The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, July, 1913 / Vol. LXXXVI. New Series: Vol. LXIV. May to October, 1913
Date: 2018-03-25T00:00:00+00:00
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, July, 1913

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Title: The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, July, 1913

Author: Various

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Language: English

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Transcriber’s Notes

This e-text is based on ‘The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine,’ from July, 1913. The table of contents, based on the index from the May issue, has been added by the transcriber.

Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation have been retained, but punctuation and typographical errors have been corrected. Passages in English dialect and in languages other than English have not been altered.

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

FICTION NUMBER

THE CENTURY MAGAZINE

VOL. LXXXVI
JULY, 1913
NO. 3

CONTENTS

| | PAGE
BEELZEBUB CAME TO THE CONVENT, HOW | Ethel Watts Mumford | 323
Picture by N. C. Wyeth.
MILLET’S RETURN TO HIS OLD HOME. | Truman H. Bartlett | 332
Pictures from pastels by Millet.
MAN WHO DID NOT GO TO HEAVEN ON TUESDAY, THE | Ellis Parker Butler | 340
BORROWED LOVER, THE | L. Frank Tooker | 348
REMINGTON, FREDERIC, RECOLLECTIONS OF | Augustus Thomas | 354
Pictures by Frederic Remington, and portrait.
SPINSTER, AMERICAN, THE | Agnes Repplier | 363
COMING SNEEZE, THE | Harry Stillwell Edwards | 368
Picture by F. R. Gruger.
BALKAN PENINSULA, SKIRTING THE | Robert Hichens |
V. In Constantinople. | | 374
Pictures by Jules Guérin and from photographs.
NOTEWORTHY STORIES OF THE LAST GENERATION. | |
The New Minister’s Great Opportunity. | C. H. White | 390
With portrait of the author, and new picture by Harry Townsend.
CAMILLA’S FIRST AFFAIR. | Gertrude Hall | 400
Pictures by Emil Pollak-Ottendorff.
T. TEMBAROM. | Frances Hodgson Burnett |
Drawings by Charles S. Chapman. | 413
MANNERING’S MEN. | Marjorie L. C. Pickthall | 427
VERITA’S STRATAGEM. | Anne Warner | 430
ST. ELIZABETH OF HUNGARY. By Francisco Zubarán. Engraved on wood by | Timothy Cole | 437
HARD MONEY, THE RETURN TO | Charles A. Conant | 439
Portraits and cartoons by Thomas Nast.
MORGAN’S, MR., PERSONALITY | Joseph B. Gilder | 459
Picture from photograph.
SOCIALISM IN THE COLLEGES. | Editorial | 468
MONEY BEHIND THE GUN, THE | Editorial | 470
ONE WAY TO MAKE THINGS BETTER. | Editorial | 471
“SCHEDULE K,” COMMENTS ON | Editorial | 472
CHRISTMAS, ON ALLOWING THE EDITOR TO SHOP EARLY FOR | Leonard Hatch | 473
BUSINESS IN THE ORIENT. | Harry A. Franck | 475
CARTOONS. | |
Foreign Labor. | Oliver Herford | 477
Ninety Degrees in the Shade. | J. R. Shaver | 477

VERSE

MY CONSCIENCE. | James Whitcomb Riley | 331
Decoration by Oliver Herford.
HOUSE-WITHOUT-ROOF. | Edith M. Thomas | 339
SIERRA MADRE. | Henry Van Dyke | 347
PRAYERS FOR THE LIVING. | Mary W. Plummer | 367
LITTLE PEOPLE, THE | Amelia Josephine Burr | 387
BELLE DAME SANS MERCI, LA | John Keats | 388
Republished with pictures by Stanley M. Arthurs.
EDEN, BEAUTY IN | Alfred Noyes | 399
GETTYSBURG, HIGH TIDE AT, THE | Will H. Thompson | 410
BLANK PAGE, FOR A | Austin Dobson | 458
MAETERLINCK, MAURICE | Stephen Phillips | 467
BROTHER MINGO MILLENYUM’S ORDINATION. | Ruth McEnery Stuart | 475
BALLADE OF PROTEST, A | Carolyn Wells | 476
SAME OLD LURE, THE | Berton Braley | 478
LIMERICKS: | |
Text and pictures by Oliver Herford.
XXX. The Gnat and the Gnu. | | 479
XXXI. The Sole-Hungering Camel. | | 480

HOW BEELZEBUB CAME TO THE CONVENT

BY ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD

Author of “The Eyes of the Heart,” “Whitewash,” etc.

WITH A PICTURE BY N. C. WYETH

Copyright 1913, by THE CENTURY CO. All rights reserved.

SISTER EULALIA rose from the bench by the door in answer to Sister Teresa’s call. The broken pavement in the outer patio of the Convent of La Merced echoed the tapping of her stick as she slowly made her way to the arch leading to the interior of the building. Sister Eulalia was blind, but as nearly the whole seventy years of her life had been passed within these same gray walls familiarity supplied the defect of vision. Her daily tasks never had been interrupted since, a full half-century before, a wind-driven cactus-thorn had robbed her of sight. She wore with simple dignity the white woolen garb of the order, with its band of blue ribbon from which depended a silver cross, the snowy coif framing her saintly face with smooth bands that contrasted with the wrinkled surface of her skin. To the eye of an artist, her frail figure in its quaint surroundings of Spanish architecture, dating from the early years of the seventeenth century, would have made an irresistible appeal. But no artist ever sought that remote, almost forgotten city, and for the few Indians and half-breeds who have inherited the fallen glories of Antigua de Guatemala, the moribund convent held no interest. Occasionally one of the older “Indigenes” whose conscience troubled him would leave an offering of food at the twisted iron gate and mumble a request for prayers of intercession; or the dark-eyed half-Spanish children would stare with something of both fascination and fear at the five white-clad ancient women who, morning and evening, crossed the patio to the chapel: Sister Eulalia on the arm of Sister Teresa, Sister Rose de Lima and Sister Catalina, one on each side of the Mother Superior. To these two younger sisters—their years were but sixty-six and sixty-nine—had fallen, by common consent, the care of the Mother Superior, whose age no one knew, so great it was, and whose infirmities the nuns loyally concealed. By them her wandering sentences were received as divine revelations, and indeed her strange, thin voice, as it repeated Latin texts with level insistence, conveyed a weird, Delphic impression.

The Mother Superior had been a woman of learning, of beauty, and of high birth, but all that had been long ago. Now she was but a pale shade repeating vaguely the words learned in a former life. Her features remained fine and fair, as if preserved in some crystalline substance. Her skin was unlined, for care and sorrow could reach her no more.

Unless she were being conducted to and from the chapel by her devoted handmaidens, or lay at rest in the state bed of the visitors’ room, she sat in the high carved seat at the end of the refectory table, her thin hands folded, her eyes fixed on the symbolic cross on her breast, unconscious of those who came and went about her, or of the echoing aisles and lofty pillared porticos that surrounded her abstracted existence.

As the blind nun crossed the court and entered the refectory, she became conscious of an unusual stir. She divined the presence of each of the sisters, divined them strangely intent and not a little agitated. The voice of Sister Rose de Lima reached her in a whisper of portent.

“The reverend Mother has spoken—in Spanish!”

A pause followed the announcement. There was a slight sound from the white prophetess. Sister Teresa and Sister Catalina, who stood beside her, drew insensibly closer. Their hands were joined, finger-tip to finger-tip, in the prayerful pose of medieval funereal statues; their withered faces were drawn with expectation. At the opposite end of the table stood Sister Rose, leaning forward breathlessly. Sister Eulalia remained at the entrance, rigid, as if turned into stone. The moments lengthened. The sunlight danced in golden motes through the long windows, innocent now of their olden glories of painted glass, and showed the worn carving of memorial stones emblazoned with coats of arms, half erased by the passing of many sandaled feet. The stone walls betrayed by protruding nails the absence of their wood-carvings and panels. The badly repaired rifts in the earthquake-torn walls showed garishly. The white figures, as in a tableau, remained still and unmoving, and the seated form of the Mother Superior appeared as lifeless as the waxen figure of Jesus under its shade of glass on the little altar.

She opened her eyes, if such a slow unclosing of the lids could be so called, revealing two wells of opaque blackness. A quick sigh escaped the lips of the three nuns. Sister Eulalia heard, and slowly knelt, ready to receive the word should such be sent.

The reverend Mother’s colorless lips moved. At first no sound issued from them. Then, with strange forceful vibration, her voice broke the waiting stillness.

“Woe!” she cried. “Woe! ‘The Fiend, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour!’”

Four withered hands hastily made the sign of the cross.

Heavily as they had lifted, the waxen lids closed over the opaque black eyes. The rigid body relaxed slightly, and the Mother Superior relapsed into her wonted insensibility.

“We are surely to be tempted!” said Sister Eulalia. “Sisters, we must be strong to resist the Fiend.” Sister Teresa nodded. “We are warned,” she added.

Sister Rose crossed herself again.

Very gently Sister Catalina assured herself of the comfort of the reverend Mother, and the four aged nuns turned to their tasks again, but with beating hearts. The Fiend would beset them soon, and in some dreadful guise. Sister Rose breathed a prayer for strength, as she filled the tiny red lamp burning ever before the waxen image. Sister Teresa hurriedly began “Aves,” as she peeled an onion; Sister Catalina’s “paternosters” preceded her into the garden; and Sister Eulalia’s beads slipped hastily through her knotted fingers as she returned to the mechanical perfection of her work at the loom.

“As a roaring lion!”—Sister Eulalia’s blind eyes could conjure more dreadful sights than the faded vision of her less afflicted companions would ever see. Now she brought them before her in endless array of horror. She would know him only by his roar, she thought, and he might creep up close noiselessly. Her ear was alert to the lightest sound. But the day wore on and no roaring beast came with hellish clamor to affright the gentle recluse.

Drawn by N. C. Wyeth. Half-tone plate engraved by H. Davidson

“THE FIVE WHITE-CLAD ANCIENT WOMEN WHO, MORNING AND EVENING,
CROSSED THE PATIO TO THE CHAPEL”

❏
LARGER IMAGE

Sister Catalina entered the patio from the garden-close, a yellow hill-rose in her hand to pleasure her afflicted companion with its subtle peppery scent; an act not sanctioned by the drastic rules of the convent. But years upon years had rolled by, bringing a gentle sagging of discipline. Occasionally one of the few priests who still clung to the wrecked cathedrals came to hear confessions of puerile and trifling misdemeanors, and a severer penance than a dozen “Aves” was unknown and unmerited. Sister Eulalia inhaled the rose’s fragrance gratefully. Her blunt, weaving-calloused fingers sought and found the soft petals of the flower with loving touch.

It was thus that the Rev. Dr. Joel McBean saw them. He paused, delighted. What a characteristic picture! How well composed; how symbolical of a decaying faith! His kodak was instantly leveled, and with a snap the sisters were immortalized. For Dr. McBean was known far and wide on the west coast for his lectures on the benighted people of other lands. His present visit to Central America combined his vacation with a search for new material for his winter tour.

The click of the camera caused Eulalia, the sightless, to turn sharply. Catalina, who was slightly deaf, seeing her companion’s movement, looked about and stood still in open-mouthed amazement. Then she made the gesture common to all women in all lands, and emitted the sound that accompanies it when the invading hen must be incited to flight.

“Shoo!” she cried. “Shiss—shiss!” and waved her garden apron at the intruder.

Sister Eulalia grasped the hem of Catalina’s flowing sleeve.

“What is it? Oh, what is it?” she gasped.

“A man! A strange man!” came the answer in a frightened whisper.

The gentleman in question realized that he was distinctly de trop, but he strongly desired to gather more lecture material from this promising source. Setting down the camera, he took out his well-thumbed volume of “Handy Spanish” and sought for a suitable phrase of explanation and introduction. There were headings about “The Hotel,” “The Laundry,” “The Eating and Procuring of Meals,” “At the Railway Station,” “The Diligence,” “The Physician”; but among the thousand useful phrases, not one seemed to offer itself aptly. At last he found the heading he sought: “Cameras—Films—Developing, etc.” “Have you any cyanide?” did not fit. “Have you a darkroom in this hotel?” seemed ambiguous. “Direct me to the photographer” would not do. Ah! Eureka! “May I take your picture?” He bowed politely, approached the now thoroughly frightened nuns, and with carefully spaced utterance made his request. “May I take your picture?” he repeated, with a graceful sweep of his white hand. “Fotografia—cuadro—”

Sister Rose appeared in the doorway, followed by Teresa. His gesture included them also, and the ancient gateway, the columned portico, and the quaint façade of the little chapel.

“Beautiful!” he cried. “Multo bueno! Hermosa, hermosa—muy hermosa!”

He wanted to take their picture! The nuns were completely at sea. Why should this stranger, this man with queer apparel and strange speech, want their picture? They possessed only one—the portrait of Our Lady of Mercy above the little altar of the chapel—and why should any one want a thing that so obviously it was impossible for them to give? Bewildered, they looked from one to another. Sister Rose, being the youngest and most mentally alert, became aware of the sacerdotal character of their visitor: the gold cross at the end of his chain, the wide-bordered felt hat which he waved so gracefully, the neat black clothes, the breviary that bulged from his pocket; but, more than all, the expression of his smiling face and gentle, near-sighted eyes.

“He is a priest—see you not?” she said excitedly. “His dress, his manner, bespeak it. He comes from some foreign land. Alas! that the reverend Mother cannot speak with him in Latin!”

“It is true,” said Catalina. “Pardon, reverend Father,” she quavered, “I did not know! Our picture—you shall see it.”

She turned toward the chapel, but the visitor waved her back. The group before him was irresistible, just as they were. Catalina instinctively obeyed his gesture, marveling.

“Are—are there any more of you?” he inquired in his halting Spanish.

Now at last they understood. The reverend Father was making the rounds of the clerical houses in order to make his report to the bishop. That had happened once before. Sister Rose launched into explanations.

“No. We are all that are left, except the Mother Superior,” she told him. “We are allowed here on sufferance only, for as, of course, the reverend Father knows, the churches have all been taken by the state, and but for the reverend Mother, who was kinswoman to some one great in the land, we should have been sent forth. Alas! our numbers have dwindled—grave upon grave we have made, each nun for herself, and now all are filled save five. We have not, it is quite true, turned the holy sod of our last sleeping-places as often as is the rule; but we have grown old, and the work is hard—”

It was the lecturer’s turn to be utterly confused and routed; the sudden change of manner, the deference shown to him all at once; above all the avalanche of Spanish was too much for him, but he still retained his amateur photographer’s zeal. With a hand raised to draw their attention, but which the nuns mistook for pastoral blessing, he steadied the camera against his narrow chest, and snapped a second picture. With a polite “Thank you” and a sigh of satisfaction, he wound the reel, heartily regretting the while that the limits of the camera’s focus must necessarily leave out the perfection of the setting—the towering, smoking peak of the Volcan de Fuego on the right, stained red and yellow by its sulphurous outpourings, and the menacing green inactivity of Agua’s deadly summit; all the gloom and glow of those earthquake-seamed walls, and tottering, carved gateways.

“Mil gracias!” He thanked them awkwardly. “I—well—goodness! how does one say it?” He seized upon the “Handy Spanish Phrases” again, and ran his finger down the line of camera sentences. “Please make me six prints.” “This is over-exposed.” “You have fogged the plate.”—“Tut, tut!” he exclaimed impatiently, “how in the world do you say ‘I’ll give you a blue-print’?—blue-print—blue-print—Ah! this will do. ‘An excellent portrait’—presented—for you,” he explained, and supplemented the statement with an elaborate pantomime. The nuns watched his gesticulations with breathless interest. He pointed to each in turn, made a circle around his own face, smiling blandly and nodding appreciation.

The sisters conferred.

“It clears!” said Sister Rose. “He asks us have we broken the rules and looked at ourselves in a looking-glass.” She advanced toward Dr. McBean and spoke for the sisterhood with deep earnestness. “Oh, no, reverend Father, we have not seen our own reflections for fifty years, and more—oh, never! There never has been a mirror on the walls of La Merced. Vanity is not our sin. Thanks be to Our Lady, not even in the convent well have we looked to see our faces reflected. Oh, no!”

Dr. McBean caught a word here and there, and felt that he was being vehemently reassured about something, probably that the nuns would be grateful for his kindness; that the elderly virgins knew nothing whatever of such a thing as a camera, and had no idea of the use to which he put his black box, would have seemed so ridiculous that the possibility of it never occurred to him. With more bows, and renewed and halting thanks, he took his departure.

“To-morrow,” he called. “Mañana—I will bring the blue-prints—mañana. Adios! Gracias!”

The nuns watched his departure in silence, but as the sound of his tripping footsteps died away, they turned to one another excitedly.

“Tell me, you who have eyes—what was he like?” begged Eulalia.

The others turned to her pityingly.

“Thou shalt hear. We had forgotten thine affliction, poor sister. He is thin of the leg and round above. He wears glasses on a small nose. His eyes are blue, and his hands are beautiful and white, like the hands of Father Ignatius—the saints rest his soul! He wore black, with a cassock very short indeed; and a round white collar, and a gold cross hung at his waist. He bore a small black box, that doubtless contained a holy relic, for ofttimes he clasped it to his bosom and cared for it most lovingly.”

“How strange,” mused Eulalia, “that the reverend Fathers should send one to question us thus unannounced, and one who also speaks so strangely! His words were confusing, and I caught not often the sense, though I listened with all my ears. Had it not been for Sister Rose, I never should have guessed his mission.”

“Had’st thou seen him, thou would’st have known,” said Sister Teresa. “His calling was not to be mistaken; moreover, with the reliquary he blessed us.”

They had great food for speculation. Such excitement had not come into their lives in unnumbered years. The dreadful prophecy of the Mother Superior was forgotten. For the first time in a decade Eulalia was heard to lament her loss of sight. Try as she would, she could not make a satisfactory mental picture from her companions’ descriptions of their visitor. These were vivid and detailed enough, but somehow she could not bring them to take definite shape. Over and over again they discussed the form and face, the manners and raiment of Dr. Joel McBean. Not a gesture they did not speculate upon and imitate, not a sentence of his incoherent Spanish that was not dissected, analyzed, and wondered about. In particular, why did he want their picture, and then leave without it?

But “to-morrow” he had said, to-morrow he would come; then perhaps they would understand.

The sunlight turned copper-red, warning them of the lateness of the hour and putting a sudden end to their excited converse. Suddenly sobered and recalled to its own world, the flustered dove-cote subsided. With stately tread they sought the reverend Mother. She suffered herself to be lifted from her chair, and with eyes downcast took her slow way to the chapel, with the help and guidance of her two faithful attendants.

THE perspiration stood in great beads upon the brow of Joel McBean as he emerged from a black, unventilated closet in the Posada del Rey, a tray of chemicals in his hand. He held the developed films up to the light and nodded with satisfaction. The pictures were excellent, clear and sharp, well composed, excellently suited to the enlargement of the stereopticon. He examined each with minute care, but found none requiring the intensifier. There at last they were fixed forever, the replicas of this strange land of contradictions—pictures that should make his audiences realize how fortunate they were to be able to stay at home in comfort while an intrepid and intelligent explorer braved the trials of arduous travel in order to bring the simulacrum of these other lands to their very doors, together with enlightening and well-turned elucidations of the manners and customs of these benighted dwellers in lands forgotten. Already he felt glowing sentences stirring in his brain, sonorous and uplifting words, at once pitying and broad-minded. “Tolerance”—that was the motto of his discourses; tolerance always, but coupled with the well-directed searchlight of comparison. What a point he would make of these aged, recluse women—their ignorance, their useless lives, their abasement before the Juggernaut of outworn rules! He flattered himself that his presence, momentary as it was, had brought new impetus, and a realization of other and more intelligent peoples, to these remnants of obsolete conditions. “Obsolete conditions”—ah, a good expression!

He slipped the sensitized paper under the films in their wooden cases, and set them for a moment on the rim of his balcony overlooking the cobbled pavement of the unfrequented King’s Highway, upon which the tropic sun beat with white fury. A moment only sufficed, and he withdrew the prints. They proved marvelously good; as portraits they could not have been excelled. He smiled with satisfaction. How pleased these benighted little sisters would be, he thought, for he was a kindly man. He slipped the photographs between the leaves of his “Handy Spanish Phrases,” and, walking along the red-tiled gallery, made his way across the blue-and-white-walled patio, and while parrots shrieked at him and capuchin monkeys chattered, he passed from their cages toward the great, sweating water-jars, and emerged into the glare of the street.

Everywhere the remains of huge triumphal arches met his eye; enormous buildings of state and vast churches, seamed and cracked by the volcano’s upheavals, now flowered with creepers and plumed with growing trees. The silence indicated complete desertion, except where one caught, from time to time, in some shattered palace, a glimpse of an Indian family at their squalid tasks, or the bray of a burro echoing from some stately ruin.

At last the twisted wrought-iron gate and the flanking spiral columns of the gateway of the convent came in sight. Dr. McBean quickened his steps.

He had been eagerly awaited within those solemn walls. After matins the excited sisters had gossiped and chatted over the events of the previous day, and then proceeded—each quietly, in her own cell, and unknown to her fellows—to make an elaborate toilet. The least faded blue ribbons were put on, a fresh coif was found, spots and stains were removed from worn white garments, while the little silver crosses received an unaccustomed furbishing.

Somewhat shamefaced they met, and laughed like children as each realized the worldliness of the others, till again Sister Eulalia’s complaint turned them to consolatory condolences. A frown of petulance had settled between Sister Eulalia’s brows. To be sure, it was lost in a maze of wrinkles, but it was there. In her old heart was revolt against the sorrow accepted so bravely fifty years before. She did not realize her sin, absorbed as she was in the Great Interest.

When Dr. McBean entered the patio he was met by the four nuns, who advanced smiling, with murmured hopes of a happy sleep of the night before and perfect health to-day.

“I kept my promise, you see,” he beamed, handing the prints to Sister Teresa, and speaking in his native tongue. “The pictures are really very good, and I hope you will enjoy having them. Thank you so much—and good-by. I start on my journey again to-day; so I must be off. Good-by, again. Adios—buanos dais!”

The nuns curtsied and bowed. He paused a moment in order to jot in his note-book: “Ignorant peoples invariably gratefully receive and appreciate—all evidences superior civilization”—bowed again and departed.

It was not till any further glimpse of him was denied by the corner wall that they turned to the photographs. They looked in astonishment, which increased to puzzled wonder; then a look of fear crossed Sister Teresa’s face. Sister Eulalia, with tears in her eyeless lids, had disconsolately sought her seat on the weaving-bench. These marvels were not for her. For a moment she hated her companions—they were no longer companions. She was alone in her misery.

From the depths of self-pity she was rushed to sudden astounded attention by sounds of wrath, of venomous speech, of resentment and anger. Sister Eulalia could not believe her ears, and the angry conversation gave her no hint of its cause. It seemed the babblings of sheer madness.

Sister Teresa had been the first to exclaim.

“See!” she cried, “I cannot understand! This is thy portrait to the life, Sister Catalina, and thine, Sister Rose, also this likeness of Sister Eulalia. But where am I? Who is this strange nun?”

Sister Catalina gazed at the picture in deep perturbation. “But I see thee well,” she affirmed. “It is thy very self upon the paper, but it is I who am not there, and this is the strange nun!” She pointed to her own portrait.

Sister Rose intervened. “Foolish! It is thy very self, and Sister Eulalia, and Sister Teresa, yes; but I am not there, and in my place is a stranger!” She pointed to her own semblance. “Who is this?”

Both Sister Teresa and Sister Catalina looked at her scornfully. “It is thyself,” they said in one breath.

Sister Rose colored till she symbolized her name, but it was the red of anger that mantled her cheeks.

“Indeed, it is not!” she answered hotly. “I have not a withered face, a jaw like a knife, and such eyes!”

“I tell thee, that”—Sister Catalina pointed, that there be no further mistake—“that is thou! This is the stranger.”

“Stranger?” laughed Rose; “then we know thee not!”

It was Sister Catalina’s turn to flame with anger. “It is not true!” she cried, stamping her foot with a grotesque parody of infantile rage. “I look like that! I know better! I remember as if it were to-day how I looked in the great mirror in my father’s house!”

“I tell thee naught but the truth,” exclaimed Sister Teresa, now quite beside herself. “Give me the picture!” She snatched at the print. A tussle ensued, punctuated by the sharp sound of a slap as they fought for the apple of discord.

Sister Catalina being the youngest, and, owing to her daily labors in the garden, the most active of the trio, obtained possession of the photograph, but not till, with a desperate push, she had thrust Sister Teresa so sharply forward that she fell panting against the iron gate. The force of the impact made the rusty iron clang, and Sister Teresa sank to the ground with a faint cry.

Not till then could Sister Eulalia master her fright and nervousness sufficiently to enter the arena. With outstretched hands, forgetful of her crutch, she advanced to the center of the patio. Her first words were sufficiently arresting to bring a sudden cessation of hostilities.

“Oh, my sisters!” she cried, “oh, my sisters—the Fiend! The Fiend!”

Involuntarily three pairs of terror-stricken eyes looked about. The sun-flooded courtyard held no unfamiliar shape; the sky was undarkened by any dreadful wing. No fateful roar broke the morning hush. But Sister Eulalia had sunk to her knees, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“We were warned,” she shrilled, “but we were not proof against him. How should we know him in the guise of a holy man?” The listeners gasped. “Look, oh, my sisters, what has happened. I—even I, whom God had blessed with blindness that I might not see—I complained aloud. Envy and hatred were in my heart that ye saw marvels while I lay in darkness. I am ashamed—I am ashamed!”

She rocked backward and forward, a prey to remorse.

With a cry of sudden terror, Sister Catalina flung the crumpled photograph from her. It fluttered like a blown leaf, was caught by a vagrant breeze and wafted toward Sister Teresa, crouching by the gate. As if the white-hot fires of the dreaded volcano had suddenly poured toward her in searing streams, she screamed aloud, dragged herself to her feet with surprising alacrity, and rushed for protection to her former assailant, throwing her arms about Sister Catalina in a paroxysm of fear.

“Ay, cry aloud your terror, sisters,” continued Sister Eulalia. “What was this thing of mystery the Fiend brought among ye? In the winking of an eye it brought strife and anger. How wise were they who forbade us looking-glasses. For ye forgot your own images till ye knew them no more. Behold, this thing that showed ye yourselves, as in a glass that was not glass, let in the very spirit of the devil. All the years of our happiness together in God were as nothing before the magic of the Evil One, whom we welcomed. Though we were warned, though we knew him the ‘Prince of Disguise’! Pray for pardon—pray quickly, that our souls be not lost forever!”

They knelt in prayer, signing themselves with the cross, surprised, indeed, that their hands did not refuse their mission in punishment for their sin. The noonday sun beat mercilessly upon the veiled heads as they bent in petition. At last Sister Catalina interrupted the droning cadence.

“Sister whom God hath blessed with blindness, I will lead thee to this evil thing. Thine eyes are closed against its wiles. Take it, thou, to the chapel, and there, with a taper lit at the altar, we will burn it, that it may return to the Father of Lies, who sent it.”

Sister Eulalia winced with fear, but realizing her peculiar mission she suffered herself to be led by the trembling nun till her fingers closed on the cursed paper. Painfully, on their knees, as one mounts the holy stairs in penance, they crawled to the chapel and prostrated themselves at the rail. With tears of remorse, the sisters embraced. A taper, one of the precious few in the tin box under the altar-lace, was lighted at the flame of the tiny red lamp. The print as it flared up seemed to show the pictured faces in twisted grimace; then it blackened, withered to ash, and dispersed in gray filaments.

For a moment the penitents remained in silent contemplation, then with one accord they crossed the patio to the refectory. Though the reverend Mother hear them not, yet they must make confession.

As they entered they stopped short, spellbound. The opaque black eyes were open wide, staring at them from the crystalline whiteness of the Mother Superior’s face. To the culprits that gaze was as accusing as any clarion voice of Judgment. They bowed their heads.

The reverend Mother’s lips moved.

“Vanitas vanitatum!” she cried, and again—“Vanitas vanitatum!”

The echoes took up the sound as a bell that will not be silenced—Vanitatum.

MY CONSCIENCE

BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

SOMETIMES my Conscience says, says he,
“Don’t you know me?”
And I, says I, skeered through and through,
“Of course I do.
You air a nice chap ever’ way,
I’m here to say!
You make me cry—you make me pray,
And all them good things thataway—
That is, at night. Where do you stay
Durin’ the day?”

And then my Conscience says, onc’t more,
“You know me—shore?”
“Oh, yes,” says I, a-trimblin’ faint,
“You’re jes’ a saint!
Your ways is all so holy-right,
I love you better ever’ night
You come around,—’tel plum daylight,
When you air out o’ sight!”

And then my Conscience sort o’ grits
His teeth, and spits
On his two hands and grabs, of course,
Some old remorse,
And beats me with the big butt-end
O’ that thing—‘tel my clostest friend
’Ud hardly know me. “Now,” says he,
“Be keerful as you’d orto be
And allus think o’ me!”

MILLET’S RETURN TO HIS OLD HOME

WITH LETTERS FROM HIMSELF AND HIS SON

BY TRUMAN H. BARTLETT

REPRODUCTIONS MADE FOR THE CENTURY OF PAINTINGS AND PASTELS BY MILLET IN THE COLLECTION OF THE LATE QUINCY A. SHAW

WHEN Jean François Millet, with his wife and nine children, went to Cherbourg in August, 1870, soon after the breaking out of the Franco-German War, he carried with him some of his own pictures and several belonging to Théodore Rousseau that had been left in his care, which were owned by a Mr. Hartmann, a friend of both artists. Once in that city, there was no certainty that Millet could sell a picture or get means to live upon from any one. To be sure, Barye and his family were already there, but he had a large family to look after, and was helping Armand Sylvestre, the writer, who lived there.

Detrimont, the picture-dealer, had advanced eight hundred francs on a painting he had previously ordered of Millet; but when this money should be gone Millet was sure to be in very embarrassing straits. Sensier’s business relations with Millet had long since ceased, and he had gone with the government to Tours. What was the poor painter to do, and what did he think? Behind him were twenty-one years of incessant labor and harsh experiences, a procession of great works of art sent into the world, out of which he had got a bare living. He was tired and health-broken, and had a large family to care for; he was worried over the dark days of his country, while possessing hardly a dollar and living in a city always indifferent to his genius.

But fortune had not quite forsaken poor Millet. Durand Ruel had managed to get out of Paris and reach London with some pictures. He, too, was in no prosperous condition, and in his anxiety he determined to give an exhibition in that city and take his chances as to the result. Trusting in the merits of the “Norman Peasant,” which he believed would be recognized in London, even in war-time, he wrote to Millet asking for some pictures and promising to send him some money—a small sum at once, if he were in need. Ruel added as a further encouragement that if he had any luck he would continue to order pictures and forward money for them as fast as he could.

The London scheme worked so well that Millet was enabled to stay in Cherbourg and its vicinity for sixteen months; and yet there was trouble in it. Nothing ever seemed to come to him in bright colors that was not shaded or involved in some train of unpleasant circumstance; and what made it still more fateful was the fact that he could not extricate himself by his own efforts. Never was a leaf more powerless before the wind than was Millet in the worldly entanglements that pursued him to his latest breath.

“I will begin a picture for you at once with the greatest ardor,” he wrote to Ruel. When he had finished it, it was taken by his son François to the wharf, where the little steamer lay that was to carry it to Southampton, while the father went to the custom-house to get a permit. The collector of customs, although knowing perfectly well who the artist was, refused to accept his declaration of authorship—all that ever was required—unless the artist would swear to it on the Bible. This extra demand, and the arrogant manner of the collector, was interpreted by Millet as an insult, and he left the official’s presence in anger and despair. He could not forward this or any other picture without the oath, and how was he to live if he did not? To his surprise and joy, he found on going to the wharf where the picture was to leave for Southampton that it had been taken on board the steamer. A seaman who had charge of embarking freight had seen the name of Millet on the box, and had asked young François about it, and whether that was the Millet who came from Greville. Learning that it was, he said, “Oh, all right! Never mind the permit; bring it aboard, and I will see that no one disturbs it.”

From the collection of the late Quincy A. Shaw. Half-tone plate engraved by R. C. Collins

THE SPADERS

FROM THE PASTEL BY JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET

There seemed to be an undying enmity against Millet on the part of the representative authorities of Cherbourg, beginning when they gave him a niggardly allowance to pursue his first studies in Paris, accentuated when they refused to continue it, and brutally intensified when he returned for refuge in 1870. Nor did it cease; for not long after his death some resident artists were discovered counterfeiting Millet’s works and selling them to those who were supposed to have been familiar with what he had done for more than thirty years. The punishment meted out to these rascally imitators was only two months in prison, and even then there were those who regarded the penalty as too severe for the offense.

There were still more troubles to come, for Millet tried to do some sketching out of doors, but the authorities prevented him. Writing to Sensier in September, 1870, he says: “It is utterly impossible for me to make a single mark of the pencil outside of the house. I should be immediately cut down or shot. I have been arrested twice and brought before the military authorities, and was released only after they had inquired about me at the mayor’s office, though they advised me strongly not even to show an indication of holding a pencil.”

The following extracts from other letters to Sensier will illustrate the precious patriotism of these military authorities when their own comfort was in question, as well as let a little light upon their ardent efforts to sustain their struggling country in its darkest days of 1870–71. He says:

“What a chance those miserable Prussians have for devastating the country! I fear that, though touching Paris lightly at present, they will still hold it so that they may continue their work in other places. I fear that they will make believe to attack Paris, and under the shadow of that pretense devastate the country of everything it has that they need. During this time Paris will exhaust its provisions, and, famine once there, they will do with it as they please. In supporting the Prussians the country will eventually exhaust itself; then will come universal famine. What do they think of all this at Tours? There is one thing I wish to tell you: for a long time they have sent from here to England sheep, pigs, potatoes, and every kind of provisions, but since the war these exports have increased. A good deal of complaint has been made, and for my part I ask myself how they can send these things to strangers abroad—and probably by indirect ways to the enemy—when we have so great a need for them. How can they rob a country now given to misery, as ours is?—for a large part of France is not only devastated but is prevented from planting crops for the coming year.

“Naturally, you know of Gambetta’s circular for preventing the exporting of provisions. That circular did not give details of everything that should not be exported. The authorities here have slyly dodged that and have permitted things to be sent away that were not mentioned in the circular. This has almost made a revolution. The people tried to prevent the embarking of these articles, but the national guard surrounded the dock and the shipment was made. I think these authorities are horrible. They let eggs, butter, and fowls be sent away. The mayor and the prefect should be whipped. If you can only tell Gambetta this! It appears that a great quantity of cannon is in the arsenal here, of which no use is made. They say that the chassepôts that came from England were left out of doors in the rain and mud. The maritime authorities do nothing, and the people cry out against them. It is said that there are eight thousand sailors here who wish to go into action, but not one is permitted to leave.

“Neither will the authorities send the cannon to Lille—those that were ordered to be sent long ago—and Lille begs for them. Eleven hundred cannon here, and not one used or sent away to the places where they are needed! There are also several gunboats which the officers say could be employed on the rivers, but they, too, are idle, although certain officers are doing their best to have something done with them. Why not tell Gambetta all this, so that he could give rigid orders? Durand Ruel has sent me a thousand francs. It was time! Oh, it was time! It will be quickly spent; and so I must work to get more when I need it.”

Before Millet returned to Barbizon he went with his family to look for the last time upon the scenes of his youth, to walk over the fields that his forefathers had tilled for generations, to visit the church where his dead had worshiped, and to sit beside their graves. It was a pilgrimage that deeply touched every chord of his nature as it never had been touched before.

He was conscious that he had lived an unusual life, that he had contributed his share to his country’s glory, and that, too, when rarely released from the awful chain of untoward circumstances. Yet no word of bitter complaint ever escaped his lips, nor did he fully confide his thoughts to any one. He knew that some tidings of him had reached his native hamlet and had given pleasure to its humble dwellers. “He longed,” says his son François, “to see whether he could again feel his youth. I think he did, for he never seemed to be present, not even when he told us children of the wondrous legends of the priory of Greville.”

The following is a part of François’ story of their journey to Gruchy.

“When we all went to Gruchy we stopped on the way at Vauville, and as we came to the little inn we were met by a large and fine-looking old woman who approached us as if we were princes, and after saluting us she said very humbly: ‘Gentlemen, we haven’t much for the table.’ ‘Haven’t you soup?’ asked Father. ‘Oh, yes!’ she replied, ‘but do you care for that?’ ‘Certainly, we like soup,’ was the answer. ‘Very well, then, you shall have some soup.’ ‘Have you any butter?’ ‘Yes, we have butter.’ ‘Very well, we like butter.’ ‘Then, gentlemen, you shall have butter, and you can eat as we do.’ ‘But I am very hungry,’ said one of my brothers. ‘Then,’ said the woman, ‘we will kill a rabbit for the boy.’

“While we were waiting for our food we sat around a fireplace in which was burned a kind of dry brush, thrown into it with a pitchfork. It made a tremendous blaze, giving Father much pleasure, and he said that that was the way they had fire when he was a boy in the old home.

From the collection of the late Quincy A. Shaw. Half-tone plate engraved by C. W. Chadwick

THE SHEPHERD

FROM THE PASTEL BY JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET

❏
LARGER IMAGE

“After we had eaten we went out to make some sketches of the church and priory. Soon after our arrival, a peasant, eighty-seven years old, who had known my grandfather, came to the hotel to find us and to renew his acquaintance with Father. He invited us to come to the priory and take breakfast with his son, who lived there and had charge of the property. We accepted the invitation, and just before it was time to go the old man came with two carts, a large one with rude board sides for Father, Mother, and the older children, and a small one for the younger ones and the servant. In this way we were trundled off to the priory, where we were very warmly welcomed by the old man’s son.

“The dining-room was very large, with an enormous fireplace, and great iron locks were on the doors. Our breakfast consisted of little beans and butter. While we were eating, a half-crazy uncle of our host sat in the fireplace, watching, as he said, for a headless prior who continually visited the convent, entering it through the chimney. ‘I must not let him come down,’ he said, ‘so I watch him; but he must not know that I see him.’

“The priory is very rich in legends concerning every phase of the life that has been lived in it for many generations. This man had cared for it since it had been used as one of the buildings of a farm; and, in cultivating the ground, had lived so secluded a life, and dwelt so constantly upon the history of the priory, that he had become insane, his head turned in faithfulness to duty.

“The priory is on a hill, while the village of Vauville is below, near the sea, and hidden from the building.

“On entering the church at Vauville we encountered the curé, who appeared very curious and desirous to talk with strangers, as they very seldom come there. While Father was looking at the picture over the altar, he said, ‘It is not bad; it has good color’; whereupon the curé, who had come up hurriedly, remarked, ‘You are looking at the picture, I see. It seems to interest you.’ ‘Yes,’ said Father. ‘Ah, well, I can tell you who painted it—one Mouchel, a child of Cherbourg. I don’t know how much he is known away from us, but he had a pupil who was helped by the city of Cherbourg and has now become known as a man of great talent.’

“The curé was very polite, and he conducted us to the door without dreaming that he had seen the pupil of Mouchel, though Father was that person.

“One day when we were in the café of the inn, a little old man with large blue eyes came to the door and looked at Father, and said in the patois of the locality, which consists more of movements of the head, peculiar accents of words, and of pauses, than of a full language, ‘Ah! do you know? Yes.’ Then Father’s chin moved upward in deep emotion. ‘Ah! I knew you when you were a little toad. We are old now. Ah, changes have come! You know it.’ ‘Come in,’ said Father, still more affected, pointing to a chair and table. Then turning to me, with his head close to my ear, he whispered, ‘It is Peter, our old servant. He took care of my father when he died, as well as all the rest of the family.’ After Father had become somewhat composed, he said to the innkeeper, ‘Give Peter all he wants.’ ‘Oh, I want nothing now, but to see you. To go back into the years. Ah, we are old now!’ This was too much for Father, and, rising to go out, he said quietly to the innkeeper, ‘He is now a drunkard, but give him everything.’

“One night at the little inn, the wind blew a real tempest; it was fearfully dark and the roar of the sea was something terrific, so the proprietor said to his servant, who was putting thorns on the fire to make a great blaze, as if to calm the elements outside, ‘How would you like to go on such a night as this to the priory?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he replied, ‘there are things you cannot reason about, and happenings you had better keep away from. Perhaps it would be better to stay at home on a night like this. The old boy up there is not a good sleeper. He is out and around nights like this, watching his stacks of grain, for he, as you know, though very learned, is in league with the devil in some way. At any rate, the devil has something to do with him. He always looks at me suspiciously, as if I had stolen his wheat, though he knows well enough that it was the devil that did it. For, even in the daytime, when he counts his sheaves, there are always some lacking, and in the night still more are missing. He can’t even drink his own cider without the devil hiding his pitcher and playing all sorts of tricks with him. No, it’s better to stay indoors when things outside are so uncertain.’

From the collection of the late Quincy A. Shaw. Half-tone plate engraved by H. Davidson

THE LESSON IN KNITTING

FROM THE PAINTING BY JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET

❏
LARGER IMAGE

“The proprietor of the inn had been a cook in Paris, but had returned to his native hamlet to live the rest of his days. He soon began to talk, perhaps to please us, as we said nothing. ‘They are strange men, those of this country,’ he began; ‘I myself have been in Paris, and I have seen many things; but I could not stay away from here, and so I came back. You see, sir, we people of these parts cannot live away. I don’t know why, but there is no place like our own land. So I came back from Paris to spend the time still left to me. But there was one who did not come back. Nor is this country without its interest. Many years ago a young fellow named Millet lived near here, and he had the strange fancy to be a painter, making pictures on cloth, sir, and, almost incredible as it may seem, he went to Paris. Going to Paris nowadays is nothing, but then it was a very serious matter. They do say that though he had much trouble he had courage also, and has succeeded, so that he is on the road to celebrity and has become a great honor to his country. A man of much talent, of whom we are all very proud.’ Father said nothing, but I saw he was smiling broadly. When we left the inn for good, the proprietor looked at Father very carefully, as if he suspected that he had not entertained an ordinary traveler; and finally, his suspicions evidently growing, he said, ‘I remember the physiognomy of the Millets, who were well known along this coast as fine-looking men.’ We could see that he was ready to ask whether Father was not the young fellow who went to Paris. His curiosity was gratified later.

From the collection of the late Quincy A. Shaw. Half-tone plate engraved by G. M. Lewis

PEASANT WOMAN AND CHURN

FROM THE DRAWING BY JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET

❏
LARGER IMAGE

“When we visited the graveyard at Greville, where our ancestors were buried, and found their graves, which had no headstones and the wooden crosses of which had long ago gone to dust, we saw that they were covered thickly with weeds nearly as high as our heads. I said nothing, but pointed to them as if asking which member of the family each grave contained; and Father, also pointing, simply said, ‘Father, Mother, Grandmother,’ and so on through the family category. Waiting awhile, much affected, he repeated, as only he could, the words, ‘Oh, the high weeds where sleep the dead!’

“In a few days we went there again and found a man cutting the weeds. Father asked him why he was doing so. ‘To sell them,’ he replied. ‘Sell!’ exclaimed Father. ‘Do you say that you are selling the weeds from the graves?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Does the curé know of it?’ ‘Know of it? Of course he does. He consents to it and thinks it a good thing to do.’ Then, as if speaking to himself, Father said, ‘Ah! the heart has left this place. You are men no more. And the curé—!’

“It was in November, 1870, that Father made the sketch of the superb marine, which he painted in the spring of the next year and sent to Ruel.[1] He made also a great number of sketches and drawings of places near Greville and Vauville, as well as of the priory. Father loved every inch of the earth of his native hamlet. It is a wonderful land.

“We lived in M. Feuardent’s house in Cherbourg, Father doing his work in an ordinary room with no special light facilities. He desired very much to make some pictures of the country and sea around Cherbourg, but the authorities told him that he must not even carry a pencil or a note-book. It was in Cherbourg that he made the drawings of ‘The Milk-maid,’ from sketches taken in Greville.”

[1] Owned by the estate of the late Quincy A. Shaw, of Boston, Massachusetts.

HOUSE-WITHOUT-ROOF

BY EDITH M. THOMAS

HOUSE-WITHOUT-ROOF my house I called,
Whether in palaces I dwelt
Or lowly cot, clay-paved and walled;
And, if at wayside cross I knelt,
Or if at shrine, for me the place
Dissolved into hypæthral space.

Beside the fire on mine own hearth,
While household hours slipped softly by,
With those most dearly loved on earth,
Still would the ceiling fade on high;
And, as the sparks my fire up-sent,
My soul escaped above, unpent.

The lightnings oftentimes she drew,
And crossed the wingèd migrants’ flight;
She sought her roof in midday blue,
Where tender cloud-weft fails from sight—
In evening-red’s ethereal bars—
Or vault of night with brede of stars.

She sought—but higher yet must rise
The courses of her mansionry;
Beyond these skies to Other Skies,
Its walls cut through so sheer, so free;
Beyond the brede of stars, aloof,
I look—but nowhere find a Roof!

THE MAN WHO DID NOT GO TO HEAVEN ON TUESDAY

BY ELLIS PARKER BUTLER

Author of “Pigs is Pigs,” “Long Sam ‘Takes Out,’” etc.

UNCLE NOAH PRUTT, sitting in the front row of seats, leaned forward and put his hand behind his ear, vainly seeking to hear what his wife was saying to Judge Murphy. From time to time he stood up, trying to hear the better, but each time the lanky policeman pushed him back into his seat.

“Judge, yer Honor,” said the policeman, after the fifth time, “this man here has nawthin’ t’ do with th’ case, an’ he’s disthurbin’ th’ coort. Shall I thrun him out?”

“Let him be, Flaherty, let him be!” said the justice, carelessly, and at the words Uncle Noah arose and came forward to the black walnut bar that separated the raised platform of the justice from the rest of the room.

“Ah pleads not guilty, Judge!” said Uncle Noah, laying one trembling hand on the rail and pushing forward his ear with the other. He was a coal black Negro, with close-kinked white hair that looked like a white wig. His nose was large and flattened against his face, and his eyeballs were streaked with brown veins that gave him a dissipated look. He was the type of Negro that, at fifty, claims eighty years of age, and, so judged, Uncle Noah Prutt might have been anywhere between sixty and one hundred and ten. As he stood at the bar his black face bore a look of the most deeply pained resentment, and his thick lower lip protruded loosely as a sign of woe.

“Sit down!” shouted both the justice of the peace and the policeman, and, with his lip hanging still lower, Uncle Noah backed into his seat. He sat as far forward as he could, and leaned his head still farther forward.

“Who is that man?” asked the justice of no one in particular.

“Him? He’s mah husban’,” said the young colored woman, with a slight up-tilt of her nose. “Yo’ don’ need to pay no ’tention to him at all, Jedge. Ah ain’ ask him to come yere. He ain’ yere in no capacity but audjeence, he ain’.”

“He has no connection with this case?” asked the justice.

“No, sah!” said the young woman, decidedly.

“If he makes any more trouble, Flaherty,” said the justice, “put him out of the court. Now, what is this trouble, Sally?”

The young woman standing against the bar was fit to be classed as a beauty. Well-formed, with a rich yellow skin through which the blood glowed in her cheeks, with masses of black hair and her head carried high, she was superb, even in her cheap print wrapper. Even the fact that her feet were hideous in a pair of broken and run-down shoes of the sort worn by men did not impair her general appearance of an injured brown Venus seeking justice, and when she glanced at the prisoner her bosom heaved with anger and her brown eyes glowed dangerously.

The prisoner sat humped down in a chair in an attitude of the most profound dejection. He was of a darker brown than the woman, and so loose of joint that when he moved he flopped. His feet were so large as to be almost grotesque, and he was so thin that the bones of his shoulders were outlined by his light coat. But as he sat in the prisoner’s seat his face was the most noticeable feature. It was thin and long for a Negro, but with such high and prominent cheek-bones that his eyes seemed hidden in deep caves, and the eyes were like those of a dog that knows he is to be beaten. His wide mouth hung far down at the corners. He was a picture of the utterly crushed, the utterly helpless, the utterly hopeless. He was the shiftless Negro, with the last ray of hope extinguished. He had but one thing to look forward to, and that was the worst. As the justice asked Sally the question the prisoner’s mouth sagged a bit farther at the ends, and his eyes took a still sadder dullness.

“Yo’ ain’ miss it none when yo’ asks whut am dis trouble, Jedge,” said Sally, angrily. “Dis yere ain’ nuttin’ but trouble, an’ I gwine ask yo’ to send dis yere Silas to jail forebber an’ ebber. Yassah! An’ den he ain’ gwine be in jail long enough to suit me. An’ Ah gwine ask yo’ to declare damages ag’inst him, fo’ huhtin’ mah feelin’s, an’ fo’ tryin’ to drown me, an’ fo’ abductin’ me away from dat poor ol’ no-’count Noah whut am mah husban’, an’ fo’ alieamatin’ mah affections, on’y he couldn’t. When Ah whack him awn de head wid dat bed-slat—”

“Now, one minute,” said the justice, raising his hand. “Flaherty, what do you know about this case?”

“Well, yer Honor,” said the policeman, in the confidential tone an officer of the law assumes when he feels that he, and he only, can explain matters, “th’ way ut was was this way: I was walkin’ me beat up there awn Twilf’ Strate this mawrnin’, like I always does, whin I heard a yellin’ an’ a shoutin’. So I run into th’ lot—”

“What lot?” asked Justice Murphy.

“’Twas betwane Olive an’ Beech Strates, yer Honor. This here deff man, Noah Prutt, lives in a shack-like there, facin’ awn th’ strate. Th’ vacant lot is full iv thim hazel-brushes an’ what all I dunno.”

“You said there was a shanty on the lot. How could it be a vacant lot if there was a shanty on it?” asked the justice.

“Now, yer Honor,” said Flaherty, with an ingratiating smile, “there’s moore than wan lot in th’ wurrld, ain’t there? Th’ lot this Noah Prutt lives awn is wan iv thim. And th’ nixt wan is another iv thim. An’ th’ nixt wan t’ that is th’ third iv thim, an’ th’ ould Darky owns all iv thim, and iv th’ three iv thim but wan is vacant, and that’s th’ middle wan. There’s a shanty awn th’ furrst wan, and there’s a shanty awn th’ thurrd wan, an’ as I was sayin’, there’s nawthin’ awn th’ vacant wan excipt brush-like, an’ mebby a few trees, an’ some tin cans, an’ whatnot.”

“Very good!” said his honor. “Go ahead.”

“Well, sor,” said Flaherty, “this Prutt an’ this wife iv his lives in th’ furrst shanty, but th’ other wan is vacant excipt whin ’t is occupied. Th’ ould man rints ut now an’ again, an’ a dang lonely habitation ut is, set ’way back fr’m th’ strate, like ut is. So here I was, comin’ along, whin I hear th’ racket in th’ vacant lot, an’ whin I got there amidst th’ hazel-brush here was this Sally a-hammerin’ this Silas over th’ head wid a bed-slat, an’ him yellin’ bloody-murdther. So I tuck thim up, th’ bot’ iv thim, yer Honor.”

“And that’s all you know of the case?” asked the judge.

“Excipt what she tould me,” said Flaherty.

“And what was that?” asked Judge Murphy.

“Ut was what previnted me from arristin’ her for assault an’ batthery,” said Flaherty, “for if iver a man was assaulted an’ batthered, this same Silas was. She can wield a bed-slat like a warryor.”

“Ah’d ’a’ killed him! Ah’d ’a’ killed him shore!” said Sally.

“She w’u’d!” said Flaherty, briefly. “Thim Naygurs have th’ harrd heads, but wan more whack an’ he’d iv had a crack in th’ cranyum. So I wrested th’ bed-slat from her. Th’ place looked like there’d been a war, yer Honor. Plinty iv thim hazel-brushes she’d mowed down wid th’ bed-slat thryin’ t’ murdther him. An’ whin I heard th’ sthory, I did not blame her.”

“I have been waiting patiently to hear it myself,” said the justice.

“Accordin’ t’ th’ lady,” said Flaherty, “she’s a respictable married woman, yer Honor, bound in th’ clamps iv wedlock to this Noah Prutt, an’ niver stheppin’ t’ wan side iv th’ path iv wifely duty or to th’ other. ’Tis nawthin’ t’ us why a foine-lookin’ gurrl like her sh’u’d marry an’ ould felly like him. Maybe him havin’ two houses atthracted her. I dunno. But, annyway, she’s had t’ wash th’ wolf from th’ doore.”

“Had to do what?” asked the justice.

“Go out doin’ week’s wash t’ kape food in th’ house,” explained Flaherty. “For th’ ould man will not wurrk much. He’s got that used t’ livin’ awn th’ rint iv th’ exthra shanty, ye see. An’ there’s been no rint comin’ in this long whiles, for th’ prisoner at th’ bar has been th’ tinint iv th’ shanty, an’ he ped no rint at all.”

“Why not?” asked the justice.

“Well, sor,” said Flaherty, rubbing the hair at the back of his neck and grinning, “th’ lady here says he’s been that busy coortin’ her he’s had no time t’ wurrk. ’Twas nawthin’ fr’m wan ind iv th’ week till th’ other but, ‘Will ye elope wid me, darlint?’ an’, ‘Come now, l’ave th’ ould man an’ be me own turtle-dove!’”

