when
the homesick exiles huddled close to the water's edge
till the period of post-colonial prosperity, when proud
merchants and opulent captains set their vast square
houses each in its handsome space of gardened ground.
My adjectives might mislead as to size, but they
could not as to beauty, and I seek in vain for those
that can duly impart the peculiar charm of the town.
Portsmouth still awaits her novelist; he will find a
rich field when he comes ; and I hope he will come of
the right sex, for it needs some minute and subtle
feminine skill, like that of Jane Austen, to express a
fit sense of its life in the past. Of its life in the pres-
ent I know nothing. I could only go by those de-
lightful, silent houses, and sigh my longing soul into
their dim interiors. When now and then a young
shape in summer silk, or a group of young shapes
in diaphanous muslin, fluttered out of them, I was
no wiser; and doubtless my elderly fancy would have
been unable to deal with what went on in them. Some
girl of those flitting through the warm, odorous twi-
light must become the creative historian of the place ;
I can at least imagine a Jane Austen now growing up
in Portsmouth.

If Miss Jewett were of a little longer breath than
she has yet shown herself in fiction, I might say the
Jane Austen of Portsmouth was already with us, and
had merely not yet begun to deal with its precious ma-
terial. One day when we crossed the Piscataqua from

236

FROM NEW YORK INTO NEW ENGLAND

New Hampshire into Maine, and took the troUey-Une
for a run along through the lovely coast country, we
suddenly found ourselves in the midst of her own
people, who are a httle different sort of New-England-
ers from those of Miss Wilkins. They began to flock
into the car, young maidens and old, mothers and
grandmothers, and nice boys and girls, with a very,
very few farmer youth of marriageable age, and more
rustic and sealaring elders long past it, all in the Sun-
day best which they had worn to the graduation exer-
cises at the High School, where we took them mostly
up. The womenkind were in a nervous twitter of talk
and laughter, and the men tolerantly gay beyond their
wont, " passing the time of day " with one another, and
helping the more tumultuous sex to get settled in the
overcrowded open car. They courteously made room
for one another, and let the children stand between
their knees, or took them in their laps, with that un-
failing American kindness which I am prouder of than
the American valor in battle, observing in all that
American decorum which is no bad thing either. We
had chanced upon the high and mighty occasion of
the neighborhood year, when people might well have
been a little off their balance, but there was not a bois-
terous note in the su'odued affair. As we passed the
school-house door, three dear, pretty maids in white
gowns and white slippers stood on the steps and gently
smiled upon our company. One could see that they
were inwardly glowing and thrilling with the excite-
ment of their graduation, but were controlling their
emotions to a calm worthy of the august event, so that
no one might ever have it to say that they had ap-
peared silly.

The car swept on, and stopped to set down passengers

at their doors or gates, where they severally left it, with

an easy air as of private ownership, into some sense

237

•-- •^™

LITERATURE AND LIFE

of which the trolley promptly flatters people along ita
obliging lines. One comfortable matron, in a cinna-
mon silk, was just such a figure as that in the Miss
Wilkins's story where the bridegroom fails to come on
the wedding-day; but, as I say, they made me think
more of Miss Jewett's people The :diore folk and the
Down-Basters are specificcdly hers ; and these were just
such as might have belonged in The Country of the
Pointed Firs, or Sister Wisby's Courtship, or Didham
Ladies, or An Autumn RanMe, or twenty other en-
trancing tales. Sometimes one of them would try
her front door, and then, with a bridling toss of the
head, express that she had forgotten locking it, and
slip round to the kitchen; but most of the ladies made
their way back at once between the roses and syringas
of their grassy door-yards, which were as neat and prim
as their own persons, or the best chamber in their
white-walled, green-shuttered, story-and-a-half house,
and as perfectly kept as the very Idtchen itself.

The trolley- line had been opened only since the last
September, but in an effect of familiar use it was as
if it had always been there, and it climbed and crooked
and clambered about with the easy freedom of the
country road which it followed. It is a land of low
hills, broken by frequent reaches of the sea, and it
is most amusing, most amazing, to see how frankly
the trolley-car takes and overcomes its difficulties. It
scrambles up and down the little steeps like a cat, and
whisks round a sharp and sudden curve with a feline
screech, broadening into a loud caterwaul as it darts
over the estuaries on its trestles. Its course does not
lack excitement, and I suppose it does not lack danger;

238

THE STANDARD HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT

COMPANY

MY friend came in the other day, before we had
left town, and looked round at the appointments
of the room in their summer shrouds, and said, with a
faint sigh, "I see you have had the eternal-womanly
with you, too/'

"Isn't the eternal-womanly everywhere? What has
happened to you?" I asked.

" I wish you would come to my house and see. Every
rug has been up for a month, and we have been living
on bare floors. Everything that could be tied up has
been tied up, everything that could be sewed up has
been sewed up. Everything that could be moth-balled
and put away in chests has been moth-balled and put
away. Everything that could be taken down has been
taken down. Bags with draw-strings at their necks
have been pulled over the chandeliers and tied. The
pictures have been hidden in cheese-cloth, and the mir-
rors veiled in gauze so that I cannot see my own mis-
erable face anywhere."

"Cornel That's something."

"Yes, it's something. But I have been thinking
this matter over very seriously, and I believe it is go-
ing from bad to worse. I have heard praises of the
thorough housekeeping of our grandmothers, but the

240

THE STANDARD HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT COMPANY

housekeeping of their granddaughters is a thousand
times more intense."

"Do you really believe that?" I asked. "And if
you do, what of it?"

"Simply this, that if we don't put a stop to it, at the
gait it's going, it will put a stop to the eternal-womanly. "

"I suppose we should hate that."

"Yes, it would be bad. It would be very bad; and I
have been turning the matter over in my mind, and
studying out a remedy."

" The highest type of philosopher turns a thing over
in his mind and lets some one else study out a remedy. "

"Yes, I know, I fee! that I may be wrong in ray
processes, but I am sure that I am right in my results.
The reason why our grandmothers could be such good
housekeepers without danger of putting a stop to the
eternal-womanly was that they had so few things to
look after in their houses. Life was indefinitely sim-
pler with them. But the modern improvements, as
we call them, have multiplied the cares of housekeep-
ing without subtracting its burdens, as they were ex-
pected to do. Every novel convenience and comfort,
every article of beauty and luxury, every means of re-
finement and enjoyment in our houses, has been so
much added to the burdens of housekeeping, and the
granddaughters have inherited from the grandmothers
an undiminished conscience against rust and the moth,
which will not suffer them to forget the least duty they
owe to the naughtiest of their superfluities. "

"Yes, 1 see what you mean," I said. This is what
one usually says when one does not quite know what
another is driving at ; but in this case 1 really did know,
or thought I did, "That survival of the conscience
is a very curious thing, especially in our eternal-wom-
anly. 1 suppose that the North American conscience
was evolved from the rudimental European conscience
'6 241

LITERATURE AND LIFE

during the first centuries of struggle here, and was
more or less religious and economical in its orig^.
But with the advance of wealth and the decay of faith
among us, the conscience seems to be simply con-
scientious, or, if it is otherwise, it is social. The eter-
nal-womanly continues along the old lines of house-
keeping from an atavistic impulse, and no one woman
can stop because all the other women are going on.
It is something in the air, or something in the blood.
Perhaps it is something in both.''

Yes," said my friend, quite as I had said already,
I see what you mean. But I think it is in the air more
than in the blood. I was in Paris, about this time last
year, perhaps because I was the only thing in my
house that had not been swathed in cheese-cloth, or
tied up in a bag with draw-strings, or rolled up with
moth-balls and put away in chests. At any rate, I
was there. One day I left my wife in New York care-
fully tagging three worn-out feather dusters, and put-
ting them into a pillow-case, and tagging it, and put-
ting the pillow-case into a camphorated self-sealing
paper sack, and tagging it ; and another day I was in
Paris, dining at the house of a lady whom I asked how
she managed with the things in her house when she
went into the country for the summer. 'Leave them
just as they are,' she said. ' But what about the dust
and the moths, and the rust and the tarnish?' She
said, ' Why, the things would have to be all gone over
when I came back in the autumn, anyway, and why
should I give m3rself double trouble? ' I asked her if
she didn't even roll anything up and put it away in
closets, and she said: 'Oh, you mean that old Amer-
ican horror of getting ready to go away. I used to go
through all that at home, too, but I Wouldn't dream
of it here. In the first place, there are no closets in the
house, and I couldn't put anything away if I wanted

242

THE STANDARD HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT COMPANY

to. And really nothing happens. I scatter some
Persian powder along the edges of things, and under
the lower shelves, and in the dim comers^ and 1 pull I
down the shades. When I come back in the fall I ,
have the powder swept out, and the shades pulled up,
and begin living again. Suppose a little dust has
got in, and the moths have nibbled a little here and
there? The whole damage would not amount to half
the cost of putting everything away and taking every-
thing out, not to speak of the weeks of discomfort, and
the wear and tear of spirit. No. thank goodness I 1
left American housekeeping in America.' 1 asked her:
' But if you went back?' and she gave a sigh, and said :
' I suppose I should go back to that, along with all the
rest. Everybody does it there.* So you see," my friend
concluded, " it's in the air, rather than the blood."

"Then your famous speci6c is that our eternal-
womanly should go and Uve in Paris?"

"Oh, dear, no1"said my friend. "Nothing so drastic
asalllhat. Merely the extinction of household property."

"I see what you mean," I said. "But — what do
you mean?"

" Simply that hired houses, such as most of us live
in, shall all be furnished houses, and that the landlord
shall own every stick in them, and ever>' appliance
down to the last spoon and ultimate towel. There
must be no compromise, by which the tenant agrees
to provide his own linen and silver; that would neu-
tralize the effect I intend by the expropriation of the
personal proprietor, if that says what 1 mean. It must
be in the lease, with severe penalties against the ten-
ant in case of violation, that the landlord is to furnish
everything in perfect order when the tenant comes
in, and is to put everything in perfect order when the
tenant goes out, and the tenant is not to touch any-
thing, to clean it, or dust it, or roll it up in moth-balls
243

LITERATURE AND LIFE

and put it away in chests. All is to be so sacredly
and inalienably the property of the landlord that it
shall constitute a kind of trespass if the tenant at-
tempts to close the house for the summer or to open
it for the winter in the usual way that houses are now
closed and opened. Otherwise my scheme would be
measurably vitiated."

"I see what you mean," I murmured. "Well?"

"Some years ago," my friend went on, "when we
came home from Europe, we left our furniture in stor-
age for a time, while we rather drifted about, and did
not settle anywhere in particular. During that in-
terval my wife opened and closed five furnished houses
in two years."

"And she has lived to tell the tale?"

" She has lived to tell it a great many times. She
can hardly be kept from telling it yet. But it is my
behef that, although she brought to the work all the
anguish of a quickened conscience, under the influ-
ence of the American conditions she had returned to,
she suffered far less in her encounters with either of
those furnished houses than she now does with our
own furniture when she shuts up our house in the
summer, and opens it for the winter. But if there
had been a clause in the lease, as there should have
been, forbidding her to put those houses in order when
she left them, life would have been simply a rapture.
Why, in Europe custom almost supplies the place of
statute in such cases, and you come and go so lightly
in and out of furnished houses that you do not mind
taking them for a month, or a few weeks. We are
very far behind in this matter, but I have no doubt
that if we once came to do it on any extended scale
we should do it, as we do everything else we attempt,
more perfectly than any other people in the world.
You see what I mean?"

244

THE STANDARD HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT COMPANY

" I am not sure that I do. But go on."

"I would invert the whole Henry George principle,
and I would tax personal property of the household
kind so heavily that it would necessarily pass out of
private bands; 1 would make its tenure so costly that
it would be impossible to any but the very rich, who
are also the very wicked, and ought to suffer."

"Oh, come, nowl"

"1 refer you to your Testament, In the end, all
household property would pass into the hands of the
state."

"Aren't you getting worse and worse?"

"Oh, I'm not supposing there won't be a long inter-
val when household property will be in the hands of
powerful monopolies, and many millionaires will be
made by letting it out to middle-class tenants like you
and rae, along with the houses we hire of them. I
have no doubt that there will be a Standard House-
hold-Effect Company, which will extend its relations
to Europe, and get the household effects of the whole
world into its grasp. It will be a fearful oppression,
and we shall probably groan under it for generations,
but it will liberate us from our personal ownership of
them, and from the far more crushing weight of the
moth-ball, We shall suffer, but—"

"1 see what you mean." 1 hastened to interrupt at
this point, "but these suggestive remarks of yours
are getting beyond — Do you think you could defer
the rest of your incompleted sentence for a week?"

"Well, for not more than a week," said my friend,
with an ail of discomfort in his arrest

— " We shall not suffer so much as we do under our

present system," said my friend, completing his sen-

24S

LITERATURE AND LIFE

lence after the interruption of a week. By this time
we had both left town, and were taking up the talk
again on the veranda of a sea-side hotel. ''As for
the eternal-womanly, it will be her salvation from her-
self. When once she is expropriated from her house-
hold effects, and forbidden under severe penalties from
meddling with those of the Standard Household-BfiFect
CompaLuy, she will begin to get back her peace of mind,
and be the same blessing she was before she began
housekeeping."

"That may all very well be," I assented, though I
did not believe it, and I found something almost too
fantastical in my friend's scheme. "But when we
are expropriated from all our dearest belongings, what
is to become of our tender and sacred associations with
them?"

" What has become of devotion to the family gods,
and the worship of ancestors? Once the graves of
the dead were at the door of the living, so that liba-
tions might be conveniently poured out on them, and
the ground where they lay was inalienable because it
was supposed to be used by their spirits as well as
their bodies. A man could not sell the bones, because
he could not sell the ghosts, of his kindred. By-and-
by, when religion ceased to be domestic and became
social, and the service of the gods was carried on in
temples common to all, it was found that the tombs
of one's forefathers could be sold without violence to
their spectres. I dare say it wouldn't be difiFerent in
the case of our tender and sacred associations with
tables and chairs, pots and pans, beds and bedding,
pictures and bric-ll-brac. We have only to evolve a
little further. In fact we have already evolved far
beyond the point that troubles you. Most people in
modern towns and cities have changed their domiciles
from ten to twenty times during their lives, and have

246

THE STANDARD HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT COMPANY

not paid the slightest attention to the tender and sacred
associations connected with them. I don't suppose you
would say that a man has no such associations with
the house that has sheltered him. while he has theoi
with the stuff that has furnished it?"

"No, I shouldn't say that."

" if anything, the house should be dearer than the
household gear. Yet at each remove we drag a length-
ening chain of tables, chairs, side-boards, portraits,
landscapes, bedsteads, washstands, stoves, kitchen
utensils, and bric-A-brac after us, because, as my wife
says, we cannot bear to part with them. At several
times in our own lives we have accumulated stuff
enough to furnish two or three houses and have paid
a pretty stiff house -rent in the form of storage for
the overflow. Why, I am doing that very thing now !
Aren't you?"