“Ah tol’ him Ah gwine murder him ef he gwine keep up dat-a-way of proceedin’!” cried Sally, shrilly. “Ah tol’ him! Ah say, ‘Go on away, you wuthless deadbeat Nigger! Wha’ don’ you pay yo’ rent like a man, befo’ yo’ come talkin’ ’bout supportin’ a lady?’ Dass whut Ah tol’ him, Jedge. An’ whut he say? He say, ‘Sally gal! Ah gwine nab yo’ an’ hab yo’. Ah gwine steal yo’ an’ lock yo’ up, an’ nail yo’ up, an’ keep yo’!’ Dass whut he say. An’ he done hit!”

“Stole you, and locked you up?” asked the judge.

“Yassah!” cried Sally, glaring at the trembling Silas. “He lock me up, an’ he nail me up, an’ he try to drown me, ef Ah ain’ say whut he want me to say. Dat low-down, hypocritical Nigger! Yassah! Ah tole him, ‘Silas, ef yo’ don’ go way an’ leave me alone Ah gwine tek mah hands an’ Ah gwine yank all de wool right offen yo’ haid!’ Dass whut Ah say, Jedge. An’ Ah say, ‘Ef yo’ don’ shet up Ah gwine tear yo’ eyes out!’ An’ Ah means it. Talkin’ up to me like dat! An’ den whut he do?”

She held out her hand toward the dejected Silas and shook her finger at him.

“Den whut he do? He see Ah ain’ to be coax’ dat-a-way, ’cause he a no-’count Nigger, an’ he let on he purtind he get religion an’ wuk on mah feelin’s. Yassah! ’Cause he know Ah’s religious mahsilf an’ he cogitate how he come lak a snake in de grass an’ cotch me whin Ah ain’ thinkin’ no meanness of him. So long come dish yere prophet-man, whut call hisself Obediah, whut get all de Niggers wuk up an’ a-shoutin’ over yonder on de ol’ camp groun’s. Ah am’ tek no stock in dat Obediah prophet-man, Jedge, ’cause Ah a good Baptis’, lak mah husban’ yonder; but plinty of de black folks dey run to him, an’ dey hear him perorate an’ carry on, an’ dey get sot in dere minds dat dey gwine to hebben las’ Tuesday night whin de sun set. Yassah, dass whut dey think, ’cause de prophet-man he pretch dat-a-way. An’ dis yere Silas he let on he gwine to hebben along wid de rest of de folks.”

She let her lip curl scornfully.

“Him a-gwine to hebben!” she scoffed. “But Ah ain’ but half believe he got religion lak he say. Ah say, ‘Luk out, Sally! Ef he gwine to hebben nex’ Tuesday let him go; an’ if he ain’ gwine, let him alone.’ But yo’ look at him, Jedge! Jes look at him! He ain’ look so dangeroos, is he? An’ whin he come to me an’ say, ‘Sally, Ah done got quit of de ol’ Nick whut was in me, an’ Ah gwine be lak dat no mo’,’ Ah jes got to believe him. Yassah! He dat pernicious meek an’ lowly an’ sorrumful-like dat Ah ain’ suspict no divilment at all. ‘Ah feel troubled in mah conscience,’ he say, ‘’cause Ah been tryin’ to lead yo’ on de wrong paff, an’ Ah can’t go to hebben nex’ Tuesday les’ yo’ forgib me,’ he say, an’ he look so downheart’ an’ seem lak he so set on gwine to hebben wid de rest ob de folks, dat Ah say, ‘All right, Silas, Ah don’ hold no hard feelin’s. Ef yo’ don’ bodder me no more, Ah forgib yo’ whut is pas’ an’ done for, but ef yo’ gwine to hebben yo’ better clean up yo’ house an’ put hit in order, lak de Book say, before yo’ start, ’cause ef yo’ don’ yo’ gwine get sint back, shore!’ So he let on lak dat how he think, too. He purtind to thank me kinely fo’ dat recommindation, an’ he ask’ c’u’d Ah lind him a scrub pail an’ a mop an’ a broom, twell he clean up he house. An’ I so done.

“Dass all right! He scrub, an’ he wash, an’ he clean, an’ he move all he furniture out in de lot, an’ he clean, an’ he wash, an’ he scrub! He ain’ wuk lak dat fo’ months, Jedge. So den Ah think shore he got religion, lak he let on. So, come Monday, Ah got a job down to Mis’ Gilbert’s scrubbin’ her house, an’ Ah jes got to hab dat pail an’ dat mop an’ dat broom. So Ah tell Noah whut job Ah got, an’ Ah say, ‘Noah, Ah gwine down to Mis’ Gilbert’s house, fo’ to help clean house, an’ ef she want me, Ah gwine stay right dah twell de house all clean’ up.’ Cause dat a long perambulation down to Mis’ Gilbert’s house, Jedge, an’ ef she ask me to stay a couple o’ days, Ah gwine save mah breakfas’ an’ mah suppah whilst Ah stay down yonder. So Ah go outen de house an’ Ah walk down de street twell Ah come to de gate whut lead up to Silas’ house, an’ Ah walk up de paff, an’ Ah knock on de do’. Nobody say nuffin’! Ah knock ag’in. Nobody say nuffin’! Ah open de do’ gintly, an’ Ah peek in. Ain’ nobody in de shack at all. So Ah steps in, fo’ to get mah pail an’ mah mop an’ mah broom.

“Dab dey set, right by de do’, an’ excipt fo’ dem, dey ain’ nuffin’ in de shack at all but de straw outen Silas he’s bed, an’ dat all scatter aroun’ lak to dry an’ air out. Excipt dey one bed-slat whut Ah calculate Silas he keep handy fo’ to whack at de rats, which am mighty pestiferous about dat shack. So whin Ah seen he done clean up yeverything as neat as a pin, my heart soften unto him. Ah jes gwine feel sorry fo’ him, de leas’ little bit. So Ah gwine look in de cupboard to see ef he got plenty to eat—an’ he ain’ got nuffin’ in de cupboard but a box of matches, an’ dat all! So Ah feel right smart sorry I been scold him lak I do, an’ Ah gwine pick up mah pail an’ mah mop an’ mah broom whin—bang!—de do’ go shut an’ Ah all in de dark.”

“Some one shut the door?” asked the justice.

“He shet de do’!” shouted Sally, shrilly, pointing her finger at the trembling Silas. “He shet de do’, an’ he lock de do’, an’ he start to nail de do’, lak he say he would! Yassah! Ah bang mahsilf ag’inst de do’ an’ Ah yell an’ shout, an’ de do’ don’t budge, ’cause hit locked. An’ all de while—bam! bam! bam!—he nailin’ de do’ from de outside. Ah poun’ wif mah fists an’ Ah peck up mah pail an’ slam at de do’ twell de pail all bus’ to pieces, an’ Ah bang mah mop to pieces, but—bam! bam! bam!—he go on nailin’.”

She paused for breath, and Silas opened his mouth, as if to speak, but closed it again.

“Yassah!” she shrilled, glaring at Silas, “he nail up de do’ so Ah can’t budge hit, an’ whin Ah try de windows, dey nailed up too.”

“There’s two iv thim doors,” explained Flaherty, “an’ both iv thim open outward. He’d nailed sthrips acrost thim. Th’ two windys has wooden shutters, and he’d nailed thim fast.”

“What!” exclaimed Justice Murphy. “He nailed the woman in?”

“He did, sor!”

“But—but this is outrageous!” exclaimed the justice.

All three glared at the dejected Silas, and did not see Noah Prutt as he arose from his chair.

“Make him pay, Jedge! Make him pay!” cried Noah, eagerly.

“Sit ye down!” cried Flaherty, in a voice of thunder, and Noah subsided. On the edge of his chair he nodded like a toy mandarin. He understood that things were going badly for Silas, and that was enough to please him. Sally turned to him and shouted in his ear.

“Shet up an’ stay shet!” she cried. “This is none of yo’ business, Noah. Ah gwine manage this mahsilf!”

The old man smiled and nodded his willingness. As she turned away he touched her on the arm.

“Thutty dollahs,” he said, and nodded and smiled again.

“Thutty nuffin’s!” she muttered. “Ah guess yo’ Honor will know whut Ah ought to get from dat Silas, an’ whut he ought to get from yo’. ’Cause Ah suffer a heap o’ distress of min’ an’ body whilst Ah been shet up in dat shanty dem three days.”

“Three days!” exclaimed the justice.

“Yassah! Ah been nail up in dat shanty three days an’ three nights,” said Sally, “an’ all dat time Ah been pestered an’ annoyed. Ah been sploshed on mah feet an’ Ah been hungry an’ col’, an’ Ah been insulted. Dat Silas he jus’ hong roun’ dat shanty to make me mizzable, but Ah ain’ give in one bit. No, sah! Ah’d a-died fus’. Fus’ off Ah bang on de do’ an’ Ah bang on de windows, an’ Ah keep wahm, an’ whin Ah get col’ Ah pile some straw in de fireplace an’ Ah get dem matches an’ Ah mek me a straw fire. An’ prisintly Ah hear Silas scramble-scramble on de roof. ‘Whut he up to now?’ Ah say; ‘He gwine try climb down de chimbly? Ef he do Ah whack him wid de bed-slat twell he mighty sorry he try dat.’ But he ain’ try hit. No, sah! Splosh! come a pail of wahtah down de chimbly, an’ out go mah fire, an’ mah feet suttinly get sopped. An’ Silas he say, down de chimbly, lak he voice all clog up wif laughin’, ‘Ain’ gone to hebben yit! Ain’ gone to hebben yit!’ an’ splosh! yere come anudder pail of wahtah.”

“Why, this is no case for me,” said the justice. “This man should be bound over to the Grand Jury!”

“Ah don’ care whut yo’ bind him to, so as yo’ bind him good an’ strong,” said Sally, vindictively. “Yevery time Ah try to get wahm by makin’ a fire, down come dat pail of wahtah an’ splosh mah feet, twell Ah think he try to drown me. ‘Ain’ gone to hebben yit!’ he shout’. Hit right col’ in dat shanty, Jedge. Hit pernicious col’. Dat wahtah freeze on de flo’, an’ hit freeze on mah shoes, an’ Ah get hungrier an’ hungrier, an’ Ah shout an’ Ah rage, an’ all he say is, ‘Ain’ gone to hebben yit! Ain’ gone to hebben yit!’ Ah bet he ain’! Whin de time come he gwine somewheres ilse!”

“How did you get out, finally?” asked the justice.

“Ah keep maulin’ at de do’ wif dat bed-slat all de whiles,” said Sally. “Dat a mahty fine piece of bed-slat, dat is. An’ prisintly, whin Ah about to drap wid hunger an’ col’ an’ die where Ah drap, Ah beat a hol’ in de do’. ‘Ain’ gone to hebben yit!’ he ’low, an’ whack at de bed-slat wif a club, but Ah right smart mad, an’ Ah pry an’ Ah wuk, an’ prisintly Ah pry off one board. An’ when he see Ah gwine win out he scoot. Yassah! He scoot. Ah ’low he run away ’cause he afraid, but dass not hit. No, suh! He gwine fotch an ax, fo’ to nail up dat do’ ag’in. So prisintly Ah wuk dat do’ open an’ Ah step out, an’ whut Ah see? Ah see dat Silas a-standin’ yere in de paff, wid he ax in he hand an’ he mouf wide open, lak Ah been a ghos’. ‘Ain’ gone to hebben yit, her?’ Ah say; ‘Well, if yo’ ain’ gone yit, yo’ gwine mighty soon!’ an’ I wint fo’ him wif de bed-slat, an’ he yell lak blazes whilst Ah gwine murder him. An’ dat how-come de pleeceman heah him an’ save he life.”

The justice folded his hands, his fingers working nervously, as if they longed to take hold of the throat of the dispirited prisoner.

“In all my experience,” he said, “this is the most outrageous case I have ever met! I am only sorry I am not the proper official to try this case. I hope this man gets the full penalty of the law. I can’t express—”

He shook his head.

“Whatever possessed you?” he asked the shrinking Silas.

“His Honor is speakin’ t’ ye!” cried Flaherty, poking Silas with his baton. “Spake up whin he addrisses ye! Why did ye do ut?”

“Ah—” began Silas, in a thin, scared voice.

“Sthand up whin ye addriss th’ coort!” said Flaherty, and Silas stood.

As he stood there was nothing about him that suggested the fiery lover. His drooping shoulders and general air of long-permanent shiftlessness almost gave the lie to the idea that he could have taken the trouble to carry a pail of water to a roof. He looked as if to walk at a shambling gait was about the extreme of any exertion of which he was possible.

“Ah didn’ do hit,” he said weakly, and sat down again.

“Now! now!” said Justice Murphy, sharply. “None of that!”

“Sthand up whin his Honor addrisses ye!” said Flaherty.

“Ah don’ know nuffin’ about hit, Jedge,” said Silas, in a squeaky voice as he half lifted himself out of the chair. “Ah’ll tell yo’ all whut Ah know. Ah wint away from mah shanty Monday, ’cause Ah got to yearn a dollar fo’ to buy a white robe fo’ to go to hebben in Tuesday, an’ Ah chop a cord ob wood an’ yearn mah dollar an’ buy mah white robe. An’ dat night all de prophet’s folks spind de night on de hilltop, a-waitin’ fo’ de dawn ob de great day, an’ a-prayin’ an’ a-singin’ an’ a-fastin’. An’ Tuesday Ah spint awn de hilltop like dat, a-prayin’ an’ a-singin’ an’ a-fastin’ twell de sun sh’u’d set. An’ whin de sun set nuffin’ happen. No, sah. Nobody go nowheres, an’ dey ain’ no prophet no mo’, fo’ he wint away wid whut he done collicted up endurin’ de revival. So whin dat come about Ah quite pertickler hungry, an’ Ah go fo’th t’ yearn some money fo’ to get mah food an’ to pay whut Ah owe Noah, ’cause he been pesterin’ me about he rint. So Ah get some wood to chop, an’ I chop hit. An’ bime-by, whin Ah chop all dat wood, Ah guess Ah’ll go home, an’ Ah go home. An’ whin Ah retch mah shanty, Ah see de do’ bruk, an’ somebody a-yammerin’ on hit, an’ whilst Ah look, out sprong dis Sally Prutt an’ whack me on de haid wid a bed-slat, an’ holler, ‘Ain’ gone to hebben yit! Ain’ gone to hebben yit!’ lak she done gwine crazy, an’ ebbery time she whack she holler, an’ ebbery time she holler she whack. So I gwine get away from dere quick, an’ whin Ah run, she run, an’ she shore gwine murder me, ef dish yere pleeceman am’ come an’ stop her.”

“Just so!” said Justice Murphy, sarcastically. “And you were not near the shanty at all? And you did not nail this woman in it? And you did not pour water down the chimney?”

“No, sah,” said Silas, in a frightened voice.

“Oh, you brack liah!” said Sally, angrily.

“And I suppose you never said, ‘Ain’t gone to heaven yet!’ did you?” said the judge. “You never heard those words, did you?”

Silas looked from side to side, and his lower lip trembled. His back took a more disconsolate droop. There are no words in the English language to describe how utterly downcast and hopeless and woe-saturated he looked. Milton came near it when he said something about “Below the lowest depths still lower depths—” In woe Silas was in depths a couple of stories lower than that.

“Well?” said the justice, sharply.

“Answer his Honor whin he addrisses ye!” shouted Flaherty, and Silas moistened his lips and gulped.

“No, sah! Ah—Ah ain’ hear them wuds perzackly, nevah befo’. Ah ain’ heah, ‘Ain’ gone to hebben.’ Ah jes heah ‘Ain’ gwine to hebben.’”

“Oh, you did hear that, did you?” said the justice. “Who said that?”

Silas stared at his boot. He blinked a couple of times, and then spoke.

“Ol’ Noah, he say thim wuds,” he said. The judge turned to the old Negro on the chair in the front row, and pointed at him.

“That Noah?” he asked. “Is that the man?”

“Yassah,” said Silas, sadly. “Dass de man. He say hit.”

Old Noah, seeing that the conversation was veering his way, arose and came forward, his hand behind his ear and expectation in his face.

“Thutty dollahs, Jedge!” he said eagerly. “Dass de right amount. Thutty dollahs.”

“You go set down!” yelled his wife in his ear, but the old man shook his head.

“Ain’ he gwine pay hit?” he asked resentfully. “Ain’ de jedge gwine mek him pay hit? Whaffo’ Ah nail up de shack ef he ain’ gwine pay hit?”

“Whut yo’ palaver about? Nail up de shack! You ain’ nail up no shack. Dat no-’count Silas he nail up de shack,” shouted Sally.

The old man nodded his head and grinned.

“Yas, dasso! Dasso! Ah nail up de shack, Jedge,” he chuckled. “Ah nail him in. Yassah, Ah done jes so.”

“Him?” shouted the justice, “you mean her?”

“Yassah, Ah nail him in,” said Noah.

“You did?” shouted the justice.

“Ah—Ah beg pawdon, Jedge,” said the old man. “Ah cawn’t heah as—as well as Ah used to heah. Ah cawn’t hear whisperin’ tones no moah. Ah—Ah got to beg yo’ to speak jes a leetle mite louder.”

“WHY DID YOU NAIL HIM IN THE SHACK?” shouted Justice Murphy at the top of his voice.

“Why, ’cause he won’ pay me de rint,” said Noah, as if it was a thing every one should have known. “Ain’ Sally been jes tol’ yo’? Ah surmise she done confabulate about that all de whiles she talkin’. Yo’ mus’ scuse her, Jedge. Whin de womens staht talkin’, nobuddy know whut dey talk about. Dey jes talk fo’ de exumcise. Mah secon’ wife, which am de las’ but one befo’ Ah tuck Sally—”

“Look here!” shouted Justice Murphy. “Why did you nail him in the shack?”

“Zack?” said the old man, doubtfully. “No, sah, he name Silas. Dass him yondah. I arsk him fo’ de rint, an’ I beg him fo’ de rint, an’ I argyfy about dat rint twell Ah jes wohn out, an’ Ah don’ git no rint at all. So bime-by erlong come dish yere prophet whut you heah about, maybe. Ah ain’ tek no stock in dat prophet-man at all! No, sah! Ah ’s a good Baptis’ an’ Ah don’ truckle to none o’ dem come-easy, go-easy, folks like dat. Ah stay ’way from him, an’ Ah tell Sally she stay way likewise. But dis yere Silas he get de prophet-man’s religion bad. Yassah. He ’low he gwine to hebben las’ Tuesday whin all de res’ ob de gang go. Ah reckon he ain’ gwine go, ’cause Ah feel dey ain’ none ob dem gwine go, but Ah can’t be shore. Mos’ anything li’ble to happen whin times so bad like dey is. So Ah projeck up to Silas an’ Ah say to him, ‘Ef yo’ gwine to hebben nex’ Tuesday, yo’ bettah pay me de rint befo’ yo’ go.’ Dass whut Ah say, Jedge. An’—an’—an’ dass reason-able. ’Cause ef he gwine to hebben Tuesday, Ah ain’ gwine hab no chance to collict dat rint come Winsday. No, sah.”

“Then what?” shouted the justice.

“Nuffin’!” said Noah. “Nuffin’ at all. He say, ‘Scuse me, Noah, but Ah so full ob preparations fo’ de great evint Ah ain’ got time to yearn no money to pay de rint.’ An’ Ah say, ‘Silas, Ah want mah rint!’ So, bime-by, whin Monday mawrnin’ come erlong, Sally she gwine away to do a job o’ work, an’ Ah meyander ober to Silas’ shack, an’ Ah got mah hatchit an’ mah nails, whut Ah gwine mind de fince. An’ whin Ah come to de shack All hear de squawk ob a board in de flo’ an’ Ah know Silas he in de shack, an’ Ah slam de do’ an’ Ah nail up de do’ an’ he carrye on scandalous, but he can’t git yout. An’ Ah don’ care whut he say, ’cause Ah can’t heah ef he cuss or ef he palaver.

“’Cause Ah ain’ gwine hab no tinint go to hebben like dat whin he owe me rint twell he pay de rint. So Ah reckon Ah leave him dere twell de gwine is all gone, an’ Ah ain’ worried erbout Silas gwine alone by hisse’f. He ain’ got de get-up to do nuffin’ alone by hisse’f. So Ah leab him dah twell he natchully bus’ out.”

“You tried to starve him,” shouted the justice. “You threw water down the chimney.”

“Dass jes a pre-caution, Jedge, dass jes a pre-caution,” said the old Negro. “Ah got mah doubts erbout dat ol’ Obediah prophet-man whut come from nowhares. Whin Ah see de smoke a-risin’ from de chimbly, Ah speculate ef et hebben whar de prophet-man gwine tek they-all, or ef he gwine tek dem ilsewhars, an’ Ah cogitate how maybe Silas gwine escape in de flame ob de fiah. Dey yain’t nuffin’ like good ol’ Baptis’ water fo’ to fight debbil’s fiah, so Ah fotch a couple o’ pail’ ob wahtah, an’ Ah po’ hit down de chimbly, an’ Ah say, ‘Yo’ ain’ gwine to hebben yit! Yo’ ain’ gwine to hebben yit!’ Yassah. An’ he ain’!”

He chuckled with glee, but at the same moment he caught a glimpse of Sally’s face, and his grin gave way to a look of blank surprise. Slowly and carefully Sally was rolling up her sleeves, and her eyes glittered menacingly. Flaherty tapped her on the shoulder.

“None iv that here!” he said sternly.

The justice looked from one to the other of the parties before him, closed an impressive-looking law book with a bang, and stood up, feeling for his tobacco-pipe in his hip pocket.

“Flaherty,” he said slowly, “this is not a case for this court. It seems in the nature of a domestic misunderstanding. Under ordinary circumstances,” he added, pressing tobacco into the pipe with his thumb, “I should undertake to explain to all parties just what happened and how it happened and why it happened but—” he looked at old Noah and shook his head—“there is nothing in the statutes of the State of Iowa compelling a justice of the peace of the County of Riverbank, City of Riverbank and Township of Riverbank, to shout that loud and that long. Case dismissed!”

Flaherty herded the three parties out of the room and the justice lighted his pipe.

“Whaffo’ Ah ain’ git mah thutty dollahs?” he heard Uncle Noah ask in the hall. “Wha’ we gwine?”

“Ah tell yo’ wha’ yo’ ain’ gwine!” he heard Sally shout. “You ain’ gwine to hebben yit! But yo’ gwine to wish yo’ was gwine ’fo’ Ah git froo wif yo’!”

“Flaherty,” said his Honor, tilting back comfortably and blowing a cloud of blue smoke toward the ceiling, “go out and warn that woman to keep the peace.”

“I will,” said Flaherty, “but can ye ixpict ut iv her, Murphy?”

SIERRA MADRE

BY HENRY VAN DYKE

O MOTHER mountains! billowing far to the snow-lands,

Robed in aërial amethyst, silver, and blue,

Why do ye look so proudly down on the lowlands?

What have their gardens and groves to do with you?

Theirs is the languorous charm of the orange and myrtle,

Theirs are the fruitage and fragrance of Eden of old,—

Broad-boughed oaks in the meadows fair and fertile,

Dark-leaved orchards gleaming with globes of gold.

You, in your solitude standing, lofty and lonely,

Bear neither garden nor grove on your barren breasts;

Rough is the rock-loving growth of your cañons, and only

Storm-battered pines and fir-trees cling to your crests.

Why are ye throned so high and arrayed in splendor

Richer than all the fields at your feet can claim?

What is your right, ye rugged peaks, to the tender

Queenly promise and pride of the mother-name?

Answered the mountains, dim in the distance dreaming:

“Ours are the forests that treasure the riches of rain;

Ours are the secret springs and the rivulets streaming

Softly down through the manifold bloom of the plain.

“Vain were the toiling of men in the dust of the dry land,

Vain were the plowing and planting in waterless fields,

Save for the life-giving currents we send from the sky-land,

Save for the fruit our embrace with the storm-cloud yields.”

O mother mountains, Madre Sierra, I love you!

Rightly you reign o’er the vale that your bounty fills,—

Kissed by the sun, or with big, bright stars above you,—

I murmur your holy name and lift up mine eyes to the hills.

THE BORROWED LOVER

BY L. FRANK TOOKER

Author of “Kerrigan’s Christmas Sermon,” “Under Rocking Skies,” etc.

’TIS this way with women,” declared Kerrigan: “some of thim will desave ye, and some will not, but ye will niver know which till ut ’s done; for they’re all alike in the use of their eyes and tongues, and the proof of the puddin’ ’s in the ’atun’. Mind thot, laad.”

It was Sunday morning, and Kerrigan was leaning over the rail, looking dreamily off across the waste of piled lumber to the spires and roofs of the city. The sun shone brightly; the yellow flood of the river lipped softly the barnacled piles of the wharf; the hush of the Sabbath lay over all. Nicolao had just gone over the side of the vessel for an all-day outing; but he turned at Kerrigan’s warning. He waved his hand airily.

“Tha’ ’s alla right,” he replied. “Eet ees the gamble, yas—what yo’ expec’. So-long! Adios!”

“Staay where ye arre,” commanded Kerrigan, sternly. “I’m goun’ wid ye. ’Tis a guardeen ye waant, ye light-mind child of misfortune. Wait till I change me clothes.”

Twenty minutes later they crossed the wharf and passed cityward, something of Kerrigan’s grandfatherly air of protection dropping away at every step.

“’Tis good to be young,” he said; “I mind I was young wance mesilf. Where are ye goun’, laad?”

“I hava the friend,” Nicolao replied; “his name is Porfirio—Portuguese, weeth the nice shop, nice fam’ly, nice daughter, yo’ know.”

“I do,” said Kerrigan, significantly; “ye’d niver go ilse. I’ll attind ye for yer own safety. ’Tis on me mind.”

At the crossing they boarded a trolley, for the sun was hot and Nicolao in haste; and going well forward, they seated themselves in the car. As Kerrigan glanced down to return the change of his fare to his pocket, he saw two hands meekly folded in the lap of the woman who sat at his left. The hands held a breviary and a handkerchief. He glanced up at the face of the holder—the fresh Irish face of a young woman.

He sighed and looked away; he knew not why, but for an instant it gave him a desolate feeling of homesickness. Then Nicolao began to talk, and Kerrigan forgot the girl.

But presently she left the car, and as she rose to her feet, he saw a handkerchief flutter to the floor. He leaned forward quickly, and, picking it up, hurried after his neighbor; but others had risen between them, and she had reached the street and was stepping up to the curb when he touched her arm.

“Ye dropped it, acushla,” he said, and turning quickly, she glanced at his outstretched hand.

“Then ’twas a miracle,” she said, “and belongs to the church, not to me.” She held up her own hand, in which safely reposed the breviary and the handkerchief. Kerrigan stared.

“Wid me two eyes I saw it drop as ye got up,” he declared.

“I had but one,” replied the girl. “Are your two eyes strong enough to see that I’ve got it still? And you’ve lost your car.”

“I’ve lost more—me good name,” Kerrigan said. “I’ve stolen the handkerchief.”

“Then you’d better pray for repentance,” she advised. “I’ll give you a hint: the church is before you. Good-by, and thank you—for nothing.” Laughing, she hurried away up the steps of the church.

Kerrigan hesitatingly watched her go, then walked to a side porch and sat down.

“I’ll tak’ the hint to this extint,” he muttered, and patiently waited through the hour of service; but as the audience streamed forth at the close he returned to the main door and stood watching.

But suddenly he felt a touch on his arm and heard a voice say:

“I’ll be going home now.”

Startled, he looked down into the face of the girl. It was very demure, though flushed.

“Ah, ’tis ye thot’s repinted—of yer haard heart,” he said. “Ye’ve come back to tell me so.”

“I’ve repented of naught but my sins,” she replied, “and a hard heart is not one of them. But I’d borrow you for a little, if you have nothing better to do.”

“I’ll have nothing better to do all through purgatory, which will be hiven to me if ye’re wid me,” he replied. “And there’s another miracle.”

She laughed.

“I’d not care to keep you so long.”

“Thin I’ll get me hell first, which is wrong,” he answered sadly. “I tho’t ye were orthodox.”

“I’m—” She pressed his arm in warning as a man passed them rapidly, turning to look back into their faces. He was weazen, middle-aged, with a wry face.

“That’s the reason for borrowing you,” she explained in a low voice.

“Thot’s not a reason; ut’s an apology,” Kerrigan said tartly. “Ut’s a monkey, not a mon.”

“He’s always hanging about,” she replied. “My father and mother favor him; he’s got money.”

“Ut’s a curse,” Kerrigan declared solemnly.

“So the rich tell me,” said the girl with a laugh.

“I’m rich mesilf while I have ye,” he said.

“You’re only borrowed,” she warned him. “Are you a masterful man?”

“I’m meek as Moses,” he assured her. “A child could lade me.”

“Oh, then you won’t do at all!” she cried. “I thought you were masterful by your looks. My father and mother are meek, but set in their ways, and I’m tired of it. Now, a man who’d knock me about and them—”

“Ye waant me to knock thim about—yer father and mither?”

“I want them to think you would,” she corrected him. “’T would be good for them. But of course you’d not do it; you’d only be soft-spoken and blarneying.”

“I’m as gintle as a cow by nature,” he assured her; “but I’d sell me birthright to plaze ye. Now tak’ me home wid ye and prove ut.”

“’T is worth trying,” she replied. “You’ll stay to dinner? I’ve taken to you, you know.”

“I accipt both the dinner and the compliment,” he answered, “and thank ye kindly for both.”

In the porch of their small house near the wall of the cemetery of the city her father and mother sat waiting as they entered the gate.

“My friend, Mr.——” The girl hesitated.

“Kerrigan—Thomas Kerrigan,” that gentleman said promptly.

“My father and mother,” continued the girl. “Reilly’s their name. The gentleman was very kind. He lost his car to return my handkerchief.”

Her father, a weather-beaten little man, looked Kerrigan over coolly as he nodded.

“Faith!” he said at last, “I’m thinkin’ he’s likely to lose his supper before he returns it; he’s got it in his hand yet.”

The girl laughed.

“It was not mine, you know,” she explained.

“I don’t see the joke,” her father said irritably. “What’s all the stir, Kate?”

“Ye’ll see ut in time,” Kerrigan replied with composure. “’T is like this: she liked me betther nor the bit of white rag, so she took me instid.”

“She was always greedy,” replied Reilly; “she’d take the biggest lump iv’ry time, not countin’ the quality.” He turned to his wife. “Do ye mind thot, Mary?”

“I don’t understand a’ the nonsince,” replied his wife, a meek little wisp of a woman. She rose and went into the house, followed by Kate.

Kerrigan was looking complacently about him, and now said:

“Ye have the cimetery handy, Reilly.”

“I need to,” the old man replied. “I worrk in it.”

“’T is the fine job,” declared Kerrigan. “Ye can feel all the time how much betther off ye are than yer neighbors. I doubt not ut makes ye consated.”

“There’s thim that are livin’ that make me feel the same,” Reilly said significantly. He glared at Kerrigan, who nodded.

“’T is a habit and grows on ye, like drinkun’,” Kerrigan declared. “What do ye do to cure ut?”

“I choose me own fri’nds mostly,” Reilly said tartly. “Belikes ye will take the hint.”

“I do,” replied Kerrigan. “’T is the raison ye worrk in the cimetery, I tak’ ut; the talk’s wan-sided. Ye’d like thot.”

Kate came out and, seeing her father glowering, sat down by Kerrigan, carelessly placing her hand on the back of his chair.

“My father has taken to you,” she said with a coquettish glance. “He’ll monopolize you. I’ll not see you at all. I’m fair green with the jealousy.”

“Good Lord!” sputtered the old man, and glared at her, but she seemed not to hear or see.

“We’ll go for a walk after dinner,” she went on—“in the cemetery. It’s the only place I can get you away from him; for he works there in the week, and he’d not like to spoil his holiday by seeing the place.”

“’T will be a sore thing to part from him,” answered Kerrigan, “for we’re like brithers alriddy, barrun’ the size of us and the looks; but I’d not like to remind him of worrk, so we’ll go, as ye say.”

“’T is the nice, quiet place for young people,” Kate said and laughed. “You’ll find them all about, walking arm and arm, and sitting on the benches in the shade, hand in hand. They’ll not notice us at all.”

“Thin we’ll not notice thim,” answered Kerrigan, with good-natured generosity; but Reilly rose up and stormed into the house, slamming the door.

He ate his dinner rapidly and in silence, and left the table long before the others, and when, ready for their walk, Kate and Kerrigan appeared in the porch, he sat there grim and silent, wearing his coat and hat.

Kate showed her surprise.

“Why, Father, have you the chill?” she asked anxiously. “Are you cold?”

“Wan worrd more, me girl, and I’ll fetch ye a clip on the side of the head, old as ye are,” Reilly said savagely.

“You’d never do the like of such a queer thing,” she exclaimed—“never. And you know me Tom would not stand for that at all. Would you?” She looked trustingly up into Kerrigan’s face.

“’T would hurt me more nor him to tak’ a little, small mon across me knee,” Kerrigan replied, “but ’t would be both me duty and right. But he’s only jokun’, me dear. He’s laughun’ in his sleeve this minut’.”

Reilly eyed him with a look of ferocity.

“Tin years younger, ye lump,” he said, “and small as I am, I’d fetch ye the mate of it over the jaw, big as ye are.”

“Hiven be thanked for the tin years, thin!” exclaimed Kerrigan, piously.

“Yes, Heaven be thanked!” echoed Kate. “’T would be a sore thing for a loving girl to see her old father in the hands of a strong man. You’ll always be tender to him, won’t you?”

“Always,” promised Kerrigan—“tender, but firm.”

“Thank you,” she said softly. “I knew you would. But good-by, Father.”

“Ye can’t go,” snapped Reilly. “Into the house wid yez!”

“What!” she cried. “And me of age, and earning me living these five years!” She threw back her head and walked toward the gate, with her father following after.

“Thin I’ll go wid yez, ye ungrateful girl,” Reilly declared.

“Thin take me ither arm,” said Kerrigan, with a solicitous air; but Reilly stepped back, waving him off.

“Go on, ye lump!” he commanded.

“Aye, ye know best,” Kerrigan agreed. “’T is more like a marriage procission yer way.”

Kate laughed.

“For shame,” she cried, “to talk of marriage so soon! I’ve known you but four hours.”

“What’s time to the lovun’ hearrt thot knows uts own mate?” asked Kerrigan.

“True,” she replied; “it’s nothing at all.”

“If ye’ve no respict for yer owld father, ye hussy,” Reilly hissed close at her ear, “think shame to yersilf for the bowldniss of yez.”

“To think you’d put the black name of boldness on your own daughter!” Kate cried, turning angrily. “I’ll not listen to you.” She flounced up the road.

Reilly followed. He passed into the cemetery behind them and stubbornly kept near; but as they turned into an avenue of live-oaks, he caught sight of a slender young man who stood in a path and watched Kate and Kerrigan go by. Reilly beckoned to him, and the young man came hesitatingly forward.

“And how are ye the day?” Reilly said genially, and extended his hand. In manifest surprise the young man shook hands and said:

“Well, Mr. Reilly, as the world goes. And how are you?”

“Fine, Michael,” Reilly replied, “though troubled a small bit.” He glanced ahead at the pair, who had not looked back. The young man’s eyes also followed them.

“Aye, it’s the world’s way,” he agreed with a somber air. “It’s up and down with us all.”

“It is, Michael Cassidy,” replied Reilly. “But I’ve not seen ye for the long time.”

As Michael had been forbidden to come to the house, he deemed it politic to make no reply. His silence left Reilly at a loss, and presently he said with a melancholy shake of the head:

“It’s God’s truth, as they say, that a mon niver knows what’s good for him.”

Michael looked at him inquiringly.

“Are you speaking of yourself, Mr. Reilly?” he asked.

“I am,” Reilly confessed. “Here was I keepin’ a fine lad like yersilf from me house, and who should me daughter bring into it but thot big lump yon! Bedad! he fills the whole place!”

“Lord keep us all!” exclaimed Michael.

“’T is well said, Michael Cassidy,” replied Reilly. “’T is the bitter, true worrd.”

“But not past mending, Mr. Reilly,” Michael said with a sly glance. “’T is only to let me come back and send the lump flying.”

“Flyin’ is it?” exclaimed Reilly, wrathfully. “Faith! he flies like a tree.”

“’T is your own house,” Michael replied. “You have only to say the word go. I know how it sounds myself.”

“Have I? ’T is all ye know. I give him a couple or three hints of the same, and he was for takin’ me over his knee—me, the father of me own daughter. And what did she do but egg him on!”

“Aye, that’s bad.”

“It is so.”

“If you could manage to let him do it,” Michael said thoughtfully, “and then call the police for assault, you’d have him fine. ’T would shame Kate. ’T would be bad for him.”

“Would it?” Reilly said with scorn. “And how would it be for me in me owld age to be taken across a mon’s knee? Tell me thot.”

Michael snickered, but quickly changed his snicker to a cough under Reilly’s wrathful look.

“You’re right, Mr. Reilly,” he said soberly; “’t would make angels weep.”

“I’d not distress the howly wans to thot extint,” Reilly declared. He was silent a moment, then said with a brightening face: “If you’d pass a scrappy worrd wid him yersilf, Michael, and take a clip or two of his fist, belikes Kate would take pity on ye and—”

“The pity of a woman is a poor tale,” Michael replied hastily. “Has Kate taken a liking to him?”

“A liking to him, is it!” exclaimed Reilly. “She makes me fair blush for her bowldniss.”

“Then she’s given me up, and it’s no use at all,” Michael said with a groan.

“Well, if she’s given ye up, ye’ve nothing to lose by me plan,” argued Reilly. “She might take ye back.”

“And be where I was before,” objected Michael, “and that was nowhere at all, with you against me. That’s the plain word between friends, Mr. Reilly, and no harm meant.”

“But all that’s done and gone, as I told ye,” Reilly irritably replied. “I’m for ye now, Michael. ’T is her pity that’s the only way to win her now.”

“Faith! I think I’d get it,” answered Michael, dolefully; “the man’s as broad as a house.”

“Well, if it comes to the blows bechune ye,” Reilly said, “just grapple wid him, and I’ll give him a little small clip on the back of the head wid me stick.” He gripped his cane hard as he added grimly: “Bedad! I’ll put me heart in it, and that’s no lie. Now come on and try me plan.”

But Michael still held back.

“What’s changed you all at once?” he asked. “You never liked me.”

“That lump,” said Reilly. “He’ll marry her out of hand before their walk’s over if ye do not stop him.”

“And if I do stop him, will I have her myself?” Michael asked.

“Ye will,” Reilly promised. “I’ve passed me worrd.”

“Then God be with us all, and here goes!” said Michael.

They quickened their pace and caught up with the pair, and Kate, looking back, stopped.

“I thought you’d forgotten us, Father,” she said with a laugh. “And is it Mr. Cassidy with you, the great stranger!” She introduced him to Kerrigan as a “friend of the family,” and they walked on together, Reilly straggling on ahead, leading the way toward his tool-house, in a lonely part of the cemetery.

“It’s the long time since you’ve been to see us, Mr. Cassidy,” Kate said at last.

“It is,” Michael replied. “The place is fairly overrun. It’s the queer lot you have hanging about.”

“Overrun, do you say!” exclaimed Kate. “There’s not been a soul there in weeks.”

Michael laughed disagreeably.

“It’s not an hour since I saw this wind-bag come out of the door,” he replied in a loud voice. Then he put his hand to his mouth, saying softly: “When you strike, strike quick and hard, Mr. Kerrigan. I’d like to have it over. And look out for the old man’s stick.” Kerrigan grinned.

Kate, on Kerrigan’s left, had not heard the aside, and she grew pale. She leaned forward now to say sweetly:

“And how are your father and mother—Michael? Are they well?”

“They are,” Michael answered; “but a bit low in spirit. I’d take it kindly if you’d parade the big monkey you’ve got with you before their gate. Belikes it would hearten them up; they’re fond of a show.”

They heard Reilly chuckle.

“Aye, Michael’s the b’y,” he muttered, and gripped his stick hard.

Kerrigan stopped short.

“We’ll go now,” he said stiffly.

“With all my heart,” retorted Michael, and turned back. But Kate caught Kerrigan’s arm, pulling him forward.

“Would you leave a girl in the middle of a walk to go following after a joker like Michael?” she cried. “Sure, he was always up to his tricks. It’s some little, small joke on his father, the poor old man. I’ll have naught to do with it.”

The two men stood glaring at each other, the grimness of Kerrigan’s face being lighted, however, as he stood with his back to Kate, by a sly wink.

“Is ut a joke?” he demanded.

“Would you call the lady a liar?” Michael asked hotly. “She says it’s a joke; and if she says it’s one, it is, even if it isn’t. Are your manners as awry as your face?”

“I niver quarrel before ladies, but we’ll take a walk soon and try to match faces,” Kerrigan said significantly.

“You couldn’t please me more if you asked me to your wake,” Michael airily replied.

“Oh, Father, there’s your little workhouse,” nervously called Kate. “I left something in it when I brought you your dinner-pail Thursday. I’ll get it now, if you have your key, though I’m thinking you’ve forgotten it, as usual.”

“I niver forget it,” retorted Reilly; and to prove his contention, led the way to the tool-house.

It was a stout little stone house with a strong door, and as Reilly opened it, he stepped in, looking back at the others with a sour smile.

“Forget it, did I?” he snapped. “Now, where did ye l’ave what ye left?”

“I hid it on top of that shelf—a little, small box,” Kate said. “Will you reach it down, Mr. Kerrigan? You’re as tall as the house yourself, and ’t will not trouble you, like these small men.”

Kerrigan stepped into the room, and in a flash she closed the door and locked it.

“Now, Michael, run, if you love me!” she exclaimed. “Do you think I want to see you murdered before my eyes? Your courage is two sizes too big for your body.”

But Michael did not move.

“Better be murdered than see you making love to that brute,” he said doggedly. “I’ll see it out now.”

She caught him by the shoulders and tried to push him away.

“But it’s not making love, Michael dear,” she replied. “It was just to stir father.” She explained in a word, with Michael’s face gradually relaxing in a grin.

“Well, you’ve stirred him all right,” he said; “he wants you to marry me now. We’ll do it at once before he changes his mind.”

“In a hurry like this!” she cried. “Oh, I couldn’t.”

“All right,” he replied, and seated himself on the door-step. “Then I’ll stay and be murdered.”

For a moment Kate stood irresolute, wringing her hands.

“Oh, what shall I do!” she murmured.

“I told you—marry me now,” he replied. He went to her, and, taking her hands, said quickly: “I’ve the license; I’ve had it for weeks. It would be the fine thing, wouldn’t it, to have it found like that on my dead body?”

“I think I should die of shame,” she confessed. “It would hardly seem decent.”

“It’s the true word you say, Katie dear. You see, there’s nothing left but to use it.”

“Sure, it would make me feel like a widow, and me not yet a wife,” she said. “I’ll go, Michael. It’s all that’s left for us now. Hurry.”

INSIDE the barred window Kerrigan and her father saw them hasten away. Her father chuckled.

“She fooled ye,” he said, for Kerrigan had not found the box.

“She did,” Kerrigan agreed. He seated himself on a stool and looked about him complacently. “Ye’ve the nice little shop for wet weather,” he went on.

“For anny weather,” Reilly replied. He had suddenly become genial, and he began to talk of his work. “Thirty years I’ve worked here,” he said at the close, “and I’ve put by a little against me owld age. And now Kate will marry, and there’s wan trouble liss off me mind. Michael’s a good b’y.”

“He is,” Kerrigan agreed with great heartiness. “Did ye hear him blackguarrdun’ me to me face as bowld as ye plaze? Me hearrt warrmed to the laad.”

“Aye, and he fooled ye well; they both did,” said Reilly, and chuckled.

“They did,” answered Kerrigan. “And now I’m like a hin in a coop; but I’m not alone.”

For a moment Reilly looked at him, and then a shadow crossed his face.

“Ye take it aisy,” he said suspiciously.

“Ut’s me way,” replied Kerrigan. “I’m a sedenthary mon by nature, though I’m slightly out of practice, though ut all comes back. I’ll shmoke now.” He took his pipe from his pocket and leisurely began to fill it.

“But ye lost the girl,” Reilly told him.

“Can I lose what I niver had or waanted?” Kerrigan asked. “I don’t know.”

“It was not an hour since ye were all but marryin’ her before me eyes,” snapped Reilly. “What of that?”

“I was borrowed only,” exclaimed Kerrigan.

“And what do ye mane?” demanded Reilly.

“’T was what Katie said,” answered Kerrigan. “We were standun’ before the church whin up edged a red-headed little old mon, and says she to me, ‘May I borrow ye for a bit?’ ‘Sure,’ says I. And she borrowed me to get rid of the mon, and now she’s borrowed anither to get rid of you and me. Sure, she’s the bright wan.”

Reilly was staring straight ahead, piecing the broken patches of truth together. Suddenly he looked up.

“And nayther of ye meant nothing at all by all the love-talk?”

“Nothing at all,” answered Kerrigan.

“Thin she’s a desateful hussy,” cried Reilly, angrily. “She’s made me ate me own worrds through fear of ye. I said young Cassidy should niver have her, and now she’s made me fair’ throw him at her, as if he was the last mon on God’s earth! Ye can’t trust a woman at all.”

“Sometimes ye can and sometimes ye cannot,” amended Kerrigan, “but ye niver know which ut is till ut’s too late.”

“It’s the true worrd,” agreed Reilly. He sighed, then added not without a touch of pardonable pride: “Well, she’s no fool, and she’s me own daughter. There’s something in that.”

RECOLLECTIONS OF FREDERIC REMINGTON

BY AUGUSTUS THOMAS

Author of “Arizona,” “The Witching Hour,” etc.

WITH PICTURES BY FREDERIC REMINGTON AND A PORTRAIT

FREDERIC REMINGTON had a large mind in a big body. The mind had great natural capacity in many directions, and in one of those directions was remarkably self-taught. The body had been splendidly cultivated and came to be unwisely overtaxed. His young manhood was spent in the far West, at work with the cow-boys and near the soldiers and Indians whose picture historian he was destined to become. The life of those men was rude and exciting. Much that would be considered dissipation in civilized surroundings was logical reaction to their environment—man’s answer to nature’s challenge. Remington adopted the cow-boy habit and point of view, and finally assimilated the cow-boy standard and philosophy. It is necessary to consider that fact if one would accurately estimate his character, his work, his achievement, and his untimely end. His very intimacy with the men and the material he drew was purchased at what others may call that cost. Future generations who profit by the facts he recorded must not quarrel with the method of their unconscious acquisition; and the wisest of those who loved him would be less wise if they wished any of his steps retraced. That education reinforced the independence of his nature, made him indifferent to the “cards and custards” of society, and, to speak after his own fashion, kept him “with the bark on.” He worked unhampered by rule, example, or opinion, a veritable child of nature, and he died untamed. Nature and second nature kept him at high pressure. He lived, thought, spoke, and worked by a series of explosions insulated under deep sympathy and great good humor.

Remington was primitive and partizan. Sensitive as an Indian, he liked instinctively and enduringly, he hated intuitively and long. He adored the memory of his father, who had been a soldier, and he remembered him in his uniform. Besides, in the West, in Frederic’s day, the local advent of the troopers meant sudden and inflexible order. The military acted promptly and without debate.

Remington loved the soldiers; he loathed all politicians because they talked.

One of Remington’s distinctions between orators and officers is worth recording. He had been recently visiting General Chaffee and more recently listening to Mr. Bourke Cockran and Mr. William J. Bryan. Indian fashion, he was half acting the manner of all three and feeling inwardly for his answer. “This is it,” he said; “Chaffee tells you to do a thing like this; he looks out from under his eyebrows with his head down; the orator throws his head up and looks out from under his eyelids. The soldier menaces—the orator hypnotizes.”

Remington kept near the ground in all his thinking. The superstructure of things, the embellishment of ideas, the amplification of systems, had small attraction for him. He had a passion for the roots, for the explanations, for the causes. His speech was laconic. If his friends had known the sign language he would generally have used it. His own vocabulary was small, vital, and picturesque, singularly free from slang, but strongly colored with military terms and phrases. He was a good listener and a good laugher. Like the disappearing Carson River, an adequate joke flowing through his system would rise again with recurrent and unexpected irruptions of reflected sunshine. He had also the quality of being humorous himself, and the flavor of his humor was Western, fresh, and wholesome.

One evening he strolled, astonished and abashed, into our half-lighted dining-room, where, unknown to him, a dinner party was in progress. After his own dinner he had come “across lots” for a cigar and our usual argumentative salvation of mankind. The introductions being over, a lady purring at the great man in knickerbockers and herculean stockings asked:

“Did you ride your bicycle, Mr. Remington?”

“Ride it? Ha-ha! Why the blankety-blanked thing wouldn’t let me walk with it.”

From a photograph by Sarony, owned by E. W. Kemble

FREDERIC REMINGTON

Mrs. Remington had a liking and a capacity for philosophic study. Some of the modern phases had her attention, and one of them which she felt would be useful she pressed upon Remington’s notice. His hospitality to the idea was more tolerant than acquisitive, and at times he may have really doubted its potency; but if he had any criticism it was never spoken, and perhaps never implied. One morning during that period, however, his man Tim brought me a brief note, which read as follows:

Dear Tommy:

I was in town last night at The Players and I got so out of tune with the Infinite that you could notice it for two blocks.

Copyright by Mrs. Frederic Remington

“THE SCALP”

MODELED BY FREDERIC REMINGTON

The value of mere anecdotes of any man is that each reader draws from them that side of the personality which he would have seen and drawn from the man himself, not merely the element open to the proper vision of the reporter; and that must be the excuse for anecdotes. E. W. Kemble, or, as his friends know him, Ed Kemble, introduced the writer to Remington in 1890. The two illustrators were friends, but the most beautiful side of their friendship needed a third friend for its precipitation. Kemble is universally amusing when he cares to be. Few men are his equal in putting the spirit of caricature into ordinary verbal report or comment; even his famous drawings do not show such sure fun. Remington responded promptly to Kemble’s comedy, however expressed. Most men who know it do the same, but Remington went further. When Kemble had left him after any interview, all of Kemble’s woes of which Remington had been the repository were suddenly dwarfed in the larger horizon of Remington’s experiences and transmuted into side-splitting jokes. In his mind, Kemble was never “grown up”; and Kemble reciprocated. Remington’s throes, viewed through Kemble’s prism, were just as amusing. They took even each other’s art as playfellows take each other’s games. There were years when much of their leisure was passed in company; in the winter, skating and long walks over the hills of Westchester; in the summer, swimming baths in the Sound, bicycling, and tennis. Their understanding was mutual and immediate. One night after the theater, on the train home from New York, sitting together, Remington was by the car window, Kemble next to the aisle. An obstreperous commuter was disturbing the passengers, men and women. The busy conductor’s admonition had been ineffective, the brakeman’s repeated expostulations useless. The men passengers seemed cowed; the rowdy was gaining confidence. On his third blatant parade through the car, and as he passed Kemble’s side, Remington’s two hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle reached out into the aisle, and, with the precision of a snapping-turtle, lifted him from his feet like a naughty boy and laid him face downward over Kemble’s interposing lap. With the spirit of perfect team-work, as Remington held the ruffian, Kemble spanked him, while the legs in the aisle wriggled frantically for a foothold. The correction, prolonged and ample, was accompanied by roars of laughter from fifty other passengers. Being done, Remington stood the offender on his feet. The man began a threatening tirade. Before half a sentence was uttered Remington had him again exposed to Kemble’s rhythmic tattoo. This was enough; and when again released the fellow rapidly left the car for the relative seclusion of the smoker.

Mrs. Remington used to tell of her husband’s return to her one night when they had transiently taken rooms at a New York hotel. Remington, after escorting her back from the theater, had her consent to a little romp at the club. It had come to be two o’clock in the morning; Mrs. Remington had gone to bed, but was as yet only in the border-land of sleep when she was aroused by the repeated slamming of hallway doors. At the proper moment in the crescendo her own door was opened, and in the frame of light stood her husband, quickly joined by a protesting attendant.

“It’s all right,” said Remington; “this one’s my wife—good-night!”

One early morning in February, 1898, James Waterbury, the agent of the Western Union Company at New Rochelle, telephoned me that the Maine had been blown up and had sunk in the harbor of Havana. Knowing the interest the report would have for Remington, I immediately called him on the telephone and repeated the information. His only thanks or comment was to shout “Ring off!” In the process of doing so I could hear him calling the private telephone number of his publishers in New York. In his mind, his own campaign was already actively under way.

One incident of that campaign illustrates the primitive man in Remington. He and Richard Harding Davis were engaged to go into Cuba by the back way and send material to an evening newspaper. The two men were to cross in the night from Key West to Cuba on a mackerel-shaped speed boat of sheet-iron and shallow draft. Three times the boat put out from Key West and three times turned back, unable to stand the weather. The last time even the crew lost hope of regaining port. Davis and Remington were lying in the scuppers and clinging to the shallow rail to keep from being washed overboard. The Chinaman cook between lurches was lashing together a door and some boxes to serve as a raft. Davis suggested to Remington the advisability of trying something of the kind for themselves.