■' 1 am — in a certain degree," I assented.

" We all are, we well-to-do people, as we think our-
selves. Once my wife and I revolted by a common
impulse against the ridiculous waste and slavery of
the thing. We went to the storage warehouse and
sent three or four van-loads of the rubbish to the auc-
tioneer. Some of the pieces we had not seen for years,
and as each was hauled out for us to ins[)cct and de-
cide upon, we condemned it to the auction-block with
shouts of rejoicing. Tender and sacred associations!
We hadn't had such light hearts since we had put
everything in storage and gone to Europe indefinite-
ly as we had when we left those things to be carted
out of our lives forever. Not one had been a pleas-
ure to us : the sight of every one had been a pang.
All wc wanted was never lo set eyes on them
again."

"I must say you have disposed of the tender and

sacred associations pretty effectually, so far as they

247

LITERATURE AND LIFE

relate to things in storage. But the things that we
have in daily use?"

"It is exactly the same with them. Why should
they be more to us than the floors and walls of the
houses we move in and move out of with no particu-
lar pathos? And I think we ought not to care for them,
certainly not to the point of letting them destroy our
eternal-womanly with the anxiety she feels for them.
She is really much more precious, if she could but
realize it, than anything she swathes in cheese-cloth
or wraps up with moth-balls. The proof of the fact
that the whole thing is a piece of mere sentimentahty
is that we may live in a furnished house for years,
amid all the accidents of birth and death, joy and sor-
row, and yet not form the slightest attachment to the
furniture. Why should we have tender and sacred
associations with a thing we have bought, and not
with a thing we have hired?"

" I confess, I don't know. And do you really think
we could liberate ourselves from our belongings if they
didn't belong to us? Wouldn't the eternal - womanly
still keep putting them away for summer and taking
them out for winter?"

"At first, yes, there might be some such mechanical
action in her ; but it would be purely mechanical, and it
would soon cease. When the Standard Household-
Effect Company came down on the temporal-manly
with a penalty for violation of the lease, the eternal-
womanly would see the folly of her ways and stop;
for the eternal - womanly is essentially economical,
whatever we say about the dressmaker's bills; and
the very futilities of putting away and taking out,
that she now wears herself to a thread with, are found-
ed in the instinct of saving."

"But," I asked, "wouldn't our household belong-
ings lose a good deal of character if they didn't belong

248

THE STANDARD HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT COMPANY

to us? Wouldn't our domestic interiors become dread-
fully impersonal?"

"How many houses now have character — person-
ality? Most people let the different dealers choose
for them, as it is. Why not let the Standard House-
hold-Effect Company, and hnally the state? I am
sure that either would choose much more wisely than
people choose for themselves, in the few cases where
they even seem to choose for themselves. In most
interiors the appointments are without fitness, taste,
or sense ; they are the mere accretions of accident in
the greater number of cases; where they are the re-
sult of design, they are worse. I see what you mean
by character and personality in them. You mean
the sort of madness that let itself loose a few years
ago in what was called household art, and has since
gone to make the junk-shops hideous Each of the
eternal-womanly was supposed suddenly to have ac-
quired a talent for decoration and a gift for the selec-
tion and arrangement of furniture, and each began
to stamp herself upon our interiors. One painted a
high - shouldered stone bottle with a stork and stood
it at the right comer of the mantel on a scarf ; another
gilded the bottle and stood it at the left comer, and
tied the scarf through its handle. One knotted a ribbon
around the arm of a chair; another knotted it around
the leg. In a day, an hour, a moment, the chairs sud-
denly became angular, cushionless, springless; and
the sofas were stood across comers, or parallel with
the fireplace, in slants expressive of the personality
of the presiding genius. The walls became all frieze
and dado; and instead of the simple and dignified
ugliness of the impersonal period our interiors aban-
doned themselves to a hysterical chaos, full of character.
Some people had their doors painted black, and the
daughter or mother of the house then decorated them
249

LITERATURE AND LIFE

with morning-glories. I saw such a door in a house
I looked at the other day, thinking I might hire it.
The sight of that black door and its morning-glories
made me wish to turn aside and live with the cattle,
as Walt Whitman says. No, the less we try to get
personality and character into our household effects
the more beautiful and interesting they will be. As
soon as we put the Standard Household-Effect G)m-
pany in possession and render it a relentless monop-
oly, it will corrupt a competent architect and decorator
in each of our large towns and cities, and when you
hire a new house these will be sent to advise with the
eternal - womanly concerning its appointments, and
tell her what she wants, and what she will like; for
at present the eternal womanly, as soon as she has
got a thing she wants, begins to hate it. The com-
pany's agents will begin by convincing her that she
does not need half the things she has lumbered up her
house with, and that every useless thing is an ugly
thing, even in the region of pure aesthetics. I once
asked an Italian painter if he did not think a certain
nobly imagined drawing-room was fine, and he said :
'SI. Ma troppa roba.' There were too many rugs,
tables, chairs, sofas, pictures, vases, statues, chan-
deliers. Troppa roba is the vice of all our household
furnishing, and it will be the death of the eternal-
womanly if it is not stopped. But the corrupt agents
of a giant monopoly will teach the eternal-womanly
something of the wise simplicity of the South, and
she will end by returning to the ideal of housekeep-
ing as it prevails among the Latin races, whom it be-
gan with, whom civilization began with. What of a
harmless, necessary moth or two, or even a few
fleas r

"That might be all very well as far as furniture
and carpets and curtains are concerned,'' I said, "but

250

THE STANDARD HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT COMPANY

surely you wouldn't apply it to pictures and objects of
art?"

" I would apply it to them first of all and above all,"
lejoined my friend, hardily. "Among all the people
who buy and own such things there is not one in a
thousand who has any real taste or feeling for tbem,
and the objects they choose are generally such as can
only deprave and degrade them further. The pict-
ures, statues, and vases supplied by the Standard
Household-Effect Company would be selected by agents
with a real sense of art, and a knowledge of it. When
the house-letting and house-furnishing finally passed
into the hands of the state, these things would be lent
from the public galleries, or from immense municipal
stores for the purpose."

" And I suppose you would have ancestral portraits
supplied along with the other pictures?" 1 sneered.

" Ancestral portraits, of course," said my friend,
with unrufBed temper, "So few people have ances-
tors of their own that they will be very glad to have
ancestral portraits chosen for them out of the collec-
tions of the company or the state The agents of the
one, or the oEBcers of the other, will study the existing
type of family face, and will select ancestors and an-
cestresses whose modelling, coloring, and expression
agree with it, and will keep in view the race and na-
tionality of the family whose ancestral portraits are
to be supplied, so that there shall be no chance of the
grossly improbable effect which ancestral portraits
now have in many cases. Yes, I see no flaw in the
scheme," my friend concluded, "and no difficulty
that can't be easily overcome. We must alienate our
household furniture, and make it so sensitively and
exclusively the property of some impersonal agency
— company or conmiunity, I don't care which — that
any care of it shall be a sort of crime ; any sense of

2SI

LITERATURE AND LIFE

responsibility for its preservation a species of incivism
punishable by fine or imprisonment. This, and noth-
ing short of it, will be the salvation of the eternal-
womanly."

" And the perdition of something even more precious
than that!"

" What can be more precious?"

"IndividuaUty."

"My dear friend," demanded my visitor, who had
risen, and whom I was gradually edging to the door,
"do you mean to say there is any individuahty in
such things now? What have we been saying about
character?"

** Ah, I see what you mean," I said.

STACCATO NOTES OF A VANISHED SUMMER

MONDAY altemoon the stonn which had been
beating up against the southeasterly wind
nearly all day thickened, fold upon fold, in the north-
west The gale increased, and blackened the harbor
and whitened the open sea beyond, where sail after
sail appeared round the reef of Whaleback Light, and
ran in a wild scamper for the safe anchorages within.
Since noon cautious coasters of all sorts had been
dropping in with a casual air; the coal schooners and
barges had rocked and nodded knowingly to one an-
other, with their taper and truncated masts, on the
breast of the invisible swell; and the flock of little
yachts and pleasure-boats which always fleck the
bay huddled together in the safe waters. The craft
that came scurrv'ing in just before nightfall were mack-
erel seiners from Gloucester. They were all of one
graceful shape and one size; they came with all sail
set. taking the waning light hke sunshine on their fly-
ing-jibs, and trailing each two dones behind them, with
their seines piled in black heaps between the thwarts.
As soon as they came inside their jibs weakened and
fell, and the anchor<hains rattled from their bows.
Before the dark hid them we could have counted sixty
or seventy ships in the harbor, and as the night fell
they improvised a Uttle Venice under the hill with
their Ughts, which twinkled rhythmically. like (he
lamps in the basin of St. Mark, between the Maine
and New Hampshire coasts.
2S3

LITERATURE AND LIFE

There was a dash of rain, and we thought the storm
had begun ; but that ended it, as so many times this
summer a dash of rain has ended a storm. The morn-
ing came veiled in a fog that kept the shipping at an-
chor through the day ; but the next night the weather
cleared. We woke to the clucking of tackle, and saw
the whole fleet standing dreamily out to sea. When
they were fairly gone, the summer, which had held
aloof in dismay of the sudden cold, seemed to return
and possess the land again ; and the succession of sil-
ver days and crystal nights resumed the tranquil round
which we thought had ceased.

One says of every summer, when it is drawing near
its end, "There never was such a summer"; but if the
summer is one of those which sUp from the feeble hold
of elderly hands, when the days of the years may be
reckoned with the scientific logic of the insurance
tables and the sad conviction of the psalmist, one sees
it go with a passionate prescience of never seeing its
like again such as the younger witness cannot know.
Each new summer of the few left must be shorter and
swifter than the last: its Junes will be thirty days
long, and its Julys and Augusts thirty-one, in com-
pliance with the almanac; but the days will be of so
small a compass that fourteen of them will rattle round
in a week of the old size like shrivelled peas in a pod.

To be sure they swell somewhat in the retrospect,
like the same peas put to soak; and I am aware now
of some June days of those which we first spent at
Kittery Point this year, which were nearly twenty-
four hours long. Even the days of declining years
Unger a little here, where there is nothing to hurry

254

STACCATO NOTES OF A VANISHED SUMMER

them, and where it is pleasant to loiter, and muse be-
side the sea and shore, which are so netted together
at Kittery Point that they hardly know themselves
apart. The days, whatever their length, are divided,
not into hours, but into mails. They begin, without
regard to the sun, at eight o'clock, when the first mail
comes with a few letters and papers which had forgot-
ten themselves the night before. At half-past eleven
the great mid-day mail arrives; at four o'clock there
is another indifferent and scattering post, much like
that at eight in the morning; and at seven the last
mail arrives with the Boston evening papers and the
New York morning papers, to make you forget any
letters you were looking for. The opening of the
mid-day mail is that which most throngs with sum-
mer folks the little post-office under the elms, oppo-
site the weather-beaten mansion of Sir Wilbam Pep-
perrell ; but the evening mail attracts a large and main-
ly disinterested circle of natives. The day's work on
land and sea is then over, and the village leisure,
perched upon fences and stayed against house walls,
is of a picturesqueness which we should prize if we saw
it abroad, and which I am not willing to ahg:ht on our
own ground.

The type is mostly of a seafaring brown, a com-
plexion which seems to be inherited rather than per-
sonally acquired; for the commerce of Kittery Point
perished long ago, and the fishing fleets that used to
fit out from her wharves have almost as long ago passed
to Gloucester. All that is left of the fishing interest
is the weir outside which supplies, fitfully and uncer-
tainly, the fish shipped fresh to the nearest markets.
But in spite of this the tint taken from the suns and
255

LITERATURE AND LIFE

winds of the sea lingers on the local complexion; and
the local manner is that freer and easier manner of
people who have known other coasts, and are in some
sort citizens of ii^e world. It is very different from the
inland New England manner; as different as the gen-
tle, slow speech of the shore from the clipped nasals
of the hill-country. The lounging native walk is not
the hea\'y plod taught by the furrow, but has the lurch
and the sway of the deck in it.

Nothing could be better suited to progress through
the long village, which rises and sinks beside the shore
like a landscape with its sea-legs on ; and nothing could
be more charming and friendly than this village. It
is quite untainted as yet by the summer cottages which
have covered so much of the coast, and made it look as
if the aesthetic suburbs of New York and Boston had
gone ashore upon it. There are two or three old-fash-
ioned summer hotels; but the summer life distinctly
fails to characterize the place. The people live where
their forefathers have lived for two hundred and fifty
years; and for the century since the baronial domain
of Sir William was broken up and his possessions con-
fiscated by the young Republic, they have dwelt in
small red or white houses on their small holdings along
the slopes and levels of the low hills beside the water,
where a man may pass with the least inconvenience
and delay from his threshold to his gunwale. Not all
the houses are small; some are spacious and ambi-
tious to be of ugly modern patterns; but most are
simple and homelike. Their gardens, following the
example of Sir William's vanished pleasaunce, drop
southward to the shore, where the lobster-traps and
the hen-coops meet in unembarrassed promiscuity.
But the fish-flakes which once gave these inclines the
effect of terraced vineyards have passed as utterly as
the proud parterres of the old baronet ; and Kittery Point

256

STACCATO NOTES OF A VANISHED SUMMER

no longer "makes" a cod or a haddock for the mar-
ket.

Three groceries, a butcher shop, and a small variety
store study the few native wants; and with a little
money one may live in as great real comfort here as
for much in a larger place. The street takes care of
itself; the seafaring housekeepmg of New England is
not of the insatiable Dutch type which will not spare
the stones of the highway; but within the houses are
of almost terrifying cleanliness. The other day I
found myself in a kitchen where the stove shone like
oxidized silver; the pump and sink were clad in oil-
cloth as with blue tiles ; the walls were papered ; the
stainless Eoor was strewn with home-made hooked and
braided rugs ; and I felt the place so altogether too good
for me that I pleaded to slay there for the transaction
of my business, lest a sharper sense of my unfitness
should await me in the parlor.

The village, with scarcely an interval of farm-lands,
stretches four miles along the water-side to Portsmouth ;
but it seems to me that just at the point where ourlines
have fallen there is the greatest concentration of its
character. This has apparently not been weakened,
it has been accented, by the trolley-line which passes
through its whole length, with gayly freighted cars
coming and going every half-hour. I suppose they are
not longer than other trolley-cars, but they each affect
me like a procession. They are cheerful presences
by day, and by night Ihey light up the dim. winding
street with the Sare of their electric bulbs, and bring to
the country a vision of city splendor upon terms that
do not humiliate or disquiet. During July and Au-
gust they are mostly filled with summer folks from a
great summer resort beyond us, and their lights reveal
the pretty fashions of hats and gowns in all the charm
of the latest lines and tints. But there is an increasing
•> 257

LITERATURE AND LIFE

democracy in these splendors, and one might easily
mistake a passing excursionist from some neighbor-
ing inland town, or even a local native with the instinct
of clothes, for a social leader from York Harbor.