“Lie still,” Remington commanded; “you and I don’t know how to do that. Let him make his raft. If we capsize, I’ll throttle him and take it from him.”

Some months later, on learning of the incident, I tried to discuss the moral phase of it with him; but he brushed my hypocrisy aside with the remark: “Why, Davis alone was worth a dozen sea-cooks. I don’t have to talk of myself.”

His experiences in Cuba were scarcely more supportable than this unpropitious start. The heat was terrible, the transportation bad, and his physical condition poor. He suffered. Growling over it all, long afterward he said to me:

“From now on I mean to paint fruits and flowers. Then if I’m ordered to the scene of action I can go fearlessly.”

Until his increasing weight made it hard to find a mount, he liked to ride. He had no fear of any horse, and among men he had a man’s courage; but he had an unreasonable fear of dogs. Once, on the occasion of a men’s dinner in the early days of the bicycle’s popularity, Kemble had made a souvenir caricature for each guest. The card at Remington’s plate represented Frederic in the costume of a bronco buster, with chaps, sombrero, and guns, riding a bicycle—a look of terror on his face. The bicycle was bucking half-way over the road, frightened at a little cotton dog on four wooden wheels. Nobody laughed more heartily over the card than Remington, and for years it had a place of honor in his studio.

The waning of his great strength was a more sensitive subject with him than his increasing weight, which produced the condition. Gradually in our Sunday walks, the hills grew steeper for him. His favorite ruse for disguising the strain on him was to stop occasionally and survey the landscape:

“Look there, Tommy, how that land lies. I could put a company of men back of that stone wall and hold it against a thousand until they flanked me.”

As with the Southern gentleman who used to look out of the window after passing the decanter to his guest, it was the part of friendship on these occasions to multiply details of the supposititious fortifications until the commander regained his wind.

One Sunday morning in those later days I went with him to the office of an osteopathic physician who was treating him. The osteopath was a slight man and not tall. Remington, lying face downward on the operating-table, presented a skyline so much higher than that of the average patient that the doctor standing on the floor lacked the angle of pressure necessary to his treatment. The doctor therefore mounted a chair, from which he stepped to the table, and finally sat astride of Remington, applying his full weight to the manipulation which he was giving to the spinal column.

Copyright by Mrs. Frederic Remington. From a photograph by Davis and Sanford.

“THE BRONCO BUSTER”

FROM THE SCULPTURE BY FREDERIC REMINGTON

“I hope I’m not hurting you, Mr. Remington?” said the doctor. Remington answered:

“It’s all right, Doctor—so long as—you don’t—use your spurs.”

Early in his occupancy of the New Rochelle home—perhaps in 1895—he added to his house a studio. This room was twenty by forty feet on the floor, and twenty feet to the roof-tree. A big skylight was in one pitch of the roof; windows with the sills breast-high were on one end, and one side wall. The second end had a double door big enough to admit a horse, or to be opened wide as he painted the horse in the open air outside. All four walls of the studio were covered, above doors and windows and in their dead spaces, with military and Indian and Mexican trappings of all descriptions from spurs to war-bonnets; there were guns of every kind ever carried by an American soldier; all kinds of swords and bridles, saddles, belts, canteens, and cartridge-boxes, powder-horns, bayonets, and knives; there were war clubs, tomahawks, bows, arrows, spears, tom-toms, pipes, scalps, and the wands of medicine-men; moccasins, blankets, beaded deerskins, and the skulls of buffalo, mountain goats, and American carnivora; sombreros, quirts, horsehair lassos, chaps, serapes, ollas, mats, pots, and baskets; in short, not prints or catalogues, but, for all that he might need for any Western picture, the veritable thing itself. He knew the troop and tribe and time and latitude of each. Accuracy in their use was his religion. In his chosen field he abhorred anachronisms. There was considerable éclat over the exhibition of a painting by a new-comer. The subject showed in an Indian fight the rescue of one trooper by another. Remington took one look at it and turned away in disgust. Bits of arms, uniforms, and harness that had never met outside of a museum were assembled in the picture. To the ordinary observer their association was harmonious; but to his expert eye it was falsehood and fake.

In the four arts which he essayed—letters, illustration, painting, and sculpture—Remington was self-taught. His writing was soon abandoned because it was not easy to him, and was not so remunerative as was drawing done in the same time. He had something to say, however, when he did write, and he had an attractive and a graphic style. Great good nature and wholesomeness showed through his lines, and he wrote always from the inside of his subject. It is not the province of this rambling anecdotal recollection of him to attempt an appreciation or a criticism of his art, but one may with propriety note the rapidity with which he overcame the initial difficulties of his tasks and outgrew the unavoidable mistakes of the beginner. Thumbing the older numbers of the magazines in which his earliest illustrations appear,[2] notably those of the Roosevelt articles, one sees that the salient marks of the novice, the small hands and feet of his figures, soon disappear, and in their stead the vigorous members of a master are employed.

Drawn by Frederic Remington

“I TOOK YE FOR AN INJIN”

Remington’s first work was in black-and-white India-ink washes. He was skilled with the pen, but to achieve values by multiplied strokes was foreign to both temperament and training. As those technically informed are aware, but as not all readers know, his illustrations, like all printed pictures, since the direct drawing upon boxwood and lithographic stone was superseded, were made on a large scale and reduced by photographic processes to the size needed for the printed page. He usually worked on a cardboard twenty-four by thirty inches, or thereabout, in size. From black-and-white washes he advanced to black-and-white in oils, and again from these to canvases of such color in flat fields as lent themselves to the earlier reproductions for magazine covers and double pages. During all of this time he was acquiring a technic that grew through the various stages of his contemporaries’ estimate from rebuke to admiration.

Half-tone plate engraved by H. C. Merrill

THE PACK-HORSE MEN REPELLING AN ATTACK BY INDIANS

FROM THE PAINTING BY FREDERIC REMINGTON

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It was an exhibition of Charles Rolla Peters’s moonlights, about 1894, that gave Remington his most serious wish to paint. The mystery of these efforts and their largeness were keyed to the mute though not inglorious poet in him. He came to see and to master the nuances of the moon’s witchery in all her moods. It was interesting to follow his awakened and developing sense of color. Nature on that side made more and more appeal to him, until in our Sunday-morning and weekday-evening tramps the tints of sky and field and road almost totally dislodged the phantom soldiery from the hillsides.

About 1896 Ruckstuhl, the sculptor, set up a tent on a vacant lot back of our place at New Rochelle, New York, and began in clay the construction of the half-size model for the heroic equestrian statue of General Hartranft that now stands in bronze in front of the State-house at Harrisburg. It was Remington’s first intimate view of sculpture in the making. The horse especially interested him. During the two months that the sculptor labored, Remington made daily visits to the Ruckstuhl tent. The following winter I was sitting one day in his studio watching him at an illustration for some story of Owen Wister’s. He was working “chic,” that is to say, without models, and was making his first marks in charcoal. His outline began to show a cow-boy in the foreground of a bar-room shooting toward the back of the picture, into the perspective of which ran the bar and its stampeding clientele. As it occurred to him that the bulking figure of the local egotist obscured too much of other interesting detail, he quickly dusted off the drawing and reversed his characters, thereby making the aggressor stand in the background and putting the victims to the front. With equal ease he could have put his cow-boy to either side of the room. I said to him:

“Frederic, you’re not an illustrator so much as you’re a sculptor. You don’t mentally see your figures on one side of them. Your mind goes all around them.”

Not long after that he bought a set of tools. Ruckstuhl sent him a supply of modeler’s wax, and he began his “Bronco Buster.” It was characteristic of the man that his first attempt should be a subject difficult enough as a technical problem to have daunted a sculptor of experience and a master of technic. His love of the work when he got at it, his marvelous aptitude for an art in which he had never had a single lesson, are some evidence that it was possibly his métier. His few bronze groups and figures that rapidly followed “The Bronco Buster,” and his heroic equestrian monument of “The Pioneer” in Fairmont Park, are the work of one who surely would have excelled in sculpture if he had lived to follow it.

Remington thought he believed in “art for art’s sake,” but I know of nothing that he ever did in any of its departments that did not primarily attempt a story. His wish to tell something that had touched him, and tell it at first hand, was as primitive as the instinct of a caveman.

The boy in the nursery wants something that will go. There is a kinship in Remington’s frequently expressed choice of an epitaph:

“He Knew the Horse.”

His death occurred December 26, 1909. On January 1, 1912, the present Democratic administration of New Rochelle was formally installed. It transacted no business that day except to pass a resolution requesting the New Haven Railroad, which was constructing a new station near Remington’s old home, to call that stop “Remington Place.” The railroad graciously complied. Remington’s fellow sculptor, Robert Aitken, has under way a portrait bust of him and four pedestal bas-reliefs. This monument is to be set up fronting the station, and perhaps it, too, will carry that commemorating phrase.

[2] See THE CENTURY for January, April, July, and August, 1889, June, 1896, and February, 1902.

Half-tone plate engraved by H. Davidson

“PEGGY”

FROM THE MARBLE BUST BY EVELYN BEATRICE LONGMAN

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THE AMERICAN SPINSTER

BY AGNES REPPLIER

Author of “The Fireside Sphinx,” etc.

THAT this is the Golden Age of spinsters no one will deny, and that America furnishes the soil in which these hardy plants put forth their finest bloom is equally indisputable. How many years have passed since the “antient maydes” of Boston—which term included all unmarried women older than twenty-five—were pronounced by John Dunton to be a “dismal spectacle”?[3] How many years since a few “acute and ingenious gentlewomen” in colonial Virginia had the temerity to remain single and cultivate their own tobacco plantations, for which unnatural behavior they were subjected to repeated “admonishments”? Now the “antient mayde” flaunts her freedom in the faces of those who are patiently doing their duty to the world. Now if a woman runs a successful apple-orchard or dairy-farm, her exploits are heralded far and wide, and other women write exultant papers about her, intimating that the day of the male agriculturist is virtually over. I am not sure that the attitude of our great-great-grandfathers, who jealously and somewhat fearfully guarded their prerogatives, was not more flattering to my sex than this enthusiasm evoked by achievements which in a man would not be found worthy of notice.

As for age—well, who in these years of grace is frankly and confessedly old? We no longer say, “On a l’âge de son cœur,” but “On a l’âge de sa volonté.” Jane Austen settled down to caps and spinsterhood before she was thirty. Dr. Johnson alluded to Miss Lucy Porter’s “hoary virginity” when that lady was fifty-two. The Ettrick Shepherd stubbornly protested that “to ca’ a woman saxty, and then mainteen that ye didna ca’ her auld, is naething short o’ a sophism.” But now no one gets beyond middle age, or “the prime of life.” I have heard a Boston spinster of eighty-two (a remarkable woman, I admit) casually spoken of as middle-aged; and when, in a desperate resolve to push matters to an issue, I said: “Miss D—is not middle-aged; she is old. If you are not old when you are eighty-two, when are you old?” the remark was taken in ill part. “I should not dream of calling Miss D—old,” said one gallant Bostonian, and all his hearers agreed with him.

The French spinster is a negligible factor. The English spinster has conquered her territory and become a force to be reckoned with. But the American spinster is the standard-bearer of the tribe. Her incessant activities and her radiant self-satisfaction have made her appear more dominant than she is, and have caused her critics much needless apprehension. When Mrs. Van Vorst wrote, in 1903, “Our factories are full of old maids, our colleges are full of old maids, our ball-rooms in the worldly centers are full of old maids,” Americans read these words with placid unconcern. They had given too many wedding presents in their day to have any doubts anent the permanent popularity of marriage. But English readers, who are ever prone to be literal, appear to have accepted Mrs. Van Vorst’s statements au pied de la lettre. Mr. Marriott Watson, chilled to the heart—as well he might be—by the vision of a ballroom destitute alike of girls and matrons, wrote for the “Nineteenth Century” a severe and agitated protest. He asserted that a woman’s “functions” “alone excuse or explain her existence,”—which is one way of looking at the matter; and he pointed out that American women are the most remote the world can show from the primitive and savage type which represents the dynamic force of a race.

The mere fact that the American spinster is so often and so sharply censured marks the strength of her position. No one dreams of censuring the French vieille fille or the German jungfrau. These victims of fate meet with scorn or sympathy, according to the taste and breeding of commentators. In either case, their lives are registered as failures. Nothing can rob the German woman of those vital sensibilities which center in the home and family. “Every great movement of the Teutonic soul,” says Mr. Havelock Ellis, “has been rooted in emotion.” If the women of Germany are demanding “rights,” and demanding them with no uncertain voice, it is because they seek to meet their responsibilities with authority. The sphere of home and child-rearing is their sphere, and they purpose to rule in it.

It is not possible for the Frenchwoman, who understands the structure of society, to welcome spinsterhood. “All her instincts of expansion,” says that acute observer Mr. William Crary Brownell, “are hostile to it. There is no more provision in the French social constitution than in the order of nature itself for the old maid.” Therefore, as the twin passions of the French heart are to be in rational accord with nature and in rational accord with social life, the unmarried woman has no alternative but to feel herself doubly incomplete. She is unstirred by the American woman’s vaulting ambition to be man’s rival, or by an uneasy envy of man’s estate. Perhaps it is because a French girl never regrets her sex that France has produced more eminent women than any other nation in the world. Certainly the only man who ever had the courage to say he would like to be a woman (a beautiful woman, he stipulated) was that distinguished Frenchman M. Jules Lemaître.

No one since De Quincey has spoken so generously of the English spinster as has Mr. John B. Atkins in the pages of THE CENTURY. He does not, like so many of his contemporaries, accuse her of gross selfishness. He does not deny her the right to control her own life. He goes so far as to say that she may use it to good purpose, and extract from it some measure of content. He points out the philanthropic paths which it should be her duty and her pleasure to tread. He draws a pleasing picture of the maiden aunt giving to nieces and nephews—to nephews especially—her sympathy and comradeship. Sir Leslie Stephen says that “Woman to a boy is simply an incumbrance upon reasonable modes of life,” and it is to be feared that many women—aunts and others—have the same doubtful regard for boys. But British sentimentality demands of the old maid, if she be a good old maid, that yearning attitude toward other people’s children which marks her as “womanly” and earns for her the tolerance of the world.

The American spinster is seldom sentimental, which is in her favor, and she is seldom emotional, which is both gain and loss. Her attenuation of feeling lessens her charm and influence, but serves to keep her in accord with the orderly conventions of society. She is keenly competitive, and eager for new fields of activity; but she can read Ellen Key’s “Love and Marriage” with intelligent detachment. She cries occasionally for the moon, but she is in no immediate danger of scorching her fingers by trying to play with the sun.

The flexibility of American social life gives to the unmarried woman an assured position which has no counterpart in the older civilizations. She may be an anomaly in nature, but she is in perfect accord with her more or less agreeable surroundings. She has no background to give repute and distinction to her rôle; but she infuses into it her own persuasive personality. She stands free from the common obligations of her sex, but she does work which is well worth doing, and she not infrequently adds to the gaiety of life. “Of how many homes,” says Mr. Brownell, “is she not the decorously decorative ornament! She may have courted or have drifted into her position of dignified singleness; it is in either case equally sure that she has not considered her estate incomplete in itself, or disengaged from the structure of society.”

As a matter of fact, she is wont to feel herself—birth and fortune permitting—a pillar of society. It is no question with her of wasted force or blighted vitality. It is a question of directing her superabundant energy into those channels where she can accomplish measurable results. She seeks and finds a constructive human existence remote from marriage and maternity. The French or German woman remains unmarried because the unkindly fates have so decreed. The English woman occasionally assists fate from sheer love of independence. “The most ordinarie cause of a single life,” says Bacon, “is liberty, especially in certain self-pleasing and humorous minds.” But it is surely reserved for the American woman to remain unmarried because she feels herself too good for matrimony, too valuable to be intrusted to a husband’s keeping. Her attitude bears some resemblance to that of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who wrote with praiseworthy conviction: “I may say without vanity that just Heaven would not bestow such a woman as myself upon a man who was unworthy of her.”

This is not idle jesting. Would it be possible in any country save our own for a lady to write to a periodical, explaining, “Why I am an Old Maid,” and be paid coin of the realm for the explanation? Would it be possible in any other country to hear such a question as “Should the Gifted Woman Marry?” seriously asked, and seriously answered? Would it be possible for any sane and thoughtful woman who was not an American to consider even the remote possibility of our spinsters becoming a detached class, who shall form “the intellectual and economic élite of the sex, and leave marriage and maternity for the less developed woman”? What has become of the belief, as old as humanity, that marriage and maternity are highly developing processes, forcing into flower a woman’s latent potentialities; and that the less developed woman is inevitably the woman who has escaped this keen and powerful stimulus. “Never,” says Edmond de Goncourt, “has a virgin, young or old, produced a work of art.” One makes allowance for the Latin point of view. And it is probable that M. de Goncourt never read “Emma.”

Signor Ferrero, contemplating the unmarried women of England, those amazing creatures who “devote themselves to sterility, not from religious motives, but from sheer calculation” (which is also a Latin point of view), has recorded his conviction that they will make themselves felt as a force, and has expressed his genuine dismay as to the possible results of their activity. He has even confessed to some whimsical misgivings lest Italian and Sicilian women should acquire this Saxon taste for spinsterhood. Yet England is emphatically a man’s country—which France has never been—and its attitude toward marriage is a robustly masculine attitude, as unacceptable to the French as to the American woman. There is no attempt anywhere to gloss over this rude fact. The Englishman believes with Mr. Kipling:

“He travels the fastest who travels alone.”

He echoes the verdict of Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, “Marriage narrows and damps the spirits of generous men.” “The position of a single man,” says a stout-hearted writer in the “Contemporary Review,” “is in itself envied and applauded; that of a single woman certainly is not. To every woman marriage is still accounted a promotion. There may be counterbalancing circumstances, but to be married is, in itself, an object of desire and a subject for congratulation.”

In the good old days when English spinsters softened the reproach of spinsterhood by borrowing the prefix “Mrs.,” as did those excellent ladies, Mrs. Hannah More and Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, the position of a single man was neither envied nor applauded. He was held to be (if of decent life,—much allowance was made for rakes) only a little less contemptible than a single woman. “The pain and the opprobrium o’ defunckin an auld bachelor,” writes the Ettrick Shepherd, expressing after his hardy fashion the sentiment of his time. Dr. Johnson firmly maintained that marriage was more necessary for a man than for a woman, because a woman could make herself comfortable and a man could not. The responsibility for the more modern and more supercilious masculine attitude must be placed where it belongs,—on the shoulders of the Englishwoman, who has accepted the creed that for her marriage is a promotion, and that “counterbalancing circumstances” should not be held to weigh too heavily in the scale. As Dean Hole’s friend said to him, when congratulated on her daughter’s engagement: “To be sure, Jenny hates the man, but then there’s always something.”

Miss Austen was the most veracious of chroniclers, one who with careful self-control refused to wander beyond the area of her own observation; but there is nothing in American fiction, and very little, I fancy, in the fiction of any land, which is comparable to the marriage of Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins. Many novelists have made easy copy of husband-hunting. It is a favorite theme with Trollope, who treats it with ruthless cynicism, and it is a not uncommon element in modern story-telling. But Charlotte Lucas staggers us. Miss Austen calls her “sensible and intelligent.” She is also well-bred, clear-headed, and kind. She is Elizabeth Bennet’s chosen friend. And she marries Mr. Collins! Marries him with alacrity, and with permanent satisfaction. If there be any one episode in life and letters which is calculated to reconcile us to the rapid increase of spinsterhood in England and America, it is the amazing fact that Jane Austen not only married Charlotte Lucas to Mr. Collins, but plainly considered it a not unnatural thing for her to do.

Ten years ago, when a rage for compiling useless statistics swept over Europe and the United States, it occurred to some active minds that children should be made to bear their part in the guidance of the human race. Accordingly a series of questions—some sensible and some foolish—were put to English, German, and American school children, and their enlightening answers were given to the world. One of these questions read: “Would you rather be a man or a woman, and why?” Naturally this query was of concern only to little girls. No sane educator would ask it of a boy. Even Jules Lemaître at twelve must have shared the convictions of his fellows. German pedagogues, be it noted, struck the question off the list. They said that to ask a child, “Would you rather be something you must be, or something you cannot possibly be?” was both foolish and useless. Interrogations concerning choice were of value only when the will was a determining factor.

In this country no such logical inference chilled the examiner’s zeal. The question was asked and was answered, and we discovered as a result that a great many little American girls (a minority, to be sure, but a respectable minority,) were well content with their sex; not because it had its duties and dignities, its pleasures and exemptions; but because they plainly considered that they were superior to little American boys, and were destined, when grown up, to be superior to American men. One small New England maiden wrote that she would rather be a woman because “Women are always better than men in morals.” Another, because “Women are more use in the world.” A third, because “Women learn things quicker than men, and have more intelligence.” And so on through varying degrees of self-sufficiency. “Lord, gie us a gude conceit o’ ourselves!” prayed the Scotchman, who knew the value of assurance.

Now certainly these little girls were old maids in the making. They had stamped upon them in their tender infancy the hall-mark of the American spinster. In a few more years they will be writing papers on “The Place of Unmarried Women in the World’s Work,” and reading addresses on “The Woman of Intellect: her Duty to Herself and to the State.” There is a formidable lack of humor in this easy confidence, in the somewhat contemptuous attitude of women whose capacities have not yet been tested, toward men who stand responsible for the failures of the world. It denotes, at home or abroad, a density not far removed from dullness. In that dreary little Irish drama, “Mixed Marriages,” which the Dublin actors played in New York two years ago, an old woman, presumed to be witty and wise, said to her son’s betrothed: “Sure, I believe the Lord made Eve when He saw that Adam could not take care of himself”; and the remark, while received with applause, reflected painfully upon the absence of that humorous sense which we used to think was the birthright of Irishmen. The too obvious retort which nobody uttered, but which everybody must have thought, was that if Eve had been designed as a care-taker, she had made a shining failure of her job.

It is conceded, theoretically at least, that woman’s sphere is an elastic term, comprising any work she is able to do well. Therefore, it may be that American spinsters, keen, college-bred, ambitious, and, above all, free, are destined to compete vigorously and permanently with men. They are, we are told, the only women who can give themselves unreservedly to work, and from them alone enduring results are to be expected. Yet it is at least worthy of notice that most of the successful business women of France,—Mme. Clicquot-Ponsardin, Mme. Pommery, Mme. Dumas, Mme. Bernet, Mme. Boucicault,—have been either married women who were their husbands’ partners, or widows who took upon their capable shoulders the burden of their dead husbands’ cares. They were also mothers who, with the definite aims and practical instincts of their race, projected themselves into the future, and wove out of their own pursuits the fabric of their children’s lives.

At present the American spinster is in a transition stage, a stage so replete with advantages that we may be permitted to hope it will last long. She has escaped from the chimney-corner, and is not yet shut up in banks and offices. She does a reasonable amount of work, and embraces every reasonable opportunity of enjoyment. She gratifies her own tastes, and cherishes her natural affinities. She sometimes cultivates her mind, and she never breaks her heart. She is the best of friends, and she has leisure for companionship. She is equally free from l’esprit gaulois and from “les mœurs de vestales pétrifiées,” which are the Scylla and Charybdis of the French vieille fille. She is content with a contentment which the German jungfrau neither understands nor envies. She is assured with an assurance unknown to the experienced English old maid. She is, as I have said, the standard-bearer of her tribe, and the pibroch to which she marches blithely through life has the ring of the old Covenanting song:

“That a’ the world may see

There’s nane in the right but we.”

All this is far removed, as Mr. Marriott Watson warns us, from the savage and primitive woman, who represents the dynamic force of a race. But who shall ring the bells backward? And who shall reconcile the primitive woman to the exigencies and formalities of civilization? Some years ago in South Carolina I came to know and love an old Negro “mammy,” a wise, fat, kind, mysterious old mammy, whose heart was soft, whose touch was healing, whose voice was like a lullaby, and whose experiences would have colored half a dozen ordinary lives. Her sister, the laundress, was one day under discussion, and I asked, with more than my customary ineptitude: “Aunt Cordelia, is Caroline an old maid?”

Aunt Cordelia turned upon me a look in which contempt for my ignorance blended with a deep acceptance and understanding of life as she had known it, unfiltered, unsheltered, unevasive. “Laws, honey,” she said, “we’s no ole maids. Some’s married, and some isn’t; but we’s no ole maids.”

[3] “Life and Errors of John Dunton,” 1705.

PRAYERS FOR THE LIVING

BY MARY W. PLUMMER

O SOUL of all souls whitest, what need’st thou

Of solemn masses who with angel choirs

Dost chant enraptured thy most pure desires,

And to the heavenly will, as erst on earth, dost bow?

What can I ask for thee, in halting prayer,

Heavy with grief, that could increase thy bliss?

What in thy perfectness can be amiss
Who grewest to angelhood all unaware?
Rather, pray thou for me. And when ye stand,
Making petition, folding wing on wing,
Drooping your eyes before the glory-light,
Think, if thou may’st, on him who, wandering
Along the lower way, hath lost thy hand,
Yet seeketh for thy footprints day and night!

THE COMING SNEEZE

BY HARRY STILLWELL EDWARDS

Author of “Sons and Fathers,” “Two Runaways,” etc.

WHAT it really was that twisted Aunt Tildy’s features into the anxious expression which inevitably waits on an approaching sneeze, no one, it is likely, will ever discover, though several plausible explanations have been offered; but twisted they were, early in life, and for all time Aunt Tildy was condemned to face the world with wrinkles on her forehead, lifted brows, a ruffled nose, half-closed eyes, and a drawn mouth. The theory of an arrested sneeze was advanced many years ago by Tim Broggins, who still sits around the cotton warehouse and, while he whittles white pine splinters and chews tobacco, is wont to settle all questions as they arise. Tim knows everything worth knowing and probably some things that are not; and of course he knew what was the trouble with Aunt Tildy’s face.

“Hit’s er comin’ sneeze, that’s what!” said he once, when Aunt Tildy, passing in her little country buggy, drew comment after her. “Hit’s er comin’ sneeze! Hit’s er sollum fac’, gentlemen, that Aunt Tildy ain’t been known ter sneeze in her whole life. She started oncet erlong back in th’ sixties; got her face twisted jes right, looked at th’ sun an’ was er-strainin’ of her corsits when somebody hollered ‘Cyclone!’ She’d been in one cyclone that like ter drug her hair out by th’ roots, an’ when she heard th’ name ag’in, she jes natchully hunted cover an’ forgot to pull ’er face together. When th’ cyclone passed, hit were too late. She ain’t never sneeze’ sence that day. Thought I’d try her some time with snuff or red pepper an’ see if hit wouldn’t tech ’er off an’ straighten out things; but hit’s done growed that erway now. The thing is sot an’ fixed!”

Aunt Tildy, however, did not let the tangled condition of her features interfere with business. From the profits of her little farm and country store she managed to sustain herself admirably; to educate and marry off her niece and lay up a competency for old age. It mattered not how hard the times, how poor the crops, and how bad were general collections, there was seldom a day when she did not have money in bank to loan at legal interest on exceptional collateral. With her bonnet pushed back, her fat umbrella grasped by its middle, and her little worn bag, she was a familiar figure in town on most Saturdays.

It was on a Saturday that Aunt Tildy and handsome Jack Cromby met for the first time, and Jack heard from Tim Broggins the old legend of the coming sneeze. Jack was the wide-awake and pushing representative of an up-State snuff factory, and was flooding the county with little red labeled tin boxes that contained samples of its product.

“Tell yer what, Jack,” said Tim, as he passed his knife-blade under a delicate curl of pine to the end of his splinter, “ef you was ter git th’ ole lady’s face on your boxes an’ call it ‘The Comin’ Sneeze’ brand, hit would ketch th’ town. Say, Jack! why ’n’t you try er little of the stuff on her, anyhow? Seems ter me ef you could jes git her up-town on the Court-House Square whar folks could see it all, an’ git her to turn loose that sneeze that’s been er hangin’ fire forty years, you’d sell er million! I ain’t er-sayin’ yo’ ole stuff could reach it, but it mout. My private opinion is that when that sneeze do come, hit’ll have ter be broke up with dynamite firs’ an’ then took out of her system piece by piece. Still, as I said, yo’ pertickerlar brand of tickler mout tech it off!”

Jack laughed heartily at the drollery of the wag; and then, the spirit of commercial enterprise taking possession of him, he suddenly grew serious.

“Not a bad idea, Tim—that about the picture. Think of the big ones to hang in the window—three colors—‘The coming sneeze’! And what a trade-mark! By George! I wonder whether I can get a photograph of her.”

“Dunno ’bout that. But I did hear John Belton who runs the gallery up-town say as how las’ week he took some to sen’ to her niece out in Texas. Maybe you mout git hold o’ one ef you go ’bout it right. But looker here, Jack!—don’t you git me mixed up in this thing! Lord! She run down that sneeze joke o’ mine ten years ago an’ sech er tongue lashin’!—Keep me out o’ hit er I’ll call you er liar, sho’!”

“I’ll keep you out, Tim. Belton, did you say?”

“Yes—John Belton. He’ll let you have one of the pictur’s, mebbe, ef you don’t tell what you want with hit. Ef you tell him that, he wouldn’t sell you one fer no price—’cause Belton wants ter live erwhile yet.”

Jack Cromby finessed. He had his own picture taken, being now thoroughly carried away with the advertising scheme, and voluntarily paid cash in advance. He then begged of the well-pleased artist one of Aunt Tildy’s,—to “send away to some friends.” In after days—though it is a shameful thing to print—he very generously assisted the unfortunate Belton to erect a barricade of fiction between himself and his outraged patron.

Jack’s one great error in discretion, after embarking on this perilous enterprise, was committed when he confided his plans to a young belle of the community. Handsome, dashing, well-dressed, and generous, Jack was a favorite, and numbered his sweethearts by dozens up and down the road. Among these was Miss Pinkie Appleby, selected by him in an evil moment to become the joint custodian of his mature plans touching Aunt Tildy’s likeness. Of course, Miss Pinkie laughed. What girl would not, in the circumstances? How could the innocent joke, as Jack described it, in any way injure Aunt Tildy? And what girl would not have promptly confided the secret to several intimates whom Jack had not honored, with strict injunctions as to secrecy?

The little group of idlers around the warehouse were holding their usual morning conversation when Aunt Tildy’s vehicle turned the corner at a pace that caused all four wheels to slide sidewise and give forth a harsh warning. Tim Broggins suspended his whittling a moment, looked at the broad scar left in the dust, and suffered his contemplative gaze to follow the receding figure in the buggy.

“What ails Tildy?” The question came from Judge Oglesby, whose two hundred and fifty pounds were waiting upright in a broad chair while his justice court threatened to convene. “Sorter flustered, ’pears to me.” He crossed his fat hands on his hickory cane and rested them against his zone of greatest circumference, blinking, as the dust began to float in.

“I wonder!—I wonder!” said Tim, reflectively, as he resumed his interrupted occupation. “Now, gentlemen, I’m goin’ ter give er guess; an’ watch me hit the nail on the head! Jedge, you know how ol’ Squire Jones laugh’ erbout that sneeze picture las’ night, an’ how drunk he were?”

“Squire was putty drunk, Tim. Worse ’n usual.”

“Well, now, I bet squire stop’ an’ tole Aunt Tildy all erbout hit! Right on his way home, her store is, an’ most gener’ly he begins to ricollec’ things he was to bring back ’bout time he gits there! Aunt Tildy gits er big trade o’ that sort. Hit’s a good soberin’-up stan’ for fellows goin’ thet erway an’ totin’ too much of the brand o’ O-be-joyful they buy eroun’ town. Yes, sir, squire tole ’er cert’in—dad blast his ol’ skin, he had oughter be lynched! Where’d she pull up, Jedge?”

“Lawyer Thomas’s office!”

“Thar now! She ain’t got no common business on ’er mind ter-day! This ain’t no mortgage, gentlemen, ner no jumpin’ account case. This is fight. She’s done cross the line an’ got on the criminal side o’ th’ docket, Jedge. Let’s go an’ stan’ eroun’ an’ see what’s up!”

But if the idlers sought excitement, they failed to get it. Aunt Tildy, after half an hour spent in consultation with her lawyer, issued from his office and, with one withering glance at the group, climbed into her buggy. When she turned it about, it slid as before, only this time the sound that came back seemed a defiance. Tim surveyed the little drama with intense interest.

“See ’er cut the horse, Jedge—three times ’twixt crossings! Mad? Dad blast my skin, she’s jes natchully er hornet now! Hit’s squire’s work.”

The pictures arrived a week or two later. They set the town wild with laughter. Merchants, clerks, and customers came out on the sidewalks up and down the single business street and exchanged criticisms after an ancient fashion of town people. There was Aunt Tildy, sure enough, in the act of holding a box of snuff; and there was the old, familiar, coming, but long delayed, sneeze! The supply of pictures was exhausted in thirty minutes. At ten o’clock they brought fifty cents each; at eleven, a dollar; and at noon Tim Broggins sold his copy to the town bank for one dollar and a half. The cashier was Aunt Tildy’s agent.

The laughter, which began down-town, spread over the dinner-hour up-town and rippled over the county for a week. No more striking advertisement had ever been put forth in that region. No other snuff could touch the trade. “The Coming Sneeze” brand had won and held the market.

Then one day Lawyer Thomas took the train for Macon and filed suit for $10,000, as damages direct and punitive, against the snuff company for infringement of copyright. For, on the day Aunt Tildy had come to town so angry, she had bought the negative of Belton and applied through him for a copyright on her own face as portrayed in that photograph. “The Coming Sneeze” was her own personal property.

After this fact became known, the idlers took their hats off and cheered Aunt Tildy whenever she passed. Her sole recognition of their friendliness was an abortive smile that flickered for an instant against the background of the coming sneeze.

Tim became oracular.

“Tell you what, boys!—Jedge—that’s er new p’int in law, on me! Don’t er man or er woman own his own face? Fer an instance, has er man got ter put his face on er record like er guano contrac’ or mule mortgidge befo’ he can pertec’ hisself? Dad blast my skin, nobody ain’t safe! I’m er goin’ right up-town an’ git my pictur’ struck off an’ patented now! Some o’ these smarties like Jack Cromby’ll be comin’ erlong here bime-by an’ er gittin’ me onter er Christmas cyard, an’ you on er valentine!” Tim laughed silently. “Po’ Jack!” he said. “Always did lack jedgment an’ allus will, I reck’n!”

Jack Cromby’s experience with the managers of his snuff company is not a matter of public record. He may have suffered criticism or he may have convinced them that their product was getting, throughout the rural districts for which it was manufactured, an advertisement worth all it might cost. If the airing of Aunt Tildy’s complaint was not confined to a city office and its spectacular values lost in the multiplicity of graver legal causes, the snuff company would not suffer much, if any. A local hearing would give him a chance to fill a column of the town’s weekly paper with a carefully prepared report of the trial, which report would be quoted in full in all the rural weeklies of the State. The advertisement department of his company would see to that.

The transference of Aunt Tildy’s case to her home county was easily effected. Lawyer Thomas was after a verdict in her favor, and perhaps was not unmindful of the advertising feature as concerned himself, and greatly preferred the home atmosphere.

The reappearance of Jack on the scene, therefore, betrayed no evidence of chagrin. On the contrary, his step was a little more elastic, his head held a bit higher, his movements were quicker, and his salutes and greetings full of cheer. Resiliency was written all over him; the sunrise was on his face.

“Now ding blast his imperdunce!” said Broggins one day when Jack, passing on the opposite side of the street, had waved a hand to them joyously and shouted a greeting: “Hello, Tim! Hello, Judge! Major, how are you? See you boys later!”—“ding blast his imperdunce! What’s he got up his sleeve now? Jack! Oh, Jack!” he called lazily.

“What’s the matter, Tim?”

“Got you going some—ain’t they?”

“Not—on—your—life, Tim! Watch me!”

Aunt Tildy’s case, by consent, came up in her own town before a special master appointed by the court.

Long before the hour set for the hearing arrived, people began to appear on the scene. Every wagon-yard, every vacant lot was crowded with vehicles; every horse-rack and hitching-post was in use. There had been great days in town before; Robinson’s old one-ring circus had occasionally depopulated the rural district in its favor, and at another time the political contest between Democrats and Populists and Tom Watson’s impassioned speeches had made it the storm-center of excitement. But no such crowd ever had assembled within the incorporated limits as that which gathered to see Aunt Tildy through in her brave assault on the enemy. The special master had elected to hear the issue in a private office, but indignant public opinion drove him into the court-house and to the bench, where he was soon surrounded by an eager crowd so dense that breathing became difficult despite the fact that all the court-room windows were open.

Drawn by F. R. Gruger Half-tone plate engraved by R. C. Collins

“‘WELL, NOW, I BET SQUIRE STOP’ AN’ TOLE AUNT TILDY ALL ERBOUT HIT!’”

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LARGER IMAGE

Not half the visitors secured entrance. The majority gathered around the building in the public square, men, women, and children, and took, second-hand, from those who struggled exhausted out of the doors, such reports of the proceedings as were not borne to their ears direct on the vibrant air. Buggies, wagons, carryalls, and the grass afforded seats, and the good-natured crowd settled down to enjoy the day.

Within the building the master and the lawyers soon arranged preliminaries and the case was opened, Aunt Tildy sitting serenely scornful beside her lawyer and facing the curious spectators with perfect indifference. It was a long trial, stubbornly contested at every point. The defense protested against “imperfect service” and “surprise.” Both sides amended and contested each other’s amendments. Both sides “demurred” and fought each other’s demurrers. Both sides offered documentary evidence, and both sides moved to “strike out.” And there were arguments at every crisis. So the day wore along, and the people outside proceeded to dine from their baskets. They were having the best of it by far.

Finally a buzz of excitement came from within. Persons visible through the windows were observed to straighten up and face one way. The crowd on the outside were now having the worst of it.

About this time Tim Broggins, who had heretofore been in evidence chiefly around the grocery down the street, where he had all day elaborately explained between “treats” the features of Aunt Tildy’s remarkable case, as well as the Federal law governing copyrights, appeared on the scene bearing a long scaling-ladder. Tim’s approach to the building with his burden was one of the features of the case not soon forgotten. The unsteadiness of his gait, the weight and length of the ladder, and his attempts to face every one who asked him questions—there were dozens of them—produced a set of gymnastics on his part that cleared the whole north side of the square. People fled from him as from a plague, the women with babies leaving first.

Reaching the court-house, Tim made heroic efforts to place the ladder upright against the wall—a performance that convulsed his audience, then at a safe distance. The final result was, Tim went over on his back with the ladder on top of him, escaping miraculously without broken bones. Friendly hands stood up both Tim and the ladder, and presently he climbed unsteadily to the second-story window, where, after a brief survey of the court-room scene and swaying dangerously, he began to laugh.

“Jedge,” he called eagerly to Oglesby below, “come up! Come up!” The judge was about as happy as Tim, but more discreet. He shook his head and shifted his quid.

“Tell us erbout it, Tim!”

“Ol’ lady on th’ stan’, Jedge, hammerin’ away with her umberella!—Go it, Aunt Tildy!” he shouted. The master’s gavel was heard, and those within the room near the window turned and shook their heads at Tim.

“What’s she sayin’, Tim?”

“She’s jes p’intedly er-skinnin’ of Jack Cromby! ‘Oudacionest’ is the shortes’ word I’ve ketched. Go it, Aunt Tildy, I’m er bettin’ on yer! Whoopee-ee—!”

“Silence in court!” The master’s angry voice could be heard by the outsiders; and again the people at the window, gesticulating, turned on Tim, whose expostulations descended.

“Thass all right, gentlemen,—all right! I ain’t in the court ner on th’ earth ner in th’ heavens, ner in the waters unner th’—earth!” Tim made a dangerous lurch as he concluded, but swayed back into the perpendicular, while the crowd below held their breath. Then he straightened up and craned his neck over his neighbors’ heads, his sides shaking while he hammered on the ladder with his fist. The people below him were burning with curiosity and the judge grew impatient.

“How goes it, Tim?”

“Fine, Jedge! Come up!—Come up! Room at the top! Allus room at the top!”

“More room down here! What’s she sayin’ now?”

“Oh, gee! Oh, gee!—” Tim laid his head against the wall and joined loudly in the subdued laugh which rippled through the window. “This here is er circus right, Jedge! She says anybody says she ever took er pinch o’ snuff er wet er snuff-stick in her born days is er lower down houn’ th’n Jack Cromby, an’ Jack is th’ lowes’ she met in thirty years’ tradin’ with Niggers an’ po’ white trash! Jedge,—oh, Jedge!—” Tim held on with both hands for safety and let his laughter come. He finally ended it with a wild “Whoop-ee-ee!” which was followed by furious strokes of the master’s gavel and the usual pantomime in the window. These did not trouble Tim. “Jedge, you had oughter see Jack’s face now! Geminy criminy! He better keep outer the way of the ‘befo’ takin’’ man or git er patent on it quick! Hello, Jack!” He had thrust his head in the window. Somebody shook him and pushed it out. “All right, all-l-l right, gentlemen. Wouldn’t ’sturb nobody fer nothin’!”

Then the vibrant voice of Lawyer Thomas rang out clear and loud, and the attentive people in the square below needed no interpreter. His arraignment of the foreign firm which had slandered and humiliated one of the noble women of the county, his scathing denunciation of Jack Cromby, were things to talk about for years. Despite the gavel, applause followed his every rounded period, and to this applause Tim contributed each time a wild whoop that fairly split the air. When Lawyer Thomas closed with a flight of eloquence that caused the older people to mention Toombs and Linton Stevens, the applause from within was answered by cheers from without. At this climax Tim Broggins’s feet slipped, the outer cheers subsided suddenly into something like a gasp of horror, and Oglesby beat a hasty retreat. Fortunately, however, Tim lodged among the upper rounds of the ladder from which he disengaged himself only after five minutes of hard work. During his struggles to get back on the upper side of his ladder he was good-naturedly assisted by advice from the sympathetic crowd who knew a “Roman holiday” sacrifice by sight if not in terms.

But all good things as well as bad must have an end. There came a few moments of silence with evidence of close attention above.

“What’s up now, Tim?” The judge drew nearer the ladder to avoid shouting.

“Hush! The boss is talkin’!” The silence was short; presently the people in the court-room began to move excitedly and to clap hands, and once more Tim, who had regained his lost ground, uttered his “Whoopee-ee!”

“One thousan’, Jedge, one thousan’! That’s what she gits! Oh, gee!—oh, gee!” he cried, cupping one hand toward Oglesby, who had ventured back into the danger zone below.

Then a queer sound issued from within, a single sound, a shrill, high-pitched, prolonged note, so totally divorced from the masculine hubbub there that it attracted the attention of everybody. And this time the people within the court-room cheered wildly, joyously, and hilariously, shaking one another by the shoulders and slapping backs. But almost instantly there began to mingle with the cheers certain vocal explosions up and down the whole chromatic scale which, swelling in volume, finally swallowed up all other sounds, and frantic hands were seen through the windows clutching at elusive coat-tail pockets. Tim was holding to the window-sill desperately and swaying violently as he gasped for breath to answer the excited questions hurled up to him. He found it at last.

“Aunt Tildy has snee—snee—sneezed! And scattered er box over ev’ybody! The comin’ sneeze has done come! An’—an’—by gosh!—hit’s—got me—too,—Currasha-h-h-o! Kitty!” The ladder went out from under him, and he hung, sneezing, to the window-sill, while below the women shrieked.

However, no tragedy marred the day. Judge Oglesby galloped out from under the falling ladder, and responsive to the frantic appeals of women, and greatly to the relief of all, the men at the window reeled Tim in by his hair and coat-collar and trousers’ seat, despite his struggles.

“Hurrah for Tim Broggins!” yelled the delighted Oglesby from a safe distance, waving his hat. A ringing shout went up.

“Currasha-h-h-o!” faintly replied the invisible Tim.

SKIRTING THE BALKAN PENINSULA

FROM TRIEST TO CONSTANTINOPLE

FIFTH PAPER: IN CONSTANTINOPLE

BY ROBERT HICHENS

Author of “The Spell of Egypt,” “The Holy Land,” “The Garden of Allah,” etc.

WITH PICTURES BY JULES GUÉRIN (SEE FRONTISPIECE) AND PHOTOGRAPHS

CONSTANTINOPLE is beautiful and hateful. It fascinates and it repels. And it bewilders—how it bewilders! No other city that I have seen has so confused and distressed me. For days I could not release myself from the obsession of its angry tumult. Much of it seems to be in a perpetual rage, pushing, struggling, fighting, full of ugly determination to do—what? One does not know, one cannot even surmise what it desires, what is its aim, if, indeed, it has any aim. These masses of dark-eyed, suspicious, glittering people thronging its streets, rushing down its alleys, darting out of its houses, calling from its windows, muttering in its dark and noisome corners, gathering in compact, astonishing crowds in its great squares before its mosques, blackening even its waters, amid fierce noises of sirens from its innumerable steamers and yells from its violent boatmen, what is it that they want? Whither are they going in this brutal haste, these Greeks, Corsicans, Corfiotes, Montenegrins, Armenians, Jews, Albanians, Syrians, Egyptians, Arabs, Turks? They have no time or desire to be courteous, to heed any one but themselves. They push you from the pavement. They elbow you in the road. Upon the two bridges they crush past you, careless if they tread upon you or force you into the mud. If you are in a caique, traveling over the waters of the Golden Horn, they run into you. Caique bangs into caique. The boatmen howl at one another, and somehow pull their craft free. If you are in a carriage, the horses slither round the sharp corners, and you come abruptly face to face with another carriage, dashing on as yours is dashing, carelessly, scornfully, reckless apparently of traffic and of human lives. There seems to be no plan in the tumult, no conception of anything wanted quietly, toward which any one is moving with a definite, simple purpose. The noise is beyond all description. London, even New York, seems to me almost peaceful in comparison with Constantinople. There is no sound of dogs. They are all dead. But even their sickly howling, of which one has heard much, must surely have been overpowered by the uproar one hears to-day, except perhaps in the dead of night.

Soldiers seem to be everywhere. To live in Constantinople is like living in some vast camp. When I was there, Turkey was preparing feverishly for war. The streets were blocked with trains of artillery. The steamers in the harbor were vomiting forth regiments of infantry. Patrols of horsemen paraded the city. On my first night in Pera, when, weary with my efforts to obtain some general conception of what the spectacular monster really was, what it wanted, what it meant, what it was about to do, I had at length fallen asleep toward dawn, I was wakened by a prolonged, clattering roar beneath my windows. I got up, opened the shutters, and looked out. And below me, in the semi-darkness, I saw interminable lines of soldiers passing: officers on horseback, men tramping with knapsacks on their backs and rifles over their shoulders; then artillery, gun-carriages, with soldiers sitting loosely on them holding one another’s hands; guns, horses, more horses, with officers riding them; then trains of loaded mules. On and on they went, and always more were coming behind. I watched them till I was tired, descending to the darkness of Galata, to the blackness of old Stamboul.

Gradually, as the days passed by, I began to understand something of the city, to realize never what it wanted or what it really meant, but something of what it was. It seemed to me then like a person with two natures uneasily housed in one perturbed body. These two natures were startlingly different. One was to me hateful—Pera, with Galata touching it. The other was not to be understood by me, but it held me with an indifferent grasp, and from it there flowed a strange and almost rustic melancholy that I cared for—Stamboul. And between these two natures a gulf was fixed—the gulf of the Golden Horn.

From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood

THE WATER-FRONT OF STAMBOUL, WITH PERA IN THE DISTANCE

Pera is a mongrel city, set on a height and streaming blatantly to Galata; a city of discolored houses not unlike the houses of Naples; of embassies and churches; of glaring shops and cafés glittering with plate-glass, through which crafty, impudent eyes are forever staring; of noisy, unattractive hotels and wizen gardens, where bands play at stated hours, and pretentious, painted women from second-rate European music-halls posture and squall under the electric lamps. There is no rest, no peace in Pera. There seems to be no discipline. Motor-cars make noises there even in the dead of night, and when standing still, such as I never before heard or imagined. They have a special breed of cars in Pera. Bicyclists are allowed to use motor sirens to clear the way before them. One Sunday when, owing to a merciful strike of the coachmen, there was comparative calm, I saw a boy on horseback going at full gallop over the pavement of the Grande Rue. He passed and repassed me five times, lashing his horse till it was all in a lather. Nobody stopped him. You may do anything, it seems, in Pera, if it is noisy, brutal, objectionable. Pera has all that is odious of the Levant: impudence, ostentation, slyness, indelicacy, uproar, a glittering commonness. It is like a blazing ring of imitation diamonds squeezing a fat and dirty finger. But it is wonderfully interesting simply because of the variety of human types one sees there. The strange thing is that this multitude of types from all over the East and from all the nations of Europe is reduced, as it were, by Pera to a common, a very common, denominator. The influence of place seems fatal there.

From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood

A STREET OF HAREM HOMES IN CONSTANTINOPLE

Stamboul is a city of wood and of marble, of dusty, frail houses that look as if they had been run up in a night and might tumble to pieces at any moment, and of magnificent mosques, centuries old, solid, huge, superb, great monuments of the sultans. The fire-tower of Galata looks toward the fire-tower of Stamboul across a forest of masts; but no watchfulness, no swiftness of action, can prevent flames from continually sweeping through Stamboul, leaving waste places behind them, but dying at the feet of the mosques. As one looks at Stamboul from the heights of Pera, it rises on its hills across the water, beyond the sea of the Golden Horn, like a wonderful garden city, warm, almost ruddy, full of autumnal beauty, with its red-brown roofs and its trees. And out of its rich-toned rusticity the mosques heave themselves up like leviathans that have nothing in common with it; the Mosque of Santa Sophia, of the Sultan Achmet, with its six exquisite minarets, of Mohammed the Conqueror, of Suleiman the Magnificent, and how many others!

From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood

GALATA BRIDGE, WHICH CONNECTS GALATA AND PERA

There is no harmony between the mosques of Stamboul and the houses of Stamboul. The former are enduring and grand; the latter, almost like houses of cards. And yet Stamboul is harmonious, is very beautiful. Romance seems brooding over it, trailing lights and shadows to clothe it with flame and with darkness. It holds you, it entices you. It sheds upon you a sense of mystery. What it has seen, Stamboul! What it has known! What a core of red violence that heart has and always has had! When the sunset dies away among the autumnal houses and between the minarets that rise above the city like prayers; when the many cypresses that echo the minarets in notes of dark green become black, and the thousands of houses seem to be subtly run together into a huge streak of umber above the lights at the waterside; when Seraglio Point stretches like a shadowy spear toward the Bosporus and the Black Sea, and the coasts of Asia fade away in the night, old Stamboul murmurs to you with a voice that seems to hold all secrets, to call you away from the world of Pera to the world of Aladdin’s lamp. Pera glitters in the night and cries out to heaven. Old Stamboul wraps itself in a black veil and withdraws where you may not follow.

THE COURTYARD OF THE “PIGEON’S MOSQUE”

FROM THE PAINTING MADE FOR THE CENTURY BY JULES GUÉRIN

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LARGER IMAGE

When I think of Constantinople as a whole, as seen, say, from the top of the Galata tower, set up by the Genoese, I think of it as the most wonderful, the most beautiful, and the most superbly situated city I ever have seen.

It is an Eastern city of the sea, pierced by water at its heart, giving itself to the winds from Marmora, from the Golden Horn, from the Bosporus, from the Black Sea. The snows of Asia look upon it across the blue waters of Marmora, where the Iles des Princes sleep in a flickering haze of gold. Stamboul climbs, like Rome, to the summits of seven hills, and gazes over the great harbor, crowded with a forest of masts, echoing with sounds of the sea, to Galata, and to Pera on the height. And the Golden Horn narrows to the sweet waters of Europe, but broadens toward Seraglio Point into the Bosporus, that glorious highway of water between Europe and Asia, lined with the palaces and the villas of sultans and pashas, of Eastern potentates and of the European Powers: Yildiz, and Dolma bagtché, Beylerbey, and Cheragan, the great palace of the Khedive of Egypt’s mother, with its quay upon the water, facing the villa of her son, which stands on the Asian shore, lifted high amid its woods, the palace of the “sweet waters of Asia,” the gigantic red-roofed palace where Ismail died in exile. Farther on toward Therapia, where stand the summer embassies of the Powers, Robert College, dignified, looking from afar almost like a great gray castle, rises on its height above its sloping gardens. Gaze from any summit upon Constantinople, and you are amazed by the wonder of it, by the wonder of its setting. There is a vastness, a glory of men, of ships, of seas, of mountains, in this grand view which sets it apart from all other views of the world. Two seas send it their message. Two continents give of their beauty to make it beautiful. Two religions have striven to sanctify it with glorious buildings. In the midst of its hidden squalor and crime rises what many consider the most beautiful church—now a mosque—in the world. Perhaps no harbor in Europe can compare with its harbor. For human and historical interest it can scarcely be equaled. In the shadow of its marvelous walls, guarded by innumerable towers and girdled by forests of cypresses, it lies like some great magician, glittering, mysterious, crafty, praying, singing, intriguing, assassinating, looking to East and West, watchful, and full of fanaticism.

I crossed the new bridge. The famous old timber bridge, which rocks under your feet, has been moved up the Golden Horn, and now spans the sea by the marine barracks. Evening was falling; a wind had brought clouds from the Black Sea. The waters were colorless, and were licked into fretful wavelets, on which the delicate-pointed caiques swayed like leaves on a tide. Opposite to me, at the edge of Stamboul, the huge Mosque of Yeni-Validé-Jamissi rose, with its crowd of cupolas large and small and its prodigious minarets. Although built by two women, it looked stern and male, seemed to be guarding the bridge, to be proclaiming to all the mongrels from Galata and Pera, who hurried from shore to shore, that Stamboul will make no compromise with the infidel, that in the great space before this mosque the true East in Europe begins.

Russia was in the wind, I thought. The breath of the steppes was wandering afar to seek—what? The breath of the desert? The great mosque confronted it, Islam erect, and now dark, forbidding under the darkening sky. Even the minarets had lost their delicate purity, had become fierce, prayers calling down destruction on unbelievers. And all the cries of Stamboul seemed to gather themselves together in my ears, keening over the sea above which I stood—voices of many nations; of Turks, Arabs, Circassians, Persians, of men from the wilds of Asia and the plains of India; voices of bashi-bazouks and of slaves; even, thin high voices of eunuchs. From the quays to right and left of the bridge crowds of people rose to my sight and hurried away; to them crowds of people descended, sinking out of my sight. Soldiers and hamals passed, upright and armed, bending beneath the weight of incredible loads. Calls of Albanian boatmen came up from the sea. From the city of closely packed fishermen’s vessels rose here and there little trails of smoke. On their decks dim figures crouched about wavering fires. A gnarled beggar pushed me, muttering, then whining uncouth words. Along the curving shore, toward the cypress-crowned height of Eyub, lights were strung out, marking the waterside. Behind me tall Pera began to glitter meretriciously. The Greek barbers, I knew, were standing impudently before the doors of their little saloons, watching the evening pageant as it surged slowly through the Grande Rue and toward the Taxim Garden. Diplomats were driving home from the Sublime Porte in victorias. The “cinemas” were gathering in their mobs. Tokatlian’s was thronged with Levantines whispering from mouth to mouth the current lies of the day. Below, near the ships, the business men of Galata were rushing out of their banks, past the large round-browed Montenegrins who stand on the steps, out of their offices and shops, like a mighty swarm of disturbed bees. The long shriek of a siren from a steamer near Seraglio Point tore the gloom. I went on, despite menacing Validé Sultan, I lost myself in the wonderful maze of Stamboul.

Stamboul near the waterside is full of contrasts so sharp, so strange that they bewilder and charm, and sometimes render uneasy even one who has wandered alone through many towns of the East. Sordid and filthy, there is yet something grandiose in it, something hostile and threatening in the watchful crowds that are forever passing by. Between the houses the sea-wind blows up, and you catch glimpses of water, of masts, of the funnels of steamers. Above the cries of the nations rise the long-drawn wails and the hootings of sirens. The traffic of the streets is made more confusing by your constant consciousness of the traffic of the sea, embraced by it, almost mingling with it. Water and wind, mud and dust, cries of coachmen and seamen, of motor-cars and steamers, and soldiers, soldiers, soldiers passing, always passing. Through a window-pane you catch a glitter of jewels and a glitter of Armenian eyes gazing stealthily out. You pass by some marble tombs sheltered by weary trees, under the giant shadow of a mosque, and a few steps farther on you look through an arched doorway and see on the marble floor of a dimly lighted hall half-naked men, with tufts of black hair drooping from partly shaved heads and striped towels girt round their loins, going softly to and fro, or bending about a fountain from which water gushes with a silvery noise. This is a Turkish bath. Throughout Stamboul there are bath-houses with little cupolas on their roofs, and throughout Stamboul there are tombs; but the uneasy and watchful crowds throng the quarters near the waterside and the great bazaars and the spaces before the principal mosques. They are not spread throughout the city. Many parts of Stamboul are as the waste places of the earth, abandoned by men.

By night they are silent and black; by day they look like the ways of a great wooden village from which the inhabitants have fled. In their open spaces, patches of waste ground, perhaps a few goats are trying to browse among rubbish and stones, a few little children are loitering, two or three silent men may be sitting under a vine by a shed, which is a Turkish café. There is no sound of steps or of voices. One has no feeling of being in a great city, of being in a city at all. Little there is of romance, little of that mysterious and exquisite melancholy which imaginative writers have described. Dullness and shabbiness brood over everything. Yet an enormous population lives in the apparently empty houses. Women are watching from the windows behind the grilles. Life is fermenting in the midst of the dust, the discomfort, the almost ghastly silence.

The great bazaar of Stamboul is a city within a city. As you stand before its entrance you think of a fortress full of immured treasures. And there are treasures of price under the heavy arches, in the long roofed-over lanes. The bazaars of Tunis seem minute, of Damascus ephemeral, of Cairo dressed up, of Jerusalem crushed together and stifling, when compared with the vast bazaars of Stamboul, which have a solidity, a massiveness, unshared by their rivals. I saw there many cheap goods such as I have seen on certain booths in the East End of London, but they were surrounded with a certain pomp and dignity, with a curious atmosphere of age. Some parts of the bazaars are narrow. Others are broad and huge, with great cupolas above them, and, far up, wooden galleries running round them. Now and then you come upon an old fountain of stained marble and dim faience about which men are squatting on their haunches to wash their faces and hands and their carefully bared arms. The lanes are paved and are often slippery. Just under the lofty roof there are windows of white glass, and about them, and on arches and walls, there are crude decorations in strong blues and purples, yellows and greens. The serious merchants from many lands do not beset you with importunities as you pass; but sometimes a lustrous pair of eyes invites you to pause, or a dark and long-fingered hand gently beckons you toward a jewel, a prayer-carpet, a weapon, or something strange in silver or gold or ivory.

One day a man from Bagdad invited me to buy a picture as I drew near to him. It was the portrait of a dervish’s cap worked in silk. The cap, orange-colored and silver, was perched upon a small table (in the picture) above which hung curtains in two shades of green. A heavy gilt frame surrounded this “old master” of the East. We bargained. The merchant’s languages were broken, but at length I understood him to say that the cap was a perfect likeness. I retorted that all the dervishes’ caps I had seen upon living heads were the color of earth. The merchant, I believe, pitied my ignorance. His eyes, hands, arms, and even his shoulders were eloquent of compassion. He lowered the price of the picture by about half a farthing in Turkish money, but I resisted the blandishment and escaped into the jewel bazaar, half regretting a lost opportunity.

From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood

PUBLIC LETTER-WRITERS IN A CONSTANTINOPLE STREET

Many Turkish women come to the bazaars only to meet their lovers. They cover a secret desire by a pretense of making purchases. From the upper floor of the yellow-blue-and-red kiosk, in which Turkish sweets are sold, and you can eat the breasts of chickens cooked deliciously in cream and served with milk and starch, I have watched these subtle truants passing in their pretty disguises suggestive of a masked ball. They look delicate and graceful in their thin and shining robes, like dominoes, of black or sometimes of prune-color, with crape dropping over their faces and letting you see not enough; for many Turkish women are pretty.

One day I was in the upper room of a photographer’s shop when two Turkish women came in and removed their veils, standing with their backs to the English infidel. One was obviously much younger than the other, and seemed to have a beautiful figure. I was gazing at it, perhaps rather steadily, when, evidently aware of my glance, she turned slowly and deliberately round. For two or three minutes she faced me, looking to right and left of me, above me, even on the floor near my feet, with her large and beautiful blue-gray eyes. She was lovely. Young, perhaps eighteen, she was slightly painted, and her eyebrows and long curling lashes were blackened. Her features were perfect, her complexion was smooth and brilliant, and her expression was really adorable. It seemed to say to me quietly:

“Yes, you are right. It is foolish ever to conceal such a face as this with a veil when really there is not too much beauty in the world. Mais que voulez-vous? Les Turcs!” And the little hanum surely moved her thin shoulders contemptuously. But her elderly companion pulled at her robe, and slowly she moved away. As the two women left the room, the photographer, a Greek, looked after them, smiling. Then he turned to me, spread out his thin hands, and said, with a shrug, “Encore des désenchantées!”

I thought of the disenchanted one day as I sat among the letter-writers in the large and roughly paved court of the “Pigeon’s Mosque,” or Mosque of Bajazet II. For hours I had been wandering on foot through the upper quarters of old Stamboul, and I could not release my mind from the dull pressure of its influence. All those wooden houses, silent, apparently abandoned, shuttered—streets and streets of them, myriads of them! Now and then above the carved wood of a lattice I had seen a striped curtain, cheap, dusty, hanging, I guessed, above a cheap and dusty divan. The doors of the houses were large and solid, like prison doors. Before one, as I slowly passed by, I had seen an old Turk in a long quilted coat of green, with a huge key in his hand, about to enter. He glanced to right and left, then thrust the key into the door. I had felt inclined to stop and say to him:

“That house has been abandoned for years. Every one has migrated long ago from this quarter of Stamboul. If you stay here, you will be quite alone.” But the old Turk knew very well that all the houses were full of people, of imprisoned women. What a fate to be one of the prisoners!

That was my thought as I looked at the sacred pigeons, circling in happy freedom over the garden where Bajazet slumbers under his catafalque, fluttering round the cupolas of their mosque, and beneath the gray-pink-and-white arcade, with its dull-green and plum-colored columns, or crowding together upon the thin branches of their plane-tree. A pure wind blew through the court and about the marble fountain. The music made by the iridescent wings of the birds never ceased, and their perpetual cooing was like the sweet voice of content. The sunshine streamed over the pavement and penetrated under the arches, making the coral beads of a rosary glow and its gold beads glitter, giving to the amber liquid carried on a tray by a boy to a barber beneath his awning a vivacity almost of flame. Beside me a lover was dictating a letter to a scribe, who squatted before his table, on which were arranged a bright-blue inkstand and cup, a pile of white paper, and a stand with red pens and blue pencils. Farther on, men were being shaved, and were drinking coffee as they lounged upon bright-yellow sofas. Near me a very old Turk, with fanatical, half-shut eyes, was sitting on the ground and gazing at the pink feet of the pigeons as they tripped over the pavement, upon which a pilgrim to the mosque had just flung some grain. As he gazed, he mechanically fingered his rosary, swiftly shifting the beads on and on, beads after beads, always two at a time. Some incense smoldered in a three-legged brazier, giving out its peculiar and drowsy smell. On the other side of the court a fruit-seller slept by a pile of yellow melons. The grain thrown by the pilgrim was all eaten now, and for a moment the sunshine was dimmed by the cloud of rising and dispersing birds, gray and green, with soft gleams like jewels entangled in their plumage. Some flew far to the tall white-and-gray minaret of their mosque, others settled on the cupola above the fountain. A few, venturous truants, disappeared in the direction of the seraskierat wall, not far off. The greater number returned to their plane-tree on the right of the lover and the scribe. And as the lover suggested, and the scribe wrote from right to left, the pigeons puffed out their breasts and cooed, calling other pilgrims to remember that even the sacred have their carnal appetites, and to honor the poor widow’s memory before going up to the mosque to pray.

MOSQUE OF THE YENI-VALIDÉ-JAMISSI, CONSTANTINOPLE

PAINTED FOR THE CENTURY BY JULES GUÉRIN

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LARGER IMAGE

One day I went up the hill toward Yildiz to see the Selamlik. That morning the sultan was going to pray in the mosque of wood which Abdul Hamid built close to the mysterious, walled-in quarter of palaces, harems, kiosks, gardens, barracks, and parks which he made his prison. From the Bosporus you can see it extending from the hilltop almost to the sea, a great property, outside the city, yet dominating it, with dense groves of trees in which wild animals were kept, with open spaces, with solitary buildings and lines of roofs, and the cupola of the mosque of the soldiers. All about it are the high walls which a coward raised up to protect him and his fear. The mosque is below the great entrance-gates on a steep hillside beyond the walls. A large modern house, white, with green shutters, in which Abdul Hamid used to grant audiences and, I believe, to give banquets, looks down on it. From the upper windows of this dwelling the Turks say the ex-sultan often stared at his city through powerful glasses.

The mosque is not large. It is yellow and white, with a minaret of plaster on the side next the sea, and a graveled courtyard surrounded by green iron railings and planted with a few trees. On the side next to Yildiz is a steep bank. A road runs up the hill to the left of the mosque as you face Yildiz, and another hidden road descends from the gates and gives access to the courtyard behind the mosque. The sultan has therefore a choice of two routes, and nobody seems to know beforehand which way he will come. There were very few tourists in Constantinople when I was there. People were afraid of war, and before I left the Orient express had ceased to run. But I found awaiting the padishah many Indian pilgrims, a large troop of pilgrims from Trebizond who were on their way to Mecca, several Persians wearing black toques, and a good many Turks. These were in the courtyard close to the mosque, where I was allowed to stand by the aristocratic young chief of police, who wore a woolly, gray, fez-shaped cap. Outside the railings stood a dense crowd of veiled women.

Soon after I arrived a squadron of the body-guard rode up from the city, carrying red-and-green pennons on long staffs, and halted before the gates of the palace. And almost at the same moment the palace musicians, in dark-blue, red, and gold, wearing short swords, and carrying shining brass instruments, marched into the inclosure. They stood still, then dropped their instruments on the ground, moved away, and sat down on the bank, lolling in easy attitudes. Time slipped by, and important people strolled in, officers, court officials, attendants. Eunuchs shambled loosely past in wonderfully fitting, long frock-coats, wearing turquoise rings on their large weak hands, and looking half-piteously impudent. Men hurried into the mosque carrying brown Gladstone bags. Nazim Pasha, weary and grave, the weight of war already on his shoulders, talked with the master of the ceremonies beside steps before which lay a bright-yellow carpet.

This is the sultan’s entrance to the mosque. It is not imposing. The two flights of steps curve on right and left to a trivial glass porch which reminded me of that bulbous addition to certain pretentious houses which is dignified by the name “winter garden.” Some smart, very strong Turkish sailors lined up opposite me. Not far from the porch stood a group of military doctors in somber uniforms. A second yellow carpet was unrolled to cover the flight of steps on the left of the porch, more eunuchs went by, more Gladstone bags were carried past me. Then came soldiers in yellowish brown, and palace officials in white and blue, with red collars. Two riding-horses were led by two grooms toward the back of the mosque. The musicians rose languidly from the bank, took up their instruments, turned round, and faced toward Yildiz. Through the crowd, like a wind, went that curious stir which always precedes an important event for which many people are waiting. Nazim Pasha spoke to the chief of police, slowly moving his white-gloved hands, and then from the hilltop came a rhythmical, booming noise of men’s voices, very deep, very male: the soldiers before the gates were acclaiming their sovereign. I saw a fluttering movement of pennons; the sultan had emerged from the palace and was descending by the hidden road to perform his devotions.

In perhaps five minutes an outrider appeared from behind the mosque, advancing slowly parallel with the bank, followed by a magnificent victoria, covered with gold and lined, I think, with satin, drawn by two enormous brown horses the harness of which was plated with gold. They were driven from the box by a gorgeous coachman, who was standing. The musicians, turning once more, struck up the “Sultan’s Hymn,” the soldiers presented arms; the brown horses wheeled slowly round, and I saw within a few paces of me, sitting alone in the victoria in a curious, spread-out attitude, a bulky and weary old man in a blue uniform, wearing white kid gloves and the fez. He was staring straight before him, and on his unusually large fair face there was no more expression than there is on a white envelop. Women twittered. Men saluted. The victoria stopped beside the bright-yellow carpet. After a moment’s pause, as if emerging from a sort of trance, the Calif of Islam got up and stepped slowly and heavily out, raising one hand to his fez. Then, as if with an abrupt effort to show alertness, he walked almost quickly up the steps to the glass porch, turned just before entering it, stood for an instant looking absolutely blank, again saluted, swung round awkwardly and disappeared. Almost immediately afterward one of his sons, a rather short and fair young man with a flushed face, attended by an officer, hurried past me and into the mosque by another entrance.

A few persons went away while his Majesty was praying; but all the pilgrims stayed, and I stayed with them. Several of the officials walked about on the gravel, talked, smoked, and drank orangeade, which a servant brought to them on a silver tray. Now and then from within the mosque came to us the loud murmur of praying voices. The soldiers of the body-guard descended the hill from the gates of Yildiz on foot, leading their horses, and assembled outside the courtyard. They were followed by a brilliant squadron of cavalry in dark-blue-and-red uniforms, with green-and-red saddle-cloths; their blood-red flag was borne before them, and their own music accompanied them. The soldiers in yellowish brown had piled arms and were standing at ease, smoking and talking. Twenty minutes perhaps went by, then a Gladstone bag was carried out of the mosque. We all gazed at it with reverence. What was in it? Or, if there was nothing, what had been recently taken out of it? I never shall know. As the bag vanished, a loud sound of singing came from within, and a troop of palace guards in vivid-red uniforms, with white-and-red toques trimmed with black astrakhan, marched into the court led by an officer. Some gendarmes followed them. Then the chief of police tripped forward with nervous agility, and made us all cross over and stand with our backs to the bank in a long line. An outrider, dressed in green and gold, and holding a big whip, rode in on a huge strawberry-roan horse. Behind him came a green-and-red brougham with satin cushions, drawn by a pair of strawberry roans. A smart coachman and footman sat on the box, and on each side rode two officers on white horses.

Now the singing ceased in the mosque. People began to come out. The sultan’s son, less flushed, passed by on foot, answering swiftly the salutes of the people. The brougham was drawn up before the bright-yellow carpet. Nazim Pasha once more stood there talking with several officials. The soldiers had picked up their arms, the sailors were standing at attention.

Then there was a very long wait.

“The sultan is taking coffee.”

Another five minutes passed.

“The sultan is sleeping.”

On this announcement being made to me, I thought seriously of departing in peace; but a Greek friend, who had spoken to an official, murmured in my ear:

“The sultan is awake and is changing his clothes.”

This sounded promising, and I decided to wait.

It seemed to me that his Majesty was a very long time at his toilet; but at last we were rewarded. Abruptly from the glass porch he appeared in European dress, with very baggy trousers much too long in the leg and a voluminous black frock-coat. He stood for a moment holding the frock-coat with both hands, as if wishing to wrap himself up in it. Then, still grasping it, he walked quickly down the steps, his legs seeming almost to ripple beneath the weight of his body, and stepped heavily into the brougham, which swung upon its springs. The horses moved, the carriage passed close to me, and again I gazed at this mighty sovereign, while the Eastern pilgrims salaamed to the ground. Mechanically he saluted. His large face was still unnaturally blank, and yet somehow it looked kind. And I felt that this old man was weary and sad, that his long years of imprisonment had robbed him of all vitality, of all power to enjoy; that he was unable to appreciate the pageant of life in which now, by the irony of fate, he was called to play the central part. All alone he sat in the bright-colored brougham, carrying a flaccid hand to his fez and gazing blankly before him. The carriage passed out of the courtyard, but it did not go up the hill to the palace.

“The sultan,” said a voice, “is going out into the country to rest and to divert himself.”

To rest, perhaps; but to divert himself!

After that day I often saw before me a large white envelop, and the most expressive people in the world were salaaming before it.

(To be continued)

THE LITTLE PEOPLE

BY AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR

BECAUSE I left the hearthstone to watch the stars at night,

Because I loved the forest and wandered there alone,

The little fairy people who mock at human might

They set a spell upon me and chose me for their own.

The Little People called me—and oh, their word was sweet!

Fair as the towers of sunset I saw their kingdom rise—

But I knew my mother listened for the coming of my feet.

In tears the vision darkened and vanished from mine eyes.

The Little People called me to cast with them my lot

Or nevermore to see them, for mine own kindred’s sake.

The heart cried out within me, and yet I faltered not.

My people were my people—what choice was mine to make?

My people are my people, and dear they are to me,

Yet sometimes comes a longing—till I hardly dare to pray—

For that far land of wonder that I shall never see,

And for the Little People from whom I turned away.

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

BY JOHN KEATS

WITH A PICTURE BY PAUL MEYLAN

OH, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has withered from the lake,

And no birds sing.

Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms

So haggard and so woebegone?

The squirrel’s granary is full,

And the harvest’s done.

I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the mead,
Full beautiful—a fairy’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A fairy song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said,
“I love thee true.”

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore;
And there I shut her wild, wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lullèd me asleep,

And there I dreamed—ah! woe betide!

The latest dream I ever dreamed

On the cold hill’s side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all:

They cried, “La belle dame sans merci

Hath thee in thrall!”

I saw their starved lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here
On the cold hill’s side.

And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Drawn by Paul Meylan. Half-tone plate engraved by C. W. Chadwick.

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

“I set her on my pacing steed

And nothing else saw all day long.”—KEATS.

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THE NEW MINISTER’S GREAT OPPORTUNITY[4]

BY C. H. WHITE

Author of “The Village Convict,” “Eli,” etc.

WITH A PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR AND A PICTURE BY HARRY TOWNSEND

(NOTEWORTHY STORIES OF THE LAST GENERATION)

THE minister’s got a job,” said Mr. Snell.

Mr. Snell had been driven in by a shower from the painting of a barn, and was now sitting, with one bedaubed overall leg crossed over the other, in Mr. Hamblin’s shop.

Half a dozen other men who had likewise found in the rain a call to leisure looked up at him inquiringly.

“How do you mean?” said Mr. Noyes, who sat beside him, girt with a nail-pocket. “‘The minister’s got a job?’ How do you mean?” And Mr. Noyes assumed a listener’s air, and stroked his thin, yellow beard.

Mr. Snell smiled with half-shut, knowing eyes, but made no answer.

“How do you mean?” repeated Mr. Noyes. “‘The minister’s got a job?’ Of course he has—got a stiddy job. We knew that before.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Snell, with a placid face; “seeing’s you know so much about it, enough said. Let it rest there.”

“But,” said Mr. Noyes, nervously blowing his nose, “you lay down this proposition: ‘The minister’s got a job.’ Now I ask, what is it?”

Mr. Snell uncrossed his legs, and stooped to pick up a last, which he proceeded to scan with a shrewd, critical eye.

“Narrer foot,” he said to Mr. Hamblin.

“Private last—Doctor Hunter’s,” said Mr. Hamblin, laying down a boot upon which he was stitching an outer sole, and rising to make a ponderous, elephantine excursion across the quaking shop to the earthen water-pitcher, from which he took a generous draft.

“Well, Brother Snell,” said Mr. Noyes,—they were members together of a secret organization, of which Mr. Snell was P. G. W. T. F., “ain’t you going to tell us? What is this job? That is to say, what—is it?”

Brother Snell set his thumbs firmly in the armholes of his waistcoat, surveyed the smoke-stained pictures pasted on the wall, looked keen, and softly whistled. At last he condescended to explain.

“Preaching Uncle Capen’s funeral sermon.”

There was a subdued general laugh. Even Mr. Hamblin’s leathern apron shook.

Mr. Noyes, however, painfully looking down upon his beard to draw out a white hair, maintained his serious expression.

“I don’t see much ‘job’ in that,” he said. “A minister’s supposed to preach a hundred and four sermons in each and every year, and there’s plenty more where they come from. What’s one sermon more or less when stock costs nothing? It’s like wheeling gravel from the pit.”

HEMAN W. CHAPLIN (“C. H. WHITE”)

Author of “The New Minister’s Great Opportunity”

“O. K.,” said Mr. Snell; “if ’tain’t no trouble, then ’tain’t. But seeing’s you know, suppose you specify the materials for this particular discourse.”

Mr. Noyes looked a little disconcerted.

“Well,” he said, “of course I can’t set here and compose a funereal discourse offhand without no writing-desk; but there’s stock enough to make a sermon of any time.”

“Oh, come,” said Mr. Snell, “don’t sneak out; particularize.”

“Why,” said Mr. Noyes, “you’ve only to open the leds of your Bible, and choose a text, and then: When did this happen? Why did this happen? To who did this happen? and so forth and so on; and there’s your sermon. I’ve heard ’em so a hunderd times.”

“All right,” said Mr. Snell; “I don’t doubt, you know: but as for me, I for one never happened to hear of anything that Uncle Capen did but whitewash and saw wood. Now, what sort of an autobiographical sermon could you make out of sawing wood?”

Whereat Leander Buffum proceeded, by that harsh, guttural noise well known to country boys, to imitate the sound of sawing through a log.

His sally was warmly greeted.

“The minister might narrate,” said Mr. Blood, “what Uncle Capen said to Issachar, when Issachar told him that he charged high for sawing wood. ‘See here,’ says Uncle Capen, ‘s’pos’n’ I do. My arms are shorter ’n other folks’s, and it takes me just so much longer to do it.’”

“Well,” said Mr. Noyes, “I’m a fair man; always do exactly right is the rule I go by; and I will frankly admit now and here that if it’s a biographical discourse they want, they’ll have to cut corners.”

“Pre-cisely,” said Mr. Snell; “and that’s just what they do want.”

“Well, well,” said Mr. Hamblin, laboriously rising and putting his spectacles into their silver case, for it was suppertime, “joking one side, if Uncle Capen never did set the pond afire, we’d all rather take his chances to-day, I guess, than those of some smarter men.”

At which Mr. Snell turned red; for he was a very smart man, and had just failed, to everybody’s surprise,—for there was no reason in the world why he should fail,—and had created more merriment for the public than joy among his creditors by paying a cent and a half on the dollar.

“COME in and sit down,” said Dr. Hunter as the young minister appeared at his office door; and he tipped back in his chair, and put his feet upon a table. “What’s the news?”

“Doctor,” said Mr. Holt, laughing, as he laid down his hat and took an arm-chair, “you told me to come to you for any information. Now, I want materials for a sermon on old Mr. Capen.”

The doctor looked at him with a half-amused expression, and then sending out a curl of blue smoke, he watched it as it rose melting into the general air.

“You don’t smoke, I believe?” he said to the minister.

Holt shook his head and smiled.

The doctor put his cigar back into his mouth, clasped one knee in his hands, and fixed his eyes in meditation on a one-eared Hippocrates looking down with a dirty face from the top of a bookcase. Perhaps the doctor was thinking of the two or three hundred complimentary visits he had been permitted to make upon Uncle Capen within ten years.

Presently a smile broke over his face.

“I must tell you before I forget it,” he said, “how Uncle Capen nursed one of my patients. Years and years ago I had John Ellis, our postmaster now, down with a fever. One night Uncle Capen watched; you know he was spry and active till he was ninety. Every hour he was to give Ellis a little ice-water, and when the first time came, he took a table-spoonful—there was only a dim light in the room—and poured the ice-water down Ellis’s neck. Well, Ellis jumped as much as so sick a man could, and then lifted his finger to his lips. ‘Here’s my mouth,’ said he. ‘Why, why,’ said Uncle Capen, ‘is that your mouth? I took that for a wrinkle in your forehead.’”

The minister laughed.

“I have heard a score of such stories to-day,” he said. “There seem to be enough of them; but I can’t find anything adapted to a sermon, and yet they seem to expect a detailed biography.”

“Ah, that’s just the trouble,” said the doctor. “But let us go into the house. My wife remembers everything that ever happens, and she can post you up on Uncle Capen, if anybody can.”

So they crossed the dooryard into the house.

Mrs. Hunter was sewing; a neighbor, come to tea, was crocheting wristers for her grandson. They were both talking at once as the doctor opened the sitting-room door.

“Since neither of you appears to be listening,” he said, as they started up, “I won’t apologize for interrupting. Mr. Holt is collecting facts about Uncle Capen for his funeral sermon, and I thought that my good wife could help him out, if anybody could. So I will leave him.”

And the doctor, nodding, went into the hall for his coat and driving-gloves, and, going out, disappeared round the corner of the house.

“You will really oblige me very much, Mrs. Hunter,” said the minister—“or Mrs. French, if you can give me any particulars about old Mr. Capen’s life. His family seem to be rather sensitive, and they depend on a long, old-fashioned funeral sermon; and here I am utterly bare of facts.”

“Why, yes,” said Mrs. Hunter. “Of course. Now—”

“Why, yes; everybody knows all about him,” said Mrs. French.

And then they laid their work down and relapsed into meditation.

“Oh!” said Mrs. Hunter in a moment. “No, though—”

“Why, you know,” said Mrs. French—“no, I guess, on the whole—”

“You remember,” said the doctor’s wife to Mrs. French, with a faint smile, “the time he papered my east chamber, don’t you—how he made the pattern come?”

And then they both laughed gently for a moment.

“Well, I have always known him,” said Mrs. French; “but really, being asked so suddenly, it seems to drive everything out of my head.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Hunter, “and it’s odd that I can’t think of exactly the thing just at this minute; but if I do, I will run over to the parsonage this evening.”

“Yes, so will I,” said Mrs. French. “I know that I shall think of oceans of things just as soon as you have gone.”

“Won’t you stay to tea?” said Mrs. Hunter as Holt rose to go. “The doctor has gone; but we never count on him.”

“No, I thank you,” said Mr. Holt. “If I am to invent a biography, I may as well be at it.”

Mrs. Hunter went with him to the door.

“I must just tell you,” she said, “one of Uncle Capen’s sayings. It was long ago, when I was first married, and came here. I had a young men’s Bible class in Sunday-school, and Uncle Capen came into it. He always wore a cap, and sat at meetings with the boys. So one Sunday we had in the lesson that verse,—you know,—that if all these things should be written, even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written; and there Uncle Capen stopped me, and said he, ‘I suppose that means the world as known to the ancients.’”

HOLT put on his hat, and with a smile turned and went on his way toward the parsonage; but he remembered that he had promised to call at what the local paper termed “the late residence of the deceased,” where, on the one hundredth birthday of the centenarian, according to the poet’s corner:

“Friends, neighbors, and visitors he did receive

From early in the morning till dewy eve.”

So he turned his steps in that direction.

He opened the clicking latch of the gate and rattled the knocker on the front door of the little cottage, and a tall, motherly woman of the neighborhood appeared and ushered him in.

Uncle Capen’s unmarried daughter, a woman of sixty, her two brothers and their wives, and half a dozen neighbors were sitting in the tidy kitchen, where a crackling wood-fire in the stove was suggesting a hospitable cup of tea.

The minister’s appearance, breaking the formal gloom, was welcomed.

“Well,” said Miss Maria, “I suppose the sermon is all writ by this time. I think likely you’ve come down to read it to us.”

“No,” said Holt, “I have left the actual writing of it till I get all my facts. I thought perhaps you might have thought of something else.”

“No; I told you everything there was about Father yesterday,” she said. “I’m sure you can’t lack of things to put in; why, Father lived a hundred years—and longer, too, for he was a hundred years and six days, you remember.”

“You know,” said Holt, “there are a great many things that are very interesting to a man’s immediate friends that don’t interest the public.”

And he looked to Mr. Small for confirmation.

“Yes, that’s so,” said Mr. Small, nodding wisely.

“But, you see, Father was a centenarian,” said Maria, “and so that makes everything about him interesting. It’s a lesson to the young, you know.”

“Oh, yes, that’s so,” said Mr. Small, “if a man lives to be a centurion.”

“Well, you all knew our good friend,” said Mr. Holt. “If any of you will suggest anything, I shall be very glad to put it in.”

Nobody spoke for a moment.

“There’s one interesting thing,” said one of the sons, a little old man much like his father; “that is, that none of his children have ever gone meandering off. We’ve all remained”—he might almost have said remained seated—“all our lives right about him.”

“I will allude to that,” said Mr. Holt. “I hope you have something else, for I am afraid of running short of material: you see, I am a stranger here.”

“Why, I hope there won’t be any trouble about it,” said Maria, in sudden consternation. “I was a little afraid to give it out to so young a man as you, and I thought some of giving the preference to Father Cobb; but I didn’t quite like to have it go out of the village, nor to deprive you of the opportunity, and they all assured me that you was smart. But if you’re feeling nervous, perhaps we’d better have him still; he’s always ready.”

“Just as you like,” said Holt, modestly; “if he would be willing to preach the sermon, we might leave it that way, and I will add a few remarks.”

But Maria’s zeal for Father Cobb was a flash in the pan. He was a sickly farmer, a licensed preacher, who, when he was called upon occasionally to meet a sudden exigency, usually preached on the beheading of John the Baptist.

“I guess you’ve got things enough to write,” said Maria, consolingly; “you know how awfully a thing does drag out when you come to write it down on paper. Remember to tell how we’ve all stayed right here.”

WHEN Holt went out, he saw Mr. Small beckoning him to come to where his green wagon stood under a tree.

“I must tell you,” he said, with an awkwardly repressed smile, “about a trade of Uncle Capen’s. He had a little lot up our way that they wanted for a schoolhouse, and he agreed to sell it for what it cost him, and the selectmen, knowing what it cost him,—fifty dollars,—agreed with him that way. But come to sign the deed, he called for a hundred dollars.

“‘How’s that?’ says they. ‘You bought it of Captain Sam Bowen for fifty dollars.’

“‘Yes, but see here,’ says Uncle Capen, ‘it’s cost me on an average five dollars a year for the ten year’ I’ve had it for manure and plowing and seed, and that’s fifty dollars more.’

“‘But you’ve sold the garden stuff off it, and had the money,’ says they.

“‘Yes,’ says Uncle Capen, ‘but that money’s spent and eat up long ago.’”

The minister smiled, shook hands with Mr. Small, and went home.

THE church was crowded. Horses filled the sheds, horses were tied to the fences all up and down the street. Funerals are always popular in the country, and this one had a double element of attractiveness. The whole population of the town, having watched for years with a lively interest Uncle Capen’s progress to his hundredth birthday, expected now some electrical effect analogous to an apotheosis.

In the front pews were the chief mourners, filled with the sweet intoxication of preëminence.

The opening exercises were finished, a hymn was sung:

“Life is a span,”

and Father Cobb arose to make his introductory remarks.

He began with some reminiscences of the first time he saw Uncle Capen, some thirty years before, and spoke of viewing him even then as an aged man, and of having remarked to him that he was walking down the valley of life with one foot in the grave. He called attention to Uncle Capen’s virtues, and pointed out their connection with his longevity. He had not smoked for forty years; therefore, if the youth who were present desired to attain his age, let them not smoke. He had been a total abstainer, moreover, from his seventieth year; let them, if they would rival his longevity, follow his example. The good man closed with a feeling allusion to the relatives, in the front pew, mourning like the disciples of John the Baptist after his “beheadment.” Another hymn was sung:

“A vapor brief and swiftly gone.”

Then there was deep silence as the minister rose and gave out his text:

“I have been young, and now I am old.”

“AT the time of the grand review in Washington,” he said, “that mighty pageant that fittingly closed the drama of the war, I was a spectator, crippled then by a gunshot wound, and unable to march. From an upper window I saw that host file by, about to record its greatest triumph by melting quietly into the general citizenship; a mighty, resistless army about to fade and leave no trace, except here and there a one-armed man, or a blue flannel jacket behind a plow. Often now, when I close my eyes, that picture rises, that gallant host, those tattered flags; and I hear the shouts that rose when my brigade, with their flaming scarfs, went trooping by. Little as I may have done as a humble member of that army, no earthly treasure could buy from me the thought of my fellowship with it, or even the memory of that great review.

“But that display was mere tinsel show compared with the great pageant that has moved before those few men who have lived through the whole length of the last hundred years.

“Before me lies the form of a man who, though he has passed his days with no distinction but that of an honest man, has lived through some of the most remarkable events of all the ages. For a hundred years a mighty pageant has been passing before him. I would rather have lived that hundred years than any other. I am deeply touched to reflect that he who lately inhabited this cold tenement of clay connects our generation with that of Washington. And it is impossible to speak of one whose great age draws together this assembly without recalling events through which he lived.

“Our friend was born in this village. This town then included the adjoining towns to the north and south. The region was then more sparsely settled, although many houses standing then have disappeared. While he was sleeping peacefully in the cradle, while he was opening on the world childhood’s wide, wondering eyes, those great men whose names are our perpetual benediction were planning for freedom from a foreign yoke. While he was passing through the happy years of early childhood, the fierce clash of arms resounded through the little strip of territory which then made up the United States. I can hardly realize that, as a child, he heard as a fresh, new, real story of the deeds of Lexington from the lips of men then young who had been in the fight; or listened, as one of an eager group gathered about the fireside, or in the old, now deserted taverns on the turnpike, to the story of Bunker Hill.

“And when, the yoke of tyranny thrown off in our country and in France, Lafayette, the mere mention of whose name brings tears to the eyes of every true American, came to see the America that he loved and that loved him, he on whose cold, rigid face I now look down joined in one of those enthusiastic throngs that made the visit like a Roman triumph.

“But turn to the world of nature, and think of the panoramic scenes that have passed before those now impassive eyes. In our friend’s boyhood, there was no practical mode of swift communication of news. In great emergencies, to be sure, some Paul Revere might flash his beacon light from a lofty tower; but news crept slowly over our hand-breadth nation, and it was months after a Presidential election before the result was generally known. He lived to see the telegraph flashing swiftly about the globe, annihilating time and space, and bringing the scattered nations into greater unity.

“And think, my hearers, for one moment of the wonders of electricity. Here is a power which we name, but do not know, that flashes through the sky, that shatters great trees, burns buildings, strikes men dead in the fields; and we have learned to lead it, all unseen, from our house-tops to the earth; we tame this mighty, secret, unknown power down into serving us as a daily messenger; and no man sets the limits now to the servitude that we shall yet bind it down to.

Drawn by Harry Townsend. Half-tone plate engraved by H. C. Merrill.

“‘NOW, WHAT I WANT TO KNOW IS, WHAT ON EARTH THERE WAS IN IT ABOUT UNCLE CAPEN?’”

❏
LARGER IMAGE

“Again, my hearers, when our friend was well advanced in life, there was still no better mode of travel between distant points than the slow, rumbling stage-coach; many who are here remember well its delays and discomforts. He saw the first tentative efforts of that mighty factor steam to transport more swiftly. He saw the first railroad built in the country; he lived to see the land covered with the iron network.

“And what a transition is this! Pause for a moment to consider it. How much does this imply? With the late improvements in agricultural machinery, with the cheapening of steel rails, the boundless prairie farms of the West are now brought into competition with the fields of Great Britain in supplying the Englishman’s table, and seem not unlikely, within this generation, to break down the aristocratic holding of land, and so perhaps to undermine aristocracy itself.”

So the preacher continued, speaking of different improvements, and lastly of the invention of daguerreotypes and photographs. He called the attention of his hearers to this almost miraculous art of indelibly fixing the expression of a countenance, and drew a lesson as to the permanent effect of our daily looks and expression on those among whom we live. He considered at length the vast amount of happiness which had been caused by bringing pictures of loved ones within the reach of all, the increase of family affection and general good feeling which must have resulted from the invention, and suggested a possible lifting of the civilization of the older nations through the constant sending home, by prosperous adopted citizens, of photographs of themselves and of their homes, and referred to the effect which that must have had in new immigration.

Finally, he adverted to the fact that the sons of the deceased, who sat before him, had not yielded to the restless spirit of adventure, but had found “no place like home.”

“But I fear,” he said at last, “that the interest of my subject has made me transgress upon your patience; and with a word or two more I will close.

“When we remember what hard, trying things often arise within a single day, let us rightly estimate the patient well-doing of a man who has lived a blameless life for a hundred years. When we remember what harm, what sin, can be crowded into a single moment, let us rightly estimate the principle that kept him so close to the golden rule not for a day, not for a decade or a generation, but for a hundred years.

“And now, as we are about to lay his deserted body in the earth, let not our perceptions be dulled by the constant repetition in this world of death and burial. At this hour our friend is no longer aged; wrinkles and furrows, trembling limbs and snowy locks, he has left behind him, and he knows, we believe, to-day more than the wisest philosopher on earth. We may study and argue all our lives to discover the nature of life or the form it takes beyond the grave; but in one moment of swift transition the righteous man may learn it all. We differ widely one from another here in mental power. A slight hardening of some tissue of the brain might have left a Shakspere an attorney’s clerk. But in the brighter world no such impediments prevent, I believe, clear vision and clear expression; and differences of mind that seem world-wide here may vanish there. When the spirit breaks its earthly prison and flies away, who can tell how bright and free the humblest of us may come to be? There may be a more varied truth than we commonly think in the words, ‘The last shall be first.’

“Let this day be remembered. Let us think of the vast display of nature’s forces which was made within the long period of our old neighbor’s life; but let us also reflect upon the bright pageant that is now unrolling itself before him in a better world.”

THAT evening Miss Maria and her brothers, sitting in state in the little old house, received many a caller, and the conversation was chiefly upon one theme: not the funeral sermon, although that was commended as a frank and simple biographical discourse, but the great events which had accompanied Uncle Capen’s progress through this world, almost like those which Horace records in his ode to Augustus.

“That’s trew, every word,” said Apollos Carver. “When Uncle Capen was a boy there wasn’t one railroad in the hull breadth of the United States, and, just think, why, now you can go in a Pullerman car clear acrost to San Francisco. My daughter lives in Oakland, just across a ferry from there.”

“Well, then, there’s photographing,” said Captain Abel. “It doos seem amazing, as the minister said: you set down, and square yourself, and slick your hair, and stare stiddy into a funnel, and a man ducks his head under a covering, and, pop! there you be as natural as life, if not more so. And when Uncle Capen was a young man there wasn’t nothing but portraits and mini’tures, and these black-paper-and-scissors portraits—what do they call ’em? Yes, sir, all that come in under his observation.”

“Yes,” said one of the sons, “it’s wonderful. My wife and me was took setting on a settee in the Garden of Eden, lions and tigers and other scriptural objects in the background.”

“And don’t forget the telegraph,” said Maria; “don’t forget that.”

“Trew,” said Apollos, “that’s another thing. I hed a message come oncet from my son that lives to Taunton. We was all so sca’t and faint when we see it that we didn’t none of us dast to open it, and finally the feller that druv over with it hed to open it fer us.”

“What was there in it?” said Mr. Small. “Sickness, death?”

“No; he wanted his thick coat expressed up. But my wife didn’t get over the shock for some time. Wonderful thing that telegraph. Here’s a man standing a hundred miles off, like enough, and harpooning an idea chock right into your mind.”

“Then that was a beautiful truth,” said Maria, “that Father and Shakspere would probably be changed round in heaven. I always said Father wasn’t appreciated here.”

“Well,” said Apollos, “’tis always so; we don’t begin to realize the value of a thing tell we lose it. Now that we sort o’ stand and gaze at Uncle Capen at a fair distance, as it were, he looms. If he only hedn’t kep’ so quiet always about these ’ere wonders; a man really ought, in justice to himself, to blow his own horn jest a little. But that was a grand discourse, wasn’t it, now?”

“Oh, yes,” said Maria, “though I felt nervous for the young man; but when you come to think what materials he had to make a sermon out of, why, how could he help it? And yet I doubt not he takes all the credit to himself.”

“I should really have liked to have heard Father Cobb treat the subject,” said Mrs. Small, rising to go, and nodding to her husband. “’Twas a grand theme. But it was a real chance for the new minister. Such an opportunity doesn’t happen not once in a lifetime.”

THE next morning, after breakfast, on his way home from the post-office, the minister stopped in at Dr. Hunter’s office.

The doctor was reading a newspaper.

Holt took a chair in silence.

The doctor laid down the paper and eyed him quizzically, and then slowly shook his head.

“I don’t know about you ministers,” he said. “I attended the funeral; I heard the biographical discourse; I understand it gave great satisfaction. I have reflected on it over night, and now, what I want to know is, what on earth there was in it about Uncle Capen?”

The minister smiled.

“I think,” he replied, “that all that I said about Uncle Capen was strictly true.”

[4] Reprinted from THE CENTURY for August, 1883, and included in the author’s volume of short stories “Five Hundred Dollars,” published by Little, Brown & Company, Boston.

BEAUTY IN EDEN

BY ALFRED NOYES

WHEN Beauty, white
As lilies in Eden night,
Woke for the deepening heavens’ delight,

Her rosy looks
Taught laughter to the brooks,
And were the world’s first gospel-books.

And wild things came,

By loveliness made tame,

And fawned on her pure feet with eyes of flame.

Yet, though her splendor

Made the fierce earth surrender,

And drew those burning panthers to attend her;

Though in her bowers,
She ruled harmonious hours,
And rode her lions with a leash of flowers;

They did not lose

The suppleness of their thews,

Nor that fierce might, loved by the warrior Muse.

Music hath fire,

Passion and deep desire,

That now plumb hell, and now to heaven aspire.

Yet, to be strong,
Must that tumultuous throng
Never escape the reins that guide the song.

So, gloriously,
She ruled earth, sky, and sea,
Being herself the law of harmony.

Strong charioteer,

The steeds are thine to steer!

Rule our weak souls! Bring back the Golden Year.

CAMILLA’S FIRST AFFAIR

BY GERTRUDE HALL

Author of “What Camilla did with Her Money,” etc.

WITH PICTURES BY EMIL POLLAK-OTTENDORFF

NEVER did there live a pretty woman so poor in faith as Camilla, where the protestations of her adorers were concerned.[5] It was certainly not when they professed to find her charming that she was incredulous, nor yet when they declared themselves épris. It was when they asserted for their sentiments, durability; for themselves, the same conspicuous constancy as distinguishes the north star.

Particularly during the period when she was known as Princess Elaguine, and lived in Paris, was comment made—in those circles where it is thought no shame to talk over lovely ladies—upon the ultimate inaccessibility of the princess, who was yet so ready to be courted. She liked the society of men, delighted in the atmosphere of their lively admiration, accepted their compliments as animals in the Zoo will swallow buns. But she no more reposed confidence in them than she would have reached with her hand through the bars of the wild-beast cages.

A singular case. For she was Italian, and though her eyes were cool and green, there lurked in her face somewhere—her lips, perhaps, or her eyelids, or her cheeks or chin—what physiognomist could tell?—a promise of warmth and richness that drew foolish fellows to press on and on—till they came to a barrier, beyond which she looked at them with ironical eyes which told them that, sorry for them though she was, she did not believe in them one little bit. Not one of her critics had the intelligence, probably, to guess what was at bottom of it. (Yet how common it is, when you find a person afraid of dogs, to discover that he was bitten when a child!) And far from Camilla would it have been to set them on the right scent.

The truth was, in her mind there lived the memory—quite fresh still when she chose to recall it, so deep a mark had it made—of a passage in her youth to which was referable the line of a whole life with regard to the tender passion. It was the memory, as you have guessed, of her first affair.

IT was in Florence, where she was born and brought up. They were tarradiddles which she told later about her origin: that her mother was a Roman marchesa and her father court physician to Victor Emmanuel II, and that her name was Cordez. Her name, as a matter of truth, was Bugiani. Her mother had at one time waited on customers in a village osteria, at another had been a house-servant. The man who called her daughter was something or other at the railway-station. Her aunt was a cook. Her sister Bianca worked in a little shop on Porta Rossa at making straw-braid into hats, with other gossiping little women who ate their simple lunch out of a piece of newspaper. Her brother Olindo was apprenticed to a gardener.

When the truth about Camilla comes out, anybody may know how it happened that she received an education so immeasurably above that enjoyed by the rest of her family—as fine an education for a woman as Florence could afford. The elegant boarding-school where she lived ten months of the year, the Institut Heller, had a reputation to maintain.

Her two-months’ vacation Camilla spent at home, perforce, with her plebeian family, in the hot city.

The house stood in a wide, pleasant street, and had a handsome entrance. The main door, open all day, let you under a high arched way. The door to the ground floor gave on this, and the staircase climbed from it to the upper stories, each occupied by a different family. This passage ended in a court, with a plot of earth and an oleander or two; on this opened the modest quarters of the Bugiani, who in consideration of certain favors performed certain duties.

From all such Camilla was exempt. Antenore—Babbo, she called him—never suggested that she should work in the summer like Bianca, at straw-braiding or some such thing. It went against the grain, but what would you? Being reserved for a different destiny, she must not be creating for herself a past she might blush for, nor yet hardening her hands with labor. So she never answered the night ring at the big front door, never touched the huge pump-handle in the court, by which this house, boasting every modern convenience, was supplied with water in all its kitchens.

Every morning at nine she appeared in the portone dressed for the street, a picture of the well-born, well-bred young lady who never steps out unescorted. But where was her maid, where her duenna? About this matter there was simply nothing to be done. A bitter necessity to Antenore that his young daughters should run about Florence unattended—part of the hardship that drew from him so often the remark that Poverty is a Pig.

Had he been able, however, to keep a constant eye upon Camilla, he would have seen nothing to blame. She went quietly and swiftly, looking neither to right nor left, her well-brought-up eyes slid away from those of Man, appearing to prefer the paving-stones. She conducted herself like the young ladies of good family among whom she had lived; her clothes were such as theirs, their traditions had perfectly become hers; whether escorted or not, she was not to be taken for any but one of them.

Down the long street she walked to the Institut Heller, which occupied the first floor of a characteristic brown Florentine palazzo, at the corner of a wide sunny piazza with a marble-faced old church. Camilla went there to practise. As she had no piano at home, it had been arranged that she should continue during vacation to use the Pleyel upright in the school music-room, and incidentally redirect Mademoiselle Heller’s mail. The servant left as caretaker could neither write nor read.

So at nine daily Camilla would set forth, in a pale yellow batiste and a black hat with a plume, carrying gloves and a parasol. Her charming eyebrows were obscured by the “fringe” which had come into fashion—for this was 1879; a thick braid hung down her neck, where it was turned back and fastened with a velvet bow.

She was not yet very pretty. The green sepals wrapped the folded rose-leaves rather straightly, the future rose hardly yet knew itself to be a rose. Antenore had no such great need to feel uneasiness at the thought of bees and butterflies.

Her little head, of course, was full of the vague dreams of sixteen, which does not mean the dreams of a New England maiden of sixteen. Camilla’s grandmother had been married before that age, one of her schoolmates, only fifteen, had left school to become affianced; the Veronese Juliet, it will be remembered, was fourteen. Though Camilla fulfilled the European ideal of a jeune fille, unstained by so much as an unauthorized breath, and had the pretty, virginal air of such, she may be described, rather than as a stick of green wood, as a little bonfire in preparation—dry brush and resinous pine, all duly laid and for the present cold, but ready to sparkle and flame when the Torch should come.

Unconscious of this, she could still think of forty things besides love. Her chief sentiment in reaching the freedom of the streets was that it would be pleasant to be for several hours away from home, to have a series of cool, empty, palatial rooms all to herself—to practise, yes, but also to read and to look out of the window.

That was her chief sentiment on the fifth of July. By the fifteenth—But it cannot be said that Camilla ever honestly regretted the relative simplicity which she lost that summer.

With all her air of minding her own distinguished affairs, she yet saw everything. She knew by sight the tenants of the house, of course, for whom the Babbo and Olindo, or Aunt Battistina and Bianca, combining forces, agitated the stiff pump-handle. She was familiar with the faces she passed daily on her way. And she naturally remarked, the second time he appeared there, a youth, an idle, slender damerino, who seemed waiting for something, on the opposite side of the street. The third time she saw him, she wondered whom he was there for. The breath-catching possibility striking her that he waited to see her come forth—for that style of thing was done in Florence in those days—she gave him his share of an abstracted look, taking in the house fronts and the lamp-post near which he stood. A handsome man, young, the faintest smear of charcoal-dust on his upper lip—seventeen, perhaps. A son of family, quite certainly.

No, he was not there for her sake; he remained watching the door, while pretending not to, after she had passed. For somebody else, then, living in the same house. She had seen him half a dozen times before she could determine whom. One evening she recognized him in the shadowy form hanging about the stairs, once even in the court—her court! She knew all by that time, and scorned him. It was the French maid on the second floor. This person took a child out for the air every morning; she went to the Fortezza, where the little one could play.

And he, a gentleman, could degrade himself to pursue that creature! Parisian, yes, but ugly, and not a day less than twenty-five.

The rather sweet, hungry, expectant, young-dog look of a boy belonging to circles where the maidens are so guarded that if there is to be romance it must be sought where there are greater facilities, mollified her not at all. It disgusted her. It disgusted her to the point finally that, running into him unexpectedly under the archway, she drew herself up and gave him a look in which was expressed all that decent people, la gente per bene, think of such bad taste, a prolonged, punishing, proud look; then passed on, her heart thumping with the excitement of the thing.

On the day following, glancing from the tail of her eye to see whether he were at his usual post, she did not find him. Before she had reached the end of the street he passed her, then lingered and allowed her to pass. She did it in a hurry, with downcast eyes and rising color. Reaching Miss Heller’s, she rang with all her might. Never, it seemed to her, never had old Italia in her distant kitchen been so slow in pulling the wire that released the catch and allowed the little door cut in the large one to swing inward.

When at midday she was obliged to come out again, the gallant was standing sentry across the way. She was aware of him following her at a just respectful distance.

To be followed by a man is frightening, for Man is a Hunter. There is a difference, though, in the degree of disagreeableness of the fright, if the Hunter is so desirable-looking as to be himself an imaginable object of hunt.

Next day it was the same thing. At a just respectful distance he followed her to school and back. On the day after that, the same. When this proceeding had been kept up for three days, it took rightly the aspect of romance, filling the thoughts of sixteen with surmises, tremors, a sense of initiation, and the excitement of a great secret.

On the fourth morning, as she was reaching the school, he passed ahead of her, and pushed a letter under the door.