With the falling leaf, the bargelike open cars close
up into well-warmed saloons, and falter to hourly in-
tervals in their course. But we are still far from the
falling leaf; we are hardly come to the blushing or
fading leaf. Here and there an impassioned maple
confesses the autumn; the ancient Pepperrell elms
fling down showers of the baronet's fairy gold in the
September gusts ; the sumacs and the blackberry vines
are ablaze along the tumbling black stone walls; but
it is still summer, it is still summer: I cannot allow
otherwise I

III

The other day I visited for the first time (in the opu-
lent indifference of one who could see it any time) the
stately tomb of the first Pepperrell, who came from
Cornwall to these coasts, and settled finally at Kittery
Point. He laid there the foundations of the greatest
fortune in colonial New England, which revolutionary
New England seized and dispersed, as I cannot but
feel, a little ruthlessly. In my personal quality I am
of course averse to all great fortunes ; and in my civic
capacity I am a patriot. But still I feel a sort of grace
in wealth a century old, and if I could now have my
way, I would not have had their possessions reft from
those kindly Pepperrells, who could hardly help being
loyal to the fountain of their baronial honors. Sir Will-
iam, indeed, had helped, more than any other man, to
bring the people who despoiled him to a national con-
sciousness. If he did not imagine, he mainly managed
the plucky New England expedition against Louis-

258

STACCATO NOTES OF A VANISHED SUMMER

bourg at Cape Breton a half century before the War
of Independence; and his splendid success in rending
that stronghold from the French taught the colonists
that they were Americans, and need be Englishmen
no longer than they liked. His soldiers were of the
stamp of all succeeding American armies, and his
leadership was of the neighborly and fatherly sort
natural to an amiable man who knew most of them
personally. He was already the richest man in Amer-
ica, and his grateful king made him a baronet; but
he came contentedly back to Kittery, and took up his
old life in a region where he had the comfortable con-
sideration of an unrivalled magnate. He built him-
self the dignified mansion which still stands across
the way from the post-office on Kittery Point, within
an easy stone's cast of the far older house, where his
father wedded Margery Bray, when he came, a thrifty
young Welsh fisherman, from the Isles of Shoals, and
established his family on Kittery. The Bray house
had been the finest in the region a hundred years be-
fore the Pepperrell mansion was built: it still remem-
bers its consequence in the panelling and wainscoting
of the large, square parlor where the young people
were married and in the elaborate staircase cramped
into the little, square hall ; and the Bray fortune helped
materially to swell the wealth of the Pepperrells.

1 do not know that I should care now to have a man
able to ride thirty miles on his own land ; but I do not
mind Sir William's having done it here a hundred
and fifty years ago ; and 1 wish the confiscations had
left his family, say, about a mile of it- They could
now, mdeed, enjoy it only in the collateral branches,
for all Sir William's line is extinct. The splendid
mansion which he built his daughter is in alien hands,
and the fine old house which Lady Pepperrell built
herself after his death belongs to the remotest of kins-
259

LITERATURE AND DIFE

men. A group of these, the descendants of a prolific
sister of the baronet, meets every year at Kittery Point
as the Pepperrell Association, and, in a tent hard
by the little grove of drooping spruces which shade
the admirable renaissance cenotaph of Sir William's
father, cherishes the family memories with due Amer-
ican "proceedings."

Tlie meeting of the Pepperrell Association was by
no means the chief excitement of our simmier. In
fact, I do not know that it was an excitement at all ;
and I am sure it was not comparable to the presence
of our naval squadron, when for four days the mighty
dragon and kraken shapes of steel, which had crum-
bled the decrepit pride of Spain in the fight at Santi-
ago, weltered in our peaceful waters, almost under my
window.

I try now to dignify them with handsome epithets;
but while they were here I had moments of thinking
they looked like a lot of whited locomotives, which had
broken through from some trestle, in a recent acci-
dent, and were waiting the offices of a wrecking-train.
The poetry of the man-of-war still clings to the " three-
decker out of the foam " of the past ; it is too soon yet
for it to have cast a mischievous halo about the modem
battle-ship; and I looked at the New York and the
Texas and the Brooklyn and the rest, and thought,
"Ah, but for you, and our need of proving your dire
efficiency, perhaps we could have got on with the wick-
edness of Spanish rule in Cuba, and there had been
no war!" Under my reluctant eyes the great, dreadful
spectacle of the Santiago fight displayed itself in peace-
ful Kittery Harbor. I saw the Spanish ships drive
upon the reef where a man from Dover, New Hamp-

260

STACCATO NOTES OF A VANISHED SUMMER

shire, was camping in a little wooden shanty uncon-
scious ; and I heard the dying screams of the Spanish
sailors, seethed and scalded within the steel walls of
their own wicked war-kettles.

As for the guns, battle or no battle, our ships, like
" kind Lieutenant Belay of the Hot Cross-Bun," seemed
to be "banging away the whole day long." They set
a bad example to the dreamy old fort on the Newcas-
tle shore, which, till they came, only recollected itself
to salute the sunrise and sunset with a single gun;
but which, under provocation of the squadron, formed
a habit of firing twenty or thirty times at noon.

Other martial shows and noises were not so bad. I
rather liked seeing the morning drill of the marines
and the blue-jackets on the iron decks, with the lively
music that went with it. The bugle calls and the bells
were charming ; the week's wash hung out to dry had
its picturesqueness by day, and by night the spectral
play of the search-lights along the waves and shores,
and against the startled skies, was even more impres-
sive. There was a band which gave us every evening
the airs of the latest coon-songs, and the national an-
thems which we have borrowed from various nations;
and yes, I remember the white squadron kindly, though
I was so glad to have it go, and let us lapse back into
our summer silence and calm. It was (I do not mind
saying now) a majestic sight to see those grotesque
monsters gather themselves together, and go wallow-
ing, one after another, out of the harbor, and drop be-
hind the ledge of Whaleback Light, as if they had sunk
into the sea.

A deep peace fell upon us when they went, and it
must have been at this most receptive moment, when all

261

LITERATURE AND LIFE

our sympathies were adjusted in a mood of hospitable
expectation, that Jim appeared.

Jim was, and still is, and I hope will long be, a cat ;
but unless one has lived at Kittery Point, and realized,
from observation and experience, what a leading part
cats may play in society, one cannot feel the full im-
port of this fact. Not only has every house in Kittery
its cat, but every house seems to have its half-dozen
cats, large, little, old, and young; of divers colors,
tending mostly to a dark tortoise-sheU. With a whole
ocean inviting to the tragic rite, I do not believe there
is ever a kitten drowned in Kittery; the illimitable sea
rather employs itself in supplying the fish to which
"no cat's averse," but which the cats of Kittery de-
mand to have cooked. They do not like raw fish;
they say it plainly, and they prefer to have the bones
taken out for them, though they do not insist upon that
point.

At least, Jim never did so from the time when he first
scented the odor of delicate young mackerel in the even-
ing air about our kitchen, and dropped in upon the
maids there with a fine casual effect of being merely
out for a walk, and feeling it a neighborly thing to call.
He had on a silver collar, engraved with his name and
surname, which offered itself for introduction like a
visiting-card. He was too polite to ask himself to the
table at once, but after he had been welcomed to the
family circle, he formed the habit of finding himself
with us at breakfast and supper, when he sauntered
in like one who should say, "Did I smeU fish?" but
would not go further in the way of hinting.

He had no need to do so. He was made at home,
and freely invited to our best not only in fish, but in
chicken, for which he showed a nice taste, and in sweet-
corn, for which he revealed a most surprising fondness
when it was cut from the cob for him. After he had

262

STACCATO NOTES OF A VANISHED SUMMER

breakfasted or supped he gracefully suggested that he
was thirsty by climbing to the table where the water-
pitcher stood and stretching his fine feline head tow-
ards it. When he had lapped up his saucer of water,
he marched into the parlor, and riveted the chains upon
our fondness by taking the best chair and going to
sleep in it in attitudes of Egyptian, of Assyrian maj-
esty.

His arts were few or none; he rather disdained to
practise any ; he completed our conquest by maintain-
ing himself simply a fascinating presence; and per-
haps we spoiled Jim. It is certain that he came under
my window at two o'clock one night, and tried the
kitchen door. It resisted his e£Forts to get in, and then
Jim began to use language which I had never heard
from the Ups of a cat before, and seldom from the Ups
of a man. I will not repeat it; enough that it carried
to the Ustener the conviction that Jim was not sober.
Where he could have got his Uquor in the totally ab-
stinent State of Maine I could not positively say, but
probably of some sailor who had brought it from the
neighboring New Hampshire coast. There could be
no doubt, however, that Jim was drunk; and a dash
from the water-pitcher seemed the only thing for him.
The water did not touch him, but he started back in
surprise and grief, and vanished into the night without
a word.

His feelings must have been deeply wounded, for it
was almost a week before he came near us again; and
then I think that nothing but young lobster would have
brought him. He forgave us finally, and made us of
his party in the quarrel he began gradually to have
with the large yellow cat of a next-door neighbor. This
culminated one afternoon, after a long exchange of
mediaeval defiance and insult, in a battle upon a bed
of rag-weed, with wild shrieks of rage, and prodigious

263

LITERATURE AND LIFE

feats of ground and lofty tumbling. It seemed to our
anxious eyes that Jim was getting the worst of it ; but
when we afterwards visited the battle-field and picked
up several tufts of blond fur, we were in a doubt which
was afterwards heightened by Jim's invasion of the
yellow cat's territory, where he stretched himself de-
fiantly upon the grass and seemed to be challenging
the yellow cat to come out and try to put him oS the
premises.

THE ART OF THE ADSMITH

THE other day, a friend of mine, who professes all
the intimacy of a bad conscience with many of
my thoughts and convictions, came in with a bulky
book under his arm, and said, "I see by a guilty
look in yotu" eye that you are meaning to write about
spring."

" I am not," I retorted, " and if I were, it would be
because none of the new things have been said yet
about spring, and because spring is never an old story,
any more than youth or love."

"I have heard something like that before," said my
friend, "and I understand. Tlie simple truth of the
matter is that this is the fag-end of the season, and you
have run low in your subjects. Now take my advice
and don't write about spring; it will make everybody
hate you, and will do no good. Write about adver-
tising." He tapped the book under his arm signifi-
cantly. " Here is a theme for you,"

He had no sooner pronounced these words than I
began to feel a weird and potent fascination in his sug-
gestion. I took the book from him and looked it eager-
ly through. It was called Good Advertising, and it
was written by one of the experts in the business who
have advanced it almost to the grade of an art, or a
himianity.

265

LITERATURE AND LIFE

"But I see nothing here," I said, musingly, "which
would enable a self-respecting author to come to the
help of his publisher in giving due hold upon the pub-
he interest those charming characteristics of his book
which no one else can feel so penetratingly or celebrate
so persuasively."

"I expected some such objection from you," said my
friend. " You will admit that there is everything else
here?"

"Everything but that most essential thing. You
know how we all feel about it: the bitter disappoint-
ment, the heart - sickening sense of insufficiency that
the advertised praises of our books give us poor au-
thors. The effect is far worse than that of the reviews,
for the reviewer is not your ally and copartner^ while
your publisher — "

"I see what you mean," said my friend. "But you
must have patience. If the author of this book can
write so luminously of advertising in other respects. I
am sure he will yet be able to cast a satisfactory light
upon your problem. The question is, I beUeve, how
to translate into irresistible terms all that fond and
exultant regard which a writer feels for his book,
all his pervasive appreciation of its singular beauty,
unique value, and utter charm, and transfer it to print,
without infringing upon the delicate and shrinking
modesty which is the distinguishing ornament of the
literary spirit?"

"Something like that. But you understand."

"Perhaps a Rontgen ray might be got to do it,"
said my friend, thoughtfully, " or perhaps this author
may bring his mind to bear upon it yet. He seems
to have considered every kind of advertising except
book-advertising. "

"The most important of alll" I cried, impatiently.

"You think so because you are in that line. If

266

THE ART OF THE ADSMITH

you were in the line of varnish, or bicycles, or soap,
or typewriters, or extract of beef, or of malt — "

"Still I should be interested in book - advertising,
because it is the most vital of human interests."

"Tell me," said my friend, "do you read the adver-
tisements of the books of rival authors?"

" Brother authors," I corrected him.

"Well, brother authors."

I said. No, candidly, I did not; and I forbore to
add that I thought them httle better than a waste
of the pubhshers' money.

My friend did not pursue his inquiry to my personal
disadvantage, but seemed to prefer a more general
philosophy of the matter.

"I have often wondered," he said, "at the enormous
expansion of advertising, and doubted whether it was
not mostly wasted. But my author, here, has sug-
gested a briUiant fact which I was unwittingly grop-
ing for. When you take up a Sunday paper " — I
shuddered, and my friend smiled intelligence — " you
are simply appalled at the miles of aimouncements of
all sorts. Who can possibly read them? Who cares
even to look at them? But if you want something in
particidar — to furnish a house, or buy a suburban
place, or take a steamer for Europe, or go to the the-
atre — ^then you find out at once who reads the adver-
tisements, and cares to look at them. They respond to
the multifarious wants of the whole community. You
have before you the living operation of that law of
demand and supply which it has always been such a
bore to hear about. As often happens, the supply seems
to come before the demand ; but that's only an appear-

267

LITERATURE AND LIFE

ance. You wanted something, and you found an offer
to meet your want."

" Then you don't believe that the offer to meet your
want suggested it?"

"I see that my author believes something of the
kind. We may be full of all sorts of unconscious
wants which merely need the vivifying influence of
an advertisement to make them spring into active
being; but I have a feeling that the money paid for
advertising which appeals to potential wants is largely
thrown away. You must want a thing, or think you
want it; otherwise you resent the proffer of it as a
kind of impertinence."

"There are some kinds of advertisements, all the
same, that I read without the slightest interest in the
subject matter. Simply the beauty of the style at-
tracts me."

"I know. But does it ever move you to get what
you don't want?"

" Never : and I shotdd be glad to know what your
author thinks of that sort of advertising : the literary,
or dramatic, or humorous, or quaint. "

"He doesn't contemn it, quite. But I think he
feels that it may have had its day. Do you still read
such advertisements with your early zest?"

"No; the zest for nearly everything goes. I don't
care so much for Tourgu6nief as I used. Still, if I
come upon the jaunty and laconic suggestions of a
certain well-known clothing -house, concerning the
season's wear, I read them with a measure of satis-
faction. The advertising expert — "

"This author calls him the adsmith."

"Delightful! Ad is a loathly little word, but we
must come to it. It's as legitimate as lunch. But
as I was saying, the adsmith seems to have caught
the American business tone, as perfectly as any

268

THE ART OF THE ADSMITH

of our novelists have caught the American social
tone."

" Yes/' said my friend, " and he seems to have pros-
pered as richly by it. You know some of those chaps
make fifteen or twenty thousand dollars by adsmith-
ing. They have put their art quite on a level with
fiction pecuniarily."