It was inscribed, “To the First who shall enter.” It ran thus:

Signorina,

I write to crave your pardon, and to explain my apparent impertinence in following you on the street. But how could a man of any sensibility endure the thought of so much grazia and gentilezza walking unprotected in a city with whose iniquities he is but too well acquainted? I cannot conceive of the false security or the remissness that so exposes a dove to falcons. Fear not that I shall myself presume to offer the offense which it is my determination to prevent others from offering. Regard me solely as a cavaliere whose courage and strength are dedicated to your service.

Suo devotissimo,
GIULIO FORTI.

How delicate! How knightly! Her climbing of the stairs was sleep-walking. She adjusted the slats of the blind so that, unseen, she could look at him where he loitered in the doorway across the street. He must have very little to do, really, to afford all that time. But of course it was vacation for him as for her. And he had the resource of cigarettes. Now he was talking with the porter, of whom he had just begged a light. He took off his straw hat to fan himself with it, for even on the shady side of the freshly watered street it was hot weather. He was a pretty boy—her words for him were “a handsome man”—with a covering of close black astrakhan to his small round head, a speaking eye, dainty features, and a warm-toned skin agreeably sprinkled with freckles. He wore the carefully fitted clothes of a good class, new, but not too new, and a light silk cravat chosen with thought.

Camilla that day omitted scales and exercises. Her piano could be heard in the street. She played her show pieces, “Les Cloches du Monastère,” “Les Soupirs,” “La Caressante,” various Chopin waltzes.

When she came forth at noon, and her body-guard sprang from his door to fall into the relation of a dog at her heels, he first begged wistfully with his eyes to know by a look from her that he was understood and forgiven. She gave him the look he wanted. A moment later he hustled off the sidewalk a man who, he considered, had passed her too closely. There was a high word or two, then the workman grumblingly fell away from the irate young gentleman shaking his slender cane.

They were new heavens and new earth between which Camilla now moved forth at morning, with an oleander at her breast, token that she was a woman and adorned herself to be the more loved. For there was no supposing that the vague fever in her veins, glowing by day and filling the night with dreams, had not been caught, by a contagion as strange as subtle, from the fever in his brown eyes.

At the end of a week his face, when upon reaching the school he hurried forward without a word to pull the bell-handle for her, was pale with anguish, and his eyes catching hers expressed urgent reproach. On the morning following he unexpectedly pressed inside the door after her, and pushed it to. They stood alone in the great stone hallway. He was obviously agitated, and her heart had stopped.

“Signorina,” he burst forth, hoarse with the sincerity of his emotion, “what have I done? I wish to know what you have against me. Never do you give me a look, never a smile. You regard me with horror, it is evident. And why? Why? I must find out before I live another day. If I am repulsive to you I had best go and drown myself. Why, tell me, do you act toward me as if I were either invisible or else a little dust in the street? Am I a toad, a reptile, in your eyes?”

Camilla had clenched one hand and pressed it over her heart; she lifted the other to her throat. Giulio was not surprised that a young girl should be terrified in the circumstances to the point of fainting. In this great moment the exhibition of her timidity must not make him timid. Trembling at his own courage, he took her hands, in part to reassure and if necessary support, in part to conquer further. He pressed them with all his strength, and commanded, imploringly, “Look at me in the face, and see whether I am such a monster! See whether you find in my eyes anything but love and by loyalty! Look, I beg, look! Look!” He waited, straining her hands.

Camilla, thus masterfully summoned, slowly lifted her face and looked. Both of them looked volumes.

The next thing, he was gently grasping her head. She averted her lips with unaffected shrinking. He very respectfully kissed her hair. He hoped he knew how a well-brought-up man behaves with a well-brought-up young girl.

A hard parrot voice, coming from above, out of sight, made them both jump. “Who is there?” It was Italia, who, when she had pulled the wire that governed the street-door, was wont to come down from her kitchen and let the visitor in at the door of the first floor. Seeing no one, she was making inquiry.

“It’s Camilla,” was called to her from below. “I am coming. I am resting a minute. Leave the door open.”

The stone-floored echoing hallway where they stood was vast as a royal ballroom. At the farther end, broad, low stairs vanishing upward; on the right, the long wall, unbroken save by one door—the ground floor was reserved by the owner, always absent; at the left, three open arches letting into a court, the bottom of a wide shaft with windows, over which a square of burning blue sky. The pavement of this court was green with the damp of centuries; a stone coping, projecting from the wall, hemmed in enough earth to support a spindling rose-tree.

“I am forced to go away to-morrow,” Giulio, still short-breathed with emotion, whispered spasmodically; “and how can I go without learning my fate from you? I am compelled to visit my married sister and be absent for two eternal weeks. My family is obliged to stay in town through the summer, you know, by my grandmother’s serious illness; but my parents insist that I shall go for the change. I vow I will not! I will disobey, and incur I know not what from their displeasure, unless you promise to answer the letters I shall write you. Do you promise? Viareggio. Poste Restante. I will not compromise you by remaining longer. On the way home make me happy by a glance now and then, when it will not be observed. Farewell, my soul! I am your slave!”

Among the letters to be redirected to Mademoiselle Heller she found his first letter. She answered it there at the school, when she ought to have been practising. In the two weeks of his absence she received about twenty letters, for in the ardor of his passion he sometimes wrote twice a day. The same did she.

As life was far from monotonous at the Mediterranean watering-place, where in beautiful striped tights of white and blue he took glorious swims twice a day, one might suppose that bits of news, information, anecdote, a little fun, would have found their way into his letters. Not at all. They were love-letters neat. He would write:

How, O my adored fidanzata, can I live through the days and months and years that must pass before the blessing of the sacerdote will have given me the right to call you mine, wholly, wholly, and forever, mine! When I think that at the end of summer I must, as my parents have decided, go to Zurich to complete my studies, and be divided from you by mountains as well as months, I feel that, in view of the anguish of that distance and waiting, it had almost been better had I never met the beam of your beauteous eye. But courage! Let us take courage, thinking of our future happiness.

She would write:

In the night, in dreams, you are always with me. I cannot sleep but you are there; and so I find myself, when I am not ardently wishing for a letter, sighing for the night and dreams. Caro mio bene, should you ever love me less, how could I endure it? If ever your heart should change toward me, if ever another should have the place with you which it is my joy and honor to hold, keep it a secret from me, I conjure you! I might kill myself, or perhaps you!

A day earlier than she had expected, he stood at the Heller entrance, in time to slip in with her. He folded her to his breast, both of them breathless and throbbing. But again with a brusk instinctive movement she got her lips out of the way, and he controlled his impulse. A man who respects himself respects his own affianced. He pressed a long, silent kiss upon her brow.

Raising a warning finger, she listened a second, then sang out to Italia, “I am going to rest a minute before doing the stairs. Let the door stand open for me.”

They seated themselves on the bottom steps for a good long scene in whispers.

Never were there such facilities, for Italia would not again think of the door, save to suppose that Camilla had come in by it and shut it behind her. Any one descending could be heard long before seen. Giulio had time to tiptoe out, Camilla would appear to be just arriving. When the danger was past, she could let Giulio in again.

The facilities were, in fact, too great! These young things had leisure to say everything a thousand times over.

Both of them knew a great deal about lovers, from general rumor and private confidence, from drama, book, and song. Their wide-awake Latin minds had early incorporated all that lore, and they acted now in as grown-up a manner as they knew. Camilla developed an umbrageous mood one day, during which she questioned him about his past. Oh, nothing of the smallest consequence, he said, with regard to a certain francese. He had had the opportunity to render her a service, once, when she was caught in the rain with her little charge. He had chanced to be carrying an umbrella, that was all. After that, he had continued the acquaintance, just a little, from courtesy.

“THEY SEATED THEMSELVES ON THE BOTTOM STEPS FOR A GOOD LONG SCENE IN WHISPERS”

Novices, they played their parts according to romantic conventions known to both, beneath which the unconventional heart did in the case of each after its nature.

It appeared, as gradually as a flower fades on its stalk, that even he, even in vacation, had duties occasionally, engagements, pressing engagements sometimes, things that must be attended to for his father, or mother, or grandmother. He would have to consult his watch. Sometimes he could stay only a minute.

She asked him one day why he was in such a heavy humor, so silent. He asked sadly in reply how he could be different, living in a house where all were so deeply concerned over the condition of his poor grandmother. Added to this, his aunt was arriving to see her mother, and was bringing his cousins. They would take up his whole time for the next few days.

Camilla looked at him attentively. Murmuring, “My idol!” he drew her cheek down to his shoulder and imprisoned her hands in those pretty, dry, brown hands of his, which had the gift of pleasing her so much.

“La Caressante,” as it rang forth from her window on certain of those soft, summer mornings, might have been mistaken for a musical imitation of artillery sputtering amid the varied sounds of battle, “Les Soupirs” for the note-portrayal of a wreck tossed in a stormy swell.

One morning, with the affected briskness of a man who does his best to put a good face on a tiresome business, he said, “Expect me not, my Camilla, to-morrow. I am sent off to visit my married sister up at Vicchio. A sudden decision. My family, saying that I have grown thin, as I have, indeed, with the cruel anxiety of our secret, believe I need the change. A dreadful bore, but what can I do?”

“Another married sister? How many more married sisters, caro mio, have you in your pocket?”

“There is still another—three in all. I was born long after them, the only man-child, which gives an excuse to old friends of the family for saying that my parents spoil me. And I am sorry to tell you, Camilla, that you must not write to me there, for there is no such thing as poste restante. The letters are brought to the villa by a peasant and my sister distributes them. Nor shall I find it possible to write you, for I could not post a letter unknown.”

Bianca that night was roused from the deadness of sleep by unaccustomed signs of life in her bedfellow, Camilla, who, she realized with horror, was struggling in the effort to keep her sobbing inside and unheard.

“What is it? Oh, what is the matter?” she asked, feeling in the dark for her sister’s shoulder.

“Non mi seccare!” Camilla answered, with a furious dash of her heel. “Bother me not!” but without concealment after that she relieved her need to weep.

Giulio at Vicchio, far among the hills! Giulio thinking of her, while from the high loggia he looked Florenceward. Giulio sending his wishes as he gazed at Venus—stella confidente!—brightening in the fading sunset!

The pain of absence, of this black and total silence, was such that on the fourth day, after reading over all his letters, she broke the rule and stole out to go for just a minute to his street and satisfy her yearning to see the windows of his vacant room.

She did not go far, for on the way she saw him, or—for a moment she thought herself the victim, possibly, of an hallucination. It was his exact image, anyhow. He walked along lightly, his straw hat far back on his head, his pretty nose and white teeth to the wind, talking with a boy of his own age and type. He was laughing, as he drew something on the air with his half-burned cigarette; she caught the glint in the sunshine of the signet-ring on his little finger. She turned and ran.

That day she asked Bianca whether she would help her, and then she told her everything.

At evening—Antenore was kept late at the station on certain nights of the week—they slipped out together while Aunt Battistina’s back was turned, and hurrying like guilty creatures went to the Cornelio gardens.

Almost invariably, when Camilla had asked how he had spent the evening, Giulio had said, “At Cornelio’s, with my father.”

They posted themselves in an unlighted doorway whence they could watch the entrance of the fashionable open-air café. Over the laurel wall inside the iron railing floated golden haze. Between pieces of band-music were intervals of clattering china and voices. Figures passed in and out.

It was not so simple as they had thought, this waiting. Wishing to be as unnoticed as mice, they felt more conspicuous than camels. Bianca’s little yellow dog, Pallina, who had refused absolutely to stay behind, had the vile habit of yapping at passers; cracks and cuffs would not subdue her. The persons barked at naturally turned to look.

Half a dozen times footsteps were heard, or imagined, on the stairs farther within. The girls each time hurried out of the way, and, against their habit, afraid of everybody, walked along the house fronts the length of the gardens, then back, to ensconce themselves again, very uneasy as to what the guard of public safety had thought, half expecting him to darken the doorway suddenly and question them. Oh, it was an evening to remember like some painful nightmare! Camilla, in spite of all, never lost sight of their reason for being there.

Now she seized Bianca’s arm. Giulio was coming out, with a party—the boy of earlier in the day, and two young girls dressed exactly alike, the cousins, very likely; behind them came a middle-aged gentleman and lady.

“The grandmother must be getting well,” said Camilla through her teeth, “seeing that they can laugh like that!”

“We will say,” she arranged with Bianca on the way home, “that while we stood at the door taking the air, Maria Nutini and her mother passed, and we joined them for a turn. They left us at the corner.”

Every time Bianca was wakened that night, she saw Camilla writing. Once tears were falling upon the paper. Ordered to keep still, Bianca sorrowfully relapsed into her healthy young sleep.

In the morning Camilla posted her letter. If it fell into his mother’s hands, so much the worse for him.

To live on, days, months, years, with that burden of love turned back upon the heart, like a dammed-in torrent, how could it be endured? What, what did one do to destroy the spell by which another got this dreadful power to fill one’s every thought, made himself master over the motions of one’s blood? For Camilla, in her outraged pride, desired not to love Giulio any more.

The hours of suspense were so intolerable that more than once she wished she never had been born. She had calculated the earliest at which she might expect an answer. She allowed not an hour more before writing him again. And then she waited with confidence, knowing positively that she should see him.

In this second waiting she had the first glimmering notion that she might feel better by and by, that the burning sense of ignominy attached to feeling oneself trampled and disdained might be turned to victorious gladness by making the other, the dear enemy, feel himself more trampled, more disdained.

She was not wishing that she never had been born, while, gathering suggestion from Spanish ballad and Sicilian tale, she plotted a development of the story in every point worthy of herself. Her scene firmly imagined and finished off with the right artistic touches, she could actually hum that afternoon. When Bianca, helping Battistina to hunt for the vegetable-knife needed to prepare supper, asked her whether she had seen anything of it, she could answer by a careless snatch of song.

At ten precisely, without the necessity to ring, the little door cut in the large one yielded to Giulio’s hand. He was fortified to meet his lady just inside, but the great hallway was empty. Surprised, he took a few doubtful steps, made up his mind, and fell to pacing the floor. After a while, he stopped under the middle arch, sent an absent glance from window to window up the white shaft to the square of blue, and composed himself to wait where he stood, arms crossed, feet well apart. He was a trifle pale, and with his troubled air appeared more grown-up than when, six or seven weeks ago, with the desert ahead of the long empty season in town, he had wondered what resources of distraction the streets, his only hope, might afford.

Half an hour passed. The shutter inside the window above and opposite moved; Camilla’s hand appeared, beckoning him to mount the stairs.

She met him at the door of the primo piano, but when he would have taken her hand she hurried before him, into Mademoiselle Heller’s own sacred sitting-room, where the chairs were in ghostly covers and the chandelier was muffled in a gauze bag. The closed windows kept out the heat and noise, kept in the faint musty smell. She turned, they looked at each other, and she smiled, as it struck him, a singular smile.

“You wished to see me,” he said.

“I did. But I have seen you already. For twenty minutes I watched you from behind the shutter when you did not know I was there; you were standing under the arch. And—I believe it saved your life. See what I had brought.” She showed him a little knife, bright and pointed, with a handle of horn. (It must be said that her dagger looked rather like a vegetable-knife.) He gave a just perceptible start. His heart had naturally jumped. But he knew, deep down, that the dagger was part of play-acting. With a gesture intended insolently to reassure, she threw it on the table, and smiled the singular smile which twisted her lips to an expression of such excessive irony. “Be not afraid. I had never seen your face when you were trying to cover your fear and inventing lies to tell me. After that spectacle, I decided you were not worthy of my powder. No, you need fear nothing from that silly stiletto, either for yourself or for me. I am not sure which I meant it for. Both, perhaps.”

“Come, Camilla,” he began, in the low, soft, ultra-reasonable tone which any man knows is the one to adopt with excited, unreasonable women. “Come! This is hardly the speech to hold to me. You are too agitated to know what you are saying. It seems to me that after such a letter as you wrote, threatening me—nientedimeno!—with a blow on the cheek wherever you met me, before everybody, it is I rather than you who have the right to call myself offended. If I am here, it is because I love you in spite of your bad treatment of me, and I wish to explain.”

This gentle and well-intentioned speech was interrupted by a sort of human feminine rendering of a leonine roar from Camilla. “Zurigo! Zurigo! Ha!” she exclaimed, “those are your tactics, are they? What you are thinking is that in a few days more you will depart for Zurigo. You need only keep up this comedy for a few days and then you can drop me without fear. All you will have to do is not to write.” Her eyes flared up intense and green; she took a pantherine step nearer. “But I—” she smacked the varnished table startlingly with the flat of her palm—“I do not admit that I am a person who can be dropped. And you are here in order that I may drop you first, and in such a manner as you cannot mistake or forget. You shall know yourself quite certainly, my fine sir, to have been discarded. But I wish you to remember for another time.” Another pantherine step nearer. His manhood, of which he was at the moment intensely conscious, forbade his receding by an inch. “I wish you to remember, for another time, that one does not so lightly take up and throw over persons like me. A man of nothing, like yourself, takes a puny wax doll to make love to and then neglect, knowing that it is safe.” She was under his very nose. “I wish you to learn the danger there is in making love to—to tigresses! Will you remember hereafter—” his head was suddenly clutched, he felt claws through his hair—“to keep to your own kind and let alone such creatures as could eat you at a bite? A man should be the stronger, while you—I could dare, fight, love, ten to your one. I saw it while you stood down there. Will you remember?”

The pain of her iron finger-nails in his scalp was fairly unendurable, but he stood it with boyish dignity, like a little Spartan; for one thing, certain that if he tried to free himself he would come forth all the more sorrily scratched; for another, not finding this maltreatment by passionate feminine fingers altogether disagreeable. His eyes were half closed, an enigmatic smile played over his lips. At the same time, he was intensely on the alert, ready to prevent her making him ridiculous beyond a certain limit.

“Will you remember,” she said, “what happens when one amuses oneself with persons who have blood in their veins? Will you? There, go! I do not believe you will forget.”

She released him with a push. With ceremonious deliberation he took out his pocket-handkerchief, to wipe a goutlet of blood from the edge of his hair.

“These are scarcely parliamentary methods!” he said, and managed a laugh. “But a man—” an enormous increase in his sense of masculine importance appeared in his bearing—“a man, you know, cannot resent such fairy touches from the hand of a lady. He is bound to consider such attentions a compliment. I have been flattered beyond my deserts. But I cannot be mistaken in thinking that I have brought love and caresses this morning to the wrong market, and so, with your permission, I will withdraw. Until another day, Camilla, when you feel more kindly disposed. No, my Camilla, I shall not forget you. I think I can promise in all sincerity not to forget.”

He got to the door a little hurriedly, but with the hope that he had not come off so very badly after all.

Once out of the house, the little future man of the world took a deep lungful of the free air. The thumb he presently slipped through his armhole, while with the other hand he swung his cane, expressed as far as it could the enrichment he felt in the knowledge of women gained that morning. Hero of a scene of jealousy! But who would have dreamed that a well-brought-up girl...? He delicately touched his temple to see whether it still bled.

Drawn by Emil Pollak-Ottendorff

“EVERY TIME BIANCA WAS WAKENED ... SHE SAW CAMILLA WRITING”

Camilla had thrown herself into one of the shrouded arm-chairs. The scene had not been what she intended. One thing after the other—finally that ferocious need to get her fingers among his hair—had interfered. But she regretted nothing, though not unaware of having, to produce her grand effect, torn off a part of herself and thrown it to the crows. She would bleed, and she would miss it; still, for the moment she regretted nothing.

SHE never saw Giulio again, to speak to him. As she did not even pass him on the street for a year or two (and pretend not to know him!) she supposed him in Zurich. Often, in the night, for ever so long after their parting, her heart would be caught as if in a screw by the remembrance of the past. Shame would burn her for her lapses from a becoming rigor. There had been a kiss or two, after all. Unpractical longing for everything to have been different, or else for everything by some wonderful twist of fortune still to turn out well, and she and Giulio be together again, would wring tears from her. But in her saner moments she understood that there was no hope of that, and simply cried into her pillow because she could not get Giulio out of her blood.

But time passed. Many things happened. She grew up. When finally one day she did run into Giulio on the street (and pretend not to know him!) nothing stirred in her heart at sight of the old love. She smiled with pity for her honest ardor of the old days, and its innocent avowal.

Her dream of the future had changed. In the present dream, which naturally contained love along with riches and glory, it was always love that she received, love lavished in Arabian Nights’ baskets of jewels at her feet. All her part was condescension. This was the work of Giulio—the inconstant. Never again should a man hold her in his hand, to feel and suffer in dependence upon him. She would have all the power herself.

IT was the school-boy Giulio still at work when, as Princess Elaguine, in Paris, she showed herself so willing to be amused by men, and so resolved not to give any man the chance to make her miserable.

[5] The writer is speaking of that Camilla, once obscure companion and secretary to Mrs. Northmere, the author, and later her heir, some of whose adventures have been told in these pages. See “Mrs. Northmere’s Treasure,” in THE CENTURY for August, 1910, and “What Camilla did with Her Money,” in THE CENTURY for January, 1911.

THE HIGH TIDE AT GETTYSBURG[6]

BY WILL H. THOMPSON

(Of the Fourth Georgia, Doles’s Brigade, Rodes’s Division, Ewell’s Corps.)

A CLOUD possessed the hollow field,
The gathering battle’s smoky shield.
Athwart the gloom the lightning flashed,
And through the cloud some horsemen dashed,
And from the heights the thunder pealed.

Then at the brief command of Lee
Moved out that matchless infantry,
With Pickett leading grandly down,
To rush against the roaring crown
Of those dread heights of destiny.

Far heard above the angry guns
A cry across the tumult runs,—
The voice that rang through Shiloh’s woods
And Chickamauga’s solitudes,
The fierce South cheering on her sons!

Ah, how the withering tempest blew
Against the front of Pettigrew!
A khamsin wind that scorched and singed
Like that infernal flame that fringed
The British squares at Waterloo!

A thousand fell where Kemper led;
A thousand died where Garnett bled:
In blinding flame and strangling smoke
The remnant through the batteries broke
And crossed the works with Armistead.

“Once more in Glory’s van with me!”

Virginia cried to Tennessee:

“We two together, come what may,

Shall stand upon these works to-day!”

(The reddest day in history.)

Drawn by Stanley M. Arthurs. Half-tone plate engraved by H. C. Merrill

“IN VAIN VIRGINIA CHARGED AND RAGED, A TIGRESS IN HER WRATH UNCAGED”

❏
LARGER IMAGE

Brave Tennessee! In reckless way

Virginia heard her comrade say:

“Close round this rent and riddled rag!”

What time she set her battle-flag

Amid the guns of Doubleday.

But who shall break the guards that wait
Before the awful face of Fate?
The tattered standards of the South
Were shriveled at the cannon’s mouth,
And all her hopes were desolate.

In vain the Tennesseean set
His breast against the bayonet!
In vain Virginia charged and raged,
A tigress in her wrath uncaged,
Till all the hill was red and wet!

Above the bayonets, mixed and crossed,
Men saw a gray, gigantic ghost
Receding through the battle-cloud,
And heard across the tempest loud
The death-cry of a nation lost!

The brave went down! Without disgrace
They leaped to Ruin’s red embrace.
They only heard Fame’s thunders wake,
And saw the dazzling sunburst break
In smiles on Glory’s bloody face!

They fell, who lifted up a hand
And bade the sun in heaven to stand!
They smote and fell, who set the bars
Against the progress of the stars,
And stayed the march of Motherland!

They stood, who saw the future come
On through the fight’s delirium!
They smote and stood, who held the hope
Of nations on that slippery slope
Amid the cheers of Christendom!

God lives! He forged the iron will
That clutched and held that trembling hill.
God lives and reigns! He built and lent
The heights for Freedom’s battlement
Where floats her flag in triumph still!

Fold up the banners! Smelt the guns!

Love rules. Her gentler purpose runs.

A mighty mother turns in tears

The pages of her battle years,

Lamenting all her fallen sons!

[6] First printed in THE CENTURY for July, 1888.

T. TEMBAROM

BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

Author of “That Lass o’ Lowrie’s,” “The Shuttle,” etc.

WITH DECORATIVE PICTURES BY CHARLES S. CHAPMAN

CHAPTER XIX

THE county was discreetly conservative in its social attitude. The gulf between it and the new owner of Temple Barholm was too wide and deep to be crossed without effort combined with immense mental agility. It was, on the whole, much easier not to begin a thing at all than to begin it and find one must hastily search about for not too noticeable methods of ending it. A few unimportant, tentative calls were made, and several ladies who had remained unaware of Miss Alicia during her first benefactor’s time drove over to see what she was like and perhaps by chance hear something of interest. One or two of them who saw Tembarom went away puzzled and amazed. He did not drop his h’s, which they had of course expected, and he was well dressed and not bad-looking; but it was frequently impossible to understand what he was talking about, he used such odd phrases. He seemed good natured enough, and his way with little old Miss Temple Barholm was really quite nice, queer as it was. It was queer because he was attentive to her in a manner in which young men were not usually attentive to totally insignificant, elderly dependents.

Tembarom derived an extremely diluted pleasure from the visits. The few persons he saw reminded him in varying degrees of Mr. Palford. They had not before seen anything like his species, and they did not know what to do with him. He also did not know what to do with them. A certain inelasticity frustrated him at the outset. When, in obedience to Miss Alicia’s instructions, he had returned the visits, he felt he had not gone far.

Serious application enabled him to find his way through the church service, and he accompanied Miss Alicia to church with great regularity. He began to take down the books from the library shelves and look them over gravely. The days gradually ceased to appear so long, but he had a great deal of time on his hands, and he tried to find ways of filling it. He wondered if Ann would be pleased if he learned things out of books.

When he tentatively approached the subject of literature with Miss Alicia, she glowed at the delightful prospect of his reading aloud to her in the evenings—“reading improving things like history and the poets.”

“Let’s take a hack at it some night,” he said pleasantly.

The more a fellow knew, the better it was for him, he supposed; but he wondered, if anything happened and he went back to New York, how much “improving things” and poetry would help a man in doing business.

The first evening they began with Gray’s “Elegy,” and Miss Alicia felt that it did not exhilarate him; she was also obliged to admit that he did not read it very well. But she felt sure he would improve. Personally she was touchingly happy. The sweetly domestic picture of the situation, she sitting by the fire with her knitting and he reading aloud, moved and delighted her. The next evening she suggested Tennyson’s “Maud.” He was not as much stirred by it as she had hoped. He took a somewhat humorous view of it.

“He had it pretty bad, hadn’t he?” he said of the desperate lover.

“Oh, if only you could once have heard Sims Reeves sing ‘Come into the Garden, Maud’!” she sighed. “A kind friend once took me to hear him, and I have never, never forgotten it.”

But Mr. Temple Barholm notably did not belong to the atmosphere of impassioned tenors.

On still another evening they tried Shakspere. Miss Alicia felt that a foundation of Shakspere would be “improving” indeed. They began with “Hamlet.”

He found play-reading difficult and Shaksperian language baffling, but he made his way with determination until he reached a point where he suddenly grew quite red and stopped.

“Say, have you read this?” he inquired after his hesitation.

“The plays of Shakspere are a part of every young lady’s education,” she answered; “but I am afraid I am not at all a Shaksperian scholar.”

“A young lady’s education?” he repeated. “Gee whizz!” he added softly after a pause.

He glanced over a page or so hastily, and then laid the book down.

“Say,” he suggested, with an evasive air, “let’s go over that ‘Maud’ one again. It’s—well, it’s easier to read aloud.”

The crude awkwardness of his manner suddenly made Miss Alicia herself flush and drop a stitch in her knitting. How dreadful of her not to have thought of that!

“The Elizabethan age was, I fear, a rather coarse one in some respects. Even history acknowledges that. Queen Elizabeth herself used profane language.” She faltered and coughed a little apologetic cough as she picked up her stitch again.

“I bet Ann’s never seen inside Shakspere,” said Tembarom. Before reading aloud in the future he gave some previous personal attention to the poem or subject decided upon. It may be at once frankly admitted that when he read aloud it was more for Miss Alicia’s delectation than for his own. He saw how much she enjoyed the situation.

His effect of frankness and constant boyish talk was so inseparable from her idea of him that she found it a puzzling thing to realize that she gradually began to feel aware of a certain remote reserve in him, or what might perhaps be better described as a habit of silence upon certain subjects. She felt it marked in the case of Strangeways. She surmised that he saw Strangeways often and spent a good deal of time with him, but he spoke of him rarely, and she never knew exactly what hours were given to him. Sometimes she imagined he found him a greater responsibility than he had expected. Several times when she believed that he had spent part of a morning or afternoon in his room, he was more silent than usual and looked puzzled and thoughtful. She observed, as Mr. Palford had, that the picture-gallery, with its portraits of his ancestors, had an attraction. A certain rainy day he asked her, to go with him and look them over. It was inevitable that she should soon wander to the portrait of Miles Hugo and remain standing before it. Tembarom followed, and stood by her side in silence until her sadness broke its bounds with a pathetic sigh.

“Was he very like him?” he asked.

She made an unconscious, startled movement. For the moment she had forgotten his presence, and she had not really expected him to remember.

“I mean Jem,” he answered her surprised look. “How was he like him? Was there—” he hesitated and looked really interested—“was he like him in any particular thing?”

“Yes,” she said, turning to the portrait of Miles Hugo again. “They both had those handsome, drooping eyes, with the lashes coming together at the corners. There is something very fascinating about them, isn’t there? I used to notice it so much in dear little Jem. You see how marked they are in Miles Hugo.”

“Yes,” Tembarom answered. “A fellow who looked that way at a girl when he made love to her would get a stranglehold. She wouldn’t forget him soon.”

“It strikes you in that way, too?” said Miss Alicia, shyly. “I used to wonder if it was—not quite nice of me to think of it. But it did seem that if any one did look at one like that—” Maidenly shyness overcame her. “Poor Lady Joan!” she sighed.

“There’s a sort of cleft in his chin, though it’s a good, square chin,” he suggested. “And that smile of his—Were Jem’s—”

“Yes, they were. The likeness was quite odd sometimes—quite.”

“Those are things that wouldn’t be likely to change much when he grew up,” Tembarom said, drawing a little closer to the picture. “Poor Jem! He was up against it hard and plenty. He had it hardest. This chap only died.”

There was no mistaking his sympathy. He asked so many questions that they sat down and talked instead of going through the gallery. He was interested in the detail of all that had occurred after the ghastly moment when Jem had risen from the card-table and stood looking round, like some baited dying animal, at the circle of cruel faces drawing in about him. How soon had he left London? Where had he gone first? How had he been killed? He had been buried with others beneath a fall of earth and stones. Having heard this much, Tembarom saw he could not ask more questions. Miss Alicia became pale, and her hands trembled. She could not bear to discuss details so harrowing.

“Say, I oughtn’t to let you talk about that,” he broke out, and he patted her hand and made her get up and finish their walk about the gallery. He held her elbow in his own odd, nice way as he guided her, and the things he said, and the things he pretended to think or not to understand, were so amusing that in a short time he had made her laugh. She knew him well enough by this time to be aware that he was intentionally obliging her to forget what it only did her harm to remember. That was his practical way of looking at it.

“Getting a grouch on or being sorry for what you can’t help cuts no ice,” he sometimes said. “When it does, me for getting up at daybreak and keeping at it! But it doesn’t; you bet your life on that.”

She could see that he had really wanted to hear about Jem, but he knew it was bad for her to recall things, and he would not allow her to dwell on them, just as she knew he would not allow himself to dwell on little Miss Hutchinson, remotely placed among the joys of his beloved New York.

Two other incidents besides the visit to Miles Hugo afterward marked that day when Miss Alicia looked back on it. The first was his unfolding to her his plans for the house-party, which was characteristic of his habit of thinking things over and deciding them before he talked about them.

“If I’m going to try the thing out, as Ann says I must,” he began when they had gone back to the library after lunch, “I’ve got to get going. I’m not seeing any of those Pictorial girls, and I guess I’ve got to see some.”

“You will be invited to dine at places,” said Miss Alicia,—“presently,” she added bravely, in fact, with an air of greater conviction than she felt.

“If it’s not the law that they’ve got to invite me or go to jail,” said Tembarom, “I don’t blame ’em for not doing it if they’re not stuck on me. And they’re not; and it’s natural. But I’ve got to get in my fine work, or my year’ll be over before I’ve ‘found out for myself,’ as Ann called it. There’s where I’m at, Miss Alicia—and I’ve been thinking of Lady Joan and her mother. You said you thought they’d come and stay here if they were properly asked.”

“I think they would,” answered Miss Alicia with her usual delicacy. “I thought I gathered from Lady Mallowe that, as she was to be in the neighborhood, she would like to see you and Temple Barholm, which she greatly admires.”

“If you’ll tell me what to do, I’ll get her here to stay awhile,” he said, “and Lady Joan with her. You’d have to show me how to write to ask them; but perhaps you’d write yourself.”

“They will be at Asshawe Holt next week,” said Miss Alicia, “and we could go and call on them together. We might write to them in London before they leave.”

“We’ll do it,” answered Tembarom. His manner was that of a practical young man attacking matter-of-fact detail. “From what I hear, Lady Joan would satisfy even Ann. They say she’s the best-looker on the slate. If I see her every day I shall have seen the blue-ribbon winner. Then if she’s here, perhaps others of her sort’ll come, too; and they’ll have to see me whether they like it or not—and I shall see them. Good Lord!” he added seriously, “I’d let ’em swarm all over me and bite me all summer if it would fix Ann.”

He stood up, with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and looked down at the floor. “I wish she knew T. T. like T. T. knows himself,” he said. It was all quite wistful.

It was so wistful and so boyish that Miss Alicia was thrilled as he often thrilled her.

“She ought to be a very happy girl,” she exclaimed.

“She’s going to be,” he answered, “sure as you’re alive. But whatever she does, is right, and this is as right as everything else. So it just goes.”

They wrote their letters at once, and sent them off by the afternoon post. The letter Miss Alicia composed, and which Tembarom copied, he read and reread, with visions of Jim Bowles and Julius looking over his shoulder. If they picked it up on Broadway, with his name signed to it, and read it, they’d throw a fit over it, laughing. But he supposed she knew what you ought to write.

It had not, indeed, the masculine touch. When Lady Mallowe read it, she laughed several times. She knew quite well that he had not known what to say, and, allowing Miss Alicia to instruct him, had followed her instructions to the letter. But she did not show the letter to Joan, who was difficult enough to manage without being given such material to comment upon.

The letters had just been sent to the post when a visitor was announced—Captain Palliser. Tembarom remembered the name, and recalled also certain points connected with him. He was the one who was a promoter of schemes—“One of the smooth, clever ones that get up companies,” Little Ann had said.

That in a well-bred and not too pronounced way he looked smooth and clever might be admitted. His effect was that of height, finished slenderness of build, and extremely well-cut garments. He was no longer young, and he had smooth, thin hair and a languidly observant gray eye.

“I have been staying at Detchworth Grange,” he explained when he had shaken hands with the new Temple Barholm and Miss Alicia. “It gave me an excellent opportunity to come and pay my respects.”

There was a hint of uncertainty in the observant gray eye. The fact was that he realized in the space of five minutes that he knew his ground even less than he had supposed he did. He had not spent his week at Detchworth Grange without making many quiet investigations, but he had found out nothing whatever. The new man was an ignoramus, but no one had yet seemed to think him exactly a fool. He was not excited by the new grandeurs of his position and he was not ashamed of himself. Captain Palliser wondered if he was perhaps sharp—one of those New Yorkers shrewd even to light-fingeredness in clever scheming. Stories of a newly created method of business dealing involving an air of candor and almost primitive good nature—an American method—had attracted Captain Palliser’s attention for some time. A certain Yankee rawness of manner played a part as a factor, a crudity which would throw a man off guard if he did not recognize it. The person who employed the method was of philosophical non-combativeness. The New York phrase was that “He jollied a man along.” Immense schemes had been carried through in that way. Men in London, in England, were not sufficiently light of touch in their jocularity. He wondered if perhaps this young fellow, with his ready laugh and rather loose-jointed, casual way of carrying himself, was of this dangerous new school.

What, however, could he scheme for, being the owner of Temple Barholm’s money? It may be mentioned at once that Captain Palliser’s past had been such as had fixed him in the belief that every one was scheming for something. People with money wanted more or were privately arranging schemes to prevent other schemers from getting any shade the better of them. Débutantes with shy eyes and slim figures had their little plans to engineer delicately. Sometimes they were larger plans than the uninitiated would have suspected as existing in the brains of creatures in their ’teens, sometimes they were mere fantastic little ideas connected with dashing young men or innocent dances which must be secured or lovely young rivals who must be evaded. Young men had also deft things to do—people to see or not to see, reasons for themselves being seen or avoiding observation. As years increased, reasons for schemes became more numerous and amazingly more varied. Women with daughters, with sons, with husbands, found in each relationship a necessity for active, if quiet, manœuvering. Women like Lady Mallowe—good heaven! by what schemes did not that woman live and have her being—and her daughter’s—from day to day! Without money, without a friend who was an atom more to be relied on than she would have been herself if an acquaintance had needed her aid, her outwardly well-to-do and fashionable existence was a hand-to-hand fight. No wonder she had turned a still rather brilliant eye upon Sir Moses Monaldini, the great Israelite financier. All of these types passed rapidly before his mental vision as he talked to the American Temple Barholm. What could he want, by chance? He must want something, and it would be discreet to find out what it chanced to be.

If it was social success, he would be better off in London, where in these days you could get a good run for your money and could swing yourself up from one rung of the ladder to another if you paid some one to show you how. He himself could show him how. A youngster who had lived the beastly hard life he had lived would be likely to find exhilaration in many things not difficult to purchase. It was an odd thing, by the way, the fancy he had taken to the little early-Victorian spinster. It was not quite natural. It perhaps denoted tendencies—or lack of tendencies—it would also be well to consider. Palliser was a sufficiently finished product himself to be struck greatly by the artistic perfection of Miss Alicia, and to wonder how much the new man understood it.

He did not talk to him about schemes. He talked to him of New York, which he had never seen and hoped sometime shortly to visit. The information he gained was not of the kind he most desired, but it edified him. Tembarom’s knowledge of high finance was a street lad’s knowledge of it, and he himself knew its limitations and probable unreliability. Such of his facts as rested upon the foundation of experience did not include multimillionaires and their resources.

Captain Palliser passed lightly to Temple Barholm and its neighborhood. He knew places and names, and had been to Detchworth more than once. He had never visited Temple Barholm, and his interest suggested that he would like to walk through the gardens. Tembarom took him out, and they strolled about for some time. Even an alert observer would not have suspected the fact that as they strolled, Tembarom slouching a trifle and with his hands in his pockets, Captain Palliser bearing himself with languid distinction, each man was summing up the other and considering seriously how far and in what manner he could be counted as an asset.

“You haven’t been to Detchworth yet?” Palliser inquired.

“No, not yet,” answered Tembarom. The Granthams were of those who had not yet called.

“It’s an agreeable house. The Granthams are agreeable people.”

“Are there any young people in the family?” Tembarom asked.

“Young people? Male or female?” Palliser smilingly put it. Suddenly it occurred to him that this might give him a sort of lead.

“Girls,” said Tembarom, crudely—“just plain girls.”

Palliser laughed. Here it was, perhaps.

“They are not exactly ‘plain’ girls, though they are not beauties. There are four Misses Grantham. Lucy is the prettiest. Amabel is quite tremendous at tennis.”

“Are they ladies?” inquired Tembarom.

Captain Palliser turned and involuntarily stared at him. What was the fellow getting at?

“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,” he said.

The new Temple Barholm looked quite serious. He did not, amazing to relate, look like a fool even when he gave forth his extraordinary question. It was his almost business-like seriousness which saved him.

“I mean, do you call them Lady Lucy and Lady Amabel?” he answered.

If he had been younger, less hardened, or less finished, Captain Palliser would have laughed outright. But he answered without self-revelation.

“Oh, I see. You were asking whether the family is a titled one. No; it is a good old name, quite old, in fact, but no title goes with the estate.”

“Who are the titled people about here?” Tembarom asked, quite unabashed.

“The Earl of Pevensy at Pevensy Park, the Duke of Stone at Stone Hover, Lord Hambrough at Doone. Doone is in the next county, but just over the border.”

“Have they all got daughters?”

Captain Palliser found it expedient to clear his throat before speaking.

“Lord Pevensy has daughters, so has the duke. Lord Hambrough has three sons.”

“How many daughters are there—in a bunch?” Mr. Temple Barholm suggested liberally.

There Captain Palliser felt it safe to allow himself to smile, as though taking it with a sense of humor.

“‘In a bunch’ is an awfully good way of putting it,” he said. “It happens to apply perhaps rather unfortunately well; both families are much poorer than they should be, and daughters must be provided for. Each has four. ‘In a bunch’ there are eight: Lady Alice, Lady Edith, Lady Ethel, and Lady Celia at Stone Hover; Lady Beatrice, Lady Gwynedd, Lady Honora, and Lady Gwendolen at Pevensy Park. And not a fortune among them, poor girls!”

“It’s not the money that matters so much,” said the astounding foreigner, “it’s the titles.”

Captain Palliser stopped short in the garden path for a moment. He could scarcely believe his ears. The crude grotesqueness of it so far got the better of him that if he had not coughed he would have betrayed himself.

“I’ve had a confounded cold lately,” he said. “Excuse me; I must get it over.”

He turned a little aside and coughed energetically.

After watching him a few seconds, Tembarom slipped two fingers into his waistcoat pocket and produced a small tube of tablets.

“Take two of these,” he said as soon as the cough stopped. “I always carry it about with me. It’s a New York thing called ‘G. Destroyer.’ G stands for grippe.”

Palliser took it.

“Thanks. With water? No? Just dissolve in the mouth. Thanks awfully.” And he took two, with tears still standing in his eyes.

“Don’t taste bad, do they?” Mr. Temple Barholm remarked encouragingly.

“Not at all. I think I shall be all right now. I just needed the relief. I have been trying to restrain it.”

“That’s a mistake,” said Tembarom. They strolled on a pace or so, and he began again, as though he did not mean to let the subject drop. “It’s the titles,” he said, “and the kind. How many of them are good-lookers?”

Palliser reflected a moment, as though making mental choice.

“Lady Alice and Lady Celia are rather plain,” he said, “and both of them are invalidish. Lady Ethel is tall and has handsome eyes, but Lady Edith is really the beauty of the family. She rides and dances well and has a charming color.”

“And the other ones,” Tembarom suggested as he paused—“Lady Beatrice and Lady Gwynedd and Lady Honora and Lady Gwendolen.”

“You remember their names well,” Palliser remarked with a half-laugh.

“Oh, I shall remember them all right,” Tembarom answered. “I earned twenty-five per in New York by getting names down fine.”

“The Talchesters are really all rather taking. Talchester is Lord Pevensy’s family name,” Palliser explained. “They are girls who have pretty little noses and bright complexions and eyes. Lady Gwynedd and Lady Honora both have quite fascinating dimples.”

“Dimples!” exclaimed his companion. “Good business.”

“Do you like dimples particularly?” Palliser inquired with an impartial air.

“I’d always make a bee-line for a dimple,” replied Mr. Temple Barholm. “Clear the way when I start.”

This was New York phrasing, and was plainly humorous; but there was something more than humor in his eye and smile—something hinting distantly at recollection.

“You’ll find them at Pevensy Park,” said Palliser.

“What about Lady Joan Fayre?” was the next inquiry.

Palliser’s side glance at him was observant indeed. He asked himself how much the man could know. Taking the past into consideration, Lady Joan might turn out to be a subject requiring delicate handling. It was not the easiest thing in the world to talk at all freely to a person with whom one desired to keep on good terms, about a young woman supposed still to cherish a tragic passion for the dead man who ought to stand at the present moment in the person’s, figuratively speaking, extremely ill-fitting shoes.

“Lady Joan has been from her first season an undeniable beauty,” he replied.

“She and the old lady are going to stay at a place called Asshawe Holt. I think they’re going next week,” Tembarom said.

“The old lady?” repeated Captain Palliser.

“I mean her mother. The one that’s the Countess of Mallowe.”

“Have you met Lady Mallowe?” Palliser inquired with a not wholly repressed smile. A vision of Lady Mallowe overhearing their conversation arose before him.

“No, I haven’t. What’s she like?”

“She is not the early-or mid-Victorian old lady,” was Palliser’s reply. “She wears Gainsborough hats, and looks a quite possible eight and thirty. She is a handsome person herself.”

He was not aware that the term “old lady” was, among Americans of the class of Mrs. Bowse’s boarders, a sort of generic term signifying almost anything maternal which had passed thirty.

Tembarom proceeded.

“After they get through at the Asshawe Holt place, I’ve asked them to come here.”

“Indeed,” said Palliser, with an inward start. The man evidently did not know what other people did. After all, why should he? He had been selling something or other in the streets of New York when the thing happened, and he knew nothing of London.

“The countess called on Miss Alicia when we were in London,” he heard next. “She said we were relations.”

“You are—as we are. The connection is rather distant, but it is near enough to form a sort of link.”

“I’ve wanted to see Lady Joan,” explained Tembarom. “From what I’ve heard, I should say she was one of the ‘Lady’s Pictorial’ kind.”

“I am afraid—” Palliser’s voice was slightly unsteady for the moment—“I have not studied the type sufficiently to know. The ‘Pictorial’ is so exclusively a women’s periodical.”

His companion laughed.

“Well, I’ve only looked through it once myself just to find out. Some way I always think of Lady Joan as if she was like one of those Beaut’s from Beautsville, with trains as long as parlor-cars and feathers in their heads—dressed to go to see the queen. I guess she’s been presented at court,” he added even a trifle more unsteadily.

“Yes, she has been presented.”

“Do they let ’em go more than once?” he asked with casual curiosity.

“Confound this cough!” exclaimed Captain Palliser, and he broke forth again.

“Take another G,” said Tembarom, producing his tube. “Say, just take the bottle and keep it in your pocket.”

When the brief paroxysm was over and they moved on again. Palliser was looking an odd thing or so in the face. “I always think of Lady Joan” was one of them. “Always” seemed to go rather far. How often and why had he “always thought”? The fellow was incredible. Did his sharp, boyish face and his slouch conceal a colossal, vulgar, young ambition? There was not much concealment about it, Heaven knew. And as he so evidently was not aware of the facts, how would they affect him when he discovered them? And though Lady Mallowe was a woman not in the least distressed or hampered by shades of delicacy and scruple, she surely was astute enough to realize that even this bounder’s dullness might be awakened to realize that there was more than a touch of obvious indecency in bringing the girl to the house of the man she had tragically loved, and manœuvering to work her into it as the wife of the man who, monstrously unfit as he was, had taken his place. Captain Palliser knew well that the pressing of the relationship had meant only one thing. And how, in the name of the Furies! had she dragged Lady Joan into the scheme with her?

It was as unbelievable as was the new Temple Barholm himself. And how unconcerned the fellow looked! Perhaps the man he had supplanted was no more to him than a scarcely remembered name, if he was as much as that. Then Tembarom, pacing slowly by his side, hands in pockets, eyes on the walk, spoke:

“Did you ever see Jem Temple Barholm?” he asked.

It was like a thunderbolt. He said it as though he were merely carrying his previous remarks on to their natural conclusion; but Palliser felt himself so suddenly unadjusted, so to speak, that he palpably hesitated.

“Did you?” his companion repeated.

“I knew him well,” was the answer made as soon as readjustment was possible.

“Remember just how he looked?”

“Perfectly. He was a striking fellow. Women always said he had fascinating eyes.”

“Sort of slant downward on the outside corners—and black eyelashes sort o’ sweeping together?”

Palliser turned with a movement of surprise.

“How did you know? It was just that odd sort of thing.”

“Miss Alicia told me. And there’s a picture in the gallery that’s like him.”

Captain Palliser felt as embarrassed as Miss Alicia had felt, but it was for a different reason. She had felt awkward because she had feared she had touched on a delicate subject. Palliser was embarrassed because he was entirely thrown out of all his calculations. He felt for the moment that there was no calculating at all, no security in preparing paths. You never know where they would lead. Here had he been actually alarmed in secret! And the oaf stood before him undisturbedly opening up the subject himself.

“For a fellow like that to lose a girl as he lost Lady Joan was pretty tough,” the oaf said. “By gee! it was tough!”

He knew it all—the whole thing, scandal, tragically broken marriage, everything. And knowing it, he was laying his Yankee plans for getting the girl to Temple Barholm to look her over. It was of a grossness one sometimes heard of in men of his kind, and yet it seemed in its casualness to outleap any little scheme of the sort he had so far looked on at.

“Lady Joan felt it immensely,” he said.

A footman was to be seen moving toward them, evidently bearing a message. Tea was served in the drawing-room, and he had come to announce the fact.

They went back to the house, and Miss Alicia filled cups for them and presided over the splendid tray with a persuasive suggestion in the matter of hot or cold things which made it easy to lead up to any subject. She was the best of unobtrusive hostesses.

Palliser talked of his visit at Detchworth, which had been shortened because he had gone to fit in and remain until a large but uncertain party turned up. It had turned up earlier than had been anticipated, and of course he could only delicately slip away.

“I am sorry it has happened, however,” he said, “not only because one does not wish to leave Detchworth, but because I shall miss Lady Mallowe and Lady Joan, who are to be at Asshawe Holt next week. I particularly wanted to see them.”

Miss Alicia glanced at Tembarom to see what he would do. He spoke before he could catch her glance.

“Say,” he suggested, “why don’t you bring your grip over here and stay? I wish you would.”

“A grip means a Gladstone bag,” Miss Alicia murmured in a rapid undertone.

Palliser replied with appreciative courtesy. Things were going extremely well.

“That’s awfully kind of you,” he answered. “I should like it tremendously. Nothing better. You are giving me a delightful opportunity. Thank you, thank you. If I may turn up on Thursday I shall be delighted.”

There was satisfaction in this at least in the observant gray eye when he went away.

CHAPTER XX

DINNER at Detchworth Grange was most amusing that evening. One of the chief reasons—in fact, it would not be too venturesome to say the chief reason—for Captain Palliser’s frequent presence in very good country houses was that he had a way of making things amusing. His relation of anecdotes, of people and things, was distinguished by a manner which subtly declined to range itself on the side of vulgar gossip. Quietly and with a fine casualness he conveyed the whole picture of the new order at Temple Barholm. He did it with wonderfully light touches, and yet the whole thing was to be seen—the little old maid in her exquisite clothes, her unmistakable stamp of timid good breeding, her protecting adoration combined with bewilderment; the long, lean, not altogether ill-looking New York bounder, with his slight slouch, his dangerously unsophisticated-looking face, and his American jocularity of slang phrase.

“He’s of a class I know nothing about. I own he puzzled me a trifle at first,” Palliser said with his cool smile. “I’m not sure that I’ve ‘got on to him’ altogether yet. That’s an expressive New York phrase of his own. But when we were strolling about together, he made revelations apparently without being in the least aware that they were revelations. He was unbelievable. My fear was that he would not go on.”

“But he did go on?” asked Amabel. “One must hear something of the revelations.”

Then was given in the best possible form the little drama of the talk in the garden. No shade of Mr. Temple Barholm’s characteristics was lost. Palliser gave occasionally an English attempt at the reproduction of his nasal twang, but it was only a touch and not sufficiently persisted in to become undignified.

“I can’t do it,” he said. “None of us can really do it. When English actors try it on the stage, it is not in the least the real thing. They only drawl through their noses, and it is more than that.”

The people of Detchworth Grange were not noisy people, but their laughter was unrestrained before the recital was finished. Nobody had gone so far as either to fear or to hope for anything as undiluted in its nature as this was.

“Then he won’t give us a chance, the least chance,” cried Lucy and Amabel in unison. “We are out of the running.”

“You won’t get even a look in—because you are not ‘ladies,’ said their brother.

“Poor Jem Temple Barholm! What a different thing it would have been if we had had him for a neighbor!” Mr. Grantham fretted.

“We should have had Lady Joan Fayre as well,” said his wife.

“At least she’s a gentlewoman as well as a ‘lady,’” Mr. Grantham said. “She would not have become so bitter if that hideous thing had not occurred.”

They wondered if the new man knew anything about Jem. Palliser had not reached that part of his revelation when the laughter had broken into it. He told it forthwith, and the laughter was overcome by a sort of dismayed disgust. This did not accord with the rumors of an almost “nice” good nature.

“There’s a vulgar horridness about it,” said Lucy.

“What price Lady Mallowe!” said the son. “I’ll bet a sovereign she began it.”

“She did,” remarked Palliser; “but I think one may leave Mr. Temple Barholm safely to Lady Joan.” Mr. Grantham laughed as one who knew something of Lady Joan.

“There’s an Americanism which I didn’t learn from him,” Palliser added, “and I remembered it when he was talking her over. It’s this: when you dispose of a person finally and forever, you ‘wipe up the earth with him.’ Lady Joan will ‘wipe up the earth’ with your new neighbor.”

There was a little shout of laughter. “Wipe up the earth” was entirely new to everybody, though even the country in England was at this time by no means wholly ignorant of American slang.