"Perhaps it is a branch of fiction."

''No; they claim that it is pure fact My author
discourages the slightest admixture of fable. The
truth, clearly and simply expressed, is the best in an
ad."

"It is best in a wof, too. I am always saying that"

"Wof?"

" Well, work of fiction. It's another new word, like
lunch or ad."

"But in a wof," said my friend, instantly adopting
it, " my author insinuates that the fashion of pa3mient
tempts you to verbosity, while in an ad the conditions
obUge you to the greatest possible succinctness. In
one case you are paid by the word; in the other you
pay by the word. That is where the adsmith stands
upon higher moral ground than the wof smith."

" I should think your author might have written a

recent article in The , reproaching fiction with

its imhallowed gains."

"If you mean that for a sneer, it is misplaced. He
would have been incapable of it My author is no
more the friend of honesty in adsmithing than he is
of propriety. He deprecates jocosity in apothecaries
and imdertakers, not only as bad taste, but as bad
business ; and he is as severe as any one could be upon
ads that seize the attention by disgusting or shocldng
the reader.

" He is to be praised for that, and for the other thing ;
and I shouldn't have minded his criticising the ready

269

LITERATURE AND LIFE

wofsmith. I hope he attacks the use of display type,
which makes our newspapers look like the poster-
plastered fences around vacant lots. In New York
there is only one paper whose advertisements are not
tjrpographically a shock to the nerves."

"Well/' said my friend, "he attacks foolish and
ineffective display."

" It is all foolish and ineffective. It is like a crowd
of people trying to make themselves heard by shouting
each at the top of his voice. A paper f idl of display
advertisements is an image of our whole congested
and delirious state of competition; but even in com-
petitive conditions it is urmecessary, and it is futile.
Compare any New York paper but one with the Lon-
don papers, and you will see what I mean. Of course
I refer to the ad pages ; the rest of our exception is as
offensive with pictiu-es and scare - heads as all the
rest. I wish your author coidd revise his opinions
and condemn all display in ads."

"I dare say he will when he knows what you think/'
said my friend, with imaginable sarcasm.

Ill

"I wish/' I went on, "that he would give us some
philosophy of the prodigious increase of advertising
within the last twenty-five years, and some conjecture
as to the end of it all. Evidently, it can't keep on
increasing at the present rate. If it does, there will
presently be no room in the world for things; it will
be filled up with the advertisements of things."

"Before that time, perhaps," my friend suggested,
"adsraithing will have become so fine and potent an
art that advertising will be reduced in bulk, while keep-
ing all its energy and even increasing its effectiveness."

270

THE ART OF THE ADSMITH

"Perhaps," I said, "some silent electrical process
vri\l be contrived, so that the attractions of a new Une
of dress -goods or the fascination of a spring or fall
opening may be imparted to a lady's consciousness
without even the agency of words. All other facts
of commercial and industrial interest coidd be dealt
with in the same way. A fine thrill could be made
to go from the last new book through the whole com-
munity, so that people would not willingly rest till
they had it. Yes, one can see an indefinite future
for advertising in that way. The adsmith may be
the supreme artist of the twentieth century. He may
assemble in his grasp, and employ at will, all the arts
and sciences."

"Yes," said my friend, with a sort of fall in his
voice, "that is very well. But what is to become of
the race when it is penetrated at every pore with a
sense of the world's demand and supply?"

" Oh, that is another affair. I was merely imagining
the possible resources of invention in providing for the
increase of advertising while guarding the integrity of
the planet. I think, very likely, if the thing keeps
on, we shall all go mad ; but then we shall none of us
be able to criticise the others. Or possibly the thing
may work its own ciu-e. You know the ingenuity
of the poUtical economists in justifying the egotism
to which conditions appeal. They do not deny that
these foster greed and rapacity in merciless degree,
but they contend that when the wealth-winner drops
off gorged there is a kind of miracle wrought, and
good comes of it all. I never could see how ; but if it
is true, why shouldn't a sort of ultimate immunity
come back to us from the very excess and invasion of
the appeals now made to us, and destined to be made
to us still more by the adsmith? Come, isn't there
hope in that?"

271

LITERATURE AND LIFE

"I see a great opportunity for the wofsmith in some
such dream," said my friend. "Why don't you turn
it to account?"

"You know that isn't my line; I must leave that
sort of wofsmithing to the romantic novelist. Be
sides, I have my well-known panacea for all the ills
our state is heir to, in a civilization which shall leg-
islate foolish and vicious and ugly and adulterate
things out of the possibility of existence. Most of
the adsmithing is now employed in persuading people
that such things are usef id, beautiful, and pure. But
in my civilization they shall not even be suffered to
be made, much less foisted upon the community by
adsmiths."

"I see what you mean," said my friend; and he
sighed gently. "I had much better let you write
about spring."

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PLAGIARISM

A LATE incident in the history of a very wide-
spread English noveUst, triumphantly closed by
the statement of his friend that the novelist had casual-
ly failed to accredit a given passage in his novel to the
real author, has brought freshly to my mind a curious
question in ethics. The friend who vindicated the nov-
elist, or, rather, who cont^nptuously dismissed the
matter, not only confessed the fact of adoption, but de-
clared that it was one of many which coidd be found in
the novelist's works. The novelist, he said, was quite
in the habit of so using material in the rough, which
he implied was like using any fact or idea from life,
and he declared that the novelist could not bother
to answer critics who regarded these exploitations
as a sort of depredation. In a manner he brushed
the impertinent accusers aside, assuring the general
public that the novelist always meant, at his leisure,
and in his own way, didy to ticket the flies preserved
in his amber.

When I read this haughty vindication, I thought
at first that if the case were mine I woidd rather have
several deadly enemies than such a friend as that;
but since, I have not been so sure. I have asked my-
self upon a careful review of the matter whether pla-
giarism may not be frankly avowed, as in nowise
•» 273

LITERATURE AND LIFE

•dishonest, and I wish some abler casuist would take
the affair into consideration and make it clear for
me. If we are to suppose that offences against society
disgrace the offender, and that public dishonor argues
the fact of some such offence, then apparently pla-
;giarism is not such an offence ; for in even very flagrant
cases it does not disgrace. The dictionary, indeed,
defines it as "the crime of literary theft"; but as no
penalty attaches to it, and no lasting shame, it is hard
to believe it either a crime or a theft ; and the offence,
if it is an offence (one has to call it something, and I
hope the word is not harsh), is some such harmless
infraction of the moral law as white-lying.

The much-perverted sa3mig of Molifere, that he took
his own where he found it, is perhaps in the conscious-
ness of those who appropriate the things other people
have rushed in with before them. But really they seem
to need neither excuse nor defence with the impartial
public if they are caught in the act of reclaiming their
property or despoiling the rash intruder upon their
premises. The novelist in question is by no means
the only recent example, and is by no means a flagrant
example. While the ratification of the treaty with
Spain was pending before the Senate of the United
States, a member of that body opposed it in a speech
almost word for word the same as a sermon delivered
in New York City only a few days earlier and published
broadcast. He was promptly exposed by the parallel-
column system ; but I have never heard tiiat his stand-
ing was affected or his usefulness impaired by the
offence proven against him. A few years ago an
eminent divine in one of our cities preached as his own
the sermon of a brother divine, no longer living ; he, too,
was detected and promptly exposed by the parallel-
column system, but nothing whatever happened from
the exposure. Every one must recall like instances,

274

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PLAGIARISM

more or less remote. I remember one within my youth-
fuller knowledge of a journalist who used as his own
all the denunciatory passages of Macatday's article
on Barr&re, and applied them with changes of name
to the character and conduct of a local politician whom
he felt it his duty to devote to infamy. He was caught
in the fact, and by means of the parallel coltmm pil-
loried before the community. But the community did
not mind it a bit, and the journalist did not either.
He prospered on amid those who all knew what he
had done, and when he removed to another city it
was to a larger one, and to a position of more com-
manding influence, from which he was long conspicu-
ous in helping shape the destinies of the nation.

So far as any effect from these exposures was con-
cerned, they were as harmless as those exposures of
fraudulent spiritistic mediums which from time to
time are supposed to shake the spiritistic superstition
to its foundations. They really do nothing of the
kind; the table-tippings, rappings, materiaUzations,
and levitations keep on as before; and I do not believe
that the exposure of the novelist who has been the
latest victim of the parallel colimin will injure him a
jot in the hearts or heads of his readers.

I am very glad of it, being a disbeliever in punish-
ments of all sorts. I am always glad to have sinners
get off, for I like to get off from my own sins ; and I have
a bad moment from my sense of them whenever an-
other's have foimd him out. But as yet I have not
convinced myself that the sort of thing we have been
considering is a sin at all, for it seems to deprave no
more than it dishonors ; or that it is what the dictionary

275

LITERATURE AND LIFE

(with very unnecessary brutality) calls a "crime"
and a "theft." If it is either, it is differently condi-
tioned, if not differently natured, from all other crimes
and thefts. These may be more or less artfully and
hopefully concealed, but plagiarism carries inevitable
detection with it. If you take a man's hat or coat out
of his hall, you may pawn it before the police overtake
you ; if you take his horse out of his stable, you maj'
ride it away beyond pursuit and sell it ; if you take his
purse out of his pocket, you may pass it to a pal in the
crowd, and easily prove your innocence. But if you
take his sermon, or his essay, or even his apposite re^
flection, you cannot escape discovery. The world is
full of idle people reading books, and they are only too
glad to act as detectives; they please their miserable
vanity by showing their alertness, and are proud to
bear witness against you in the court of parallel col-
umns. You have no safety in the obscurity of the
author from whom you take your own ; there is always
that most terrible reader, the reader of one book, who
knows that very author, and will the more indecently
hasten to bring you to the bar because he knows no
other, and wishes to display his erudition. A man
may escape for centuries and j^et be found out. In
the notorious case of William Shakespeare the offender
seemed finally secure of his prey; and yet one poor
lady, who ended in a lunatic asylum, was able to detect
him at last, and to restore the goods to their rightful
owner. Sir Francis Bacon.

In spite, however, of this almost absolute certainty
of exposure, plagiarism goes on as it has always gone
on ; and there is no probability that it will cease as long
as there are novelists, senators, divines, and journal-
ists hard pressed for ideas which they happen not to
have in mind at the time, and which they see going to
waste elsewhere. Now and then it takes a more vio-

276

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PLAGIARISM

lent form and becomes a real mania, as when the plagi-
arist openly claims and urges his right to a well-loiown
piece of literary property. When Mr. WiUiam Allen
Butler's famous poem of " Nothing to Wear " achieved
its extraordinary popularity, a yotmg girl declared and
apparently quite believed that she had written it and
lost the MS. in an omnibus. All her friends appar-
ently believed so, too ; and the friends of the different
gentlemen and ladies who claimed the authorship
of "Beautiful Snow" and "Rock Me to Sleep" were
ready to support them by affidavit against the real
authors of those pretty worthless pieces.

From all these facts it must appear to the philosophic
reader that plagiarism is not the simple "crime" or
" theft " that the lexicographers would have us believe.
It argues a strange and pecuhar courage on the part
of those who commit it or indulge it, since they are sure
of having it brought home to them, for they seem to
dread the exposure, though it involves no punishment
outside of themselves. Why do they do it, or, having
done it, why do they mind it, since the public does not?
Their temerity and their timidity are things almost
irreconcilable, and the whole position leaves one quite
puzzled as to what one would do if one's own pla-
giarisms were found out. But this is a mere question
of conduct, and of infinitely less interest than that of
the nature or essence of the thing itself.

PURITANISM IN AMERICAN FICTION

THE question whether the fiction which gives a
vivid impression of reality does truly represent
the conditions studied in it, is one of those inquiries
to which there is no very final answer. The most
bafiOing fact of such fiction is that its truths are self-
evident ; and if you go about to prove them you are in
some danger of shaking the convictions of those whom
they have persuaded. It will not do to afiSrm any-
thing wholesale concerning them; a hundred exam-
ples to the contrary present themselves if you know
the grotmd, and you are left in doubt of the verity which
you cannot gainsay. The most that you can do is to
appeal to your own consciousness, and that is not
proof to anybody else. Perhaps the best test in this
difficult matter is the quality of the art which created
the picture. Is it clear, simple, unaffected? Is it true
to human experience generally? If it is so, then it
cannot well be false to the special human experience it
deals with.

Not long ago I heard of something which amus-
ingly, which pathetically, illustrated the sense of real-
ity imparted by the work of one of our writers, whose
art is of the kind I mean. A lady was driving with a
young girl of the lighter-minded civilization of New
York through one of those little towns of the North

278

PURITANISM IN AMERICAN FICTION

Shore in Massachusetts, where the small, wooden
houses cling to the edges of the shallow bay, and the
schooners slip in and out on the hidden channels of
the salt meadows as if they were blown about through
the tall grass. She tried to make her feel the shy charm
of the place, that almost subjective beauty, which those
to the manner bom are so keenly awawe of in old-fash-
ioned New England villages; but she found that the
girl was not only not looking at the sad-colored cot-
tages, with their weather-worn shingle walls, their
grassy door-yards ht by patches of summer bloom,
and their shutterless windows with their close-drawn
shades, but she was resolutely averting her eyes from
them, and staring straightforward until she should be
out of sight of them altogether. She said that they
were terrible, and she knew that in each of them was
one of those dreary old women, or disappointed girls,
or unhappy wives, or bereaved mothers, she had read
of in Miss Wilkins's stories.

She had been too little sensible of the himior which
forms the relief of these stories, as it forms the relief
of the bare, duteous, conscientious, deeply individ-
ualized lives portrayed in them; and no doubt this
cannot make its f idl appeal to the heart of youth ach-
ing for their stoical sorrows. Without being so very
young, I, too, have found the humor hardly enough
at times, and if one has not the habit of experiencing
support in tragedy itself, one gets through a remote
New England village, at nightfall, say, rather limp
than otherwise, and in quite the mood that Miss Wil-
kins's bleaker studies leave one in. At mid-day, or
in the bright sunshine of the morning, it is quite pos-
sible to fling off the melancholy which breathes the
same note in the fact and the fiction ; and I have even
had some pleasure at such times in identif3dng this
or that one-story cottage with its lean-to as a Mary

279

LITERATURE AND LIFE

Wilkins house and in placing one of her muted dramas
in it. One cannot know the people of such places
without recognizing her types in them, and one cannot
know New England without owning the fidelity of
her stories to New England character, though, as I
have already suggested, quite another sort of stories
could be written which should as faithfully repre-
sent other phases of New England village life.

To the alien inquirer, however, I should be by no
means confident that their truth would evince itself,
for the reason that human nature is seldom on show
anywhere. I am perfectly certain of the truth of Tol-
stoy and Tourgu6nief to Russian life, yet I should not
be surprised if I went through Russia and met none
of their people. I should be rather more surprised if
I went through Italy and met none of Verga's or Fo-
gazzaro's, but that would be because I already knew
Italy a little. In fact, I suspect that the last delight
of truth in any art comes only to the connoisseur who
is as well acquainted with the subject as the artist him-
self. One must not be too severe in challenging the
truth of an author to life ; and one must bring a great
deal of sympathy and a great deal of patience to the
scrutiny. Types are very backward and shrinking
things, after all ; character is of such a mimosan sen-
sibility that if you seize it too abruptly its leaves are
apt to shut and hide all that is distinctive in it ; so that
it is not without some risk to an author's reputation
for honesty that he gives his readers the impression of
his truth.