This led to so many other things both mirth-provoking and serious, even sometimes very serious indeed, that the entire evening at Detchworth was filled with talk of Temple Barholm. Very naturally the talk did not end by confining itself to one household. In due time Captain Palliser’s little sketches were known in divers places, and it became a habit to discuss what had happened, and what might possibly happen in the future. There were those who went to the length of calling on the new man because they wanted to see him face to face. People heard new things every few days, but no one realized that it was vaguely through Palliser that there developed a general idea that, crude and self-revealing as he was, there lurked behind the outward candor of the intruder a hint of over-sharpness of the American kind. There seemed no necessity for him to lay schemes beyond those he had betrayed in his inquiries about “ladies,” but somehow it became a fixed idea that he was capable of doing shady things if at any time the temptation arose. That was really what his boyish casualness meant. That in truth was Palliser’s final secret conclusion. And he wanted very much to find out why exactly little old Miss Temple Barholm had been taken up. If the man wanted introductions, he could have contrived to pick up a smart and enterprising unprofessional chaperon in London who would have done for him what Miss Temple Barholm would never presume to attempt. And yet he seemed to have chosen her deliberately. He had set her literally at the head of his house. And Palliser, having heard a vague rumor that he had actually settled a decent income upon her, had made adroit inquiries and found it was true.

It was. To arrange the matter had been one of his reasons for going to see Mr. Palford during their stay in London.

“I wanted to fix you—fix you safe,” he said when he told Miss Alicia about it. “I guess no one can take it away from you, whatever old thing happens.”

“What could happen, dear Mr. Temple Barholm?” said Miss Alicia in the midst of tears of gratitude and tremulous joy. “You are so young and strong and—everything! Don’t even speak of such a thing in jest. What could happen?”

“Anything can happen,” he answered, “just anything. Happening’s the one thing you can’t bet on. If I was betting, I’d put my money on the thing I was sure couldn’t happen. Look at this Temple Barholm song and dance! Look at T. T. as he was half strangling in the blizzard up at Harlem and thanking his stars little Munsberg didn’t kick him out of his confectionery store less than a year ago! So long as I’m all right, you’re all right. But I wanted you fixed, anyhow.”

He paused and looked at her questioningly for a moment. He wanted to say something and he was not sure he ought. His reverence for her little finenesses and reserves increased instead of wearing away. He was always finding out new things about her.

“Say,” he broke forth almost impetuously after his hesitation, “I wish you wouldn’t call me Mr. Temple Barholm.”

“D-do you?” she fluttered. “But what could I call you?”

“Well,” he answered, reddening a shade or so, “I’d give a house and lot if you could just call me Tem.”

“But it would sound so unbecoming, so familiar,” she protested.

“That’s just what I’m asking for,” he said—“some one to be familiar with. I’m the familiar kind. That’s what’s the matter with me. I’d be familiar with Pearson, but he wouldn’t let me. I’d frighten him half to death. He’d think that he wasn’t doing his duty and earning his wages, and that somehow he’d get fired some day without a character.”

He drew nearer to her and coaxed.

“Couldn’t you do it?” he asked almost as though he were asking a favor of a girl. “Just Tem? I believe that would come easier to you than T. T. I get fonder and fonder of you every day, Miss Alicia, honest Injun. And I’d be so grateful to you if you’d just be that unbecomingly familiar.”

He looked honestly in earnest; and if he grew fonder and fonder of her, she without doubt had, in the face of everything, given her whole heart to him.

“Might I call you Temple—to begin with?” she asked. “It touches me so to think of your asking me. I will begin at once. Thank you—Temple,” with a faint gasp. “I might try the other a little later.”

It was only a few evenings later that he told her about the flats in Harlem. He had sent to New York for a large bundle of newspapers, and when he opened them he read aloud an advertisement, and showed her a picture of a large building given up entirely to “flats.”

He had realized from the first that New York life had a singular attraction for her. The unrelieved dullness of her life—those few years of youth in which she had stifled vague longings for the joys experienced by other girls; the years of middle age spent in the dreary effort to be “submissive to the will of God,” which, honestly translated, signified submission to the exactions and domestic tyrannies of “dear papa” and others like him—had left her with her capacities for pleasure as freshly sensitive as a child’s. The smallest change in the routine of existence thrilled her with excitement. Tembarom’s casual references to his strenuous boyhood caused her eyes to widen with eagerness to hear more. Having seen this, he found keen delight in telling her stories of New York life—stories of himself or of other lads who had been his companions. She would drop her work and gaze at him almost with bated breath. He was an excellent raconteur when he talked of the things he knew well. He had an unconscious habit of springing from his seat and acting his scenes as he depicted them, laughing and using street-boy phrasing:

“It’s just like a tale,” Miss Alicia would breathe, enraptured as he jumped from one story to another. “It’s exactly like a wonderful tale.”

She learned to know the New York streets when they blazed with heat, when they were hard with frozen snow, when they were sloppy with melting slush or bright with springtime sunshine and spring winds blowing, with pretty women hurrying about in beflowered spring hats and dresses and the exhilaration of the world-old springtime joy. She found herself hurrying with them. She sometimes hung with him and his companions on the railing outside dazzling restaurants where scores of gay people ate rich food in the sight of their boyish ravenousness. She darted in and out among horses and vehicles to find carriages after the theater or opera, where everybody was dressed dazzlingly and diamonds glittered.

“Oh, how rich everybody must have seemed to you—how cruelly rich, poor little boy!”

“They looked rich, right enough,” he answered when she said it. “And there seemed a lot of good things to eat all corralled in a few places. And you wished you could be let loose inside. But I don’t know as it seemed cruel. That was the way it was, you know, and you couldn’t help it. And there were places where they’d give away some of what was left. I tell you, we were in luck then.”

There was some spirit in his telling it all—a spirit which had surely been with him through his hardest days, a spirit of young mirth in rags—which made her feel subconsciously that the whole experience had, after all, been somehow of the nature of life’s high adventure. He had never been ill or heart-sick, and he laughed when he talked of it, as though the remembrance was not a recalling of disaster.

“Clemmin’ or no clemmin’, I wish I’d lived the loife tha’s lived,” Tummas Hibblethwaite had said.

Her amazement would indeed have been great if she had been told that she secretly shared his feeling.

“It seems as if somehow you had never been dull,” was her method of expressing it.

“Dull! Holy cats! no,” he grinned. “There wasn’t any time for being anything. You just had to keep going.”

She became in time familiar with Mrs. Bowse’s boarding-house and boarders. She knew Mrs. Peck and Mr. Jakes and the young lady from the notion counter (those wonderful shops!). Julius and Jim and the hall bedroom and the tilted chairs and cloud of smoke she saw so often that she felt at home with them.

“Poor Mrs. Bowse,” she said, “must have been a most respectable, motherly, hard-working creature. Really a nice person of her class.” She could not quite visualize the “parlor,” but it must have been warm and comfortable. And the pianola—a piano which you could play without even knowing your notes—What a clever invention! America seemed full of the most wonderfully clever things.

Tembarom was actually uplifted in soul when he discovered that she laid transparent little plans for leading him into talk about New York. She wanted him to talk about it, and the Lord knows he wanted to talk about himself. He had been afraid at first. She might have hated it, as Palford did, and it would have hurt him somehow if she hadn’t understood. But she did. Without quite realizing the fact, she was beginning to love it, to wish she had seen it. Her Somerset vicarage imagination did not allow of such leaps as would be implied by the daring wish that sometime she might see it.

But Tembarom’s imagination was more athletic.

“Jinks! wouldn’t it be fine to take her there! The lark in London wouldn’t be ace high to it.”

The Hutchinsons were not New Yorkers, but they had been part of the atmosphere of Mrs. Bowse’s. Mr. Hutchinson would of course be rather a forward and pushing man to be obliged to meet, but Little Ann! She did so like Little Ann! And the dear boy did so want, in his heart of hearts, to talk about her at times. She did not know whether, in the circumstances, she ought to encourage him; but he was so dear, and looked so much dearer when he even said “Little Ann,” that she could not help occasionally leading him gently toward the subject.

When he opened the newspapers and found the advertisements of the flats, she saw the engaging, half-awkward humorousness come into his eyes.

“Here’s one that would do all right,” he said—“four rooms and a bath, eleventh floor, thirty-five dollars a month.”

He spread the newspaper on the table and rested on his elbow, gazing at it for a few minutes wholly absorbed. Then he looked up at her and smiled.

“There’s a plan of the rooms,” he said. “Would you like to look at it? Shall I bring your chair up to the table while we go over it together?”

He brought the chair, and side by side they went over it thoroughly. To Miss Alicia it had all the interest of a new kind of puzzle. He explained it in every detail. One of his secrets had been that on several days when Galton’s manner had made him hopeful he had visited certain flat buildings and gone into their intricacies. He could therefore describe with color their resources—the janitor; the elevator; the dumb-waiters to carry up domestic supplies and carry down ashes and refuse; the refrigerator; the unlimited supply of hot and cold water, the heating plan; the astonishing little kitchen, with stationary wash-tubs; the telephone, if you could afford it,—all the conveniences which to Miss Alicia, accustomed to the habits of Rowcroft Vicarage, where you lugged cans of water up-stairs and down if you took a bath or even washed your face, seemed luxuries appertaining only to the rich and great.

“How convenient! How wonderful! Dear me! Dear me!” she said again and again, quite flushed with excitement. “It is like a fairy-story. And it’s not big at all, is it?”

“You could get most of it into this,” he answered, exulting. “You could get all of it into that big white-and-gold parlor.”

“The white saloon?”

He showed his teeth.

“I guess I ought to remember to call it that,” he said, “but it always makes me think of Kid MacMurphy’s on Fourth Avenue. He kept what was called a saloon, and he’d had it painted white.”

“Did you know him?” Miss Alicia asked.

“Know him! Gee! no! I didn’t fly as high as that. He’d have thought me pretty fresh if I’d acted like I knew him. He thought he was one of the Four Hundred. He’d been a prize-fighter. He was the fellow that knocked out Kid Wilkens in four rounds.” He broke off and laughed at himself. “Hear me talk to you about a tough like that!” he ended, and he gave her hand the little apologetic, protective pat which always made her heart beat because it was so “nice.”

He drew her back to the advertisements, and drew such interesting pictures of what the lives of two people—mother and son or father and daughter or a young married couple who didn’t want to put on style—might be in the tiny compartments, that their excitement mounted again.

This could be a bedroom, that could be a bedroom, that could be the living-room, and if you put a bit of bright carpet on the little hallway and hung up a picture or so, it would look first-rate. He even went into the matter of measurements, which made it more like putting a puzzle together than ever, and their relief when they found they could fit a piece of furniture he called “a lounge” into a certain corner was a thing of flushing delight. The “lounge,” she found, was a sort of cot with springs. You could buy them for three dollars, and when you put on a mattress and covered it with a “spread,” you could sit on it in the daytime and sleep on it at night, if you had to.

From measurements he went into calculations about the cost of things. He had seen unpainted wooden tables you could put mahogany stain on, and they’d look all you’d want. He’d seen a splendid little rocking-chair in Second Avenue for five dollars, one of the padded kind that ladies like. He had seen an arm-chair for a man that was only seven; but there mightn’t be room for both, and you’d have to have the rocking-chair. He had once asked the price of a lot of plates and cups and saucers with roses on them, and you could get them for six; and you didn’t need a stove as there was the range.

He had once heard Little Ann talking to Mrs. Bowse about the price of frying-pans and kettles, and they seemed to cost next to nothing. He’d looked into store windows and noticed the prices of groceries and vegetables and things like that—sugar, for instance; two people wouldn’t use much sugar in a week—and they wouldn’t need a ton of tea or flour or coffee. If a fellow had a mother or sister or wife who had a head and knew about things, you could “put it over” on mighty little, and have a splendid time together, too. You’d even be able to work in a cheap seat in a theater every now and then. He laughed and flushed as he thought of it.

Miss Alicia had never had a doll’s house. Rowcroft Vicarage did not run to dolls and their belongings. Her thwarted longing for a doll’s house had a sort of parallel in her similarly thwarted longing for “a little boy.”

And here was her doll’s house so long, so long unpossessed! It was like that, this absorbed contriving and fitting of furniture into corners. She also flushed and laughed. Her eyes were so brightly eager and her cheeks so pink that she looked quite girlish under her lace cap.

“How pretty and cozy it might be made, how dear!” she exclaimed. “And one would be so high up on the eleventh floor, that one would feel like a bird in a nest.”

His face lighted. He seemed to like the idea tremendously.

“Why, that’s so,” he laughed. “That idea suits me down to the ground. A bird in a nest. But there’d have to be two. One would be lonely. Say, Miss Alicia, how would you like to live in a place like that?”

“I am sure any one would like it—if they had some dear relative with them.” He loved her “dear relative,” loved it. He knew how much it meant of what had lain hidden unacknowledged, even unknown to her, through a lifetime in her early-Victorian spinster breast.

“Let’s go to New York and rent one and live in it together. Would you come?” he said, and though he laughed, he was not jocular in the usual way. “Would you, if we waked up and found this Temple Barholm thing was a dream?”

Something in his manner, she did not know what, puzzled her a little.

“But if it were a dream, you would be quite poor again,” she said, smiling.

“No, I wouldn’t. I’d get Galton to give me back the page. He’d do it quick—quick,” he said, still with a laugh. “Being poor’s nothing, anyhow. We’d have the time of our lives. We’d be two birds in a nest. You can look out those eleventh-story windows ’way over to the Bronx, and get bits of the river. And perhaps after a while Ann would do—like she said, and we’d be three birds.”

“Oh!” she sighed ecstatically. “How beautiful it would be! We should be a little family!”

“So we should,” he exulted. “Think of T. T. with a family!” He drew his paper of calculations toward him again. “Let’s make believe we’re going to do it, and work out what it would cost—for three. You know about housekeeping, don’t you? Let’s write down a list.”

If he had warmed to his work before, he warmed still more after this. Miss Alicia was drawn into it again, and followed his fanciful plans with a new fervor. They were like two children who had played at make-believe until they had lost sight of commonplace realities.

Miss Alicia had lived among small economies and could be of great assistance to him. They made lists and added up lines of figures until the fine, huge room and its thousands of volumes melted away. In the great hall, guarded by warriors in armor, the powdered heads of the waiting footmen drooped and nodded while the prices of pounds of butter and sugar and the value of potatoes and flour and nutmegs were balanced with a hectic joy, and the relative significance of dollars and cents and shillings and half-crowns caused Miss Alicia a mild delirium.

By the time that she had established the facts that a shilling was something like twenty-five cents, a dollar was four and twopence, and twenty-five dollars was over five pounds, it was past midnight.

They heard the clock strike the half-hour, and stopped to stare at each other.

Tembarom got up with yet another laugh.

“Say, I mustn’t keep you up all night,” he said. “But haven’t we had a fine time? I feel as if I’d been there.”

They had been there so entirely that Miss Alicia brought herself back with difficulty.

“I can scarcely believe that we have not,” she said. “I feel as if I didn’t like to leave it. It was so delightful.” She glanced about her. “The room looks huge,” she said—“almost too huge to live in.”

“Doesn’t it?” he answered. “Now you know how I feel.” He gathered his scraps of paper together with a feeling touch. “I didn’t want to come back myself. When I get a bit of a grouch I shall jerk these out and go back there again.”

“Oh, do let me go with you!” she said. “I have so enjoyed it.”

“You shall go whenever you like,” he said. “We’ll keep it up for a sort of game on rainy days. How much is a dollar, Miss Alicia?”

“Four and twopence. And sugar is six cents a pound.”

“Go to the head,” he answered. “Right again.”

The opened roll of newspapers was lying on the table near her. They were copies of “The Earth.” The date of one of them by merest chance caught her eye.

“How odd!” she said. “Those are old papers. Did you notice? Is it a mistake? This one is dated—” She leaned forward, and her eye caught a word in a head-line.

“The Klondike,” she read. “There’s something about the Klondike.” He put his hand out and drew the papers away.

“Don’t you read that,” he said. “I don’t want you to go to bed and dream about the Klondike. You’ve got to dream about the flat in Harlem.”

“Yes,” she answered. “I mustn’t think about sad things. The flat in Harlem is quite happy. But it startled me to see that word.”

“I only sent for them—because I happened to want to look something up,” he explained. “How much is a pound, Miss Alicia?”

“Four dollars and eighty-six cents,” she replied, recovering herself.

“Go up head again. You’re going to stay there.”

When she gave him her hand on their parting for the night, he held it a moment. A subtle combination of things made him do it. The calculations, the measurements, the nest from which one could look out over the Bronx, were prevailing elements in its make-up. Ann had been in each room of the Harlem flat, and she always vaguely reminded him of Ann.

“We are relations, ain’t we?” he asked.

“I am sure we often seem quite near relations—Temple.” She added the name with very pretty kindness.

“We’re not distant ones any more, anyhow,” he said. “Are we near enough—would you let me kiss you good night, Miss Alicia?”

An emotional flush ran up to her cap ribbons.

“Indeed, my dear boy—indeed, yes.”

Holding her hand with a chivalric, if slightly awkward, courtesy, he bent, and kissed her cheek. It was a hearty, affectionately grateful young kiss, which, while it was for herself, remotely included Ann.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever said good night to any one like that,” he said. “Thank you for letting me.”

He patted her hand again before releasing it. She went up-stairs blushing and feeling rather as though she had been proposed to, and yet, spinster though she was, somehow quite understanding about the nest and Ann.

(To be continued)

MANNERING’S MEN

BY MARJORIE L. C. PICKTHALL

IN that town,” said Blake to himself, peering cautiously through the scrub, “is Mannering’s grave, and the wreck of a brave man’s life-work. Oh, Sergeant, if those two beggarly Nyam-Nyams try to run away; deal with them straightly. At moonset we will go down.”

“O sons of Eblis,” murmured the Haussa sergeant with a grin, “scum of the market-place, little frogs of the mud-puddles of Wakonda, in that town is good soured milk, much grain, and chickens and goats as many as the prayers of the prophet. At moonset we will go down.”

The command gurgled pleasantly to itself and lay closer. Blake crawled nearer Macartney, who was raking the silver-patched blackness with a pair of night-glasses wrapped in dark cloth.

“I can make out a tin roof,” whispered Macartney at last; “that will be the roof of the residency.”

“Where Mannering was speared on his own door-step,” said Jim Blake, taking the glasses. “Dead, down and dead, wiped out, an absolute failure, Mannering. I can’t get over that, you know. He was such a keen old beggar, so wrapped up in his work. He simply spent himself on this beastly country. And he cleared out Wakonda, as far as mortal eye can see, on purpose to make room for seven other devils worse than the late king.”

“Couldn’t be,” put in Macartney.

“It’s not being speared that’s the worst part of it,” persisted Blake; “we all come to that sooner or later. It’s having absolutely nothing to show for his life or his death. Nothing even for the next man to build on. It’s that,” he continued, shivering as the dawn chill blew up the valley, “which I fancy must worry old Mannering—still.”

“What you need is chlorodyne,” whispered Macartney, indignantly.

They lay silent in the dank, upland grass, and the dew beaded and dripped on the thorns overhead. The command hunted for prickles in its feet, tightened belts, and babbled softly of stewed fowl.

From immense spaces, as spun out and thin as a thread, came the hunting-cry of a lion. The Haussa sergeant crept up and touched Blake’s foot.

“The moon sets, O Effendi, and it is not yet the dawn.”

Blake rose to his feet and looked at the sky. “We be ready,” he said.

The command moved as one man, eyes glinting whitely under the tarbooshes. The last few days had been hungry ones. Below in the valley was good food; it was only to fight a little, and all would be full. “Ya Illah, brethren, let us go down.”

They went down. Blake was no tactician, and his plan in such cases was simple. You took the main gate, held it, and swept the obstructionists out of the other gates or over the mud walls, broom fashion. He had worked with his present command for a year, and they followed him like a foot-ball team. The sergeant at his elbow presently touched his sleeve.

“There is made ground here.”

“Made ground?”

“Yes. The road built by Mannering Bimbashi.”

Already the road built by Mannering for the grain dealers and spice merchants was no more than a track in the undergrowth, and the grass swept to the thigh. Their way dipped sharply, and a river valley swirling in mist took them like shadows. Blake felt under his feet the rotten piles of a bridge, and a rifle clanged against rusted iron.

“I think these cattle of Wakonda have the alarm,” said the sergeant as they grunted up the opposite slope.

“Why?”

“There was a watchman at the bridge end; we should have crossed by the ford farther down. But these Wakondai cannot fight, and all is as Allah wills. O Ibrahim, son of Suleiman, keep thy rifle dry and remember to get under the walls.”

The town was clattering like a frightened hen-roost when a company of shadows flitted through the fog, and flung themselves under the walls and against the main gate. Five minutes of noisy, scrambling, hit-or-miss fighting followed, and they were inside, with their hardest work before them. Their fire had driven back the defenders, but they themselves had for the moment no cover. Presently the slugs began to flop on the walls behind them, and two men fell. Blake felt a stinging blow on the knee, and went down on all fours. He rose, laughing rather shakily into Macartney’s scared face.

“A spent bullet,” he cried in the din; “can’t put my foot to the ground. Clear those houses, old man; I’ll hold the gate.”

Macartney nodded and was gone, his men after him. Blake and his handful took cover behind a mud buttress and a dead camel, and prepared to hold the gate. It was only then that Blake saw the sergeant.

“Why art thou here?”

“I stay with thee, O Effendi. Besides,”—he sniffed wistfully,—“in that house they have been cooking good mutton. I would not go too far.”

The din and turmoil of the narrow ways rose and fell like the froth of a sea. The roofs were beginning to burn in a dozen places as Macartney, in rough-and-ready fashion, cleared out the slug-shooters. The red light of burning thatch danced in the fog and the thinning dark, and by this light Blake saw a score of white-wrapped figures leap from the reek and rush for the gate, shouting as they came.

“Steady, men, steady!”

“By the prophet’s beard!” cried the Haussa sergeant, flinging himself flat behind the camel, “these be no Wakondai, but ghazis of the far desert. Shoot well, O my children!”

It was all happening with the jerky rapidity of a cinematograph film, and the noise passed hearing. The command, inspired with visions of buttered mutton, loaded and fired as one man. Two, three close-range volleys swept between the walls, and the alley was blotched with whitish bundles that were the bodies of the desert men. But the others came on, and suddenly Blake was on his feet in the shadow of the gate, fighting hand to hand for his life.

“Stand firm, O my children!”

The sergeant’s voice echoed his. He was the center of an indescribable confusion. Under the gate the smoke of the volleys hung heavily. Through this broke first one fierce face, then another, the gleam of arms, the surge and retreat of the attack, the blows and outcries of men. Ibrahim, the son of Suleiman, fell across Blake’s feet and coughed his life out in ten seconds. Another of his best men was down, speared through the heart. And then, as suddenly as they had come, the desert men retreated to the shelter of the huts, and Blake, looking up, saw that it was day.

“They are gone,” said the sergeant, looking at the dead, “but they will come again. O Effendi, this is no good place.”

“I should have kept more men,” Blake was thinking clearly and rapidly. “If Mac doesn’t come back inside ten minutes, it will be too late for us, and he’ll have to cut his way out.”

A moment’s dreamlike quiet had succeeded the dreamlike noise. Over his head the sky was clear and growing gold, barred with the black flocks of wild-fowl that flew to their feeding-grounds in the valley. The sun rose with the hard flash of metal, and the blink of metal answered from the ruined roof of Mannering’s house. Blake’s breath drew cold. Was he also to die uselessly, wastefully, his work unfinished, under the spears of Wakonda? “Steady, men, steady, and fire slowly! It is ours to hold the gate.”

The Haussa sergeant leaped to his feet.

“They come again! O jackals of the sands, we men are ready—”

“Silence—and lie down!”

Again with that dreaming sense of unreality Blake watched the rush of fluttering figures up the alley. The men were loading and firing as fast as they could, but the rush was scarcely checked. Someone behind him began to croon a wild death-song. A thrown spear flickered before his eyes and struck his head a glancing blow. He looked at it curiously as it clattered down on his boots, and wondered why his hands felt so weak, and why the earth reeled under his feet like an out-rolled ribbon. Then everything was lost in a warm, red mist through which savage faces seemed to peer and yell. Blinded and dizzy, he braced himself for the shock of the charge, the while some voice in his head was buzzing busily, “You will go down as Mannering did, a failure, a failure—”

An utter pity for Mannering filled him. He leaned back against the wall, leveled his revolver as well as he could on his knee, and waited—as Mannering had waited.

“Ya Illah!” shouted the sergeant hoarsely. “Who be these?”

Blake cleared the blood from his eyes and looked. The attack had wavered and had turned upon itself, for a compact little force of ten had filed out from behind a house and fallen upon the desert men in the rear. They were in all degrees of dress and undress. Their leader was very tall and very thin, with a great bush of hair, upon which he wore the remains of a tarboosh, and he had an empty bandoleer round his neck. He and his men were armed variously, ranging from a damaged Martini to an inlaid jezail from the North. These weapons they were using variously, but effectively, in disciplined silence. So much Blake saw in a photographic flash of amazement. Then strength came back to him, and he and the sergeant flung themselves across the dead camel.

“Come on, you black rascals!” shouted Blake, staggering as he stood.

“Follow me, sons of darkness!” yelled the sergeant.

The men obeyed with howls. Caught between two forces, the enemy, fighting like wolves, were driven down alleys, cut down in corners, scattered and broken. In five minutes Blake’s men and their unknown allies were staring and panting under the gate, their work done.

“Now,” suggested the Haussa, patting Blake all over with his delicate black hands in a search for fatal injuries—“now I go and picket that street whence came the good cooking smell.”

“Wait!” commanded Blake. He looked at the gate, at the dead lying in the light and the black shadow. Even now the gold had scarcely gone from the faint, hot blue of the sky; scattered bands of birds still flew across it, and the high air seemed stirred with a multitude of wings. He looked at the leader of the allies, who was standing on one leg and grinning anxiously.

“Who art thou?”

The man drew his dusty heels together and carefully saluted.

“We be the men of Mannering Bimbashi.”

“Of Mannering Bimbashi?”

“Yea, master. I was a policeman of the force wherewith he policed this town. He said to us, ‘Go here,’ or ‘Go there,’ and we went and punished the evil-doers. Twice and thrice have I fought under Mannering Bimbashi.” He gazed contemptuously at his command. “These others are also of his force, or of his house—warriors, as I am, or gardeners and herders of goats; but all Mannering Bimbashi’s men.”

“Go on,” said Blake, quietly.

“Mannering Bimbashi was slain, and many of his folk; but I was left. I remembered. I gathered these others together, and bade them remember also. Mannering Bimbashi was dead, but we were not freed from our service. We had to live. I was a seller of rock-salt in the market-place, and these others did work after their kind. Sometimes we met and spoke together. None knew us for his men, and his name might not be upon our lips; but we laid our hands upon our mouths—so—and then we remembered.”

“Go on.”

“There is no more. It is very difficult to remember. But I knew the English would come in the footsteps of our bimbashi, and I held these of his together in readiness, as thou hast seen. But our bimbashi—on whom be peace!—has been dead a long time, and now we would take service with thee, O master.”

“Thou hast done well.” Blake’s voice shook a little as he thought how well. “Thou hast done very well. But why?”

The man was very ugly and very black, but all the poetry and sadness of the Arab were in his face as he answered:

“We were his men. We loved him.”

Blake’s eyes were dim as he looked across at the ruined house. There Mannering had gone down, and his hope, his work, his deeds—all these had gone down with him into dust.

“But even here there was love left,” said Blake aloud, with a kind of wonder; “even here there was love left!”

Then he took his men and Mannering’s and went to join Macartney in the ordering of Wakonda.

VERITA’S STRATAGEM

BY ANNE WARNER[7]

Author of “Susan Clegg,” “Seeing France with Uncle John,” etc.

THERE were very many people who gave a good deal of time to wondering whether Lady Verita Veritas would really ever marry Captain Adair. Many were the opinions on the subject, and some fair-sized bets, one man even proposing to take out the risk at Lloyd’s that she would not. The general view was that marrying Captain Adair was about the only thing that her very original ladyship had not done so far; but on the heels of this undeniable proposition followed the query as to whether her very original ladyship would ever do anything that even the wildest imagination might have accidentally predicted. It was felt that the chances were all against this possibility, and good society was preparing to return to its old favorite topic of how very curiously the young lady treated the young man if she did mean to marry him, and how much more curious was her course of action if she didn’t, when suddenly, one fair May morning, on every news-stall in England appeared a well-known magazine, displaying upon its cover list of contributors the name of our heroine, and upon its pages a terrible tale, entitled, “The Dowager Marchioness doesn’t Think,” which clearly owed its inception and development to the quick wit and ready pen of that same blue-blooded young woman.

Here was a fresh sensation in good earnest, the more pronounced from the fact that there was a very thoughtless dowager marchioness in the Veritas family. It was not many hours before all London was buzzing, and none of the buzzing was louder than that set up by the wheels of the irate aunt’s car as they hummed round and round, spinning her rapidly toward her niece. For the earl’s eldest sister lived near Windsor and was very, very rich, quite rich enough to have a good and legal right to a thoughtless disposition, the latter combined, be it added, with a most uncertain temper.

The marchioness had the magazine with her, but the speed she had commanded was so great and the purchase of her pince-nez so uncertain that she could only glance casually from time to time at the iniquities portrayed therein. It was easy to see, however, that it was a frightful story and calculated to incite to riot and bloodshed, or, at the very least, to upset all discipline in the servants’ hall. The plot seemed to hint at some vague system of retribution (here the marchioness held the page very close), and in one spot there were certain vicious passages about downing—or was it drowning?—all aristocrats; but just at that moment the car struck a stone, and the noble lady lost her place, in fact, both her places. By the time that she had readjusted herself, the leaf had turned over, and her eye fell on another and yet more absorbing horror, for an old villager in the story predicted death to all who had oppressed him, and following immediately upon this bloodthirsty prophecy came a style of invective that quite shocked one, and made Verita’s aunt suspect that her dear niece had been slumming in Limehouse.

“I wonder what her father will—” reflected the ancient lady of ten times more ancient lineage, shutting tight her thin-lipped mouth; but there the car, making ever more and more violent efforts to save time at the expense of every other consideration, skidded, and again the dowager marchioness was forced to give up thinking.

She gave it up for so long a time that the next thing of which she became aware was the pillared entrance to Veritas House and the green-and-silver footman who was brother to her own maid. He took her out with a solicitude that showed that he also was fully aware of the tragic happening which had just shaken the august family.

“The duchess is up-stairs, your Ladyship,” he whispered respectfully, as she clung to his arm, “and Captain Adair, too.”

The dowager marchioness nodded with jelly-like faintness. Then she mounted the staircase in real agitation, and was announced by a second footman, this one being a son of her own cook.

The countess was “laid up with her head,” so Verita was pouring the tea; no one else was present except the duchess and the captain.

“Not a copy to be had,” the captain was saying excitedly; “I tried everywhere. I tried at Paddington and at the club, and then I took a taxi to Gray’s Inn. There’s a news-stall just across the way, don’t you know; but not a beastly one could I find.”

“Too bad,” said the author, going to kiss the new arrival; “but it doesn’t matter so much now, because here’s one.” She took the dowager marchioness’s magazine as she spoke, and gave it to the duchess, who opened it eagerly.

“O Vera, how could you?” began her aunt at once. “Or if you wanted to do it, why did you drag us all in this terrible way? This is something much more dreadful than walking in processions and being arrested; this is the most dreadful thing that you’ve done yet.”

“The worst of it is,” said the captain, “that it breaks down all the sense of noblesse oblige and entre nous—all that kind of thing, you know. If it were anybody else, it wouldn’t so much matter, for we seem to be baited from every side just now; but I don’t think that she ought to join in, and what worries me especially is that their being sold out at Paddington shows that the magazine has gone out on the afternoon trains in every direction.” He drew a hard breath and glared. Just to look at him, any casual observer would have declared on the Bible that here was a man with great force of character.

“The Paddington trains go only as far as Oxford,” said Lady Verita in a soothing tone, but Captain Adair was clearly in no easily soothed mood.

“They go to Reading, too,” he said with an uncommon air of real opposition, “and to Banbury.”

“And to Stratford—they go to Stratford, too,” interposed the dowager marchioness. “Oh, I’m sure, if you looked into the matter, you’d find that quite a number of places are reached from Paddington. Else why shouldn’t those trains have gone from some other station?” She paused at this bit of constructive London logic, and reverted to her usual condition.

“I wish that they did go from some other station,” said Captain Adair, irately, “it took me so long to get to Paddington. To-day was the first time in ages that I’d gone there, and I wouldn’t have gone there to-day only I was right in the neighborhood.”

Lady Verita looked at him in a way that she had, and he ceased speaking. There was no special quality in her glance, but it was of a kind that one frequently encounters in the best English circles, and it always causes some one to cease speaking. Captain Adair would become a duke some day if one man should die and another should never marry; but it must be confessed that Lady Verita, whether she did or did not have his interest at heart, frequently chose that he should cease speaking.

“I wish that you hadn’t put your name to it,” said the dowager marchioness, suddenly awakened to life and their family grievance by the duchess’s turning a page with a smart snap; “there’s a place there where a man shrieks that he will fight until not one drop of blue blood is left running beside another. That is really very terrible, my dear, that”—She was stopped abruptly, for the duchess threw the book violently from her, gathered up her feather boa, and, rising abruptly, started toward the door.

“What is it?” asked Lady Verita, rising also.

Without a word of explanation or adieu, her grace sailed out of the room. Captain Adair having jumped to open the door for her.

The dowager marchioness sat open-mouthed.

“She must be mad,” said the man as he returned to his seat; “but you know that you really shouldn’t have written it, Vera; really you shouldn’t. People don’t do such things.”

“So revolutionary!” expostulated the dowager marchioness, finding her tongue. “You ought to consider the times. We might as well have Tolstoy in the family, or that horrid little man who led the French strike. Think of your country. Think of her need. Think of our ships.”

“Think of the docks,” the captain added, “or don’t write. That would do just as well.”

“Or, if you must write,” said the aunt, “why not write about the cottage industries? We’ve such a nice cottage industry near us.”

“You might as well be a socialist,” continued the captain; “think of the danger then. Think of the taxes.”

“Think of all the men who are continually being killed,” said the dowager, warming to her argument.

“Think of the condition of your party,” said the captain; and then, having picked up the magazine and hunted out the offending matter, he ceased speaking and carefully adjusted his glass.

Lady Verita leaned back in her chair and seemed to resign herself to the inevitable.

“And if I were not kindness itself,” went on the marchioness, after a slight somnolent pause, “I should feel outraged over your taking your title from me. That”—

“Well, by George!” cried the captain.

“What is it?” asked the marchioness.

Lady Verita began to laugh.

“I declare!” The captain began to laugh, too.

“What is it?” cried the marchioness again.

“The whole thing is about the French Revolution!”

“Of course,” said the author, laughing more.

“The French Revolution!” stammered her aunt.

“It doesn’t mean us at all,” said Adair, dropping his glass and staring at both ladies.

“Naturally not.” Lady Verita began crumbling bread for the poodle. “How could any of you suppose that I would make a story out of you?”

“The French Revolution!” repeated the dowager.

“I’ll wager that’s why the duchess bolted,” said the captain, suddenly. “She’d seen through it.”

“Selbstverständlich,” said Lady Verita, pouring cold tea over the crumbs, to the end that the poodle might enjoy some truly kind attention.

“I’m going straight to her!” announced the marchioness, rising with dignity. “I wish to let her know that I know, too.”

In less than two minutes the lady and the captain were left alone together.

“I believe you wrote it for a sell,” the man said then. He did occasionally beam brightly through his own fog, and he was anxious now to be on good terms again; “you knew how it would be taken.”

“Perhaps,” said Lady Verita, calmly; “but do ring for them to take away the tea, and then run along yourself. I’m tired.”

“You treat me like a dog,” grumbled the captain, “and I never rebel. Do kiss me once before I go, anyhow, and say you love me just once. Do!”

She kissed him, and that so sweetly that she was barely through with it when the men came in for the tea-things. The men going out with the tea-things were barely on the other side of the door when she said “I love you,” and that sweetly, too. The captain went away in raptures. If only—if only—

It was this sort of happenings that kept so much gossip afloat about the young couple.

THERE are only two short months between the first of May and the first of July; it follows therefore that there were only two short months between the publication of “The Dowager Marchioness doesn’t Think” and that of “The Earl’s Own County.” Every one who had been shocked by the title of “The Dowager Marchioness doesn’t Think” had become quickly calmed upon discovering that it concerned nothing nearer home than the French Revolution, and so could not have meant anything invidious in relation to either our particular dowager marchioness, or yet her times, or yet her class. But there was quite another tale to tell about “The Earl’s Own County,” and both the earl and his county were so well known and so dreadful, the description of them was so vividly accurate, and the language so painful and so glowing, that those who knew the whole truth stood open-mouthed and aghast, wondering what the noble father would do with his noble daughter now.

The noble father was off yachting and thus altogether removed from the field of immediate retribution. But his noble brother, the bishop, came trundling up from his bishopric as fast as, first, a pair of cobs, second, a first-class ticket, and third, a taxi, could be induced to bring him. Arriving at Veritas House, he found his sister-in-law, the countess, laid up with her head, as usual; but the youthful culprit received her uncle with an outstretched hand and a beaming smile. It was hard to believe her so great a sinner as she had proved, but the bishop was ready to believe anything of a daughter and an aristocrat who would write “The Earl’s Own County.”

“Verita,” he said at once and gravely, “this is no light matter. This cannot be overlooked. Your own ancestral acres! It is really most dreadful. You have absolutely identified the place by your detailed description of the thatches and the drains. Thatches and drains are no longer mere impersonal matters of picturesque possibility, as in the past. The low-lying politics of the present government have unduly exalted the drain and all but carried off the thatch. To write lightly of the matter is the reverse of pardonable. Indeed, I may say without fear of prevarication that it is a very serious offense. Statements such as yours, put in the peculiarly unfortunate manner which you have somehow hit upon, stir people up beyond all reason. You remember that American book about the pigs in the jungle near Chicago? Do you recollect that it nearly wrecked the whole slaughtering industry? These things are better left alone. There is no knowing to what end they may lead. You might bring about a question in the House. Consider that possibility. Such fearful issues have arisen out of most trivial matters. In the present state of German tiles, we must put down with a hand of steel all reference to English thatches. I trust that you are following me?” The bishop paused, quite out of breath.

“But I have a purpose,” said Lady Verita. “Have you read my story?”

“In part—only in part; vespers intervened to spare me useless pain. But that little was enough—too much, in fact. It is pulling the very foundations from under our civilization to write as you have written. I cannot in justice deny that your description of life among the poor is a remarkable piece of work, but no good can come of descriptions of life among the poor. Indeed, in my estimation, it is a thing that never should be done. We have our master’s own warrant for the continual existence of the poor, and we may not question his statement. ‘Always with you,’ he said. What could be clearer? In my estimation, their elimination would undermine the whole foundation of that crown of virtue, Christian charity.”

“But I don’t agree with that view,” said Lady Verita; “I disagree with it completely. I think that the situation of the poor can be vastly improved; in fact, it is being improved; which absolutely proves that it can be. That’s logic.”

“Not at all,” protested the bishop; “on the contrary, it’s altogether the opposite of logical. I have it on the authority of nearly all who view the matter as I do, that things are getting continually worse. And with things getting continually worse, the case is proved in opposition to all law and all your so-called logic. I must decline to argue the matter, for the simple reason that the only side to take is mine. Therefore, do not let us go into it. Nothing can be gained by discussing. No one denies that the country has fallen on evil days, but that is a mere trifle compared to the horror of what you have written—and to think that it should have been written by one in the lofty station of your father’s daughter!” Again the bishop paused for breath.

“I’m interested in the poor,” said Lady Veritas, meditatively.

“Perhaps we had best leave the poor out of the question,” said the bishop, who was noted for the firmness with which he adhered to any ground that he had once taken. “As a churchman of more than ordinary weight, I may say that I have ever deprecated the wasting of words as to the economic position of the poor. The poor, in my opinion, are becoming far too prominent. They occupy at present a position never intended in that divine order of things to which I have already referred. It is a position that even the most casual observer must admit is far beyond their limited capabilities to hold. Much of the provision which is needed—and I may say even bitterly needed—by the church is now being diverted to what may well be denominated as the bottomless pit wherein dwell the poor. The poor are fast becoming the rich. The rich are rapidly being pauperized for the unreasonable aggrandizement of the poor. The situation will all too soon become completely unbearable. Now, I put it to you,”—the bishop warmed suddenly in his most persuasive pulpit manner,—“why make it worse? A story like yours is to all intents and purposes a suggestion as to making everything better, and what could be worse? I may say without fear of prevarication that this is a serious matter. It is a very serious matter. Here in your story you have your childhood home desecrated! Our old ancestral acres stripped for the popular gaze! Why did you do it? Or, if an unconquerable longing to perpetuate them in print obsessed you, why did you not perpetuate the beeches or the wild boar or one of the sweet old stories of dole and dungeon? Why drag forth into the fierce light of the present unfortunate tendency to look into matters which, after all”—

“Dear uncle,” said Lady Verita, quite wearied by the length as well as the breadth of her right reverend relative’s scope, “to say the truth, the story is about Ireland. Any one who reads it carefully through to the end sees that. The difficulty is that no one reads anything through to the end nowadays. They skip all but the love scenes. There isn’t a word about any of us or our own wretched belongings in the whole thing. It is all about County Mayo.”

“County Mayo!” cried the bishop.

“Yes,” said his niece, “it is all about County Mayo. Of course it is written very carefully, just as the other story was, and I had a fancy that it might lead some readers to think, ‘Whom the cap fits, let him wear it.’ It has amused me not a little to see how the guilty jump at conclusions. I drew a picture of the French Revolution, and every one cried out that I was writing of ourselves. And now I write of a poor corner in a poor county in Ireland, and your own conscience at once attaches my silly tale to a poor corner in a poor county in England. That amuses me.”

A dull red glowed in the bishop’s angry face. He never had liked this girl, and now he felt that he disliked her intensely. But of course there was no more to be said. An English bishop must not allow himself to be interested in Ireland.

“I am afraid that your youthful spirits will cause you to do what you never can undo,” he said, carefully avoiding her glance of fun as he rose stiffly.

“They have,” said his niece.

“You admit it. Yes, I should imagine so. I”—

Just here Captain Adair was announced.

“Dear uncle,” said Verita, putting her hand into the captain’s while she looked toward the bishop, “we are what Fate wills in our weaving, and I am busy unraveling my skein, that’s all.”

The bishop shook his head in a rather irritated manner and went away. Left alone together, the captain kissed her ladyship and drew her to a seat on the divan.

“My uncle has been expostulating about ‘The Earl’s Own County,’” she said then.

“It’s an awful sell,” said Adair, half angry, half laughing; “down to the last line, every one thinks it’s your place. Of course I always read to the last line before I say anything now. I’ve learned your little way.”

Verita laughed brightly.

“But isn’t it droll that directly I deny it, no one sees the real truth in the descriptions any more?”

“Y-e-s,” said the captain, looking into her pretty face; “and yet I wish that you wouldn’t—’pon my soul I do. You might consider me a little, I think. You know what a hard time I have. I’ve stood such a lot for you. We have all stood such a lot with you. The trouble is, you’re so much too clever for a woman. All women are nowadays. They’re going ahead of all the rules of the game. And you go ahead of all the rest of them.”

“Somebody must go ahead, or progress would cease,” said Lady Verita. “We’ve sat around quite a bit waiting for the men to do things lately, I think.”

“Oh, but we’d be so comfortable if progress ceased, don’t you think?” protested the captain. “Hang it all! if I don’t think that that progress cult is at the bottom of every trouble in the world these days. If everybody’s going to join in for progress, there never will be any peace any more. And as for women like you, Vera dear, if you ever do get the vote, you’ll find yourself a thorn in the side of your party. It’s that way with the clever men always: one has to give the country over to ’em just to keep ’em quiet.”

“I never shall have any party,” said Lady Verita, thoughtfully. “I don’t believe in party politics. I’ll believe in any party that will give even the devil his due. That’s all.”

“That would be the worst party of all,” said the captain; “that would be the kind that no one ever would know which lobby you’d see ’em in.” He stopped to shake his head sadly, for there seemed to him so much of which he should despair, and he, like most well-born Englishmen, did so long to be hopeful and happy! “I do wish you’d quit all this,” he continued, “and settle down like other girls. Some day I’ll get on my feet, and then we’ll tell every one. It really isn’t any of it my fault, you know.”

Lady Verita looked at him not unkindly,—he was a handsome fellow,—and was aware of a sincere wish that she were not so very much the cleverer of the two, or, at least, that he wouldn’t be so ready to admit it.

“I’m aiming to accomplish something,” she said, speaking almost as sadly as he had spoken. “When I’ve done it, I’ll cease writing; but I can’t before. You know that I never do anything very long, however, so I shall soon finish with this.”

But this was cold comfort for the captain.

“You keep me so upset, Vera,” he said after a moment’s painful reflection. “I never know what you’ll do next.”

She laughed a little.

“But there’s one thing I must say,” he added, “and you must remember it, too: don’t you ever write anything about me, because that’s something I won’t stand for. Promise me that.”

Lady Verita did not promise. She kissed him instead, and he did not notice the alteration in the program.

IT was only a moon or two later that my lady’s last tale appeared in print. It was called “If I were only a Duke.” Captain Adair was the hero, and society, on noting the latter fact, was shaken to its very center. The captain was in Malta with a special commission of inquiry into the chance of a night attack from Germany; but he had a sister in London, who mailed him a copy the day that it appeared.

The framework of the story was remarkable.

“Of course they’re engaged,” people said everywhere; “they must be.”

“We know that it’s true about his being poor,” said the cabinet minister’s wife to her cousin; “she didn’t need to tell that.”

“And that his uncle’s a beast,” rejoined the cousin.

“He’ll rage when he reads this,” continued the cabinet minister’s wife; “it is rather a give-away, I do think. He might have made them an allowance.”

“To think of her writing openly that, after all the labor she had had to get him to offer himself, it is too bad that she must wait indefinitely to be married!” The cousin sighed deeply. As she had been waiting twenty-five years for some allowance to be made for her own marriage, she felt a secret sympathy with Lady Verita.

“A most shocking confession,” said the cabinet minister’s wife, knowing just what the sigh meant, and being one of those wives who never regard an allowance as necessary when the maiden ladies of the family marry. And then she gathered up her wrap and departed.

The old duke, even if he was a beast, had always been a very dignified beast; but the commotion about his supposedly published parsimony shook even his conception of noble rights. He went in his big blue car to call at the house where the dreadful young woman stayed when she was at home. The countess, her mother, was laid up with her head, as usual. Lady Verita received his grace exactly as she received most persons in these trying times.

“I suppose it is the story,” she said as she greeted him. She wasn’t a bit afraid of him, having learned to regard him as much the same stuff as the rest of humanity, only more in her way.

“Yes, it is the story,” he said haughtily. He regarded it as most unfortunate that she herself differed so widely from the rest of humanity. “It’s really too bad of you, don’t you know. If Clifford wishes to marry, I’ll give him a little something regular. He ought to know that. You ought to know that. What’s the good of rowing?”

Lady Verita lowered her eyes. She thought that there had been a deal of good in rowing, since it had brought his close-fisted grace to this.

“But it’s very shocking to write it out for the hoi polloi, don’t you know,” the duke continued vigorously; “I must beg, if you marry Clifford, that we have no more of this kind of thing.”

“But it wasn’t meant for any one we know,” protested Lady Verita.

“Yes, it was,” said the duke, putting up his glass and glaring at her; “everything you’ve written has been straight from the shoulder. I read the other two, and it was rubbish to suppose you meant the French Revolution or Ireland. Ireland, indeed! Any one with half an eye could see what you meant. And I don’t need even half an eye to see what you mean now. You mean to marry Clifford, and you wish to do it at once. Dash it all! if putting it off is going to lead to more of these stories, and putting it forward will stop ’em, I’ll set you up in housekeeping to stop ’em. We can’t let this kind of thing continue.”

“Thank you so much,” said Lady Verita, casting down her eyes modestly. “We are betrothed.”

“Yes, I thought so,” said the duke; “I’ve reason to think so, for every one’s been telling me so for the last two years. But what beats me is how, with your daring, you haven’t found a way to marry him before this.”

Lady Verita hesitated.

“I have,” she said finally.

ON receipt of the magazine, Captain Adair flew home as if he had been a dynamite cartridge. For the first time in his life he was stirred enough to be really very much worth while.

“What did I tell you?” he cried, rushing in upon the guilty person without even having stopped to be brushed by his valet. “Now you have done it. We’ll have to tell now.”

Verita wasn’t in the least upset. If he had been plate-glass and she had been a hammer, she couldn’t have been more aware of where the advantage lay.

“We’ll have to tell now,” he repeated; “in fact, you have virtually told already.”

She did not deny it. But she rose and went to him. There was something about her that always had a calming effect when he was vexed, and the charm worked this time as always. He took her hands, clasped them behind his neck, and drew her to him.

“Do let us announce it,” he said in a tone that was muffled by circumstances.

She returned his kiss, for although she knew all his mental deficiencies, she loved him dearly.

“I want to tell,” he whispered; “I’ve always wanted to tell, you know. What if we are poor? We’ll scrape along somehow. We’ll open a flower-shop or a laundry or something.”

She laid her face against his breast.

“I think we’d better tell, too,” she said. “That was the reason why I wrote the story. Writing stories is such a simple way of bringing the truth before the public.”

“But our marriage isn’t on a par with the state of the times nor the condition of your father’s estate,” he reminded her.

“No, not exactly,” she admitted; “but it was something that I felt should be known and which required careful leading up to.”

He kissed her again.

“But you’ll let it be known now?” he asked.

She did not say:

“I’ve wanted it known all the time, but you were so beastly afraid of your uncle.” Instead she murmured, “We’ll send an announcement to the newspapers to-night.”

Then she looked at him and smiled, and then for an instant her heart misgave her and she sighed. She knew that she had gained her purpose, and she knew that she liked him better than any other man; but she was a femme d’esprit, and she knew also that although he would one day be a duke, he never would be her equal. And, like all clever women who marry future dukes for love, she could but sigh slightly.

[7] This story was received by THE CENTURY shortly before the death of the author, which occurred February 4, 1913.

Owned by Sir William Van Horne

ST. ELIZABETH OF HUNGARY. BY FRANCISCO ZURBARÁN

(TIMOTHY COLE’S WOOD ENGRAVINGS OF MASTERPIECES IN AMERICAN GALLERIES)

❏
LARGER IMAGE

TIMOTHY COLE’S
WOOD ENGRAVINGS
OF
MASTERPIECES
IN
AMERICAN GALLERIES

ST. ELIZABETH
OF HUNGARY

BY

ZURBARÁN

THE RETURN TO HARD MONEY

BY CHARLES A. CONANT

Formerly Washington Correspondent of the New York “Journal of Commerce”

WITH PORTRAITS AND CARTOONS

TAXES FOR EVERYBODY

WHEN the wrack and waste of war are done, and ceased are the tumults and the shouting, the harder task lies before the statesman and the financier of paying the cost. A great war, at least down to very recent times, has usually carried with it haphazard and wasteful financing, an oppressive debt, unequal and burdensome taxation, and a depreciated currency. The aftermath of the Civil War was no exception. At its close all these evils lay heavy upon the people of the United States.

The public debt stood at $2,846,000,000, or about $80 per capita; and of this amount nearly $1,900,000,000 was paying interest at the rate of six per cent., or higher. The ordinary expenditures of the Government, including the support of the armies, were running at the rate of about $3,300,000 a day, while receipts from taxation and other sources than loans were falling below $1,000,000 a day. The man of business could not affix his signature to a check, a receipt, or a bill of exchange, receive a legacy or transfer a piece of real estate, without paying a tax. Cotton was taxed two cents a pound; salt, six cents a hundred pounds; sugar, from two to three and a half cents a pound. Manufacturers were paying licenses for the right to do business, and also taxes upon the value of their output whether a profit emerged or not; middlemen were taxed upon the volume of goods dealt in, irrespective of the fact that such goods had already paid several times. Among other taxes were those levied on matches, photographs, lottery tickets, perfumery, theaters, and carriages; and additions made by repairs to the value of a carriage or a machine paid their own distinctive tax. Incomes were taxed up to twelve and one half per cent. There existed, in short, to use the terse language of David A. Wells, “a system of internal taxation which for its universality and peculiarities has no parallel in anything which had theretofore been recorded in civil history.”

A FLOOD OF PAPER MONEY

THE currency consisted of irredeemable paper, a part issued by national banks, a part by State banks, and a part directly from the government printing-presses. Its value, which had been as low as $35.09 in gold for $100 in paper, in July, 1864, was still less than $70 in gold after the stimulus of Lee’s surrender. Prices of commodities, which had fluctuated even more wildly than the gold premium, showed an average for leading articles, in the first quarter of 1865, representing 2.62 times the corresponding average just before the war.

Brave and energetic as had been the policy of Salmon P. Chase as Secretary of the Treasury in grappling with the problems of the war, he made two economic errors which greatly added to the difficulties that confronted his successor. He continued too long the policy of borrowing instead of taxing, thereby impairing the public credit and adding to the cost of his borrowings; and he opened the Pandora’s box of legal-tender paper money, which left its mark upon our political history for nearly half a century.