The diflSculty with characters in fiction is that the
reader there finds them dramatized; not only their
actions, but also their emotions are dramatized; and

280

PURITANISM IN AMERICAN FICTION

the very same sort of persons when one meets them in
real life are recreantly undramatic. One mipht go
through a New England village and see Mar\- Wilkins
houses and Mary Wilkins people, and yet not witness
a scene nor hear a word such as one finds in her tales.
It is only too probable that the inhabitants one met
would say nothing quaint or humorous, or betray at
all the nature that she reveals in them ; and yet 1 should
not question her revelation on that account. The life
of New England, such as \hss Wilkins deals with, and
Miss Sarah 0. Jewett. and \hss Alice Brown, is not on
the surface, or not visibly so, except to the accustomed
eye. It is Puritanism scarcely animated at all by the
Puritanic theology. One must not be very posilnc
m such things, and 1 may be too bold in venturing to
say that while the belief of some New-Englanders ap-
proaches this theology the belief of most is now far
from it ; and yet its penetrating individualism so deep-
ly mSuenced the New England character that Puri-
tanism survives in the moral and mental make of the
people almost in its early strength. Conduct and
maimer conform to a dead religious ideal ; the wish
to be smcere, tlie wish to be just, tlie wish to be right-
eous are before the wish to be kind, merciful, himible.
A people are not a chosen people for half a dozen gen-
erations without acquiring a spiritual pride that re-
mains with them long aJter they cease to believe them-
selves chosen. They are often stiffened in the neck
and tliey are often hardened m the heart by it, to the
point of making them angular and cold : but they are
of an inveterate responsibility to a power higher than
themselves, and they are strengthened for any fate.
They are what we see in the siories which, perhaps,
hold the first place in American fiction.

As a matter of fact, the religion of New England is
not now so Puritanical as that of many parts of the

LITERATURE AND LIFE

South and West, and yet the inherited Puritanism
stamps the New England manner, and differences it
from the manner of the straightest sects elsewhere.
There was, however, always a revolt against Puritan-
ism when Puritanism was severest and securest; this
restdted in types of shiftlessness if not wickedness,
which have not yet been dtdy studied, and which wotdd
make the fortune of some novelist who cared to do a
fresh thing. There is also a sentimentaUty, or pseudo-
emotionaUty (I have not the right phrase for it), which
awaits fidl recognition in fiction. This e£Borescence
from the dust of systems and creeds, carried into nat-
ures left vacant by the ancestral doctrine, has scarce-
ly been noticed by the painters of New England man-
ners. It is often a last state of Unitarianism, which
prevailed in the larger towns and cities when the Cal-
vinistic theology ceased to be dominant, and it is often
an effect of the spiritualism so common in New Eng-
land, and, in fact, everywhere in America. Then,
there is a wide-spread love of literature in the country
towns and villages which has in great measure re-
placed the old interest in dogma, and which forms
with us an author's closest appreciation, if not his
best. But as yet Uttle hint of all this has got into the
short stories, and still less of that larger intellectual
life of New England, or that exalted beauty of char-
acter which tempts one to say that Puritanism was a
blessing if it made the New-Englanders what they are;
though one can always be glad not to have Uved among
them in the disciplinary period. Boston, the capital
of that New England nation which is fast losing itself
in the American nation, is no longer of its old literary
primacy, and yet most of our right thinking, our high
thinking, still begins there, and qualifies the thinking
of the country at large. The good causes, the generous
causes, are first befriended there, and in a wholesome

282

PURITANISM IN AMERICAN FICTION

sort the New England culture, as well as the New Eng-
land conscience, has imparted itself to the American
people.

Even the power of writing short stories, which we
suppose ourselves to have in such excellent degree,
has spread from New England. That is, indeed, the
home of the American short story, and it has there been
brought to such perfection in the work of Miss Wil-
kins, of Miss Jewett, of Miss Brown, and of that most
faithful, forgotten painter of maimers, Mrs. Rose Terry
Cook, that it presents upon the whole a truthful picture
of New England village life in some of its more obvious
phases. I say obvious because I must, but I have al-
ready said that this is a life which is very little obvious ;
and I should not blame any one who brought the por-
trait to the test of reality, and found it exaggerated,
overdrawn, and urmatural, though I should be per-
fectly sure that such a critic was wrong.

THE WHAT AND THE HOW IN ART

ONE of the things always enforcing itself upon
the consciousness of the artist in any sort is
the fact that those whom artists work for rarely care
for their work artistically. They care for it morally,
personally, partially. I susp)ect that criticism itself
has rather a muddled preference for the what over the
how, and that it is always haunted by a philistine
question of the material when it should, aesthetically
speaking, be concerned solely with the form.

The other night at the theatre I was witness of a
curious and amusing illustration of my point. They
were playing a most soul -filling melodrama, of the
sort which gives you assurance from the very first
that there will be no trouble in the end, but everything
will come out just as it should, no matter what ob-
stacles oppose themselves in the course of the action.
An over-ruling Providence, long accustomed to the
exigencies of the stage, could not fail to intervene at
the critical moment in behalf of innocence and virtue,
and the spectator never had the least occasion for
anxiety. Not unnaturally there was a black-hearted
villain in the piece; so very black-hearted that he
seemed not to have a single good impulse from first
to last. Yet he was, in the keeping of the stage Prov-
idence, as harmless as a blank cartridge, in spite

284

THE WHAT AND THE HOW IN ART

of his deadly aims. He accomplished no more mis-
chief, in fact, than if all his intents had been of the
best; except for the satisfaction afforded by the edi-
iying spectacle of his defeat and shame, he need not
have been in the play at all; and one might almost
have felt sorry for him, he was so continually ba£Bed.
But this was not enough for the audience, or for that
part of it which filled the gallery to the roof. Perhaps
he was such an uncommonly black-hearted villain,
so very, very cold-blooded in his wickedness that the
justice unsparingly dealt out to him by the dramatist
could not suffice. At any rate, the gallery took such
a vivid interest in his punishment that it had out
the actor who impersonated the wretch between all
the acts, and hissed him throughout his dehberate
passage across the stage before the curtain. The
hisses were not at all for the actor, but altogether for
the character. The performance was fairly good,
quite as good as the performance of any virtuous part
in the piece, and easily up to the level of other villan-
ous performances (I never find much nature in them,
perhaps because there is not much nature in villany
itself ; that is, villany pure and simple) ; but the mere
conception of the wickedness this bad man had at-
tempted was too much for an audience of the aver-
age popular goodness. It was only after he had taken
poison, and fallen dead before their eyes, that the
spectators forbore to visit him with a hvely proof of
their abhorrence ; apparently they did not care to " give
him a realizing sense that there was a punishment
after death," as the man in Lincoln's story did with
the dead dog.

The whole affair was very amusing at first, but it
has since put me upon thinking (I hke to be put upon

285

LITERATURE AND LIFE

thinking ; the eighteenth-century essayists were) that
the attitude of the audience towards this deplorable
reprobate is really the attitude of most readers of
books, lookers at pictures and statues, listeners to
music, and so on through the whole list of the arts.
It is absolutely different from the artist's attitude,
from the connoisseur's attitude; it is quite irreconcil-
able with their attitude, and yet I wonder if in the end
it is not what the artist works for. Art is not produced
for artists, or even for connoisseurs; it is produced
for the general, who can never view it otherwise than
morally, personally, partially, from their associations
and preconceptions.

Whether the e£fect with the general is what the artist
works for or not, he does not succeed without it. Their
brute liking or mislildng is the final test; it is uni-
versal suffrage that elects, after all. Only, in some
cases of this sort the polls do not close at four o'clock on
the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November,
but remain open forever, and the voting goes on. Still,
even the first day's canvass is important, or at least
significant. It will not do for the artist to electioneer,
but if he is beaten, he ought to ponder the causes of
his defeat, and question how he has failed to touch
the chord of imiversal interest. He is in the world
to make beauty and truth evident to his fellow-men,
who are as a rule incredibly stupid and ignorant of
both, but whose judgment he must nevertheless not
despise. If he can make something that they will
cheer, or something that they will hiss, he may not
have done any great thing, but if he has made some-
thing that they will neither cheer nor hiss, he may
well have his misgivings, no matter how well, how
finely, how truly he has done the thing.

This is very humiliating, but a tacit snub to one's
artist-pride such as one gets from public silence is

286

THE WHAT AND THE HOW IN ART

not a bad thing for one. Not long ago I was talking
about pictures with a painter, a very great painter,
to my thinking; one whose pieces give me the same
feeling I have from reading poetry; and I was ex-
cusing myself to him with respect to art, and perhaps
putting on a httle more modesty than I felt. I said
that I could enjoy pictures only on the Uterary side,
and could get no answer from my soul to those ex-
cellences of handling and execution which seemed
chiefly to interest painters. He repUed that it was a
confession of weakness in a painter if he appealed
merely or mainly to technical knowledge in the spec-
tator ; that he narrowed his field and dwarfed his work
by it; and that if he painted for painters merely, or
for the connoissetirs of painting, he was den3ring his
office, which was to say something clear and appreci-
able to all sorts of men in the terms of art. He even
insisted that a picture ought to tell a story.

The difficulty in humbling one's self to this view of
art is in the ease with which one may please the gen-
eral by art which is no ari Neither the play nor
the playing that I saw at the theatre when the actor
was hissed for the wickedness of the villain he was
personating, was at all fine; and yet I perceived, on
reflection, that they had achieved a supreme effect. If
I may be so confidential, I will say that I shotdd be
very sorry to have written that piece; yet I should be
very proud if, on the level I chose and with the quality
I cared for, I could invent a villain that the poptdace
would have out and hiss for his surpassing wicked-
ness. In other words, I think it a thousand pities
whenever an artist gets so far away from the general,
so far within himself or a little circle of amateurs, that
his highest and best work awakens no response in
the multitude. I am afraid this is rather the danger
of the arts among us, and how to escape it is not so

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LITERATURE AND LIFE

very plain. It makes one sick and sorry often to see
how cheaply the applause of the common people is
won. It is not an infallible test of merit, but if it is
wanting to any performance, we may be pretty sure
it is not the greatest performance.

The paradox lies in wait here, as in most other hu-
man affairs, to confound us, and we try to ba£Be it,
in this way and in that. We talk, for instance, of
poetry for poets, and we fondly imagine that this is
different from talking of cookery for cooks. Poetry is
not made for poets; they have enough poetry of their
own, but it is made for people who are not poets. If
it does not please these, it may still be poetry, but it
is poetry which has failed of its truest office. It is
none the less its truest office because some very wretch-
ed verse seems often to do it.

The logic of such a fact is not that the poet should
try to achieve this truest office of his art by means of
doggerel, but that he should study how and where
and why the beauty and the truth he has made manifest
are wanting in universal interest, in human appeal.
Leaving the drama out of the question, and the theatre
which seems now to be seeking only the favor of the
dull rich, I believe that there never was a time or a
race more open to the impressions of beauty and of
truth than ours. The artist who feels their divine
charm, and longs to impart it, has now and here a
chance to impart it more widely than ever artist had
in the world before. Of course, the means of reach-
ing the widest range of humanity are the simple and
the elementary, but there is no telling when the com-
plex and the recondite may not imiversally please.

288

THE WHAT AND THE HOW IN ART

The art is to make them plain to every one, for every
one has them in him. Lowell used to say that Shake-
speare was subtle, but in letters a foot high.

The painter, sculptor, or author who pleases the
polite only has a success to be proud of as far as it
goes, and to be ashamed of that it goes no further.
He need not shrink from giving pleasure to the vulgar
because bad art pleases them. It is part of his reason
for being that he should please them, too; and if he
does not it is a proof that he is wanting in force, how-
ever much he abounds in fineness. Who would not
wish his picture to draw a crowd about it? Who would
not wish his novel to sell five hundred thousand copies,
for reasons besides the sordid love of gain which I
am told governs novelists? One should not really
wish it any the less because chromos and historical
romances are popular.

Sometime, I believe, the artist and his public will
draw nearer together in a mutual understanding,
though perhaps not in our present conditions. I put
that imderstanding off till the good time when life
shall be more than living, more even than the question
of getting a living; but in the mean time I think that
the artist might very well study the springs of feeling
in others; and if I were a dramatist I think I should
quite humbly go to that play where they hiss the villain
for his villany, and inquire how his wickedness had
been made so appreciable, so vital, so personal. Not
being a dramatist, I still cannot indulge the greatest
contempt of that play and its public.
19

POLITICS OF AMERICAN AUTHORS

NO thornier theme could well be suggested than I
was once invited to consider by an Englishman
who wished to know how far American politicians were
scholars^ and how far American authors took part in
politics. In my mind I first revolted from the inquiry,
and then I cast about, in the fascination it began to
have for me, to see how I might handle it and prick
myself least. In a sort, which it would take too long
to set forth, politics are very intimate matters with us,
and if one were to deal quite frankly with the politics
of a contemporary author, one might accuse one's self
of an unwarrantable personality. So, in what I shall
have to say in answer to the question asked me, I shall
seek above all things not to be quite frank.

My uncandor need not be so jealously guarded in
speaking of authors no longer living. Not to go too
far back among these, it is perfectly safe to say that
when the slavery question began to divide all kinds
of men among us, Lowell, Longfellow, Whittier, Cur-
tis, Emerson, and Bryant more or less promptly and
openly took sides against slaver3^ Holmes was very
much later in doing so, but he made up for his long
delay by his final strenuousness ; as for Hawthorne, he
was, perhaps, too essentially a spectator of life to be

290

POLITICS OF AMERICAN AUTHORS

classed with either party, though his associations, if not
his sympathies, were with the Northern men who had
Southern principles until the civil war came. After
the war, when our political questions ceased to be
moral and emotional and became economic and socio-
logical, Uterary men found their standing with greater
difl&culty. They remained mostly Republicans, be-
cause the Repubhcans were the anti-slavery party,
and were still waging war against slavery in their
nerves.

I should say that they also continued very largely
the emotional tradition in politics, and it is doubtful
if in the nature of things the politics of literary men
can ever be otherwise than emotional. In fact, though
the questions may no longer be so, the politics of vast-
ly the greater number of Americans are so. Nothing
else would accoimt for the fact that during the last
ten or fifteen years men have remained Republicans
and remained Democrats upon no tangible issues ex-
cept of ofl&ce, which could practically concern only a
few hundreds or thousands out of every million voters.
Party fealty is praised as a virtue, and disloyalty to
party is treated as a species of incivism next in wicked-
ness to treason. If any one were to ask me why then
American authors were not active in American poUtics,
as they once were, I should feel a certain diffidence in
replying that the question of other people's accession
to office was, however emotional, unimportant to them
as compared with literary questions. I shotdd have
the more diffidence because it might be retorted that
literary men were too unpractical for poUtics when
they did not deal with moral issues.

Such a retort would be rather mild and civil, as
things go, and might even be regarded as compliment-
ary. It is not our custom to be tender with any one
who doubts if any actuaUty is right, or might not be

291

LITERATURE AND LIFE

bettered, especially in public a£fairs. We are apt to
call such a one out of his name and to punish him for
opinions he has never held. This may be a better
reason than either given why authors do not take part
in politics with us. They are a thin-skinned race, fas-
tidious often, and always averse to hard knocks; they
are rather modest, too, and distrust their fitness to lead,
when they have quite a firm faith in their convictions.
They hesitate to urge these in the face of practical
poUticians, who have a confidence in their abiUty to
settle all a£fairs of State not surpassed even by that of
business men in dealing with economic questions.

I ihink it is a pity that our authors do not go into
priitics at least for the sake of the material it would
yield them; but really they do not. Our poUtics are
often vulgar, but they are very picturesque; yet, so
far, our fiction has shimned them even more decidedly
than it has shunned our good society — which is not
picturesque or apparently anything but a tiresome
adaptation of the sort of drama that goes on abroad
under the same name. In nearly the degree that our
authors have dealt with our politics as material, they
have given the practical politicians only too much rea-
son to doubt their insight and their capacity to un-
derstand the mere machinery, the simplest motives, of
political life.

There are exceptions, of course, and if my promise
of reticence did not withhold me I might name some
striking ones. Privately and unprof essionally, I think
our authors take as vivid an interest in public affairs
as any other class of our citizens, and I should be sorry
to think that they took a less intelligent interest. Now
and then, but only very rarely, one of them speaks out,

292

POLITICS OF AMERICAN AUTHORS

and usually on the unpopular side. In this event he
is spared none of the penalties with which we like to
visit difference of opinion; rather they are accumu-
lated on him.

Such things are not serious, and they are such as
no serious man need shrink from, but they have a bear-
ing upon what I am trying to explain, and in a certain
measure they account for a certain attitude in our lit-
erary men. No one likes to have stones, not to say
mud, thrown at him, though they are not meant to
hurt him badly and may be partly thrown in joke.
But it is pretty certain that if a man not in politics takes
them seriously, he will have more or less mud, not to
say stones, thrown at him. He might burlesque or
caricature them, or misrepresent them, with safety;
but if he spoke of public questions with heart and coo-
science, he could not do it with impunity, unless he
were authorized to do so by some practical relation to
them. I do not mean that then he would escape ; but
in this country, where there were once supposed to be
no classes, people are more strictly classified than in
any other. Business to the business man, law to the
lawyer, medicine to the physician, politics to the poli-
tician, and letters to the literary man ; that is the rule.
One is not expected to transcend his function, and
commonly one does not. We keep each to his last, as
if there were not human interests, civic interests, which
bad a higher claim than the last upon our thinking
and fcehng. The tendency has grown upon us sev-
erally and collectively through the long persistence of
our prosperity ; if pubhc affairs were going ill, private
aflairs were going so well that we did not mind the
others; and we Americans are, I think, mendton£d in
our improvidence. We are so essentially of to-day
that we behave as if to-morrow no more concerned us
than yesterday. We have taught ourselves to believe
29i

LITERATURE AND LIFE

that it will all come out right in the end so long that
we have come to act upon our belief ; we are optimistic
fatalists.

Ill

The turn which our politics have taken towards
economics, if I may so phrase the rise of the questions
of labor and capital, has not largely attracted literary
men. It is doubtful whether Edward Bellamy him-
self, whose fancy of better conditions has become the
abiding faith of vast ntunbers of Americans, supposed
that he was entering the field of practical pohtics, or
dreamed of influencing elections by his hopes of eco-
nomic equahty. But he virtually founded the Populist
party, which, as the vital principle of the Democratic
party, came so near electing its candidate for the Presi-
dency some years ago; and he is to be named first
among our authors who have dealt with politics on their
more himian side since the days of the old anti-slavery
agitation. Without too great disregard of the reticence
concerning the living which I promised myself, I may
mention Dr. Edward Everett Hale and Colonel Thomas
Wentworth Higginson as prominent authors who en-
couraged the Nationalist movement eventuating in
Populism, though they were never Populists. It may
be interesting to note that Dr. Hale and Colonel Hig-
ginson, who later came together in their sociological
sympathies, were divided by the schism of 1884, when
the first remained with the Repubhcans and the last
went ofiF to the Democrats. More remotely. Colonel
Higginson was anti- slavery almost to the point of
Abolitionism, and he led a negro regiment in the war.
Dr. Hale was of those who were less radically opposed
to slavery before the war, but hardly so after it came.
Since the war a sort of refluence of the old anti-slavery

294

POLITICS OF AMERICAN AUTHORS

pontics carried from his moorings in Southern tradi-
tion Mr. George W. Cable, who, against the white sen-
timent of his section, sided with the former slaves, and
would, if the indignant renunciation of his fellow-
Southerners could avail, have consequently ceased to
be the first of Southern authors, though he would still
have continued the author of at least one of the greatest
American novels.

If I must bum my ships behind me in alleging these
modem instances, as I seem really to be doing, I may
mention Mr. R. W. Gilder, the poet, as an author who
has taken part in the politics of municipal reform.
Mr. Hamlin Garland has been known from the first as
a zealous George man, or single-taxer. Mr. John Hay,
Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, and Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge
are Republican politicians, as well as recognized liter-
ary men. Mr. Joel Chandler Harris, when not writing
Uncle Remus, writes political articles in a leading
Southern journal. Mark Twain is a leading anti-im-
perialist.

I am not sure whether I have made out a case for
our authors or against them; perhaps I have not done
so badly; but I have certainly not tried to be exhaust-
ive ; the exhaustion is so apt to extend from the sub-
ject to the reader, and I wish to leave him in a condition
to judge for himseU whether American literary men
take part in American politics or not. I think they
bear their share, in the quieter sort of way which we
hope (it may be too fondly) is the American way. They
are none of them politicians in the Latin sort. Few,
if any, of our statesmen have come forward with small
volumes of verse in their hands as they used to do in
Spain ; none of our poets or historians have been chosen

295

LITERATURE AND LIFE

Presidents of the republic as has happened to their
French confrires ; no great novehst of ours has been
exiled as Victor Hugo was, or atrociously mishandled
as Zola has been, though I have no doubt that if, for
instance, one had once said the Spanish war wrong he
would be pretty generally conspui. They have none of
them reached the heights of political power, as several
English authors have done ; but they have often been
ambassadors, ministers, and consuls, though they may
not often have been appointed for political reasons.
I fancy they discharge their duties in voting rather
faithfully, though they do not often take part in cau-
cuses or conventions.

As for the other half of the question — ^how far Amer-
ican politicians are scholars — one's first impulse would
be to say that they never were so. But I have always
had an heretical belief that there were snakes in Ireland ;
and it may be some such disposition to question au-
thority that keeps me from yielding to this impulse.
The law of demand and supply alone ought to have
settled the question in favor of the presence of the
scholar in our politics, there has been such a cry for
him among us for almost a generation past. Perhaps
the response has not been very direct, but I imagine that
our politicians have never been quite so destitute of
scholarship as they would sometimes make appear.
I do not think so many of them now write a good style,
or speak a good style, as the politicians of forty, or
fifty, or sixty years ago; but this may be merely part
of the impression of the general worsening of things,
familiar after middle life to every one's experience,
from the beginning of recorded time. If something
not so hterary is meant by scholarship, if a study of
finance, of economics, of international affairs is in
question, it seems to go on rather more to their own
satisfaction than that of their critics. But without

296

POLITICS OF AMERICAN AUTHORS

being always very proud of the result, and without
professing to know the facts very profoundly, one
may still suspect that under an outside by no means
academic there is a process of thinking in our states-
men which is not so loose, not so unscientific, and not
even so imscholarly as it might be supposed. It is
not the effect of specific training, and yet it is the effect
of training. I do not find that the matters dealt with
are an3nvhere in the world intrusted to experts; and
in this sense scholarship has not been called to the aid
of our legislation or administration; but still I should
not like to say that none of our poUticians were scholars.
That would be offensive, and it might not be true. In
fact, I can think of several whom I should be tempted
to call scholars if I were not just here recalled to a sense
of my purpose not to deal quite frankly with this in-
quiry.

STORAGE

IT has been the belief of certain kindly philosophers
that if the one half of mankind knew how the
other half lived, the two halves might be brought to-
gether in a family affection not now so observable
in human relations. Probably if this knowledge
were perfect, there would still be things to bar the
perfect brotherhood; and yet the knowledge itself is
so interesting, if not so salutary as it has been imag-
ined, that one can hardly refuse to impart it if one
has it, and can reasonably hop)e, in the advantage of
the ignorant, to find one's excuse with the better in-
formed.

City and country are still so widely apart in every
civilization that one can safely count upon a reciprocal
strangeness in many every-day things. For instance,
in the country, when people break up house-keeping,
they sell their household goods and gods, as they did
in cities fifty or a hundred years ago ; but now in cities
they simply store them; and vast warehouses in all
the principal towns have been devoted to their storage.
The warehouses are of all typ)es, from dusty lofts over
stores, and ammoniacal lofts over stables, to buildings
offering acres of space, and carefully planned for the
purpose. They are more or less fire-proof, slow-burn-
ing, or briskly combustible, like the dwellings they
have devastated. But the modem tendency is to a
typ)e where flames do not destroy, nor moth corrupt,

298

STORAGE

nor thieves break through and steal. Such a ware-
house is a city in itself, laid out in streets and avenues,
with the private tenements on either hand duly num-
bered, and accessible only to the tenants or their order.
The aisles are concreted, the doors are iron, and the
roofs are ceiled with iron ; the whole place is heated by
steam and lighted by electricity. Behind the iron
doors, which in the New York warehouses must num-
ber hundreds of thousands, and throughout all our
other cities, millions, the furniture of a myriad house-
holds is stored — the effects of people who have gone
to Europ)e, or broken up house-keeping provisionally
or definitively, or have died, or been divorced. They
are the dead bones of homes, or their ghosts, or their
yet living bodies held in hjrpnotic trances, destined
again in some future time to animate some house or
fiat anew. In certain cases the spell lasts for many
years, in others for a few, and in others yet it prolongs
itself indefinitely.

I may mention the case of one owner whom I saw
visiting the warehouse to take out the household stuff
that had lain there a long fifteen years. He had been
all that while in Europe, expecting any day to come
home and begin life again in his own land. That
dream had passed, and now he was taking his stuff
out of storage and shipping it to Italy. I did not envy
him his feelings as the parts of his long-dead past rose
round him in formless resurrection. It was not that
they were all broken or defaced. On the contrary,
they were in a state of preservation far more heart-
breaking than any decay. In well-managed storage
warehouses the things are handled with scrupulous
care, and they are so packed into the appointed rooms
that if not disturbed they could suffer little harm in
fifteen or fifty years. The places are wonderfully
well kept, and if you will visit them, say in midwinter,

299

LITERATURE AND LIFE

after the fall influx of furniture has all been hidden
away behind the iron doors of the several cells, you shall
find their far-branching corridors scrupulously swept
and dusted, and shall walk up and down their concrete
length with some such sense of secure finality as you
would experience in pacing the aisle of your family vault.
That is what it comes to. One may feign that these
storage warehouses are cities, but they are really cemr
eteries: sad columbaria on whose shelves are stowed
exanimate things once so intimately of their owners'
hves that it is with the sense of looking at pieces and
bits of one's dead self that one revisits them. If one
takes the fragments out to fit them to new circum-
stance, one finds them not only uncomformable and
incapable, but so volubly confidential of the associa-
tions in which they are steeped, that one wishes to
hurry them back to their cell and lock it upon them
forever. One feels then that the old way was far better,
and that if the things had been auctioned off, and
scattered up and down, as chance willed, to serve new
uses with people who wanted them enough to pay for
them even a tithe of their cost, it would have been wiser.
Failing this, a fire seems the only thing for them, and
their removal to the cheaper custody of a combustible or
slow-burning warehouse the best recourse. Desperate
people, aging husbands and wives, who have attempted
the reconstruction of their homes with these

"Portions and parcels of the dreadful past"

have been known to wish for an earthquake, even,
that would involve their belongings in an indiscrimi-
nate ruin.

In fact, each new start in life should be made with
material new to you, if comfort is to attend the enter-

300

STORAGE

prise. It is not only sorrowful but it is futile to store
your possessions, if you hope to find the old happiness
in taking them out and using them again. It is not
that they will not go into place, after a fashion, and
perform their old office, but that the pang they will
inflict through (he suggestion of the other places where
they ser\'ed their purpose in other years will be only
the keener for the perfection with which they do it
now. If they cannot be sold, and if no fire comes
down from heaven to consume them, then they had
better be stored with no thought of ever taking them
out again.

That will be expensive, or it will be inexpensive,
according to the sort of storage they are put into. The
inexperienced in such matters may be surprised, and
if they have hearts they may be grieved, to learn
that the fire-proof storage of the furniture of the aver-
age house would equal the rent of a very comfortable
domicile in a small town, or a farm by which a family's
hving can be earned, with a decent dwelling in which
it can be sheltered. Yet the space required is not
very great; three fair -sized rooms will bold every-
thing; and there is sometimes a fierce satisfaction
in seeing how closely the things that once stood largely
about, and seemed to fill ample parlors and chambers,
can be packed away. To be sure they are not in their
familiar attitudes; they he on their sides or backs,
or stand upon their heads ; between the legs of library
or dining tables are stuffed all kinds of minor movables,
with cushions, pillows, pictures, cunningly adjusted
to the environment ; and mattresses pad the walls, or
interpose their soft bulk between pieces of furniture
that would otherwise rend each other. Carpets sewn
in cotton against moths, and rugs in long rolls; the
piano hovering under its ample frame a whole brood
of helpless little guitars, mandolins, and banjos, and
301

LITERATURE AND LIFE

supporting on its broad back a bulk of lighter cases
to the fire-proof ceiling of the cell; paintings in boxes
indistinguishable outwardly from their companioning
mirrors; barrels of china and kitchen utensils, and
all the what-not of householding and house- keeping
contribute to the repletion.

There is a science observed in the arrangement of
the various effects; against the rear wall and packed
along the floor, and then in front of and on top of these,
is built a sup)erstructure of the things that may be
first wanted, in case of removal, or oftenest wanted
in some exigency of the homeless hfe of the owners,
pending removal. The lightest and shghtest articles
float loosely about the door, or are interwoven in a
kind of fabric just within, and curtaining the pon-
derous mass behind. The effect is not so artistic as
the mortuary mosaics which the Roman Capuchins
design with the bones of their dead brethren in the
crypt of their church, but the warehousemen no doubt
have their just pride in it, and feel an artistic pang in
its provisional or final disturbance.

It had better never be disturbed, for it is disturbed
only in some futile dream of returning to the past;
and we never can return to the past on the old terms.
It is well in all things to accept life implicitly, and
when an end has come to treat it as the end, and not
vainly mock it as a suspense of function. When
the poor break up their homes, with no immediate
hope of foimding others, they must sell their belong-
ings because they cannot afford to pa^"^ storage on
them. The rich or richer store their household effects,
and cheat themselves with the illusion that they are
going some time to rehabilitate with them just such
a home as they have dismantled. But the illusion
probably deceives nobody so httle as those who cherish
the vain hope. As long as they cherish it, however

302

STORAGE

— and they must cherish it till their furniture or them-
selves fall to dust — they cannot begin life anew, as
the poor do who have kepi nothing of the sort to link
them to the past. This is one of the disabilities of
the prosperous, %vho will probably not be relieved of
it till some means of storing the owner as well as the
furniture is invented. In the immense range of modern
ingenuity, this is perhaps not impossible. Why not,
while we are still m life, some sweet oblivious antidote
\ which shall drug us against memory, and after time
shall elapse for the reconstruction of a new home in
place of the old, shall repossess us of ourselves as un-
changed as the things with which we shall again
array it? Here is a pretty idea for some dreamer to
spin into the 51my fabric of a romance, and I hand-
somely make a present of it to the first comer. If
the dreamer is of the right quality he will know how
to make the reader feel that with the universal long-
ing to return to former conditions or circumstances it
must always be a mistake to do so, and he will subtly
insinuate the disappointment and discomfort of the
stored personahty in resuming its old relations. With
that just mixture of the comic and pathetic which
we desire in romance, he will leach convincingly that
a stored personality is to be desired only if il is per-
manently stored, with the implication of a like finality
in the storage of its belongings.

Save in some signal exception, a thing taken out

of storage cannot be established in its former function

I without a sense of its comparative inadequacy. It

\ stands in the old place, it serves the old use, and yet

a new thing would be better; it would even in some

subtle wise be more appropriate, if I may indulge so

audacious a paradox : for the time is new, and so will

be all the subconscious keeping in which our lives

are mainly passed. We are supposed to have associa-

303

LITERATURE AND LIFE

lions with the old things which render them precious,
but do not the associations rather render them painful?
If that is true of the inanimate things, how much truer
it is of those personahties which once environed and
furnished our lives I Take the article of old friends,
for instance: has it ever happened to the reader to
witness the encounter of old friends after the lapse of
years? Such a meeting is conventionally imagined
to be full of tender joy, a rapture that vents itself in
manly teare, perhaps, and certainly in womanly tears.
But really is it any such emotion? Honestly is not
it a cruel embarrassment, which all the hypocritical
pretences cannot hide? The old friends smile and
laugh, and babble incoherently at one another, but
are they genuinely glad? Is not each wishing the
other at that end of the earth from which he came?
Have they any use for each other such as people of
imbroken associations have?

I have lately been privy to the reunion of two old
comrades who are bound together more closely than
most men in a community of interests, occupations,
and ideals. During a long separation they had kept
account of each other's opinions as well as experiences;
they had exchanged letters, from time to time, in which
they opened their minds fully to each other, and found
themselves constantly in accord. When they met
they made a great shouting, and each pretended that
he found the other just what he used to be. They
talked a long, long time, fighting the invisible enemy
which they felt between them. The enemy was habit,
the habit of other minds and hearts, the daily use of
persons and things which in their separation they had
not had in common. When the old friends parted
they promised to meet every day, and now, since their
lines had been cast in the same places again, to repair
the ravage of the envious years, and become again

304

STORAGE

to each other all that they had ever been. But though
they Uve in the same town, and often dine at the same
table, and belong to the same club, yet they have not
grown together again. They have grown more and
more apart, and are uneasy in each other's presence,
tacitly self-reproachf u! for the same effect which neither
of them could avert or repair. They had been re-
spectively in storage, and each, in taking the other
out, has experienced in him the unfitness which grows
upon the things put away for a time and reinstated
in a former function.

I have not touched upon these facts of life, without
the purpose of finding some way out of the coil. There
seems none better than the counsel of keeping one's
face set well forward, and one's eyes fixed steadfastlj'
upon the future. This is the hint we will get from
nature if we will heed her, and note how she never
recurs, never stores or takes out of storage. Fancy
rehabiUtatmg one's first love : how nature would mock
at thati We cannot go back and be the men and
women we were, any more than we can go back and
be children. As we grow older, each year's change
in us is more chasmal and complete. There is no
ehxir whose magic will recover us to ourselves as we
were last year; but perhaps we shall return to our-
selves more and more in the times, or the eternity,
to come. Some instinct or inspiration implies the
promise of this, but only on condition that we shall
not cling to the life that has been ours, and hoard its
mummified image in our hearts. We must not seek
to store ourselves, but must part with what we were
for the use and behoof of others, as the poor part with
their worldly gear when they move from one place to
305

LITERATURE AND LIFE

another. It is a curious and significant property of
our outworn characteristics that, hke our old furniture,
they will ser\'e admirably in the life of some other,
and that this other can profitably make them his when
we can no lonp^er keep them ours, or ever hope to re-
sume them. They not only go down to successive
generations, but they spread beyond our lineages,
and serve the turn of those whom we never knew to be
within the circle of our influence.

CiviUzation imparts itself by some such means, and
the lower classes are clothed in the cast conduct of the
upper, which if it had been stored would have left the
inferiors rude and barbarous. We have only to think
how socially naked most of us would be if we had not
had the beautiful manners of our exclusive society to
put on at each change of fashion when it dropped them.

All earthly and material things should be worn
out with use, and not jjreserved against decay by any
unnatural artifice. Even when broken and disabled
from overuse they have a kind of respectability which
must commend itself to the observer, and which par-
takes of the pensive grace of ruin. An old table with
one leg gone, and slowly lapsing to decay in the wood-
shed, is the emblem of a fitter order than the same
table, with all its legs intact, stored with the rest of
the furniture from a broken home. Spinning-wheels
gathering dust in the garret of a house that is itself
falling to pieces have a dignity that deserts them when
they are dragged from their refuge, and furbished
up with ribbons and a tuft of fresh tow, and made
to sen^e the hollow occasions of bric-^-brac, as they
were a few years ago. A pitcher broken at the foun-
tain, or a battered kettle on a rubbish heap, is a vener-
able object, but not crockery and copper- ware stored
in the possibility of future need. However carefully
handed do>^Ti from one generation to another, the

306

STORAGE

old objects have a lorlom incongruity in their suc-
cessive surroundings which appeals to the compassion
rather than the veneration of the witness.

It was from a truth deeply mystical that Hawthorne
declared against any sort of permanence in the dwell-
ings of men, and held that each generation should
newly house itself. He preferred the perishability
of the wooden American house to the durability of
the piles of brick or stone which in Europe affected
him as with some moral miasm from the succession
of sires and sons and grandsons that had died out of
them. But even of such structures as these it is im-
pressive how little the earth makes with the passage
of time. Where once a great city of them stood, you
shall find a few tottering walls, scarcely more mindful
of the past than " the cellar and the well" which Holmes
marked as the ultimate monuments, the last witnesses,
to the existence of our more transitory habitations.
It is the law of the patient sun that everything under
it shall decay, and if by reason of some swift calamity.
some fiery cataclysm, the perishable shall be over-
taken by a fate that fixes it in unwasting arrest, it
cannot be felt that the law has been set aside in the
interest of men's happiness or cheerfulness. Neither
Pompeii nor Herculaneum invites the gayety o( the spec-
tator, who as he walks their disinterred thoroughfares
has the weird sense of taking a former civilization out
of storage, and the ache of findmg it wholly unadapted
10 the actual world As far as his comfort is concerned,
it had been far better that those cities had not been
stored, but had fallen to the ruin that has overtaken all
their contemporaries.

No, good friend, sir or madam, as the case may be.
but most likely madam: if you are about to break

LITERATURE AND LIFE

up your household for any indefinite period, and are
not so poor that you need sell your things, be warned
against putting them in storage, unless of the most
briskly combustible type. Better, far better, give
them away, and disperse them by that means to a
continuous use that shall end in using them up; or
if no one will take them, then hire a vacant lot, some-
where, and devote them to the flames. By that means
you shall bear witness against a custom that insults
the order of nature, and crowds the cities with the
cemeteries of dead homes, where there is scarcely space
for the living homes. Do not vainly fancy that you
shall take your stuff out of storage and find it adapted
to the ends that it served before it was put in. You
will not be the same, or have the same needs or desires,
when you take it out, and the new place which you
shall hope to equip with it wiU receive it with cold reluc-
tance, or openly refuse it, insisting upon forms and di-
mensions that render it ridiculous or impossible. The
law is that nothing taken out of storage is the same as it
was when put in, and this law, hieroglyphed in those rude
graffiti apparently inscribed by accident in the process
of removal, has only such exceptions as prove the rule.
The world to which it has rettuned is not the same,
and that makes all the difference. Yet, truth and beau-
ty.do Jiot change, however the moods Jand-^aaluQns
change,. The ideals remain, and these alone you can
go back to, secure of finding them the same, to-day and
to-morrow, that they were yesterday. This perhaps is
because they have never been in storage, but in con-
stant use, while the moods and fashions have been put
away and taken out a thousand times. Most people
have never had ideals, but only moods and fasdiions,
but such people, least of all, are fitted to find in them
that pleasure of the rococo which consoles the idealist
when the old moods and fashions reappear.

308

"FLOATING DOWN THE RIVER ON THE 0-HI-O"

THERE was not much promise of pleasure in the
sodden afternoon of a mid -March day at Pitts-
burg, where the smoke of a thousand foundry chim-
neys gave up trying to rise through the thick, soft
air, and fell with the constant rain which it dyed its
own black. But early memories stirred joyfully in the
two travellers in whose consciousness I was making
my tour, at sight of the famihar stem-wheel steam-
boat lying beside the wharf -boat at the foot of the
dilapidated levee, and doing its best to represent
the hundreds of steamboats that used to lie there in
the old days. It had the help of three others in its
generous effort, and the levee itself made a gallant
pretence of being crowded with freight, and succeeded
in displa>-ing several saturated piles of barrels and
agricultural implements on the irregular pavement
whose wheel-worn stones, in long stretches, were sunk-
en out of sight in their parent mud. The boats and
the levee were jointly quite equal to the demand made
upon them by the Ught-hearted youngsters of sixty-
five and seventy, who were setting out on their journey
in fulfilment of a long-cherished dream, and for whom
much less freight and much fewer boats would have re-
habilitated the past.

When they mounted the broad stairway, tidily

strewn with straw to save it from the mud of careless

309

LITERATURE AND LIFE

boots, and entered the long saloon of the steamboat,
the promise of their fancy was more than made good
for them. From the clerk's office, where they eagerly
paid their fare, the saloon stretched two hundred feet
by thirty away to the stem, a cavernous splendor of
white paint and gilding, starred with electric bulbs,
and fenced at the stern with wide windows of painted
glass. Midway between the great stove in the bow
where the men were herded, and the great stove at the
stem where the women kept themselves in the seclu-
sion which the tradition of Western river travel still
guards, after wellnigh a hundred years, they were
given ample state-rooms, whose appointments so ex-
I actly dupHcated those they remembered from far-ofiF
days that they could have beheved themselves awak-
ened from a dream of insubstantial time, with the
events in which it had seemed to lapse, mere feints of
experience. When they sat down at the supper-table
and were served with the sort of belated steamboat
dinner which it recalled as \'ividly, the kind, sooty
faces and snowy aprons of those who ser\'ed them
were so quite those of other days that they decided
all repasts since were mere Barmecide feasts, and
made up for the long fraud practised upon them with
the appetites of the year 1850.

A rigider sincerity than shall be practised here might
ovm. that the table of the good steamboat Avanek left
something to be desired, if tested by more sophisti-
cated cuisines, but in the article of corn-bread it was
of an inapproachable pre-eminence. This bread was
made of the white com which North knows not, nor
the hapless East; and the buckwheat cakes at break-

310

"FLOATING DOWN THE RIVER ON THE O-HI-O "

fast were without blame, and there was a simple va-
riety in the abundance which ought to have satisfied
if it did not flatter the choice. The only thing that
seemed strangely, that seemed sadly, anomalous in
a land flowing with ham and bacon was that the Avo-
nek had not imagined providing either for the guests,
no one of whom could have had a rehgious scruple
against them.

The thing, indeed, which was first and last con-
spicuous in the passengers, was their perfectly Amer-
ican race and character. At the start, when with an
acceptable observance of Western steamboat tradition
the Avonek left her wharf eight hours behind her ap-
pointed time, there were very few passengers; but
they began to come aboard at the httle towns of both
shores as she swam southward and westward, till all
the tables were so full that, in observance of another
Western steamboat tradition, one did well to stand
guard over his chair lest some other who liked it should
seize it earUer. The passengers were of every age
and condition, except perhaps the highest condition,
and they seemed none the worse for being more like
Americans of the middle of the last century than of
the beginning of this. Their fashions were of an ap-
proximation to those of the present, but did not scru-
pulously study detail; their manners were those of
simpler if not sincerer days.

The women kept to themselves at their end of the
saloon, aloof from the study of any but their husbands
or kindred, but the men were everywhere else about,
and open to observation. They were not so open to
conversation, for your mid- Westerner is not a facile,
though not an unwilling, talker. They sat by their
tall, cast-iron stove (of the oval pattern tm varied since
the earhest stove of the region), and silently rumi-
nated their tobacco and spat into the clustering cus-

LITERATURE AND LIFE

pidors at their feet. They would always answer civ-
illy if questioned, and oftenest intelligently, but they
asked nothing in return, and they seemed to have
none of that curiosity once known or imagined in them
by Dickens and other averse aUens. They had most-
ly faces of resolute powei, and such a looking of know-
ing exactly what they wanted as would not have prom-
ised well for any collectively or individually opposing
them. If ever the sense of human equaUty has ex-
pressed itself in the human countenance it speaks un-
mistakably from American faces like theirs.

They were neither handsome nor unhandsome; but
for a few striking exceptions, they had been impar-
tially treated by nature; and where they were nota-
bly plain their look of force made up for their lack
of beauty. They were notably handsomest in a tall
young fellow of a lean face, absolute Greek in pro-
file, amply thwarted with a branching mustache, and
slender of figure, on whom his clothes, lustrous from
much sitting down and leaning up, grew like the bark
on a tree, and who moved slowly and gently about,
and S]X)ke with a low, kind voice. In his yoimg come-
liness he was like a god, as the gods were fancied in
the elder world : a chewing and a spitting god, indeed,
but divine in his passionless calm.

He was a serious divinity, and so were all the mid-
Western human -beings about him. One heard no
joking either of the dapper or cockney sort of cities, or
the quaint graphic phrasing of Eastern country folk;
and it may have been not far enough West for the true
Western himior. At any -rate, -whenJiiey..wes& not
silent these men still were serious.

The women were apparently serious, too, and where
they were associated with the men were, if they were
not really subject, strictly abeyant, in the spectator's
eye. The average of them was certainly not above

312

"FLOATING DOWN THE RIVER ON THE 0-HI-O "

the American woman's average in good looks, though
one yotmg mother of six children, well grown save
for the baby in her arms, was of the type some mas-
ters loved to paint, with eyes set wide under low-arched
brows. She had the placid dignity and the air of
motherly goodness which goes fitly with such beauty,
and the sight of her was such as to disperse many of
the misgivings that beset the beholder who looketh
upon the woman when she is New. As she seemed,
so any man might wish to remember his mother seem-
ing.

All these river folk, who came from the farms and
villages along the stream, and never from the great
towns or cities, were well mannered, if quiet manners
are good ; and though the men nearly all chewed to-
bacco and spat between meals, at the table they were
of an exemplary behavior. The use of the fork ap-
peared strange to them, and they handled it strenu-
ously rather than agilely, yet they never used their
knives .shovelwise, however they planted their forks
like daggers in the steak: the steak deserved no gen-
tler usage, indeed They were usually yoimg, and
they were constantly changing, bent upon short jour-
neys between the shore villages; they were mostly
farm youth, apparently, though some were said to be
going to find work at the great potteries up the river
for wages fabulous to home-keeping experience.

One personahty which greatly took the hking of
one of our tourists was a Kentucky mountaineer who,
after three years' exile in a West Virginia oil town,
was gladly returning to the home for which he and all
his brood — of large and litUe comely, red-haired boys
and girls — had never ceased to pine. His eagerness
to get back was more than touching ; it was awing ;
for it was founded on a sort of mediaeval patriotism
that could own no excellence beyond the borders of
313

"FLOATING DOWN THE RIVER ON THE O-HI-O "

dreamers of ideal commonwealths have always had
the vision.

The derricks and the chimneys, when one saw them,
seemed to have all the land to themselves; but this was
an appearance only, terrifying m its strenuousness,
but not, after all, the prevalent aspect. That was rather
of farms, farms, and evermore farms, lying along the
nch levels of the stream, and chmbing as far up its
beautiful hills as the plough could drive. In the spring
and \n the fall, when it is suddenly swollen by the ear-
her and the later rains, the river scales its banks and
swims over those levels to the feet of those hills, and
when it recedes it leaves the cornfields enriched for
the crop that has never failed since the forests were
first cut from the land. Other fertilizing the fields
have never had any, but they teem as if the guano
islands had been emptied into their laps. They feel
themselves so rich that they part with great lengths
and breadths of their soil to the river, which is not
good for the river, and is not well for the fields ; so
that the farmers, whose ease learns slowly, are be-
ginning more and more to fence their borders with the
young willows which form a hedge in the shallow wash
such a great part of the way up and down the Ohio,
Elms and maples wade in among the willows, and in
time the river will be denied the indigestion which it
confesses in shoals and bars at low water, and in a
difficulty of channel at all stages.

Meanwhile the fields Sourish in spite of their unwise
lai^esse to the stream, whose shores the comfortable
ffirmsteads keep so constantly that they are never out
of sight. Most commonly they are of brick, but some-
times of painted wood, and they are set on little emi-
nences high enough to save them from the freshets,
but always so near the river that they cannot fail of
its passing life. Usually a group of planted ever-
315

LITERATURE AND LIFE

greens half hides the house from the boat, but its in-
mates will not lose any detail of the show, and come
down to the gate of the paling fence to watch the Avo-
nek float by: motionless men and women, who lean
upon the supporting barrier, and rapt children who
hold by their skirts and hands. There is not the eager
New England neatness about these homes; now and
then they have rather a sloven air, which does not
discord with their air of comfort; and very, very rare-
ly they stagger drunkenly in a ruinous neglect. Ex-
cept where a log cabin has hardily survived the pio-
neer period, the houses are nearly all of one pattom;
their facades front the river, and low chimneys point
either gable, where a half-story forms the attic of the
two stories below. Gardens of pot-herbs flank them,
and behind cluster the corn-cribs, and the bams and
stables stretch into the fields that stretch out to the
hills, now scantily wooded, but ever lovely in the lines
that change with the steamer's course.

Except in the immediate suburbs of the large towns,
there is no ambition beyond that of rustic comfort in
the buildings on the shore. There is no such thing,
apparently, as a summer cottage, with its mock hu-
mility of name, up or down the whole tortuous length
of the Ohio. As yet. the land is not openly depraved
by shows of wealth; those who amass it either keep
it to themselves or come away to spend it in Euro-
pean travel, or pause to waste it unrecognized on the
ungrateful Atlantic seaboard. The only distinctions
that are marked are between the homes of honest in-
dustry above the banks and the homes below them of
the leisure, which it is hoped is not dishonest. But,
honest or dishonest, it is there apparently to stay in
the house-boats which line the shores by thousands,
and repeat on Occidental terms in our new land the
river-life of old and far Cathay.

316

"FLOATING DOWN THE RIVER ON THE O-HI-O "

They formed the only feature of their travel which
our tourists found absolutely novel; they could clearly
or dimly recall from the past every other feature but
the house-boats, which they instantly and gladly nat-
uralized to their memories of it. The houses had in
common the form of a freight-car set in a flat-bottomed
boat ; the car would be shorter or longer, with one, or
two, or three windows in its sides, and a section of
stovepipe softly smoking from its roof. The windows
might be curtained or they might be bare, but appar-
ently there was no other distinction among the house-
boat dwellers, whose sluggish craft lay moored among
the willows, or tied to an elm or a maple, or even made
fast to a stake on shore. There were cases in which
they had not followed the fall of the river promptly
enough, and lay slanted on the beach, or propped up
to a more habitable level on its slope; in a sole, sad in-
stance, the house had gone down with the boat and
lay wallowing in the wash of the flood. But they all
gave evidence of a tranquil and unhurried life which
the soul of the beholder envied within him, whether
it manifested itself in the lord of the house-boat iish-
ing from its bow, or the lady coming to cleanse some
household utensil at its stem. Infrequently a group
of the house-boat dwellers seemed to be drawing a net,
and in one high event they exhibited a good-sized fish
of their capture, but nothing so strenuous character-
ized their attitude on any other occasion. The accept-
ed theory of them was that they did by day as nearly
nothing as men could do and hve, and that by night
their forays on the bordering farms supplied the sim-
ple needs of people who desired neither to toil nor to
spin, but only to emulate Solomon in his glor>' with
the least possible exertion. The joyful witness of their
ease would willingly have sacrificed to them any
amount of the facile industrial or agricultural pros-
317

LITERATURE AND LIFE

perity about them and left them slumberously afloat,
unmolested by dreams of landlord or tax-gatherer.
Their existence for the fleeting time seemed the true
interpretation of the sage's philosophy, the fulfilment
of the poeVs aspiration.

" Why should we only toil, that are the roof and crown of
things?"

How did they pass their iUimitaUe leisure, when
they rested from the fishing-net by day and the chicken-
coop by night? Did they read the new historical fic-
tions aloud to one another? Did some of them even
meditate the thankless muse and not mind her ingrat-
itude? Perhaps the ladies of the house-boats, when they
found themselves — ^as they often did — ^in companies of
four or five, had each other in to " evenings," at which
one of them read a paper on some artistic or literary
topic.

The trader's boat, of an elder and more authentic
tradition, sometimes shouldered the house-boats away
from a village landing, but it, too, was a peaceful home,
where the family fife visibly went hand-in-hand with
commerce. When the trader has supplied all the wants
and wishes of a neighborhood, he unmoors his craft
and drops do^^n the river's tide to where it meets the
ocean's tide in the farthermost Mississippi, and there
either sells out both his boat and his stock, or hitches
his home to some returning steamboat, and climbs
slowly, with many pauses, back to the upper Ohio.
But his home is not so interesting as that of the house-
boatman, nor so picturesque as that of the raftsman,
whose floor of logs rocks flexibly under his shanty,
but securely rides the current. As the pilots said, a

318

"FLOATING DOWN THE RIVER ON THE O-HI-O'"

steamboat never tries to hurt a rfJt of logs, which is
adapted to dangerous retaliation : and by night it al-
ways gives a wide berth to the lantern tilting above
the raft from a swaying pole. By day the raft forms '
one of the pleasantesl aspects of the nver-IJfe. with its
convoy of skiffs always searching the stream or shore
for logs which have broken from it, and which the
skiffmen recognize by distinctive brands or stamps.
Here and there the logs lie in long ranks upon the
shelving beaches, mixed with the drift of trees and
fence-rails, and frames of com-cribs and hen-coops,
and even house walls, which the freshets have brought
down and left stranded. The tops of the httle willows
are tufted gayly with hay and rags, and other spoil of
the flood; and in one place a disordered mattress was
lodged high among the boughs of a water-maple, where
it would form building material for countless genera-
tions of birds. The fat cornfields were often littered
with a varied wreckage which the farmers must soon
heap together and bum. to be rid of it, and everywhere
were proofs of the river's power to devastate as well as
enrich its shores. The dwellers there had no power
against it, in its moments of insensate rage, and the
land no protection from its encroachments except in
the simple device of the willow hedges, which, if plant-
ed, sometimes refused to grow, but often came of them-
selves and kept the torrent from the loose, unfathom-
able soil of the banks, otherwise crumbling helplessly
into it.

The rafts were very well, and the house-boats and
the traders' boats, but the most majestic feature of the
river-life was the tow of coal-barges which, going or
coming, the Avonek met every few miles. Whether
going or coming they were pushed, not pulled, by the
powerful steamer which gathered them in tens and
twenties before her, and rode the mid -current with

LITERATURE AND LIFE

them, when they were full, or kept the slower watei
near shore when they were empty. They claimed
the river where they passed, and the Avotiek bowed to
an unwritten law in giving them the full right of way,
from the time when their low bulk first rose in sight,
with the chimneys of their steamer towering above
them and her gay contours gradually making them-
selves seen, till she receded from the encounter, with
the wheel at her stem ]X)uring a cataract of yellow
water from its blades. It was insurpassably pict-
uresque always, and not the tapering masts or the
swelling sails of any sea-going craft could match it.

So at least the travellers thought who were here re-
visiting the earliest scenes of childhood, and who per-
haps found them unduly endeared. They perused
them mostly from an easy seat at the bow of the hur-
ricane-deck, and, whenever the weather favored them,
spent the idle time in selecting shelters for their de-
clining years among the farmsteads that offered them-
selves to their choice up and down the shores. The
weather commonly favored them, and there was at
least one whole day on the lower river when the weather
was divinely flattering. The soft, dull air lulled their
nerves while it buffeted their faces, and the sun, that
looked through veils of mist and smoke, gently warmed
their aging frames and found itself again in their
hearts. Perhaps it was there that the water-elms and
water-maples chiefly budded, and the red-birds sang,
and the drifting flocks of blackbirds called and clat-
tered; but surely these also spread their gray and
pink against the sky and filled it with their voices.
There were meadow-larks and robins without as well

320

"FLOATING DOWN THE RIVER ON THE 0-Hl-O "

as within, and it was no subjective plough that turned
the earUest furrows in those opulent fields.

When they were tired of sitting there, they chmbed,
invited or uninvited, but alwaj's welcomed, to the pilot-
house, where either pilot of the two who were always
on watch poured out in an unstinted stream the lore of
the river on which all their days had been passed. They
knew from indehble association every ever-changing
line of the constant hills; every dwelling by the low
banks ; every aspect of the smoky towns ; every caprice
of the river; every tree, every stump; probably every
bud and bird in the sky. They talked only of the
river ; they cared for nothing else. The Cuban cumber
and the PhiUppine folly were eqiially far from them ;
the German prince was not only as if he had never been
here, but as if be never had been ; no public question
concerned them but that of abandoning the canals
which the Ohio legislature was then foolishly de-
bating. Were not the canals water-ways, too, like
the river, and if the State unnaturally abandoned
them would not it be for the behoof of those railroads
which the rivermen had always fought, and which
would have made a solitude of the river if they
could?

But they could not, and there was nothing more
surprising and delightful in this blissful voyage than
the evident fact that the old river traffic had strongly
survived, and seemed to be more strongly reviving.
Perhaps it was not; perhaps the fondness of those
Ohio-river-bom passengers was abused by an illusion
(as subjective as that of the buds and birds) of a vivid
vetriety of business and pleasure on the beloved stream.
But again, perhaps not. They were seldom out of
sight of the substantial proofs of both in the through
or way packets they encountered, or the nondescript
steam craft that swarmed about the mouths of the con-
321

LITERATURE AND LIFE

tributory rivers, and climbed their shallowing courses
into the recesses of their remotest hills, to the last lurk-
ing-places of their oil and coaL

The Avonek was always stopping to put off or take
on merchandise or men. She would stop for a single
passenger, planted in the mud with his telescope valise
or gripsack under the edge of a lonely cornfield, or to
gather upon her decks the few or many casks or bales
that a farmer wished to ship. She lay long hours by
the wharf-boats of busy towns, exchanging one cargo
for another, in that anarchic fetching and carrying
which we call commerce, and which we drolly suppose
to be governed by laws. But wherever she paused or
parted, she tested the pilot's marvellous skill, for no
landing, no matter how often she landed in the same
place, could be twice the same. At each return the
varying stream and shore must be studied, and every
caprice of either divined. It was always a triumph,
a miracle, whether by day or by night, a constant
wonder how under the pilot's inspired touch she glided
softly to her moorings, and without a jar slipped from
them again and went on her course.

But the landings by night were of course the finest
Then the wide fan of the search-hght was imfurled
upon the point to be attained and the heavy staging
lowered from the bow to the brink, perhaps crushing
the willow hedges in its fall, and scarcely touching
the land before a black, ragged deck-hand had run out
through the splendor and made a line fast to the trunk
of the nearest tree. Then the work of lading or imlad-
ing rapidly began in the witching play of the light,
that set into radiant relief the black, eager faces and

322

"FLOATING DOWN THE RIVER ON THE O-HIO"

the black, eager figures of the deck-hands struggUng
up or down the staging under boxes of heavy wares,
or kegs of nails, or bales of straw, or blocks of stone,
steadily mocked or cursed at in their shapeless effort,
till the last of them reeled back to the deck down the
steep of the lifting stage, and dropped to his broken
sleep wherever he could coil himself, doglike, down
among the heaps of freight

No dog, indeed, leads such a hapless life as theirs;
and ah I and ah I why should their sable shadows in-
trude in a picture that was meant to be all so gay and
glad? But ah I and ah! where, in what business of
this hard world, is not prosperity built upon the strug-
gle of toiling men, who still endeavor their poor best,
and writhe and writhe under the burden of their broth-
ers above, till they lie still under the lighter load of their
mother earth?

THE END

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Cambridge, MA 02U8 ^.617- 495-2413

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