From a photograph by W. Kurtz

DAVID A. WELLS

McCULLOCH’S FACULTY FOR ECONOMY

THE problems presented to Hugh McCulloch, when he succeeded to the headship of the Treasury in Lincoln’s second cabinet, were to reduce expenditures, to reorganize taxation, to systematize and consolidate the debt, and to restore stability to the currency. The country was fortunate in having such a man as Mr. McCulloch to perform these services. Of long experience as a practical banker, he had been made Comptroller of the Currency upon the reorganization of the national banking system, and was familiar with all branches of government finance. Fortunately, also, he was not a politician. He was a descendant of that small but prolific colony of Scotch and Scotch-Irish who settled in northern New England, whose sturdy courage enriched the blood of all other races with which it was mingled. His views of what was required to restore sanity to the national finances were not warped by fear of popular clamor; and if they went further than the condition of the country warranted in the direction of monetary contraction, they at least set a standard of national honor and obligation which was like a beacon set on a hill to the supporters of honest money.

Toward reducing expenditures, rapid progress was made as the million men who had sprung to arms at the call of the country were mustered out of the Grand Army and returned to their plows and workshops. Expenditures for the War Department, which were $1,030,000,000 in 1865, were brought down the next year to $283,000,000, and in 1867 to $95,000,000. On the side of reducing and simplifying taxation much was accomplished by the clear-headed young man who had been called into consultation by President Lincoln a few weeks before his death. This man, David A. Wells, tall, gaunt, and deadly in earnest, had perhaps a greater capacity for massing facts than any other American economist. At his suggestion, the war taxes, which had fettered production and exchange, began to drop from the limbs of industry. By the act of July 13, 1866, taxes on articles of common consumption were abolished, the income tax was suspended from and after June 30, 1870, and the foundations were laid of the existing system of internal revenue, taxing substantially only spirits and tobacco.

Of the elaborate operations of refunding, which converted obligations paying six and seven per cent. into five, four, and finally even into three per cent. securities, and raised American credit to the level of that of other powerful nations, it is not desirable, here, to set forth the details. It is enough to say that the funded debt was reduced within ten years after the war by nearly $500,000,000, and that interest payments upon it, which in 1867 were $143,700,000, had fallen in 1877 to $97,100,000. Even more remarkable in figures were the achievements of later years; but if it is by obstacles overcome that the greatness of a victory is measured, then the palm of achievement belongs to those earlier years when, in the language of Secretary McCulloch, “the industry of one third part of the country, by reason of the war and the unsettled state of its political affairs, has been exceedingly depressed, and the other two thirds by no means exerted their full productive power.”

A MEASURE OF THE COUNTRY’S GROWTH

FOR America was still only on the threshold of that wonderful development which was to make her in the beginning of the twentieth century one of the half-dozen great Powers of the world; with a homogeneous white population second in numbers only to that of Russia; with accumulated wealth exceeding in per capita average that of any other country except perhaps England; and with imperial interests in Cuba, Porto Rico, Central America, Samoa, the Philippine Islands, and China.

The population of the United States in 1860 was only 31,443,000, or less than one third what it was in 1912; and the estimated total wealth was $16,159,616,000, or about one seventh of the great accumulations of to-day. Of these amounts, moreover, the South had taken out of the Union a proportion which may be estimated roughly at two fifths. Railway mileage, which was 30,626 for the whole Union in 1860, had increased only to 35,085 in 1865, or less than one seventh the mileage of to-day. Much of the country west of the Mississippi was still an untracked wilderness. Senator John Sherman, after the adjournment of Congress in 1866, made a vacation trip with his brother, General William T. Sherman, in the general’s official inspection of army posts. The Central Pacific Railroad ended at Fort Kearney, and thence the party traveled in light army-wagons drawn by mules, camping at night, sleeping in the wagons, the horses parked near by, guarded by sentinels, and with the frequent menace of Indian attack.

Skilful as was the financial leadership required to reduce expenditures, reform taxation, and refund the debt, these were the least difficult in a sense of the economic problems of the war, because they were chiefly problems of legislation. Much more serious were the questions of escape from the hectic influences of war prices and conditions and of inflated government-paper issues; and these were to give their color to the industrial and financial history of the country for a generation. Dreams of untold fortunes derived from speculation in the securities of new railways were rendered peculiarly vivid by the disorganized state of the currency and the fluctuations in its gold value, stimulated by manipulation in the gold-room of the New York Stock Exchange, but due fundamentally to uncertainty as to the quantity of currency in circulation and as to when it would be made redeemable. Thaddeus Stevens went to the extreme of declaring that one of the measures proposed, with the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, would put under the absolute and uncontrolled discretion of that official more than sixteen hundred million dollars’ worth of paper money, and would confer upon him more power “than was ever before conferred upon any one man in a government claiming to have a constitution.” It is small wonder that amid such possibilities speculation became a rankly luxuriant growth of the financial markets.

“BLACK FRIDAY”

TYPICAL of these conditions was the famous “Black Friday” of September 24, 1869. It was the result of a daring speculation on the part of Jay Gould, “Jim” Fisk, and kindred spirits in Wall Street to corner the gold stock of the country and compel short sellers of the yellow metal to settle with them at their own price. Plans were carefully laid early in the summer of 1869 to enlist President Grant’s sympathy by convincing him that high prices were necessary to the prosperity of the country, and at the same time to entangle Mrs. Grant, her brother-in-law, A. R. Corbin (the husband of General Grant’s sister Virginia), the President’s private secretary, General Horace Porter, the Collector of the Port of New York, and others close to the President, in the appearance of a corrupt conspiracy to participate in the profits of the corner. It was planned to bring to a stop the sales of gold which were being made from time to time by the Secretary of the Treasury, and which tended to supply the demand for gold for the payment of customs and other special purposes, and thereby keep down its price. The tendency of the yellow metal had been downward during the spring, and the quotations of early September stood at about 135.

The effort to convince President Grant that he ought not to interfere by throwing Treasury gold upon the market was begun as early as the middle of June, when the President was on board one of the Fall River steamers on his way to Boston. Supper was served at nine o’clock, and the conversation was deftly turned to the state of the country, the crops, and the financial outlook. On Gould’s own confession, President Grant’s favorite rôle of a listener stood him in good stead. After listening for a long time to the talk, which had been carefully planned by Gould and in which Corbin and others took part, the President remarked that he thought there was a certain amount of fictitiousness about the prosperity of the country, and that the bubble might as well be tapped in one way as another. This remark, according to Gould, in his testimony before the Congressional Committee of investigation, “struck across us like a wet blanket.” They concluded that the President was a contractionist.

The game was by no means abandoned, however, as a result of this first rebuff. A prominent English financier who was visiting the country advocated the theory that business interests required an advance in the price of gold in order to move the crops and sell them on favorable terms in foreign markets. Corbin was a willing convert to this theory, for he was already a party to a pool in which Gould and Fisk were members. Corbin was put forward to talk to the President whenever he came in contact with him, and even introduced Gould for the purpose of presenting his views. The President, according to Corbin, engaged in these conversations with reluctance, and the moment any allusion was made to the future policy of the Government he became very reticent. Fisk also tried his hand on the President, but without much success. Thus matters dragged along until September, when the President wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Treasury, George S. Boutwell, suggesting that it would not be wise to sell gold in large amounts to force down the price while the crops were moving, as it might embarrass the West. This was the first ray of light from the Presidential office that had reached the conspirators. It is not certain that they knew definitely of this letter; but on the third and fourth of September gold began to rise rapidly, and on the sixth it touched 137-⅝.

About two weeks later, with President Grant staying at a small country place in Washington, Pennsylvania (on a visit to William Smith, a cousin of Mrs. Grant), far from the railway and the telegraph, the time seemed ripe to push up the price of the yellow metal, drive the “shorts” to cover, and compel them to settle. The final coup was played by getting Corbin to write a letter to the President, urging him not to interfere in the struggle between the two factions in the gold market by ordering or permitting sales of gold by the Treasury. A faithful messenger, W. O. Chapin, was selected to take this letter to Pittsburgh, and from there by carriage to Washington, thirty miles distant. It was testified by General Horace Porter, secretary to the President, that they were engaged one morning in playing a game of croquet when General Porter was told that a gentleman wished to see him. The messenger was asked to wait until the game was finished, when he handed Porter a note stating that he had a letter which he desired to deliver to the President. The letter was shown to the President, who glanced over it and said to the bearer, “No answer.” General Porter then called the President’s attention to the peculiarity of the missive being brought so far by a special messenger, with a letter of introduction. The President was set to thinking. The letter, which Corbin and his conspirators were relying upon to prevent interference by the Secretary of the Treasury, proved their ruin. President Grant began to see through the plot, and suggested to Mrs. Grant to say in a letter she was writing to Mrs. Corbin that rumors had reached her that Mr. Corbin was connected with speculators in New York, and that she hoped, if this were true, that he would disengage himself from them at once, adding that the President was very much distressed at such rumors.

Mrs. Grant’s letter caused something approaching a panic in the ranks of the gold speculators. When Gould called at Corbin’s house on the evening of Wednesday, September 22, and read the contents of the letter, it was apparent to him that Corbin had no such influence over the President as had been expected, and that a blow from the Treasury might fall at any hour. It was a picturesque spectacle, described by Gould himself in his testimony, when the two were shut in the library near midnight, Corbin bending over the table and straining with dim eyes to decipher the contents of the letter, written in pencil to his wife, while the gold-room gambler, looking over his shoulder, caught with his sharper vision every word. Corbin had already prepared a letter to the President denying that he had any interest in the movement, direct or indirect, and now told Gould that he must send the letter by the first mail; but that, if it were sent, its statements must be true. He proposed, therefore, to Gould that they should settle his (Corbin’s) account, paying him his accrued profits, which as gold stood that night would amount to more than $100,000, in addition to $25,000 which he had already received. Gould put the matter over until morning and eventually drew a check, which, however, never was paid to Corbin.

Gould knew better than to divulge the unfortunate news to Fisk. It appeared to be his plan to let him and their brokers continue to buy gold and force up its price, while Gould himself was unostentatiously getting rid of his stock at maximum prices. Fisk entered the gold-room the next morning and struck terror into the hearts of the “bears” by offering to bet any part of $50,000 that gold would sell at 200. Thursday afternoon gold closed at about 144, and the conspirators held a meeting in the evening to lay plans for the next day’s campaign. They held calls for more than $100,000,000 in gold, and there were not more than $15,000,000 of gold and gold certificates in New York, outside of the Sub-Treasury. They had a full list of those who were short of gold, including more than two hundred and fifty prominent firms; and it was proposed to publish this list next morning, and to inform the victims that if they did not settle at 160 before three o’clock, a higher rate would be demanded. This detail was abandoned because they were advised by counsel that under the statutes of New York such a course would constitute a conspiracy. Fisk was asked the next morning why he feared any sale the Treasury could make, since the clique held calls for more gold than both the Treasury and the city could command. His answer was, “Oh, our phantom gold can’t stand the weight of the real stuff!”

About Friday noon, the blow from the Treasury fell. President Grant had returned from Pennsylvania to Washington on the previous afternoon, and in the evening had held a consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury. Both agreed that if the price of gold should be forced higher, so as to threaten a general financial panic, it would be their duty to interfere to protect business interests. Friday morning the price advanced rapidly, and telegrams poured into Washington from all parts of the country, urging the Government to interfere and if possible prevent a financial crash. At a conference, held soon after eleven o’clock, it was agreed to sell $4,000,000 of Treasury gold. The message to the assistant treasurer at New York, General Butterfield, was not sent in cipher, and soon the news was in everybody’s mouth. In the meantime, James Brown, a Scottish banker of New York, with the support of leading merchants, offered successively to sell $1,000,000 gold at 162, another $1,000,000 at 161, and $5,000,000 more at 160. The market began to break; and when ten minutes afterward the news came that the Treasury would sell, the price fell from 160 to 133.

From a photograph owned by F. H. Meserve

COMMODORE CORNELIUS VANDERBILT

It was with difficulty that Gould and Fisk escaped from the fury of the ruined victims who had been following their lead, and succeeded in finding refuge in their up-town stronghold, the office of the Erie Railroad Company at Twenty-third Street and Eighth Avenue. During Thursday and Friday they had sold out at high rates a large part of the gold they had purchased, and had made many private settlements at rates ruinous to their victims. They now repudiated all the purchases they had made through Belden, the principal broker who had acted as their agent. They called on Corbin and overwhelmed him with denunciations. As Fisk told the story, Corbin “was on one side of the table weeping and wailing, and I was gnashing my teeth.” In vain they despatched Corbin to Washington to plead with Grant to suspend the order to sell. The President cut him short with the remark that that subject was closed. Corbin returned to New York and did not even see his fellow conspirators when he got back. As Fisk characterized the situation, “Matters took such a turn that it was no use; it was each man drag out his own corpse.” Afterward it was shown that neither Mrs. Grant nor General Porter was in any way connected with the conspiracy.

THE ERA OF RAILWAY BUILDING

“BLACK FRIDAY” was only a symptom of the deeper disorders of the body politic. The minority of the committee of the House which investigated the “Black Friday” episode declared that “no one doubts that if the constitutional currency of coin had remained to us, such panics would have been, and would now be, impossible.” The stimulus to over-expansion afforded by an unstable currency operated also upon mercantile enterprise and railway development. The demand for the extension of the railway network over new farm land, and across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, became the channel through which speculative influences converged to bring on the panic of 1873. Already, in 1862, Congress had granted a charter for the construction of the Union Pacific line, and in 1864 it granted further aid by making the United States bonds that were to be issued for construction purposes a subordinate lien to that of the bonds of the company sold in the market. Thus, as John Sherman put it, “The constructors of these roads, who were mainly directors and managers of the company, practically received as profit a large portion of the bonds of the United States issued in aid of the work, and almost the entire capital stock of the company.” At the same time was enacted the Northern Pacific charter, which, according to the same authority, was an act “with broad and general powers, carelessly defined, and with scarcely any safeguards to protect the Government and its lavish grants of land.”

Already, shortly before the war, the ground had been cleared for extensive railway enterprises by the knitting together of small roads into trunk lines connecting New York with the Mississippi Valley. Originally, eleven companies owned and operated the lines making up the route between Albany and Buffalo. After this anomaly disappeared, it remained for the genius of Commodore Vanderbilt to acquire the Hudson River road in 1864 and the New York Central lines in 1867, and to bear his share in the picturesque battles of the Stock Exchange and the courts, which gave such fascination to this lawless epoch of American finance.

VANDERBILT AND DREW

IT was the period of Cornelius Vanderbilt, Daniel Drew, Jay Gould, and “Jim” Fisk; the period in which were conceived and carried out the famous “corners” in Harlem, in Hudson River, and in Erie stocks. None of the leaders in these speculations would have shone in Newport or in the polished, well-groomed crowd that watches the races at Deauville or takes the “cures” at Vichy or at Nauheim. Cornelius Vanderbilt, the son of a farmer in moderate circumstances on Staten Island, was ferrying passengers over to New York at sixteen years of age, and at the age of eighteen owned two boats and was captain of a third. He derived his education from practical experience, his successes from innate shrewdness. Daniel Drew, beginning as a drover and afterward the keeper of a tavern, never sought to rise socially above his early environment. To a reported trick of his in early life is ascribed the familiar stock-market expression, “watering stock.” According to the legend, Drew gave his cattle salt in order to create a thirst, which would cause them to drink freely and make them appear bigger and fatter when brought to market. He was negligent in his attire, even to the verge of slovenliness, and never departed from the provincial pronunciation of his youth. In many a broker’s office where he called for his securities his loud demand for “them sheers” was long remembered.

THE BATTLE OF THE GIANTS OVER ERIE

“THE COMMODORE,” as Vanderbilt was familiarly called, was seeking to develop the Hudson River property, when he found it assailed by a large “bear” element. Immediately taking the situation in hand, he tricked his opponents into the belief that his position was weak, and lured them into increasing their output of short stock. Getting virtually all the real stock in existence into his possession, and accepting contracts for additional amounts from the short interest, he soon had the market at his mercy. From 112 the stock rose in a few days to 180. The shorts, unable to make the deliveries they had contracted for, begged for mercy, and the stock was sold back to them at a handsome profit.

Much more complicated and daring were the operations of Daniel Drew, Jay Gould, and Fisk in Erie. The story of their use of the Erie road is worth outlining, if only to illustrate methods which in the financial world of to-day would no longer be tolerated, even if they were possible. In July, 1868, the Erie Railroad became the personal property of Fisk and Gould. The board of directors held no meetings; the executive committee never was called together. The Erie offices were moved to a white marble “palace” on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Twenty-third Street, which was furnished with vulgar ostentation, contained an opera-house (still a popular theater), and was connected with the private apartments of Fisk. Just before this (in 1866), Drew had operated his famous plan of loaning money to the Erie Railroad on the security of stock and convertible bonds, and converting the bonds into stock to meet his short contracts.

It was the acquisition by Commodore Vanderbilt in 1867 of the New York Central Railroad which brought him into conflict with Drew and Gould. “The Commodore” desired to acquire Erie. To guard against the transformation of more “convertible bonds” into stock, he employed the services of Frank Work to obtain from Judge Barnard an injunction restraining Drew from the payment of interest on $3,500,000 in bonds, pending an investigation of his accounts as treasurer of the railway. But Drew was equal to the emergency. Under a statute authorizing any railroad to create and issue its own stock in exchange for that of a leased line, he and his associates issued against an insignificant property, worth perhaps $250,000, the amount of $2,000,000 in Erie stock. Deals and counter-deals, and injunctions to restrain injunctions, did not prevent Fisk from seizing the enjoined stock certificates by force, nor Drew from aiding him by throwing 50,000 shares on the market and breaking Vanderbilt’s attempted “corner.” It is said that while new stock was thus being put out, Fisk summed up the purposes of his clique toward Vanderbilt in the remark, “If this printing-press don’t break down, I’ll give the old hog all he wants of Erie.” Vanderbilt was credited with spending $7,000,000 in this operation, and it was the wonder of his friends that he was not ruined.

To tell fully the story of these battles of the financial giants would be beyond the scope of a sketch like this. How Gould and Fisk succeeded Drew in control of the Erie; how they nearly ruined him when he came back into the speculative field; how Judge Barnard authorized Gould and Fisk to sell their Erie stock, issued at 40, back to the corporation at any price less than par, is a story of surpassing interest, but it represents methods long since discarded in American finance.

THE CHICAGO AND BOSTON FIRES

DURING these years of unsettlement and wild speculation, the country seemed pursued by an evil destiny. About two years after business credit was so seriously disturbed by the incidents of “Black Friday,” a destruction of capital amounting to more than $200,000,000 was caused by the great fire in Chicago, and within another thirteen months came the great fire in Boston. It was a quiet Sunday on October 8, 1871, when a small wooden barn on De Koven Street, Chicago, surrounded by cheaply-built wooden buildings and lumber-yards, burst into flames. Sweeping ruthlessly through the fire-traps of the western division of the city, the fire soon got beyond control, wiped out the Union Depot and the Pittsburgh and Fort Wayne Terminal, and destroyed in this division alone five hundred buildings. This, however, was only a beginning. All night Sunday and the following Monday the flames steadily advanced over the southern division, comprising nearly the whole of the business district, and then to the northern division, comprising many private residences. Business blocks of brick and granite melted like wax before the flames, which swept clear up to the water-front of Lake Michigan, and spread a pall of smoke and cinders far across the northern sky. All the wholesale stores, the newspaper offices, and the principal banks, insurance-and law-offices were reduced to smoldering heaps of ruins. The court-house, custom-house, and other public buildings, and nearly all the hotels, suffered the same fate. Crowds of people, driven from their homes, camped in the parks and sought refuge in the buildings left standing.

In the southern division, which was the business district, it was calculated that 3650 buildings were destroyed, including 1600 stores, twenty-eight hotels, and sixty manufacturing establishments. The number of people rendered homeless was estimated at 2250 in the western division, 21,800 in the southern division, and 74,450 in the northern division. The total money loss in buildings was calculated at $53,000,000; business stocks and produce, $84,000,000; and personal effects, $58,000,000. This total of nearly $200,000,000 was swelled by the depreciation of property which naturally followed such a destruction of values. The total valuation of the city before the fire was estimated at $620,000,000, and the population at 334,270. The insurance in force in the burned district was about $100,000,000; but fifty-six insurance companies suspended, and only about $40,000,000 in insurance was collected.

The Boston fire broke out on Saturday, November 9, 1872. The fire-department was crippled in fighting the fire by a remarkable epidemic, or distemper, which prevailed among the horses. So completely were the horses of the city disabled that ordinary local deliveries of merchandise had almost come to a standstill; some of the street-railways had ceased running, and teaming by oxen or by gangs of men was the only means of moving freight. On Saturday, October 26, a meeting was held at the City Hall of the board of engineers of the fire-department to decide upon a course of action in case of serious fire during the distemper. It was decided that the strength of each fire company should be temporarily doubled by the enlistment of volunteers, and that drag-ropes should be furnished each engine-house for the purpose of drawing the apparatus by hand. But with these precautions was taken a step which probably contributed materially to the delay in attacking the fire of two weeks later. It was provided that the hose-jumpers should alone be taken out on a first alarm, and that the engines were to follow only in case of a second alarm, unless the fire was above the third story.

The neighborhood in which the fire broke out was at the corner of Kingston and Summer streets. This corner was then on the fringe of the business district, with the remains of some of the old aristocratic homes of the city still standing, which had, however, for the most part, been converted into boarding-houses. It was in a five-story granite block that the fire began, and the whole building seemed to leap into flames before there was any response from the fire-department. Inexplicable delays seemed to attend the arrival of the engines. The fire was already visible in Charlestown before 7:10, and the alarm at City Hall was received only at 7:24 P.M. from box No. 52. Box No. 52 was known among the city firemen as “a bad box,” because it was in the heart of the dry-goods district, which was filled up with costly and inflammable stocks, and the principal water-mains were of insufficient size, put in years before, when it was a region of quiet dwellings. Only two engines left their quarters on the first alarm. Two others soon followed, but it required the third alarm, at 7:34, to bring out the rest of the force. Then, as the fire was gaining headway, went out the general alarm, and messages were rushed by telegraph to neighboring towns and cities to come to the aid of Boston.

The fire was already beyond control. Walls were toppling into the street, great billows of flame surged into the air, and the fire began pressing through street after street until it destroyed Trinity Church and threatened the Old South. At this historic spot was wrought something like the “miracle” that occurred on the field of Waterloo, when the burning of the chapel at Hougomont stopped when it reached the crucifix. The Old South was saved, and the fire was checked at Milk Street on the line between Devonshire and Washington streets.

The out-of-town engines in the meantime had been pouring into the city at all hours of Saturday night and up to Sunday morning, and rendered heroic services in raising a wall of water against the flames. Crowds of citizens gathered on the corners and watched the struggle to stay the fire. President Eliot of Harvard University mingled with the crowd, his mind weighed down perhaps by the thought of the injury to Harvard’s endowments invested in Boston real estate. Phillips Brooks, the young rector of Trinity, stayed in the church, then on Summer Street, near Hawley, until lines of flame were creeping along the rafters. Powder was used in some cases to blow up buildings and thereby destroy the fuel for the flames.

In Boston as in Chicago, soldiers were called to the aid of the civil authorities to patrol the smoking heaps of ruins, in which were buried many safes containing money, jewelry, and valuable documents. Serious as the fire was, it did not sweep over any such territory as in Chicago, nor represent half of the Chicago loss. The total loss in Boston was estimated at $75,291,530, out of a valuation for the entire city (which did not then include Charlestown and other suburbs) of $682,724,300. Buildings and property were largely insured, but the magnitude of the calamity again carried down many insurance companies and permitted them to pay only a percentage of their losses. Upon the whole, however, the insurance companies acquitted themselves with remarkable credit, the Massachusetts mutual companies, of which there were fourteen, paying losses in full except two. Companies organized in other States to the number of about 120, which had Boston risks, paid their losses in full, with the exception of four companies.

THE PANIC OF 1873

THE panic of 1873 was the natural result of the destruction of capital by war, fire, and unwise investment which had been going on during the previous decade, and of the encouragement given to speculation by a fluctuating paper currency. The money-markets of the world had to reckon not only with the enormous destruction of property during civil war in the United States, but with the similar fruits of two other recent wars: that between Germany and Austria in 1866, which was crowned by the victory of Germany at Sadowa, and the great war between France and Germany in 1870, for which France was compelled to pay to Germany an indemnity of a thousand millions of dollars. The direct cost of the American Civil War, exclusive of pensions, has been estimated at more than $5,500,000,000, and the cost of the Franco-Prussian War at only $2,700,000,000, owing to its shorter duration. An enormous amount of capital also was absorbed in the ten years prior to 1873 in the building of railways. New construction in the United States in 1870 was 5690 miles; in 1871, 7670 miles; in 1872, 6167 miles; and in 1873, including a part of the period of panic, 3948 miles. In Russia a system of 12,000 miles of railway had been almost entirely created since 1868, and in South America nearly $200,000,000 in English capital had been borrowed, mostly for railway enterprises. It was at about this period also that the substitution of Bessemer steel for iron began, as the material for rails, sending thousands of dollars’ worth of old rails to the scrapheap.

The severity of the panic in the United States, as well as in Austria, was heightened by the state of the currency. There had been, up to the climax of the Civil War, an almost uninterrupted decline in the value of the paper money issued by the United States Government, and a corresponding rise in paper prices. With the close of the war, these movements were reversed. A rise in the value of the currency began, and also a decline in prices. This decline in prices spelled ruin to many who had bought real estate or merchandise in the expectation of its rise in value, and it imposed paralysis even upon the more conservative, who had correctly read the downward tendency of values expressed in paper money.

The specific cause usually assigned by economic historians for the panic of 1873 was the failure of the great house of Jay Cooke and Company, as the result of tying up its resources in the Northern Pacific Railway. The incident was, however, only typical of the times; and if Jay Cooke never had lived, the story would have differed chiefly by the substitution of another name for his. The house of Jay Cooke and Company had grown to power and prestige by the clever and original methods employed by Mr. Cooke in borrowing money for the Government during the Civil War. Cooke was a true child of the new America, the first or nearly the first male child born, as he was fond of boasting, in Sandusky, Ohio. Through political and social connections, he entered a Philadelphia banking-house during the period of hazardous financing and State banking before the Civil War, and had made enough money by 1859, while still under forty years of age, to contemplate retiring from active business. But his was not a nature for inactivity. The close relations established by his father and his brother with Salmon P. Chase, the new Secretary of the Treasury, obtained Cooke a hearing in the floating of the early war loans. He was not of the old style of banker, who sat in his office waiting for a customer to come in; he quickly realized that if the Government was to obtain the money necessary to carry on the war, it must be by educating the people to understand the value of the war bonds, and the necessity of taking them as a patriotic duty.

It was a wonderful campaign of advertisement, of canvassing the post-offices, of manipulating the press, and of removing opposition, which Cooke carried on in floating hundreds of millions of the five-twenties, the ten-forties, and the seven-thirties. The later flotations, however, which came after the war, required perhaps as much skill as the earlier ones, because they involved persuading the people to retain their public funds while accepting considerable reductions of interest. Inevitably Cooke’s success drew competitors into the field. When the question of refunding arose, a committee representing other New York banking-houses appeared in Washington to demand a share in the operation. The composition of this committee is of interest because it was virtually the first appearance on the stage of public finance of John Pierpont Morgan, then a young man of thirty-five. He, with Levi P. Morton, who had established the banking-house of Morton, Bliss and Company, and had enlisted the aid of the Rothschilds, appeared in Washington in January, 1873, and demanded and obtained from Secretary Boutwell a share in the new issues. The methods of the syndicate had little of the “go” of the old Cooke methods, and already the tightening of the money-market was making itself felt. Where subscriptions of $600,000,000 had been expected for the new loan, they amounted after several weeks to less than $50,000,000, and the entire operation was ultimately suspended by the outbreak of the panic.

The lack of uninvested capital to subscribe for the government loan was a warning of conditions prevailing in the money-market generally. Jay Cooke, swept along by the great success of his methods in disposing of the war loans, believed it possible to perform the same miracle with the bonds of the Northern Pacific. It was his calculation that he could sell bonds as fast as he was called upon for money for the work of construction, and it was distinctly provided in the contract with the road that the advance in excess of the amounts realized from sales of bonds by the bankers never should exceed $500,000, which itself was secured by the deposit of the company’s bonds at fifty cents on the dollar.

During the summer of 1872, however, with President Grant’s campaign for re-election against Horace Greeley at its height, sales of bonds fell to a few hundred thousand dollars a month, while the drafts of the treasurer of the railway company were running at about $1,000,000 a month. Inevitably, the balance of floating indebtedness by the railroad to the banking house began creeping up, until it stood near the close of August at $1,583,000. Ex-Secretary McCulloch, who had become head of the London connection of Jay Cooke and Company, and other associates of Cooke were quick to realize that the house was getting into deep water, and that further uncovered advances must be stopped. It was much easier to lay down this rule, however, than to carry it out. Already there were complaints along the line of construction that wages were not being paid promptly and that men were being laid off. Smaller railway enterprises in hands less strong were going to the wall from similar causes, and in October, 1872, the coupons were defaulted on the St. Paul and Pacific road, in which a controlling interest was owned by the Northern Pacific.

The year 1873 was thick with omens of disaster for the new railway enterprises. The Boston fire of the previous November, while not so disastrous as that in Chicago the year before, caused a crash in the stock market similar to that which followed the San Francisco fire in 1906. Scandalous frauds were disclosed in the management of the Erie Railroad; General John C. Frémont failed conspicuously in an effort to raise money for the Southern Pacific system in France; and at last grave exposures were made in connection with the Union Pacific Railroad, which resulted in the Crédit Mobilier investigation and its long train of scandals. A traveler in Germany wrote home in August that an American railway bond, “even if signed by an angel in heaven, would not sell.” So desperate was the situation becoming that Henry Cooke, brother of Jay Cooke, put his chief dependence, in a letter to his brother, on “an unfailing confidence in the God in Whom we put our trust.” “I do not believe,” he said, “He will desert us.”

But the Lord did not intervene to prevent the results, which seemed to the profane to be an inevitable outcome of economic laws. Jay Gould was still manipulating a powerful gold pool in the late summer and early autumn, when on September 8, 1873, the first rude blow was given to the card house of the New York money-market. The New York Warehouse and Security Company suspended, followed five days later by a firm with which Daniel Drew was associated. When Jay Cooke reached his Philadelphia office on September 18, he found a despatch announcing that the New York office had been closed by his partners in that city. The news spread like fire on one of the Northern Pacific’s own dry prairies. Other houses fell the same day or the next day; stocks dropped from twenty to forty points; money could hardly be had at any price; and the Stock Exchange Committee closed the exchange, in the language of the vice-chairman, “to save the entire Street from utter ruin.”

While ultimately the assets of the failed house proved to be amply adequate to meet its liabilities, the career of Mr. Cooke as a financier was ended. Facing cheerfully for a time the prospect of extreme poverty, he found his fortune partially recouped six years after the panic by an almost forgotten mining investment. Repurchasing his old home in the suburbs of Philadelphia, he continued to live there, content with the society of his children and grandchildren, his farming and fishing, almost forgotten by the new generation of Americans, until his death in 1905 at the age of eighty-four. In his great cape cloak and his wide-brimmed, gray, soft felt hat, set over a gentle face adorned by a long white beard, his patriarchal figure was long familiar in the streets of Philadelphia, a very different type from the shrewd, grasping men who speculated in their country’s fortunes in the New York gold-room.

THE FIRST MOVE FOR A CONTRACTION OF THE CURRENCY

THE disorder and discouragement caused by the panic did not make easy the return to a sound monetary system. Already, prior to 1873, the people had expressed themselves against the policy of acute contraction so vigorously urged by Secretary McCulloch. The return of the Southern States to the Union naturally opened a new field for the circulation of greenbacks and national bank-notes. Influenced by this wider area of circulation for the employment of money, and by the improvement of public credit, the greenbacks rose from a gold value of $49.50 in 1865 to $71.20 in 1866, for $100 in paper. There was little further change in average value until 1870, when there was a gain of about $10 per $100 and a further advance the next year to $88.70, which remained substantially the average during the years of depression that followed. The average value of these years, however, is no measure of the fluctuations, which arose naturally from differences in the demand for currency and were made erratic from time to time by speculation.

Up to 1875 no one knew what steps were to be taken, or whether any were to be taken, to restore specie payments. Half a dozen different schools argued crudely, with imperfect economic knowledge and narrow horizons, as to the proper policy to be pursued. For a moment the sturdy Scotchman, McCulloch, at the head of the Treasury from 1865 to 1869, carried Congress with him in his policy of sharply contracting the volume of government notes by an issue of bonds. A resolution passed the House of Representatives on December 18, 1865, by a vote of 144 to 6, that the House cordially concurred in the view of the Secretary of the Treasury in relation to the necessity of a contraction of the currency, with a view to as early a resumption of specie payments as the interests of the country would permit, and that “We hereby pledge coöperative action to this end as speedily as practicable.”

The problem was not, however, so simple as it seemed. The greenbacks formed considerably more than one half of the currency circulation of the country. Unless gold or some other form of currency could be brought in, their retirement would mean violent contraction at the very moment when the new field of the South had been opened to the national money. While such a contraction would undoubtedly have tended to bring the greenbacks up with a jerk to their old parity of 100 cents in gold, such a sudden enhancement in the value of the monetary unit would have caused a fall in prices which would have spelled wide-spread ruin. Only vaguely, apparently, was this danger apprehended by advanced economists; but the danger was real enough to arouse among the masses, especially in the debtor States, stubborn opposition to immediate resumption or to the reduction of the volume of paper currency. Mortgages on farms, running for three, five, or even ten years, which had been incurred in paper, if required to be paid back in gold would have absorbed more than the total value of the farms. Other conditions are thus summed up by Senator Theodore E. Burton of Ohio in his “Life of John Sherman” (1906):

Prices were high in 1865; great investments were made in numerous enterprises at the existing high prices; agricultural areas of the West were rapidly developed, and the production of cereals vastly increased. With the returning soldiers of the disbanding armies, and increased immigration from abroad, new fields were settled. The change of so great a multitude of soldiers from consumers to producers, changed the relation between demand and supply in many classes of products.

WHETHER TO PULL THE GREENBACK UP OR THE GOLD DOLLAR DOWN

DURING the thirteen years from July 1, 1865, to July 1, 1878, six months before the resumption of specie payments, the net monetary stock of the country in circulation remained practically stationary, and the per capita average was reduced by the addition of thirteen millions of population from $20.57 to $15.32. It is not surprising that under the pressure of such drastic contraction, all manner of financial heresies sprouted and thrived. The amazing proposition came from President Johnson himself, in his annual message of 1868, that inasmuch as the holders of government securities had received upon their bonds a larger amount than their original investment, as measured by gold, it would be just that the six per cent. interest then paid them should be applied to the reduction of the principal of the debt, thus liquidating it in sixteen years and eight months. Thaddeus Stevens, the great congressional leader of the Civil War, made violent speeches in favor of paying the bonds in paper. In the West, the proposition was so warmly advocated by Senator Thurman of Ohio that it became known as “the Ohio idea.”

It is a question whether the soundest economic policy would not have been to take the resolute steps for resumption supported by McCulloch and the Eastern bankers, and at the same time to adopt a new monetary unit which recognized the status quo; in other words, to create a new gold dollar worth 75 or 80 per cent. of the old. This was the principle adopted by Austria-Hungary in 1892, by Russia in 1895, and by Mexico in 1905, in bringing to an end the instability of their currency and planting it upon a permanent basis of gold. The conclusive argument for such a policy lies in the fact that it recognizes and crystallizes the existing purchasing power of money, in which prices are expressed, instead of seeking violently to change it. It thus permits the transition from the old unstable basis to the new fixed basis without jar, and without radically changing the relations between the holders of money and those who are under contracts to pay money.

Monetary science was less advanced, however, in 1865 than it is in our time. In the United States the problem of the monetary unit was entangled by both parties with the very different problem—whether the bonded debt of the Government should be paid in the money in which it had been promised. While ultimately the country reached the ideal of the most pronounced hard-money men of pulling the greenback up to 100 cents in gold, it was at the cost of six years of falling prices, which spread a pall over real estate and industrial development, and ruined many men who had in good faith bought property at its valuation in paper when paper was the legal-tender money of the country.

The ink was hardly dry on the resolutions by which the House approved the proposals of Secretary McCulloch in 1865 before a counter movement set in. By the following April a bill had been enacted aimed at tying the secretary’s hands by limiting the retirement of United States notes to $10,000,000 for the next six months, and thereafter to $4,000,000 a month. In the face of two succeeding annual reports by the secretary in favor of contraction, Congress, by the act of February 4, 1868, suspended entirely his authority to make any reduction of the currency by retiring or canceling United States notes.

THE FINANCIAL BOOM

“Lay low!”

FROM A CARTOON BY THOMAS NAST IN “HARPER’S WEEKLY,” DECEMBER 27, 1879

GENERAL GRANT’S SERVICE TO SOUND MONEY

THUS matters stood up to the inauguration of President Grant. Early in his term was passed the “act to strengthen the public credit,” with its courageous declarations that “the faith of the United States is solemnly pledged to the payment in coin, or its equivalent, of all obligations of the United States not bearing interest, known as United States notes, and of all interest-bearing obligations of the United States.” The final clause was subject to a few proper exceptions; but coin was then held to mean gold, and the Government thus stood committed to establish its monetary system, as well as to discharge its debts, upon the basis of other advanced nations. General Grant as President brought to the solution of financial problems much of that grim, hard sense which served him so well in the field. In his annual message of 1869 he urged resumption of gold payments, but added:

BY INFLATION YOU WILL BURST

UNCLE SAM: “You stupid Money-Bag there is just so much Money in you; and you can not make it any more by blowing yourself up!”

LET WELL ENOUGH ALONE, AND DON’T MAKE IT WORSE

Money is tight, but let it recover itself naturally, and then it will stand on a Sounder Basis.

Stimulants or Inflation only bring final collapse.

FROM CARTOONS BY THOMAS NAST IN “HARPER’S WEEKLY,” DECEMBER 20, 1873

“Immediate resumption, if practicable, would not be desirable. It would compel the debtor class to pay, beyond their contracts, the premium on gold at the date of their purchase, and would bring bankruptcy and ruin to thousands.”

RESUMPTION (?)

UNCLE SAM: “There is no circulation in that leg, and it’s swelling every day more and more. Mortification will set in, and I am sure my other leg will be affected. Now Dr. SHERMAN, something must be done, and quick, too.”

FROM A CARTOON BY THOMAS NAST IN “HARPER’S WEEKLY,” NOVEMBER 29, 1879

But Grant, like other Republican Presidents, set his face like a flint against further inflation. When he received from a Congress controlled by his own party the so-called “Inflation Bill” of 1874, authorizing the increase of the volume of greenbacks to $400,000,000, he promptly returned it with his veto. John Sherman, a leading member of the Senate Committee on Finance, who had been unwilling to follow McCulloch in 1865, became convinced by 1873 that the time had come for setting a definite date for specie resumption. His method was not to retire the greenbacks, but to provide a gold fund for their current redemption. It was not until the crushing Republican defeat in the Congressional elections of 1874, however, that the party was ready for action. In the short session of December a special committee of Republican senators was appointed, from whose labors emerged the Resumption Act of January 14, 1875. It was a vague and evasive measure, purposely avoiding questions upon which there were wide differences of opinion; but it contained the one salient declaration that “on and after the first day of January, 1879, the Secretary of the Treasury shall redeem in coin the United States legal-tender notes then outstanding, on their presentation for redemption at the office of the Assistant Treasurer of the United States in the City of New York.” It also placed power in the hands of the Secretary of the Treasury to prepare and provide for resumption.

WHEN THE GOLD WAS THERE IT WAS NOT WANTED

MARKET conditions did not at once respond to this promise; but after the election of Hayes, a sound-money President, in 1876, and the gradual accumulation of gold, under the guiding hand of John Sherman, as Secretary of the Treasury, the same man who had managed the passage of the Resumption Act, it began to be understood that specie resumption was to be actually accomplished. The banks of New York City, which held about $125,000,000 of the $346,000,000 in legal-tender notes outstanding, abolished special gold deposits and agreed with the Treasury to receive and pay balances without discrimination between gold and notes. The news of these arrangements, completed in November, 1878, removed lingering doubts. In the gold-room of the New York Stock Exchange—the scene of so much agitation on “Black Friday” nine years before—a sale of gold was made, on December 17, 1878, at 12:29 P.M., at par. It was the first sale at par in sixteen years, but so quietly was the transaction accomplished that only three or four persons who stood near the registrar’s desk were cognizant of it. When the first of January, 1879, dawned, the banks, which might have presented millions of notes for gold, did not ask for a dollar; and the dull corridors of the New York Sub-Treasury hardly afforded an indication that the United States had reached and passed a crucial point in her history and on that day had reëntered the circle of solvent nations. Truly, the experience of that day, carefully prepared for as it had been, and attained at much cost and suffering, seemed to verify the contention of those who for many years had insisted that “The way to resume is to resume.”

BE SOUND IN MIND AND BODY

UNCLE SAM: “As long as I keep these outstanding notes on my mind, which I am well able to pay, I am violating the laws of my constitution: and how can I expect my body to recover when my mind is not at ease?”

FROM A CARTOON BY THOMAS NAST IN “HARPER’S WEEKLY,” DECEMBER 13, 1879

THE “CROSS OF GOLD”

TWENTY-ONE years were to pass, however, before the country was to be extricated finally and absolutely from the shadow of an uncertain monetary standard. Specie resumption had not been accomplished when a bill was passed over the veto of President Hayes, on February 28, 1878, providing for the infusion of large masses of silver dollars into the circulation. This was followed by the so-called Sherman Silver Law of 1890, further increasing the amount of silver to be absorbed by the Treasury. The underlying motive for an increase in the monetary stock was the steady contraction which had been going on in the effort to restore the paper dollar to its old parity with gold; and for a time the country absorbed without apparent risk the additions made by the silver to the currency of the country. Gold exports set in, however, in heavy volume after the law of 1890; the Treasury began to lose its gold; and soon after the inauguration of President Cleveland, in 1893, the country stood face to face with the destruction of the gold standard. Panic supervened, and only at a special session of Congress in the autumn of 1893 was the further purchase of silver suspended by law.

The country lay prostrate for three years under a variety of ills, from which a young prophet from the West sought to rescue it by raising the standard of the free and unlimited coinage of silver “without the aid or consent of any other nation.” For a moment it seemed that the majority of the voters would respond to the electric thrill conveyed by this young leader, William Jennings Bryan, to the Democratic National Convention of 1896, when he wound up his famous speech with the declaration, “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!”

A REAL CROSS OF GOLD

THE country decided for the continuance of the gold standard, and its decision was crystallized into law by the act of March 14, 1900. This act set aside for the protection of the greenbacks the sum of $150,000,000 in gold, to be kept inviolate from all other uses, and declared the bonds and other obligations of the Government to be redeemable in gold and in gold only. But the causes that were operating prior to 1892 to cause contraction in the monetary stock were reversed after that date by the great outpouring of new gold from the mines of South Africa and the Klondike. New processes of separating gold from low-grade ores made profitable fields that in earlier years would have been considered unavailable. The gold production of the world rose from $113,000,000 in 1890 to $202,251,000 in 1896 and $454,000,000 in 1910. Gold flowed into the Bank of England in the summer of 1896, even while Mr. Bryan was making his canvass for free silver, to an amount never before recorded in monetary history; and the beneficent flood soon overflowed the coffers of the advanced commercial nations and filled up the void in metallic money in such developing countries as Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and India. In place of the fear of a scarcity of gold, which hung like a pall over some minds at the close of the last century, such a redundancy of the yellow metal arose that swollen bank reserves stimulated loans at low rates, manufacturing plants were extended, and prices of commodities advanced with a rapidity which lessened the purchasing power of wages and threatened to reduce the world to the unfortunate state of Midas, making gold a curse instead of a blessing.

It is this situation which has reduced the real income of the laborer, the professional man, and other classes, through the diminished purchasing power of their money, which is imposing a true cross of gold on the world to-day, and which presents to a new administration the problem of finding a way to establish and maintain an equitable standard of value.

Owned by Ernest W. Longfellow and now in the Boston Museum of Art. Half-tone plate engraved by H. Davidson

THE WIDOW

FROM THE PAINTING BY COUTURE

(EXAMPLES OF FRENCH PORTRAITURE)

❏
LARGER IMAGE

FOR A BLANK PAGE

BY AUSTIN DOBSON

LIFE, like a page unpenned,
Spreads out its whiteness,
Nothing, from end to end,
Marring its brightness.

Surely a field to claim

Steadfast endeavor?

Where one might win a name

Vocal forever?

Now—to review it all—
What a prosaic,
Patched, unmethodical,
Paltry mosaic!

Plans that ne’er found a base;
Wingless up-yearning;
Speed, that ne’er won the race;
Fire, without burning;

Doubt never set at rest,
Stifle or falter it;
Good, that was not the best—
Yet, would you alter it?

Yet, would you tread again

All the road over?

Face the old joy and pain—

Hemlock and clover?

Yes: for it still was good,
Good to be living;
Buoyant of heart and blood,
Fighting, forgiving;

Glad for the earth and sky,
Glad—for mere gladness;
Grateful, one knew not why,
Even for sadness;

Finding a ray of hope
Gleam through distresses;
Building a larger scope
Out from successes;

Careless of loss and gain,
Rendering ever,
Both for the joy and pain,
Thanks to the Giver.

So, though the script is slow,
Faint though the line is,
Let the poor record go,
Onward to Finis.

From a photograph by Pach

THE MORGAN LIBRARY, EAST THIRTY-SIXTH STREET, NEW YORK

(Architects, McKim, Mead, and White)

MR. MORGAN’S PERSONALITY

AS VIEWED BY HIS FRIENDS

BY JOSEPH B. GILDER

IT was in the panic days of 1907—late October. The Secretary of the Treasury had hurried from Washington to New York, and was spending his days (long days they were, too) at the Sub-Treasury and his evenings at the Manhattan Hotel, where all who needed to could see him. Meanwhile the bankers conferred daily at Mr. Morgan’s office, across the street from the Sub-Treasury, and nightly at his library in Thirty-sixth Street. While they put their heads together and worked out details, their host spent most of his time in his private room in the library building, not infrequently playing solitaire. But he was always within reach when counsel was needed; and his word was law.

To allay popular fears, it was decided to issue a public statement, and the library conferees prepared one and took it up to show to Secretary Cortelyou at his hotel. Mr. Morgan went with them. He had not yet seen the statement, and when one of the party started to read it aloud, he stopped him at the first sentence. “Is that correct?” he asked. “It will be by the time the statement is published,” was the reply. “No, gentlemen, that won’t do. If it isn’t so now, we can’t say it. We’ve got to state the facts exactly as they are. The public must have the truth and nothing but the truth.” And the statement was modified accordingly.

Mr. Morgan had had just half a century’s preparation for doing the public the immense service he rendered it in “composing” the panic of 1907; for he had been in the banking business since 1857—another panic year. Ability, experience, character, reputation, and financial resources were his, and had put him in a position to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm. He had done wonders to preserve the national credit before the year 1907, but it had never fallen to his lot to do anything quite so spectacular (though unintentionally so) as he did at this time. What he did, no one else, however capable, could have done, or, at least, have done so well. It needed just the combination of attributes and qualities he possessed to give the needed authority to his acts.

His whole character was summed up in the brief sentences addressed to his fellow bankers in Mr. Cortelyou’s presence. Always his words were few; but always they were pregnant and unequivocal. What he said he meant, and what he meant he said.

It is no truer that Wall Street—“the Street” par excellence—is the financial center of the Western world than that Mr. Morgan was the dominant personality therein. He himself was not the Street, for that term includes the Stock Exchange, a large part of the activities of which are purely speculative; and at no time in his life was Mr. Morgan a speculator. Wall Street signifies, and will increasingly signify, as time goes on, the abiding-place of bankers rather than of brokers; and it was in the banking world that Mr. Morgan reigned supreme.

The transactions in which he was the chief factor ran all the way up to the more than $1,400,000,000 capital of the United States Steel Corporation. The total amount involved in his organizations and reorganizations of railways, industrial concerns, and public utilities, and his flotations of American and English government bonds, was thousands of millions of dollars. Never has one man exercised such control over the accumulated wealth and undeveloped resources of a great country. The power appeared to be despotic, but if it really was so, the despotism was so tempered by probity and a high sense of responsibility as to lose all the terrors the term usually connotes.

An old friend, a banker in close touch with many of Mr. Morgan’s most important operations, was asked the secret of his success. “There was no secret about it,” said he. “I think his chief asset was integrity. Of course, being honest doesn’t make a man rich. He must have—as Mr. Morgan had—immense energy and ability. But a man in the banking business can’t make a great success with these qualities alone. At the ‘Money Trust’ inquiry it was shown that the Morgan house had more than a hundred million dollars on deposit; and this was by no means high-water mark. Probably these deposits have been twice as great, at times. Now, no matter how brilliant a man is, people don’t put more than two hundred million dollars in his hands unless they know him to be honest to the core, as Mr. Morgan was.” When I quoted this to a clergyman, he said: “That is the business man’s point of view.” “So much the better for business,” I replied. The president of a great commercial bank made this confirmatory comment: “Mr. Morgan’s power lay in his keen sense of trusteeship.”

An intimate friend of Mr. Morgan’s, speaking of the financier’s mental attributes, remarked that his mind never appeared to work deliberately, logically, but to attain its results by intuition, as it were; in other words, he was a man of genius. What the business man usually lacks is imagination; but imagination was perhaps the largest element in Mr. Morgan’s mind. It was this that made his actions great. It was his constructive imagination that made it possible for Mr. Claflin, President of the New York Chamber of Commerce and himself a distinguished man of affairs, to say: “Like the founders of this nation, Mr. Morgan had prophetic vision; like them, he was an organizer of scattered possibilities and a builder of mighty structures such as no man had built before.” It was because of his imaginative force that Senator Root called him “the greatest master of commerce of the world”; and that Mr. Choate said that “only once in a generation is such a mind born in such a body.” And it was this that prompted our English kin to liken him to Cecil Rhodes, to Bismarck, and to Napoleon.

Mr. Morgan’s great gift to Harvard University was made in a way that illustrates his habitual promptness of decision. He and Mr. Rockefeller were among those who were asked to contribute to the habilitation of the Medical School. The latter caused a thorough investigation to be made, which lasted for six months. At the end of that time he received a favorable report and was advised to give $500,000. He bettered the advice, however, by giving a round million. Mr. Morgan’s course was equally characteristic. When the needs of the school were explained to him, he made an appointment to see two or three of the professors at his office. Entering from his private room with his watch in his hand, he said: “I am pressed for time and can give you but a moment. Have you any plans to show me?” The plans were produced and unrolled; and moving his finger quickly from point to point, “I will build that,” he said, “and that—and that—and that. Good morning, gentlemen.” The cost was over a million dollars. Mr. Morgan and Mr. Rockefeller had reached exactly the same conclusion as to the merits of the case and the amount of his contribution, but by what different methods!

Mr. Morgan’s activities and achievements in the financial field divide themselves into three main groups: the reorganizing of bankrupt railways, or railways threatened with bankruptcy; the forming of great industrial organizations, and the floating of corporate or government bonds. His chief performance in the last-mentioned line was the flotation of United States Government bonds in the year 1895, when, incidentally, Messrs. Morgan and Belmont arranged with President Cleveland and his Secretary of the Treasury further to protect the national credit by putting a stop to the menacing outflow of American gold to Europe.

At the age of seventy, the veteran financier was called upon to render another great service to the country by organizing and directing the forces that put an end to the panic of 1907, as noted at the beginning of this article. His efforts at this trying time won the gratitude and applause of all right-thinking men. Yet, five years thereafter, in the spectacular search for a bogy popularly styled the “Money Trust,” he was put upon the rack by a congressional committee and subjected to a prolonged quizzing. To a man so proud, so shy and so sensitive, the ordeal was a dreaded one, but he had made no attempt to evade it. In the end, it afforded him an opportunity of bearing emphatic witness that personal integrity is the basis of all credit. The tonic effect of this testimony was felt from one end of the land to the other, and, had the witness been a younger man, his gratification would have much more than outweighed the strain upon his nervous system. As it was, his friends do not attribute to this ordeal his collapse a few weeks later, while on his way to the scene of the excavations in Egypt which the Metropolitan Museum of Art was conducting at his expense.

Nothing has been said oftener of Mr. Morgan than that he was “a ‘bull’ on America.” One of his old friends disclosed, the other day, the origin of this “bullishness.” As is well known, Mr. Morgan was an optimist. His father’s temperament was the same, and the older man impressed upon his son—when he was returning to America more than half a century ago, to go into business—his own belief in this country and his faith in its future. “Any man who is a ‘bear’ on America is bound to fail,” he said. Coming from the lips of his father, whom during his life the son leaned on and respected, and whose memory he revered and honored, these words made an indelible impression on the young man’s mind; the more indelible as they confirmed his personal feeling and conviction and, in later years, his experience. As it turned out, his confidence in the country’s future was a potent factor in its material prosperity.

Current report has it that once, when Mr. Morgan invited into his firm a young man who had made a name for himself, he said, “I want you to come down here and ‘do things.’” Less well known—though as well worth preserving—is his word to another bright young man, in similar circumstances. Surprised no less than gratified at the invitation, the fortunate one exclaimed, “But what can I do for J. P. Morgan and Company?” “I don’t ask you to make money for us,” was the reply; “but we have a great many duties and responsibilities here, and I want you to come in and help us bear them.”

It is related that Mr. Morgan’s father once threatened to withdraw his power of attorney from the son, if the latter persisted in overworking. If the warning was given, it probably was heeded; but Mr. Morgan was always a great worker, though in his later years, at least, he realized the value of holidays, as is shown in the saying ascribed to him: “I can do a year’s work in nine months, but not in twelve.” Apropos is the legend that partnership in the Morgan house meant a short life, if not a merry one. Undoubtedly, all the members of the firm had their work cut out for them. It could not be otherwise in a house that stood at the top and meant to maintain its position. There was an immense amount of work to be done, and they were there to do it. But they were always men who liked to work; and the fact is that when a partner died or retired, it was at an age when death or retirement was not unnatural. There have been few exceptions to this rule. And one, at least, of Mr. Morgan’s former partners has survived his chief, though several years his senior.

Mr. Morgan’s own stalwart physique and capacity for work were an inheritance from his father, whose death, at seventy-seven, was due to an accident. Some of his indomitable energy must have come to him from his maternal grandfather and namesake, John Pierpont; for, when the Civil War began, that poet, patriot, preacher, and ardent reformer, after seventy-six strenuous years, had the pluck to enlist as a chaplain (though for a very brief service) and lived to be eighty-one years old.

It is recalled that at school Mr. Morgan was a writer of verse, but it does not appear whether this was due to the example of his grandfather, one of whose poems on the death of a child—“I Cannot Call Him Dead”—has gone into the anthologies.

An interesting incident relating to the poet is told me by a friend. During the Civil War, Father Pierpont (as he was called) was a clerk in the Treasury Department at Washington, and while there was often a visitor at the house of Paul H. Berkau, well remembered in Washington as president of the Schillerbund, a club for the study of German literature. The Berkaus were abolitionists, friends of Sumner and Julian, and other men of that faith, and this was a bond between them and their friend the poet. One day, when he came to see them, he found on the table a copy of his volume, “Airs of Palestine and Other Poems.” He took it up and wrote on the fly-leaf these lines:

“Shame! that my book should to my friend be sold

Rather than made a present of, or lent;
Sold, too, for paper, not so good as gold
By forty-eight or forty-nine per cent.

Jno. Pierpont.

Washington, D. C., 3 Dec., 1863.”

In 1902 one of the owner’s family, coming into possession of this volume, presented it to Mr. Morgan with this inscription:

This volume, formerly the property of my uncle, Mr. Paul H. Berkau, to whom the poet wrote the inscription, is respectfully presented by me to Mr. John Pierpont Morgan, who has done so much to keep our “paper” as “good as gold.”

Mr. Morgan received the volume with evident delight.

For many years it was Mr. Morgan’s custom to engage a furnished house in the city in which a general convention of the Episcopal Church was to be held (he himself being always a lay delegate from New York), and to entertain therein, as long as the convention lasted, a group of his particular friends in the episcopate. A private car conveyed these parties to their destination; and once, when the place of meeting was San Francisco, a special train was engaged for the long journey. Mr. Morgan’s guests on these occasions were usually Bishop Potter or (later) Bishop Greer of New York, Bishop Doane of Albany, the Bishops of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and the wives or other members of the families of these gentlemen. The present bishop of New York relates that once, when some one raised the question of the familiarity of the members of the party with the services of the church, it proved that their host was better versed in the collects, the hymns, and the Shorter Catechism than any of his clerical guests. This only confirms other anecdotes illustrating the extraordinary retentiveness of his memory; for, while he was a habitual church-goer, never missing a Sunday morning service if he was within reach of a church, he could hardly have attended as many services, in the course of his life, as the youngest of the bishops present. His similar hospitality and constant attention to the Archbishop of Canterbury, primate of the Church of England, during that prelate’s visit to America a few years ago, caused a wit to speak of His Grace as “Pierpontifex Maximus.”

His devotion to the interests of the church was of long standing. It showed itself, of course, at Highland Falls, on the Hudson, the village nearest his summer home; and more conspicuously at St. George’s in Stuyvesant Square, New York City, where the simple, impressive service chosen by himself was read at his funeral on the fourteenth of April. To the activities of this church—a body less distinguished for the wealth and social prominence of its members than for its work among the poor—he was for many years a liberal subscriber. The spacious, well-equipped parish-house commemorated his father-in-law, Mr. Charles E. Tracy, a former vestryman. And at a time when there was special need of larger revenues, he made it known that, for a considerable period, he would duplicate every contribution made by other parishioners. At the time of his death, he was senior warden of St. George’s, and he never had missed a meeting of the vestry when he was in New York.

His interest in denominational affairs manifested itself in other directions. To the building fund of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral in Albany he gave handsomely. When subscriptions were first asked for the building of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in New York, he put his name down for half a million dollars; and to this sum he afterward added $100,000. At a meeting of a committee appointed to raise money for a synod house, when he learned that $50,000 had been subscribed but that $250,000 more was needed, he made himself responsible for the whole amount, requesting that the earlier subscribers be relieved of their obligations. Finding, however, that Mr. Bayard Cutting wished to participate on equal terms in this gift to the General Convention, he contented himself with assuming one half the entire burden—which in its entirety proved to be $350,000 instead of the estimated $300,000. Thus his gifts in connection with the new cathedral amounted to nearly $900,000, and his friends in the church were not surprised that his will made no further provision for this great undertaking. Not only at home but abroad was he the cheerful giver the Lord is said to love, as witness the installation of electricity in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, at a cost approximating $200,000.

The benevolent institution that ranked next to the church in Mr. Morgan’s regard was the Lying-In Hospital, near St. George’s Church, in Stuyvesant Square. Having bought the house and grounds of the late Mr. Hamilton Fish, skirting Second Avenue from Seventeenth to Eighteenth Street, and some adjoining houses, he sent Dr. James W. Markoe abroad to study the hospitals of Europe, and in due time authorized the preparation of plans for a model building to cost about $750,000. By the time these plans had been drawn and specifications had been worked out, the price of materials had greatly increased, and the estimated cost proved to be about half a million more than was expected. Instead of abandoning the project, or waiting for prices to decline, or demanding a drastic revision of the plans, Mr. Morgan’s word was, “Go ahead—and cut out nothing.” When the hospital was built and thoroughly equipped, Mr. Morgan made up for the city’s inadequate annual contribution to this great charity by giving $100,000 a year toward its maintenance.

Harvard University, especially the Medical School; the Art Museum at Hartford, founded in memory of his father, Junius Spencer Morgan of London; the New York Trade School, which he handsomely endowed; the American Academy in Rome, and the Loomis Sanatorium were the other chief beneficiaries of his discriminating bounty. But the institutions, causes, and individuals (many of the latter personally unknown to him) that were indebted to Mr. Morgan for substantial aid, at one time or another, were innumerable as the autumnal leaves of Vallombrosa. Many of his benefactions were not publicly recorded, and if he recollected them himself, it was only because his memory was incapable of relaxing its grasp on anything, large or small, that had once entered it. As the London “Spectator” said, never was there a millionaire so set upon effacing his name from his deeds of beneficence.

Mr. Morgan’s connection with the Metropolitan Museum of Art dated from 1871, when the institution was organized. For twenty-five years he was one of the trustees, and since 1904 he had been president. He took an intense interest in its upbuilding, contributing thereto not only of his wealth but of his time and affection. So conspicuous was his identification with the art museum that it obscured his relations with the American Museum of Natural History, on the other side of Central Park. Yet these were equally close and well-nigh as important, involving forty years’ activity as a trustee and long service, first as treasurer and again as vice-president. Here, too, his gifts were lavish. His love of beauty showed itself in the presentation to the museum of large and choice collections of minerals and precious stones; but these were only a small part of his contributions, which included money for endowment, maintenance and research, as well as innumerable objects for exhibition.

Owing largely to modern facilities for travel and communication, the personality of the American Mæcenas was probably better known in foreign countries than that of any private citizen of the past. He was a very familiar figure in England, where he succeeded years ago to the headship of his father’s firm, as well as to the ownership and yearly occupancy of his father’s town house and country-seat; where most of his collections were kept for many years; and where his gift to St. Paul’s Cathedral showed his lively interest in the Church of England and in the City of London. He was equally well known in France, where he was the head of a banking-house and a benefactor of his favorite health resort, Aix-les-Bains; in Germany, where his presentation of an important letter of Luther’s to the Imperial Government was heartily appreciated; in Italy, where he endeared himself to Pope and people by the restoration of the cope of Ascoli, and where his last hours were passed; and finally in Egypt, the antiquities as well as the climate of which had an attraction for him that grew constantly stronger. Moreover, his fame as a collector made him an object of intense, if not altruistic, interest in the various lands in which he sojourned.

Having achieved an international reputation as a maker of money for his clients and customers, as well as for himself, Mr. Morgan found no less pleasure, but rather more, in making a new and quite as wide a reputation as a spender. His collections were made en prince. He never haggled over a bargain, but took a thing on the seller’s terms or left it. When he declined a book, a manuscript, or an object of art at the owner’s price, he must have been aware that that price was exorbitant; for his purchases were made with an open hand, many of them at figures that somewhat discounted the appreciation in values when competition should have become even keener than it was when he entered the field. His activities as a buyer doubtless caused a general rise in the price of rarities—an inevitable result of the rather rapid making of a collection that has recently been insured for $23,000,000 and would probably fetch a much larger sum if disposed of under favorable conditions. In estimating the commercial value of such a collection, it must be borne in mind that the number of masterpieces is virtually fixed, while the number of potential competitors for their possession continually increases.

When Mr. Morgan bought the house adjoining his father’s former home, No. 13 Princes Gate, London, joined the two, and filled the addition with things for which there had been no space before—having a room especially designed to hold the series of Fragonards; when he left in the National Gallery the Colonna Raphael, for which he had given a hundred thousand pounds or so; when he filled case after case in the South Kensington Museum with priceless treasures, he had no prevision that by far the greater part of his collections would be coming, before long, to New York. Their departure did not follow hard upon the passage of the law exempting from tariff charges works of art more than twenty years old. But when Mr. Morgan learned, last year, from Mr. Lloyd-George’s own lips, that if he should die while his collections remained in England, his estate would have to pay $300,000 or more on the Raphael alone, he promptly arranged to transfer his treasures to his own country, where the death duties are less onerous. And now that they are safely arrived, word comes, through his will, that in due time they may become permanently accessible to the American people. Already the literary treasures, safeguarded in the exquisite library building adjoining his house in Thirty-sixth Street, are accessible to accredited students and amateurs; hundreds of his art works—paintings, porcelains, carvings, tapestries, etc.—are on view in the Metropolitan Museum; and only the erection of a suitable building (presumably in the form of an addition to the museum itself) delays the revelation of the full extent of the rich and varied collections the acquisition of which gave so keen a zest to the financier’s later years.

Of Mr. Morgan’s many activities, he enjoyed none more keenly, and found none more beneficial, than yachting. As many days and hours as he could spare, he passed aboard his steam yacht, the Corsair, often spending the summer nights in New York Bay or on Long Island Sound, early in the week, and running up the Hudson, to his country home, for the week-end. Longer trips were made to Newport or Bar Harbor—with the New York Yacht Club, when its annual cruise was on; at other times with only his personal guests. From 1897 till 1899, he was the club’s commodore; and his hand went deep into his pocket to build the Columbia, which defended the America’s cup in the last of these years, and was used as a trial boat in 1901, when Reliance was the defender. The Corsair of 1891 (a 242-foot boat) was sold to the Government, as other yachts were, when we were at war with Spain, in 1898. As the Gloucester, under Captain Wainwright, she gave a very good account of herself at Santiago. That year the Sagamore served as flagship; but on the very day the Commodore sold the Corsair he had commissioned her designer, Mr. J. Beavor Webb, to build a boat sixty-two feet longer than the old one; and the next year the new Corsair was launched.

Mr. Morgan’s private signal was known in Europe as well as in home waters, though he never crossed the ocean on anything but a great liner, usually the flagship of the White Star Line. This line—the chief subsidiary of the International Mercantile Marine Company, one of his many organizations—was in a sense his pet; and the sinking of the Titanic, in whose construction he had taken the keenest interest, was probably a heavier blow to him than to any one to whom it did not bring personal bereavement.

Mr. Morgan’s great liking for collies is known to all lovers of dogs, and the Cragston kennels are decorated with many a first prize won at the Madison Square Garden and elsewhere. As a rule, the animals, young and old, are confined to their own quarters, well away from the house, and separated from the house grounds by the public road that runs along the bluff on the west shore of the Hudson at this point. Despite the comfort, not to say luxuriousness, of their surroundings indoors, they are always overjoyed to be let out; and one of their owner’s keenest pleasures was to see them released; to watch them dash, in a pack, to the gateway, turn sidewise in the air as they sprang through, then tear like mad down the road in the direction of Highland Falls and West Point, yelping as if possessed. After running a few hundred yards, they would turn as suddenly as they had started, and race back, passing the gate at full speed, and dashing another hundred rods or so, before turning again.

“Sefton Hero,” or some other great prize-winner, was likely to be seen about the house in the daytime; but to only one collie was granted the privilege of permanent occupancy. This was a dog that had been in the habit of running down the private road to meet his master on the arrival of the yacht, the private signal of which he had learned to recognize. One afternoon, in his zealous haste, he failed to see a railway train that arrived just as he reached the riverside. The cow-catcher struck him and tossed him many feet, but happily he landed on a bit of swampy ground with no bones broken. His devotion, with its almost fatal consequences, won him special privileges for the rest of his days.

Not long after the completion of Mr. Morgan’s greatest work as an organizer, he was the chief guest at a dinner of the Gridiron Club, in Washington—one of those functions where the newspaper “boys” have fun with the great ones of the earth. It was, of course, impossible to get him to talk; but leaving the room, late at night, his arm linked in that of his old friend Mr. George F. Baker, he exclaimed, “If only I were a speaker, how I should have liked to talk for an hour to-night, and tell them the story of the organization of the Steel Corporation!” He may have felt an equally strong impulse to unbosom himself on other occasions, but if so he repressed it.

An invincible shyness, which seemed hardly consistent with the man’s dominating forcefulness, made him as sedulous in avoiding publicity as many are in courting it. On certain occasions it was impossible for him to escape the spot-light; but when its rays fell full upon him his discomfort was obvious. Such an occasion was the dedication of the New Theatre, now the Century. As chairman, it was Mr. Morgan’s duty to receive the silver key of the building from the architect. For once he had to take the center of the stage in only too literal a sense. As he sat there throughout the addresses of Senator Root and Governor Hughes, alternately glancing at, and crumpling up, the scrap of paper on which his notes were written, it was an easy guess that the remotest corner of the attic would have been a preferable place of waiting; and when his turn came, and he had pronounced his two or three formal sentences, his relief was evident. Once, when he was called on for a speech, he said, “No, no, gentlemen; I have never made a speech in my life, and I’m not going to begin now.”

Now and then a business proposition of minor importance would be submitted for Mr. Morgan’s approval, which was usually given or withheld after apparently cursory consideration. If the matter came up again months afterward, and there was any difference of opinion as to its details, the recollection of the senior partner, who had given the thing five minutes’ attention, was invariably found to be more nearly correct than that of the juniors, who had had the handling of the business. Once in a way, Mr. Morgan might have occasion to borrow a small coin. If so, the next time he met the lender, no matter how many weeks had elapsed, he would recall the occurrence and repay the loan, as surely as if the amount were a quarter of a million instead of a quarter of a dollar. A table or a chair not in its accustomed place attracted his attention; a picture hanging slightly askew disturbed him. For ten or fifteen years before his death, it was his habit to play solitaire for a while before going to bed, and he arranged the cards with the utmost neatness and precision. For his mind was nothing if not orderly, and disorder in exterior objects disturbed it. When great affairs occupied it, there was no room for petty details; but in the absence of matters of moment, its craving for activity had to satisfy itself with whatever came to hand.

Mr. Morgan’s delicate sense of the fitness of things is illustrated by an incident related by the young lady who rebound some of the choicest books in his library. One of these is Geoffrey Tory’s “Book of Hours” (1525). Into the cover design Miss Lahey wove Tory’s name, as he himself was in the habit of doing; but Mr. Morgan would not allow her to reproduce the emblem of a broken jug which the old French artist had adopted as his sign-manual, using it on every page of his illuminations. Mr. Morgan’s feeling was that this device was too personal to the artist himself to be used on any work but that of his own hands.

The public was surprised at the fervent declaration of religious belief with which Mr. Morgan’s remarkable document began. It almost appeared that he regarded his faith as a thing so real, not to say tangible, as to be transmissible by legal process. Certainly it was fundamental in his own nature, and as potent a force as any that shaped his actions. In a noteworthy tribute in the “Outlook,” a former partner and most intimate friend, Mr. Robert Bacon, late Ambassador to France, sums up the matter in these few words: “He was a man of faith; not only religious faith, but faith in the universe, in humanity, in his country, in his associates, and in the highest standards of honor in both his public and his private life.”

A giant frame, an iron will,
A mind that sped as lightning speeds,
Cleaving a way for wits less keen—
A man whose words were deeds.

Simple, sincere, accessible
To all that sought; but woe betide
Him who before those piercing eyes
Faltered, evaded, lied!

And yet those eyes, so quick to blaze
And sear, were no less quick to bless;
For strength and courage, in great hearts,
Mate still with tenderness.

Honest, for honesty’s own sake—
Loyal, for so his soul was made—
With one swift glance he chose his ground,
And held it unafraid.

Keen to acquire, to spend, to give,
Ardent in all things, small in none,
He joyed and sorrowed, lived and loved
And toiled till his task was done.

J. B. G.

MAURICE MAETERLINCK

BY STEPHEN PHILLIPS

In the February number of “The Poetry Review,” M. Maeterlinck speaks of the editor of that magazine as “le bon poète, Stephen Phillips, dont je suis admirateur, fervent et fidèle.”—ED.

MASTER Mystic over Europe
Whom we did not gladly hear,
Now a sweet revenge thou takest
In the stubborn Saxon tear.

Murmuring of the bees about thee,
With a flight how like thine own,
Upward due to utter heavens,
Happy, be the flight but flown.

Standing half-way between two worlds,
All a-dream, yet dreaming true,
Lord of shadows, yet of shadows
Passing to a perfect blue.

All the ghosts that throng thy pages
Are more real than living wights,
All our noontides are not brighter
Than the brightness of thy nights.

What the dumb moon saith in splendor,
Or the husky bird at dawn,
Thou with human note expressest
Of our murmured fate forlorn.

What the sea would say to sunrise,
Memories of a speechless wind,
This thy muffled muse suggested,
All we seek yet never find.

Yet, forsaking lovelier fancies,
In thy Monna Vanna tale
Thou couldst grip a sterner story,
Hold us fast and leave us pale.

Still the wings we are not ’ware of,
Voices that we dully hear,
Spirit-music struggling downward,
Thou dost bring us dimly near.

I, detained in this ill island,
Where her mist the singer bars,
Hail thee angel of a twilight
Trembling momently to stars.

SOCIALISM IN THE COLLEGES

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF EDUCATORS FOR THE GROWTH OF REVOLUTIONARY OPINION

SIMON-PURE Socialism is so ugly, so red in tooth and claw, that to be hated it needs but to be seen and understood. Yet there are so many dilutions of Socialism on the market, emotional adulterations and attenuations of the genuine brand, that the inexperienced seeker is pretty sure to have a mixture far below full strength palmed off on him, and after tasting he will be likely to say that the stuff is not so bad, after all. Socialism is offered in the guise of bland and salutary reforms; it takes the form of ethical standards, of social justice, of uplift, and of progress and happiness for all; now it is the shield that guards the poor and the helpless against the shafts of undeserved ill fortune, and now it stays the hand of the heartless oppressor. In its assumptions it is the Ten Commandments, it is the Sermon on the Mount, it is Christianity. Can we wonder that in these disguises it disarms suspicion and wins a tolerance that is already a half-way approval?

It is time that the men and women of this country awoke to an understanding of the true nature of Socialism, of what it is, what it aims to do, and how it seeks to achieve its ends. Socialism is revolution, it is blood, it is overthrow, spoliation, and a surrender of the priceless conquests of civilization, an extinction of the noble impulses that have raised mankind out of the condition of savagery.

It is time these things were known and understood, we say; it is time that foolish misconception gave way to clear knowledge, because Socialism is everywhere sowing its seeds, because it is spreading in the land, not insidiously, but by an open propaganda; because the principles of Socialism are taking hold upon the minds of youth through teaching permitted, or in the name of “academic freedom” actually encouraged, in our schools, colleges, universities, and even in theological seminaries. And it is only here and there that from some chair of instruction a voice is heard proclaiming the truth about Socialism, examining its foundations, subjecting its system and its principles to the test of reason and common sense, and picturing forth in the clear light of experience the consequences of substituting them for the existing social order. Having permitted this poison to be instilled into the minds of their students, it is the belief of men who have observed with growing apprehension the spread of Socialistic belief, that the country’s institutions of learning will be false to their duty if they fail to supply the antidote by establishing courses of instruction in which the fallacies, the falsehoods, and the dangers of Socialism shall be combatted by competent analysis in the light of history and economic truth.

No board of trustees, no faculty, can plead an excusable ignorance as to what Socialists intend. They differ as to plan and method, but they are agreed upon this foundation article of their faith:

The Socialist program requires the public or collective ownership and operation of the principal instruments and agencies for the production and distribution of wealth—the land, mines, railroads, steamboats, telegraph and telephone lines, mills, factories, and modern machinery.

“This is the main program,” says Morris Hillquit, and it “admits of no limitation, extension, or variation.” The Socialist program means, then, the abolition of private property in land and in investments, the abolition of rent, profits, of the wage system, and of competition. Some Socialists advocate confiscation by taxing at full value—for of course Socialism aims at full control of the powers of government; some, like the Industrial Workers of the World, would have the wage-earners take forcible possession of the factories and operate them for their own account; others would make a pretense of payment, while still others preach direct seizure. All agree that the land and the instruments of production and exchange must be taken out of the hands of private owners and transferred to the State, and assent to that foundation doctrine makes every Socialist a revolutionist. Obviously, it is a revolution that could succeed only through violence and bloodshed, but the real Socialists do not shrink from that extreme. “The safety and the hope of the country,” said Victor Berger, the Socialist member of the last Congress, “will finally lie in one direction only—that of violent and bloody revolution.” He advises Socialists to read and think, and also “have a good rifle.” But the literature of Socialism supplies proof upon proof that the capture of the Government and of property is to be effected by violence. Hence the Socialist’s hatred of the Army, of the Navy, and of the National Guard; hence his detestation of all manifestations of the sentiment of patriotism.

Indeed, one of the noblest expressions of that sentiment which our literature affords may serve as a complete demonstration of the conflict between the doctrines of Socialism and some of the convictions that have struck their roots deepest in our common life. The familiar lines of Fitz-Greene Halleck’s “Marco Bozzaris” admirably serve the purpose:

“Strike, for your altars and your fires;
Strike, for the green graves of your sires,
God, and your native land!”

Our “altars” are the symbol of our religion. “No God, no master,” is the cry of the Socialists, and it was only after a prolonged debate that a repudiation of religion was kept out of the Socialist platform of 1908. Our “fires” are our homes and hearthstones. Socialism would destroy the home. The revolting doctrine of promiscuity was applauded, and applauded by young women of the faith, at a recent meeting of Socialists. “The green graves of your sires”—those words should remind us that the earliest form of title to land was the right to inclose the graves of parents and kindred. Socialism permits no private ownership of land. “God, and your native land”—Socialism denies the Creator and puts the red flag above the Stars and Stripes. Could the grim meaning of this hideous creed be brought more directly home to the minds and hearts of American youth than by the evidence that it is a cold-blooded negation of the fine and lofty patriotism of Halleck’s adjuration?

Yet American youth by thousands are to-day under Socialistic teaching and conviction. In December, 1912, the Fourth Annual Convention of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society was held in New York. It was reported that there were fifty-nine “chapters” of the society in as many colleges and universities, including all the leading institutions of the country, and eleven graduate chapters. There were between 900 and 1000 members of the undergraduate chapters, and 700 graduate members. The list of “enthusiastic disciples of Karl Marx” among college faculties includes the names of many professors of national repute. Socialism is at work, too, in the schools, and it has schools of its own, and in this city its “Sunday-schools.” The doctrines are put before children and youth not as doctrines of destruction and confiscation, and of revolution by violence and bloodshed, but as principles of ethics, of social justice, and the common good, all leading up to the beautiful dream of the brotherhood of man. College students are asked to consider the working of some privately managed undertaking, and then by plausible illustrations it is pointed out to them that the State could perform the service much better, and thus the ground principle of Socialism gets a lodgment in minds insufficiently informed to detect the falsity of the teaching. In the children’s schools is used “The Socialist Primer,” in which by text and pictures hatred of the rich and well-to-do is implanted, and the workingman is presented as the helpless victim of greed and cruel oppression. The facts of Socialism, the truth about Socialism, are open to ascertainment by every college and university trustee, by every president, by every giver of funds whose benefactions are employed in part to support the teaching of this devil’s creed that is to supplant our old-time reverence for the altar, the hearth-fire, the family, the graves of kindred, and the flag. There is no vital difference between Socialists. The revolutionaries of the Haywood and Debs type and the evolutionary Socialists of the college faculties have virtually a common faith, and tend inevitably to the acceptance of one method for its attainment.

Is this teaching of revolution and confiscation to go on? A sound course of instruction devoted to the exposure of the fallacies, the falsehoods, and the destructive purposes of Socialism in every college where it has gained a foothold, would make the student immune to its poisonous delusions. Truth is the natural shield against error, yet only here and there has its protection been extended over the endangered youth of our colleges. The teaching of false history and false science would not be tolerated anywhere. Is it less important that young men should be safeguarded against false teaching in matters that go to the very groundwork of their morality and their citizenship? The trustees, presidents, and faculties of the country’s seats of learning have a duty to perform that they cannot longer neglect without inviting the sternest censure of public opinion.

THE MONEY BEHIND THE GUN

IN “The Flower of Old Japan,” a poem “for children between six and sixty,” Mr. Alfred Noyes represents his child seekers for the mirror of wisdom as encountering, among other personified phenomena of the adult intelligence, a curiously-inclined people known as the Ghastroi, of whom he says:

“Their dens are always ankle-deep
With twisted knives, and in their sleep
They often cut themselves; they say
That if you wish to live in peace
The surest way is not to cease
Collecting knives; and never a day
Can pass, unless they buy a few;
And as their enemies buy them too,
They all avert the impending fray,
And starve their children and their wives
To buy the necessary knives.”

The children are quite at a loss to know what to make of such a strange way of life.

Many children of a larger growth have wondered at the phenomenon of the actual world of which Mr. Noyes’s fancy is an allegory. But in the cultivation of the fear of war it has been left for the present year to reveal an aspect of sordidness the like of which has never before been known.

The world was startled, and all Germans were overwhelmed with mortification and shame, when in April the facts were made known concerning the way in which a market for military supplies had been created at Berlin. One great manufacturer of guns had been guilty of giving bribes within the very walls of the War Office. Another large company dealing in arms and ammunition had sent money to France in order to hire writers of anti-German articles, so that warlike feeling might appear to be stirred up, and the German Government be induced to place large orders for rifles and cartridges. All this went far beyond the ordinary manipulation of a “war scare.” With that we are familiar. It has frequently been seen in the United States. More than twenty years ago, when there was foolish talk about a war with Chile, a New Jersey steel-maker was heard to say, after the flurry was over, “Well, anyhow, it was a good enough war to secure me an order for $600,000 worth of ship’s plates.”

Such tactics by armor-makers and powder-manufacturers have often been exposed, but they fall short of the fiendishness of these German plottings. It is bad enough to work up an artificial excitement in your own land, to form leagues for a bigger army and navy, to point to various alleged foreign “perils,” to ply committees of Congress with fantastic military arguments, and to do it all, and finance it all, solely in order to get some fat government contracts. But to do what the German firm did is to pass beyond the mischievous and dishonorable into the diabolical. Deliberately and by means of money sent abroad to seek to rouse a hostile spirit and provoke a war for the purpose of making the weapon business good—this is to be willing to coin money out of the misery of two nations. It is to take the position that the blood of the killed and wounded and the tears of widows and orphans may be ignored if only they are “good for trade.” We have heard much of the mad competition in armament being a reduction of militarism to the absurd. These German revelations are a veritable reductio ad horribilem—all the more shocking because the German Emperor is to-day one of the greatest forces for peace.

Yet, when all is said, is not this thing, which the moral sense of civilized men pronounces shocking, only a development, one may say a logical development, of practices which have long been known and tolerated? There would seem to be only a difference in degree of turpitude between bribing one’s way to an order for cannon and paying out money, directly or indirectly, to secure general legislation which means money in a private citizen’s purse. This latter process has been not merely winked at in this country; it has been thought the regular and reputable thing to do. It has almost been honored. At least those who have profited by it have been honored. For years it was the vicious custom of corporations to group under “legal expenses” sums paid out to influence the legislature or Congress. Of one man prominent in his party, long in public life, and influential there, it was said that his motto, in politics as in business, was, “If you want anything, go and buy it.”

Such things were once far too common. They are frowned upon now, and we may believe that they are passing. It is necessary only to refer to what was done year after year in the matter of the protective tariff. The relation between campaign contributions and desired rates in the tariff bill was so close that it was hardly an exaggeration to say that the manufacturer put his coin in the party-treasury slot and drew out the customs duty he wanted. It seems certain that this habit of the “good old times” is disappearing before the spirit of the better new time. Yet evil is persistent. It is protean and recurrent. With all the gains that have been made, it is still true that the pecuniary view of legislation is too often met with. We laugh at “going in for the old flag and an appropriation,” but there are ways of corruption subtler than the blatant patriotic. In connection with too many bills and projects of law the questions are yet asked, “What is there in it for me?” “Who is putting up the money for this?”

Cases of outright legislative bribery are rare. In the few that do come to light or are suspected, proof of guilt is exceedingly difficult—how difficult, recent events at Albany have shown. But it is not the coarse methods of the purchaser or huckster in legislation that we need to guard against so much as the more insidious forms of swaying public legislation to private advantage. Too often, in connection with projects of law, a distinct “interest” appears. And frequently it is a moneyed interest. Movements that are artfully given the appearance of being spontaneous or voluntary are discovered to be secretly financed for secret purposes. The press is sometimes approached as well as legislatures and Congress. Sinister ends are craftily disguised. The very elect are occasionally deceived.

What is the remedy? It must be mainly moral. Against these anti-social practices the full power of social condemnation must be massed. The senses of men need to be sharpened until they can deny the truth of the cynical saying, “Gold does not smell.” Some gold does. And as against a private “interest” in legislation, there must be asserted, as the one standard, a broad State or National interest. Lacking that, no bill should be exempt from the severest scrutiny to expose a possibly selfish backing. That general principle established, and the further truth being insisted upon that no man shall be permitted before a legislative or congressional committee to be a judge in his own cause, the motive and the mischief of money-prompted legislation would be greatly diminished.

ONE WAY TO MAKE THINGS BETTER

THE FUNCTION OF HIGH STANDARDS IN LITERATURE AND THE ARTS

AT first thought, it seems like mockery to recommend to a world of social unrest and of shifting ideals, a world that for the most part is struggling for three meals a day, the efficacy of music, letters, and art to ameliorate its condition. “Emerson in words of one syllable for infant minds” will not reach below a certain intellectual stratum. Beethoven for the people seems a contradiction of terms. There are times when, despite the crowds at the museums, Michelangelo and the Greek marbles seem to have as little influence upon the stream of humanity as rocks upon the current of a river that flows past them. The cry for the elevation of the race, which is the dominant note—the Vox Humana—of our time, the hope that we may all move up together, is a logical development of the Christian idea and the most creditable aspect of the new century. The whole world is reaching for sun and air. The ambition of the wage-earner is a counterpart of nature, as Lowell reads it into his “June”:

“Every clod feels a stir of might,

An instinct within it that reaches and towers,

And, groping blindly above it for light,

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers.”

With the impetuosity and the lack of discipline of our day, this aspiration often overreaches itself. The highly stimulated desire for advancement is thwarted by unwillingness to take the plodding and the stony road. The treasures of the humble are forgotten. The quick fire burns up the substance and leaves but ashes. Meanwhile, it is something if, with Landor, we have

“warmed both hands against the fire of life.”

But, with all this impatience to “get culture,” and this rush to take beauty and intellectual resources to those who have them not, as food to the famine-stricken, we are in danger of forgetting the chief value of the best in literature and the arts: that it awakens the imagination and gives poise to life. Now, imagination and poise are two traits that differentiate man from the brute, and the superior man from the inferior. The best thinking is done by men of imagination; the best action is accomplished by men of poise; for, by poise is meant the faculty of holding one’s course courageously to the compass among contrary winds and waves. The value of high literary, artistic, and musical standards is not that they make poise and imagination universal, but that they affect the world secondarily, through the leaders in whom these qualities are developed. Who shall compute the worth to humanity of one great thinker, one great novelist, one great poet, one great painter, one great sculptor, one great composer? In debating societies, great material advances through invention and discovery are weighed in the balance with great achievements in arts and letters; but account is seldom taken of the intellectual forces that created the inventors and the discoverers.

It is because America is in need of great men that she stands most in need of these forces. The twentieth century appears to be a century of challenge to all the centuries that have gone before, with the accelerated momentum of them all. Now, more than ever, must we have men of imagination and men of poise, and every agency that gives promise of developing these traits deserves encouragement and support. The uplifting of the people to a high average of happiness is thus closely though indirectly related to the advance of literature and the arts.

COMMENTS ON “SCHEDULE K”

IN the paper on the tariff as applied to woolen goods, by Mr. N. I. Stone in the May CENTURY, it was stated: “The great factor in the woolen industry to-day is the American Woolen Company, popularly known as the Woolen Trust, which was said to control sixty per cent. of the country’s output at the time of its formation in 1899.”

Mr. Winthrop L. Marvin, secretary of the “National Association of Wool Manufacturers,” in a letter to THE CENTURY says: “The American Woolen Company makes annual reports. Its capital stock in 1899 was $49,501,100 and in 1909 it was $60,000,000. The total capital of the woolen and worsted industry of this country, as stated by the Federal Census, was, in 1899, $257,000,000 and in 1909 it was $415,000,000. The output of the American Woolen Company in any given year has been at a maximum $51,000,000. The total output of the industry in 1899 was $239,000,000 and in 1909 it was $419,000,000. These figures controvert the assertion of ‘sixty per cent.’”

Mr. Marvin also states that while the Tariff Board mentioned duties on certain English cloths as being “from 132 to 260 per cent.,” it also made plain that those very high rates were not actually effective, since American competition operated to reduce the tariff cost to an average of 67 per cent., “embodying the higher cost of American materials and labor.”

—THE EDITOR.

ON ALLOWING THE EDITOR TO SHOP EARLY FOR CHRISTMAS

Counsel to a Literary Aspirant who Wishes to Enrich the Yuletide

Dear Chalmers:

For years you have made no secret of the fact that you were studying Editors,—root and branch, genus and specimens. I know that you have diagnosed and pondered their little infamies, one by one. I know that you have pored over gossip of their habits and wiles—as chronicled by Sunday newspaper articles. I think I am not exaggerating when I surmise that you feel you know the tribe—analytically speaking—through and through.

And yet—and yet—you confessed to me not more than a month ago, with chagrin in your voice, that you have never dared attempt a Christmas story. Frankly, my friend, I was, and still am, surprised. You have been successful in more difficult things, yet you balk at a mere Christmas tale. I’ve thought about it so much that I am finally taking the liberty of sending you this letter, which you may, if you choose, regard as a monograph on “How to Write a Christmas Story.” As I have just sold my ninety-eighth tale of Christmas, I think you will allow that my counsel deserves some consideration.

First of all: be kind to the editor. Don’t put off sending him your story till the eleventh hour; but give him his chance to shop early. It is not his fault that his Christmas purchases have to be made before Labor Day. Therefore be considerate.

Spring is, of course, the best season to begin to think of tuning up for your December fiction. In any case, between the time the first dandelion shows its head and the end of July it is essential that you should tear yourself away from the play you are working on and oil your typewriter preparatory to the Christmas story. That accomplished, your task is all but finished. The only thing that remains before mailing off your tale of the Yuletide is to write it—a mere formality.

Of course you have to choose which Christmas story you will write. But that is a bagatelle. Fortunately the stereotyped varieties have become as easily classified as the different sorts of evergreen. A row of mental pigeonholes will contain the stock formulas. You have only to reach in and draw one out. Roughly speaking, the tales may be divided into those of the city and the country.

One favorite is the crusty millionaire story. You should make him a second Crœsus, dyspeptic, with a heart of flint. He bullyrags his servants unmercifully, and has no kind word for any one. He gets no happiness out of life, and will not permit anybody else to get any. Such carking selfishness is easily worth three thousand words. Then comes the great transformation scene, with incidental music of Christmas bells. A little child, a faithful old servant, the woman he did not marry:—one of these is the agent who sets him to giving away his money with both hands and—so we are led to believe—cures his indigestion.

If you have no fancy for this story, why not select the regeneration of the hardened man about town? He is irreproachably dressed, unspeakably bored, illimitably cynical, and inexpressibly selfish. The rise of the curtain finds him kicking some little dog that gets in his way. It is night. He wanders through the town in melancholy irritation. Then the story should run thus, to put it like an old-fashioned playbill of the melodrama: SCENE 1. Night in a great city.—Heartless Jack Mortimer.—The beggar repulsed.—The snow-storm.—The weeping newsboy.—“I haven’t any Christmas present for Mother!”—Jack Mortimer touched. SCENE 2. The slums.—The brutal policeman.—The comic washerwoman.—The garret.—“Hush, my child, there’s not so much as a single crust in the house.”—The arrival of Jack Mortimer.—The Christmas tree.—“God bless you, sir, you’re a real gentleman!” SCENE 3. On Fifth Avenue.—High Life among the 400.—The funny butler.—Florence in the conservatory.—The proposal.—“At last, Jack Mortimer, you have proved yourself a man!”—Great chime effect.—Curtain.

A variant on this is the story of the traveler who is stranded on Christmas eve in a strange city far from his family. Don’t forget to play up his extreme loneliness for a page or two. Then he either falls in with another homesick stranger, or helps out the party in distress who always appears at just the proper instant in this story. And at the end, his entire family, which has traveled all night, appears to surprise him.

So much for the city. After all, you were country-bred yourself, and if you prefer the country or the wilds for your story, they also are rich in stock devices. What better place than a Christmas story to tell of the old couple who have never had a child? We hear the ring at their door-bell, but as we turn the page no one is found at the door. But wait!—there in a basket is a cooing baby. A scrap of paper pinned to its dress begs, “Be good to baby!” And so on December 25, 19—, the old couple at last have their child.

It is also on December 25 that the selectmen of almost any town—your selectmen—have decided that at last poor old Marthy Pettibone—whose only son disappeared years ago—must be taken to the poor-farm. The carriage waits at the gate. Dejected Mrs. Pettibone has just gone back to get her bird-cage. At that instant a tall stranger, bronzed and bearded, wearing a massive gold watch-chain, strides up the path and knocks at the door. Need I go on?

Perhaps most reliable is the Christmas tale of the hinterland. A gang of unkempt lumbermen or miners are snowed up by the worst blizzard of the decade. It looks as if they would have to fall back on bad whisky as Yuletide recreation. At this point the fearless young girl appears on the scene, arriving somehow. (If necessary, use a flying-machine.) The whisky is put out of sight and mind, and clean red shirts are donned. Follows the scene of the Christmas tree with an improvised Santa Claus and comic gifts, succeeded by a spelling-match and Virginia Reel. And what end so appropriate as the picture of the young girl lifted on to a table while the rough diamonds drink her health in ginger-pop which the cookee produces at the right moment. That ought to be enough of a Christmas story for any one; but if more seems needed, insert at the proper point the defense of the girl—from a half-breed who would have whisky—by the young civil engineer of Harvard or Yale.

Or if you are not suited with any of these, why not take a shot at the yarn of Christmas at sea or below the equator? If, however, you sympathize with those who like an occasional pellet of religion sugar-coated as fiction, nothing is simpler than to give them the allegorical Christmas story. And I mustn’t conclude this survey of the property-room of holiday fiction without reference to the house-party story. The man must be very tall, very athletic, very handsome, and “virile.” The girl must have blue eyes and gold hair, be petite, and pert as a boarding-school miss. Remember to have them talk to each other as if they—and you—were being paid by the paragraph. The gatling-gun warfare of love-making must be carried on while they arrange the Christmas tree for little Tommy. And the hero’s final successful assault—with force used if necessary—must be made in the vicinity of the mistletoe.

Such, then, is the range before you,—of allegory, the city, the country, and that no-man’s land where picture men, seven feet tall, philander with debutantes.

The choice is yours; or, if you have no preference, it is easy enough to draw lots to decide. The whole business is almost too simple. At latest, midsummer should turn the trick. And you will be doing good all round.

The editor will be spared the pangs of reading Christmas fiction while making up his Easter number.

As for you, you will have no one but yourself to blame if you do not utilize holly, mistletoe, and chimes to finance your pleasant summer vacation.

Hopefully yours,
Leonard Hatch.

BROTHER MINGO MILLENYUM’S ORDINATION

(AS RELATED BY HIMSELF)

BY RUTH McENERY STUART

WHEN I was a little pickanin’,
Down on Sweet Gum plantation,
I used to heah de preacher preach,
An’ screech an’ screech an’ screech,
Expoundin’ out salvation.

He’d open up dat Bible-book
Befo’ de congregation,
An’, sir, he’d read dem Scriptures out,
An’ shout an’ shout an’ shout an’ shout,
Widout no education.

He nuver knowed ’is A, B, C’s,
Much less pronunciation;
But when he’d focus on a page,
An’ rage an’ rage an’ rage an’ rage,
Gord sont interpretation.

He’d show de devil’s forkèd tail
Out clair, in his noration;
He’d h’ist dat pitchfork up on high,
An’ cry an’ cry an’ cry an’ cry,
An’ p’int insinuation,

An’ I’d brace up an’ clench de pew
An’ try to hol’ my station,
Whilst he’d light up de fumes o’ hell,
An’ yell an’ yell an’ yell an’ yell,
’Tel we could smell damnation!

One day I swooned off in a tranch,
F’om brimstone suffocation;
An’ red-hot sins wid forkèd tails
Riz up wid wails an’ wails an’ wails
An’ stopped my circulation!

I felt jes’ lak a cushion o’ pins
Big as de whole creation;
My tongue was swole too thick to speak,

But de pins dey’d stick, an’ de sins dey’d shriek!

’Tel I los’ all sinsation.

******

I come th’ough on de tranch-room flo’,
Wid de mou’ners on probation;
An’ when I heerd ’em screech an’ screech

’Bout “a babe an’ sucklin’ called to preach!”—

Dat was my ordination.

BUSINESS IN THE ORIENT

BY HARRY A. FRANCK

HE is the selfsame fellow still, the Cairene merchant, as in the days of Harun-al-Rashid. His shop may be the lower story of a great modern building, his wares the products of monster factories; yet he squats in cross-legged contentment as of yore, amenable only to the loquacious system of bargaining dear to the heart of the Oriental. The Western tourist, foolishly regarding time as of value, will lose all equanimity long before he has completed the smallest transaction. If his knowledge of the East and his patience suffice, and he begins negotiations early enough in the day not to be driven forth as the merchant sets up his shutters at nightfall, he may obtain the article he seeks at a just and equitable price. If he gains possession of it in less than the accustomed time, he will certainly have paid more than its market value, be his business acumen what it may.

Vagamundo, the Western traveler experienced in the ways of the East, catches sight, during a stroll through the bazaars, of an Arabic blade that takes his fancy. It hangs high at the top of the open booth, on the raised floor of which, close-circled by his tumbled chaos of wares, serenely squats the proprietor, with folded legs. Vagamundo, as from the merest curiosity, pauses to run his eye over the countless articles, suggests with a half-stifled yawn that the simitar looks like what might be a convincing weapon in the hands of an enemy, ventures to hope that the merchant is enjoying the fine weather, and strolls leisurely on. The shopkeeper continues to puff drowsily at his water-bottle, in his eyes the far-off look of the day-dreamer, until the Westerner is all but out of earshot. Then he appears suddenly to awake, and drones out a languid invitation to return. Vagamundo pays no heed to the summons for some moments, gazes abstractedly upon the wares displayed in another booth, then wanders slowly back toward the object that has attracted his attention. The merchant hopes that the traveler is enjoying the best of health, invites him to squat in the bit of space not already occupied by himself or his wares, offers a cigarette, and falls to discussing the latest doings of the mixed courts or the state of the cotton crop in the delta. By the time the second cigarette is lighted, he turns the conversation deftly to the simitar, and remarks that, though it is hung among his wares rather for ornament than for sale, it is possible he may some day tire of beholding it and part with it for—perhaps eleven hundred or a thousand piasters. Vagamundo, puffing reminiscently for a time, recalls having heard a friend express a desire to obtain such a weapon for, say, seventy-five piasters or so, and wonders, after all, why that friend should care for so useless an article. The shopkeeper regrets that the two prices named do not more nearly coincide, trusts that the inundations will not be so late this year as last, as, indeed, the Nilometer has prophesied they will not, and reaches again for the tube of his narghile. Vagamundo expresses his delight that the khedive has recovered from his recent attack, thanks the merchant for his disinterested hospitality, and saunters away.

The shortest instant before he is finally lost from view in the surging stream of donkeys, pedestrians, camels, runners, and bazaar-loungers he is called back to learn that the merchant is of the opinion that the new land tax will work more effectively than the old, that the simitar is probably worth only seven hundred and eighty piasters, and that some of the eucalyptus-trees in the Esbekieh Gardens are to be removed. With all due respect to Cromer Pasha Vagamundo doubts the practicability of his latest scheme of taxation, and hopes that his friend may somewhere run across such a simitar at one hundred piasters.

Thus the transaction continues: a third, a fourth, even a fifth time Vagamundo returns. By the sixth visit he has dropped the fiction of a friend, and openly offers two hundred and twenty-five piasters for the blade, and the shopkeeper arouses himself sufficiently from his lethargy to take the weapon down for inspection, and expresses a willingness to part with it for two hundred and seventy-five.

Over newly rolled cigarettes the negotiation proceeds, now touching upon the prevalence of ophthalmia, now debating the success of the recent installation of sugar factories, anon skirting the matter of simitars, their manufacture and price. Speaking of simitars, the merchant suspects that for the one in hand he would be satisfied perhaps at two hundred and fifty piasters. Vagamundo lays that sum—which both recognized from the beginning as the just price—on the mat between them, grasps his newly acquired property, and, amid protestations of lifelong friendship from the merchant, takes his departure.

Manchester business men and Chicago captains of industry, scorning such childish methods, have dived into the maelstrom of the bazaars of Cairo with the avowed intention of “doing business” after the manner of to-day and the West; but all in vain. The Cairene shopkeeper will hurry in his transactions for no mortal man. Whether his wares are purchased or not is, at least to every outward appearance, a matter to which he is at all times utterly indifferent. Let the pulsating Westerner, with his strange notions of the relative value of time and ease, press his mercenary suit too forcibly, and he discovers to his surprise, and perhaps even to his dismay, that the merchant of the East displays his wares and squats by day among them merely as a recreation and amusement, and that the notion of selling anything from the trifles about him is farthest from his thoughts.

A BALLADE OF PROTEST

BY CAROLYN WELLS

MY Pegasus strains at his curb,

Although I have him tightly geared.

Though I protest, with speech acerb;

I cannot hold him, I’m afeard.

Oh, never has he so careered!

He’s like a bee-stung Hippodrome;

But, though his laws I’ve e’er revered,

I will not write a Cubist Pome!

To keep my seat doth me perturb;
He plunges on, with head upreared,—
As he had eaten witches’ herb,—
Raging his maddened way, unsteered.
He wants my fair word-pictures smeared
With thought laid on in polychrome!
Nay, we shall leave one fence uncleared;
I will not write a Cubist Pome!

He’d have me shape a lissome verb
Like a three-sided noun, ensphered!
He babbles of effects superb,
Produced by themes with truth veneered.
No! Till the Joy of Life is biered,
Till Reason wobbles in her dome,
Till all Fame’s other eels are speared,
I will not write a Cubist Pome!

L’ENVOI

PEGASUS, go and dree thy weird;
Down Duchamp’s staircase sadly roam;
I cannot have my laurels queered,—
I will not write a Cubist Pome!

Drawn by Oliver Herford

FOREIGN LABOR

Looking over our spring samples.

Drawn by J. R. Shaver

NINETY DEGREES IN THE SHADE

“Aren’t we having fun, Father?”

THE BUTTERFLY

BY RUTH McENERY STUART

SIS’ BUTTERFLY aimed to work all right,

But ’er wings des was heavy, an’ ’er head too light;

So she riz in de air, caze she see she was made

Jes’ to fly in de sun in de beauty parade.

An’ she ain’t by ’erself in dat, in dat—

An’ she ain’t by ’erself in dat.

❏
LARGER IMAGE

THE SAME OLD LURE

BY BERTON BRALEY

WHEN west winds blow,
I want to go
Where mountain-peaks are wrapped in snow,
And breathe the air
That thrills you there
With strength to do and nerve to dare!

When west winds call,
I hate it all—
This life of petty things and small!
And I have cried
Again to ride
Where sun is clear and plains are wide.

When west winds sigh
At night, I lie
And dream of careless days gone by.
(To hear me blow,
You’d never know
I’d not been west of Cleveland, O.)

LIMERICKS

TEXT AND PICTURES BY OLIVER HERFORD

THE GNAT AND THE GNU

“HOW absurd,” said the gnat to the gnu,
“To spell your queer name as you do!”
“For the matter of that,”
Said the gnu to the gnat,
“That’s just how I feel about you.”

THE SOLE-HUNGERING CAMEL

A CAMEL, with practical views
On the nutritive value of shoes,
To the mosque would repair
While the folks were at prayer,
Little dreaming their soles they would lose.

THE DE VINNE PRESS, NEW YORK

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Table of Contents

- THE CENTURY MAGAZINE
- CONTENTS
- HOW BEELZEBUB CAME TO THE CONVENT
- MY CONSCIENCE
- MILLET’S RETURN TO HIS OLD HOME
- HOUSE-WITHOUT-ROOF
- THE MAN WHO DID NOT GO TO HEAVEN ON TUESDAY
- SIERRA MADRE
- THE BORROWED LOVER
- RECOLLECTIONS OF FREDERIC REMINGTON
- THE AMERICAN SPINSTER
- PRAYERS FOR THE LIVING
- THE COMING SNEEZE
- SKIRTING THE BALKAN PENINSULA
- THE LITTLE PEOPLE
- LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI
- THE NEW MINISTER’S GREAT OPPORTUNITY[4]
- BEAUTY IN EDEN
- CAMILLA’S FIRST AFFAIR
- THE HIGH TIDE AT GETTYSBURG[6]

- T. TEMBAROM

- CHAPTER XIX

- CHAPTER XX

- MANNERING’S MEN

- VERITA’S STRATAGEM

- THE RETURN TO HARD MONEY

- TAXES FOR EVERYBODY
- A FLOOD OF PAPER MONEY
- McCULLOCH’S FACULTY FOR ECONOMY
- A MEASURE OF THE COUNTRY’S GROWTH
- “BLACK FRIDAY”
- THE ERA OF RAILWAY BUILDING
- VANDERBILT AND DREW
- THE BATTLE OF THE GIANTS OVER ERIE
- THE CHICAGO AND BOSTON FIRES
- THE PANIC OF 1873

- THE FIRST MOVE FOR A CONTRACTION OF THE CURRENCY

- WHETHER TO PULL THE GREENBACK UP OR THE GOLD DOLLAR DOWN

- GENERAL GRANT’S SERVICE TO SOUND MONEY
- WHEN THE GOLD WAS THERE IT WAS NOT WANTED
- THE “CROSS OF GOLD”
- A REAL CROSS OF GOLD

- FOR A BLANK PAGE
- MR. MORGAN’S PERSONALITY
- MAURICE MAETERLINCK

- TOPICS OF THE TIME

- SOCIALISM IN THE COLLEGES
- THE MONEY BEHIND THE GUN
- ONE WAY TO MAKE THINGS BETTER
- COMMENTS ON “SCHEDULE K”

- OPEN LETTERS

- ON ALLOWING THE EDITOR TO SHOP EARLY FOR CHRISTMAS

- IN LIGHTER VEIN

- BROTHER MINGO MILLENYUM’S ORDINATION
- BUSINESS IN THE ORIENT
- A BALLADE OF PROTEST
- THE SAME OLD LURE

- LIMERICKS

- THE GNAT AND THE GNU

- THE SOLE-HUNGERING CAMEL

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE