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THE GALAXY.

VOL. XXIII.--APRIL, 1877.--No. 4.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by SHELDON &
CO., in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.




THE THEATRE FRANCAIS.

M. Francisque Sarcey, the dramatic critic of the Paris "Temps," and the
gentleman who, of the whole journalistic fraternity, holds the fortune
of a play in the hollow of his hand, has been publishing during the
last year a series of biographical notices of the chief actors and
actresses of the first theatre in the world. "Comediens et Comediennes:
la Comedie Francaise"--such is the title of this publication, which
appears in monthly numbers of the Librairie des Bibliophiles, and is
ornamented on each occasion with a very prettily etched portrait, by M.
Gaucherel, of the artist to whom the number is devoted. By lovers of
the stage in general, and of the Theatre Francais in particular, the
series will be found most interesting; and I welcome the pretext for
saying a few words about an institution which--if such language be not
hyperbolical--I passionately admire. I must add that the portrait is
incomplete, though for the present occasion it is more than sufficient.
The list of M. Sarcey's biographies is not yet filled up; three or
four, those of Mme. Favart and of MM. Febvre and Delaunay, are still
wanting. Nine numbers, however, have appeared--the first being entitled
"La Maison de Moliere," and devoted to a general account of the great
theatre; and the others treating of its principal _societaires_ and
_pensionnaires_ in the following order:

    Regnier,
    Got,
    Sophie Croizette,
    Sarah Bernhardt,
    Coquelin,
    Madeleine Brohan,
    Bressant,
    Mme. Plessy.

(This order, by the way, is purely accidental; it is not that of age or
of merit.) It is always entertaining to encounter M. Francisque Sarcey,
and the reader who, during a Paris winter, has been in the habit, of a
Sunday evening, of unfolding his "Temps" immediately after unfolding
his napkin, and glancing down first of all to see what this sturdy
_feuilletoniste_ has found to his hand--such a reader will find him in
great force in the pages before us. It is true that, though I myself
confess to being such a reader, there are moments when I grow rather
weary of M. Sarcey, who has in an eminent degree both the virtues and
the defects which attach to the great French characteristic--the habit
of taking terribly _au serieux_ anything that you may set about doing.
Of this habit of abounding in one's own cause, of expatiating,
elaborating, reiterating, refining, as if for the hour the fate of
mankind were bound up with one's particular topic, M. Sarcey is a
capital and at times an almost comical representative. He talks about
the theatre once a week as if--honestly, between himself and his
reader--the theatre were the only thing in this frivolous world that
is worth seriously talking about. He has a religious respect for his
theme, and he holds that if a thing is to be done at all, it must be
done in detail as well as in the gross.

It is to this serious way of taking the matter, to his thoroughly
businesslike and professional attitude, to his unwearying attention to
detail, that the critic of the "Temps" owes his enviable influence and
the weight of his words. Add to this that he is sternly incorruptible.
He has his admirations, but they are honest and discriminating; and
whom he loveth he very often chasteneth. He is not ashamed to commend
Mlle. X., who has only had a curtsey to make, if her curtsey has been
_the_ curtsey of the situation; and he is not afraid to overhaul M. A.,
who has delivered the _tirade_ of the play, if M. A. has failed to hit
the mark. Of course his judgment is good; when I have had occasion to
measure it, I have usually found it excellent. He has the scenic
sense--the theatrical eye. He knows at a glance what will do, and what
won't do. He is shrewd and sagacious and almost tiresomely in earnest,
but this closes the list of his attractions. He is not witty--to speak
of; and he is not graceful; he is heavy and common, and above all what
is familiarly called "shoppy." He leans his elbows on his desk, and
does up his weekly budget into a parcel the reverse of coquettish. You
can fancy him a grocer retailing tapioca and hominy--full weight for
the price; his style seems a sort of integument of brown paper. But the
fact remains that if M. Sarcey praises a play, the play has a run; and
that if M. Sarcey says it won't do, it does not do at all. If M. Sarcey
devotes an encouraging line and a half to a young actress, mademoiselle
is immediately _lancee_; she has a career. If he bestows a quiet
"bravo" on an obscure comedian, the gentleman may forthwith renew his
engagement. When you make and unmake fortunes at this rate, what
matters it whether you have a little elegance the more or the less?

Elegance is for M. Paul de St. Victor, who does the theatres in the
"Moniteur," and who, though he writes a style only a trifle less
pictorial than that of Theophile Gautier himself, has never, to the
best of my belief, brought clouds or sunshine to any playhouse. I may
add, to finish with M. Sarcey, that he contributes a daily political
article--generally devoted to watching and showing up the "game" of the
clerical party--to Edmond About's journal, the "XIXieme Siecle"; that
he gives a weekly _conference_ on current literature; that he "confers"
also on those excellent Sunday morning performances now so common in
the French theatres, during which examples of the classic repertory
are presented, accompanied by a light lecture upon the history and
character of the play. As the commentator on these occasions M. Sarcey
is in great demand, and he officiates sometimes in small provincial
towns. Lastly, frequent playgoers in Paris observe that the very
slenderest novelty is sufficient to insure at a theatre the (very
considerable) physical presence of the conscientious critic of the
"Temps." If he were remarkable for nothing else, he would be remarkable
for the fortitude with which he exposes himself to the pestiferous
climate of the Parisian temples of the drama.

For these agreeable "notices" M. Sarcey appears to have mended his pen
and to have given a fillip to his fancy. They are gracefully and often
lightly turned; occasionally, even, the author grazes the epigrammatic.
They deal, as is proper, with the artistic and not with the private
physiognomy of the ladies and gentlemen whom they commemorate; and
though they occasionally allude to what the French call "intimate"
matters, they contain no satisfaction for the lovers of scandal. The
Theatre Francais, in the face it presents to the world, is an austere
and venerable establishment, and a frivolous tone about its affairs
would be almost as much out of keeping as if applied to the Academie
herself. M. Sarcey touches upon the organization of the theatre, and
gives some account of the different phases through which it has passed
during these latter years. Its chief functionary is a general
administrator, or director, appointed by the State, which enjoys this
right in virtue of the considerable subsidy which it pays to the house;
a subsidy amounting, if I am not mistaken (M. Sarcey does not mention
the sum), to 250,000 francs. The director, however, is not an absolute,
but a constitutional ruler; for he shares his powers with the society
itself, which has always had a large deliberative voice.

Whence, it may be asked, does the society derive its light and its
inspiration? From the past, from precedent, from tradition--from the
great unwritten body of laws which no one has in his keeping, but many
in their memory, and all in their respect. The principles on which the
Theatre Francais rests are a good deal like the common law of
England--a vaguely and inconveniently registered mass of regulations
which time and occasion have welded together, and from which the
recurring occasion can usually manage to extract the rightful
precedent. Napoleon I., who had a finger in every pie in his dominion,
found time during his brief and disastrous occupation of Moscow to send
down a decree remodelling and regulating the constitution of the
theatre. This document has long been a dead letter, and the society
abides by its older traditions. The _traditions_ of the Comedie
Francaise--that is the sovereign word, and that is the charm of the
place--the charm that one never ceases to feel, however often one may
sit beneath the classic, dusky dome. One feels this charm with peculiar
intensity as a newly arrived foreigner. The Theatre Francais has had
the good fortune to be able to allow its traditions to accumulate. They
have been preserved, transmitted, respected, cherished, until at last
they form the very atmosphere, the vital air, of the establishment. A
stranger feels their superior influence the first time he sees the
great curtain go up; he feels that he is in a theatre which is not as
other theatres are. It is not only better, it is different. It has a
peculiar perfection--something consecrated, historical, academic. This
impression is delicious, and he watches the performance in a sort of
tranquil ecstasy.

Never has he seen anything so smooth, and harmonious, so artistic and
complete. He heard all his life of attention to detail, and now, for
the first time, he sees something that deserves the name. He sees
dramatic effort refined to a point with which the English stage is
unacquainted. He sees that there are no limits to possible "finish,"
and that so trivial an act as taking a letter from a servant or
placing one's hat on a chair may be made a suggestive and interesting
incident. He sees these things and a great many more besides, but at
first he does not analyze them; he gives himself up to sympathetic
contemplation. He is in an ideal and exemplary world--a world that has
managed to attain all the felicities that the world we live in misses.
The people do the things that we should like to do; they are gifted
as we should like to be; they have mastered the accomplishments that
we have had to give up. The women are not all beautiful--decidedly
not, indeed--but they are graceful, agreeable, sympathetic, ladylike;
they have the best manners possible, and they are delightfully well
dressed. They have charming musical voices, and they speak with
irreproachable purity and sweetness; they walk with the most elegant
grace, and when they sit it is a pleasure to see their attitudes. They
go out and come in, they pass across the stage, they talk, and laugh,
and cry, they deliver long _tirades_ or remain statuesquely mute; they
are tender or tragic, they are comic or conventional; and through it
all you never observe an awkwardness, a roughness, an accident, a
crude spot, a false note.

As for the men, they are not handsome either; it must be confessed,
indeed, that at the present hour manly beauty is but scantily
represented at the Theatre Francais. Bressant, I believe, used to be
thought handsome; but Bressant has retired, and among the gentlemen of
the troupe I can think of no one but M. Mounet-Sully who may be
positively commended for his fine person. But M. Mounet-Sully is, from
the scenic point of view, an Adonis of the first magnitude. To be
handsome, however, is for an actor one of the last necessities; and
these gentlemen are mostly handsome enough. They look perfectly what
they are intended to look, and in cases where it is proposed that they
shall _seem_ handsome, they usually succeed. They are as well mannered
and as well dressed as their fairer comrades, and their voices are no
less agreeable and effective. They represent gentlemen, and they
produce the illusion. In this endeavor they deserve even greater credit
than the actresses, for in modern comedy, of which the repertory of the
Theatre Francais is largely composed, they have nothing in the way of
costume to help to carry it off. Half a dozen ugly men, in the periodic
coat and trousers and stove-pipe hat, with blue chins and false
moustaches, strutting before the footlights, and pretending to be
interesting, romantic, pathetic, heroic, certainly play a perilous
game. At every turn they suggest prosaic things, and their liabilities
to awkwardness are increased a thousand fold. But the comedians of the
Theatre Francais are never awkward, and when it is necessary they solve
triumphantly the problem of being at once realistic to the eye and
romantic to the imagination.

I am speaking always of one's first impression of them. There are spots
on the sun, and you discover after a while that there are little
irregularities at the Theatre Francais. But the acting is so
incomparably better than any that you have seen, that criticism for a
long time is content to lie dormant. I shall never forget how at first
I was under the charm. I liked the very incommodities of the place; I
am not sure that I did not find a certain mystic salubrity in the bad
ventilation. The Theatre Francais, it is known, gives you a good deal
for your money. The performance, which rarely ends before midnight, and
sometimes transgresses it, frequently begins by seven o'clock. The
first hour or two is occupied by secondary performers; but not for the
world at this time would I have missed the first rising of the curtain.
No dinner could be too hastily swallowed to enable me to see, for
instance, Mme. Nathalie in Octave Feuillet's charming little comedy of
"Le Village." Mme. Nathalie was a plain, stout old woman, who did the
mothers, and aunts, and elderly wives; I use the past tense because she
retired from the stage a year ago, leaving a most conspicuous vacancy.
She was an admirable actress, and a perfect mistress of laughter and
tears. In "Le Village" she played an old provincial _bourgeoise_ whose
husband takes it into his head, one winter night, to start on the tour
of Europe with a roving bachelor friend, who has dropped down on him at
supper-time, after the lapse of years, and has gossiped him into
momentary discontent with his fireside existence. My pleasure was in
Mme. Nathalie's figure when she came in dressed to go out to vespers
across the _place_. The two foolish old cronies are over their wine,
talking of the beauty of the women on the Ionian coast; you hear the
church bell in the distance. It was the quiet felicity of the old
lady's dress that used to charm me; the Comedie Francaise was in every
fold of it. She wore a large black silk mantilla, of a peculiar cut,
which looked as if she had just taken it tenderly out of some old
wardrobe where it lay folded in lavender, and a large dark bonnet,
adorned with handsome black silk loops and bows. Her big pale face had
a softly frightened look, and in her hand she carried her neatly kept
breviary. The extreme suggestiveness, and yet the taste and temperance
of this costume, seemed to me inimitable; the bonnet alone, with its
handsome, decent, virtuous bows, was worth coming to see. It expressed
all the rest, and you saw the excellent, pious woman go pick her steps
churchward among the puddles, while Jeannette, the cook, in a high
white cap, marched before her in sabots, with a lantern.

Such matters are trifles, but they are representative trifles, and they
are not the only ones that I remember. It used to please me, when I had
squeezed into my stall--the stalls at the Francais are extremely
uncomfortable--to remember of how great a history the large, dim
_salle_ around me could boast: how many great things had happened
there; how the air was thick with associations. Even if I had never
seen Rachel, it was something of a consolation to think that those very
footlights had illumined her finest moments, and that the echoes of her
mighty voice were sleeping in that dingy dome. From this to musing upon
the "traditions" of the place, of which I spoke just now, was of course
but a step. How were they kept? by whom, and where? Who trims the
undying lamp and guards the accumulated treasure? I never found out--by
sitting in the stalls; and very soon I ceased to care to know. One may
be very fond of the stage, and yet care little for the green room; just
as one may be very fond of pictures and books, and yet be no frequenter
of studios and authors' dens. They might pass on the torch as they
would behind the scenes; so long as, during my time, they didn't let it
drop, I made up my mind to be satisfied. And that one could depend upon
their not letting it drop became a part of the customary comfort of
Parisian life. It became certain that the "traditions" were not mere
catchwords, but a most beneficent reality.

Going to the other Parisian theatres helps you to believe in them.
Unless you are a voracious theatre-goer you give the others up; you
find they don't pay; the Francais does for you all that they do and so
much more besides. There are two possible exceptions--the Gymnase and
the Palais Royal, The Gymnase, since the death of Mlle. Desclee, has
been under a heavy cloud; but occasionally, when a month's sunshine
rests upon it, there is a savor of excellence in the performance. But
you feel that you are still within the realm of accident; the
delightful security of the Rue de Richelieu is wanting. The young lover
is liable to be common, and the beautifully dressed heroine to have an
unpleasant voice. The Palais Royal has always been in its way very
perfect; but its way admits of great imperfection. The actresses are
classically bad, though usually pretty, and the actors are much
addicted to taking liberties. In broad comedy, nevertheless, two or
three of the latter are not to be surpassed, and (counting out the
women) there is usually something masterly in a Palais Royal
performance. In its own line it has what is called style, and it
therefore walks, at a distance, in the footsteps of the Francais. The
Odeon has never seemed to me in any degree a rival of the Theatre
Francais, though it is a smaller copy of that establishment. It
receives a subsidy from the State, and is obliged by its contract to
play the classic repertory one night in the week. It is on these
nights, listening to Moliere or Marivaux, that you may best measure the
superiority of the greater theatre. I have seen actors at the Odeon, in
the classic repertory, imperfect in their texts; a monstrously
insupposable case at the Comedie Francaise. The function of the Odeon
is to operate as a _pepiniere_ or nursery for its elder--to try young
talents, shape them, make them flexible, and then hand them over to the
upper house. The more especial nursery of the Francais, however, is the
Conservatoire Dramatique, an institution dependent upon the State,
through the Ministry of the Fine Arts, whose budget is charged with
the remuneration of its professors. Pupils graduating from the
Conservatoire with a prize have _ipso facto_ the right to _debuter_ at
the Theatre Francais, which retains them or lets them go, according to
its discretion. Most of the first subjects of the Francais have done
their two years' work at the Conservatoire, and M. Sarcey holds that an
actor who has not had that fundamental training which is only to be
acquired there, never obtains a complete mastery of his resources.
Nevertheless some of the best actors of the day have owed nothing to
the Conservatoire--Bressant, for instance, and Aimee Desclee, the
latter of whom, indeed, never arrived at the Francais. (Moliere and
Balzac were not of the Academy, and so Mlle. Desclee, the first actress
after Rachel, died without acquiring the privilege which M. Sarcey says
is the day-dream of all young theatrical women--that of printing on
their visiting cards, after their name, _de la Comedie Francaise_.)

The Theatre Francais has, moreover, the right to do as Moliere did--to
claim its property wherever it finds it. It may stretch out its long
arm and break the engagement of a promising actor at any of the other
theatres; of course after a certain amount of notice given. So, last
winter, it notified to the Gymnase its danger of appropriating Worms,
the admirable _jeune premier_, who, returning from a long sojourn
in Russia, and taking the town by surprise, had begun to retrieve the
shrunken fortunes of that establishment.

On the whole, it may be said that the great talents find their way,
sooner or later, to the Theatre Francais. This is of course not a rule
that works unvaryingly, for there are a great many influences to
interfere with it. Interest as well as merit--especially in the case of
the actresses--weighs in the scale; and the ire that may exist in
celestial minds has been known to manifest itself in the councils of
the Comedie. Moreover, a brilliant actress may prefer to reign supreme
at one of the smaller theatres; at the Francais, inevitably, she shares
her dominion. The honor is less, but the comfort is greater.

Nevertheless, at the Francais, in a general way, there is in each case
a tolerably obvious artistic reason for membership; and if you see a
clever actor remain outside for years, you may be pretty sure that,
though private reasons count, there are artistic reasons as well. The
first half dozen times I saw Mlle. Fargueil, who for years ruled the
roost, as the vulgar saying is, at the Vaudeville, I wondered that so
consummate and accomplished an actress should not have a place on the
first French stage. But I presently grew wiser, and perceived that,
clever as Mlle. Fargueil is, she is not for the Rue de Richelieu, but
for the Boulevards; her peculiar, intensely Parisian intonation would
sound out of place in the Maison de Moliere. (Of course if Mlle.
Fargueil has ever received overtures from the Francais, my sagacity is
at fault--I am looking through a millstone. But I suspect she has not.)
Frederic Lemaitre, who died last winter, and who was a very great
actor, had been tried at the Francais and found wanting--for those
particular conditions. But it may probably be said that if Frederic was
wanting, the theatre was too, in this case. Frederic's great force was
his extravagance, his fantasticality; and the stage of the Rue de
Richelieu was a trifle too academic. I have even wondered whether
Desclee, if she had lived, would have trod that stage by right, and
whether it would have seemed her proper element. The negative is not
impossible. It is very possible that in that classic atmosphere her
great charm--her intensely _modern_ quality, her supersubtle
realism--would have appeared an anomaly. I can imagine even that her
strange, touching, nervous voice would not have seemed the voice of the
house. At the Francais you must know how to acquit yourself of a
_tirade_; that has always been the touchstone of capacity. It would
probably have proved Desclee's stumbling-block, though she could utter
speeches of six words as no one else surely has ever done. It is true
that Mlle. Croizette, and in a certain sense Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt, are
rather weak at their _tirades_; but then old theatre-goers will tell
you that these young ladies, in spite of a hundred attractions, have no
business at the Francais.

In the course of time the susceptible foreigner passes from that
superstitious state of attention which I just now sketched to that
greater enlightenment which enables him to understand such a judgment
as this of the old theatre-goers. It is borne in upon him that, as the
good Homer sometimes nods, the Theatre Francais sometimes lapses from
its high standard. He makes various reflections. He thinks that Mlle.
Favart rants. He thinks M. Mounet-Sully, in spite of his delicious
voice, insupportable. He thinks that M. Parodi's five-act tragedy,
"Rome Vaincue," presented in the early part of the present winter, was
better done certainly than it would have been done upon any English
stage, but by no means so much better done than might have been
expected. (Here, if I had space, I would open a long parenthesis, in
which I should aspire to demonstrate that the incontestable superiority
of average French acting to English is by no means so strongly marked
in tragedy as in comedy--is indeed sometimes not strongly marked at
all. The reason of this is in a great measure, I think, that we have
had Shakespeare to exercise ourselves upon, and that an inferior
dramatic instinct exercised upon Shakespeare may become more flexible
than a superior one exercised upon Corneille and Racine. When it comes
to ranting--ranting even in a modified and comparatively reasonable
sense--we do, I suspect, quite as well as the French, if not rather
better.) Mr. G. H. Lewes, in his entertaining little book upon "Actors
and the Art of Acting," mentions M. Talbot, of the Francais, as a
surprisingly incompetent performer. My memory assents to his judgment
at the same time that it proposes an amendment. This actor's special
line is the buffeted, bemuddled, besotted old fathers, uncles, and
guardians of classic comedy, and he plays them with his face much more
than with his tongue. Nature has endowed him with a visage so admirably
adapted, once for all, to his role, that he has only to sit in a chair,
with his hands folded on his stomach, to look like a monument to
bewildered senility. After that it doesn't matter what he says or how
he says it.

The Comedie Francaise sometimes does weaker things than in keeping M.
Talbot. Last autumn, for instance, it was really depressing to see
Mlle. Dudley brought all the way from Brussels (and with not a little
flourish either) to "create" the guilty vestal in "Rome Vaincue." As
far as the interests of art are concerned, Mlle. Dudley had much better
have remained in the Flemish capital, of whose language she is
apparently a perfect mistress. It is hard, too, to forgive M. Perrin
(M. Perrin is the present director of the Theatre Francais) for
bringing out "L'Ami Fritz" of M. Erckmann-Chatrian. The two gentlemen
who write under this name have a double claim to kindness. In the first
place, they have produced some delightful little novels; every one
knows and admires "Le Conscrit de 1813"; every one admires, indeed, the
charming tale on which the play in question is founded. In the second
place, they were, before the production of their piece, the objects of
a scurrilous attack by the "Figaro" newspaper, which held the authors
up to reprobation for having "insulted the army," and did its best to
lay the train for a hostile manifestation on the first night. (It may
be added that the good sense of the public outbalanced the impudence of
the newspaper, and the play was simply advertised into success.) But
neither the novels nor the persecutions of M. Erckmann-Chatrian avail
to render "L'Ami Fritz," in its would-be dramatic form, worthy of the
first French stage. It is played as well as possible, and upholstered
even better; but it is, according to the vulgar phrase, too "thin" for
the locality. Upholstery has never played such a part at the Theatre
Francais as during the reign of M. Perrin, who came into power, if I
mistake not, after the late war. He proved very early that he was a
radical, and he has introduced a hundred novelties. His administration,
however, has been brilliant, and in his hands the Theatre Francais has
made money. This it had rarely done before, and this, in the
conservative view, is quite beneath its dignity. To the conservative
view I should humbly incline. An institution so closely protected by a
rich and powerful State ought to be able to cultivate art for art.

The first of M. Sarcey's biographies, to which I have been too long in
coming, is devoted to Regnier, a veteran actor, who left the stage four
or five years since, and who now fills the office of oracle to his
younger comrades. It is the indispensable thing, says M. Sarcey, for
a young aspirant to be able to say that he has had lessons of M.
Regnier, or that M. Regnier has advised him, or that he has talked
such and such a point over with M. Regnier. (His comrades always speak
of him as M. Regnier--never as simple Regnier.) I have had the fortune
to see him but once; it was the first time I ever went to the Theatre
Francais. He played Don Annibal in Emile Augier's romantic comedy of
"L'Aventuriere," and I have not forgotten the exquisite humor of the
performance. The part is that of a sort of seventeenth century Captain
Costigan, only the Miss Fotheringay in the case is the gentleman's
sister, and not his daughter. This lady is moreover an ambitious and
designing person, who leads her threadbare braggart of a brother quite
by the nose. She has entrapped a worthy gentleman of Padua, of mature
years, and he is on the eve of making her his wife, when his son, a
clever young soldier, beguiles Don Annibal into supping with him, and
makes him drink so deep that the prating adventurer at last lets the
cat out of the bag, and confides to his companion that the fair
Clorinda is not the virtuous gentlewoman she appears, but a poor
strolling actress who has had a lover at every stage of her journey.
The scene was played by Bressant and Regnier, and it has always
remained in my mind as one of the most perfect things I have seen on
the stage. The gradual action of the wine upon Don Annibal, the
delicacy with which his deepening tipsiness was indicated, its
intellectual rather than physical manifestation, and, in the midst of
it, the fantastic conceit which made him think that he was winding his
fellow drinker round his fingers--all this was exquisitely rendered.
Drunkenness on the stage is usually both dreary and disgusting; and I
can remember besides this but two really interesting pictures of
intoxication (excepting always, indeed, the immortal tipsiness of
Cassio in "Othello," which a clever actor can always make touching).
One is the beautiful befuddlement of Rip Van Winkle, as Mr. Joseph
Jefferson renders it, and the other (a memory of the Theatre Francais)
the scene in the "Duc Job," in which Got succumbs to mild inebriation,
and dozes in his chair just boosily enough for the young girl who loves
him to make it out.

It is to this admirable Emile Got that M. Sarcey's second notice is
devoted. Got is at the present hour unquestionably the first actor at
the Theatre Francais, and I have personally no hesitation in accepting
him as the first of living actors. His younger comrade, Coquelin, has,
I think, as much talent and as much art; but the older man Got has the
longer and fuller record, and may therefore be spoken of as the master
_par excellence_. If I were obliged to rank the half dozen _premiers
sujets_ of the last few years at the Theatre Francais in their absolute
order of _talent_ (thank Heaven, I am not so obliged!), I think I
should make up some such little list as this: Got, Coquelin, Mme.
Plessy, Sarah Bernhardt, Mlle. Favart, Delaunay. I confess that I have
no sooner written it than I feel as if I ought to amend it, and wonder
whether it is not a great folly to put Delaunay after Mlle. Favart. But
this is idle.

As for Got, he is a singularly interesting actor. I have often wondered
whether the best definition of him would not be to say that he is
really a _philosophic_ actor. He is an immense humorist, and his
comicality is sometimes colossal; but his most striking quality is the
one on which M. Sarcey dwells--his sobriety and profundity, his
underlying element of manliness and melancholy, the impression he gives
you of having a general conception of human life and of seeing the
relativity, as one may say, of the character he represents. Of all the
comic actors I have seen he is the least trivial--at the same time that
for richness of detail his comicality is unsurpassed. His repertory is
very large and various, but it may be divided into two equal
halves--the parts that belong to reality and the parts that belong to
fantasy. There is of course a vast deal of fantasy in his realistic
parts and a vast deal of reality in his fantastic ones, but the general
division is just; and at times, indeed, the two faces of his talent
seem to have little in common. The Duc Job, to which I just now
alluded, is one of the things he does most perfectly. The part, which
is that of a young man, is a serious and tender one. It is amazing that
the actor who plays it should also be able to carry off triumphantly
the frantic buffoonery of Maitre Pathelin, or should represent the
Sganarelle of the "Medecin Malgre Lui" with such an unctuous breadth of
humor. The two characters, perhaps, which have given me the liveliest
idea of Got's power and fertility are the Maitre Pathelin and the M.
Poirier, who figures in the title to the comedy which Emile Augier and
Jules Sandeau wrote together. M. Poirier, the retired shop-keeper who
marries his daughter to a marquis and makes acquaintance with the
incommodities incidental to such a piece of luck, is perhaps the
actor's most elaborate creation; it is difficult to see how the
portrayal of a type and an individual can have a larger sweep and a
more minute completeness. The _bonhomme_ Poirier, in Got's hands,
is really great; and half a dozen of the actor's modern parts that I
could mention are hardly less brilliant. But when I think of him I
instinctively think first of some role in which he wears the cap and
gown of the days in which humorous invention may fairly take the bit in
its teeth. This is what Got lets it do in Maitre Pathelin, and he leads
the spectators' exhilarated fancy a dance to which their aching sides
on the morrow sufficiently testify.

The piece is a _rechauffe_ of a mediaeval farce, which has the credit of
being the first play not a "mystery" or a miracle piece in the records
of the French drama. The plot is of the baldest and most primitive. It
sets forth how a cunning lawyer undertook to purchase a dozen ells of
cloth for nothing. In the first scene we see him in the market-place,
bargaining and haggling with the draper, and then marching off with the
roll of cloth, with the understanding that the shop-man is to call at
his house in the course of an hour for the money. In the next act we
have Maitre Pathelin at his fireside with his wife, to whom he relates
his trick and its projected sequel, and who greets them with Homeric
laughter. He gets into bed, and the innocent draper arrives. Then
follows a scene of which the liveliest description must be ineffective.
Pathelin pretends to be out of his head, to be overtaken by a
mysterious malady which has made him delirious, not to know the draper
from Adam, never to have heard of the dozen ells of cloth, and to be
altogether an impossible person to collect a debt from. To carry out
this character he indulges in a series of indescribable antics,
out-Bedlams Bedlam, frolics over the room dressed out in the
bed-clothes and chanting the wildest gibberish, bewilders the poor
draper to within an inch of his own sanity, and finally puts him
utterly to rout. The spectacle could only be portentously flat or
heroically successful, and in Got's hands this latter was its fortune.
His Sganarelle, in the "Medecin Malgre Lui," and half a dozen of his
characters from Moliere besides--such a part, too, as his Tibia, in
Alfred de Musset's charming bit of romanticism, the "Caprices de
Marianne"--have a certain generic resemblance with his treatment of the
figure I have sketched. In all of these the comicality is of the
exuberant and tremendous order, and yet, in spite of its richness and
flexibility, it suggests little connection with high animal spirits. It
seems a matter of invention, of reflection and irony. You cannot
imagine Got representing a fool pure and simple--or at least a passive
and unsuspecting fool. There must always be an element of shrewdness
and even of contempt; he must be the man who knows and judges--or at
least who pretends. It is a compliment, I take it, to an actor, to say
that he prompts you to wonder about his private personality; and an
observant spectator of M. Got is at liberty to guess that he is both
obstinate and proud.

In Coquelin there is perhaps greater spontaneity, and there is a not
inferior mastery of his art. He is a wonderfully brilliant, elastic
actor. He is but thirty-five years old, and yet his record is most
glorious. He too has his "actual" and his classical repertory, and here
also it is hard to choose. As the young _valet de comedie_ in Moliere,
Regnard, and Marivaux, he is incomparable. I shall never forget the
really infernal brilliancy of his Mascarille in "L'Etourdi." His
volubility, his rapidity, his impudence and gayety, his ringing,
penetrating voice, and the shrill trumpet-note of his laughter, make
him the ideal of the classic serving-man of the classic young
lover--half rascal and half good fellow. Coquelin has lately had two or
three immense successes in the comedies of the day. His Duc de
Sept-Monts, in the famous "Etrangere" of Alexandre Dumas, last winter,
was the capital creation of the piece; and in the revival, this winter,
of Augier's "Paul Forestier," his Adolphe de Beaubourg, the young man
about town, consciously tainted with _commonness_, and trying to shake
off the incubus, seemed, while one watched it and listened to it, the
last word of delicately humorous art. Of Coquelin's eminence in the old
comedies M. Sarcey speaks with a certain picturesque force: "No one is
better cut out to represent those bold and magnificent rascals of the
old repertory, with their boisterous gayety, their brilliant fancy, and
their superb extravagance, who give to their buffoonery _je ne sais
quoi d'epique_. In these parts one may say of Coquelin that he is
incomparable. I prefer him to Got in such cases, and even to Regnier,
his master. I never saw Monrose, and cannot speak of him. But good
judges have assured me that there was much that was factitious in the
manner of this eminent comedian, and that his vivacity was a trifle
mechanical. There is nothing whatever of this in Coquelin's manner.
The eye, the nose, and the voice--the voice above all--are his most
powerful means of action. He launches his _tirades_ all in one breath,
with full lungs, without bothering too much over the shading of
details, in large masses, and he possesses himself only the more
strongly of the public, which has a great sense of _ensemble_. The
words that must be detached, the words that must decisively 'tell,'
glitter in this delivery with the sonorous ring of a brand-new louis
d'or. Crispin, Scapin, Figaro, Mascarille have never found a more
valiant and joyous interpreter."

I should say that this was enough about the men at the Theatre
Francais, if I did not remember that I have not spoken of Delaunay. But
Delaunay has plenty of people to speak for him; he has, in especial,
the more eloquent half of humanity--the ladies. I suppose that of all
the actors of the Comedie Francais he is the most universally
appreciated and admired; he is the popular favorite. And he has
certainly earned this distinction, for there was never a more amiable
and sympathetic genius. He plays the young lovers of the past and the
present, and he acquits himself of his difficult and delicate task with
extraordinary grace and propriety. The danger I spoke of a while
since--the danger, for the actor of a romantic and sentimental part, of
being compromised by the coat and trousers, the hat and umbrella of the
current year--are reduced by Delaunay to their minimum. He reconciles
in a marvellous fashion the love-sick gallant of the ideal world with
the "gentlemanly man" of to-day; and his passion is as far removed from
rant as his propriety is from stiffness. He has been accused of late
years of falling into a mannerism, and I think there is some truth in
the charge. But the fault in Delaunay's situation is certainly venial.
How can a man of fifty, to whom, as regards face and figure, Nature has
been stingy, play an amorous swain of twenty without taking refuge in a
mannerism? His mannerism is a legitimate device for diverting the
spectator's attention from certain incongruities. Delaunay's
juvenility, his ardor, his passion, his good taste and sense of
fitness, have always an irresistible charm. As he has grown older he
has increased his repertory by parts of greater weight and sobriety--he
has played the husbands as well as the lovers. One of his most recent
and brilliant "creations" of this kind is his Marquis de Presles in "Le
Gendre de M. Poirier"--a piece of acting superb for its lightness and
_desinvolture_. It cannot be better praised than by saying it was
worthy of Got's inimitable rendering of the part opposed to it. But I
think I shall remember Delaunay best in the picturesque and romantic
comedies--as the Duc de Richelieu in "Mlle. De Belle-Isle"; as the
joyous, gallant, exuberant young hero, his plumes and love knots
fluttering in the breath of his gushing improvisation, of Corneille's
"Menteur"; or, most of all, as the melodious swains of those charmingly
poetic, faintly, naturally Shakespearian little comedies of Alfred de
Musset.

To speak of Delaunay ought to bring us properly to Mlle. Favart, who
for so many years invariably represented the object of his tender
invocations. Mlle. Favart at the present time rather lacks what the
French call "actuality." She has made this winter an attempt to recover
something of that large measure of it which she once possessed; but I
doubt whether it has been completely successful. M. Sarcey has not yet
put forth his notice of her; and when he does so it will be interesting
to see how he treats her. She is not one of his high admirations. She
is a great talent which has passed into eclipse. I call her a great
talent, although I remember the words in which M. Sarcey somewhere
speaks of her: "Mlle. Favart, who, to happy natural gifts, _soutenu par
un travail acharne_, owed a distinguished place," etc. Her talent is
great, but the impression that she gives of a _travail acharne_ and of
an insatiable ambition is perhaps even greater. For many years she
reigned supreme, and I believe she is accused of not having always
reigned generously. However that may be, there came a day when Mlles.
Croizette and Sarah Bernhardt passed to the front, and the elder
actress receded, if not into the background, at least into what
painters call the middle distance. The private history of these events
has, I believe, been rich in heart-burnings; but it is only with the
public history that we are concerned. Mlle. Favart has always seemed to
be a powerful rather than an interesting actress; there is usually
something mechanical and overdone in her manner. In some of her parts
there is a kind of audible creaking of the machinery. If Delaunay is
open to the reproach of having let a mannerism get the better of him,
this accusation is much more fatally true of Mlle. Favart. On the other
hand, she knows her trade as no one does--no one, at least, save Mme.
Plessy. When she is bad she is extremely bad, and sometimes she is
interruptedly bad for a whole evening. In the revival of Scribe's
clever comedy of "Une Chaine," this winter (which, by the way, though
the cast included both Got and Coquelin, was the nearest approach to
mediocrity I have ever seen at the Theatre Francais), Mlle. Favart was,
to my sense, startlingly bad. The part had originally been played by
Mme. Plessy; and I remember how M. Sarcey in his _feuilleton_ treated
its actual representative. "Mlle. Favart does Louise. Who does not
recall the exquisite delicacy and temperance with which Mme. Plessy
rendered that difficult scene in the second act?" etc. And nothing
more. When, however, Mlle. Favart is at her best, she is prodigiously
strong. She rises to great occasions. I doubt whether such parts as the
desperate heroine of the "Supplice d'une Femme," or as Julie in Octave
Feuillet's lugubrious drama of that name, could be more effectively
played than she plays them. She can carry a great weight without
flinching; she has what the French call her "authority"; and in
declamation she sometimes unrolls her fine voice, as it were, in long
harmonious waves and cadences, the sustained power of which her younger
rivals must often envy her.

I am drawing to the close of these rather desultory observations
without having spoken of the four ladies commemorated by M. Sarcey in
the publication which lies before me; and I do not know that I can
justify my tardiness otherwise than by saying that writing and reading
about artists of so extreme a personal brilliancy is poor work, and
that the best the critic can do is to wish his reader may see them,
from a quiet _fauteuil_, as speedily and as often as possible. Of
Madeleine Brohan, indeed, there is little to say. She is a delightful
person to listen to, and she is still delightful to look at in spite of
that redundancy of contour which time has contributed to her charm. But
she has never been ambitious, and her talent has had no particularly
original quality. It is a long time since she created an important
part; but in the old repertory her rich, dense voice, her charming
smile, her mellow, tranquil gayety, always give extreme pleasure. To
hear her sit and _talk_, simply, and laugh and play with her fan, along
with Mme. Plessy, in Moliere's "Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes," is an
entertainment to be remembered. For Mme. Plessy I should have to mend
my pen and begin a new chapter; and for Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt no less a
ceremony would suffice. I saw Mme. Plessy for the first time in Emile
Augier's "Aventuriere," when, as I mentioned, I first saw Regnier. This
is considered by many persons her best part, and she certainly carries
it off with a high hand; but I like her better in characters which
afford more scope to her talents for comedy. These characters are very
numerous, for her activity and versatility have been extraordinary. Her
comedy of course is "high"; it is of the highest conceivable kind, and
she has often been accused of being too mincing and too artificial. I
should never make this charge, for, to me, Mme. Plessy's _minauderies_,
her grand airs and her arch-refinements, have never been anything but
the odorous swayings and queenly tossings of some splendid garden
flower. Never had an actress grander manners. When Mme. Plessy
represents a duchess, you have to make no allowance. Her limitations
are on the side of the pathetic. If she is brilliant, she is cold; and
I cannot imagine her touching the source of tears. But she is in the
highest degree accomplished; she gives an impression of intelligence
and intellect which is produced by none of her companions--excepting
always the extremely exceptional Sarah Bernhardt. Mme. Plessy's
intellect has sometimes misled her--as, for instance, when it whispered
to her, a few years since, that she could play Agrippine in Racine's
"Britannicus," when that tragedy was presented for the _debuts_ of
Mounet-Sully. I was verdant enough to think her Agrippine very fine;
but M. Sarcey reminds his readers of what he said of it the Monday
after the first performance. "I will not say"--he quotes himself--"that
Mme. Plessy is indifferent. With her intelligence, her natural gifts,
her great situation, her immense authority over the public, one cannot
be indifferent in anything. She is therefore not indifferently bad. She
is bad to a point which cannot be expressed, and which would be
afflicting for dramatic art if it were not that in this great shipwreck
there rise to the surface a few floating fragments of the finest
qualities that nature has ever bestowed upon an artist."

Mme. Plessy retired from the stage six months ago, and it may be said
that the void produced by this event is irreparable. There is not only
no prospect, but there is no hope of filling it up. The present
conditions of artistic production are directly hostile to the formation
of actresses as consummate and as complete as Mme. Plessy. One may not
expect to see her like, any more than one may expect to see a new
manufacture of old lace and old brocade. She carried off with her
something that the younger generation of actresses will consistently
lack--a certain largeness of style and robustness of art. (These
qualities are in a modified degree those of Mlle. Favart.) But if the
younger actresses have the success of Mlles. Croizette and Sarah
Bernhardt, will they greatly care whether they are not "robust"? These
young ladies are children of a later and eminently contemporary type,
according to which an actress undertakes not to interest, but to
fascinate. They are charming--"awfully" charming; strange, eccentric,
and imaginative. It would be needless to speak specifically of Mlle.
Croizette; for although she has very great attractions, I think she may
(by the cold impartiality of science) be classified as a secondary, a
less inspired, and (to use the great word of the day) a more "brutal"
Sarah Bernhardt. (Mlle. Croizette's "brutality" is her great card.) As
for Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt, she is simply, at present, in Paris, one of
the great figures of the day. It is hard to imagine a more brilliant
embodiment of feminine success. It is hard to imagine a young woman
leading a more complete and multifold existence. The intellectual
fermentation of a productive, creative (and most ambitious) artist, the
splendors of a princess, the glories of a celebrity, and various other
matters besides--these are a sufficiently interesting combination. But
as an artist, as I have said, Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt would almost
deserve a chapter for herself.

HENRY JAMES, JR.




MISS MISANTHROPE.

BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY.




CHAPTER VII.

ON THE BRIDGE.


There was one walk of which Minola Grey was especially fond, and which
she loved to enjoy alone. It led by a particular track through Regent's
Park, avoiding for the most part the frequented paths, and bringing her
at one time to the summit of a little mound or knoll, from which she
could look across broad fields where sheep were grazing, and through
clumps of trees and over hedges, and from which, by a happy
peculiarity, all sight of the beaten and dusty avenues of the park was
shut out. The view from this little eminence was perhaps most beautiful
on a moist and misty day. There the soft, loving, artistic breath of
the rain-charged clouds breathed tenderly on the landscape, and effaced
any of the harsher, or meaner, or in any way more prosaic details.
There the gazer only saw a noble expanse of delicious green grass and
darker hedgerows, and trees of dun and gray, and softly-mottled
moss-grown trunks, and here and there a bed of flowers, and all under a
silver-gray atmosphere that almost seemed to dissolve while the eye
rested on it. When Minola had looked long enough on the scene opening
below the mound, she then usually pursued her course by devious ways
until she reached one of the bridges of the canal, and there she made
another halting place. The scene from the canal-bridge, unlike that
from the mound, looked best on a bright, breezy day, of quick changing
lights and shadows. There the brown water of the canal sparkled and
gladdened in the sun, and Minola, leaning over the little bridge, and
fixing her eyes on the water as it rippled past the nearer bank, might
enjoy, for the hour, the full sensation of one who floats in a boat
along a stream, and watches the trees and grasses of the shore. The
place was quiet enough, and rich enough in trees and shrubs, and little
reeds quivering out of the water, to seem, at least in Minola's pleased
eyes, like a spot on the bank of the canal far in the country, while
yet there was to her the peculiar and keen delight of knowing herself
in London. Sometimes, too, a canal boat came gliding along, steered by
a stalwart and sunburnt woman in a great straw bonnet, and the boat and
the woman brought wild and delicious ideas of far-off country places,
with woods and gipsies, and fresh, half savage, half poetic life.
Minola extracted beautiful pictures and much poetry and romance from
that little bridge over the discolored canal, creeping through the
heart of London.

The population of London--even its idlers--usually move along in tracks
and grooves. Where some go, others go; where few go, at last none go.
It is wonderful what hours of almost absolute solitude Minola was able
to enjoy in the midst of Regent's Park. Voices, indeed, constantly
reached her: the cries and laughter of children, the shoutings of
cricketers, the dulled clamor of the metropolis itself. These reached
her as did the bleating of sheep and the tinkle of their bells, the
barking of dogs, and occasionally the fierce, hoarse, thrilling growl
or roar of some disturbed or impatient animal in the Zooelogical Gardens
near at hand. But many and many a time Minola lounged for half an hour
on her little knoll or on her chosen bridge, without seeing more of man
or woman than of the lions in their cages on the other side of the
enclosure. There was a particular hour of the day, too, when the park
in general was especially deserted, and it appears almost needless to
say that this was the time selected usually by Miss Grey for her
rambles. It was sometimes a curious, half sensuous pleasure for her
thus alone, amid the murmur of the trees, to fancy herself, for the
moment, back again within sight of the mausoleum at Keeton, where she
had spent so many weary and solitary hours, and then, awaking, to
rejoice anew in her freedom and in London.

It was a fortunate and kindly destiny which assigned to our heroine a
poetess for a companion. Much as she loved occasional solitude, Minola
loved still better the spirit of fidelity to the obligations of true
_camaraderie_, and if Miss Blanchet had had any manner of work to
do, from the mending of a stocking to the teaching of a school, in
which Minola could possibly have assisted her, Minola would never have
thought of leaving her to do the work alone. Or even if Miss Blanchet
had work to do in which Minola could not have helped her, but to which
her presence would be any manner of encouragement, Minola would have
stayed with her, and never dreamed of play while her companion had to
be at work. But we may safely appeal to all the poets of all time to
say whether anybody ever desired companionship while engaged in the
composition of poetry. Sappho herself could have well dispensed with
the society of Phaon at such a moment. It is true that Corinne threw
off some of her grandest effusions in full face of an admiring crowd,
and recited them not only with Lord Nelvil, but at him. Corinne,
however, was of the improvisatrice class, to which Mary Blanchet did
not profess to belong; and we own, moreover, to a constant suspicion
that Corinne must have sat up late for many previous nights getting her
improvisations by heart. At all events Miss Blanchet was not Corinne,
and required seclusion, and much thought, and comparison of rhymes, and
even looking out in dictionaries, in order to the composition of her
poems. At the present time Minola was well aware that her friend had a
new collection of poems on hand, and that the poems would be churned
off with less difficulty if the author were occasionally left to
herself for an hour or two. Therefore Minola was free to go into
Regent's Park, with untroubled conscience and light heart. The woman
who was not a poet revelled in the rustling branches and the sight of
the soft grass, and was filled with glad visions and dreams by the
flowing even of a poor, clouded, slow canal stream, and was rapt into
the ideal at the sight of a reed growing in the water and shaken by the
wind. The poetess remained at home in a dull room, and hammered out
rhymes with the help of a dictionary.

But, to do Minola justice, she was not wholly given up, even in these
free and lonely hours, to the sweet, innocent sensuousness that fills
certain beings when amid trees and the sounds of flowing water. She had
many scruples about the possible selfishness of her life, and wondered
whether it was not wrong thus to live, and whether it was not through
some fault of hers that no opportunity presented itself to her of doing
any good for man or woman. She asked herself sometimes whether she had
not been impatient and wilful in her dealings with the people at home.
She still, when in a self-questioning and penitential mood, thought and
spoke of Keeton as "home," and whether she had not done wrong in
leaving the material enclosure of any place bearing even by tradition
the name of home, for a life of freedom which some censors might have
thought unwomanly. There are metaphysicians who hold that, although man
of his nature has no intuitive knowledge, yet that the accumulated
experience of generations supplies gradually for men, as they are born,
a something which is like intuition to start with, and which they could
not now start clear of. So the experience or the traditions of
generations form a sort of factitious and accumulated conscience for
women independent of any abstract or eternal laws, and amounting in
strength to something like intuition. Over this shadow they cannot
leap. Minola, filled as she was with a peculiarly independent spirit,
and driven by circumstances to consider its indulgence a right and even
a duty, could not keep from the occasional torment of a doubt whether
there must not be something wrong in the conduct of any woman who,
under any circumstances, leaves voluntarily, and while she is yet under
age, the home of her childhood, and takes up her abode among strangers,
without guardians, mistress of herself, and in lodgings.

Perhaps some such ideas were in Minola's mind when she left Mary
Blanchet, a few mornings after the meetings described in the last
chapter, and set out for a pleasant lonely walk in Regent's Park.
Perhaps it was the very pleasure of the walk, and the loneliness, now
missed for some days, that made her dread being selfish, and sent her
down into a drooping and penitent reaction. "This will never do," she
kept thinking. "I ought to try to do something for somebody. I am
growing to think only of myself--and I broke away from Keeton because I
was getting morbid in thinking about myself."

It was in this remorseful condition of mind that she approached her
favorite mound, longing for an hour of quiet delight there, and half
ashamed of her longing. When she had nearly reached its height, she
discerned that the fates had seemingly resolved to punish her for her
love of solitariness, by decreeing that her chosen retreat should that
day be occupied. There was a seat on which she usually sat, and now a
man was there. That was bad enough, but she could in an ordinary case
have passed on, and sought some other place. Now, however, she saw that
that was denied to her; for the intruder was Mr. Victor Heron, and at
the sound of her footstep he looked round, recognized her, and was
already coming toward her, with hat uplifted and courteous bow.

The very rapid moment of time between Minola's first seeing Mr. Heron
and his recognizing her had enabled her quick eyes to perceive that
when he thought himself alone he was anything but the genial and joyous
personage he appeared in company. At first Miss Grey's attention was
withdrawn from her own disappointment by the air of melancholy and even
of utter despondency about the face and figure of the seated man. He
sat leaning forward, his chin supported by one hand, his eyes fixed
moodily on the ground. He seemed to have no manner of concern with air,
or sky, or scene, and his dark-complexioned face gave the impression of
one terribly at odds with fortune. Minola felt almost irresistibly
drawn toward one who seemed unhappy. Her harmless misanthropy went out
at a breath in the presence of any man who appeared to suffer.

But the change which came over Mr. Heron when he saw her can only be
likened to that which would be made by the sudden illumination of a
house that a second before was all dark, and seemingly tenantless. He
came to meet her with sparkling eyes and delighted expression. Mr.
Heron, it should perhaps be explained, considered himself so much older
than Miss Grey, so entirely an experienced, mature, not to say outworn
man, that he did not think of waiting to see whether Miss Grey was
inclined to encourage a renewal of the acquaintance. He considered it
his duty to be polite and friendly to the pretty girl he had met at
Money's, and whom he assumed to be poor, and wanting in friends.

"How fortunate I am to meet you here to-day!" he said. "You remember
me, I hope, Miss Grey? I haven't called you Miss Money this time. Come
now--don't say you have forgotten me."

"I could not say I had forgotten you, for it would not be true, Mr.
Heron."

"Thank you; that was very prettily said, and kindly."

"Was it? I really didn't mean it to be either pretty or kind--only the
truth."

"I see, you go in for being downright, and saying only what you mean. I
am very glad. So do I, and I am very much delighted to meet you here,
Miss Grey. Come, you won't say as much for me?"

"I cannot say that I was glad to see anybody just here; this place is
always deserted, except by me."

"You come here often, and you are sorry to have your retreat broken in
upon? Don't hesitate to say so, Miss Grey, and I will promise not to
come into this part of the park--or into any part of the park for that
matter--any more. Why should I disturb you?"

He spoke with such earnestness and such evident sincerity that Minola
began to feel ashamed of her previous ungraciousness.

"That would be rather hard upon you, and a little arrogant on my part,"
she said smiling. "The park isn't mine, and, if it were, I am sure I
could not be selfish enough to wish to shut you out from any part of
it. But I am in the habit of being a good deal alone; and I fear it
makes me a little rude and selfish sometimes. I was thinking of that
just as I came up here, and saw you."

"Then you saw me before I saw you?"

"Oh, yes."

"I am afraid you must have seen a very woe-begone personage."

"Yes; you seemed unhappy, I thought."

"There is something sympathetic about you, Miss Grey, for all your
coldness and loneliness."

"Surely," said Miss Grey, "a woman without some feeling of sympathy
would be hardly fit to live."

"You think so?" he asked quite earnestly and gravely. "So do I--so do I
indeed. Men have little time to sympathize with men--they are all too
busy with their own affairs. What should we do but for the sympathy of
women? Now tell me, why do you smile at that? I saw that you were
trying not to laugh."

"I could not help smiling a little, it was so thoroughly masculine a
sentiment."

"Was it? How is that now?" His direct way of propounding his questions
rather amused and did not displease her. It was like the way of a
rational man talking with another rational being--a style of
conversation which has much attraction for some women.

"Well, because it looked upon women so honestly as creatures only
formed to make men comfortable, by coming up and sympathizing with them
when they are in a humor for sympathy, and then retiring out of the way
into their corner again."

"I can assure you, Miss Grey, that never has been my idea--nothing of
the kind, indeed. To tell the truth, I have not known much about the
sympathy of women and all that. I have lived awfully out of the world,
and I never had any sisters, and I hardly remember my mother. I know
women chiefly in poems and romances, and I believe I generally adopt
the goddess theory. In honest truth, most women do seem to me a sort of
goddesses."

"You will not be long in England without unlearning that theory," Miss
Grey said. "Our writers seem to have hardly any subject now but the
faults and follies of women. One might sometimes think that woman was a
newly-discovered creature that the world could never be done wondering
at."

"Yes, yes; I read a good deal of that sort of thing out in the
colonies. But I have retained the goddess theory, so far at least. Mrs.
Money seems to me a sort of divinity. Miss Money is a born saint; she
ought to go about with a gilt plate round her head. Miss Lucy Money
seems like a little angel of light. Are you smiling again? I do assure
you these are my real feelings."

"I was not smiling at the idea, but only at the difference between it
and the favorite ideas of most people at present, even of women about
women."

"May I walk a little with you," Mr. Heron said, "or will you sit and
rest here, if you are tired, and we will talk? Don't stand on formality
and send me away, although I will go if you like, and not feel in the
least offended. But if we might talk for a little, it would give me
great pleasure. You said just now that you did not wish to be selfish.
It will be very unselfish and very kind if you will let me talk to you
a little. I felt very wretched when you came up--quite in a suicidal
frame of mind."

"Oh, no! Pray don't speak in that way. You do not mean it I am sure."

"In one sense I do mean it--that is, it is quite true that I should not
have thrown myself into the water or blown my brains out; that sort of
thing seems to me like abandoning one's post without orders from
headquarters. But I felt in the condition of mind when one can quite
understand how such things are done, and would be glad if he were free
to follow the example. For _me_ that is a great change in itself," the
young man added with some bitterness.

"What can I do for him?" Miss Grey asked herself mentally. "Nothing but
to show him the view from the canal bridge. There is nothing else in my
power."

"There is a very pretty view a short distance from this," she said; "a
view from a bridge, and I am particularly fond of looking from bridges.
Should you like to walk there?"

"I should like to walk anywhere with you," Victor Heron said, with a
look of genuine gratefulness, which had not the faintest breath of
compliment in it, and could only be accepted as frank truth.

Perhaps, if Miss Grey had been a town-bred girl, she might have
hesitated about setting out for a companionable walk in the park with a
young man who was almost a stranger to her. But, as it was, she
appeared to herself to have all the right of free action belonging to
one in a place of which the public opinion can in no wise touch her.
She acted in London as freely as one speaks with a friend in a foreign
hotel room, where he knows that the company around are unable to
understand what he is saying. In this particular instance, however,
Minola hardly thought about the matter at all. There was something in
Heron's open and emotional way which made people almost at the first
meeting cease to regard him as a stranger. Perhaps, if Minola had
thought over the matter, she might have cited in vindication of her
course the valuable authority of Major Pendennis, who, when asked
whether Laura might properly take walks in the Temple Gardens with
Warrington, eagerly said, "Yes, yes, begad, of course, you go out with
him. It's like the country, you know; everybody goes out with everybody
in the Gardens; and there are beadles, you know, and that sort of
thing. Everybody walks in the Temple Gardens." Regent's Park, one would
think, ought to come under the same laws. There are beadles there, too,
or guardian functionaries of some sort, although it may be owned that
in their walk to and from the canal bridge Heron and Minola encountered
none of them.

It is doubtful whether Heron at least would have noticed such a
personage even had they come in their way, for he talked nearly all the
time, except when he paused for an answer to some direct question, and
he seldom took his eyes from Minola's face. He was not staring at her,
or broadly admiring her; nor, indeed, was there anything in his manner
to make it certain that he was admiring her at all, as man
conventionally is understood to admire woman. But he had evidently put
Miss Grey into the place of a sympathetic and trusted friend, and he
talked to her accordingly. She was amused and interested, and she now
and then kept making little disparaging criticisms to herself, in order
to sustain her place as the cool depreciator of man. But she was very
happy for all that.

One characteristic peculiarity of this sudden and singular
acquaintanceship ought to be mentioned. When people still read "Gil
Blas" they would have remembered at once how the waiting-woman received
delightedly the advances of Gil Blas, believing him to be a gentleman
of fortune, and how Gil Blas paid great court to the waiting-woman,
believing her to be a lady of rank. The pair of friends in Regent's
Park were drawn together by exactly opposite impulses: each believed
the other poor and unfriended. Minola was under the impression that she
was giving her sympathy to a ruined and unhappy young man, who had
failed in life almost at the very beginning, and was now friendless in
stony-hearted London. Victor Heron was convinced that his companion was
a poor orphan girl, who had been sent down by misfortune from a
position of comfort, or even wealth, to earn her bread by some sort of
intellectual labor, while she lived in a small back room in a depressed
and mournful quarter of London.

He told her the story of his grievance; it may be that he even told her
some parts of it more than once. It was a strange sensation to her, as
she walked on the soft green turf, in the silver gray atmosphere, to
hear this young man, who seemed to have lived so bold and strange a
life, appealing to her for an opinion as to the course he ought to
pursue to have his cause set right. The St. Xavier's Settlements do not
geographically count for much, and politically they count for still
less. But when Mr. Heron told of his having been administrator and
commandant there; of his having made treaties with neighboring kings
(she knew they were only black kings); of his having tried to put down
slavery, and to maintain what he persisted in believing to be the true
honor of England; of war made on him, and war made by him in
return--while she listened to all this, it is no wonder if our romantic
girl from Duke's Keeton sometimes thought she was conversing with one
of the heroes and master-spirits of the time. He made the whole story
very clear to her, and she thoroughly understood it, although her
imagination and her senses were sometimes disturbed by the tropic glare
which seemed to come over the places and events he described. At last
they actually came to be standing on the canal bridge, and neither
looked at the view they had come to see.

"Now what do you advise?" Heron said, after having several times
impressed some particular point on her. "I attach great importance to a
woman's advice. You have instincts, and all that, which we haven't; at
least so everybody says. Would you let this thing drop altogether, and
try some other career, or would you fight it out?"

"I would fight it out," Minola said, looking up to him with sparkling
eyes, "and I would never let it drop. I would make them do me justice."

"Just what I think; just what I came to England resolved to do. I hate
the idea of giving in; but people here discourage me. Money discourages
me. He says the Government will never do anything unless I make myself
troublesome."

"Well, then, why not make yourself troublesome?"

"I have made myself troublesome in one sense," he said, with a vexed
kind of laugh, "by haunting ante-chambers, and trying to force people
to see me who don't want to see me. But I can't do any more of that
kind of work; I am sick of it. I am ashamed of having tried it at all."

"Yes, I couldn't do that," Minola said gravely.

"Then," Heron said, with a little embarrassment, "a man--a very kind
and well-meaning fellow, an old friend of my father's--offered to
introduce me to Lady Chertsey--a very clever woman, a queen of society,
I am told, who gets all the world (of politics, I mean) into her
drawing-room, and delights in being a sort of power, and all that. She
could push a fellow, they say, wonderfully if she took any interest in
him. But I couldn't do that, you know."

"No? Why not?"

"Well, I shouldn't care to be introduced to a lady's drawing-room with
the secret purpose of trying to get her to do me a service. There seems
something mean in that. Besides, I have a cause (at least, I think I
have) which is too good to be served in that kind of way. If I can't
get a hearing and justice from the Government of England and the people
of England for the sake of right and for the claims I have, I will
never try to get it through. Oh, well, perhaps, I ought not to say what
I was going to say."

"Why not?" Minola asked again.

"I mean, perhaps I ought not to say it to you."

"I don't know really. Tell me what it is, and then I'll tell you
whether you ought to say it."

He laughed. "Well, I was only going to say that I don't care to have my
cause served by petticoat influence."

"I think you are quite right. If I were a man, I should think petticoat
influence in such a matter contemptible. But why should you not like to
say so?"

"Only because I was afraid you might think I meant to speak
contemptuously of the influence and the advice of women. I don't mean
anything of the kind. I have the highest opinion of the advice of women
and their influence, as I have told you already; but I couldn't endure
the idea of having a lady, who doesn't know or care anything about me
and my claims, asked by somebody to say a word to some great man or
some great man's wife, in order that I might get a hearing. I am sure
you understand what I mean, Miss Grey."

"Oh, yes, I never should have misunderstood it; and I know that you are
quite right. It would be a downright degradation."

"So I felt. Anyhow, I could not do it. Then there remains the making
myself troublesome, as Money advises----"

"Yes, what is that?"

"Getting my case brought on again and again in the House of Commons,
and having debates about it, and making the whole thing public, and so
forcing the Government either to do me justice or to satisfy the
country that justice has already been done," he said bitterly.

"That would seem to me a right thing to do," Miss Grey said; "but I
know so little that I ought not to offer a word of advice."

"Oh, yes, I should trust to your feelings and instincts in such a case.
Well, I don't like, somehow, being in the hands of politicians and
party men, who might use me and my cause only as a means of annoying
the Government--not really from any sense of right and justice. I don't
know if I make myself quite understood; it is hard to expect a lady,
especially a young lady, to understand these things."

"I think I can quite understand all that. We are not so stupid as you
seem to suppose, Mr. Heron."

"Stupid? Didn't I tell you of my goddess theory?"

"Some of the goddesses were very stupid I always think. Venus was
stupid."

"Well, well; anyhow you are not Venus."

"No, indeed."

"In that sense I mean. Then I do succeed in making myself understood?"

"Oh, yes!" She could see that he was looking disappointed at her
interruption and her seeming levity, which was indeed only the result
of a momentary impulse to keep up to herself her character as a scorner
of men. "I think I understand quite clearly that you fear to be made
the mere instrument of politicians; and I think you are quite right. I
did not think of that at first, but, now that you explain it, I am sure
that you are right."

He nodded approvingly. "Then comes the question," he said, "what is to
be done?"

Leaning against the bridge, he thrust his hands into his pockets, and
stood looking into her face, as if he were really waiting for her to
solve the problem for him.

"That is entirely beyond me," she said. "I know nothing; I could not
even guess at what ought to be done."

"No? Now here is my idea. Why not plead my cause myself?"

"Plead your cause yourself? Can that be done?"

"Yes; myself--in Parliament."

Minola's mind at once formed and framed a picture of a stately
assembly, like a Roman Senate, or like the group of King Agrippa,
Festus, Bernice, and the rest, and Mr. Heron pleading his cause like
Cicero or Paul. The thing seemed hardly congruous. It did not seem to
her to fall in with modern conditions at all. Her face became blank;
she did not well know what to answer.

"Are people allowed to do such things now, in England?" she asked--"to
plead causes before Parliament?"

An odd idea came up in her mind, that perhaps by the time this strange
performance came to be enacted, Mr. Augustus Sheppard might be in
Parliament, and Mr. Heron's enthusiastic eloquence would have to be
addressed to him. She did not like the idea.

"You don't understand," Heron said. "You really don't this time. What I
mean is to get into Parliament--be elected for some place, and then
stand up and make my own fight for myself."

She kindled at the idea.

"Oh, yes, of course! How stupid I am not to see at once! That is a
splendid idea; the very thing I should like to do if I were a man and
in your place."

"You really think so?"

"Indeed I do. But then----" And she hesitated, for she feared that she
had been only encouraging him to a wild dream. "Does it not cost a
great deal of money to get into Parliament?"

"No; I think not; not always at least. I should look out for an
opportunity. I have money enough--for me. I'm not a rich man, Miss
Grey, but my father left me well enough off, as far as that goes; and
you know that in a place like St. Xavier's one couldn't spend any
money. There was no way of getting rid of it. No, my troubles are none
of them money troubles. I only want to vindicate my past career, and so
to have a career for the future. I ought to be doing something. I feel
in an unhealthy state of mind while all this is pressing on me. You
understand?"

"I can understand it," Miss Grey said, turning to leave the bridge, and
bestowing one glance at the yellow, slow-moving water, and the reeds
and the bushes, of which she and her companion had not spoken a word.
"It is not good to have to think of oneself. But you are bound to
vindicate yourself; that I am sure is your duty. Then you can think of
other things--of the public and the country."

"He is rich," she thought, "and he is clever and earnest, in spite of
his egotism. Of course he will have a career, and be successful. I
thought that he was poor and broken down, and that I was doing him a
kindness by showing sympathy with him."

They went away together, and Heron, delighted with her encouragement
and her intelligence, unfolded splendid plans of what he was to do. But
Minola somehow entered less cordially into them than she had done
before, and Mr. Heron at last became ashamed of talking so much about
himself.

"I hope we shall meet again," he said as she stopped significantly at
one of the gates leading out of the park, to intimate that now their
roads were separating. "I wish you would allow me to call and see you.
I do hope you won't think me odd, or that I am presuming on your
kindness. I am a semi-barbarian, you know--have been so long out of
civilization--and I haven't any idea of the ways of the polite world."

"Nor I," said Minola. "I have come from utter barbarism--from a country
town."

"But I do hope we shall meet again, for you are so sympathetic and
kind."

She bade him good day, and nodded with a friendly smile, but made no
answer to the repeated expression of his hope, and she hastened away.

Heron could not endure walking alone just then. He hailed a hansom and
disappeared.

"How vain men are!" Minola thought as she went her way. "How
egotistical they all are!" Of course she assumed herself to have
obtained a complete knowledge of all the characters of men. "How
egotistic he is! Of course he tells his whole story to every woman he
meets. Lucy Money no doubt has it by heart."

She did not remember for the moment that her own favorite hero was
likewise somewhat egotistical and effusive, and that he was very apt to
pour out the story of his wrongs into the ear of any sympathetic woman.
But she was disappointed with herself and her friend just now, and was
not in a mood to make perfectly reasonable comparisons.




CHAPTER VIII.

A "HELPER OF UNHAPPY MEN."


Mrs. Money had one great object in life. At least, if it was not an
object defined and set out before her, it was an instinct: it was to
make people happy. She could not rest without trying to make people
happy. The motherly instinct, which in other women is satisfied by
rushing at babies wherever they are to be seen, and ministering to
them, and fondling them, and talking pigeon-English to them, exuberated
in her so far as to set her trying to do the mother's part for all men
and women who came within her range, even when their years far exceeded
hers. There was one great advantage to herself personally in this: it
kept her content in what had come to be her own sphere. One cannot go
meddling in the affairs of duchesses and countesses, and Ministers of
State, with whatever kindly desire of setting everything to rights and
making them all happy. People of that class give themselves such
haughty airs that they would rather remain unhappy in their own way
than obtain felicity at the hand of some person of inferior station. So
Mrs. Money believed; and perhaps one secret cause of her dislike to the
aristocracy (along with the avowed conviction that the aristocratic
system had somehow misprized and interfered with her husband) was the
feeling that if she were among them, they would not allow her to do
anything for them. She therefore maintained a circle of which she
herself was the queen, and patroness, and Lady Bountiful. She busied
herself about everybody's affairs, and was kind to everybody, without
any feeling of delight in the mere work of patronizing, but out of a
sheer pleasure in trying to make people happy. Naturally she made
mistakes, and the general system of her social circle worked so as to
occasion a continual change, a passing away of old friends and coming
in of new. As young men rose in the world and became independent, as
girls got married and came to consider themselves supreme in their own
sphere, they tended to move away from Mrs. Money's influence. Even the
grateful and the generous could not always avoid this. For beginners in
any path of life she was the specially appointed helper and friend; and
next to these she might be called the patron saint of failures. In her
circle were young poets, painters, lawyers, novelists, preachers,
ambitious men looking out for seats in Parliament, or beginners in
Parliament; also there were the gray old poets whom no one read; the
painters who could not get their pictures exhibited or bought; the men
who were in Parliament ten or twenty years ago, and got out and never
could get in again; and the inventors who could not impress any
government or capitalist with a sense of the value of their
discoveries. No front-rank, successful person of any kind was usually
to be found in Mrs. Money's rooms. Her guests were the youths who were
putting their armor on for the battle, and the worn-out campaigners who
had put it off defeated.

Naturally, when Minola Grey came in Mrs. Money's way, the sympathy and
interest of the kindly lady were quickened to their keenest. This
beautiful, motherless, fatherless, proud, lonely girl--not so old as
her own Theresa, not older than her own Lucy--living by herself, or
almost by herself, in gloomy lodgings in the heart of London--how could
she fail to be an object of Mrs. Money's deep concern? Of course Mrs.
Money must look into all her affairs, and find out whether she was
poor; and in what sort of way she was living; and whether the people
with whom she lodged were kind to her.

Mary Blanchet's pride of heart can hardly be described when an open
carriage, with a pair of splendid grays, stopped at the door of the
house in the no-thoroughfare street, and a footman got down and
knocked; and it finally appeared that Mrs. Money, Miss Money, and Miss
Lucy Money had called to see Miss Grey. Miss Grey, as it happened, was
not at home, although the servant at first supposed that she was; and
thus the three ladies were shown into Minola's sitting-room, and there
almost instantly captured by Miss Blanchet. We say "almost" because
there was an interval long enough for Lucy to dart about the room from
point to point, taking up a book here, a piece of music there, an
engraving, a photograph, or a flower, and pronouncing everything
delightful. The room was old-fashioned, spacious, and solid, very
unlike the tiny apartments of the ordinary West End lodging; and, what
with the flowers and the books, it really looked rather an attractive
place to enthusiastic eyes. Miss Money kept her eyes on the ground for
the most part, and professed to take little notice of the ordinary
adornments of rooms; for Miss Money was a saint, and was furthermore
engaged to a man not far from her father's years, who, having made a
great deal of money at the Parliamentary bar, was now thinking of
entering the Church, and had already set about the building of a temple
of mediaeval style, in the progress of which Miss Money naturally was
deeply interested.

Miss Blanchet was in a flutter of excitement as she entered the
sitting-room. As she was crossing its threshold she was considering
whether she ought to present a copy of her poems to each of the three
ladies or only to Mrs. Money; or whether she ought to tender the gift
now or send it on by the post. The solemn eyes and imposing presence of
Mrs. Money were almost alarming, and the trailing dresses and feathers
of all the ladies sent a thrill of admiration and homage into the heart
of the poetess--everything was so evidently put on regardless of
expense. Little Mary had always been so poor and so stinted in the
matter of wardrobe that she could not help admiring these splendidly
dressed women. Mary, however, luckily remembered what was due to the
dignity of poetic genius, and did not allow her homage to show itself
too much in the form of trepidation. She instantly put on her best
company manners, and spoke in the sweetly measured and genteel tone
which she used to employ at Keeton, when she had occasion to
interchange a word with the judges, or the sheriffs, or some eminent
counsel.

"Minola will be home in a few moments--a very few," Miss Blanchet said.
"Indeed, I expect her every minute. I know she would be greatly
disappointed if she did not see you."

"Oh, I am not going without seeing Nola!" said Lucy.

"I am Minola's friend," Mary explained with placid dignity. "I may
introduce myself. My brother, I know, has already the honor of your
acquaintance. I am Miss Blanchet."

"Mr. Herbert Blanchet's sister?" Mrs. Money said in melancholy tone,
but with delighted eyes. "This is indeed an unexpected and a very great
pleasure."

"Why, you don't mean to say you are Herbert Blanchet's sister?" Lucy
exclaimed, seizing both the hands of the poetess. "He's the most
delightful creature, and a true poet. Oh, yes, a man of genius!"

The eyes of Mary moistened with happiness and pride.

"Herbert Blanchet is my brother. He is much younger than I; I need
hardly say that. I used to take care of him years ago, almost as if I
were his mother. We were a long time separated; he has been so much
abroad."

The faithful Mary would not for all the world have suggested that their
long separation was due to any indifference on the part of her brother.
Indeed, at the moment she was not thinking of anything of the kind,
only of his genius, and his beauty, and his noble heart.

"He never told me he had a sister," Mrs. Money said, "or I should have
been delighted to call on you long ago, Miss Blanchet. It is your
brother's fault, not mine. I shall tell him so."

"He did not know that I was coming to London," Mary was quick to
explain. "He thought I was still living in Keeton. I only came to
London with Minola."

"Oh! You lived in Keeton then always, along with Miss Grey!"

"How delightful!" Lucy exclaimed, desisting from her occupation of
opening books and turning over music; "for you can tell us all about
Nola and her love story."

"Her love story?" Mrs. Money repeated, in tones of melancholy inquiry.

"Her love story!" Miss Blanchet murmured tremulously, and wondering who
had betrayed Minola's secret.

"Oh, yes," said Lucy decisively. "I know there's some love
story--something romantic and delightful. Do tell us, Miss Blanchet."

Even the saint-like Theresa now showed a mild and becoming interest.

"It's not exactly a love story," Miss Blanchet said with some
hesitation, not well knowing what she ought to reveal and what to keep
back. "At least it's no love affair on Minola's part. She never was in
love--never. She detests all love-making--at least she thinks so," the
poetess said with a gentle sigh. "But there was a gentleman who was
very much in love with her."

"Oh, she must have had heaps of lovers!" interposed Lucy.

Miss Blanchet then told the story of Mr. Augustus Sheppard, and how he
was rich and handsome--at least rather handsome, she said--and how he
wanted to marry Minola; and her people very much wished that she would
have him, and she would not; and how at last she hastened her flight to
London to get rid of him. All this was full of delightful interest to
Lucy, and still further quickened the kindly sympathy of Mrs. Money.
Then Mary Blanchet went into a long story about the death of Minola's
mother and the second marriage of Minola's father, and then the
father's death and the stepmother's second marriage, and the discomfort
of the home which fate had thus provided for Minola. She expatiated
upon the happiness of the sheltered life Minola had had while her
mother was living, and the change that came upon her afterward, until
the only doubt Mrs. Money had ever entertained about Minola--a doubt as
to the perfect propriety and judgment of her coming to live almost
alone in London--vanished altogether, and she regarded our heroine as a
girl who had been driven from her home instead of having fled from it.

Mrs. Money delicately and cautiously approached the subject of Minola's
means of subsistence. On this point no one could enlighten her better
than Miss Blanchet, who knew to the sixpence the income and expenditure
of her friend. Well, Minola was not badly off for a girl, Mrs. Money
thought. A girl could live nicely and quietly, like a lady, but very
quietly, on that. Besides, some rich man would be sure to fall in love
with her.

"But she ought to have a great deal of money," the poetess eagerly
explained, very proud of her leader's losses. "Her father was a rich
man, quite a rich man, and he had quarrelled with her brother, and she
ought to have all the money, only for that second marriage." Indeed,
Miss Blanchet added the expression of her own profound conviction that
there must have been some queer work--some concealment or
something--about Mr. Grey's property, seeing that so little of it came
to Minola.

"I'll get Mr. Money to look into all that," Mrs. Money said decisively.
"He understands all about these things, and nothing could be hidden
from him."

Miss Blanchet modestly intimated that she had confided her suspicions
to her brother, and begged him to try and find out something.

"Oh, he never could understand anything about it!" Lucy said. "Poets
never know about these things. It's just in papa's line. He'll find
out. They can't baffle him. I know they have been cheating Nola--I know
they have! I know there's a will hidden away somewhere, making her the
rightful heir or whatever it is."

"About this gentleman--this lover. Is he a nice person?" Mrs. Money
began.

"Mr. Augustus Sheppard?" Mary asked, mentioning his name for the first
time in the conversation.

"Augustus Sheppard! Is that his name?" Lucy demanded eagerly.

"Why then, papa knows him! Indeed he does. I do declare papa knows
everything!"

"Why do you think, dear, that he knows this gentleman?"

"Because I heard him asking Nola about Mr. Augustus Sheppard the other
day, mamma, in our drawing-room."

"He couldn't have known this, I think," Miss Blanchet said.

"Oh, no, I suppose not; but he knows him, and he'll tell us all about
him. Why wouldn't Nola have him, Miss Blanchet?"

"He is rather a formal sort of person, and heavy, and not the least in
the world poetic or romantic; and Minola does not like him at all. She
doesn't think his feelings are very deep; but there I am sure she is
wrong," the poetess added emphatically. "She has never had occasion to
make a study of human feelings as others have."

"You think he has deep feelings?" Mrs. Money asked, turning the full
light of her melancholy eyes upon Mary, and with her whole soul already
in the question.

"Oh, yes; I know he has. I know that he will persevere, and will try to
make Minola marry him still. He is a man I should be afraid of if he
were disappointed. I should indeed."

"Mamma, don't you think we had better have Nola to stay with us for a
while?" Lucy asked. "Miss Blanchet could describe him, or get a
photograph, and we could give orders that no such man was ever to be
admitted if he should call and ask to see her. Some one should always
go out with her, or she should only go in the carriage. I dread this
man; I do indeed. Miss Blanchet is quite right, and she knows more than
she says, I dare say. Such terrible things have happened, you know. I
read in a paper the other day of a young man who fell in love with a
girl--in the country it was, I think, or in Spain perhaps, or
somewhere--and she would not marry him; and he hid himself with a long
dagger, and when she was going to church he stabbed her several times."

"I don't think Mr. Augustus Sheppard would be likely to do anything of
that kind," Miss Blanchet said. "He's a very respectable man, and a
steady, grave sort of person."

"You never can tell," Lucy declared. "When those quiet men are in love
and disappointed, they are dreadful! I've read a great many things just
like that in books."

"Well, dear," Mrs. Money said, "we'll ask your papa. If he knows this
gentleman--this person--he can tell us what sort of man he is. It
doesn't seem that he is in London now."

"He may have come to-day," said Lucy.

Miss Theresa looked at her watch.

"Mamma dear, I don't think Miss Grey is coming in just yet, and it's
growing late, and I have to attend the Ladies' Committee of the Saint
Angulphus Association, at four."

"You go, mamma, with Theresa," Lucy exclaimed. "I'll wait; I must see
Nola. I begin to be alarmed. It's very odd her staying out. I think
something must really have happened. That man may have been in town,
waiting somewhere. You go. When I have seen Nola, and am satisfied that
she is safe, I can get home in the omnibus, or the underground, or the
steamboat, or somehow. I'll find my way, you may be sure."

"My dear," her mother said, "you were never in an omnibus in your
life."

"Papa goes in omnibuses, and he says he doesn't care whether other
people do or not."

"But a lady, my dear----"

"Oh, I've seen them in the streets full of women! They don't object to
ladies at all."

"But my dear young lady," Miss Blanchet pleaded, "there is not the
slightest occasion for your staying. Mr. Sheppard isn't at all that
kind of person. Minola is quite safe. She is often out much later than
this, although I confess that I did expect her home much earlier
to-day."

"I'll stay till Nola comes," the positive little Lucy declared, "unless
Miss Blanchet turns me out; and there's an end of that. So, mamma dear,
you and Tessy do as you please, and never mind me."

"When Minola does come----" Mary Blanchet began to say.

"When she does come?" Lucy interrupted in portentous accents. "Say if
she does come, Miss Blanchet."

"When she does come, please don't say anything of Mr. Sheppard. Of
course she would not like to think that we spoke about such a subject."

"Oh, of course, of course!" all the ladies chorused, with looks
expressive of immense caution and discretion; and in true feminine
fashion all honestly assuming that there could be nothing wrong in
talking over anybody's supposed secrets so long as the person concerned
did not know of the talk.

"I see Miss Grey," said the quiet Theresa suddenly. She had been
looking out of the window to see if the carriage was near. As a
professed saint she had naturally less interest in ordinary human
creatures than her mother and sister had.

"Thank heaven!" Lucy exclaimed.

"Dear Lucy!" Theresa interposed in tones of mild remonstrance, as if
she would suggest that not everybody had a right to make reference to
heaven, and that heaven would probably resent any allusion to it by the
unqualified.

"Well, I am thankful that she is coming all the same; but I wish you
wouldn't call her Miss Grey, Tessy. It seems cold and unfriendly. Call
her Nola, please."

Mary Blanchet went to the door and exchanged a brief word or two with
Minola, in order that she might be prepared for her visitors. Minola
came in, looking very handsome, with her color heightened by a quick
walk home and the little excitement of her morning.

"How lovely you are looking, Nola, dear!" Lucy exclaimed, after the
first greetings were over. "You look as if you had been having an
adventure."

"I have had a sort of adventure," Minola answered with a faint blush.

The one thought went through the minds of all her listeners at the same
moment, and it shaped itself into a name--"Mr. Augustus Sheppard." All
were silent and breathless.

"It was not much," Minola hastened to say. "Only I met Mr. Victor Heron
in Regent's Park, and I have been walking with him."

Most of her listeners seemed relieved.

"I wish I had met him," Lucy blurted out. "He is very handsome, and I
should like to have walked with him. Oh, what nonsense I am talking!"
and she grew red, and jumped up and looked out of the window.

Then they all talked about something else, and the visit closed with a
promise that Minola and Mary Blanchet would present themselves at one
of Mrs. Money's little weekly receptions, out of season, which was to
take place the following evening; and after which Mrs. Money hoped to
decoy them into staying for the night. Mary Blanchet went to bed that
night in an ecstasy of happiness, only disturbed now and then by a
torturing doubt as to whether Mrs. Money would be equally willing to
receive her if she had known that she had been the keeper of the
court-house at Keeton; and whether she ought not to forewarn Mrs. Money
of the fact; and whether she ought not, at least, to call Minola's
attention to the question, and submit to her judgment.




CHAPTER IX.

IN SOCIETY.


Mr. Money was not a very regular visitor at his wife's little
receptions out of the season. In the season, and when they had larger
and more formal gatherings, he showed himself as much as was fitting
and regular; for many of the guests then were virtually his guests,
persons who desired especially to see him, and of whose topics he could
talk. A good many foreign visitors were there usually--scientific men,
and railway contractors, and engineers, and shipbuilders, from Germany,
Italy, and Russia, and of course the United States, who looked upon Mr.
Money as a person of great importance and distinction, and would not
have cared anything about most of Mrs. Money's guests.

The foreigners were curiously right and wrong. Mr. Money was a person
of importance and distinction. Every Londoner who knew anything knew
his name, and knew that he was clever and distinguished. If a Russian
stranger of rank were dining with a Cabinet minister, and were to
express a wish to see and know Mr. Money, the minister would think the
wish quite natural, and would take his friend down to the lobby of the
House of Commons, and make him acquainted with Mr. Money. We have all
been foreigners ourselves somewhere, and we know how our longing to see
some celebrity, as we suppose, of the land we are visiting, some one
whose name was familiar to us in England, has been occasionally checked
and chilled by our finding that in the celebrity's own city no one
seems to have heard of him. There are only too many celebrities of this
kind which shine, like the moon, for those who are a long way off. But
Mr. Money was a man of mark in London, as well as in St. Petersburg and
New York. Therein the foreigners found themselves right. Yet Mr.
Money's position was somewhat peculiar for all that, in a manner no
stranger could well appreciate. The Cabinet minister did not ask Mr.
Money to meet his friend at dinner; or, at all events, would never have
been able to say to his friend, "Money? Oh, yes! Of course you ought to
know him. He is coming to-morrow to dine with us. Won't you come and
meet him?" The most the Cabinet minister would do would be to get up a
little dinner party, suitably adjusted for the express purpose of
bringing his friend and Mr. Money together. It would be too much to say
that Mr. Money was under a cloud. There rather seemed to be a sort of
faint idea abroad that he ought to be, or some day would be, under a
cloud, no one knew why.

No such considerations as these, however, would have affected the
company who gathered round Mrs. Money in the out-of-season evenings, or
could have been appreciated by them. They were, for the most part,
entirely out of Mr. Money's line. He came among them irregularly and at
intervals; and if he found there any man or woman he knew or was taken
with, he talked to him or her a good deal, and perhaps, if it were a
man, he carried him and one or two others off to his own study or
smoking-room, where they discoursed at their ease. Sometimes Lucelet
was sent to her papa, if he was not making his appearance in the
drawing-room, to beg him to accomplish some such act of timely
intervention. Somebody, perhaps, presented himself among Mrs. Money's
guests who was rather too solid, or grave, or scientific, or political,
to care for the general company, and to be of any social benefit to
them; or some one, as we have said, in whose eyes Mr. Money would be a
celebrity, and Mrs. Money's guests counted for nothing. Then Lucy went
for her father, if he was in the house, and drew him forth. He was
wonderfully genial with his womankind. They might disturb him at any
moment and in any way they chose. He seemed to have as little idea of
grumbling if they disturbed him as a Newfoundland dog would have of
snapping at his master's children if they insisted on rousing him up
from his doze in the sun.

Mr. Money talked very frankly of his daughters and their prospects
sometimes.

"My girls are going to marry any one they like," he would often say;
"the poorer the better, so far as I am concerned, so long as they like
the girls and the girls like them." As chance would have it, a rich man
fell in love with Theresa, and she, in her quiet, sanctimonious way,
loved him, and that was settled.

"Now, Lucelet, look out for yourself," Mr. Money would, say to his
blushing daughter. "If you fall in love with some fine young fellow, I
don't care if he hasn't sixpence. Only be sure, Mrs. Lucelet, that you
are in love with him, and that he is in love with you, and not with
your expectations."

Lucelet generally smiled and saucily tossed her head, as one who should
say that she considered herself a person quite qualified to make an
impression without the help of any expectations.

"I sometimes wish the right man would come along, Lucelet," Mr. Money
said one day, throwing his arm round his pretty daughter's shoulder,
and drawing her to him.

"Papa! do you want to get rid of me so soon? I wonder at you. I know I
don't want to get rid of you."

"No, no, dear; it isn't that. Never mind. Where's your mamma? Just run
and ask her"--and Mr. Money started something else, and put an end to
the conversation.

Mr. Money's ideas with regard to the future of his daughters did not
fail to become known among his acquaintances in general, and would
doubtless have drawn young men in goodly numbers around his home, even
if Lucelet were far less pretty than she really was. But in any case
Mrs. Money loved to be friendly to young people, and her less formal
parties were largely attended, almost always, by the young. Miss
Theresa's future husband did not come there often. He had known the
family chiefly through Mr. Money and Parliament; and, coming once to
dine with Mr. Money, he fell fairly in love with the dove-like eyes and
saintly ways of Theresa. Theresa was therefore what her father would
have called "out of the swim." She looked tolerantly upon her mother's
little gatherings of poets _en herbe_, artists who were great to
their friends, patriots hunting for constituencies, orators who had not
yet caught the speaker's eye, and persons who had tried success in all
these various paths and failed. She looked on them tolerantly, but her
soul was not in them; it floated above them in a purer atmosphere. It
was now, indeed, floating among the spires of the church which her
lover was to build.

One peculiarity seemed common to the guests whom Mrs. Money gathered
around her. On any subject in which they felt the slightest interest
they never felt the slightest doubt. The air they breathed was that
of conviction; the language they talked was that of dogma. The men
and women they knew were the greatest, most gifted, and most
beautiful in the world; the men and women they did not know were
nothing--were beneath contempt. Every one had what Lowell calls an
"I-turn-the-crank-of-the-universe air." In that charmed circle every
one was either a genius destined yet to move the world, or a genius
too great for the dull, unworthy world to comprehend. It was a happy
circle, where success or failure came to just the same.

All in a flutter of delight was Mary Blanchet when preparing to enter
that magical circle. She was going at last to meet great men and
brilliant women. Perhaps, some day, she might even come to be known
among them--to shine among them. She could never be done embracing
Minola for having brought her to the gate of that heaven. She spent all
the day dressing herself and adjusting her hair; but as the hours went
on she became almost wretched from nervousness. When it was nearly time
for them to go she was quivering with agitation. They went in a
brougham hired specially for the occasion, because, although Mrs. Money
offered to send her carriage, and Mary would have liked it much, Minola
would hear of nothing of the kind. Mary was engaged all the way in the
brougham in the proper adjustment of her gloves. At last they came to
the place. Minola did the gentleman's part, and handed her agitated
companion out. Mary Blanchet saw a strip of carpet on the pavement, an
open door with servants in livery standing about, blazing lights,
brightly dressed women going in, a glimpse of a room with a crowd of
people, and then Minola and she found themselves somehow in a ladies'
dressing-room.

"Minola, darling, don't go in without me. I am quite nervous--I should
never venture to go in alone."

Minola did not intend to desert her palpitating little companion, who
now indeed clung to her skirts and would not let her go had she been
inclined. Miss Blanchet might have been a young beauty just about to
make her _debut_ at a ball, so anxious was she about her appearance,
about her dress, about her complexion; and at the same time she was so
nervous that she could hardly compel her trembling fingers to give the
finishing touches which she believed herself to need. Minola looked on
wondering, puzzled, and half angry. The poetess was unmistakably a
little, withered, yellowing old maid. She had not even the remains of
good looks. No dressing or decoration possible to woman could make her
anything but what she was, or deceive any one about her, or induce any
one to feel interested in her. The handsome, stately girl who stood
smiling near her was about to enter the drawing-room quite unconcerned
as to her own appearance, and indeed not thinking about it; and the
homely little old maid was quite distressed lest the company generally
should not sufficiently admire her, or should find any fault with her
dress.

"Come along, you silly poetess," said Minola at last, breaking into a
laugh, and fairly drawing her companion away from the looking-glass.
"What do you think anybody will care about you or me? We'll steal in
unnoticed, and we'll be all right."

"It's the first time I ever was in London society, Minola, dear, and
I'm quite nervous."

"It's the first time I ever was in London society, and I'm not a bit
nervous. No one knows us, dear--and no one cares. So come along."

She fairly carried Mary Blanchet out of the dressing-room, along a
corridor lined with seats, on which people who had been in the
drawing-room and had come out, were chattering, and flirting, and
lounging--and at last over the threshold of the drawing-room, and into
the presence of the hostess. A few friendly words were got through, and
Minola dragged her companion along through the crowd into the recess
formed by a window where there were some unoccupied seats.

"Now, Mary, that's done. The plunge is made, dear! We are in society!
Let us sit down here--and look at it."

"This," said Mary faintly--"this, at last, is society."

"I suppose it is, dear. At least it will do very well for you and me.
We should never know any difference. Imagine all these people marquises
and countesses, and what more can we want to make us happy? They may be
marquises and countesses for all I know."

"I should think there must be some great poets, and authors, and
artists, Minola. I am sure there must be. Oh, there is my brother!"

In effect Mr. Herbert Blanchet had already fixed his dark eyes on
Minola, and was making his way up to her retreat, rather to Minola's
distress. He addressed Minola at once with that undefinable manner of
easy and kindly superiority which he always adopted toward women, and
which, it must be owned, impressed some women a great deal. To his
sister he held out, while hardly looking at her, an encouraging hand of
recognition.

"Have you seen Delavar's picture?" he asked Minola.

"No. Who is Delavar?"

"Delavar? He _was_ the greatest painter of our time--at least of his
school; for I don't admit that his school is the true one."

"Oh, is his picture here?"

"In the other room--yes. He painted it for Mr. Money--for Mrs. Money
rather I should say--and it has just been sent home. Come with me and I
will show it to you."

"And Mary?"

"We'll come back for Mary presently. The rooms are too full. We
couldn't all get through. If you'll take my arm, Miss Grey!"

Minola rose and took his arm, and they made their way slowly through
the room. They moved even more slowly than was necessary, for Herbert
Blanchet was particularly anxious to show off his companion and himself
to the fullest advantage. The moment Minola entered the room he saw
that she was the handsomest girl there, and that her dressing was
simple, graceful, and picturesque. He knew that before a quarter of an
hour had passed everybody would be asking who she was, and he resolved
to secure for himself the effect of being the first to parade her
through the rooms. He was a singularly handsome man--as has been said
before--almost oppressively handsome; and a certain wasted look about
his eyes and cheeks added a new and striking effect to his appearance.
He was dark, she was fair; he was a tall man, she was a rather tall
girl; and if his face had a worn look, hers had an expression of
something like habitual melancholy, which was not perhaps in keeping
with her natural temperament, and which lent by force of contrast an
additional charm to her eyes when they suddenly lit up at the opening
of any manner of animated conversation. No combination could be more
effective, Mr. Blanchet felt, than that of his appearance and hers; and
then she was a new figure. So he passed slowly on with her, and he knew
that most people looked at them as they passed. He took good care, too,
that they should be engaged in earnest talk.

"I am delighted to have you all to myself for a moment, Miss Grey--to
tell you that I know all about your goodness to Mary. That is why I
would not bring her with us now. No--you must let me speak--I am not
offering you my thanks. I know you would not care about that. But I
must tell you that I know what you have done. I have no doubt that you
are her sole support--poor Mary!"

"I am her friend, Mr. Blanchet--only that."

"Her only friend too. Her brother has not done much for her. To tell
you the truth, Miss Grey, it isn't in his power now. You don't know the
struggles of us, the unsuccessful men in literature, who yet have faith
in ourselves. I am very poor. My utmost effort goes in keeping a decent
dress-coat and buying a pair of gloves; I don't complain--I am not one
bit deterred, and I only trouble you with this confession, because
whatever I may have been in the past I had rather you knew me to be
what I am--a wretched, penniless struggler--than believe that I left my
sister to be a burden on your friendship."

"Mary is the only friend I have," said Minola. "It is not wonderful if
I wish to keep her with me. And you will make a great success some
time."

He shook his head.

"If one hadn't to grind at things for bare living, one might do
something. I am not bad enough, or good enough; and that's the truth of
it. I dare say if I were mean enough to hunt after some woman with
money, I might have succeeded as well as others--but I couldn't do
that."

"No, I am sure you could not."

"I am not mean enough for that. But I am not high-minded enough to
accept any path, and be content with it and proud of it. Now I shan't
bore you any more about myself. I wanted you to know this that you
might not think too harshly of me. I know you felt some objection to me
at first; you need not try politely to deny it."

"Oh, no; I don't want to deny it. I prefer truth to politeness, a great
deal. I did think you had neglected your sister; but really I was not
surprised. I believe other men do the same thing."

"But now you see that I have some excuse?"

"I am glad to hear it, Mr. Blanchet."

"Glad to hear that I am so wretchedly poor, Miss Grey?" he said with a
smile, and bending his eyes on her. "Glad to hear that your friend's
brother is such a failure?"

"I would rather a thousand times hear that you were poor than that you
were heartless. I don't call it a failure to be poor. I should call it
a failure to be selfish and mean."

She spoke in a low tone, but very earnestly and eagerly, and she
suddenly thought she was speaking too eagerly, and stopped.

"Well," he said, after a moment's pause, "here is the picture. We shall
get to it presently, when these people move away."

They had entered, through a curtained door, a small room which was
nearly filled with people standing before a picture, and admiringly
criticising it. Minola, with all her real or fancied delight in noting
the jealousies and weaknesses of men and women, could hear no words of
detraction or even dispraise.

"Is the painter here?" she asked of her companion in a whisper.

"No; I haven't seen him. Perhaps he'll come in later on."

"Would you think it cheap cynicism if I were to ask why they all praise
the picture--why they don't find any fault with it?"

"Oh, because they are all of the school, and they must support their
creed. Our art is a creed to us. I don't admit that I am of Delavar's
school any more; in fact, I look upon him as a heretic. He is going in
for mere popularity; success has spoilt him. But to most of these
people here he is still a divinity. They haven't found him out yet."

"Oh!"

This little exclamation broke from Minola as some people at length
struggled their way outward, and allowed her to see the whole of the
picture.

"What is it called?" she asked.

"Love stronger than death."

The scene was a graveyard, under a sickly yellow moon, rising in a
livid and greenish sky. A little to the left of the spectator was seen
a freshly-opened grave. In the foreground were two figures--one that of
a dead girl, whom her lover had just haled from her coffin, wrapped as
she was in her cerements of the tomb; the other that of the lover. He
had propped the body against the broken hillock of the grave, and he
was chanting a love-song to it which he accompanied on his lute. His
face suggested the last stage of a galloping consumption, further
enlivened by the fearsome light of insanity in his eyes. Some dreary
bats flopped and lollopped through the air, and a few sympathetic toads
came out to listen to the lay of the lover. The cypresses appeared as
if they swayed and moaned to the music; and the rank weeds and grasses
were mournfully tremulous around the sandalled feet of the forlorn
musician.

Minola at first could not keep from shuddering. Then there followed a
shocking inclination to laugh.

"What do you think of it?" Blanchet asked.

"Oh, I don't like it at all."

"No? It is trivial. Mere prettiness; just a striving after drawing-room
popularity. No depth of feeling; no care for the realistic power of the
scene. Pretty, pleasing--nothing more. Surface only; no depth."

"But it is hideous," Minola said.

"Hideous? Oh, no! Decay is loveliness; decay is the soul of really high
art when you come to understand it. But there is no real decay there.
That girl's face is pretty waxwork. There's no death there," and he
turned half away in contempt. "That is what comes of being popular and
a success. No; Delavar is done. I told him so."

"He is quite new to me," said Minola. "I never heard of him before."

"He's getting old now," Blanchet said. "He must be quite thirty. Let me
see--oh, yes; fully that. He had better join the pre-Raphaelites now;
or send to the Royal Academy; or hire a gallery and exhibit his
pictures at a shilling a head. I fancy they would be quite a success."

Some of this conversation took place as they were making their way
through the crowd with the intention of entering the drawing-room
again. Minola was greatly amused, and in a manner interested. The whole
thing was entirely new to her. As they passed into the corridor there
were one or two vacant seats.

"Will you rest for a moment?" Blanchet said, motioning toward a seat.

"Hadn't we better go back for Mary?"

"We'll go back presently. She is very happy; she loves above all things
observing a crowd."

Minola would have liked very much to observe the crowd herself and to
have people pointed out to her. Blanchet, however, though he saluted
several persons here and there, did not seem particularly interested in
any of them. Minola sat down for a while to please him, and to show
that she had no thought of giving herself airs merely because she was
enabled to be kind to his sister.

Blanchet threw himself sidelong across his chair and leaned toward
Minola's seat. He knew that people were looking at him and wondering
who his companion was, and he felt very happy.

"I wish I might read some of my poems to you, Miss Grey," he said. "I
should like to have your opinion, because I know it would be sincere."

"I should be delighted to hear them, but I don't think I should venture
to give an opinion; my opinion would not be worth anything."

"When may I come and read one or two to you and Mary? To-morrow
afternoon?"

"Oh, yes; we are staying here tonight, but we shall be at home in the
afternoon. Are these published poems? Pray, excuse me--I quite forgot;
you don't publish. You don't care for fame--the fame that sets other
people wild."

He smiled, and slightly shrugged his shoulders.

"We don't care for the plaudits of the stupid crowd," he said; "that is
quite true. We don't care for popularity, and to have our books lying
on drawing-room tables, and kept by the booksellers bound in morocco
ready to hand, to be given away as gift books to young ladies. But we
should like the admiration of a chosen few. The truth is, that I don't
publish my poems because I haven't the money. They would be a dead
loss, of course, to any one who printed them; I am proud to say that. I
would not have them printed at all if they couldn't be artistically and
fitly brought out; and I haven't the money, and there's an end. But if
I might read my poems to you, that would be something."

Minola began to be full of pity for the poor poet, between whom and
possible fame there stood so hard and prosaic a barrier. She was
touched by the proud humility of his confession of ambition and
poverty. Three sudden questions flashed through her mind. "I wonder how
much it would cost? and have I money enough? and would it be possible
to get him to take it?"

Her color was positively heightening, and her breath becoming checked
by the boldness of these thoughts, when suddenly there was a rushing
and rustling of silken skirts, and Lucy Money, disengaging herself from
a man's arm, swooped upon her.

"You darlingest, dear Nola, where have you been all the night? I have
been hunting for you everywhere! Oh--Mr. Blanchet! I haven't seen you
before either. Have you two been wandering about together all the
evening?"

Looking up, Minola saw that it was Mr. Victor Heron who had been with
Lucy Money, and that he was now waiting with a smile of genial
friendliness to be recognized by Miss Grey. It must be owned that
Minola felt a little embarrassed, and would rather--though she could
not possibly tell why--not have been found deep in confidential talk
with Herbert Blanchet.

She gave Mr. Heron her hand, and told him--which was now the
truth--that she was glad to see him.

"Hadn't we better go and find Mary?" Blanchet said, rising and glancing
slightly at Heron. "She will be expecting us."

"No, please don't take Miss Grey away just yet," Victor said,
addressing himself straightway, and with eyes of unutterable cordiality
and good-fellowship, to the poet. "I haven't spoken a word to her yet;
and I have to go away soon."

"I'll go with you to your sister, Mr. Blanchet," said Lucy, taking his
arm forthwith. "I haven't seen her all the evening, and I want to talk
to her very much."

So Lucy swept away on Mr. Blanchet's arm, looking very fair, and
_petite_, and pretty, as she held a bundle of her draperies in one
hand, and glanced back, smiling and nodding, out of sheer good-nature,
at Minola.

Victor Heron sat down by Minola, and at once plunged into earnest talk.




TRIED AND TRUE.


    Year after year we'll gather here,
    And pass the night in merry cheer.
    Through storm and war, o'er sea and land,
    We'll come each year to Neckar's strand:
    In war and storm, on land and sea,
    To this our pledge we'll faithful be,
    _And each to all be true_.

    So sang three students one March night--
      Without the storm wind blew,
    Within were wine and warmth and light
      And three hearts brave and true.

      "To-morrow morn we all go hence,"
      Said Wilhelm, speaking low.
      "For Emil fights for Fatherland,
      Franz o'er the sea doth go,

      "And I in Berlin, with my books,
      Will lead a scholar's life--
    In toil, and war, and foreign land,
      We thus begin the strife."

    Three glasses then with Rhineland wine
      Unto the brim were filled,
    And to the sacred parting pledge
      Each heart responsive thrilled.

    Three years went by, and so the friends
      Unto their faith were true,
    And spent the night in merry song
      And lived the past year through.

    When came the fourth reunion night
      Without the March wind blew,
    Within were wine, and warmth, and light,
      And one heart brave and true.

    For Emil died for Fatherland,
      And Franz went down at sea--
    In war and storm, in life and death,
      They said they'd faithful be:

    And so Wilhem three glasses filled.
      Of one he kissed the edge;
    Two shadow hands the others raised--
      The friends had kept their pledge!

SYLVESTER BAXTER.




ABOUT CIGARETTES.


Ten or fifteen years ago we rarely saw cigarettes in this country,
their use being confined to the few natives who had acquired the habit
during a residence abroad, and to foreigners, French, Italian, and
Cuban settlers, who followed the practices of their youth. So slight
was the general demand that, excepting in the large cities, cigarettes
were rarely found for sale. To-day there are probably few small towns
in the thickly settled portions of the country where cigarettes are not
readily obtained; while in the large cities the stores vie with each
other in giving us varied assortments of leading brands. Indeed, recent
statistics state that nearly thirty per cent. of the entire smoking
tobacco consumed in the United States is in this form. Cigarettes are
now imported from all portions of Europe, but principally from France.
Several factories have of late years been started in our own country,
but the cigarette _par excellence_ is made in Havana. Nowhere else do
we find capital so largely invested, labor so diversified, or such
attention to details. There certainly you can take your
choice--Honoradez, Havana, Astrea, Cherito, Henriquez, and dozens of
others of lesser note.

The tobacco used in the making of the Havana cigarettes is bought from
the cigar factors, but only from those who have the most assured
reputation. It consists of the leaves left from the making of cigars.
The necessity of securing the best grades of tobacco cannot be
overestimated. The judgment of the cigarette smoker is formed solely
from the sense of taste. He is totally unaffected by sight, which in
the cigar enables a clever workman to so roll bad tobacco that we are
predisposed in favor of an inferior article. While absolute inferiority
is intolerable in either, mediocrity, in Cuba at all events, is much
more readily tolerated in the cigar than in the cigarette.

The tobacco for the cigarette is not, as is generally supposed with us,
raised on the plantations of the various leading cigar factors.
"Bartegas," "Cobania," "Upman," or whatever be the name of our favorite
brand, does not depend for its success upon any one plantation. The
practice on the part of the leading houses is to send their purchasing
agents into the tobacco district as soon as the crop begins to ripen.
Sales are then and there arranged, immense sums sometimes being offered
in advance, by way of retainer, for a specially likely plantation. The
Vuelto Abago district is the favorite one, the planters there holding a
position not unlike that occupied by the proprietors of the "Sea
Island" plantations in days when "cotton was king." The ability to
control the market so as to bring to their own manufactories the
choicest tobacco is the main secret of the success of the larger
houses, not, as is frequently supposed, any particular superiority in
the workmen.

The principal cigarette factory is, as is well known, the factory of M.
Susini, "La Honoradez," "Honoradez" signifying in Spanish, honesty, the
motto of the house. It consists of a series of irregular buildings,
covering an area in space about equal to that occupied by the usual
Broadway block. On the upper floor of the principal building we find a
lot of tobacco, which has just arrived, and is being prepared for
inspection; the first requisite being to remove from it any leaves that
are either dead or in any way injured. The tobacco lays loosely
scattered over an immense wooden tray, which is kept continually
moving, by means of machinery, from one end of a table to the other.
Around this table are seated some twelve or fourteen Cuban workmen, all
good judges of tobacco. Each one throws aside such leaves as he deems
unfit for use, while the slow but yet continual motion given to the
tray brings each imperfection successively before the eyes of all. The
next step is to free the tobacco from any particles of sand or earth
that may adhere to it. This is done by moving the tray by machinery,
until it is over a large bin, into which the tobacco is allowed to
fall, being subjected in its passage to a powerful current of air
induced by means of an immense fan, likewise worked by machinery. One
step more, and a very simple one--that of drying--and the tobacco is
ready for a change of form. The tobacco is dried by simply exposing it
on the roof, for a few hours, to the heat of the sun. For cigarettes it
can scarcely be too dry, or for cigars too damp. A Cuban would not
think of smoking other than a damp cigar. In the factories one sees the
workmen smoking cigars they have just rolled, and no native could
understand why one should smoke dry cigars in which so much of the
natural flavor has been lost.

Thus far the process has been entirely one of cleansing or of freeing
from impurities. The next step is that of cutting the leaves into fine
particles in order to adapt the tobacco for cigarettes. The scattered
leaves are first collected and subjected to powerful hydraulic
pressure, from which they come out looking for all the world like a
pile of snuff- brick. The moulded tobacco next goes to the
cutting machine, falling from thence into a sieve, the meshes of which
pass only such pieces as have been reduced to the proper size. The
remainder is passed into a hopper, and thence goes for a second
cutting. One step more, and the tobacco will be issued to the
"rollers." Some half a dozen Chinese enter the room, each carrying with
him a small vessel containing an aromatic liquid, with which the loose
tobacco is carefully sprinkled. The preparation of this liquid is not
known. It is doubtless the desire to keep it secret that leads to the
preference of Chinese over native labor.

Before following the tobacco furher, let us look at the remaining
portion of the cigarette, the wrapper. The original envelope for the
tobacco was doubtless composed of leaves, the followers of Columbus
carrying back to Spain accounts of the strange custom existing among
the natives of San Salvador, the smoking of tobacco wrapped in the
leaves of the palm, which was doubtless the primitive cigarette. In
France to this day new straws are much used, but generally paper has
become the popular envelope. This paper must be specially manufactured.
Most of it comes from Barcelona, where the making of cigarette paper
constitutes an important industry. All of that used at the "Honoradez"
factory, after inspection, is carefully stamped with the name "Susini."
By unrolling any of this brand of cigarettes this mark can be readily
seen, and serves as the readiest means of detecting counterfeits. A
portion of the paper is sprinkled with various preparations to give to
it the flavor of tea, licorice, or such other taste as may suit certain
consumers. This explains the variation in the color of the wrapper,
which is sometimes straw-color, sometimes brown, but more usually
white, the latter color distinguishing the paper which has not been
artificially flavored. In the cutting machine the paper is rapidly
converted into the proper size for envelopes, while another machine
close at hand is turning out little bits of pasteboard for such of the
cigarettes as are to be made with a mouthpiece.

Both tobacco and paper are now ready to be given out to the "rollers."
Let us go down and watch them as they come pouring in. Both sexes and
all ages have representations here. Each one awaits his turn, and then
receives, after it has been carefully weighed, his or her allowance of
tobacco, some five thousand papers, and a large wooden hoop. The hoop
serves as a rude but very accurate gauge, its circumference being of
such a size as to properly encompass five thousand cigarettes of such
size as will contain the entire amount of tobacco issued. A slight
excess of both tobacco and paper, say sufficient to make forty or fifty
cigarettes, is usually given, intended for the personal consumption of
the employee. When their work is completed and returned to the factory,
they receive in exchange therefor a small copper check payable on
demand. So common are these checks in Havana that a few years
since--possibly it may be so still--they were constantly given to one
at the various stores, and were commonly received as current coin.

Physically the cigar and cigarette makers are a sorry lot. The
continual odor of tobacco, their constant labor, with bodies bent over
tables, calling into play no muscle, no exertion, indeed, whatever,
excepting the exercise of their fingers--this cannot fail to have its
effect. The cigarette makers are injured, too, by the inhalation of an
almost invisible dust arising from the small particles of tobacco. The
compensation received appears very small. Four or five cigarettes a
minute is accounted good work, and even at this rate two days' steady
labor is required to fill a hoop, for which they receive less than two
dollars.

The larger number of cigarettes manufactured at Havana are made by
machinery which is exceedingly ingenious, and has proved thoroughly
successful. The cigarettes made by machinery are not only more tightly
wrapped, but also manufactured at a much reduced cost. Each machine is
capable of making thirty cigarettes per minute, 1,800 per hour, or
43,200 per day, thus replacing the labor of fourteen men, presuming
them to be capable of working ten hours per day. For such persons as
prefer making their own cigarettes, pressed packages of tobacco, with
little paper books containing the envelopes, are sold. The tobacco is
so neatly put up that were it not for the accompanying book, one would
almost fancy it to be a package of the most delicate French chocolate.
As illustration of the consumption of cigarettes it may be of interest
to state that three million cigarettes are made in the Honoradez
factory each year, while it is estimated that in their manufacture over
six million dollars is annually expended in the city of Havana alone.
The Cuban, indeed, is much more of a cigarette than a cigar smoker; the
cigarette is his constant companion. Even after dinner the cigarette
seems to be preferred. I remember once, at a very charming dinner
party, being quite astonished--for it was shortly after my arrival in
Havana--to find myself and the host the only cigar smokers. The rest of
our number, some six or seven, all Cubans, took to their accustomed
cigarette with a unanimity which has always led me to believe that my
good host himself felt called upon by his sense of politeness to do
violence to his own preference.

In connection with the manufacture of cigarettes, nothing strikes one
with more astonishment than the many industries which form accessories
to a factory. The printing and lithographic work, a large quantity of
which is required for the paper bundles or tasteful pasteboard boxes in
which the various packages are put up, is all done by the employees,
and even a photograph gallery is at hand for such persons as may desire
their own likeness to accompany each package. So cleverly is all this
work executed, that until very recently the bank notes and lottery
tickets, both of which are largely circulated, were here printed.
Rather odd to our American ideas, it must be confessed, is the
spectacle of bank notes and lottery tickets being printed side by
side--that too in a cigarette factory.

Boxes of tin, of wood, of all shapes and sizes, as well as kegs for
exportation to distant points, are made within these same walls, where
moulders, machinists, blacksmiths, tinmen, printers, lithographers,
engravers, painters, and carpenters, are all furnished with work. Two
hundred out of the twenty-five hundred employees are Chinese, and for
them is provided a separate dormitory, kitchen, and even bathrooms.




THE HARD TIMES.

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR CHEAP LABOR?


    "WANTED.--

    _Work for a thousand starving Immigrants!_"

Such is our advertisement. _Cheap labor!_ that is the boon our
"society" seeks. We wish to "develop our resources"; and as rapidly as
possible, for in that lies all blessedness--real "sweetness and light."

Has not this delightful gospel been preached to us from pulpit and
forum now full fifty good years, and does any one doubt its divine
origin? Yes; I fear there is now and then to be found one of those
antiquated infidels who scorns our "cheap cotton" and holds fast to
manhood; who sniffs at our great new factory and says, "Give me a
_man_!"

It is some two years ago that one of these benighted men told me--I
pity him--he told me he had been into our beautiful Berkshire county to
enjoy the delicious air and the delightful mountains. He went to North
Adams, which lies so calm and basks so peacefully in the embraces of
its sheltering hills. He said that when the noonday bell clanged out, a
living torrent of men and women, boys and girls, poured forth from one
of the gorgeous temples which have been there raised for the worship of
the new god. In that temple were created cheap shoes. He said these men
and women, boys and girls, were haggard, old, squalid, dirty; they
showed traces--so it seemed to his jaundiced eyes--of drink,
hopelessness, lechery, and vileness. He asked who they were. He was
told--and they said it with glee--

"_That is our cheap labor!_"

And where does it come from--from the homes of New England? Oh, no!
From Ireland, from Germany, from Portugal, from China, from
Canadian-Acadie, that pastoral spot of which poets sing!

"Vileness, filth, baseness!" he said. "My God, has Berkshire come to
this!"

It was a very foolish thing to say, and his calling upon his antiquated
God was not only foolish, but useless. His God is not the God now.

He took a ride through the winding roads and wooded hills of that
delightful land. His driver proposed to take him round by the
"Limestone brook" to show him the new factory.

"And what do they make there?"

"Why, didn't you know? They are grinding up the white limestone, and
they send away tons and tons on't every day."

"And what is it used for?"

"Used for? It's used for mixin'. They make three grades: the sody
grade, and the flour grade, and the sugar grade."

"The deuce they do!"--that was a foolish exclamation. "Do you mean that
they use this to mix with flour and sugar?"

The man laughed pityingly. "Of course they do. It makes 'em healthier.
Flour and sugar is healthier and goes further with a little of this
'ere limestone dust mixed in--you see. It's cheaper too. This stuff is
sold for fifty cents a hundred, and flour, you know, costs six dollars
a hundred. Don't you see?"

The benighted infidel did see, and he indulged in some internal
ejaculations; but he fled from the simple and sincere hills of
Berkshire, and sought a solace in the coarse vulgarity and vice of
Boston.

But I am neglecting to say what our _society_ proposes to do; and when
I have told you _of course_ we shall expect you to subscribe.

"The Cheap Labor Society" proposes to introduce from Africa and China,
in batches of one thousand each, as rapidly as possible, able-bodied
men who will work cheap.

"To _develop the resources_" of the country is the end and aim of
all honorable men. In other words, we want cheap men so that we may
make cheap shoes, cheap hats, cheap mutton, and--cheap women.

We who are now here--_we_ do not wish to work at all. Work is a
_curse_. The Bible has said so, and every noble-minded man has said so,
and the clergy has said so, and we know it is and must be so. But yet
there are people existing in the depths of Africa and China who it is
believed will work rather than starve; and these we propose to bring as
rapidly as our means will permit.

We head our appeal, as you see, "Work wanted for a thousand starving
men," because we know that we can get more work out of men who are just
on the edge of starvation than from any other, and in that way we shall
"develop our resources" most effectively and rapidly.

It is quite true that we already produce more cotton cloth and more
boots and shoes than we can possibly sell; but we know--for have we not
political economy to teach us?--that when we get them cheap enough, say
to one-half their present starvation prices--every man, and every
woman, and every child will wear two shirts, and two hats, and two
pairs of shoes; and thus we shall have in a superior way that
blessedness of which poets write--the making "two blades of grass grow
where one grew before." Now, I ask any liberal-minded man if "two pairs
of shoes in place of one" is not higher and nobler than two blades of
grass? That goes without talking.

If work be indeed the curse of curses, why, let the sons of Ham
(Africa) and the sons of Shem (Asia) do it; for it is well known they
are accursed, and have been since the days of "good old Noah"; besides
which, having <DW52> skins, we know just how to mark the helots; can
import them as fast as needed; can put all labor upon them, and can
thus keep our own Japhetic skins and hands clean and white.

Deferring to a not wholly extinct public opinion, which is now and then
announced by some orator to some small schoolboys, in words like these,
_Labore est honore_, and in the vernacular, "_Labor is honorable_," I
am compelled to deny it clearly and distinctly. Almost all know it, but
it may be best to say to those who do not:

If labor is honorable, why does every man refuse to hoe in his garden,
to make his fire, to raise his food? Why does every woman refuse to
cook her food, to make her clothes, to take care of her children? Why
do every father and every mother take special pains to so bring up and
educate their children that they can do no sort of hand work? Why is it
that high schools, and academies, and colleges are held as the most
majestic of blessings, except that they are intended to wholly unfit
boys and girls for the _necessary work of life_?

Why is it that those who do no work are always called "upper classes,"
and those who do much work are called "the masses," unless it is so?
Being so, let us agree to import "the masses" as rapidly as we can.

Permit me to here lay down another corner-stone: As cheapness is a
boon, of course cheap labor is a boon; if labor, even at a dollar a
day, is a blessing, it follows that labor at half a dollar a day is a
greater blessing; and if we can only get it to a quarter of a dollar a
day, will not mankind be four times as happy as when it is at a dollar
a day? And then, oh blessed time! When we get it down to one cent a day
shall we not be standing just in the portals of Paradise?

Let all men take heart, for we approach that time. I learned last
summer, in the lovely State of Connecticut, that the Messrs. Sprague
were hiring able-bodied men to work eleven hours a day, sometimes in
water and mud, at rebuilding their great Baltic dam, for eighty-three
cents a day, and that thousands more were ready to rush in. I may
recall to mind the dark ages, when ignorance prevailed, and men boasted
of a land (if there was one) where

    All the men were brave and all the women virtuous.

_All_ of that kind! Then there could have been no cheap labor, and the
boon which we now know to be the greatest vouchsafed to man could not
be enjoyed. There have been times when strong, honest men and strong,
honest (and permit me to say clean) women were thought to be the
fruition of a perfect and Christian civilization--when cheap cotton was
not thought to be the "one thing needful."

The good King Henri of Navarre is said to have hoped for the day when
in France the poorest peasant might have a fowl in his pot.

Besotted king! he did not know that in the good time coming, when we
shall bring in our one to ten thousand cheap Chinese per week, the
white man will be happy indeed who can get a pound of rice or potatoes
in his pot. A fowl in his pot! Foolish king!

"Progress"--what a lovely word!--progress has shown all mankind what a
glorious thing cheap labor is and must be. How great and happy are the
people who preach and practise it! "Progress"--a beautiful word
certainly, if we do really understand it. But I remember me of a man--a
brewer--who rather late in life had fallen in love with the word
"docile." He thought it a beautiful word. One day his partner returned,
having failed to collect a doubtful debt. My friend essayed it, but
returned red in the face.

"Well," said his partner, "have you got it?"

"Got it! The fellow won't do a thing. He's as _docile_ as hell!"

_Progress!_ Its meaning once was,

"Intellectual or moral advancement; improvement in knowledge or in
virtue."

Now it means _cheap cotton and cheap men and women_. To the enlightened
and prosperous English nation belongs the credit of this radical
discovery.

To England too belongs the invention or creation of our new god. She--I
am happy to say it--she invented and created the god we now worship. We
call him

    TRADE!

The first, last, and only commandment of our new god is,

"_Buy cheap and sell dear._"

Whatever nation or man worships this god, and obeys this first and
great commandment, is sure of blessedness; for that man or that nation
will get more money than other men and other nations, as England has;
and will be happy, _as she is_!

Swiftly and surely the belief and worship of the new god and the new
gospel is spreading into all lands. Men _fancy_ they still worship "the
Trinity," "Confucius," "Zoroaster," "Mohammed," "Mumbo-jumbo." It is
wholly a fancy. Men still _say_, "I believe in God the Father," etc.
They still say, "Do to others as you would have them do to you," is the
first and great commandment. But what they _do_ do, and wish to do, and
mean to do, is,

"To buy cheap and sell dear."

We need no missionaries to drive this gospel into heathen minds. It has
the charming vitalizing power of going itself. The Chinese have
received it, and have immediately taken the whole tea business out of
the hands of Messrs. Russell & Co. and Jardine, Matheson & Co.; have
quite put an extinguisher upon _their_ money-making. Indeed, do we not
know that _almost_ every European, Chinese, and Indian merchant has
failed, and the heathen Chinee sits in their seats.

How England came to invent this new gospel is known to many, though not
to all. Let me briefly sketch the amazing creation:

A century ago the strength and power of England was based upon her
yeomanry. They possessed much land; and upon the lovely rolling fields
of that lovely country their stone farm-houses and their small farms
were the homes and habitations of millions. From this strong and hardy
yeomanry were drawn the bowmen and the pike-men who made the armies of
the Edwards and the Henrys invincible; from them came the "jolly tars"
who seized victory for Drake and Nelson.

Then Liverpool was not, and Manchester was not, and _creation_ did
not pay tribute to England's god.

But a century ago Watt, the keen, canny Scotsman, discovered that
_steam_ was a giant, and could he but capture him and harness him into
his machine, what work might he not do? He did capture him, and he did
harness him to his machine; and now he works on, on, up, down, here,
there, not ceasing by night and day, by summer and winter; he tires
not, he rests not; for ever and for ever he toils on. He saws, he
grinds, he spins, he weaves, he ploughs, he thrashes, he drags, he
lifts. Such a giant he is!

_One_ man with the steam machine now does the work which once was done
by _ten_, _twenty_, _fifty_! He files, he cuts, he sews, he polishes,
he brews, he bakes, he washes, he irons. Is all this nothing?

It is vast--it is a _revolution_! And no man yet sees the end.

Trade now was exaggerated beyond all former measure, and henceforth was
to be the god of England and of the world. "Let us produce, let us buy
cheap and sell dear, and so we shall be blessed." England had coal deep
down in her bowels. Let her send her sons by thousands into the slime
and darkness to dig it out. Let her make steam, and cheap cotton, and
infinite iron, and let her make all mankind buy of her. "Let us," she
cried, "demand free trade! for _we_ can make cheap and sell dear, and
none can rival us."

She did demand free trade. She demanded it in India by seizing a
kingdom. She demanded it in China at the cannon's mouth. She got it.

She said to all peoples, "You may make corn, and cotton, and wool for
us, and we will make everything you want cheaper than you can make it
for yourselves, and happy you will be. We will make all the ships, will
bring your corn, and cotton, and wool to us, and we will carry all our
lovely manufactures to you, to the uttermost ends of the earth--at
_your_ cost. We will take toll of you both ways; we will make fair
profit on _your_ cotton, and on _our_ manufactures, and that will be
just and even, and we shall both be happy."

And so it has gone on for a hundred years, and gold has poured into
England's stomach, a flowing stream, until her eyes stick out with
fatness; she has even sought Turkish bonds for investment, and has lent
much money to the good Khedive of Egypt--_which she can't get back_!

Let us look at England for a moment, as she is to-day. She has built
magnificent temples dedicated to her great god all over England: at
Birmingham and Manchester, at Glasgow and Paisley; at Birkenhead and
Liverpool, at Preston and Salford, at Leeds and Nottingham--and where
not? England has become a great workshop in which the god of trade is
ministered to.

Her land? Yes, it is beautiful, but her _yeoman have disappeared_--all
have been drawn into the maw of the manufacturing monster. Forty
millions of people now has England, and only some seven per cent. of
them raise the food they eat. And how do the rest get their food? It is
quite simple: by selling to other nations the things they make, and
bringing back the food which other nations make.

It has been the boast of England that she had a larger population to
the square mile--389 human bodies--than any other land except one, and
more great cities than any other land but the "far Cathay"--if even she
be an exception.

That "inspired idiot" Goldsmith once sang in his pretty, sentimental
way,

    Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey,
    Where wealth accumulates and men decay:
    Princes and lords may flourish or may fade;
    A breath can make them as a breath has made:
    But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
    When once destroyed, can never be supplied.

"Bold peasantry," "stalwart yeomen," "hard-handed farmers"--what
preposterous phrases these seem now when we have the immense advantages
of "cheap labor"!

And we here in America--we too? But of us, anon, anon.

Great factories, great halls, great shops, abound--abound and magnify
that English land, so that a glamour has come over mankind, and
moon-faced idiots in all lands have cried, "Behold the glory of
England. Let us do likewise." Those great cities have glorified
themselves and have glorified England, and who has cared to look deeper
down into the mire? Have we seen these men and women, childhood and
age, reeking in squalor and vile with filth in the purlieus of every
temple? Have we looked into the slums of Liverpool and Glasgow, of
Edinburgh and Newcastle, to see men and women, childhood and age, in
all their divinity--or their damnation? Is all lovely--is it indeed? Is
this "progress"? Is it civilization? Is it Christianity? Of course it
is, all three.

I have mentioned the word _revolution_--social revolution. What is it?
Is it at hand? It is quite clear that this amazing power of steam and
machinery is doing _something_. It is quite clear that every machine
does the work of twenty men, and nineteen of these have got to seek
other means of support--they and their wives and their little ones.

It is well known that every man out of work means four mouths bare of
food. Who fills them? The rates (taxes) of course, and in London, the
last winter I was there, some six years ago, 80,000 paupers and beggars
were receiving public aid. "The laws of trade" is to make things right.
I think that is the name of the modern redeemer of men. If work is not
there and food is not there, man will flow at his own sweet will, like
water seeking its level, until he finds his food and his work
somewhere. But if man's "sweet will" decides not to flow, but to lie
down and make his bed in your _pockets_, and feed on the contents in
the shape of taxes--what is to come then? Why, he must be depleted, or
he will deplete _you_. How to deplete him is a most interesting
question? He does not deplete himself, for it is manifest to men that
paupers in England and America get children as fast as they can; and
the clergy applaud and say, "Be fruitful and multiply." There is no
continence among them--none anywhere except in wicked France.

In the "good time coming" in England, the pauper will lie down with the
prince, and there will be peace while the pauper devours the prince; or
there will be pestilence, which is a sure depleter; or the idle army
may be used to deplete the mob. Who can say?

"But there is no danger! Of course not. Why croak?"

What has been will be, under the benign influence of cheap labor and
free trade--perhaps! Let me go on with my pleasant tale--do not
interrupt--I have the word--by and by you.

At this moment, to-day, this year of our Lord 1877, the merchant
princes of London, the manufacturing barons of Manchester are at their
wits' ends; for people refuse to buy the products of their mills.
Germany will not have them, and France will not, and America chooses to
make her own; and even India, ungrateful that she is, has gone to
spinning her own cotton. Mills are being closed in England, furnaces
are blown out, wages are reduced, and workmen are threatening to
_strike_, or have struck, and are settling down for a comfortable
winter upon the _rates_. All right! England has "developed her
resources," and trade is free. Let her sing hosannahs, and cry, "Glory
be to our god," for no such beautiful "progress" was ever seen on earth
before.

What is to happen to the 300,000 or half million land-owners of
England, if outside pig-headed peoples wilfully and maliciously refuse
to buy the mill products of England and so to feed the 37,200,000
people of England who have no land upon which to raise their own food?
What is to happen if some fine day the 37,200,000 take it into their
foolish heads to say:

"We do not like to starve. We are many, you are few. We will take the
land and raise our own food, and you can emigrate if you like, or you
can stand out in the cold as we have done. We don't like it."

It is not quite easy to shoot those people; and if they choose to stay
in England, it is not quite easy to _make_ them emigrate--not even if
the "laws of trade" tell them they really ought to go.

And besides, it is so easy for 100,000 paupers to emigrate--to take
their wives and their children, their flocks and their herds, their
camels and their asses, their beds and their tents, and go forth to
seek the promised land--the land flowing with milk and honey. It is so
simple, so pleasant, that one is lost in amazement that they do not
go--that they wickedly persist in staying where they are paupers, and
refuse to obey the law of "supply and demand."

Such conduct is quite unworthy of enlightened Britons who "never will
be slaves."

It is too bad--it really is--and political economy ought to be preached
at them severely. Why is it too that outside barbarians refuse to buy
the divine productions of England? Some think we may do well to take a
look at this part of the problem before _we_ go on with our plans for
introducing more cheap labor into our own happy land.

A century ago, as has been said, England discovered the wonderful way
of applying the _steam giant_ to the creation of manufactured goods,
and for three-quarters of the century she has had a practical monopoly;
has turned the golden streams of the whole world to enrich herself; has
preached free trade; has said, "Buy cheap and sell dear," and has set
her god on a high throne. But slowly and haltingly other and stupider
nations have caught the tricks of the new Cultus; have caught little
steam giants, and have set them to work to turn their mills and grind
their grists. Germany and the United States are two of these dull
nations who have done a stroke of work in this way. France has really
been too stupid to do much at it--has indeed gone back to a tariff
after having tasted of the new gospel, and now obstinately refuses to
live by it--_will_ pay her debts, and will _not_ enjoy unlimited
pauperism.

Germany has, however, done well. She now makes woollens, cottons,
linens, irons, steels, penknives, and Bibles quite as cheap as England,
and, as some say (one of her own Centennial Commission), "cheaper and
nastier." Now _her_ traders are ubiquitous; they go, with the wandering
Jew, the fascinating Englishman, the penetrating Yankee, into all
heathen lands, carrying everywhere the new gospel of trade, and
introducing to youthful minds the civilizing influences of lager beer
and free lunches. Aided by the persuasive tones of the patient and
soothing Yankee, they are doing wonders in teaching the value of time,
by founding establishments for "stand-up drinks" in every lazy and
luxurious land, by giving prizes to all who _smoke while they work_,
thus making labor cheerful if not respectable. So patient and
indefatigable has Germany been, that at Manchester in England, which
may perhaps be termed the Delos of the new faith, I was told some five
years ago that she had just taken the contract, had bought from Germany
the iron beams and rafters for a new city building, and had put them up
under the very noses of the worshippers who burn their sacred fires at
Birmingham and Wolverhampton. And so, in the whirligig of time, Trade
brings his pleasant revenges.

I was told also--the newspapers said it, and it must be true--that Mr.
Mundella, an enterprising M.P., and a devout worshipper of the new
god, who is a vast producer at Nottingham of stockings and hosiery of
every sort--had found it best--well, absolutely necessary--in order to
compete with the new disciples in Germany, to remove a part of his
machines and machinery to Germany, and make his stockings there, in
order that those ridiculous and cheap Germans should not quite put a
stop to his trade. It was whispered about that French-made tools were
being bought and brought into England for use there, and it was said
openly that American saws, vises, and axes were playing the very deuce;
and now, just after the triumphs of the "Centennial," Englishmen are
writing home that Yankee silks will also play another very deuce with
them if they don't get more and cheaper labor. I see too, by late
letters from England, that they propose to cheapen iron by putting
cheap Chinese labor into the iron works!

And yet in Germany they cry out that _they_ have a panic, and that
trade is dull, and people will persist in failing, and that other
people won't buy all they can make; they too are at their wits' ends.
There must be something wrong, the "doctrinaires" say, about the gases.
Trade is not free enough, or labor is not cheap enough, or they have
too much or too little paper money, or they don't try woman suffrage.
At any rate the new gospel is right--_must be right_, because if
you obey the laws of trade and buy cheap and sell dear, you are sure to
be happy.

And France--it is frightful to think of France. Steeped in stupidity
and enveloped in Cimmerean fog, she resists the new gospel. She will
not send her missionaries abroad over the world; she will not build
great factories and temples; she will not take her whole people from
their small farms, where they raise great surpluses of food, to put
them into the new temples; she does not even work her land with steam,
nor does she hanker for the cheap (and nasty) things which England and
Germany are so ready, willing, and anxious to pour into every
household; indeed, will not have them at all. Oh, the economic
condition of France makes the heart of the enlightened priest of the
new gospel weep. France has taken no steps to introduce the cheap labor
of Ireland or China, or even of Africa--right at her doors--into her
own wretched country, and there is no sign that she will. What feeling
but contempt can the sincere doctrinaire entertain for France?

It would be indeed strange--and yet it is not wholly impossible--that
England and Germany and the United States, all of whom have for
centuries been cursing work, and crying out against work, and doing all
manner of things to get rid of work, and educating their best and
wisest not to do it--it would be indeed strange if some day they should
be crying out, "Give us work, in God's name." Strange, but not wholly
impossible.

We come back now to our own country--to the

    Land of the free, and the home of the blest.

We are the child of England, and we revere, we love, we emulate her. We
adopt her methods, we worship her god. We follow in her footsteps, and
emulating her example, we send out missionaries to extend the gospel of
trade; we love to buy cheap and sell dear; we love to scheme; we
delight in speculation, for that is an intellectual operation. We have
been taught for centuries that the mind is divine, the body devilish.
We do well, therefore, to despise the devilish body and exalt the
godlike soul. We do well to depress and belittle the hand, and to
glorify and enlarge the head. We do well to say it, and to make men
believe it if we can, that the "pen is mightier than the sword" or the
plough. We do well to convert our boys and girls into exaggerated
heads, even if they are useless, because we thus exalt them toward
gods. We do well to leave out of view all just balance between head and
hand because that is common and vulgar. We do well to say that the man
who _says_ a good thing is greater than he who _does_ a good thing, for
the spiritual _is_ divine, and the earthly _is_ base!

Keeping in view the short time we have possessed this land, we may
fairly arrogate to ourselves what England has long claimed for herself,
great "progress." We have created more great cities, more luxurious
habits, more free whiskey, more useless railroads, more brokers'
boards, more wild-cat banks, more swindling mining companies, more
political jobs, more precocious boys and more fast girls, more bankrupt
men and more nervous women than any country known in history. Following
the "example of our illustrious predecessor"--England--we have done one
thing of which we are justly proud, and the full account of which,
illustrated with pictures, our "Government" (as we facetiously call it)
has published in some ten fine volumes. And what is the example we
followed? It is this: England, having possessed herself of the vast
kingdom of India, found a production there of opium very lucrative to
her and very desirable to many of the Chinese, who enjoyed the smoking
of the pleasing drug. England greatly desired to sell this drug to
China, for it was all in the interest of trade. One fine day some
Chinese emperor or mandarin took it into his meddling head to check or
forbid the freedom of this trade: and then the virtue, the religious
fervor of the devoted Briton was roused. Ninety-three thousand chests
of good merchantable opium, worth many taels, was not a dogma to be
trifled with, not even by the Emperor of the Flowery Kingdom. What!
Should trade be impeded by this yellow Mantchu, this devotee of
Confucius, this long-eyed heathen, because he had some sentimental
notions about his people's morals or manners? Good heavens! Could trade
stand that? By no means. Persuasion must bring him to his senses if he
had any. Persuasion was tried, and various iron arguments were used.
They battered down Canton, they assaulted and took the cities of Amoy,
Chusan, Ningpo, Woosung, Shanghai, Nanking; and thus the English
missionaries kept on persuading until at last the heathen Chinee
yielded: was persuaded to pay $12,000,000, to open the ports of Canton,
Amoy, Foochoo, Ningpo, Shanghai to trade; to welcome all future opium
with open arms; to make the good Queen Victoria a present of the port
of Hong Kong; and so on and on. Thus, under the persuasion of a
fraternal war, "trade, civilization, and Christianity" made themselves
safe in the high places of China; since which happiness has bourgeoned
there if not in England!

Could our youthful but pious nation do better than follow this
illustrious example? Certainly not. Something must be done. If China
could thus be persuaded to trade by the English, poor little Japan
might be persuaded to trade by the United States. We could but try. We
did, and Perry sailed away, with his ships and his cannons, to try. The
<DW61>s were benighted, foolish, and weak. They declined, and said, "No,
we don't want any of your trade. We make _all we want_, and don't care
either for your religion, your opium, your whiskey, or your stovepipe
hats."

"But," said the gallant Perry, "that is a wicked sentiment. The
brotherhood of nations is the cornerstone of modern civilization. Trade
is divine, and stovepipe hats mark the intellectual races. We are your
brothers. God has made of one blood all the nations of the earth. If
you will not be our brothers, and trade, we shall be obliged to shoot.
Don't want to, but must. One--two--three. Bang!"

Well, the <DW61>s also yielded to these arguments, and thenceforth have
been happy. Trade has prevailed. Rice has gone up, and a good many
<DW61>s have gone to the ethereal spaces, overcome with hunger. Railways
have been built, national debts have been created; the Mikado and
Tycoon have fought, the Daimios have quarrelled, white men have been
assassinated, beggary has begun, taxes press upon the people; and
indeed all the signs which mark the high civilization of trade have
appeared. "Progress," we are assured, is now certain, and Japan is
"developing her resources." Bliss ensues. All of which is written down
and printed in many volumes for all men to read. And "Perry's
Expedition" can be read in beautiful volumes which cost you, we'll say,
$50 for the books and a million for the glorious expedition.

We make any sacrifices for the new religion, and are willing to waste
the filthy lucre of gold to extend a divine idea.

We did it!

We opened their ports!

We extended the blessing of trade!

We have made the <DW61>s into Yankees!

They are learning the benefits of cheap and nasty!

Glory be to the new god!

Massachusetts! Massachusetts has held herself and has been held as the
heart and the brain of New England. She has had (so she has believed)
the heart to feel a moral principle and the head to accept a great
thought. She has had brave-hearted men and clear-eyed women. Once--let
us make a brief retrospect--she had "pilgrim fathers." She had what she
and the world too thought a religion, which she believed in. She had a
people of sound English stock, who in this clear New England air grew
to hate squalor, vice, beggary, debt, and damnation. Once, fifty years
ago, she had no great cities; her "Hub," Boston, in 1830 had but the
poor population of 61,392, nearly all born on her soil, few of them
dirty or beggared. Once, fifty years ago, all through Massachusetts
were clean, decent, white-housed towns, such as Worcester, and
Springfield, and Northampton, and Concord, and Salem, and Newburyport,
centres of small but most cultivated and earnest social life.

Then small farms were cultivated by families of New England birth, out
of whom came able men and handsome women. Children lived with parents,
and did not tyrannize them. Silk gowns were rare, and pianos unknown;
"art" and "culture" had not become household words, but butter was made
at home, and the mystery of bread was known to ladies. Few then had
been to Paris, and few therefore knew how vulgar they were. But "where
ignorance is bliss," etc. They got on, and did not know what poor
creatures they were.

Every child was expected to learn the three R's at the little red
school-house, and to _perfect_ his education by taking hold of material
nature with his hands, and learning what it was by mastering it. That
was education. The parson knew a little Latin, and he was all. They
thought this worked well. Lamentable indeed!

The man expected to marry a capable wife, and to bring up children; he
expected to work on his land or in his shop, to dress decently in
clothes which his wife had made, securing a reasonable support in this
world by his own labor, not by _hocus-pocus_; he provided for his
future salvation by imbibing the five points of Calvin through
fifty-four sermons a year, with now and then a Thursday lecture to fill
in the cracks. Thus he was sure of his food here and of salvation
hereafter--through the merciful providence of God, and not his own
righteousness. New England thus produced a breed of people unlike and
they fancied not inferior to any that history tells of.

But it would not do. There was no progress--it was a lamentable
condition of things. They had _not_ got a population of 211.78 to the
square mile, raked together from the four corners of creation, making
the State the sixth in density of all in the world, as she now boasts
she has, and thus she had totally failed to secure the higher and
better civilization.

They had not "developed their resources"; they had not built up
splendid great cities; they had little knowledge of the delights of
trade. Things could not get on so--that was not "progress." Here was
water power running to waste all over Massachusetts; there were keen
and able heads who believed they knew how to set these powers to work
to grind their grists; it was quite ridiculous that these tumbling
streams should not be turning millwheels and spinning cheap cotton. And
then too not a railroad ran through Massachusetts--no transportation
except in wagons. "Good God!" the pious people naturally exclaimed;
"what misery, what a slow set!" Money--money was then loaned at only
six per cent.! Things must be changed. They were changed. Mill after
mill was built, among them the "_Atlantic_." Railway after railway was
built, among them the "_Eastern_," and the stock was quickly paid up,
and all went merry as a marriage bell. But some people own those stocks
now, and do _not_ find themselves happy!

What is the cure for these shrivelled dividends? Clearly, is it not,
_to bring in cheap labor_? Let every man who has nothing and wants
much, take shares in

    "THE CHEAP LABOR SOCIETY."

Seeing what has been done for Massachusetts, it is easy to see what can
be done. And what has been done? In fifty years she has built up
Lowell, and Lawrence, and Worcester, and Holyoke, and many more great
towns. She has increased Boston to a population of 341,919 souls--or
bodies--in the year of grace 1875. She has "improved" things so, has
made such progress, that Boston now spends yearly $15,114,389.73
(auditor's report 1875-6), which means that out of every man, woman,
and child of Boston was taken in 1875, for public expenses, the sum of
_forty-four dollars_! The happiness resulting from this may be partly
understood when I relate that this tax is some four hundred per cent.
greater than the "effete aristocracies" of Europe have ever got out of
their down-trodden serfs, or have even dared to try to get. One other
charming effect of this style of self-government (?), as we please to
call it, is, that it has driven out of Boston a set of bloated money
getters, who fancy it is not pleasant to pay large taxes, so they go to
Nahant, and Barnstable, and Concord for a few months, and rid Boston of
themselves and--their taxes! Shrewd fellows those Boston Democrats!
They know how to _govern_ a city. So they do in New York. So they do in
Cambridge.

But let us look at another of the evidences of true progress. Every man
votes, you must know, whether he owns any property or not. Now, Mr.
Daniel L. Harris has discovered, in his researches at Springfield, that
of the voters there, _four_ pay taxes and _five_ do not; that is,
four-ninths of the voters pay the taxes and five-ninths who pay none
outvote the four who pay all. This is so generous on the part of the
four that we ought to try to see what it is the four really are about.
Applying the same ratio to Boston, we find that every tax-payer, every
man of the four-ninth party, really paid to the yearly expenditures of
the city of Boston, in the blessed year 1875-6, the neat little sum of
three hundred and ninety-nine dollars, money of this realm.[1]

      [1] Total polls of Boston, 85,243. Four-ninths of these will go
      into $15,114,389--total expenditure of the year 1875-6--$399
      times.

And yet the business men of Boston complain that they have made no
money for three years, and that they can't make any. How absurd that
is, when they can pay such taxes as these! And then think what they do
in Boston for the intellect (as it is called). While they stupidly
complain that they can't make any money, they spend on their common
schools every year--over two millions of good dollars (2,015,380)--and
they teach what--what don't they teach? I counted, I think, _thirty-six
branches_ as being taught in the Boston schools last year. "Art" and
"culture," you know! And in those brutal old times of fifty years ago,
they taught only the three R's. Unhappy and despicable! Did they not
deserve it?

And then the generosity of these Boston merchants who can't, as they
pretend, make anything. Look for a moment at that!

They paid in 1865 for the teaching of each one of those children those
thirty-six branches, so necessary to salvation, the sum of $21.16; in
1875 the sum of $35.23. That is, they voluntarily and gladly paid
somebody sixty-six per cent. more for their work in 1875 than in 1865,
and all the while those merchants pretend they are making no money. Do
they expect us to believe that?

If they want to make money, why not at once bring in more cheap labor?
The Chinese are ready to come, and the <DW64>s, even if Ireland can
spare no more of her enlightened people. And then what a boon this
class of people would be to our aspiring statesman. For the sum of two
dollars they are entitled to vote, and then any man who feels a desire
to be a governor or an M.C. can, by paying this paltry pittance,
secure the votes of a grateful constituency. Is it not, therefore, our
supreme duty to bring in this class of voters as rapidly as possible?
We need _population_ and we need _voters_. England has a population of
389 to the square mile and we in Massachusetts have only 211! Should we
not hide our faces with shame while such an inferiority lasts?

There are people now who are getting up a scare about the wonderful
growth of the Holy Catholic Church, claiming that that church demands
of all its members (as it does) allegiance _first_ to the Church, and
then _second_ to the government where its subjects happen to be. I
do not think much of this now that Antonelli is dead; but there may be
something in it. I question whether Massachusetts can any longer put
forth pretensions to being a Puritan or a Unitarian or religious State
of any sort unless it be a Catholic one. Go with me to the U.S. census
report of 1870:

    The whole population of Massachusetts in 1870 was    1,457,351

    Of these were born in foreign lands         353,319

    Born of foreign parents in Massachusetts    626,211    979,530

Thus, it seems, the population of Massachusetts is already foreign-born
and of foreign parents, _over two-thirds_. What number of these foreign
people are Roman Catholics, any other person can guess as well as I
can. But it is quite certain that this blessing, such as it is, has
reached us incidentally through our cheap labor; that is, it is a sort
of superadded bliss, coming as an unexpected reward of unconscious
virtue. In the words of Shakespeare, "We are twice blessed." We have
got cheap labor and we have got the Catholic church crowning every hill
and blooming in every valley.

At any rate it is quite certain that few if any of this class of the
Massachusetts people are either Puritans, Unitarians, or Episcopalians;
and some of them I strongly suspect are like the good sailor, neither
Catholics nor Protestants, but "captains of the fore-top!" In
Massachusetts, as I have said, there was in 1870 of this kind of
population sixty-six per cent., and all have votes. In the whole United
States there was forty-five per cent. of this sort, all of whom have
votes. It is known also that New York, and Boston, and Lowell, and Fall
River are intrinsically foreign cities. It is known that the majority
of voters in those cities have no property which pays taxes; it is
known that this class of voters are now well organized, and can and do
vote and do elect such men as will _please them_--men who "will tickle
me if I'll tickle you"--that is the sort of statesman we now welcome
with effusion; indeed, we seek no other. We mean to deplete all
over-grown fortunes; we mean through the taxes to equalize things and
make Saturday afternoons pleasant. I have not at hand, just this
moment, the figures to tell what good was done in Boston last year to
the class called "the poor." But I have them for Cambridge, a small
city almost a part of Boston. In that small select and intellectual
city the expenditures in direct aid of "the poor," not counting work
which was _made_ for them, was in dollars, $80,000, and that does not
count a large sum besides given in private charity. This help was given
to some 5,400 persons; stating it simply, in the words of political
economy, one person in seven or eight of that cultivated and select
community was a pauper. Another feature of this new and peculiar social
state is this: that the voters who have no property and pay no taxes do
not enjoy the possibility of starving, nor do they look with favor upon
advice which tells them to "Go West." Why should they go West? They do
not know where to go--indeed, they have no money to go with--nor do
they know that there would be any work for them there. They _choose_ to
stay where they are, and they will vote for people who will help them
to stay; and they have five votes to the tax-payer's four, which
significant little fact should not be lost sight of!

In our laudable desire for "progress," in our vital wish "to develop
our resources," we have produced many results, some interesting ones,
quite unexpected. We have got cheap labor and we have got cheap cotton
cloth and cheap boots and shoes, and a good deal of all of them. The
smart little city of Lowell was begun by the most capable and
enterprising of Boston's "solid men"; it was begun upon a theory that
men and women in New England ought to be clean, decent, and virtuous.
In its beginning nearly all the operatives were of New England birth,
descendants of Puritans who were used to decency, cleanliness, and
virtue. Then they lived and lodged in houses belonging to the mills,
which were _regulated_--the men in their own boarding houses, the women
in theirs. All were expected to be in their houses by or before a
certain hour, say ten o'clock at night.

Then every young lady had a green silk parasol for Sunday's use, and
she wrote poetry for the "Lowell Offering," if she felt the divine
movement. At that early undeveloped time an English gentleman, one
Anthony Trollope, visited the nascent city. He lamented the
narrow-mindedness of the projectors, and predicted it would not work;
that the little Lowell could never compete with such highly developed
cities as Manchester and Preston, where they knew the magic of "cheap
labor." In other words, Lowell could not be a great success.

That Arcadian simplicity worked for a while, but inevitably the magic
of cheap labor made itself felt--it was potent--it came, it saw, it
conquered. And now the best information I have convinces me that the
squalor, filth, recklessness, and happiness are nearly or quite equal
to what they are in the noble cities of Manchester and Glasgow in
England. Should Mr. Trollope revisit those scenes of his youth, he
would be as much delighted as any Englishman could permit himself to be
with anything outside his "Merrie England" at the delectable advances
made there.

He would find labor cheap and cotton cheap--as cheap as they are in his
beloved Manchester. He would find, as in his beloved Manchester, that
they made more than they could sell; which is the secret of cheapness.
He would find that in that small elysium, in the year 1874, they made
135,000,000 yards of cotton cloth, which gospel of cotton they were
then spreading abroad over all the earth, sending some of it to his
beloved Manchester. He would learn also that there was invested there
some $20,000,000 of good money of the realm, a large proportion of
which paid no dividends; which also is an excellent method of securing
cheapness. He would find all "narrow-minded regulations" quite done
away with, and the full liberty of the subject enjoyed by all; that
people staid "out nights" according to their own sweet wills; that men
slept when they pleased and where they pleased, and with whom they
pleased--women too for that matter; and that life was as free and
pleasant as his good English heart could wish. He would find that the
old-fashioned, narrow-minded New England stock had disappeared--not
being cheap enough--and their places were fully supplied with a
delightful conglomeration of gentlemen and ladies who had fled from
poor Ireland, from the Azores, from Germany, from pastoral Acadie; and
here and there he would note the pigtail of the frugal Chinese, the
_avant courier of a better time coming_.

Thus he would find that Lowell, having rid herself of narrow-minded
notions, having followed reverently in the footsteps of his illustrious
Manchester, was _a success indeed_.

And _Lynn_ too. She discovered thirty years ago the surprising
swiftness of "teams," whereby six or eight men working in partnership,
each one doing only one thing, say one a welt, and another a bottom,
and another the eyelets, etc., could put a shoe through in one-eighth
the time of the old "one-man" way. Millions of shoes were made, and
shoes were cheap. Much money flowed in, and life was lovely at Lynn.
But Paradise pales if too long continued. The sewing-machines came, and
McKaye was a god--for the master. One man with his machine could do the
work of twenty or forty men in the teams. Shoes were now amazingly
cheap. The Crispins wept, the master laughed, and the making of shoes
went merrily on. And what became of the Crispins? They struck! and
then--they disappeared, vanished, went too "where the woodbine
twineth." They too were not wanted. Let them get themselves out of the
way! the Chinese are coming!

They got much consolation from a certain set of preachers, who assured
them it was all right--"Laws of trade, you know," "cheap shoes good for
the masses," "water will find its level," "the masses in Africa will
now be able to wear shoes," "the best government is _no_ government,"
"all one great brotherhood," "every man for himself and the devil take
the hindmost."

Paradise was just beyond their noses, and it lay just here: "When
things get very cheap every man will only work three hours a day. All
men can play the rest of the time, or they can cultivate their
_minds_!" "Beautiful! Beautiful! Hosannah to the highest!" was what
every disbanded Crispin ought to have said; but, foolish man as he was,
he kept saying, "My _body_ is hungry, and I have no work, and I will
steal some food--or become a broker! You had better look out."

But luckily the Southern war came, and it made places for a good many
men, and the "Government" (not us men and women)--the Government paid
_the bills_, and so we were tided over. And now we have got the bills,
and we have got cheap labor too! And we are as near to "no government"
as any people ever was except wild Indians; and that we know--for the
doctrinaires say so--is Paradise. If it is not that, what in Heaven's
name is it?

There was once a notion that the men who had knowledge, and experience,
and strength, should think for and act for those who had not; in short,
that those who were strong should protect and care for the weak. The
father in some countries--not all--yet does pursue this plan; he is
head and master of his household, and is expected to know how to act
and what to do better than his boys and girls.

We have exploded that idea. Under this "best government upon which the
sun ever shone," we have made discoveries. We find that children know
what _they_ want better than their fathers; that women are really
stronger than men, have larger brains, more sense, more heart, and more
purity; and that when women and children both vote (mistress Biddy too)
the world will go right--for they--the pure, the honest--_will_ "holler
out gee!"

This old paternal or family government was a _despotism_, tempered
with love, to be sure, but a despotism not to be tolerated in an
enlightened age. Shovel it out, shovel it out!

It is a sad fact that children now, while wiser and purer than their
fathers, are not physically quite so strong. But it is found that the
pistol puts the holders upon a _perfect equality_, and that is the
thing to be aimed at. The redress of the weak is therefore in the
pistol, which I expect to see in every child's pocket soon. The tyrant
man will then be degraded to his place. With women voting, and children
holding pistols, men and fathers will be pulled down from the pedestal
they have usurped so long.

We know that women have more virtue than men (?), and that children
have more purity, and therefore, knowing well the "good, the true, and
the beautiful," they must and shall govern the land. They shall be
tyrannized no longer.

And so, as New England has cut into old England, and has set her own
machinery and steam to work making many things cheaper than old England
can make them, and bids fair to starve out some of her garrisons of
workers, just in the same way have Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, and
Chicago taken it into their heads to set their machinery and steam to
work; and now torrents of hats, and shoes, and woollens, and cottons,
and clothing, and furniture, and stoves, and pots are pouring out of
those nests of industry, so that even they are beginning to cry out,
"Why don't you buy what we want to sell, and thus make _us_ rich?"

If, then, we in New England refuse to buy--refuse to buy at profitable
prices the productions of old England--what does England propose to do
with her millions of non-food-producing workmen? She demands free
trade; says we are fools for not opening our ports and accepting with
effusion the blessings of cheap goods she would so willingly send us?
She does not quite like to open _our_ ports, as she did those of China,
nor does she incline at present to carry into France the civilizing
influences of her cheap looms at the point of the bayonet. _She_ must
answer the question, not I.

And in New England--if that "West," with its fertile fields and its
surplus food, will go to making cheap shoes and cheap cotton, and will
not see how much happier she would be if she would only make corn and
pork and swap them with New England for shoes and cotton--what will New
England, what will Massachusetts do with her 507,034 workers who do not
produce their own food? This is rather a vital question to those men
and women who have no food. It is rather vital too to the capital
invested in mills and machines in Lowell and elsewhere.

I come back now to my first proposition for the cure of the ills of
life--_cheap labor_.

If trade be the true god, let us worship him; if to buy cheap and sell
dear be the true gospel, let us extend that; if to convert men and
women into tenders to machines be really the perfection of human
nature, let us import the wild African and the heathen Chinee rapidly,
largely, for nothing can be cheaper than they. Let us get ready our
ships; let us open the ports of Dahomey, and Congo, and Canton, and
Shanghai; let us exchange whiskey and tobacco for able-bodied men and
women; let us fill this land with the black men and the copper men; let
us perfect our civilization, for those men and those women can live
cheap and work cheap; and if _white_ men and _white_ women do go to the
wall--why should they not?

Gentle reader, you ask what is the _moral_?

I reply, Does not our civilization demand _cheap cotton_ and not great
_men and women_? Clearly it does.

Does it not demand free _pauper immigration_? Clearly it does.

Does it not demand cheap _Chinese immigration_? Clearly it does.

Does it not demand free _pauper_ and free _Chinese voting_? Clearly it
does.

Does it not demand that "Trade" shall be god, and the _laws of supply
and demand_ shall rule? Clearly it does.

Does it not call this "progress"? Clearly it does.

And is not all this leading us directly to--_Heaven_ or to _Hell_?
Clearly they are.

And you, gentle reader, can decide which.

CHARLES WYLLY ELLIOTT.




THE TWO WORLDS.


    Two mighty silences, two worlds unseen
      Over against each other lie:
    For ever boundlessly apart have been,
          For ever nigh.

    In one is God Himself, and angels bright
      Do congregate, and spirits fair;
    And, lost in depths of mystic light,
          Our Dead dwell there.

    All things that cannot fade, nor fall, nor die,
      Voices beloved, and precious things foregone,
    Float up and up, and in that silence high,
          With God grow one.

    No barren silence, nay, but such as over
      Lips that we love its spell may fling,
    Where tender words like nested swallows hover,
          Ere they take wing.

    Sometimes from that far land there comes a breeze,
      Soft airs surprise us on our way,
    As dew-drops from above; then on our knees
          We fall and pray.

    And oft in some low crimson coast of cloud
      We deem we see its far-off strand:
    Our hearts, like shipwrecked sailors, cry aloud,
          "The Land! the Land!"

    And side by side that other world unknown,
      Drenched in unbroken silence lies,
    World of ourselves, where each one lives alone,
          And lonely dies.

    With our unuttered griefs, our joys untold,
      Our multitudinous thoughts swift throng,
    We dwell; one silence them and us doth fold
          All our life long.

    Out from those depths there comes a cry of pain.
      Ah, pitifully, Lord, it calls,
    "Behold the sorrows of our hearts!" and then--
          A silence falls.

    Nought but the narrow strip doth lie between
      Of sounding surf that men call life;
    Yet none can pass between those worlds unseen,
          And end the strife.

    Die down, die down, O thou tormented sea!
      Suffer my silent world to fill
    With voices from that land which cry to me,
          "We love thee still."

    In vain: I hear them not! but o'er my loss
      Comes an apocalyptic voice,
    "There shall be no more sea, and thou canst cross."
          Rejoice! rejoice!

ELICE HOPKINS.




SISTER ST. LUKE.


They found her over there. "This is more than I expected," said
Carrington as they landed--"seven pairs of Spanish eyes at once."

"Three pairs," answered Keith, fastening the statement to fact and the
boat to a rock in his calm way; "and one if not two of the pairs are
Minorcan."

The two friends crossed the broad white beach toward the little stone
house of the light-keeper, who sat in the doorway, having spent the
morning watching their sail cross over from Pelican reef, tacking
lazily east and west--an event of more than enough importance in his
isolated life to have kept him there, gazing and contented, all day.
Behind the broad shoulders of swarthy Pedro stood a little figure
clothed in black; and as the man lifted himself lazily at last and came
down to meet them, and his wife stepped briskly forward, they saw that
the third person was a nun--a large-eyed, fragile little creature,
promptly introduced by Melvyna, the keeper's wife, as "Sister St.
Luke." For the keeper's wife, in spite of her black eyes, was not a
Minorcan at all; not even a southerner. Melvyna Sawyer was born in
Vermont, and, by one of the strange chances of this vast, many-raced,
motley country of ours, she had travelled south as nurse, and a very
good, energetic nurse too, albeit somewhat sharp-voiced, to a delicate
young wife, who had died in the sunny land, as so many of them die; the
sun, with all his good will and with all his shining, not being able to
undo in three months the work of long years of the snows and the bleak
east winds of New England.

The lady dead, and her poor thin frame sent northward again to lie in
the hillside churchyard by the side of bleak Puritan ancestors, Melvyna
looked about her. She hated the lazy tropical land, and had packed her
calf-skin trunk to go, when Pedro Gonsalvez surprised her by proposing
matrimony. At least that is what she wrote to her Aunt Clemanthy, away
up in Vermont; and although Pedro may not have used the words, he at
least meant the fact, for they were married two weeks later by a
justice of the peace, whom Melvyna's sharp eyes had unearthed, she of
course deeming the padre of the little parish and one or two attendant
priests as so much dust to be trampled energetically under her shoes,
Protestant and number six and a half double-soled mediums. The justice
of the peace, a good natured old gentleman who had forgotten that he
held the office at all, since there was no demand for justice and the
peace was never broken in the small lazy village, married them as well
as he could in a surprised sort of a way, and instead of receiving a
fee gave one, which Melvyna, however, promptly rescued from the
bridegroom's willing hand, and returned with the remark that there was
no "call for alms" (pronounced as if it rhymed with hams), and that two
shilling, or mebbe three, she guessed, would be about right for the
job. This sum she deposited on the table, and then took leave, walking
off with a quick, enterprising step, followed by her acquiescent and
admiring bridegroom. He had remained acquiescent and admiring ever
since, and now, as light-house keeper on Pelican island, he admired and
acquiesced more than ever; while Melvyna kept the house in order,
cooked his dinners, and tended his light, which, although only third
class, shone and glittered under her daily care in the old square tower
which was founded by the Spaniards, heightened by the English, and now
finished and owned by the United States, whose light-house board said
to each other every now and then that really they must put a
first-class Fresnal on Pelican island and a good substantial tower
instead of that old-fashioned beacon. They did so a year or two later;
and a hideous barber's pole it remains to the present day. But when
Carrington and Keith landed there the square tower still stood in its
gray old age, at the very edge of the ocean, so that high tides swept
the step of the keeper's house. It was originally a lookout where the
Spanish soldier stood and fired his culverin when a vessel came in
sight outside the reef; then the British occupied the land, added a
story, and placed an iron grating on the top, where their
coastguardsman lighted a fire of pitch-pine knots that flared up
against the sky, with the tidings, "A sail! a sail!" Finally the United
States came into possession, ran up a third story, and put in a
revolving light, one flash for the land and two for the sea, a
proportion unnecessarily generous now to the land, since nothing came
in any more, and everything went by, the little harbor being of no
importance since the indigo culture had failed. But ships still sailed
by on their way to the Queen of the Antilles, and to the far Windward
and Leeward islands, and the old light went on revolving, presumably
for their benefit. The tower, gray and crumbling, and the keeper's
house, were surrounded by a high stone wall with angles and
loopholes--a small but regularly planned defensive fortification built
by the Spaniards; and odd enough it looked there on that peaceful
island, where there was nothing to defend. But it bore itself stoutly
nevertheless, this ancient little fortress, and kept a sharp lookout
still over the ocean for the damnable Huguenot sail of two centuries
before.

The sea had encroached greatly on Pelican island, and sooner or later
it must sweep the keeper's house away; but now it was a not unpleasant
sensation to hear the water wash against the step--to sit at the narrow
little windows and watch the sea roll up, roll up, nearer and nearer,
coming all the way landless in long surges from the distant African
coast only to never quite get at the foundations of that stubborn
little dwelling, which held its own against them, and then triumphantly
watched them roll back, roll back, departing inch by inch down the
beach, until, behold! there was a magnificent parade-ground, broad
enough for a thousand feet to tread--a floor more fresh and beautiful
than the marble pavements of palaces. There were not a thousand feet to
tread there, however; only six. For Melvyna had more than enough to do
within the house, and Pedro never walked save across the island to the
inlet once in two weeks or so, where he managed to row over to the
village, and return with supplies, by taking two entire days for it,
even Melvyna having given up the point, tacitly submitting to loitering
she could not prevent, but recompensing herself by a general cleaning
on those days of the entire premises, from the top of the lantern in
the tower to the last step in front of the house.

You could not argue with Pedro. He only smiled back upon you as sweetly
and as softly as molasses. Melvyna, endeavoring to urge him to energy,
found herself in the position of an active ant wading through the downy
recesses of a feather bed, which well represented his mind.

Pedro was six feet, two inches in height, and amiable as a dove. His
wife sensibly accepted him as he was, and he had his two days in
town--a very mild dissipation, however, since the Minorcans are too
indolent to do anything more than smoke, lie in the sun, and eat salads
heavily dressed in oil. They said, "The serene and august wife of our
friend is well, we trust?" And, "The island--does it not remain
lonely?" And then the salad was pressed upon him again. For they all
considered Pedro a man of strange and varied experiences. Had he not
married a woman of wonder--of an energy unfathomable? And he lived with
her alone in a light-house, on an island; alone, mind you, without a
friend or relation near!

The six feet that walked over the beautiful beach of the southern ocean
were those of Keith, Carrington, and Sister St. Luke.

"Now go, Miss Luke," Melvyna had said, waving her energetically away
with the skimmer as she stood irresolute at the kitchen door. "'Twill
do you a power of good, and they're nice, quiet gentlemen who will see
to you, and make things pleasant. Bless you, _I_ know what they are.
They ain't none of the miserable, good-for-nothing race about here!
Your convent is fifty miles off, ain't it? And besides, you were
brought over here half dead for me to cure up--now, warn't you?"

The Sister acknowledged that she was, and Melvyna went on.

"You see, things is different up north, and I understand 'em, but you
don't. Now you jest go right along and hev a pleasant walk, and I'll
hev a nice bowl of venison broth ready for you when you come back. Go
right along now." The skimmer waved again, and the Sister went.

"Yes, she's taken the veil, and is a nun for good and all," explained
Melvyna to her new guests the evening of their arrival, when the shy
little Sister had retreated to her own room above. "They thought she
was dying, and she was so long about it, and useless on their hands,
that they sent her up here to the village for sea air, and to be red of
her, I guess. 'T any rate, there she was in one of them crowded, dirty
old houses, and so--I jest brought her over here. To tell the truth,
gentlemen--the real bottom of it--my baby died last year--and--and Miss
Luke she was so good I'll never forget it. I ain't a Catholic--fur from
it; I hate 'em. But she seen us coming up from the boat with our little
coffin, and she came out and brought flowers to lay on it, and followed
to the grave, feeble as she was; and she even put in her little black
shawl, because the sand was wet--this miserable half-afloat land, you
know--and I couldn't abear to see the coffin set down into it. And I
said to myself then that I'd never hate a Catholic again, gentlemen. I
don't love 'em yet, and don't know as I ever shell; but Miss Luke,
she's different. Consumption? Well, I hardly know. She's a sight better
than she was when she come. I'd like to make her well again, and,
someway, I can't help a-trying to, for I was a nurse by trade once. But
then what's the use? She'll only hev to go back to that old convent!"
And Melvyna clashed her pans together in her vexation. "Is she a good
Catholic, do you say? Heavens and earth, yes! She's _that_
religious--my! I couldn't begin to tell! She believes every word of all
that rubbish those old nuns have told her. She thinks it's beautiful to
be the bride of heaven; and, as far as that goes, I don't know but
she's right: 'tain't much the other kind is wuth," pursued Melvyna,
with fine contempt for mankind in general. "As to freedom, they've as
good as shoved her off their hands, haven't they? And I guess I can do
as I like any way on my own island. There wasn't any man about their
old convent, as I can learn, and so Miss Luke, she hain't been taught
to run away from 'em like most nuns. Of course, if they knew, they
would be sending over here after her: but they don't know, and them
priests in the village are too fat and lazy to earn their salt, let
alone caring what has become of her. I guess, if they think of her at
all, they think that she died, and that they buried her in their
crowded, sunken old graveyard. They're so slow and sleepy that they
forget half the time who they're burying! But Miss Luke, she ought to
go out in the air, and she is so afraid of everything that it don't do
her no good to go alone. I haven't got the time to go; and so, if you
will let her walk along the beach with you once in a while, it will do
her a sight of good, and give her an appetite--although what I want her
to hev an appetite for I am sure I don't know; for ef she gets well, of
course she'll go back to the convent. Want to go? _That_ she does.
She loves the place, and feels lost and strange anywhere else. She was
taken there when she was a baby, and it is all the home she has.
_She_ doesn't know they wanted to be red of her, and she wouldn't
believe it ef I was to tell her forty times. She loves them all dearly,
and prays every day to go back there. Spanish? Yes, I suppose so; she
don't know herself what she is exactly. She speaks English well though,
don't she? Yes, Sister St. Luke is her name; and a heathenish name it
is for a woman, in my opinion. _I_ call her Miss Luke. Convert
her? Couldn't any more convert her than you could convert a white gull,
and make a land bird of him. It's his nature to ride on the water and
be wet all the time. Towels couldn't dry him--not if you fetched a
thousand!"

"Our good hostess is a woman of discrimination, and sorely perplexed,
therefore, over her _protegee_," said Keith, as the two young men
sought their room, a loft under the peaked roof, which was to be their
abode for some weeks, when they were not afloat. "As a nurse she feels
a professional pride in curing, while as a Calvinist she would almost
rather kill than cure, if her patient is to go back to the popish
convent. But the little Sister looks very fragile. She will probably
save trouble all round by fading away."

"She is about as faded now as a woman can be," answered Carrington.

The two friends, or rather companions, plunged into all the phases of
the southern ocean with a broad, inhaling, expanding delight which only
a superb natural or an exquisitely cultured physique can feel. George
Carrington was a vigorous young Saxon, tall and broad to a remarkable
degree, feeling his life and strength in every vein and muscle. Each
night he slept his eight hours dreamlessly, like a child, and each day
he lived four hours in one, counting by the pallid hours of other men.
Andrew Keith, on the other hand, represented the physique cultured and
trained up to a high point by years of attention and care. He was a
slight man, rather undersized, but his wiry strength was more than a
match for Carrington's bulk, and his finely cut face, if you would but
study it, stood out like a cameo by the side of a ruddy miniature
painted in oils. The trouble is that but few people study cameos. He
was older than his companion, and "One of those quiet fellows, you
know," said the world. The two had never done or been anything
remarkable in all their lives. Keith had a little money, and lived as
he pleased, while Carrington, off now on a vacation, was junior member
of a firm in which family influence had placed him. Both were city men.

"You absolutely do not know how to walk, senora," said Keith. "I will
be doctor now, and you must obey me. Never mind the crabs, and never
mind the jelly fish, but throw back your head and walk off briskly. Let
the wind blow in your face, and try to stand more erect."

"You are doctor? They told me, could I but see one, well would I be,"
said the Sister. "At the convent we have only Sister Inez, with her
small and old medicines."

"Yes, I think I may call myself doctor," answered Keith gravely. "What
do you say, Carrington?"

"Knows no end, Miss, Miss--Miss Luke--I should say, Miss St. Luke. I am
sure I do not know why I should stumble over it when St. John is a
common enough name," answered Carrington, who generally did his
thinking aloud.

"No end?" repeated the little Sister inquiringly. "But there is an end
in this evil world to all things."

"Never mind what he says, senora," interrupted Keith, "but step out
strongly and firmly, and throw back your head. There now, there are no
crabs in sight, and the beach is hard as a floor. Try it with me: one,
two; one, two."

So they treated her, partly as a child, partly as a gentle being of an
inferior race. It was a new amusement, although rather a mild one,
Carrington said, to instruct this unformed, timid mind, to open the
blinded eyes, and train the ignorant ears to listen to the melodies of
nature.

"Do you not hear? It is like the roll of a grand organ," said Keith as
they sat on the doorstep one evening at sunset. The sky was dark; the
wind had blown all day from the north to the south, and frightened the
little Sister as she toiled at her lace work, made on a cushion in the
Spanish fashion, her lips mechanically repeating prayers meanwhile; for
never had they such winds at the inland convent, embowered in its
orange trees. Now, as the deep, low roll of the waves sounded on the
shore, Keith, who was listening to it with silent enjoyment, happened
to look up and catch the pale, repressed nervousness of her face.

"Oh, not like an organ," she murmured. "This is a fearful sound; but an
organ is sweet--soft and sweet. When Sister Teresa plays the evening
hymn it is like the sighing of angels."

"But your organ is probably small, senora."

"We have not thought it small. It remains in our chapel, by the window
of arches, and below we walk, at the hour of meditation, from the lime
tree to the white rose bush, and back again, while the music sounds
above. We have not thought it small, but large--yes, very large."

"Four feet long probably," said Carrington, who was smoking an evening
pipe, now listening to the talk awhile, now watching the movements of
two white heron who were promenading down the beach. "I saw the one
over in the village church. It was about as long as this step."

"Yes," said the Sister, surveying the step, "it is about as long as
that. It is a very large organ."

"Walk with me down to the point," said Keith--"just once and back
again."

The docile little Sister obeyed; she always did immediately whatever
they told her to do.

"I want you to listen now; stand still and listen--listen to the sea,"
said Keith, when they had turned the point and stood alone on the
shore. "Try to think only of the pure, deep, blue water, and count how
regularly the sound rolls up in long, low chords, dying away and then
growing louder, dying away and then growing louder, as regular as your
own breath. Do you not hear it?"

"Yes," said the little Sister timorously.

"Keep time, then, with your hand, and let me see whether you catch the
measure."

So the small brown hand, nerveless and slender, tried to mark and
measure the roar of the great ocean surges, and at last succeeded,
urged on by the alternate praises and rebukes of Keith, who watched
with some interest a faint color rise in the pale, oval face, and an
intent listening look come into the soft, unconscious eyes, as, for the
first time, the mind caught the mighty rhythm of the sea. She listened,
and listened, standing mute, with head slightly bent and parted lips.

"I want you to listen to it that way every day," said Keith, as he led
the way back. "It has different voices: sometimes a fresh, joyous song,
sometimes a faint, loving whisper; but always something. You will learn
in time to love it, and then it will sing to you all day long."

"Not at the dear convent; there is no ocean there."

"You want to go back to the convent, I suppose?"

"Oh, could I go? Could I go?" said the Sister, not impatiently, but
with an intense yearning in her low voice. "Here, so lost, so strange
am I, so wild is everything---- But I must not murmur"; and she crossed
her hands upon her breast and bowed her head.

                     *      *      *      *      *

The young men led a riotous life; they rioted with the ocean, with the
winds, with the level island, with the sunshine and the racing clouds.
They sailed over to the reef daily and plunged into the surf; they
walked for miles along the beach, and ran races over its white floor;
they hunted down the centre of the island, and brought back the little
brown deer who lived in the low thicket on each side of the island's
backbone. The island was twenty miles long, and a mile or two broad,
with a central ridge of shell-formed rock about twenty feet in height,
that seemed like an Appalachian chain on the level waste; below, in the
little hollows on each side, spread a low tangled thicket, a few yards
wide; and all the rest was barren sand, with moveable hills here and
there--hills a few feet in height, blown up by the wind, and changed in
a night. The only vegetation besides the thicket was a rope-like vine
that crept over the sand, with few leaves far apart, and now and then a
dull purple blossom, a solitary tenacious vine of the desert, satisfied
with little, its growth slow, its life monotonous; yet try to tear it
from the surface of the sand, where its barren length seems to lie
loosely like an old brown rope thrown down at random, and behold, it
resists you stubbornly. You find a mile or two of it on your hands,
clinging and pulling as the strong ivy clings to a stone wall; a giant
could not conquer it, this seemingly dull and half dead thing; and so
you leave it there to creep on in its own way over the damp,
shell-strewn waste. One day Carrington came home in great glory; he had
found a salt marsh. "Something besides this sand, you know--a stretch
of saw-grass away to the south, the very place for fat ducks. And
somebody has been there before us, too, for I saw the mast of a
sailboat some distance down, tipped up against the sky."

"That old boat is ourn, I guess," said Melvyna. "She drifted down there
one high tide, and Pedro he never would go for her. She was a mighty
nice little boat, too, ef she _was_ cranky."

Pedro smiled amiably back upon his spouse, and helped himself to
another hemisphere of pie. He liked the pies, although she was obliged
to make them, she said, of such outlandish things as figs, dried
oranges, and pomegranates. "If you could only see a pumpkin, Pedro,"
she often remarked, shaking her head. Pedro shook his back in sympathy;
but, in the mean time, found the pies very good as they were.

"Let us go down after the boat," said Carrington. "You have only that
old tub over at the inlet. Pedro and you really need another boat"
(Carrington always liked to imagine that he was a constant and profound
help to the world at large). "Suppose anything should happen to the one
you have." Pedro had not thought of that; he slowly put down his knife
and fork to consider the subject.

"We will go this afternoon," said Keith, issuing his orders, "and you
shall go with us, senora."

"And Pedro, too, to help you," said Melvyna. "I've always wanted that
boat back, she was such a pretty little thing: one sail, you know, and
decked over in front; you sat on the bottom. I'd like right well to go
along myself; but I suppose I'd better stay at home and cook a nice
supper for you."

Pedro thought so, decidedly.

When the February sun had stopped blazing down directly overhead, and a
few white afternoon clouds had floated over from the east to shade his
shining, so that man could bear it, the four started inland toward the
backbone ridge, on whose summit there ran an old trail southward, made
by the fierce Creeks three centuries before. Right up into the dazzling
light soared the great eagles--straight up, up to the sun; their
unshrinking eyes fearlessly fixed full on his fiery ball.

"It would be grander if we did not know they had just stolen their
dinners from the poor hungry fish-hawks over there on the inlet," said
Carrington.

Sister St. Luke had learned to walk quite rapidly now. Her little black
gown trailed lightly along the sand behind her, and she did her best to
"step out boldly," as Keith directed; but it was not firmly, for she
only succeeded in making a series of quick, uncertain little paces over
the sand-like bird tracks. Once Keith had taken her back and made her
look at her own uneven footsteps. "Look--no two the same distance
apart," he said. The little Sister looked and was very much mortified.
"Indeed, I _will_ try with might to do better," she said. And she did
try with might; they saw her counting noiselessly to herself as she
walked, "One, two; one, two." But she had improved so much that Keith
now devoted his energies to teaching her to throw back her head, and
look about her. "Do you not see those soft banks of clouds piled up in
the west?" he said, constantly directing her attention to objects above
her. But this was a harder task, for the timid eyes had been trained
from childhood to look down, and the head was habitually bent, like a
pendant flower on its stem. Melvyna had deliberately laid hands upon
the heavy veil and white band that formerly encircled the small face.
"You cannot breathe in them," she said. But the Sister still wore a
light veil over the short dark hair, which would curl in little rings
upon her temples in spite of her efforts to prevent it; the cord and
heavy beads and cross encircled her slight waist, while the wide
sleeves of her nun's garb fell over her hands to the finger tips.

"How do you suppose she would look dressed like other women?" said
Carrington one day. The two men were drifting in their small yacht,
lying at ease on the cushions, and smoking.

"Well," answered Keith slowly, "if she was well dressed--very well I
mean, say in the French style--and if she had any spirit of her own,
any vivacity, you might, with that dark face of hers and those
eyes--you _might_ call her piquant."

"Spirit? She has not the spirit of a fly," said Carrington, knocking
the ashes out of his pipe and fumbling in an embroidered velvet pouch,
one of many offerings at his shrine, for a fresh supply of the strong
aromatic tobacco he affected, Keith meanwhile smoking nothing but the
most delicate cigarettes. "The other day I heard a wild scream; and
rushing down stairs I found her half fainting on the steps, all in a
little heap. And what do you think it was? She had been sitting there,
lost in a dream--mystic, I suppose, like St. Agnes--

    Deep on the convent roof the snows
      Are sparkling to the moon:
    My breath to heaven like vapor goes.
      May my soul follow soon--

and that sort of thing."

"No," said Keith, "there is nothing mystical about the Luke maiden; she
has never even dreamed of the ideal ecstasies of deeper minds. She says
her little prayers simply, almost mechanically, so many every day, and
dwells as it were content in the lowly valleys of religion."

"Well, whatever she was doing," continued Carrington, "a great sea crab
had crawled up and taken hold of the toe of her little shoe. Grand
tableau--crab and Luke maiden! And the crab had decidedly the better of
it."

"She _is_ absurdly timid," admitted Keith.

And absurdly timid she was now, when, having crossed the stretch of
sand and wound in and out among the low hillocks, they came to the
hollow where grew the dark green thicket, through which they must pass
to reach the Appalachian range, the backbone of the island, where the
trail gave them an easier way than over the sands. Carrington went
first and hacked out a path with his knife; Keith followed, and held
back the branches; the whole distance was not more than twelve feet;
but its recesses looked dark and shadowy to the little Sister, and she
hesitated.

"Come," said Carrington; "we shall never reach the salt marsh at this
rate."

"There is nothing dangerous here, senora," said Keith. "Look, you can
see for yourself. And there are three of us to help you."

"Yes," said Pedro--"three of us." And he swung his broad bulk into the
gap.

Still she hesitated.

"Of what are you afraid?" called out Carrington impatiently.

"I know not indeed," she answered, almost in tears over her own
behavior, yet unable to stir. Keith came back, and saw that she was
trembling--not violently, but in a subdued, helpless sort of a way
which was pathetic in its very causelessness.

"Take her up, Pedro," he ordered; and before she could object, the
good-natured giant had borne her in three strides through the dreaded
region, and set her down safely upon the ridge. She followed them
humbly now, along the safe path, trying to step firmly, and walk with
her head up, as Keith had directed. Carrington had already forgotten
her again, and even Keith was eagerly looking ahead for the first
glimpse of green.

"There is something singularly fascinating in the stretch of a salt
marsh," he said. "Its level has such a far sweep as you stand and gaze
across it, and you have a dreamy feeling that there is no end to it.
The stiff drenched grasses hold the salt which the tide brings in twice
a day, and you inhale that fresh, strong, briny odor, the rank, salt,
invigorating smell of the sea; the breeze that blows across has a tang
to it like the snap of a whip lash across your face, bringing the blood
to the surface, and rousing you to a quicker pace."

"Ha!" said Carrington; "there it is. Don't you see the green? A little
further on, you will see the mast of the boat."

"That is all that is wanted," said Keith. "A salt marsh is not complete
without a boat tilted up aground somewhere, with its slender dark mast
outlined against the sky. A boat sailing along in a commonplace way
would blight the whole thing; what we want is an abandoned craft, aged
and deserted, aground down the marsh with only its mast rising above
the green."

"_Bien!_ there it is," said Carrington; "and now the question is, how
to get to it."

"You two giants will have to go alone," said Keith, finding a
comfortable seat. "I see a mile or two of tall wading before us, and up
to your shoulders is over my head. I went duck-shooting with that man
last year, senora. 'Come on,' he cried--'splendid sport ahead, old
fellow; come on.'

"'Is it deep?' I asked from behind. I was already up to my knees, and
could not see bottom, the water was so dark.

"'Oh no, not at all; just right,' he answered, striding ahead. 'Come
on.'

"I came; and went in up to my eyes."

But the senora did not smile.

"You know Carrington is taller than I am," explained Keith, amused by
the novelty of seeing his own stories fall flat in dead failure.

"Is he?" said the Sister vaguely.

It was evident that she had not observed whether he was or not.

Carrington stopped short, and for an instant stared blankly at her.
What every one noticed and admired all over the country wherever he
went, this little silent creature had not even seen!

"He will never forgive you," said Keith laughing, as the two tall forms
strode off into the marsh. Then, seeing that she did not comprehend in
the least, he made a seat for her by spreading his light coat on the
Appalachian chain, and leaning back on his elbow, began talking to her
about the marsh. "Breathe in the strong salt," he said, "and let your
eyes rest on the green, reedy waste. Supposing you were painting a
picture, now--does any one paint pictures at your convent?"

"Ah, yes," said the little nun, rousing to animation at once. "Sister
St. James paints pictures the most beautiful on earth. She painted for
us Santa Inez with her lamb, and Santa Rufina of Sevilla, with her
palms and earthen vases."

"And has she not taught you to paint also?"

"Me! Oh, no. I am only a Sister, young and of no gifts. Sister St.
James is a great saint, and of age she has seventy years."

"Not requisites for painting, either of them, that I am aware," said
Keith. "However, if you were painting this marsh, do you not see how
the mast of that boat makes the feature of the landscape the one human
element; and yet, even that abandoned, merged as it were in the
desolate wildness of the scene?"

The Sister looked over the green earnestly, as if trying to see all
that he suggested, Keith talked on. He knew that he talked well, and he
did not confuse her with more than one subject, but dwelt upon the
marsh: stories of men who had been lost in them, of women who had
floated down in boats and never returned; descriptions clear as
etchings; studies of the monotone of hues before them--one subject
pictured over and over again, as, wishing to instruct a child, he would
have drawn with a chalk one letter of the alphabet a hundred times,
until the wandering eyes had learned at last to recognize and know it.
"Do you see nothing at all, feel nothing at all?" he said. "Tell me
exactly."

Thus urged, the Sister replied that she thought she did feel the salt
breeze a little.

"Then take off that shroud and enjoy it," said Keith, extending his arm
suddenly, and sweeping off the long veil by the corner that was nearest
to him.

"Oh!" said the little Sister; "oh!" and distressfully she covered her
head with her hands, as if trying to shield herself from the terrible
light of day. But the veil had gone down into the thicket, whither she
dared not follow. She stood irresolute.

"I will get it for you before the others come back," said Keith. "It is
gone now, however, and what is more, you could not help it; so sit
down, like a sensible creature, and enjoy the breeze."

The little nun sat down, and confusedly tried to be a sensible
creature. Her head, with its short rings of dark hair, rose childlike
from the black gown she wore, and the breeze swept freshly over her;
but her eyes were full of tears, and her face so pleading in its pale,
silent distress, that at length Keith went down and brought back the
veil.

"See the cranes flying home," he said, as the long line dotted the red
of the west. "They always seem to be flying right into the sunset,
sensible birds."

The little Sister had heard that word twice now; evidently the cranes
were more sensible than she. She sighed as she fastened on the veil;
there were a great many hard things out in the world, then, she
thought. At the dear convent it was not expected that one should be as
a crane.

The other two came back at length, wet and triumphant, with their
prize. They had stopped to bail it out, plug its cracks, mend the old
sail after a fashion, and nothing would do but that the three should
sail home in it; Pedro, for whom there was no room, returning by the
way they had come. Carrington, having worked hard, was determined to
carry out his plan; and said so.

"A fine plan to give us all a wetting," remarked Keith.

"You go down there and work an hour or two yourself, and see how _you_
like it," answered the other, with the irrelevance produced by aching
muscles and perspiration dripping from every pore.

This conversation had taken place at the edge of the marsh where they
had brought the boat up through one of the numerous channels.

"Very well," said Keith. "But mind you, not a word about danger before
the Sister. I shall have hard enough work to persuade her to come with
us as it is."

He went back to the ridge, and carelessly suggested returning home by
water. "You will not have to go through the thicket then," he said.

Somewhat to his surprise, Sister St. Luke consented immediately, and
followed without a word as he led the way. She was mortally afraid of
the water, but, during his absence, she had been telling her beads, and
thinking with contrition of two obstinacies in one day: that of the
thicket and that of the veil; she could not, she would not have three.
So, commending herself to all the saints, she embarked.

"Look here, Carrington, if ever you inveigle me into such danger again
for a mere fool's fancy, I will show you what I think of it. You knew
the condition of that boat, and I did not," said Keith sternly as the
two men stood at last on the beach in front of the light-house. The
Sister had gone within, glad to feel land underfoot once more. She had
sat quietly in her place all the way, afraid of the water, of the wind,
of everything, but entirely unconscious of the real danger that menaced
them. For the little craft would not mind her helm; her mast slipped
about erratically; the planking at the bow seemed about to give way
altogether; and they were on a lee shore, with the tide coming in, and
the surf beating roughly on the beach. They were both good sailors, but
it had taken all they knew to bring the boat safely to the lighthouse.

"To tell the truth, I did not think she was so crippled," said
Carrington. "She really is a good boat for her size."

"Very," said Keith sarcastically.

But the younger man clung to his opinion; and in order to verify it, he
set himself to work repairing the little craft. You would have supposed
his daily bread depended upon her being made seaworthy by the way he
labored. She was made over from stem to stern: a new mast, a new sail;
and, finally, scarlet and green paint were brought over from the
village, and out she came as brilliant as a young paroquet. Then
Carrington took to sailing in her. Proud of his handy work, he sailed
up and down, over to the reef, and up the inlet, and even persuaded
Melvyna to go with him once, accompanied by the meek little Sister.

"Why shouldn't you both learn how to manage her?" he said in his
enthusiasm. "She's as easy to manage as a child----"

"And as easy to tip over," replied Melvyna, screwing up her lips
tightly and shaking her head. "You don't catch me out in her again,
sure as my name's Sawyer."

For Melvyna always remained a Sawyer in her own mind, in spite of her
spouse's name; she could not, indeed, be anything else--_noblesse
oblige_. But the Sister, obedient as usual, bent her eyes in turn
upon the ropes, the mast, the sail, and the helm, while Carrington,
waxing eloquent over his favorite science, delivered a lecture upon
their uses and made her experiment a little to see if she comprehended.
He used the simplest words for her benefit, words of one syllable, and
unconsciously elevated his voice somewhat, as though that would make
her understand better; her wits seemed to him always of the slowest.
The Sister followed his directions and imitated his motions with
painstaking minuteness. She did very well until a large porpoise rolled
up his dark, glistening back close alongside, when, dropping the
sail-rope with a scream, she crouched down at Melvyna's feet and hid
her face in her veil. Carrington from that day could get no more
passengers for his paroquet boat. But he sailed up and down alone in
his little craft, and when that amusement palled he took the remainder
of the scarlet and green paint and adorned the shells of various
sea-crabs and other crawling things, so that the little Sister was met
one afternoon by a whole procession of unearthly creatures, strangely
variegated, proceeding gravely in single file down the beach from the
pen where they had been confined. Keith pointed out to her, however,
the probability of their being much admired in their own circles as
long as the hues lasted, and she was comforted.

They strolled down the beach now every afternoon, sometimes two,
sometimes three, sometimes four when Melvyna had no cooking to watch,
no bread to bake; for she rejected with scorn the omnipresent hot
biscuit of the South, and kept her household supplied with light loaves
in spite of the difficulties of yeast. Sister St. Luke had learned to
endure the crabs, but she still fled from the fiddlers when they
strayed over from their towns in the marsh; she still went carefully
around the great jelly fish sprawling on the beach, and regarded from a
safe distance the beautiful blue Portuguese men-of-war, stranded
unexpectedly on the dangerous shore, all their fair voyagings over.
Keith collected for her the brilliant sea-weeds, little flecks of color
on the white sand, and showed her their beauties; he made her notice
all the varieties of shells, enormous conches for the tritons to blow,
and beds of wee pink ovals and cornucopias, plates and cups for the
little web-footed fairies. Once he came upon a sea bean.

"It has drifted over from one of the West Indian islands," he said,
polishing it with his handkerchief--"one of the islands--let us say
Miraprovos--a palmy tropical name, bringing up visions of a volcanic
mountain, vast cliffs, a tangled gorgeous forest, and the soft lapping
wash of tropical seas. Is it not so, senora?"

But the senora had never heard of the West Indian islands. Being told,
she replied, "As you say it, it is so. There is, then, much land in the
world?"

"If you keep the sea bean for ever, good will come," said Keith,
gravely presenting it; "but if after having once accepted it, you then
lose it, evil will fall upon you."

The Sister received the amulet with believing reverence. "I will lay it
up before the shrine of Our Lady," she said, carefully placing it in
the little pocket over her heart, hidden among the folds of her gown,
where she kept her most precious treasures--a bead of a rosary that had
belonged to some saint who lived somewhere some time, a little faded
prayer copied in the handwriting of a young nun who had died some years
before and whom she had dearly loved, and a list of her own most
vicious faults, to be read over and lamented daily; crying evils such
as a perverse and insubordinate bearing, a heart froward and evil,
gluttonous desires of the flesh, and a spirit of murderous rage. These
were her own ideas of herself, written down at the convent. Had she not
behaved herself perversely to the Sister Paula, with whom one should be
always mild on account of the affliction which had sharpened her
tongue? Had she not wrongfully coveted the cell of the novice Felipa,
because it looked out upon the orange walk? Had she not gluttonously
longed for more of the delectable marmalade made by the aged Sanchita?
And worse than all, had she not, in a spirit of murderous rage, beat
the yellow cat with a palm branch for carrying off the young doves, her
especial charge? "Ah, my sins are great indeed," she sighed daily upon
her knees, and smote her breast with tears.

Keith watched the sea bean go into the little heart-pocket almost with
compunction. Many of these amulets of the sea, gathered during his
winter rambles, had he bestowed with formal warning of their magic
powers, and many a fair hand had taken them, many a soft voice had
promised to keep them "for ever." But he well knew they would be
mislaid and forgotten in a day. The fair ones well knew it too, and
each knew that the other knew, so no harm was done. But this sea bean,
he thought, would have a different fate--laid up in some little nook
before the shrine, a witness to the daily prayers of the simple-hearted
little Sister. "I hope they may do it good," he thought vaguely. Then,
reflecting that even the most depraved bean would not probably be much
affected by the prayers, he laughed off the fancy, yet did not quite
like to think, after all, that the prayers were of no use. Keith's
religion, however, was in the primary rocks.

Far down the beach they came upon a wreck, an old and long hidden relic
of the past. The low sand-bluff had caved away suddenly and left a
clean new side, where, imbedded in the lower part, they saw a ponderous
mast. "An old Spanish galleon," said Keith, stooping to examine the
remains. "I know it by the curious bolts. They ran ashore here,
broadside on, in one of those sudden tornadoes they have along this
coast once in a while, I presume. Singular! This was my very place for
lying in the sun and letting the blaze scorch me with its clear
scintillant splendor. I never imagined I was lying on the bones of this
old Spaniard."

"God rest the souls of the sailors," said the Sister, making the sign
of the cross.

"They have been in--wherever they are, let us say, for about three
centuries now," observed Keith, "and must be used to it, good or bad."

"Nay; but purgatory, senor."

"True. I had forgotten that," said Keith.

One morning there came up a dense, soft, southern-sea fog, "The kind
you can cut with a knife," Carrington said. It lasted for days,
sweeping out to sea at night on the land breeze, and lying in a gray
bank low down on the horizon, and then rolling in again in the morning
enveloping the water and the island in a thick white cloud which was
not mist and did not seem damp even, so freshly, softly salt was the
feeling it gave to the faces that went abroad in it. Carrington and
Keith, of course, must needs be out in it every moment of the time.
They walked down the beach for miles in the fog, hearing the muffled
sound of the near waves, but not seeing them. They sailed in the fog,
not knowing whither they went, and they drifted out at sunset and
watched the land breeze lift it, roll it up, and carry it out to sea,
where distant ships on the horizon line, bound southward, and nearer
ones, sailing northward with the Gulf stream, found themselves
enveloped for the night and bothered by their old and baffling foe.
They went over to the reef every morning, these two, and bathed in the
fog, coming back by sense of feeling, as it were, and landing not
infrequently a mile below or above the light-house; then what appetites
they had for breakfast. And if it was not ready, they roamed about
roaring like young lions. At least that is what Melvyna said one
morning when Carrington had put his curly head into her kitchen door
six times in the course of one half hour.

The Sister shrank from the sea fog; she had never seen one before, and
she said it was like a great soft white creature that came in on wings,
and brooded over the earth. "Yes, beautiful, perhaps," she said in
reply to Keith, "but it is so strange--and--and--I know not how to say
it--but it seems like a place for spirits to walk, and not of the
mortal kind."

They were wandering down the beach, where Keith had lured her to listen
to the sound of the hidden waves. At that moment Carrington loomed into
view coming toward them. He seemed of giant size as he appeared, passed
them, and disappeared again into the cloud behind, his voice sounding
muffled as he greeted them. The Sister shrank nearer to her companion
as the figure had suddenly made itself visible. "Do you know it is a
wonder to me how you have ever managed to live, so far?" said Keith
smiling.

"But it was not far," said the little nun. "Nothing was ever far at the
dear convent, but everything was near, and not of strangeness to make
one afraid; the garden wall was the end. There we go not outside, but
our walk is always from the lime tree to the white rosebush and back
again. Everything we know there--not roar of waves, not strong wind,
not the thick, white air comes to give us fear, but all is still and at
peace. At night I dream of the organ, and of the orange trees, and of
the doves. I wake, and hear only the sound of the great water below."

"You will go back," said Keith.

He had begun to pity her lately, for her longing was deeper than he had
supposed. It had its roots in her very being. He had studied her and
found it so.

"She will die of pure homesickness if she stays here much longer," he
said to Carrington, "What do you think of our writing down to that old
convent and offering--of course unknown to her--to pay the little she
costs them, if they will take her back?"

"All right," said Carrington. "Go ahead."

He was making a larger sail for his paroquet boat. "If none of you will
go out in her, I might as well have all the sport I can," he said.

"Sport to consist in being swamped?" Keith asked.

"By no means, croaker. Sport to consist in shooting over the water like
a rocket; I sitting on the tilted edge, watching the waves, the winds,
and the clouds, and hearing the water sing as we rush along."

Keith took counsel with no one else, not even with Melvyna, but
presently he wrote his letter and carried it himself over to the
village to mail. He did good deeds like that once in a while, "to help
humanity," he said; they were tangible always, like the primary rocks.

At length one evening the fog rolled out to sea for good and all, at
least as far as the shore was concerned. In the morning there stood the
light-house, and the island, and the reef, just the same as ever.
Someway they had almost expected to see them altered or melted a
little.

"Let us go over to the reef, all of us, and spend the day," said Keith.
"It will do us good to breathe the clear air, and feel the brilliant,
dry, hot sunshine again."

"Hear the man!" said Melvyna laughing. "After trying to persuade us all
those days that he liked that sticky fog too!"

"Mme. Gonsalvez, we like a lily; but is that any reason why we may not
also like a rose?"

"Neither of 'em grows on this beach as I'm aware of," answered Melvyna
dryly.

Then Carrington put in his voice, and carried the day. Women never
resisted Carrington long, but yielded almost unconsciously to the
influence of his height, and his strength, and his strong, hearty will.
A subtler influence over them, however, would have waked resistance,
and Carrington himself would have been conquered far sooner (and was
conquered later) by one who remained unswayed by those mere outer
influences, to which the crowd of fair ones, however, paid involuntary
obeisance.

Pedro had gone to the village for his supplies and his two days of mild
Minorcan dissipation, and Melvyna, beguiled and cajoled by the chaffing
of the two young men, at last consented, and not only packed the
lunch-basket with careful hand, but even donned for the occasion her
"best bonnet," a structure trimmed in Vermont seven years before by the
experienced hand of Miss Althy Spears, the village milliner, who had
adorned it with a durable green ribbon and a vigorous wreath of
artificial flowers. Thus helmeted, Mme. Gonsalvez presided at the stern
of the boat with great dignity. For they were in the safe
well-appointed little yacht belonging to the two gentlemen, the daring
paroquet having been left at home tied to the last of a low heap of
rocks that jutted out into the water in front of the light-house, the
only remains of the old stone dock built by the Spaniards long before.
Sister St. Luke was with them of course, gentle and frightened as
usual. Her breath came quickly as they neared the reef, and Carrington
with a sure hand guided the little craft outside into the surf, and
rounding a point, landed them safely in a miniature harbor he had noted
there. Keith had counted the days, and felt sure that the answer from
the convent would come soon. His offer--for he had made it his alone
without Carrington's aid--had been munificent; there could be but one
reply. The little Sister would soon go back to the lime tree, the white
rosebush, the doves, the old organ that was "so large"--all the quiet
routine of the life she loved so well; and they would see her small
oval face and timid dark eyes no more for ever. So he took her for a
last walk down the reef, while Melvyna made coffee, and Carrington,
having noticed a dark line floating on the water, immediately went out
in the boat, of course to see what it was.

The reef had its high backbone, like the island. Some day it would be
the island with another reef outside, and the light-house beach would
belong to the mainland. Down the stretch of sand toward the sea the
pelicans stood in rows, toeing a mark, solemn and heavy, by the
hundreds--a countless number--for the reef was their gathering place.

"They are holding a conclave," said Keith. "That old fellow has the
floor. See him wag his head."

In and out among the pelicans, and paying no attention to them and
their conclave, sped the sickle-bill curlews, actively probing
everywhere with their long, grotesque, sickle-shaped bills; and woe be
to the burrowing things that came in their way. The red-beaked oyster
bird flew by, and close down to the sea skimmed the razor-bill
shear-water, with his head bent forward and his feet tilted up, just
grazing the water with his open bill as he flew, and leaving a shining
mark behind, as though he held a pencil in his mouth and was running a
line. The lazy gulls, who had no work to do, and would not have done it
if they had, rode at ease on the little wavelets close in shore. The
Sister, being asked, confessed that she liked the lazy gulls best.
Being pressed to say why, she thought it was because they were more
like the white doves that sat on the old stone well-curb in the convent
garden.

Keith had always maintained that he liked to talk to women. He said
that the talk of any woman was more piquant than the conversation of
the most brilliant men. There was only one obstacle: the absolute
inability of the sex to be sincere, or to tell the truth, for ten
consecutive minutes. To-day, however, as he wandered to and fro whither
he would on the reef, he also wandered to and fro whither he would in
the mind, and the absolutely truthful mind too, of a woman. Yet he
found it dull! He sighed to himself, but was obliged to acknowledge
that it _was_ dull. The lime tree, the organ, the Sisters, the Sisters,
the lime tree, the organ; it grew monotonous after a while. Yet he held
his post, for the sake of the old theory, until the high voice of
Melvyna called them back to the little fire on the beach and the white
cloth spread with her best dainties. They saw Carrington sailing in
with an excited air, and presently he brought the boat into the cove
and dragged ashore his prize, towed behind--nothing less than a large
shark, wounded, dead, after a struggle with some other marine monster,
a sword fish probably. "A man-eater," announced the captor. "Look at
him, will you? Look at him, Miss Luke!"

But Miss Luke went far away, and would not look. In truth he was an
ugly creature; even Melvyna kept at a safe distance. But the two men
noted all his points; they measured him carefully; they turned him
over, and discussed him generally in that closely confined and
exhaustive way which marks the masculine mind. Set two women to
discussing a shark, or even the most lovely little brook trout, if you
please, and see how far off they will be in fifteen minutes!

But the lunch was tempting, and finally its discussion called them away
even from that of the shark. And then they all sailed homeward over the
green and blue water, while the white sand hills shone silvery before
them, and then turned red in the sunset. That night the moon was at its
full. Keith went out and strolled up and down on the beach. Carrington
was playing fox-and-goose with Mme. Gonsalvez on a board he had
good-naturedly constructed for her entertainment when she confessed one
day to a youthful fondness for that exciting game. Up stairs gleamed
the little Sister's light. "Saying her prayers with her lips, but
thinking all the time of that old convent," said the stroller to
himself, half scornfully. And he said the truth.

The sea was still and radiant; hardly more than a ripple broke at his
feet; the tide was out, and the broad beach silvery and fresh. "At home
they are buried in snow," he thought, "and the wind, is whistling
around their double windows." And then he stretched himself on the
sand, and lay looking upward into the deep blue of the night, bathed in
the moonlight, and listening dreamily to the soft sound of the water as
it returned slowly, slowly back from the African coast. He thought many
thoughts, and deep ones too, for his mind was of a high order; and at
last he was so far away on ideal heights that, coming home after
midnight, it was no wonder if, half unconsciously, he felt himself
above the others; especially when he passed the little Sister's closed
door, and thought, smiling not unkindly, how simple she was.

The next morning the two men went off in their boat again for the day,
this time alone. There were still a few more questions to settle about
that shark, and, to tell the truth, they both liked a good day of
unencumbered sailing better than anything else.

About four o'clock in the afternoon Melvyna, happening to look out of
the door, saw a cloud no bigger than a man's hand low down on the
horizon line of the sea. Something made her stand and watch it for a
few moments. Then, "Miss Luke! Miss Luke! Miss Luke! Miss Luke!" she
called quickly. Down came the little Sister, startled at the cry, her
lace work still in her hand.

"Look!" said Melvyna.

The Sister looked, and this is what she saw: a line white as milk
coming toward them on the water, and behind it a blackness.

"What is it?" she asked.

"A tornader," said Melvyna with white lips. "I've only seen one, and
then I was over in the town; but it's awful! We must run back to the
thicket," Seizing her companion's arm, the strong Northern woman
hurried her across the sand, through the belt of sand hills, and into
the thicket, where they crouched on its far side close down under the
protecting backbone. "The bushes will break the sand, and the ridge
will keep us from being buried in it," she said. "I dursn't stay on the
shore, for the water'll rise."

The words were hardly spoken before the tornado was upon them, and the
air was filled with the flying sand, so that they could hardly breathe.
Half choked, they beat with their hands before them to catch a breath.
Then came a roar, and for an instant, distant as they were, they caught
a glimpse of the crest of the great wave that followed the whirlwind.
It seemed to them mountains high, and ready to engulf the entire land.
With a rushing sound it plunged over the keeper's house, broke against
the lower story of the tower, hissed across the sand, swallowed the
sand hills, and swept to their very feet, then sullenly receded with
slow, angry muttering. A gale of wind came next, singularly enough from
another direction, as if to restore the equipoise of the atmosphere.
But the tornado had gone on inland, where there were trees to uproot,
and houses to destroy, and much finer entertainment generally.

As soon as they could speak, "Where are the two out in the sail boat?"
asked the Sister.

"God knows!" answered Melvyna. "The last time I noticed their sail they
were about a mile outside of the reef."

"I will go and see."

"Go and see! Are you crazy? You can never get through that water."

"The saints would help me, I think," said the little Sister.

She had risen, and now stood regarding the watery waste with the usual
timid look in her gentle eyes. Then she stepped forward with her
uncertain tread, and before the woman by her side comprehended her
purpose she was gone, ankle-deep in the tide, knee-deep, and finally
wading across the sand up to her waist in water toward the light-house.
The great wave was no deeper, however, even there. She waded to the
door of the tower, opened it with difficulty, climbed the stairway, and
gained the light room, where the glass of the windows was all
shattered, and the little chamber half full of the dead bodies of
birds, swept along by the whirlwind and dashed against the tower, none
of them falling to the ground or losing an inch of their level in the
air as they sped onward, until they struck against some high object,
which broke their mad and awful journey. Holding on by the shattered
casement, Sister St. Luke gazed out to sea. The wind was blowing
fiercely and the waves were lashed to fury. The sky was inky black. The
reef was under water, save one high knob of its backbone, and to that
two dark objects were clinging. Further down she saw the wreck of the
boat driving before the gale. Pedro was over in the village; the tide
was coming in over the high sea, and night was approaching. She walked
quickly down the rough stone stairs, stepped into the water again, and
waded across where the paroquet boat had been driven against the wall
of the house, baled it out with one of Melvyna's pans, and then,
climbing in from the window of the sitting-room, she hoisted the sail,
and in a moment was out on the dark sea.

Melvyna had ascended to the top of the ridge, and when the sail came
into view beyond the house she fell down on her knees and began to pray
aloud: "Oh, Lord, save her; save the lamb! She don't know what's she is
doing, Lord. She's as simple as a baby. Oh, save her, out on that
roaring sea! Good Lord, good Lord, deliver her!" Fragments of prayers
she had heard in her prayer-meeting days came confusedly back into her
mind, and she repeated them all again and again, wringing her hands as
she saw the little craft tilt far over under its all too large sail, so
that several times, in the hollows of the waves, she thought it was
gone. The wind was blowing hard but steadily, and in a direction that
carried the boat straight toward the reef; no tacks were necessary, no
change of course; the black-robed little figure simply held the sail
rope, and the paroquet drove on. The two clinging to the rock, bruised,
exhausted, with the waves rising and falling around them, did not see
the boat until it was close upon them.

"By the great heavens!" said Keith.

His face was pallid and rigid, and there was a ghastly cut across his
forehead, the work of the sharp-edged rock. The next moment he was on
board, brought the boat round just in time, and helped in Carrington,
whose right arm was injured.

"You have saved our lives, senora," he said abruptly.

"By Jove, yes," said Carrington. "We could not have stood it long, and
night was coming." Then they gave all their attention to the hazardous
start.

Sister St. Luke remained unconscious of the fact that she had done
anything remarkable. Her black gown was spoiled, which was a pity, and
she knew of a balm which was easily compounded and which would heal
their bruises. Did they think Melvyna had come back to the house yet?
And did they know that all her dishes were broken--yes, even the cups
with the red flowers on the border? Then she grew timorous again, and
hid her face from the sight of the waves.

Keith said not a word, but sailed the boat, and it was a wild and
dangerous voyage they made, tacking up and down in the gayly painted
little craft, that seemed like a toy on that angry water. Once
Carrington took the little Sister's hand in his, and pressed his lips
fervently upon it. She had never had her hand kissed before, and looked
at him, then at the place, with a vague surprise, which soon faded,
however, into the old fear of the wind. It was night when at last they
reached the light-house; but during the last two tacks they had a light
from the window to guide them; and when nearly in they saw the lantern
shining out from the shattered windows of the tower in a fitful,
surprised sort of a way, for Melvyna had returned, and with the true
spirit of a Yankee, had immediately gone to work at the ruins.

The only sign of emotion she gave was to Keith. "I saw it all," she
said. "That child went right out after you, in that terrible wind, as
natural and as quiet as if she was only going across the room. And she
so timid a fly could frighten her! Mark my words, Mr. Keith, the good
Lord helped her to do it! And I'll go to that new mission chapel over
in the town every Sunday after this, as sure's my name is Sawyer!" She
ceased abruptly, and going into her kitchen, slammed the door behind
her. Emotion with Melvyna took the form of roughness.

Sister St. Luke went joyfully back to her convent the next day, for
Pedro, when he returned, brought the letter, written, as Keith had
directed, in the style of an affectionate invitation. The little nun
wept for happiness when she read it. "You see how they love me--love me
as I love them," she repeated with innocent triumph again and again.

"It is all we can do," said Keith. "She could not be happy anywhere
else, and with the money behind her she will not be neglected. Besides,
I really believe they do love her. The sending here up here was
probably the result of some outside dictation."

Carrington, however, was dissatisfied. "A pretty return we make for our
saved lives," he said. "I hate ingratitude." For Carrington was half
disposed now to fall in love with his preserver.

But Keith stood firm.

"Adios," said the little Sister, as Pedro's boat received her. Her face
had lighted so with joy and glad anticipation that they hardly knew
her. "I wish you could to the convent go with me," she said earnestly
to the two young men. "I am sure you would like it." Then, as the boat
turned the point, "I am sure you would like it," she called back,
crossing her hands on her breast. "It is very heavenly there--very
heavenly."

That was the last they saw of her.

Carrington sent down the next winter from New York a large silver
crucifix, superbly embossed and ornamented. It was placed on the high
altar of the convent, and much admired and reverenced by all the nuns.
Sister St. Luke admired it too. She spoke of the island occasionally,
but she did not tell the story of the rescue. She never thought of it.
Therefore, in the matter of the crucifix, the belief was that a special
grace had touched the young man's heart. And prayers were ordered for
him. Sister St. Luke tended her doves, and at the hour of meditation
paced to and fro between the lime tree and the bush of white roses.
When she was thirty years old her cup was full, for then she was
permitted to take lessons and play a little upon the old organ.

Melvyna went every Sunday to the bare, struggling little Presbyterian
mission over in the town, and she remains to this day a Sawyer.

But Keith remembered. He bares his head silently in reverence to all
womanhood, and curbs his cynicism as best he can, for the sake of the
little Sister--the sweet little Sister St. Luke.

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON.




CLEOPATRA'S SOLILOQUY.


    What care I for the tempest? What care I for the rain?
    If it beat upon my bosom, would it cool its burning pain--
    This pain that ne'er has left me since on his heart I lay,
    And sobbed my grief at parting as I'd sob my soul away?
    O Antony! Antony! Antony! when in thy circling arms
    Shall I sacrifice to Eros my glorious woman's charms,
    And burn life's sweetest incense before his sacred shrine
    With the living fire that flashes from thine eyes into mine?
    O when shall I feel thy kisses rain down upon my face,
    As, a queen of love and beauty, I lie in thine embrace,
    Melting--melting--melting, as a woman only can
    When she's a willing captive in the conquering arms of man,
    As he towers a god above her, and to yield is not defeat,
    For love can own no victor if love with love shall meet?
    I still have regal splendor, I still have queenly power,
    And--more than all--unfaded is woman's glorious dower.
    But what care I for pleasure? what's beauty to me now,
    Since Love no longer places his crown upon my brow?
    I have tasted its elixir, its fire has through me flashed,
    But when the wine glowed brightest from my eager lip 'twas dashed.
    And I would give all Egypt but once to feel the bliss
    Which thrills through all my being whene'er I meet his kiss.
    The tempest wildly rages, my hair is wet with rain,
    But it does not still my longing, or cool my burning pain.
    For Nature's storms are nothing to the raging of my soul
    When it burns with jealous frenzy beyond a queen's control.
    I fear not pale Octavia--that haughty Roman dame--
    My lion of the desert--my Antony can tame.
    I fear no Persian beauty, I fear no Grecian maid:
    The world holds not the woman of whom I am afraid.
    But I'm jealous of the rapture I tasted in his kiss,
    And I would not that another should share with me that bliss.
    No joy would I deny him, let him cull it where he will,
    So, mistress of his bosom is Cleopatra still;
    So that he feels for ever, when he Love's nectar sips,
    'Twas sweeter--sweeter--sweeter when tasted on my lips;
    So that all other kisses, since he has drawn in mine,
    Shall be unto my loved as "water after wine."
    Awhile let Caesar fancy Octavia's pallid charms
    Can hold Rome's proudest consul a captive in her arms.
    Her cold embrace but brightens the memory of mine,
    And for my warm caresses he in her arms shall pine.
    'Twas not for love he sought her, but for her princely dower;
    She brought him Caesar's friendship, she brought him kingly power.
    I should have bid him take her, had he my counsel sought.
    I've but to smile upon him, and all her charms are nought;
    For I would scorn to hold him by but a single hair,
    Save his own longing for me when I'm no longer there;
    And I will show you, Roman, that for one kiss from me
    Wife--fame--and even honor to him shall nothing be!

                     *      *      *      *      *

    Throw wide the window, Isis--fling perfumes o'er me now,
    And bind the Lotus blossoms again upon my brow.
    The rain has ceased its weeping, the driving storm is past,
    And calm are Nature's pulses that lately beat so fast.
    Gone is my jealous frenzy, and Eros reigns serene,
    The only god e'er worshipped by Egypt's haughty queen.
    With Antony--my loved--I'll kneel before his shrine
    Till the loves of Mars and Venus are nought to his and mine;
    And down through coming ages, in every land and tongue,
    With them shall Cleopatra and Antony be sung.
    Burn Sandal-wood and Cassia, let the vapor round me wreathe,
    And mingle with the incense the Lotus blossoms breathe.
    Let India's spicy odors and Persia's perfumes rare
    Be wafted on the pinions of Egypt's fragrant air.
    With the sighing of the night breeze, the river's rippling flow,
    Let me hear the notes of music in cadence soft and low.
    Draw round my couch its curtains: I'd bathe my soul in sleep;
    I feel its gentle languor upon me slowly creep.
    O let me cheat my senses with dreams of future bliss,
    In fancy feel his presence, in fancy taste his kiss,
    In fancy nestle closely against his throbbing heart,
    And throw my arms around him, no more--no more to part.
    Hush! hush! his spirit's pinions are rustling in my ears:
    He comes upon the tempest to calm my jealous fears;
    He comes upon the tempest in answer to my call.
    Wife--fame--and even honor--for me he leaves them all;
    And royally I'll welcome my lover to my side.
    I have won him--I have won him from Caesar and his bride.

MARY BAYARD CLARKE.




THE DRAMATIC CANONS.

II.


In our late inquiry[2] into the secrets of dramatic success, our
researches were principally directed toward the ascertainment of such
general and technical rules as might recommend themselves for the
treatment of all dramas, whatever the nature of their subject, tragic,
comic, or melodramatic. The limits of space unavoidable in a magazine
article prevented anything more than a fragmentary treatment of that
part of the subject, indicating the general line of argument that
seemed to be the soundest in the light of the present day, and
presenting for consideration twelve technical rules, more or less
general, which we shall here summarize for the sake of convenience, to
make clear what follows:

      [2] "The Galaxy" for March, 1877.

   I. The subject of a play should be capable of full treatment in fifteen
scenes at most.

  II. It should be acted without the aid of narrative.

 III. It should have a connected plot, one event depending on the other.

  IV. The interest should hinge on a single action or episode.

   V. Furniture and set-pieces should be kept out of front scenes if
possible.

  VI. The best dialogue should be put in front scenes.

 VII. They should end in suspense to be relieved by the full scenes.

VIII. Fine points should be avoided in opening a play.

  IX. Act I. should open with a quiet picture, to be disturbed by the bad
element, the other characters successively coming in, the excitement
increasing.

   X. Act I. should end in a partial climax of suspense.

  XI. Each act should lead to the other, the interest increasing.

 XII. The interest should be concentrated on few characters.

The reasons for some of these arbitrary rules will appear plain to even
a cursory observer. The others will recommend themselves, I think,
after an examination of the models cited in the article itself, to
which the reader is referred. It must not be supposed, however, even by
the lay reader, that a subject so extensive can be exhausted in so
short an essay. Old actors and dramatists, in the light of their own
experience, may even doubt whether a theme so abstruse and difficult
can be treated at all, save by one of lifelong experience, and may be
inclined to sneer at the presumption of any person who attempts to
write on methods of attaining dramatic success before having attained
it himself by a grandly popular drama. It seems to the present writer,
however, that the inquiry is open to all, and if conducted on the
inductive method, with plays of acknowledged popularity for a basis,
may result in the settlement of some points around which he, in common
with other hitherto unsuccessful dramatists, has been groping for
years.

In closing the first part of our inquiry, we remarked on the fact that
the interest of a successful play increases gradually from act to act,
and that it is usually concentrated on a few people. The next question
that presents itself in our treatment of the play as a whole is as to
the best method of attaining this increase of interest from act to act,
and how it is done in successful plays. The suggestion in rule X. seems
to be the one most generally used by old dramatists for this
purpose--that is, the employment of the partial climax as a means of
exciting suspense. It may be said to be one of the most difficult
points in dramatic construction to decide when to bring the curtain
down at the end of a play; and the fall of the drop at the end of each
act offers nearly equal difficulties. Is there any guide to a solution
of this question in the handling of well-known plays? If there is, let
us endeavor to find it.

The first thing to be remarked is that we cannot apply to Shakespeare
for the information. The experience of nearly three centuries in the
acting of Shakespeare's plays has resulted in making the acting
editions very different from the original plays in arrangement, in
the suppression of whole scenes and acts, the substitution of others,
the amalgamation of plays, the taking of all sorts of liberties with
the action. Only in one thing do they remain at all times faithful to
the original author, in the preservation, for the most part, of his
language. Familiar instances will occur in the "Merchant of Venice,"
where the play is now always closed with the trial scene; a few
sentences between Bassanio and Portia, clumsily tacked on, being
regarded as preferable to the original closing in a final act of light
comedy. The amalgamation, in the acting edition of "Richard III.," of
parts of "Henry V." and "Henry VI.," and the suppression of the
historical ending after Richard's death, were changes made by Colley
Cibber, which have stood the test of time, and have made the play a
traditional success whenever well acted. In each case experience
showed that the following up of a scene of tragic intensity by either
comedy or narrative made the scene drag. In other words, it was an
_anti-climax_.

It is noticeable, by the by, that these instances of clumsy construction
and consequent alteration occur most frequently in Shakespeare's
historic dramas, where he was fettered by familiar facts, and thought
less of the play than of the chronicle. Such plays of his as deal with
popular legend or stories, already polished by tradition into poetic
justice, and moulded by instinct into a dramatic form, have suffered
much less in the adaptation; some, such as "Midsummer Night's Dream,"
"As You Like It," hardly needing alteration. While I do not suppose
that in these or any other play Shakespeare consciously worked on any
philosophic principle of construction, previously thought out, it is
evident that his artistic instinct, left to itself, prevented his
making any serious mistakes in technique, a matter which has advanced
considerably since his day. I believe that, had Shakespeare lived
to-day, he would have written much more perfectly constructed acting
plays, while at the same time his vast knowledge, or rather lightning
appreciation of the various phases of human nature, would have been
just as great. When he wrote, the English drama was in its infancy, but
three centuries of actors, managers, scene painters, and carpenters
have made great advances in technical experience since those days; and
no genius, however great in the essentials of painting the passions,
can to-day attain success if ignorant of the technical secrets of
managing scenes. We have noticed the changes made in "Richard" and the
"Merchant of Venice," to avoid the anti-climax. Let us take a modern
stock play, the "Lady of Lyons," to illustrate the opposite of dramatic
construction. The first act ends with Claude scornfully rejected by
Pauline, burning for revenge, offered a chance, ready to grasp it. Down
goes the drop. The second act closes with his revenge almost completed,
his remorse beginning. He is _going_ to be married--_not married yet_.
Down goes the drop. Third act--he is married, and his remorse has come.
He has deceived a loving woman, and resolves to atone by giving her up.
Down goes the drop on his resolve, still unaccomplished. Fourth act--he
expiates his crime and sees a chance to regain happiness after a long,
weary probation. Again the drop falls on a _suspense_. The question
is--Will he stand the test, and will Pauline be faithful? The fifth act
opens in gloom, and closes with the reward of virtue and punishment of
vice. The reader will mark in each case how the acts end in suspense,
and how, as soon as the suspense is clearly indicated, down comes the
drop. This was Bulwer's first successful play, and we shall come to it
again in looking at the inner secrets that guide the motives of a
drama. The good construction of the "Lady of Lyons" and the faulty
original construction of the "Merchant of Venice" must not blind us to
the fact that Shylock was the work of a lofty genius, Claude merely the
polished production of a man of talent and erudition. From the preface
to "The Caxtons," and other sources, we know that Bulwer was fond of
ascertaining rules and principles, and that he always did good work
when once he had found them out. Shakespeare as clearly worked from
pure instinct, and defied almost all rules, except to hold "the mirror
up to nature." Could we only join to-day the brains of old William and
the research and learning of old "Lytton," what a drama might we have
at last! But lest we further wander away from our theme, it is time to
propose the canon which the reader must by this time have anticipated
as self-evident:

XIII. Avoid anti-climax. When you have reached suspense bring down the
drop or close the scene. When the last climax has come bring down the
curtain.

Before passing to the more particular secrets of handling scenes in a
dramatic success, one other general point remains to be treated, which
is the respective merits of Greek and Gothic dramatic construction, as
developed, in modern times, into the French and English methods. The
distinction is broad and simple. The French write all their plays, or
almost all, in single-scene acts, and never employ front scenes in a
regular play; the English of the old school use front scenes, and
multiply the divisions of an act into as many as five in some
instances. Each method has its strong and weak points. The French
method is apt to become stiff and formal, the English to fritter away
the action of the drama into a mass of subordinate pictures. On the
other hand, the French method gives a degree of realism to each act in
a drama to which it cannot pretend where the scenes are shifted. Each
act becomes a living picture, revealed by the rising of the curtain and
closed by its fall. As long as it lasts it is perfect, and every year
of advance in the mechanical part of theatricals increases the
resources of the stage in the direction of realism. In interiors
particularly the advance has become very great, since the general
introduction of box scenes, with a regular ceiling and walls,
simulating the appearance of a room with complete fidelity. Such a
scene is barely practicable and always clumsy if set in sight of the
audience, and its removal is hardly possible, save as hidden by the
curtain. Open-air scenes may be enriched with all sorts of heavy
set-pieces, when acts are composed of one scene, which must be
dispensed with if the scenes are numerous, or their removal will entail
such a noise as seriously to disturb the illusion. The removal of
scenes, moreover, always disturbs, more or less, the action of a drama,
and unless that action be very complex, requiring several sets of
characters, to be introduced in different places simultaneously, is
unwise.

On the other hand, the breaking up of acts into three or more scenes
offers one great advantage, that of variety, and prevents many a play
from dragging. If there are two sets of characters in a play, the
virtuous and the wicked, it is a very good device to keep them apart,
acting simultaneously in different scenes, during the action of a play,
to be brought together only at the climax; and such a method has been
employed by the best artists, with a gain in interest that could not
have been obtained with the single-scene act for a basis.

The greatest masters of dramatic construction that have made their
appearance in the present century are probably Bulwer Lytton and Dion
Boucicault; and each has left good examples of treatment in both
schools. Bulwer, in the "Lady of Lyons" and "Richelieu," both romantic
plays, with the regular villanous element, has used the front scene to
advantage wherever he found it necessary. In "Money," on the other
hand, a scientific comedy of the very first order, the five pictures
succeed each other with no disturbance but that of the curtain. The
plot of "Money," be it observed, is quite simple, the characters few,
the intention that of the old Greek comedy--a satire on manners.

Boucicault, in his latest success--the "Shaughraun"--and in his other
Irish dramas, notably the "Colleen Bawn," uses three and even five
scenes in an act, with perfect freedom, while in others, almost as
successful in their day, such as "Jessie Brown," "Octoroon," the French
form seemed to him to be preferable. Some principle must have guided
him in this distinction, as it did Bulwer, and the same elements
probably decided both to tell one story in one way, the other in
another. It is observable that both treat a romantic and complicated
story, with numerous characters and considerable of the villanous
element, in numerous scenes, whereas a realistic picture of actual
manners, such as "Money," "Octoroon," "Jessie Brown," falls naturally
into few scenes. The climax of each of these last mentioned plays, be
it observed, is produced by the operation of general causes, the laws
of society in "Money" and "Octoroon," the operation of a historical
fact in "Jessie Brown," while in the romantic plays the climax depends
on the action of the characters, determined by accidental
circumstances, irrespective of general laws. The respective rank of
"Money" and the "Lady of Lyons" in the lapse of years can hardly, I
think, be doubted. The first will hold its own with the "School for
Scandal," when the "Lady of Lyons" is forgotten, along with "The
Duenna." The recent success of Augustin Daly in adapting the "School
for Scandal" to mono-scenic acts shows how readily that form lends
itself to the exigencies of legitimate comedy. The single fault of that
adaptation is that the first act drags, just as Sardou's first acts
always drag, but the audience forgets that as the story progresses. The
result of our ramble through the instances mentioned seems to be this
canon:

XIV. Mono-scenic acts are best for high comedy, realistic and society
dramas; multi-scenic acts succeed best with romantic and complicated
plots.

We have now explored, with more or less success, some of the general
and broad principles that underlie dramatic construction taken as a
whole, without regard to particular forms and instances. It would seem
that a brief excursion into the domain of particulars may not be out of
place, partly as a recreation, partly to test the accuracy of our past
conclusions. Let us take, for instance, the greatest popular successes
of late years, and try to find wherein lies their secret, following
these by an inquiry into the cause why some stock plays hold the boards
while others are dead. What is the secret of the "Black Crook"? Of
Boucicault's Irish dramas? Of Bulwer's renowned trio, "Lady of Lyons,"
"Richelieu," "Money"? Of "School for Scandal" and "Rivals"? Of "Richard
III.," "Macbeth," "Othello," "Lear," "Hamlet," and the Shakespeare
comedies? I put out of the question now such plays as the "Dundreary"
drama, depending as those do on a different element of success, apart
from the drama itself, to which we shall come before we finish.

First, what is the secret of the "Black Crook"? No other drama ever had
such a run in the United States, in spite of all sorts of abuse, in
spite of numerous literary faults, and it has always succeeded wherever
it has been properly put on the stage. What is its secret? The
stereotyped answer of the disappointed dramatist and carping newspaper
critic used to be "legs"; but that answer will not do now. There have
been plenty of "leg" dramas put on since that day, and as far as the
display of feminine anatomy is concerned, the "Black Crook" was a
paragon of prudery compared with many of its followers; yet they only
ran a few weeks, while the "Black Crook" ran nearly three years, all
over the Union, with hardly a serious break. It was not the dancing,
for we have had better since, as far as gymnastics are concerned; it
was not the dresses and scenery, for both have been excelled since that
day; it was not the beauty of the tableaux, for they also have been
excelled; it was something in the drama itself, quite different from
its predecessors and followers. The "Black Crook" was a strong,
exaggerated melodrama, with plenty of the weird element in the
incantation scene, relieved by the broadest of broad farce in the
person of the magician's comic slave. It was full of _variety_. There
was a little of everything, and nothing very long at one time. When it
first came out I remember very young gentlemen making learned
criticisms on the powerful acting of the man who played the "Black
Crook" himself. The same class also raved about the "terrible"
incantation scene, which was worked up till the passion was torn to
tatters. But I feel convinced that the incantation scene, the dances,
the novelty of ladies in tights, would have failed to make the "Black
Crook" a success but for the broad humor and farce of that comic slave
and the old housekeeper and steward. That humor was so simple, so like
the well remembered ringmaster and clown of our childhood, that we all
laughed at it, wise as well as foolish. I remember well during the
second run of the venerable Herzog and his slave, talking to a very
acute and learned gentleman--a man of the world too--who actually had
never seen the "Black Crook" till the previous evening, and he was
convulsed with laughter every time he recalled the figure of the man
who shouts, "I want to go home!" That figure remained with him out of
all the play, in his memory, as something irresistibly comic, just as
the weird and uncanny elements remained with the minds of smaller
calibre. For the children who saw it, I will venture to say that the
parts which pleased them most were the parts which made the success of
the play, the obtrusion of broad farce in one place, the beauty of the
grotto scene and really poetical dancing of Bonfanti in another.
Strange that of all the dancers, many more agile and supple, no one
should ever have replaced Bonfanti, or even come near her in the "Black
Crook." She gave the play what it lacked, poetical beauty and grace,
and thus completed the secret of its success, which was--_variety_. Its
rivals and followers tried to beat up the narrow channel that leads to
public favor, in one or two long tacks, and ended by running aground,
while the "Black Crook" kept hands at the braces all the time, and
"went about" as often as the water showed a symptom of shoaling.

The same secret of _variety_ accounts for the great success of
Boucicault's Irish dramas as compared with those of other dramatists,
and even with his own plays on other subjects. The regular
old-fashioned Irish drama had interest only to an Irishman. It dealt
with rebellions of half a century and more gone by, stamped out, and in
which few took interest outside of Ireland. A certain element, that of
traditional abuse of the traditional Briton, who was supposed to be
always wandering over the United States with his pockets full of
_Berrritish gold_, trying to corrupt patriotic Americans and regain
King George's colonies, gave a certain interest to the Irish drama in
America for the half century before the dedication of the Bunker Hill
monument, but that faded out as time obliterated early jealousies. Then
came Boucicault and did a wonderful thing, taking hackneyed and
ridiculous Fenianism and making out of it one of the greatest successes
of modern times, that bids fair to remain a stock play for years--the
"Shaughraun." In "Arrah-na-Pogue" he took the old thin story of the
Irish patriot of '98, and achieved an equal success, while in the
"Colleen Bawn" he made a tremendous hit with even poorer materials. The
secret of the success of all three plays is found in _variety_,
produced by contrasting the broad unctuous humor and sharp wit of the
Irish peasant, familiar to the English-speaking world, with the quiet
delicacy and refinement of the Irish upper classes, by using a few
strong melodramatic situations, but nothing very long, the pathos
always relieved by humor before it drags. The whole play--any of the
three--rattles off without a hitch. In the last and most perfect, the
"Shaughraun," a very happy hit is made with the _comic_ villain, a new
creation in the drama, though as old in the pantomime as Clown and
Pantaloon.

If variety be the leading element of success in the "Black Crook" and
the Irish dramas of Boucicault, wherein lies that of Bulwer's trio of
stock plays by which he will be remembered? The first of his successes
was the "Lady of Lyons," and we have already seen how skilful is the
mechanical construction of this play, leading the suspense from act to
act; but that will not account for the whole of the interest. A saying
of Boucicault as to this play gives us also a key to the whole three
Bulwer plays, for we find the same element pervading them all--the
central idea of two, and only slightly modified in the third. Boucicault
has remarked that the interest of the "Lady of Lyons" really depends on
the fact that the completion of Claude's marriage is delayed from the
second to the end of the fifth act; and a little reflection will show
this to be the case. The whole interest of the play before the close of
the second act turns on whether Claude will obtain his lady-love; the
interest thereafter on his resistance to the temptations that draw him
toward Pauline against honor. Look at "Richelieu," and the same element
intensified pervades it. Adrian de Mauprat marries Julie at the close
of the first act, only to be separated from her all the rest of the
play till the climax. Richelieu himself, as far as the main action of
the play is concerned, is secondary to Adrian, the end of all plays
being "to make two lovers happy." In "Money" nearly the same motive
runs through the play. In the first act Evelyn finds that Clara loves
him, and all real obstacle to their marriage is removed by his sudden
accession to fortune; yet all the rest of the play sees them kept apart
by the most flimsy obstacles, just to tantalize the audience, and make
them wonder if those two fools will ever come together. The means are
very simple, and yet quite powerful enough, as much so as the first
part of "Romeo and Juliet," where, by the by, almost all the interest
dies out after the balcony scene. The main secret of Bulwer then
reveals itself, like that of flirtation, to reside in the _art of
tantalization_.

We next come to Sheridan, the man who wrote the best comedy in the
English language, "School for Scandal." The secret of that play and the
"Rivals" has been thought by some to consist in the dialogue, but
dialogue alone never made a play run before a mixed audience. The worst
dialogue in the "Black Crook"--and God knows it was bad enough--could
not kill that play any more than the finest dialogue could make
Tennyson's "Queen Mary" into a real play, or galvanize it into a
semblance of interest before an audience. Sheridan has more than witty
dialogue. His situations are always capital, and his characters are
without exception real living beings, only very slightly caricatured.
To be sure they are rather too sharp and clever as a class, for we
seldom or never meet in society such a perfect galaxy of smart,
keen-witted people, Mrs. Malaprop not excepted; but the secret of
Sheridan lies below dialogue and character. It lies, I think, in the
natural sympathy felt by all mixed audiences in favor of youth and high
spirits, through all their pranks, as exemplified in Captain Absolute,
Charles Surface, Lydia Languish, and Lady Teazle, against
respectability, honest or the reverse, embodied in Sir Anthony
Absolute, Sir Peter Teazle, and Joseph Surface. It is the protest of
honest animal spirits against conventionality, ending in the
reconciliation of the rebels to society. Some people talk of the bad
moral of the "School for Scandal," never thinking that it is identical
in spirit with that of the parable of the Prodigal Son. A broad feeling
of charity and toleration for honest error, with a grimly sarcastic
treatment of all shams, pervade Sheridan's work just as they do those
of all the great satirists, whether novelists or dramatists. Goldsmith,
Fielding, Dickens, Thackeray, all run in the same track when they once
get started, and we must confess that they have pretty high authority
for their kindness toward the returning prodigal and their sneers at
his eminently respectable brother, Joseph Surface, Esq.

This secret of Sheridan in the "School for Scandal" is the main element
of only one modern drama that I now remember--"Rip Van Winkle"--but it
is quite common in the "old comedies," as they are called. These old
comedies generally make their appearance at least once in two years at
such theatres as Wallack's and Daly's of New York and the Arch Street
at Philadelphia. I forget the name of the Boston "legitimate" place.
When well acted they always "take," and there are so many stage
traditions of how to act them that they are seldom badly done. The
forgiveness of repentant prodigals, it will be remembered, forms the
basis of most of them, an element which has gradually disappeared from
the modern drama in deference to the increasing Philistine element,
represented by the Y.M.C.A. and the T.A.B.

Ascending from the modern English drama to its parents in the
Elizabethan era, we encounter the only dramatist of those times whose
works still hold the stage, and ask what is the secret of "Richard
III.," "Macbeth," "Othello," "Lear," "Hamlet," and the Shakespeare
comedies. The first general answer that most people will give is--the
genius of Shakespeare; his power of drawing character, his wonderful
language, his mastery of human passion. All these, it seems to me, are
true, but it is to the last element that the success of Shakespeare's
plays _on the stage_ is mainly due. No other dramatist, French,
English, or German, with the single exception of Goethe in "Faust," has
succeeded in making men and women, under the influence of tremendous
passion, talk and act so _truly_, so _realistically_. We notice this on
the stage when we see "Richard III." well acted. The man becomes a real
live man, a great scamp no doubt, but an able scamp, so able that he
actually excites our sympathy, when a really good actor plays him. The
main power of Shakespeare's tragedies to-day, and their superiority to
the tragedies of any other dramatist, lies in their _realism_. Where a
modern dramatist like Boucicault confines his realistic treatment to
matters with which most of us are familiar, Shakespeare flies at any
game, no matter how high, and impresses us with the presence of _real_
men and women, whether they be kings and queens or only common folk.
This seems to be Shakespeare's one secret which makes his plays hold
the stage to-day in spite of faulty construction, in spite of all the
modern advances in stage management. Modern dramas are realistic, but
they deal with common emotions, cramped by the restraints of an
artificial state of society, where all our feelings are more or less
artificial. Shakespeare takes human nature untrammelled, and paints it
as it is, unshackled by the commonplace laws of modern society. Compare
his pathos with modern pathos, and see the difference. The staple
element of modern pathos is the contrast between poverty and riches,
hunger and fulness, cold and warmth. The greatest pathos of
Shakespeare, in "Lear," comes out not in the storm scene, but in the
meeting of Lear and Cordelia amid luxury and comfort. The old king
hurls curses and contempt at the mere physical discomforts of the
tempest; they serve to divert his thoughts from the far greater torture
of his mind; but when his conscience makes him crave pardon of his own
child, then indeed the limit of human pathos is reached. There is
nothing artificial there. Lear might be any old man as well as a king,
and the situation would be just as terrible in its justice of
atonement. It is _truth_.

That _realism_ is the whole secret of Shakespeare's success as a
dramatist, is made more evident by the fact that he avows it himself in
"Hamlet," as the mainspring of dramatic success, in the celebrated
"advice to the players." This being the only passage on record in which
Shakespeare lays down his principles of art, has always been held as of
great value, and has probably done more to improve the English stage
than most people imagine. It has been always available as a canon to
which to refer unnatural ranters, and to prevent the robustious school
from tearing a passion to tatters. It sobered down Forrest in his old
age into a model Othello, and constitutes the secret that has placed
Lester Wallack and Joseph Jefferson at the head of their respective
lines of light comedy. I think, however, it has hardly been recognized
fully enough as the principle on which Shakespeare worked, for here at
least he does seem to have held to a rigidly defined and artificial
principle of action. This was to take a given passion and treat it with
the utmost realism from every point of view, making that the _motive_
of a play, being otherwise careless of construction.

This principle appears very clearly in "Lear," the most artificial in
construction of all Shakespeare's tragedies. His theme was _filial
ingratitude_, and hardly a scene in the whole drama turns aside from
that theme. It appears in the two plots about Lear and Gloucester, both
having exactly the same lines of actors, the last obviously a reflex of
the first. It is perhaps the only play of Shakespeare in which the
_moral_ obtrudes itself forcibly all through the action, as plainly as
in the stories of an old-fashioned primer, and I cannot help thinking
that if the whole story of Edgar and Edmund had been left out, the play
would have gained in unity and nature.

In "Richard III." ambition is the ruling passion, treated in the same
realistic fashion, conjoined with the extreme sensitiveness of personal
deformity to strictures on itself. In "Macbeth" ambition pure and
simple is treated from every point, first in man, then in woman;
afterward remorse is dissected with equal skill. The ruling passion in
"Hamlet" is somewhat more difficult to analyze than the rest, but I
think that the renowned soliloquy of "To be or not to be" discloses it
more clearly than any other part of the play. It is _fear_. Fear
appears in Hamlet all through the play, from the first ghost scene to
the death of Ophelia--an excessive caution, a hesitation, a timidity, a
want of resolution, mental more than physical, which lasts till he
returns from his travels and is stung into manliness over poor
Ophelia's grave. Then at last he does what he ought to have done at
first, but for his lack of good, honest pluck--gets savage and breaks
things, and so works poetical justice.

If the tragedies of Shakespeare reveal their principal secret to be the
realistic treatment of master passions, what shall we say to such
comedies as "Midsummer Night's Dream," "As You Like It," "Much Ado
About Nothing," and such? It is very difficult to define in what
consists their success, apart from the beauty of their love stories,
their dainty language, their charming feminine characters, and a cloud
of accessories, none of which can properly be called the main secret.
The first two, I think, owe their beauty principally to the dissection
of that passion of love which forms the motive of "Romeo and Juliet."
The author treats us to nothing but love scenes and scenes in mockery
of love, and yet we never tire of them. In "Much Ado About Nothing," to
be sure, there is an artificial plot of villany to hinder the
love-making, but after all it is Benedick and Beatrice, making fun of
love and getting caught in its toils, that make the charm of the piece,
and the same device, minute analysis of love, makes "Twelfth Night"
what it is. When we come to look below the surface we find, in the
comedies as in the tragedies of Shakespeare, that the realistic
treatment of some ruling passion forms the ultimate secret on which he
works.

To sum up in the aphoristic form the secrets affecting the motives of
the greatest dramatic successes of the English stage, we can, I think,
partially agree on one more canon:

  XV. Variety, suspense, satire, and realistic analysis of human passion
are the secrets, so far discovered, of lasting dramatic successes.

The subject of dramatic success, however, has one more very important
branch, still to be considered. As an artist cannot work without colors
and brushes, so a dramatist cannot work without actors. Good actors
cannot permanently lift a bad play out of the mud, but bad actors can
murder the best drama ever written, and even the best actor cannot make
a hit if his part does not fit him and his physical appearance. I
remember once a ludicrous instance of this, with Boucicault's "Flying
Scud," which I happened to see in Buffalo. Nat Gosling, the venerable
jockey, was there played by a man weighing at least a hundred and
eighty pounds, in the dress of an old farmer; and the absurdity was so
glaring that the whole play fell as dead as ditchwater, though by no
means badly played. The same play in New York was first fitted exactly
with Young for its Nat Gosling--a little, dried-up, weazen-faced man,
who identified himself so perfectly with the character that the piece
became quite a _furore_. It is a very common superstition among actors
that a good actor can act anything, and can "make up" to look like
anything, and no doubt this is partially, but only partially, true.
There are actors, with flat, commonplace faces, figures of medium size,
voices of no particular character, who, by dint of a little paint and
pomatum, some false hair, some padding, and considerable study, can
adapt themselves to play almost any character after a fashion; but it
is a significant fact that such men are not to be found among the
leaders of their profession, but only in the second rank. _Great_
actors take a line and stick to it, one that exactly suits their
individuality, and such find their mark. If they leave it, they
deteriorate, if they stick to it, they become identified with it, and
no one can rival them in their specialty. They become _real_ "stars."
Jefferson found in Rip Van Winkle his _fit_, and has been wise enough
never to leave it. Sothern did the same in Lord Dundreary. Lester
Wallack has his own recognized line, the _blase_ man of the world,
which he never leaves, save to his misfortune. Edwin Booth keeps his
face, figure, and voice the same in all his characters, and people
crowd to see him. Why? Because he has a delicately handsome face and
figure, a melodious voice, and a clear, intellectual conception of
every part. They go to see Booth, not Bertuccio, or Brutus, or Othello,
and it is noticeable that his Hamlet is one of his most successful
pieces, because in it he is less disguised than anywhere else. The
greatest success Barrett ever made was in Cassius, because the part
fitted him, and no one has ever come near him in that part, where his
face and figure appeared as nature made them. Any one who has ever seen
Charles Fisher act Triplet in "Masks and Faces" must have realized the
same sense of entire completeness and fitness which attended Barrett's
Cassius, Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle, Lester Wallack's Elliott Gray,
Sothern's Dundreary, Harry Placide's Monsieur Tourbillon, Booth's Iago
and Richard III., Mrs. Scott-Siddons's Viola, Fanny Davenport's
Georgette in "Fernande," Mary Gannon's "Little Treasure," Maggie
Mitchell's "Fanchon" and "Little Barefoot."

In all these undoubted successes, old and new, with the sole exception
of Sothern's Dundreary, the actors and actresses appeared and appear
undisguised, talk in a natural voice, and fit their characters like
a glove, face, figure, and all. This essential of fitness between
character and physique is sometimes ignored by managers, with
disastrous effects, while its observance has made a success of many
a play, bolstered up by the influence of a single character. T. P.
Cooke's Long Tom Coffin in the "Pilot" was such an instance of
phenomenal success attained by the physique of one actor, carrying a
rubbishy play through. Charlotte Cushman's Meg Merrilies was another
such instance, the mere power of face, figure, and voice making a
triumph, spite of poor play, and even spite of unmitigated and
unnatural rant on the part of the actress. I have mentioned one
instance in my own observation of the consequences of putting actors
into ill fitting parts, in "Flying Scud." If the reader can imagine
Lester Wallack in Rip Van Winkle, Jefferson in Elliott Gray or Hugh
Chalcote, Barrett in Dundreary, Sothern in Cassius, Booth as Monsieur
Tourbillon or Solon Shingle, Owens as Iago, he will have the salient
points of our argument in strong light. The best example of a well
fitted play I ever saw was Lester Wallack's "Veteran," as first acted,
with James W. Wallack for Colonel Delmar, Mrs. Hoey for Amina, Mary
Gannon for the other young woman, Mrs. Vernon for Mrs. MacShake. Every
part, down to the very slaves, was perfectly fitted, and nothing has
since come near it in completeness except Boucicault's plays, written
at different times for the same theatre, "Jessie Brown" and the
"Shaughraun." The full consideration of all these facts, and especially
a retrospect of the relative rank of versatile actors and of
specialists, has led to the following further aphorism:

XVI. If the actors fit the play, expect success; if they do not,
disaster.

The consideration of actors as affecting the success of a play brings
us to the last branch of the whole subject affected by the dramatic
canons, which is _the qualifications required by the dramatist_ to
secure success. When we have considered them we shall have finished our
task--the completion of an essay to arouse thought in others. When we
consider the literary construction of such plays as "Black Crook,"
"Buffalo Bill," as well as the hosts of nameless dramas that are
constantly making their appearance at minor and first-class theatres,
their flat dialogue and general insipidity when merely read, not acted,
we begin to realize that genius or even talent in the author are not
the first requisite. He may lack both and still succeed. He must,
however, have one thing, or he might as well keep out of the box office
altogether, for his plays will be there pigeon-holed for good if he
possesses it not. This something is _stage experience_. He may be an
actor, no matter how bad, a scene painter, a carpenter, a musician, but
he must have been about a theatre in some capacity, no matter how
humble, to see how things work. One week behind the curtain is worth a
year in front. The mere acquaintance with the ways of managers and
actors is worth a good deal of time, but the familiarity with the
working of a piece is the main thing. The most successful American
comedy that has yet appeared was written by a walking lady who never
would have made an actress if she had staid on the stage forty years,
but who utilized her experience to some purpose on quitting the stage.
The most successful money-making sensational piece of late years was
written by a scene painter, and the poorest actors frequently write
very good pieces, while good actors who possess talent for scribbling,
almost always do well as playwrights. Only one fault do they all
exhibit, without any exception, so far as my experience has run: they
are all utterly oblivious of the meaning of the eighth commandment, and
seem to regard plagiarism not as theft, but as a favor to the author
whose literary property they steal. This is the worst that can be said
about actor-authors, and to the rule there are no exceptions that ever
I heard of. Actor-authors are unmitigated pirates of the most utterly
unscrupulous sort, who crib whole chapters out of novels, word for
word, without shame or acknowledgment, and write successful plays by
filching other men's ideas, making a patchwork. Perhaps the most
shameless of the whole raft of these actor-authors is Lester Wallack,
whose two plays, the "Veteran" and "Rose-dale," are marvels of
patchwork of this sort. In the first all the Arab characters and
several scenes, language and all, are taken straight out of Captain
James Grant's nearly forgotten novel of the, "Queen's Own," and in the
second most of the plot and the most successful comic scene of the play
come bodily from Colonel Hamley's "Lady Lee's Widowhood," another
military novel. The provoking part of all this thieving in Wallack is,
that other parts of his plays show that the man has talent enough to
write, if he were not too lazy to work; but this preference of theft to
labor is so common among actor-authors that nothing will ever check it
but an extension of the copyright law in the interests of justice; for
moral sense in the direction of the eighth commandment seems to be
utterly unknown among them. The truth of the old adage about "hawks
pikeing out hawks 'een" is, however, curiously exemplified in the
scruples which the same men display as managers toward appropriating a
play, no matter how much of a piracy in itself, without payment to the
playwright, unless he be a Frenchman, when the case at once becomes
altered. Novelists and foreign dramatists having no legal rights,
actor-authors appear to think they have also no moral rights entitled
to respect. This is the one stain on the character of actor-authors
from which not one of them is free, or ever has been free, no matter
what his time and nation. From Shakespeare to Brougham, from Moliere to
Boucicault, the lustre of all their talents has been dimmed by this one
dirty vice of filching the product of other men's brains; and the only
dramatists free from the reproach have been those who have come to the
boards from outside, like Bulwer and Sheridan. I do not here mean to
include avowed translations like "Pizarro" and the "Stranger," nor
avowed dramatizations of novels like Boucicault's "Heart of Mid
Lothian." Such things are not thefts, any more than the use of history
for the basis of a novel; they are open to all. But the unavowed
stealing of unknown French plays, the surreptitious filching of
chapters from forgotten novels, no more becomes right after quoting
Shakespeare and Moliere as exemplars, than cowardice and treason become
noble because St. Peter sneaked out of Caiaphas's petty sessions once
on a time.

Spite of this degrading meanness, however, there is no doubt that
actor-authors have so far written the greatest number of good plays
that hold the stage, in consequence of just one thing, their
_experience_, which reveals itself as the first quality necessary
in the dramatist. After experience of the stage, the next qualification
that meets us in such dramatists as Shakespeare, Dumas, Lope de Vega,
and Boucicault, is their marvellous fecundity of invention, implying an
amount of information on various subjects simply amazing. Nothing comes
amiss to them, and they seem to have a smattering of every science, to
have skimmed the private history of the whole world. Variety of
information comes next after stage experience. A man may be a great
fool on most subjects, and yet write a fair acting play from stage
experience alone, if he filches enough, but if he have plenty of
general information, he will be able to double the value of his play,
while some plays have been made quite successful by the use of nothing
but stage experience and some special line of information, by men who
could not have written an original story to save their necks.

Last of the qualifications for dramatic success come _ideas_, and the
possession of ideas implies also genius or at least talent, without
which, after all, the really successful dramatist cannot work and leave
enduring work behind him. All the ephemeral successes of the stage lack
this one element, the one thing that cannot be taught, but must be born
in a man. With genius, with real talent, everything is at last possible
to a writer ambitious of stage success. Like Bulwer, he may make
failure after failure, before he gets the _entree_ to theatrical life,
but once there he will get past the portal and command success at last.
Experience and information will be acquired with more or less labor,
but he will get them at last, and then will be content to add his voice
to the last canon of theatrical conditions to success:

XVII. Stage experience, varied information, and talent, are the _sine
qua non_ of the dramatist who hopes for success.

FREDERICK WHITTAKER.




SAINT LAMBERT'S COAL.


    Wild hordes had sacked the minster: scattered
      Upon the broken pavement, lay
    The crash of blazon'd windows, shattered
      By barbarous knights in wanton fray,
      Who wrought the wreck and went their way.

    Across pale, pictur'd faces, gashes
      Showed where their godless blades had thrust
    Profane defiance; and with ashes
      Strewn was the altar, and encrust
      Was chalice, pyx, and urn with rust.

    No lamp shed forth its sacred glimmer,
      No incense breathed its hallowed fume;
    And as the rudded eve grew dimmer,
      Shadows as ghostly as the tomb
      Wrapped choir and nave and aisle in gloom.

    Anon athwart the murk came stealing
      Far floatings of a chanted hymn,
    Up-borne in gusto from floor to ceiling,
      As faintly a procession dim
      Out of the darkness seemed to swim.

    Onward it wended--nor did falter,
      Till from their midmost, one cried--"Who
    Bethought him of the quenched altar?
      Alas! how guide the service through?
      Would God might light the lamp anew!"

    "_Amen!_" came through the silence drifting:
      And from the train, therewith, out stole
    A little acolyte, who, lifting
      His surplice hem, displayed a coal
      That glowed, yet left the garment whole.

    "_Christus illuminator!_" kneeling,
      The astonied Bishop cried. "From whom
    Can light else come? Thyself revealing.
      Flash forth that faith to chase our gloom,
    Which burns and yet doth not consume!

    "Such faith is thine, O Lambert! Kindle
      Thereat the altar-lamp, and let
    Its lustre, henceforth, never dwindle!"
      He took the coal, the light reset,
      And there, they tell, 'tis burning yet.

MARGARET J. PRESTON.




ENGLISH TRAITS.


One of the earliest records of modern history in regard to the race
which peopled the old England and the New refers to its beauty. Most of
us have heard the story: how three young captives, brought from an
almost unknown island on the verge of civilization, and indeed at the
western limit of the then known world, were exposed for sale in Rome,
and how Gregory the Great, not yet Pope, seeing them, was struck by
their beauty and asked what they were, and being told, _Angli_
(English), replied "_Non Angli, sed angeli_" (not Angles, but angels);
which was a tolerable pun for a future Pope and saint. This was twelve
hundred years ago; and since that time the English race has enjoyed the
reputation (subject to some carping criticism, due to the self-love of
other peoples) of being the handsomest in the world. It is well
deserved; indeed, if it were not, it would long ago have been jealously
extinguished. Not improbably, however, the impression made upon Gregory
was greatly due to the fair complexion, blue eyes, and golden brown
hair of the English captives, which, indeed, are mentioned in the
story. For southern Europe is peopled with dark-skinned, dark-haired
races; and the superior beauty of the blonde type was recognized by the
painters, who always, from the earliest days, represented angels as of
that type. The Devil was painted black so much as a matter of course
that his pictured appearance gave rise to a well-known proverb;
ordinary mortals were represented as more or less dark; celestial
people were white and golden-haired; whence the epithet "divinely
fair." When therefore the good Gregory saw the fair, blue-eyed English
youths, his comparison was at once suggested, and his pun was almost
made to his hand. And I am inclined to believe that it is of much later
origin, although he ought to have made it; just as Sidney Smith ought
to have said to Landseer, when he asked the Reverend wit to sit for his
portrait, "Is thy servant a dog that he should do the thing?" and as
the innkeeper ought to have said to Mr. Seward that he was not Governor
of New York, but "Thurlow Weed, by thunder?" but did not. In each of
these cases, however, and in all such, a significant fact is at the
bottom of the story, which otherwise would have no reason for its
being.

It is hardly true, however, that other races do not produce individuals
approaching as nearly to an ideal standard of beauty as any that are
seen among the English. These are found, as we all know, among the
various Latin races, the Celts and the Sclaves, and even, as Mr. Julian
Hawthorne himself would hardly venture to deny, among the Teutons, the
very Saxons themselves. Who has not seen French women and French men,
Italians, Spaniards, Russians, Poles, Irish, and even Germans of both
sexes, distinguished by striking and captivating personal beauty both
of face and figure? But the average beauty of the English race appears
to be in a marked degree above that of all others. Among a thousand men
and women of that race there will not only be found more "beauties"
than among the same number of other races, but the majority will be
handsomer, "finer," more symmetrically formed, better featured, with
clearer skins, and a more dignified bearing and presence than the
majority of any other European race with which they may be compared.

A notion was for some time in vogue that this English distinction did
not obtain in America, but that the race had degenerated here. It was a
mere notion, having its origin in a prejudiced perversion of isolated
facts; in the desire of book-writing travellers to find something
strange, and also derogatory, with which to spice their pages; and in a
craving, which amounts to a mild insanity, among European people, and
particularly among all classes of the British nation, to lay hold of
some distinctive "American" quality, whether physiological, literary,
political, or other, and label it, and file it away, and pigeon-hole it
for reference by way of differencing "Americans" from themselves.

The notion, I venture to say, was essentially absurd. That a race of
men should materially change its physical traits in the course of two
centuries, under whatever conditions of climate or other external
influence, is inconsistent with all that we know upon that subject. The
very pyramids protest against it by their pictured records. According
to the history of mankind, as it is thus far known to us, such a change
could not take place within such a period, unless to external
influences of great modifying power there were added such an
intermingling of races as has not yet taken place here more than in
England itself, although plainly it is to come in future generations.
Up to thirty years ago the intermarriage of Yankees--by which name, for
lack of another, I designate people of English blood born in this
country--with Irish and Germans was so rare as practically, in regard
to this question, not to exist; and at that period there was not in
England itself a more purely English people than that of New England.

This notion of English degeneracy in "America" has, however, been
rapidly dying out in Europe, and even in England during the last ten or
fifteen years. The change has been brought about partly by the events
of our civil war; for the blindest prejudice saw that that war was not
fought by a physically degenerate people; and partly by the increase of
knowledge obtained, not from carping travellers writing books to please
a carping public, but from personal observation. This I know, not by
inference, but from Englishmen and others who have been here, and who
have not written books. The belief, formerly prevalent, that "American"
women had in their youth pretty doll faces, but at no period of life
womanly beauty of figure, is passing away before a knowledge of the
truth, and I have heard it scouted here by Englishmen, who, pointing to
the charming evidence to the contrary before their eyes, have expressed
surprise that the travelling book-writers, who had given them their
previous notions on the subject, could have so misrepresented the
truth. A colonel in the British army, who had been all over the world,
and with whom I was in New England during the war, at a time when a
large number of our volunteers were home on furlough, expressed
constantly his surprise at the "fine men" he saw going about in
uniform, the equals of whom he said that he had never seen as a whole
in any army; although he did not hesitate to express his dislike of
their uniform, or his disgust at the slouchy, slovenly way in which
they carried themselves. I was ready to believe what he said; for I had
then just seen the Coldstreams in Montreal; and I had before seen the
Spanish regular troops in Cuba, who, even the regiment of the Queen,
were so small that they looked to me like toy soldiers to be kept in a
box; and a very bad box they soon got into. During my recent visit to
England, after I had been in London a week or two, having previously
visited other places, a London friend who had twice visited "the
States," said to me, "Well, I suppose you've been looking at the people
here and comparing them with those you've left at home?" "Yes, of
course." "Do you find much difference in them really?" "No; very
little; almost none." "You're right--quite right. There may be a little
more fulness of figure and a little more ruddiness; but it's been
greatly exaggerated--greatly." One reason for this exaggeration I
learned from the remarks of two English friends to me in this country.
Some years ago I took one, a gentleman who had travelled a good deal,
and who held an important position in the Queen's household--and a very
outspoken man he was--to a "private view," at which for a wonder there
was not a miscellaneous throng, but just enough people to fill the
rooms pleasantly. As we sat together after a tour, looking at the
company, I asked him to tell me the difference between the people he
saw there and those he would see on a like occasion at the Royal
Academy. He sat looking around him in silence for so long a time that I
thought he was going to pass my question unnoticed, when he said, "I
can see no difference; none at all; except that there would not be
quite so many pretty women there, and that there would be more stout
old people." The other, a lady, who also did not hesitate in her
criticisms, remarked that the chief difference in appearance between
people of the same condition here and in England was that here she
"didn't see any fat old men." _She_ said nothing about fat old women;
not, however, that she herself was either fat or old.

There is this difference among old people; although even this has been
exaggerated; and it is this which gives a certain color of truth to the
notion I have referred to. English men and women do not always grow
stout and red-faced as they grow old; but after they have passed middle
age more of them do tend to rubicundity and to protuberant rotundity of
figure than people of the same age do in "America." The cause, I am
quite sure, is simply--beer. Both the color and the rotundity come to a
large proportion of the Americans who live in England and drink English
beer, in English allowance; which, it need hardly be said, could not be
the case if there had been any essential change in the type of the
race. But among men under forty and women under thirty, the difference
either in complexion or figure is almost inappreciable.

As to the women, there are at least as many in England who are spare
and angular of figure as here, and of those who have not passed thirty
I think rather more. The London "Spectator" said some years ago, in
discussing the Banting diet, I believe, that "scragginess was more
common in England among women than stoutness"; and it is remarkable
that the French caricatures of Englishwomen always represent them as
thin, bony, and sharp-featured. In this of course there is a little
malice; but it shows the impression left upon the French people by
their near neighbors. I cannot do better here than to offer my readers,
in the following passage, a share in one of my letters written home; it
has at least the advantage of recording on the spot impressions
received by me after careful examination under the most favorable
circumstances. I was writing about the beauty of the parks:

"It is amazing to see the great space of this little island that these
English folk have reserved for air, and health, and beauty; and it is
for all, the poorest and meanest as well as the richest and noblest;
there are no privileged classes in this. As to the effect upon their
health, I suppose it must be something, but it shows for very little.
G---- [a gentleman who is very strong upon the subject of degeneracy,
which I have always doubted] will laugh and say that it was a foregone
conclusion with me, but to set aside my inference he will be obliged to
take the position that there is nothing so misleading as facts, except
figures. I have now seen many hundreds of thousands of Englishmen and
Englishwomen of all classes. I have placed myself in positions to
examine them closely. At the great Birmingham musical festival my seat
gave me full view of the house, chorus and all. The vast hall was
filled with people of the middle and upper middle classes, and at one
end with members of the highest aristocracy, who occupied seats roped
off from the rest, and called 'the President's seats'--the President
being the Marquis of Hertford. At the end of the performance, both
evening and morning, I hastened to a place where a great part of the
audience would pass close before me. At Westminster Abbey I stood again
and again at the principal door and watched the congregation as they
came out; I have done the same in swarming railway stations; I have
walked through country villages and cathedral towns; I know the human
physiognomy of all quarters of London pretty well; I have seen the
Guards and the heavy dragoons, and I say without any hesitation that
thus far I find that the men and the women are generally smaller and
less robust than ours, and above all that the women are on the whole
sparer and less blooming than ours. The men are ruddier on the whole;
that is, there are more ruddy men here; but the number of men without
color in their cheeks seems to be nearly the same as with us. The
apparent inconsistency of what I have said is due to the fact that the
ruddy men and women here are generally so very red that they produce a
great impression of redness, an impression that lasts and remains
salient in the memory. A delicately graduated and healthy bloom is not
very common. And so the fat women are so very fat that they seem to
take up a great part of the island. But the little London 'gent,' with
whom Leech has made us so familiar, you meet everywhere in the great
city. Sunday before last, loitering in the cloisters of Westminster, I
stopped to look at a tablet in the wall. There were three of these men
before me, and the number soon increased to seven. I looked over _the
hats_--round felt hats--of the whole seven without raising my chin.
I remember that like Rosalind I am 'more than common tall,' but I never
did anything like that at home. At the Horse Guards they put their
finest men as sentinels, mounted, on each side of the gate. Well, they
are fine fellows, and would be very uncomfortable chaps to meet, except
in a friendly way; a detachment of them riding up St. James's street
the other morning, with their cuirasses like mirrors, and the coats of
their big black horses almost as bright, was a spectacle which it
seemed to me could not be surpassed for its union of military splendor
and the promise of bitter business in a fight; but Maine, or Vermont,
or Connecticut, or Kentucky can turn out whole regiments of bigger and
stronger men. Colonel M----, whom I met in Canada, said the same to me
when he thought he was talking to an Englishman. I wonder that he ever
forgave me the things he said to me during his brief self-deception;
for they were true. But he was a good fellow and bore no malice.
Nevertheless, you sometimes meet here a very fine man, or a big,
blooming beauty, and in either case the impression is stronger and more
memorable than in a like case it is apt to be with us; chiefly, I
think, because of their dress and 'set up,' which in such cases--as in
that of the Guards and Dragoons--is apt to be very pronounced."

I will add here, in passing, that this English "set up," particularly
in the case of almost all Englishmen of any pretensions, is
distinctive, and is in a great measure the cause of the impression of
superior good looks and strength on their side. It appears in a marked
degree in all military persons, rank and file as well as officers, and
in the police force, the men of which are on the whole inferior in
stature and bulk to ours--leaving the big Broadway squad, most of them
Yankees, out of the question--and yet it is far superior in appearance
to ours, owing to the "set up" of the men, and the way in which they
carry themselves. I observed that although the upper classes contained
a fair proportion, although no notable excess, of large and well-formed
men and women, the burly men and the big-bodied, heavy-limbed women
were generally of the lower and the lower middle class. This made me
wonder where all the pretty housemaids and shop girls came from; for
the prettiest faces, the most delicately blooming complexions, and the
finest figures that I saw in England were among them. In a letter
written from the Rose Inn at Canterbury, a cosy comfortable old
hostlery, I find the following passage, which is to the purpose:

"I ate my bacon and eggs this morning in the coffee room, where at
another table were three queer Englishwomen, yet nice looking--apparently
a mother and two daughters. The elder daughter was, I will not say a
lathy girl, but very slim not only in the waist, but above and below
it. The mother and the younger were plump and rosy, absurdly alike, and
with that cocked-up nose which is one of the very few distinctive
peculiarities of figure that you see here, but even this very rarely;
and their black hair was curled in tight curls all over their heads. I
was struck by this, because curling hair is comparatively rare here,
and I had expected to find it common. It was cut just like a man's, and
plainly so because it would have been impossible to dress it if it were
allowed to grow long in woman fashion. They were very jolly and
pleasant, chaffing each other in low, soft voices, and breaking out in
rich, sweet laughter. They looked just like boys masquerading in
women's clothes; for the eldest was quite young looking and may have
been an elder sister. The youngest, who was some seventeen or eighteen
years old, looked very fair and blooming across the room, but when I
came close to her, which I had an opportunity of doing, I found that
her color, both white and red, was coarse, which is very often the case
here when there is color. In the mother, or eldest sister, this
coarseness was apparent even at a distance. But see, Lady ---- and her
daughters, although pretty and elegant, had no tinge of color in their
cheeks, and they were all as thin as rails, and the girls' hair, as
well as their mother's, was as straight as fiddle strings. I came here
expecting to see golden curls in plentiful crops, or at least not
uncommonly. But it seems to me that I haven't seen a dozen curly-haired
children since I have been in the country; and I have seen them--the
children--by tens of thousands, and examined them closely, making
memorandums of my observation. Nor have the ladies of this family (I am
now at ----), Lady ---- and Mrs. ----, any more bloom than this paper,
and they are both as thin as Lady ---- and her daughters; Mrs. ----
painfully so. The men, belonging of course to another family, are
stout, well-built fellows enough, but the two other guests are as lean
as greyhounds. I went to a little dinner party the other evening, and
the carriage sent to the station for me (for they think nothing here of
asking you fifteen or twenty miles to dinner even when you are not
expected to stay over night) took also a Major General Sir ---- ----. I
was told that he would join me, and I expected to see a portly, ruddy
man of inches, with sweeping whiskers and moustache. I found a short,
slender, meek-looking, pale-faced man; but his bearing was very
military; he was a charming companion and the pink of courtesy. We
entered the drawing-room together of course; but notwithstanding his
rank, he waved me in before him, and my plain Mistership was announced
before his titles. I have seen no men here at all equal in face or
figure to General Hooker, General Hancock, General Augur, or General
Terry, to say nothing of General Scott, who was something out of the
common even with us. And Burnside, and McDowell, and Grant, and
McClellan are all stouter men than you are apt to find here. The
biggest men that I have seen were from the north, Yorkshire and
Northumberland. Those of the south, particularly in Kent, are the
shortest; although, as a Kent man said to me, they are generally
'stocky.'"[3]

      [3] Mr. Jennings, late editor of the New York "Times," now London
      correspondent of the "World," in a recent letter describing the
      opening of Parliament by the Queen in person, on which occasion
      the House of Lords was filled with peers and peeresses, writes
      thus with regard to the beauty of the women and the presence and
      figures of the men:

          "On this occasion the ladies overflowed the House. Early as
          it still was, the floor was covered with them--large blocks
          of the benches were occupied, and the galleries were crowded.
          All these ladies were in evening toilets, the peeresses
          wearing coronets of diamonds--most of them being fairly
          ablaze with diamonds on head and neck. If the daylight was
          not very favorable to the shoulders or complexions of some of
          these noble dames, the gorgeousness of their costumes and the
          glitter of their precious stones served to divert attention
          from the defects of nature or the ravages of time.... Not
          many of these ladies in the House were very pretty, although
          here and there was a face such as makes one stop short and
          hold one's breath, and wonder at the divine perfection of
          nature's handiwork when she is at her best.... As for the old
          bald-headed gentlemen, some of them very short and stumpy,
          they looked painfully like a collection of 'senators' in some
          opera bouffe. One of them in particular, with four ermine
          bars on his cloak, denoting his high rank, was exactly like
          the funny-looking dummy Englishman which the French delight
          to exhibit in their farces. He had very little hair left to
          boast of, and that little was very red, and his face was
          round and red also, and he was altogether so comic a little
          man that one could not look at him without a smile. I could
          not find out who he was till the royal procession entered,
          when he suddenly reappeared in great pomp and state, standing
          on the throne by the side of her Majesty's chair and carrying
          the 'Cap of Maintenance.' Then I knew that he was the Marquis
          of Winchester--fourteenth of that ilk--John Paulet by name,
          and the Premier Marquis of England. So much for appearances."

      Mr. Jennings, it should be remembered, is an Englishman; but he
      lived eight or ten years in New York; and I may be pardoned for
      saying that he carried away a constant reminder of "American"
      beauty, and a standard of comparison which would be likely to
      make him fastidious.

A New England man now living in England, who made his house very
delightful to me, first by the presence of himself and his family, and
next by the kindest and most considerate hospitality, is an ever
present rebuke of the stoutest sort to the British notion of the
physical degeneracy of the English race in "America." He, a Yankee of
the old Puritan emigration, is five feet ten and a half inches high, is
forty-eight inches, four good feet, in girth around the chest, weighs
two hundred pounds, and yet has not the least appearance of portliness,
rather the contrary. He is the only man I ever met whose friendly grip
was rather more than I liked to bear. I spoke to his wife about his
strength and his figure, and she told me that when he went to get his
life insured here the surgeons said that they very rarely saw such a
powerful, finely formed, and perfectly healthy man as he is, and never
any finer or healthier. That would be impossible. And as he is so was
his father. Were they exceptions? Only of a sort that constantly occur
among real Yankees--"Americans" whose families have been in the country
for generations, and who are the only proper examples of the influence
of the climate and the social conditions of the country.

I have, perhaps, said too much upon this subject of the comparative
physical condition of the race in the two countries; but I have been
led to do so because of the very great inconsistency I found between
the facts and the common notion as to stout Englishmen and lean
"Americans," blooming, buxom Englishwomen and pale, slender "American"
women--a notion which one writer has repeated, parrot-like, after the
other, until even we ourselves have accepted it without question. Like
many other notions which no one disputes, it is false. But the world
has gone on accepting it and assuming it to be true until it has so
taken possession of the general mind that if in a room full of English
people only one man were found ruddy and burly, and only one woman
blooming and well rounded (and this or something very like it I have
seen more than once), they would be picked out and spoken of as
English-looking, to the disregard of all the others. The exceptions
would be taken as examples of the rule; and this even by the English
themselves, so swayed are we by tradition and authority, even in such
an everyday matter. Nay, even I myself, skeptical and carping, was thus
misled. The steamer, going out, was filled chiefly with English people.
Two of my fellow passengers I selected in my mind as notably and
typically English, not only in person, but in bearing. They proved to
be, one a Massachusetts Yankee and the other a Western man; but both
had from association contracted English habits of dress and of manner.
Two Englishwomen, however, attracted my particular attention. One was,
I think, the very largest human female I ever saw outside of a caravan.
She was a fearful manifestation of the enormous development of solid
flesh which the British fair sometimes attain. As she stood by her
husband she was the taller from the ear upward. She weighed about
twenty stone. I think that a plumb line dropped from the front of her
corsage would have reached the deck without touching her skirts. Her
tread was hippopotamic. And yet she showed traces of beauty, and not
improbably had been a fine fair girl; and even at the present time she
managed to effect a very palpable waist. I mused wonderingly upon the
process by which she did this; but still more upon that sad gradual
enormification by which she passed from a tall blooming beauty into her
present tremendous proportions. The other was exactly the reverse. She
could hardly be called ill looking in the face, but her pale, blank,
unfeatured countenance reminded one instantly of a sheep. She was a
washed-out, and although young, a faded creature, with no more
shoulders or hips than my forefinger. And yet she was a perfect English
type, and so like some of John Leech's women that I could not look at
her without internal laughter. Her husband--for even such women by some
mysterious process known to themselves will get husbands--was like unto
her in face, in feature, and in expression; and yet he was so
strikingly, so aggressively British in look and in manner that I heard
some Yankees on board say that they would like to kick him. And I
somewhat shared their prejudice; of which before we landed I learned to
be ashamed; for I found him a very intelligent, well-informed, pleasant
man, reserved in his manners, and although firm in his opinions, which
were strongly British, very respectful of other men's, and very careful
of giving offence. His union of firmness and courtesy seemed to me
worthy of admiration; and if he did wish to kick any of the Yankees on
board, for which in one or two cases I could have forgiven him, I am
sure that he never let the desire manifest itself in their presence.

Another prevalent notion, which is reciprocal between the people of the
two countries, is mistaken according to my observation. It is generally
believed, or at least very often said in "America," that the men in
England are very much handsomer than the women; and conversely it is
commonly believed in England, or said, that the women in "America" are
handsomer than the men. An absurd and truly preposterous notion, as
will be seen upon a moment's reflection. For the women in both
countries are the mothers of both the men and the women; and the men
are the fathers of both the men and the women; and as some of the women
are of their fathers' types and some of the men of their mothers', the
imputed difference of the two in personal beauty could not be brought
about. It is physiologically impossible that the women of a race should
be handsomer than the men, and _vice versa_.

It is nevertheless true that the men in England are on the whole more
attractive to the eye than the women, and that the women in "America"
are generally much more attractive than the men. The cause of this is a
fact very distinctive of the social surface of the two countries. I
have spoken of the "set up" and the bearing of the men in England. It
is very remarkable, and is far superior to anything of the kind that is
found even among the most cultivated people in this country, except in
comparatively rare individual cases. But in England it is common; it is
the rule. There, from the middle classes up, a slovenly man is a rare
exception. There men are almost universally neat and tidy, and they
carry themselves with a conscious self-respect. They do not slouch.
They do not go about, even in the morning, with coats unbuttoned,
skirts flying, and their hands in their overcoat pockets. They dress
soberly, quietly, with manly simplicity, but almost always in good
taste, and with notable neatness. They are manly looking men, with an
air of conscious manhood. Moreover, in England the man is still
recognized as the superior. England has been called the purgatory of
horses and the paradise of women. But that saying came from the
continent of Europe, where women, except in the very highest and most
cultivated classes, are not treated with that tenderness and
consideration for their weakness and their womanly functions which I am
inclined to think is somewhat peculiar to the English race. I should
call England the paradise of men; for there the world is made for them;
and women are happy in making it so. An Englishman who is the head of a
family is not only master of his house, but of the whole household. His
will is recognized as the law of that household. No one thinks of
disputing it. It is not deemed unreasonable that in the house which he
provides and keeps up his comfort and his convenience should be first
considered, or that, as he is responsible for his household both to the
law and to society, authority should go with responsibility. And
yet--perhaps for this very reason--wives there have the household
affairs more absolutely in their hands than they have here. A man whose
absolute authority is acknowledged, practically as well as
theoretically, is very ready to make concessions and to rid himself of
what at any time he may assume. Real monarchs, like the Czars or like
the Tudors, are careless of the protection of royal etiquette. The
consciousness of this acknowledged or rather unquestioned superiority
shows itself in the men's faces, and in their bearing, simple and
unpretending as their manner is. Besides all this, men in England (I am
leaving out of consideration the lower classes) show the effect of
cultivation, of breeding, of discipline. Even in the middle classes
they are well informed, and, what is of more importance to the present
question, they have been taught to behave themselves respectfully to
others. They do so behave; they feel that they ought to do so and that
they must. There are two gods worshipped in England, and one is
propriety; and a very good god he is, when he is not made a Juggernaut.
The result of all this is a very different man in appearance from him
who generally pervades "America." The latter may be, and generally is,
as handsome physically as the former; he may be, and generally is, as
good morally; but the one generally shows for all that he is and
perhaps for more, and the other does not, and frequently does for less.
And yet again; among such men in England another sort who, for example,
say "hadn't oughter," and "have came," and who spit upon the floor, are
not generally found mingling. They are kept in social pens by
themselves. And thus in judging of English society they are left out.

A comparative estimate of Englishwomen is too serious and far too
complicated a subject to be treated except in an article by itself.

RICHARD GRANT WHITE.




A DEAD VASHTI.

Do we indeed desire the dead should still be near us, at our side?


"I do not know how it is with others," said the spirit, looking away
from the Sunday child to the red and spectral moon that was arising
from the tossing ocean into a mass of heavy, broken clouds; "for since
my death I have been alone; but when I left my human form I left few of
the affections, the passions of life, and thus death has made but
little change in me. I cannot believe, however, that all the dead carry
as much of their old life into the new as I have, for few can be cursed
as I have been with a granted prayer. What my life in the world of
spirits might have been I cannot tell you; but I know that all I have
suffered comes from my folly, my wickedness in praying for my own will!
But my life upon earth had been so complete, so happy, it seemed as if
I might be justified in thinking that it ought to give me the same
bliss if it was made eternal. My love for Philip was so pure and true
that it seemed as fit that it should govern me in one life as in the
other! Other women, I suppose, have loved their husbands as well; but
few would have had the temerity to stake their eternal happiness on
human fidelity as I did! But my love was a part of my being, and I
thought no more of its extent or duration than of the density of the
air I breathed. It was never put to the test of neglect or
misunderstanding, and was never subject to question. Looking back now,
it seems impossible that I ever lived without Philip; for all my days
before I knew him are but fragments of a half-forgotten time. Of his
love I had no doubt. It satisfied me. And we were not only lovers, but
also comrades. I was but an amateur where he was a master, but I
followed him attentively, eagerly. I like to remember those days, when
we wandered like children through the woods, when we climbed, sketched,
laughed, and sang together, and I often wonder if any mortals are as
happy now. At home we had our hours of work, of merry talk, and happy
plans. We had the excitements of the exhibition days, the pleasures of
social life, and then we had also my dear little girl, our Nellie!
Sometimes I fancy that such happiness cannot die; that if our words and
actions perpetuate themselves, such vivid experiences cannot fade away,
and that I may some time find it all passed into an eternal form! But
these are dreams; for every thing has changed, and I know that nothing
can be eternal that is not based upon truth, upon faithfulness.

"You can understand, although you are so young, and are just learning
how love transfigures everything, that my life with my husband was so
complete that we did not dream of any change; we did not comprehend
that we could ever be parted. I have heard women say that they have
trembled when they were very happy, knowing that there must be an end
to their joy; but I had no such fears. Still it came to me, and in a
horrible shape.

"I knew that I was very ill, and that Philip was anxious and wretched,
but I never thought that I might die. My fierce pain gave me no hint of
death, and so it came almost without warning. I would not believe that
I must go away, and that this brief illness meant death was incredible,
preposterous! I shrank from thinking of it; I cried out that I would
not die; I would not leave Philip! I begged my physicians for life; I
entreated Heaven to spare me; I almost broke my husband's heart by my
wild cries for life. It was a bitter struggle! I prayed for
annihilation--for anything but the knowledge that we were separated. Do
not think that I forgot Nellie, or that I did not grieve to part with
her; but other mothers have loved their children for the father's sake,
and I could have surrendered anything to have kept him. I could trust
her to a Higher love, but for us there was nothing but daily, hourly
union.

"The night before I died--for who can thrust away the inevitable!--I
lay close in Philip's arms as he knelt by my bedside. I was almost
helpless, but I clung body and soul to him. It was poor comfort to tell
each other that this was but a temporary separation; that we had yet an
eternity in which to live together. Eternity was indefinite and far
away, while our parting, his lonely life, my waiting hours, were so
near. I cannot forget how he wept as he held me close, closer to him,
and how his courage failed as he realized how fast my hour of departure
was hastening to us! I do not now know how it was that we did not die
together that night! We talked of it, and it seemed so easy and natural
that we thought we could not help it; but the daylight came, and we
were still alive, clinging to each other.

"But this night of agony did more than death alone could have done, for
it shaped my future. Out of our frantic grief there came a prayer that
has fixed me here, and which has taught me of what love is made!
Together that night we besought Heaven to give me no other happiness
than that I had known in life, but to let me linger near my home, and
be with my husband until he died. I cried out that any other existence
would be hell to me; and with desperate hands we beat against the doors
of prayer, and pleaded for power to choose our own future.

"The next night I died. All day I had laid on my bed passive and quiet.
My grief had worn me out, and I could not have spoken had I wished.
Philip sat by me holding my hand, but he too was silent. I felt vaguely
that mine was the easier task; that living could be harder than dying;
but I had no words with which to comfort or strengthen him. I could
faintly smile when he would bend his head, and kiss my nerveless hand,
and I wondered if he knew how much I liked to lie quietly and look at
him. Yet I did not care for it all! I remember the watchful
indifference with which I regarded my physician's face, and followed
the motions of the nurse about the room. I remember my sister's tears,
and how little Nellie sat by me on the bed with her doll, until she
fell asleep on my pillow. I remember how the hours measured themselves
away, how the sunshine deepened and faded, how the night came, and all
grew dim and silent. An absolute hush rested upon the earth. The fire
blazed, but it had ceased its crackling; the watchers moved noiselessly
about the room, the street had become quiet, and everything seemed
awaiting some coming, some solemn change. As Philip leaned over me, and
I saw his lips move, but heard no sound, I fancied that perhaps my
hearing had gone from me, but I cared nothing for it! Then the fire
grew dim, the room seemed full of shadows, the lights faded away, and
my eyes became heavy, but I did not care to shut them, or to brush away
the film that covered them. My breath gained substance, and began to
push its way through my lungs, my throat seemed closing, and then
suddenly everything changed!

"It is not to my purpose, even were I allowed, to tell you anything of
the conditions of my present life, or to explain to you how I can
reveal myself to you, and why it was that Philip could never see me.
All that I am to tell you is connected with this earth.

"After the first surprise was over I turned to Philip, who was kneeling
by the bed. He could not believe that I was dead, but called vehemently
on me to look at him. I remember the joy with which I sprang to his
side, and putting my arms around, tried to turn his head away from the
dead body to my living, happy face! But it was all in vain, in vain! He
was deaf, he was blind to me! Our prayer, our compact was as nothing:
he knew only the dead wife! I was as indifferent to the body as to a
shadow on the wall; but to be clinging to him unrecognized, unfelt,
terrified me, shocked me! I cannot dwell on this, but after all was
over, and the body carried away, he was still ignorant of my presence.
I followed his aimless steps through the house; I stood by his chair as
he sat idly at his easel; I watched with him through the long nights,
but he never suspected that I was there! How often when he has called
me have I answered, and when he has prayed for one glimpse of me have I
clung to him, but had no sign from him to tell me that he even blindly
guessed that our prayer might have been granted! I have put my arms
around him; my head has lain upon his shoulder; I have passionately
called upon him, but still been as empty air! Yet it comforted me to be
with him, and I could not doubt that some time he would come to know of
my presence. It was impossible, I thought, for him to dwell in such an
atmosphere of love and always be unconscious of it. Why, we thought
only of each other, we longed only for each other, and so he must at
last come to know how near I was, and then, I thought with joy, waiting
would lose its pain!

"I could laugh as I now think of this fond and foolish fancy--of my
trust in time, in a man's intuition! Why, I did not even know that men
do not nurse grief as we do; and I was surprised by Philip's resolute
bravery in turning to work, and trying to forget in study all he had
lost in love. But do not think it was easy for him! I was much too
intimately connected with his art not to be always suggested by it; and
my dumb and unknown presence awakened none of the old inspiration of
our talks, our mutual sympathy and interest. Sometimes his desire for
me became so intense that I felt that my time for recognition had
surely come, and I have knelt, clinging to him, waiting for that
blessed smile of knowledge, but all in vain!

"Time, however, smoothes all griefs for mortals, and soon life began to
run tranquilly in the house. Nellie was happy in my sister's care, and
Philip became absorbed in work. The old sparkle and gayety was gone,
but youth and vigor were left, so they lived pleasantly enough, and I
wandered through the rooms lonely, but not forlorn. I could not be
miserable, for I was ever with them. And I could not but be happy in
seeing how tenderly I was remembered, how constantly I was thought of
by them all. Nothing was changed, for even my work-basket kept its
place in Philip's room, and some of my ribbons were still tumbled in
with his collars! Thus some years passed away. Nellie grew tall and
pretty, and Philip became graver, more studious, and was as famous as
he was popular. I do not believe that he ever thought of making any
change in his life, of filling my place in his home or heart. I never
dreamed it was possible! But ignorance is a poor safeguard, and at last
the time came when the shadow began to lift from off his life, to
deepen over mine. I do not know how to tell you more; the thought of
speaking of it almost strikes me dumb; but I must, I must! I am
compelled to do it! And it all came of a picture--a picture of youth
and beauty; and she--Esther--came to sit for it! You need not expect me
to tell you much of her, for some things are impossible; but she had
been as a schoolgirl a pet of mine. She was the daughter of a friend,
and she was pretty; she was rich; she was good and loving: what else
could any mortal ask for? These quiet hours in the studio were pleasant
to both of them, and one day Philip broke the silence of years and
spoke of me to her. She was glad to talk of me, for she had been fond
of me; and she told him of what I had said to her; she brought him a
little drawing I had made of Nellie for her. They spoke of me lovingly
and gently, but I stood off and wrung my hands in anguish. The most
cruel silence would have been better than these confidences which
brought them so close together.

"But what a wonderful picture he painted! How fair, how lovely she
looked upon the canvas, and how happy she was when the painting was
praised! She danced for joy when she first saw it in its frame; but
I--I who knew so well what a success it was--I did not rejoice! I did
not look at the picture, but instead I watched the soft and tender
smile with which Philip regarded her! Need I tell you more?" she said
in a husky voice, standing up and clenching her hands. "Must I repeat
the history of these days as though it was a story I was telling you!
Have I not suffered penance enough in witnessing a grief I could not
comfort, a resignation that I could not share, and a happiness that has
made me desperate; but must I also put it all into words? But there was
one trial spared me. I did not have to witness the growth of this new
love, for I rarely saw them together during the days of courtship. She
did not come often to the house after the picture was finished, and so
I escaped this much. Yet I knew when they saw each other, and he was no
laggard wooer. I never followed him or her, for I could not leave the
home where we had lived; but in thought I was never parted from him.
How often have I paced the floor in lonely agony, waiting for his
return from her house. I have crouched in the corner, fearing, yet
eager to see him enter with the new happiness in his eye, the new
elasticity in his step. I saw him grow brighter and gayer; and as he
whistled or sang at his work I have fled away in helpless agony. Yet he
had not forgotten me; and in the midst of the new life that was
thrilling through him I was still dear to him. I cannot pretend to
understand a man's love, nor to tell you how faithfulness to an old
affection, and desire for one that is new, can dwell in the same heart.
He thought of me tenderly. I was a part of a past too dear to be
forgotten; but I did not belong to the present. He had lived without
me, and I was no longer necessary to him, but this younger love was
very near and real to him.

"At last he brought her home, and with many smiles and happy glances he
led Nellie to her new mother. It seemed very proper to the people who
filled the house that her grace and youth should mate with his dignity
and reputation, and that they should love each other; but none of them
saw, few thought of the disembodied wife who was still chained to his
side by links he had helped to forge, and who, standing unsuspected in
their midst, cursed--not the bride nor her husband--but her own
immorality.

"Yet as I watched the merriment with a most bitter scorn of my
suffering, and a fancy how Philip might well paint a love dancing on a
coffin for his next picture, I yet felt glad to know that I had not
been the one who was false to that dreadful night of vows and prayers.
If he had died, _I_ would have been faithful. My need of love would
have been as great; I might have longed for protection, for even bread;
but I would have had no other husband. I was glad, for it is well to be
faithful. A new love may bring new sweetness and content, but constancy
has its own sweet rewards, and the widowed heart would seek no strange
hand if it did but know what remains to those who are true.

"This was years ago as you count time; but until to-night I have
lingered around my home--my old home that was changed and beautified
for another mistress. I have nothing to tell you of their life, that
does not seem to men to be pleasant. They have been prosperous. They
have known many joys and few sorrows. They have travelled. He is famous
and he is also rich. Is that not enough? And Nellie, too, has been
content. Esther has not allowed the child to miss me; and although
other children claim equal love from her father, they have never robbed
her. Is not this best? your questioning eyes ask me. Perhaps it is. I
have often taken my jealous heart to task; and remembering how solitary
Philip's home would have been, how much he has gained in these new
loves, I have tried to say it _was_ the best. But he was not bound to
me only for life--for my life. Our love reached out toward the other
world and swore eternal fidelity, and I--_I_ have not been freed
from him.

"But this is not all. I might reconcile myself to this and be content.
I love Philip so truly that I think I could sacrifice my dearest, most
selfish wishes to him, and be satisfied to see him prosperous and
happy. But whether it is a keener sight that I possess, whether it is a
natural change that comes to all who submit to the influence of the
world, I know not; but Philip is not the same artist--he is not the
same man; but this, I think, no one knows; that his pictures have
changed is clear to all. Once he worked for the sake of the best; now
he works for 'success'; and Esther rates his paintings at the price
they bring. But had I lived even this might have been. Yet this is not
all. The sting, the bitterness of my bereavement is in my knowledge
that we are parted for ever. If Philip had not grown so far away from
me in the years in which he has not known me, I could expect some happy
reunion with him; but this man will need me no more in Heaven than he
now does upon earth. If I could now return to him and take Esther's
place by his side, I would jar upon him, displease him. He might love
me, but there would be little affinity between us. And I--have I not
changed? has not my ignorance turned to bitterness, my confidence to
disbelief? But it seems to me that a little sunshine would bring back
all that was sweet or good in me--yet I cannot tell. But this I know:
in the future the soul of this man will lay no claim to mine. We get
nothing without its price, and Philip has paid for a second love by the
loss of all he once thought dearest. Still it may be best, it may be
right.

"As for myself, some change is coming to me. It must be so, or I would
not be here to-night. You know what perhaps is to occur; you know how
long I was to linger; but of this I cannot speak. If I shall never see
him again, do you think I can talk of it?

"But, child, it fills me with wonder as I think that the spirit world
in which I have so long dwelt, of which I know nothing, is now,
perhaps, to be revealed to me. I have no fear of it. I believe that
when I enter Paradise--and I cannot believe that its doors are for ever
closed against me--that in some way the lost love of my husband, the
misled affection of my child, will be made up to me. Heaven defrauds us
of nothing; and as we are created to love and be loved, is it not true
that there must be compensation somewhere if it is torn from us, or
denied to us?

"But be that as it may," she said, looking down upon her companion with
sad and tender eyes. "You are a woman, and I have a charge to give you.
I warn you, child, that your love to Heaven cannot be too strong; your
love for man too true; but while you give to man the sweetness and
comfort of your life, you must look to Heaven alone for faithfulness."

                     *      *      *      *      *

When the girl looked up again, the morning star shone over the sea, a
fresh wind blew out of the yellowing sky, but she was alone upon the
sands.

LOUISE STOCKTON.




ON BEING BORN AWAY FROM HOME.


Reading, the other day, in Mr. Stigand's interesting "Life of Heine,"
about the young poet's discontent in Germany, about his long desire
to quit that country and to live in France, and of his final hegira
to Paris, it occurred to me that he might be described, not too
fancifully, as having been born away from home. How many have had the
same fortune, whether for good or ill. But the happier class is the
contrasting one, that of persons who have never suffered from the
stress of the migrating instinct; and surely it is a fortunate thing to
be born in one's own place, as Lamb was born in London, to grow in the
fit soil, to lose no time in striking root. Lamb was the happiest of
men in this respect. A true child of the city, he held that London was
a better place to be born in than any part of the country. "A garden,"
he writes to Wordsworth, "was the primitive prison, till man, with
Promethean boldness and felicity, luckily sinned himself out of it."
For _garden_ if we read _farm_ in this passage, we have, perhaps,
a statement of the feeling which prompts our own country people, and
more and more with successive years, to leave the country and come to
the city--to crowd the towns and desert the fields. Lamb says
again--and one almost trembles to see him thus defying the "poet of
nature" to his face--"Separate from the pleasure of your company, I
don't much care if I never see a mountain in my life.... I do not envy
you. I should pity you did I not know that the mind will make friends
with anything." But Wordsworth, the Laker, was quite as clearly born at
home as Lamb, the Londoner; and, as we know, he came back to his native
hills after no long wanderings, not to quit them again. It is because
Lamb hardly wandered at all that he seems so truly autochthonous, so
peculiarly a child of the soil. He struck deep root into the
intellectual alluvium of London, and until he was fifty years old he
suffered nothing from transplantation except when he changed his
lodgings or paid his somewhat reluctant visits to friends in the
country; and when, at fifty, he ventured away from London, it was no
further than to the margin of the city of Paradise--to Enfield,
Edmonton--the latter a place which he calls "a little teasing image of
a town," where "the country folks do not look like country folks," and
where "the very blackguards are degenerate." It was only in London that
Lamb's spirit really nourished itself and grew.

And why is it in old countries that the mind seems to strike its most
vigorous fibres into the soil, to draw up its most potent juices,
bringing to blossom such flowers as Wordsworth's "Poems of Childhood,"
such <DW29>s as Elia's thoughts? Lamb suggests country images; even
though he was of the city, his essays have an outdoor freshness and
tenderness. They take us into the open fields, and show us the soft
counterchange of shadows and sunlight, bright spaces and pursuing
swarths of shade. And where did he learn the longing homesickness of a
child for the country? "How I would wake weeping," Elia says, "and in
the anguish of my heart exclaim upon sweet Calne, in Wiltshire!"
Whether in country or city, surely it is in old lands that one gets the
fullest home feeling, the complete benefits of soil, and atmosphere,
and acquaintance with the various geniuses of the place. Would that we
had been Londoners, we say, to know the ancient streets, or Parisians
for the sake of the great libraries and of Notre Dame!

That, however, is but a melancholy _utinam_; there has been no lack of
fortunate migrations among people who have been born far away from
their fitting homes, and who have found their way thither in course of
time. So the "rising young men" of our own colonial days returned to
England to make their career; and sometimes we may trace the features
of their childhood's "environment" in their developed genius. Our
painters, for whom the new country was not yet a quite satisfactory
place, displayed perhaps the strongest homing tendency. Copley, West,
and Stuart, for instance, all American born, had to seek an older home
of art. West returned in youth to England, and Copley in early manhood;
there they made their careers, there they lived and died; while Stuart,
after passing fifteen years in Europe, came back to settle in America.
But none of these artists quite severed himself from his native
country. American themes served each of them for some of his best known
works: as in Stuart's famous "Washington," West's "Death of General
Wolfe," and Copley's first historical picture, so called, the "Youth
Rescued from a Shark."[4]

      [4] Now, I believe, in the Boston Athenaeum.

There, too, was Copley's son, born, like his father, in New England.
In 1774 he was taken to London, where he too made his career, a
distinguished one; for the Boston boy lived to become Baron Lyndhurst
and Lord Chancellor. But as the eminent nobleman to be, at the time of
his demigration, was but two years old, it is difficult to point out
any traits of distinctively American statesmanship in his career.

And that other American nobleman, Count Rumford, of whom Mr. Ellis has
recently written the first good biography--his was a notable case of
birth away from home. It is a little odd to think of the famous Count
Rumford, Franklin's compeer in genius, and born but a few miles from
Franklin's birthplace, as plain Benjamin Thompson of North Woburn,
Massachusetts. His parents were plain New England people, but he was
ambitious, and had a handsome person; he had, too, what his neighbors
might have called "uppish" ways; for he pretended to peculiar
knowledge, and was always making strange researches and experiments; in
short, I fear that he was not quite enough of a democrat to suit his
neighbors. There was a distinction about him that they did not like; he
was too original in his character and tastes; and consequently he was a
marked man in that community. His fortunes seemed well enough, I
presume, when, at twenty, he quitted school-teaching to marry a rich
widow, thirteen years older than himself, Sarah Rolfe of Concord, New
Hampshire; appearing on the wedding day, it is noted, in a splendid
scarlet suit, to the astonishment and scandal of the young man's
friends. But that was in 1772, and his troubles were not far ahead. At
the outbreak of the colonial quarrel he was accused of being a Tory,
and charged with disloyalty to the American cause. He protested his
innocence in vain. He was arrested, tried--and acquitted; for nothing
could be proven against him. Indeed, there was nothing to prove; it was
his character that was the real cause of offence to the good people of
Concord. They were not tolerant of superiority; and there must have
been an intolerable superiority in young Thompson's personal beauty, in
his manners, in his passion for study and scientific experiment. In
spite of his acquittal, he remained _un homme suspect_; and finally the
Concord mob visited his house to take their will of him; but he had
fled, never to return. Had he not been forewarned, I fear there would
never have been any Count Rumford. The patriots of Concord might not
have put him to death, but one does not easily make noblemen of persons
who have been tarred and feathered. It is better to admit a tradesman
now and then, or even a dentist, to the ranks of the nobility, as it
has happened to some of our countrymen more recently. Very luckily,
then, young Thompson escaped the tar and feathers; at twenty-two he
left family, home, and estate, and fled from the Concord mob, never to
return. His property was confiscated, and in August, 1775, after having
suffered imprisonment as a Tory, he decided to quit the country. One
would think that he had sufficient reasons. He wrote thus to his
father-in-law: "I am determined," he says, "to seek for that _peace_
and _protection_ in foreign lands, and among strangers, which is deny'd
me in my native country. I cannot any longer bear the insults that are
daily offered me. I cannot bear to be looked upon and treated as the
_Achan_ of society." Thompson showed a true instinct for the
opportunity in choosing this course. He entered the British service,
and thenceforward, says Mr. Ellis, "the rustic youth became the
companion of gentlemen of wealth and culture, of scientific
philosophers, of the nobility, and of princes." Perhaps it gives a
wrong impression to speak of him as a "rustic youth"; for besides a
winning address, we are told that he had "a noble and imposing figure,"
and that he was a natural courtier; so that the familiar story of his
rapid promotion is not surprising. Under-Secretary of State at
twenty-eight, he was knighted by George III. at thirty; and eight years
later, by the pleasure of the King of Bavaria, Benjamin Thompson, of
Woburn, Massachusetts, was transformed into Count Rumford, having
already taken rank as a European celebrity. But he did not forget his
early home and friends, and it is pleasant to find him deriving his
title from the name given to Concord by the early settlers--a name, by
the way, that these patriots misspelled from _Romford_, the village
near London whence some of them came.

Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, never saw America or Sarah Rolfe
again. He never saw his only daughter, born after his flight from
Concord, until, at the age of twenty, she too left the forests of New
England to meet him in London. From the Continent she wrote those
interesting letters which his biographer has made accessible, the
record of a singular experience--that of a bright but untrained New
England girl introduced, without the least preparation, to courtly
European life. She relates her blunders and misadventures very frankly;
how she filled her father with consternation by making her best
courtesy to a housekeeper; how she ordered costly goods without
inquiring the prices; how--but I see that this _naive_ young woman
is likely to lead us from our subject, for Miss Thompson evidently went
away from home when she left New England.

As for her father, he lived to marry a second widow, the brilliant and
distinguished woman who had been the wife of Lavoisier. We cannot say
that Count Rumford's good fortune kept to him in the matter of this
second marriage. It was an unhappy one; it reminds us of Dr. Johnson's
genial remark that second marriages are made to illustrate "the triumph
of hope over experience." My lord and my lady did not suit each other;
they quarrelled in the midst of their splendor, and in ways not always
the most decorous. Poor Benjamin Thompson! I fancy that after Madame
had "poured hot water" on the choicest flowers in your garden, you
wished that you were taking your ease in Concord again, the Revolution
being now safely ended, and no further question of tar and feathers
being likely to arise!

Alexander Hamilton was another eminent American who migrated in search
of a home; but seeking, not quitting, our dear country. Born of English
parentage in another British colony, the West Indies, he spent his
boyhood cursing the fate which had doomed him, apparently, to what he
called the "grovelling condition of a clerk" in the North Caribbee
islands. He longed to escape from trade; boy-like, he longed for a war,
for the opportunity of distinction in affairs. Nor did he have to wait
until age, or even until maturity, for verification of the saying of
his contemporary, Goethe, about the final fulfilment of the desires of
youth. What Hamilton desired in boyhood came to him promptly, almost as
by the rubbing of the lamp. We all know the story: how at fifteen he
found his way to New Jersey, whence extricating himself he went to
Columbia college; and how, while he was there, the Revolutionary war
broke out, making the lad drop his books at once to accept his
appointment as a major of artillery; and how naturally his career
flowed from that initial point. And in our own times Thackeray was
another product of a British colony, having been born in Calcutta, and
spending the first seven years of his childhood there. I will not
venture to say that I trace much colonial influence in his writings. He
may have been a true Indian at heart, but his novels are certainly
those of a club-man and a Londoner; and none of his essays disclose
very much of the Hindoo. Sainte-Claire Deville, again, one of the
truest of Frenchmen, was born, like Hamilton, in the Antilles.

But how many have there been who never found a real home, though they
sought it painfully and with tears! Byron, the predestinate wanderer,
and Rousseau, who never found rest, who complained that his birth was
but the beginning of his misfortunes, _le premier de mes
malheurs_--these are types of the less fortunate class. But we need
not multiply examples; it is the old story of wandering and
homelessness. How often is the homing effort made in vain! One would
fancy the air filled with piloting spirits that endeavor to find ways
of escape for the languishing body, spirits constantly coming and going
between the rock of exile and the far distant home. Sometimes the
effort succeeds, as we have seen; and sometimes it fails; the spirit
wastes itself in vain endeavor, passes away like the unnoticed melting
of a cloud. To spirits thus aspiring, thus failing, life is indeed what
old Desportes calls it, a bitter and thorny blossom, _une fleur
espineuse et poignante_. For what is the loss of opportunity but the
loss of the soul? and the conscious loss of opportunity may go on for a
lifetime, a protracted martyrdom. Take the case of any intelligent
exile, some wanderer in the Macerian desert, some refined person
unluckily born in Patagonia, who rejects the Patagonian ideals, who no
longer craves the most succulent of limpets gathered at the lowest
tide: in our own comfort and satisfaction cannot we extend a little
compassion to him? Not that I have the least prejudice against
Patagonia; but we need some name for the better concentration of our
sympathy. The intelligent but discontented Patagonian, then, who
rejects the Patagonian ideals, whose thoughts are not the thoughts of
Patagonia, whose ways are not Patagonian ways, he to whom even the most
successful popular career in Patagonia would seem a humiliation,
because it would associate him with the Patagonian character, and so
compromise him before the extra-Patagonian world--his, I say, is not a
happy case. His exile must end like other banishments for life--either
in escape or in death. For while he lives he must do without spiritual
light and heat, without the intellectual climate that he needs.

Do you call this a morbid state of mind in the Patagonian? Well, it may
be that he should imitate the repose, the serenity of the limpet; it
may be his duty to rest contented with the beach at low tide, with the
estate to which he was born; and yet I say that his feeling is not
devoid of a certain distinction; it may be, indeed, very blamable, but
it is a feeling that is no trait of ignoble natures.

And there is, too, a sanative quality in that feeling. His critical
attitude may help the exile to keep before him higher standards,
whether in thought or in conduct, whether in his "Hellenizing" or his
"Hebraizing" tendencies, as Mr. Arnold calls them, than he might
entertain were he living comfortably at the very centre. His
privations may thus be more effective than the maceration of the
recluse in keeping him in sympathy with culture, with the best things
of the mind; and surely that is some compensation for living in
Patagonia! There is still another: there is a fortunate exemption for
such exiles--fortunate we may safely call it, though it is but a
negative beatitude--the exemption from envy. That is worth not a
little. In Paris, in London, in Pekin, how many provocatives to envy
beset even the philosopher! For in those cities he must see many
undeniably superior persons about him--persons superior to himself not
only in fortune, but in ability! There, in attainment of all sorts, he
meets his rivals; and if he is a real philosopher, he will remember
Creon's caution--"not to get the idea fixed in your head that what you
say and nothing else is right."[5] Still, philosopher or not, he will
be likely to envy some of the desirable things that he sees; and the
fault is perhaps excusable: at any rate an occasional touch of the
claw, an _effleurement_ now and then of the passion, need not surprise
us, even when we do not excuse it, in London or Pekin. But in the
Patagonian civilization, however important it may be to the progress
of the world, what does such a man find to envy? Surely the higher
provocatives to that weakness are not abundant. Hereditary wealth,
ancient family dignities, culture, scholarship, imposing genius--these
do not surround him, these do not confront him with his inferiority as
they do, let us say, in this country. It is we, then, who are the
unhappy ones in this respect; but we can understand, at least, the
weakness of brethren who may be a little shaken by the contemplation
of all the desirable things in which the richer civilizations abound.

      [5] [Greek: Me nyn en ethos mounon en sauto phorei,
                  Hos phes sy, kouden allo, tout' orthos echein.]

      --_Antigone_.

Yes, the careers which we may observe from day to day may certainly
prove stumbling blocks to some of us. The thriving politician or
contractor, for instance, Dives in his barouche, the blooming members
of literary cliques, the fashionable clergymen and poets, chorusing
gently to feminine audiences, who listen intent, perhaps even "weeping
in a rapturous sense of art," as Heine tells us the women of his day
wept when they heard the sweet voices of the evirates singing of
passion, of

    Liebes fehnen,
    Von Lieb' und Liebeserguss--

how admirable are all these characters! These, indeed, are careers to
move any but the steadfast mind.

And yet, even in Philistia, it is not every one that will yearn after
successes like these. In Philistia, far from the promised land, the
exile may yet contemplate without desire all these desirable things,
envying neither them nor their possessors. He may even indulge in a
saving scorn of them, a scorn of the main achievements, the popular men
of the Philistine community; bathing himself in irony as a tonic
against the spiritual malaria. Such a man I once knew, a man of
Askelon. He lived in that rich city as a recluse, and according to any
standard recognized in Askelon, he was not rich. On this text he would
sometimes quote delightful old Rutebeuf:

    Je ne sai par ou je coumance,
    Tant ai de matyere abondance
    Por parleir de ma povretei.

Yet this man was not without his pleasures. One of them, I remember,
came from his interest in the study of architecture. For Askelon was a
finely built city; and he used to walk much in the streets of it,
gazing upon the fronts of the costly houses, all patterned, as I
understood, after the purest Greek orders. He used to walk around
admiring, and making me admire. But this man had a wonderful eye, a
visual gift which must have been, I think, much the same thing as the
second sight or clairvoyance of which we read; for upon the fronts of
these fine houses he saw more than what the delicate taste, the cunning
hand of the builder had placed there. I have heard him say that he was
"a Sunday's child," referring to some superstition not current in that
community--and he certainly made out writing upon those walls and doors
which I, for one, could never see, though I have no doubt that it was
really there. But they were legends which would have startled the
residents could they have been audibly published in the streets of
Askelon. "What inscriptions upon these door plates!" he would sometimes
remark, walking down the Pentodon, the most fashionable street in the
place: "Let me read you a few that I discern in this neighborhood"; and
as we passed slowly before the Greek houses he pronounced, one by one,
these remarkable words, reading them off, as it seemed, from the
lintels of the very finest edifices. I cannot give all of them, but
these, if I remember, were some: Charlatan, Tartufe, Peculator,
Sharper, Parthis mendacior; and when we came to one of the corner
houses, or "palaces," as they called them in Askelon, he said: "One of
our furtive men lives there--one of our men of three letters. We have
as many of them here in Askelon as ever existed in Plautus's time, and
they are quite as able now as they then were to live in fine houses to
which they have not quite the most honest claim in the world." While he
spoke the man of three letters came out and ran down the marble
staircase, smiling, and offering, I thought, to salute my friend as he
stepped into his chariot; but my friend, though he had clear sight for
the palace, did not see the owner.

But you were surely too severe, poor friend of mine. There were just
men even in Askelon--upright, religious, and intelligent, full of good
works. What if this clever conveyancer had appropriated to himself
enough to buy him a fine house? Was it not in the very air of Askelon
that he should do such a thing--that he, like others, should at any
rate establish himself comfortably? and will not some honester man than
himself live after him in the fine house? Come now, confess, I used to
say, that you yourself, in his place, might not have done much better:
confess, at least, that when you were a boy you put your fingers into
the sugar-bowl when you should have kept them out, when you well knew
that you ought to keep them out! And then my friend would confess the
pressure of the "environment," the power of the "Zeit-Geist," as we
have learned to call it since then. Poor man! That was long ago; and
things have changed greatly in Askelon of latter years. They tell me
that everybody there has now grown honest, and that nobody goes around
any more reading invisible writing on the houses. And all the fine
buildings are still standing, it appears; though the journals of that
city remark that some of the Grecian architecture has peeled off from
the fronts of the houses in the Pentodon, having been insecurely
fastened on, it seems, at first. And how my poor friend used to
criticise those very palaces in his dry, technical way! One thing in
particular that he said I remember by the antithesis, the turn of it;
he used to say that the architects of Askelon were never certain
whether to construct ornament or to ornament construction.

Well, he is gone now; he will never blame Askelon again, or run down
Gath. He died in Philistia. Perhaps he served his purpose there, but I
am sure he would have done more if he had been a little less Quixotic
in his notions.

But let us not grow tristful again. How many a happy escape, as we
said, has been made from Philistia; how many a clear spirit has made
its way out of the darkness to a true honor. If many who have had the
higher endowments have perished in the shadow, princes dying behind the
iron mask, yet not all have failed; some have broken away to a career.
Of two such in particular let us conclude by speaking--Winckelmann and
Heine. Both were Prussians, and each one migrated from the north into a
southern country, a fugitive from "the power of the night, the press of
the storm." Each waited long before his opportunity came; each learned
that the "tardiest of the immortals are the boon Hours." But each found
his opportunity; and by what an instinctive escape! For Winckelmann it
was his first journey out of Prussia, when, in 1755, he set his face
toward Rome; still it was a homing flight like that of a carrier
pigeon; for in Rome he found his appointed place, and there he spent in
congenial work the remaining years of his life. Yet he could say, in
the bitterness of his spirit, on reaching Rome, "I have come into the
world and into Italy too late." Nor may we contradict that bitter cry,
even in view of Winckelmann's great critical achievement; we have to
ask, Might it not have been greater still, had he not been thus _serus
studiorum_, as Horace phrases it--thus unluckily belated in his
culture?

All the traits of these migrations of men of genius are interesting,
and we may dwell for a moment, though at the risk of some digression,
upon Winckelmann's disappointment on his arrival in the city of his
desire. It was a pathetic disappointment, but one of a kind not
infrequent with sensitive minds. Long detained by poverty in the north,
it was not until the age of thirty-eight that he reached Italy; and
when at last he arrived in Rome, the longed-for city wore a strange
look for him--had an aspect for which he was not prepared. It was there
that his emotion broke out as we have seen. We can understand his
disappointment if we bear in mind the cruel treatment to which our
fancies are commonly subjected at the hands of the fact. How swiftly,
how silently, like the irrevocable sequence of images in a dissolving
view, our premonitions vanish under the light of the reality! The
actual Rome, the living man, the painting, the landscape which we
travel far to see--these dispel at once the preconception; a glance,
and the dream is gone, however long domesticated in the mind, however
brightly glowing but now in the imagination. Fact is a careless
bedfellow, and overlays the tender child Fancy; and even when nature
contrives the change less rudely, we can hardly resign our poor,
familiar fancies without regret. But sometimes, happily, we can do what
Winckelmann did not do; we can retain the old fancies and compare them
with the experience. Let me give a personal instance: I remember
framing the distinctest image of the lakes of Killarney from my
childhood readings in Peter Parley's veritable histories. There was the
cool spring, shaded with bushes, and pouring out abundant waters; and
there was the blessed Saint Patrick, standing by the rocky edge of the
spring, clasping down the stout lid of an iron-bound chest upon the
last of the unhappy serpents of Erin, and saying, "Be aisy, darlints!"
just before casting the box into the depths of the lake. It was a
pleasant scene, a clear imaginative microcosm; never was a distincter
picture in my mind than that of this fancied Killarney. The real
Killarney I saw many years after reading those histories of Peter
Parley, yet that first vivid picture did not vanish at the sight; the
fancied lake held its place against the reality; nay, even at this day,
I can call up the two pictures at will, the imagined and the real, and
compare the two--the scene of my early fancies with the humorous Celtic
saint standing beside the spring and snapping down the lid of his box
upon the tail of the last snake, on the one hand, and the broader
landscape of reality, in which there were no saints, but many Patricks.

But Winckelmann, if he did not find the visionary Rome, soon became
reconciled to the real one. The city put on the homelike look for him,
and it was not long before it became profoundly endeared to him. It was
with the authentic pang of homesickness that he left it, finally, to
make that northward journey from which he was never to return.

How different was Heine's first experience of his newly-found home,
Paris! For that other migrating spirit there was no such initiatory
disappointment. For Heine his adopted city was from the first a
spiritual home, a true city of refuge, an island of the blessed. For
years, lingering in his cold city of the north, _verdammtes Hamburg_,
as he called it, he had longed in vain to escape; and to what vivid
expressions of his suffering he gives utterance! In one place he
compares himself to the white swans at the public garden, whose wings
were broken on the approach of winter that they should not fly away to
the south:

"The waiter at the Pavilion declared that they were comfortable there,
and that the cold was healthy for them. But that is not true. It is not
good for one to be imprisoned hopelessly in a cold pool, and there to
be frozen up; to have one's wings broken so that one can no longer fly
forth to the fair South, where the beautiful flowers are, and the
golden sunlight, and the blue mountain lakes. Alas! to me once was Fate
not much kinder."

While still pent up in Hamburg he had written thus to a friend: "I am
no German, as you well know.... There are but three civilized
people--the French, the Chinese, and the Persian.... Ah, how I yearn
for Ispahan! Alas! I, poor fellow, am far from its lovely minarets and
odoriferous gardens! Ah, it is a terrible fate for a Persian poet that
he must wear himself out in your base, rugged German tongue.... O
Firdusi! O Ischami! O Saadi! how miserable is your brother!"

As Goethe is said to have thought of doing when he was in love with
"Lili," Heine at this time thought of retiring to the United States, "a
land which I loved before I knew it," as he wrote from Heligoland in
1830. How he knew it does not appear, but he decided against us; he
calls this country a "frightful dungeon of freedom, where the invisible
chains gall still more painfully than the visible ones at home, and
where ... the mob exercises its coarse dominion!" Meanwhile, as he
tells us somewhere, "In Hamburg it was my only consolation to think
that I was better than other people."

Heine reached Paris in his thirty-first year; and never was the city
better appreciated and enjoyed than by this young wanderer during the
earlier time of his residence there. Everything in it pleased him: the
intellectual life, the interest in ideas, not less than the gayety and
charm. But he found much pleasure in the courtesy of Parisian manners.
Parisian manners were then, as even now, distinguishable from Prussian
by the careful observer. "Sweet pineapple odors of politeness!" he
says, "how beneficially didst thou console my sick spirit, which had
swallowed down in Germany so much tobacco vapor!... Like the melodies
of Rossini did the pretty phrases of apology of a Frenchman sound in my
ear, who had gently pushed me in the street on the day of my arrival. I
was almost frightened at such sweet politeness--I who had been
accustomed to boorish German knocks in the ribs without any apology at
all." If any one jostled Heine roughly in the street, and made no
apology, he would say, "I knew that that man was one of my
countrymen."[6]

      [6] I quote from the translations in Stigand's "Life."

But Paris is somewhat more than a city of pleasure; it is a city of
opportunity. To many Americans it is a stumbling-block, to many
Englishmen foolishness; but Heine was one of the true children of
Paris, though wandering at first far from the centre, and he found
fitting work there. They were busy as well as joyous years, those that
he first spent in that bright capital. O Paris, city of opportunity,
how many other of thy children are still wandering far from the centre!
Some of them live upon the sierras of Patagonia, some in the stonier
streets of Askelon, some inhabit caves in the deserts of Maceria.
Living an anchorite's life in German villages, in Pacific colonies, on
Cape Cod or Kerguelen's Land, the delicate French spirit wastes itself
away. And yet some of these exiles have found their way to that centre
of blithe intellectual activity.

Heine was such a one; he spent in Paris the most productive and happy
period of his life, the bright interval between his cloudy morning and
the shadows that were to gather around him before their time; and how
he glowed in the warmth and light of the capital! And while he carried
his pleasures to excess, yet he did not go pleasuring like the vulgar.
In a valid sense his very extravagances had an intelligible principle
in them; one might say that he dissipated himself upon ethical grounds.
Yet his were the reasons of a poetic, not of an analytic thinker. The
popular religion, he said, has dishonored the flesh; let us restore it
to honor. To restore joyousness to modern life, something of the
antique innocence to pleasure, to make it reputable as well as
delightful, to readjust the conscience of a community which looked upon
pleasure as essentially wrong, and yet pursued it, so thinking, at the
expense of its conscience, to relieve pleasure somewhat from the ban,
to augment, in a word, the permitted happiness of life--that was
Heine's aim; that was what he understood by his favorite doctrine of
restoring the flesh to honor--_la rehabilitation de la chair_.

Do you call that an easy creed, a comfortable practice? I will not deny
it, but do not let us lose the distinction, the trait by which Heine's
doctrine was discriminated from that of some other easy-going apostles.
Heine was intellectually sincere; he had a genuine purpose; he did not
go to Paris, for instance, as some of our missionaries have gone of
late years to Florence and Madrid, with commissions to labor among the
"nominal Christians," as they call the Catholic residents of those
comfortable capitals, to convert them to the true Christianity of
American Protestantism. No; Heine had too much directness, too much
intellectual verity for a situation of that sort: his mistakes were
honest mistakes, and he paid an honest penalty for them.

And surely the reinstatement of the flesh, the restoration of the body
to honor and to perfection, is, as I have said elsewhere, an admirable
purpose. It is only through the wise reinstatement of the flesh, if I
am not mistaken, that the condition of men is likely to be much
bettered; for it grows clearer every year that educating will not
accomplish this, or medicine, or penalties, or perhaps even preaching.
But Heine was no theorist in these matters: he was poet before all,
and he was too absolutely, too completely a poet for the justest
thought, or for his own good. Heine's nature lacked that tonic bent
toward accurate knowledge, toward dispassionate observation and
thought, which was the salvation, for instance, of Goethe, and which
has been the salvation of all great natures who have sought to excel
in character as well as in art. The spring of clear, untroubled
intelligence did not flow for Heine, the stream which should flow upon
the homestead of every poet, the _fons Baudusiae splendidior vitro_.
In those invigorating waters he seldom refreshed his spirit as
the greatest poets have done--in meditation, in discipline, in
dispassionate inquiry. These are the spiritual antiseptics that are
needful at least for the more carnal poetic temperaments. Am I using
fanciful metaphors? I mean that the poet who may undertake to put
forth a new gospel of conduct, must first think long and strictly. But
Heine did not think strictly, and his critical theory of life need not
detain us. Heine thought of pleasure, for instance, as Mr. Ruskin
thinks of work, that it is a thing to be had for the asking; the fact
being in any state of society yet established inexorably the
reverse--namely, that neither work nor pleasure is commonly to be had
on demand.

But it was a part of the new creed that enjoyment was to be had for the
asking, and the _propaganda_ already existed. "There was a little
society of devotees, if I may call them so--Michel Chevalier, Olinde,
Enfantin, and others--who were zealously preaching the rehabilitation
of the flesh"; and Heine devoted himself with assiduity to the pleasing
cultus--with all the more assiduity, we may fairly suppose, as being a
stranger in Paris. I fear that his labors were in the main of a carnal
and unscientific sort; certainly they never won him any reputation for
religious zeal. Nor was Paris the field before all others where
laborers of this sort were needed. In Paris, indeed, the doctrine and
practice of pleasure had been attended to, with no lack of zeal, for at
least three centuries before the time of Heine's arrival there. Would
that Heine had taken up his creed with somewhat more of reserve; that
he had been content with a less many-sided experience of pleasure! For
he surfeited himself somewhat with this experience; he knew its dangers
perfectly well, but what ardent young man is deterred by knowing the
danger? We bite at the hook just the same, as M. Renan says:
_L'hamecon est evident, et neanmoins on y a mordu, on y mordra
toujours_. And with all his love of delicacy, with all his
distinction of spirit, he also relished harsh things. Sharp aliments,
rank flavors, draining ecstasies that mingle the last drop of pleasure
with pain and faintness, seemed necessary to complete the round of this
man's life--of Heine the singer, Heine the man of all his time in whom
the delicate blossoms of poetry were most fragrant. No poet could
better deal than he with the exquisite joyances of the heart and soul;
and he well knew that this bloom does not gather upon the fruit of
coarse experience. He knew that the most delicate vintage is yielded to
the gentle pressure. But with this he was not content. He crushed the
grape harshly; he made it yield up its harsher juices; the flavors of
rind and seed are expressed in the wine of his life, and mingle with
the cup that he pours out.

And his life was spent as wine is poured upon the ground. Heine ended
where the ascetics began, in pain, privation, mortification of the
flesh; and it was a mortification that had not even the consolation of
being the sufferer's own choice, for it was involuntary. Better for him
would it have been had he gone out to dwell in the wilderness, as St.
Jerome left the Paris of his day, and retired into the desert of
Chalcis. For a strange penalty was to be his--one of which the joyous
apostle of pleasure could hardly have dreamed before the blow fell. A
paralytic touch converted the man of pleasure into a man of pain, his
bed a living tomb. No more for ever, for Heine, was there to be any
reinstatement of the flesh.

This dark closing period of Heine's life has a fascination about it; it
holds the attention like the background of a Rembrandt etching, with
its dimly-seen forms that appear to stir in the gloom, ghostly,
half-alive; such a contrast there is between his gloomy close and the
bright projection of his earlier career. Shall we call his life a
failure as regards himself, his personal success and happiness? Upon
that point we may not pronounce too confidently. He would have chosen
it had the choice been offered him with full knowledge of the
alternatives; he would have preferred it to any commonplace existence.
There will always be those who hold that such careers as Byron's or
Heine's, such fitful careers, with their fierce tempests, their
ecstatic sunshine, their "awful brevity," are preferable to any serener
life, however long; and least of all may we pity Heine. With what scorn
would he look down upon our pity!

Heine's life has a peculiar value for the student of modern life, in
that it has what we may call an exemplary interest. For Heine made that
costly sacrificial experiment of which the old examples never suffice
us; the experiment which each new generation requires anew, in which
nature in her wasteful way insists on consuming the finest geniuses. As
Byron had attempted just before him, so Heine attempted to think and to
live without reserves, to compass the round of sentiment and sensation,
to touch the entire range of experience. Like Byron, he could not pass
through the fire; he fell, the flame licked him up. And yet, far more
truly than many a martyr, Byron and Heine gave their lives for us. Not,
indeed, in the professed spirit of the martyr, not purposing the
sacrifice, but for that very reason making it the more significant.
They experimented lavishly, daringly with life, and in their poems they
give us real life as no other poets since have done. They are real
passion, real thought, the ruddy drops of the sad heart. Heine's "Book
of Songs" is his own body and blood. One feels of it what Whitman says
of his "Leaves of Grass": "This is no book; who touches this touches a
man."

And Heine and Byron, in giving their lives for us, did what the
greatest poets and the strongest men have seldom done. Though they have
always suffered, yet for us these have rather toiled than suffered.
Dante, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Goethe--what exalted, what demiurgic
creations have they bequeathed to us, what power to move, what beauty
to ponder with unapproachable longing! But these creations have an
awing beauty; they keep an unattainable distance and height. When we
consider the lives of these greatest spirits, we find them walking
apart in the fastnesses of the hills, pursuing arduous ways where few
or none may bear them company. Their paths gain upward upon the
heights; they gain so far and high that the tinge of that mountain
remoteness falls upon them--an airy distance, a deterring shadow; and
if ever their voices seem to say, "Follow us," they have not pointed
out the way.

But though Byron and Heine were thus rapt up into the mountain in
visions, their daily walk and life were in the world; its dust and
soilure cling to them, we see them wavering and going astray. Their
very wanderings bring them nearer to us, who sojourn; their desire,
their aspiration, their failures make the wiser use of opportunity
possible to any of us who may have been born away from home.

TITUS MUNSON COAN.




THE HOME OF MY HEART.


    Not here in the populous town,
      In the playhouse or mart,
    Not here in the ways gray and brown,
    But afar on the green-swelling down,
      Is the home of my heart.

    There the hillside <DW72>s down to a dell
      Whence a streamlet has start;
    There are woods and sweet grass on the swell,
    And the south winds and west know it well:
      'Tis the home of my heart.

    There's a cottage o'ershadowed by leaves
      Growing fairer than art,
    Where under the low sloping eaves
    No false hand the swallow bereaves:
      'Tis the home of my heart.

    And there as you gaze down the lea,
      Where the trees stand apart,
    Over grassland and woodland may be
    You will catch the faint gleam of the sea
      From the home of my heart.

    And there in the rapturous spring,
      When the morning rays dart
    O'er the plain, and the morning birds sing,
    You may see the most beautiful thing
      In the home of my heart;

    For there at the casement above,
      Where the rosebushes part,
    Will blush the fair face of my love:
    Ah, yes! it is this that will prove
      'Tis the home of my heart.

F. W BOURDILLON.




THE SOUTH, HER CONDITION AND NEEDS.


Sir Robert Peel, shortly before his death, said that what he had seen
and heard in public life had left upon his mind a prevailing impression
of gloom and grief. What impressed the mind of the English statesman so
painfully in reference to his own country must be felt correspondingly
by Americans who contemplate the South; for its present condition
awakens the anxious solicitude of every thoughtful patriot. A brief
mention of some of the evils that afflict her may help toward the
ascertainment and application of adequate remedies. Let it be premised
that this discussion proceeds in no degree from disloyalty to the
Government, nor from unwillingness to accept the legitimate
consequences of the war.

Betwixt the North and the South there lingers much estrangement. One
serious cause of irritation at the South, which seems irremediable, is
the distrust with which those who sustained the Confederate States are
regarded by a large number of Northern people. Our motives are
habitually misrepresented, our purposes misunderstood, our actions
perverted, our character maligned. On our conduct have been placed
constructions which seem to spring from direst hate or malice. By
representative men Southern States are spoken of as outside the Union;
and "a solid South" has been the party appeal most efficacious for
arousing sectional and vindictive passion. Every Southern citizen who
followed his convictions, and affiliated with the 1,640,000 Democrats
of the North, is suspected of disloyalty or treason. No protestations
of men or parties, no avowals of governors or legislatures, are
accepted as sincere unless accompanied by a support of the Republican
party. Party platforms, the support of an Abolitionist like Mr.
Greeley, organic laws, are regarded as deceptive because the shibboleth
of disloyalty and patriotism is "Republicanism." These persistent
efforts to brand us as inferiors, to make us unequals as citizens, to
coerce the support of an administration and a party, are based upon our
unfitness, morally or intellectually, to decide for ourselves what is
best for the country's welfare and perpetuity. We are loyal, and
patriotic, and honest only when we sing paeans to the Administration and
its favorites. Practically the war has been prolonged, and this policy
of disunion alienates, embitters, and prohibits the growth of fraternal
sentiments. To prevent a complete and durable reconciliation seems the
settled policy of a large party. This proscription and ostracism have
helped to create a hopelessness as to the future. A nightmare paralyzes
our energies.

The South, if conquered, and honestly accepting the results of the war,
needed encouragement and material help instead of discriminating
injuries. Her condition was deplorable. All wars are destructive of
property and production. To the South the war between the States was
exhausting to the utmost degree. Its destructiveness is not computable
by figures. The numerical inferiority of the army made it necessary to
put into the effective military force every available boy and man; and
these were thus withdrawn from productive labor. Much of the labor that
remained was applied, not to the production of wealth, but to such
manufactures as were needful only in war. For four dreadful years, like
the _triste noche_ described by Prescott, with ports closed, and under
the imperious necessity of evoking and utilizing every possible warlike
agency, this cessation of wealth-producing industry, this drain upon
material resources, this decimation of our best men, this waste of
capital and exhaustion of the country from the Rio Grande to the
Chesapeake bay, continued remorselessly. Superadd the emancipation of
4,000,000 slaves, the sudden extinction of $1,600,000,000 of property,
the disorganization of the labor system, the upheaval of society, the
"stupendous innovation" upon habits, modes of thought, allegiance,
amounting almost to a change of civilization, and it will be easy to
see that the South started upon her new career with nothing but genial
climate, fertile soil, and brave hearts. Absence of capital, of
concentrated wealth, made it necessary to begin _de novo_. Slavery and
profitableness of crops had prevented diversity of pursuits.
Agriculture, applied to a few products, was almost our sole occupation.
Former habits had disinclined to mechanical pursuits or manual labor,
and our towns, since 1865, have been crowded with young men, who have
sought in clerkships, agencies, and professions the means of support.
These employments, if furnishing remunerative wages, are not
wealth-producing, add nothing to capital, and have aggravated the
general impoverishment.

These evils have been intensified by vicious legislation and bad
government. Federal legislation has been much in the interest of
stock-jobbers, speculators, monopolists, so that "corners" have been
fostered, and labor has paid heavy and depressing tribute to fatten
greedy cormorants. The present system of banking violates the
established principles of currency, and is in utter contradiction to
what, for a decade, by consent of all parties and financiers, was the
policy of the Government. Bad as the system is inherently by injurious
legislation, its benefits are secured to a favored class, and by
combination with other corporations, notably railroad companies, the
business of the country is largely in the control of a few monopolists,
who rule and grow rich in spite of the laws of political economy.
Promissory notes, printed with pictures on fine paper, have been
substituted for the money of the Constitution, and our young people are
growing up with the notion that this rag currency is a legitimate
measure of value and a legal solvent of debts.

So marked has been this class legislation in the interest of capital,
that a Senator of the United States, Mr. Wallace of Pennsylvania, says,
"From the beginning of the present Administration down to the
adjournment of Congress in August, 1876, every financial statute has
had but one purpose, and that purpose to increase the value of the
bonded indebtedness of the Government." Statistics show how insecure is
business, on what vicious principles it is transacted, and how rapidly
property is concentrating in the hands of a few. In 1874 there were
5,830 failures for a total of $155,000,000, and in 1875 the failures
increased to 7,740, aggregating a loss of $201,000,000. In both North
and South there has been a frightful increase of indebtedness by towns
and cities, counties and States--thirty-eight States owe an aggregate
of $382,000,000--so that taxpayers groan in purse and spirit, and are
deeply concerned to find a way of honest payment.

Taxation has been and is a potent instrument of wrong and corruption.
To pay the national debt increased taxation was, of course, necessary
and proper, but taxation should have been adjusted to the rights of
honest creditors and the lessened pecuniary ability of taxpayers. The
Federal and local taxes of the last eleven years, according to high
authority, amount to not less than $7,500,000,000. Never in modern
times was revenue collected in such a complicated and ruinous manner.
Mr. Curtis tells us one-fourth of the revenue is lost in the
collection. If the collection and expenditure of revenue be the tests
for determining the wisdom of a government, then ours is not "the best
the world ever saw."

Extravagant expenditure is closely connected with enormous revenues.
Economy of administration is a lost art. Federal expenditure in 1860,
exclusive of payment of public debt, was $1.94 per head. In 1870 it was
$3.52 per head, and in 1875 $3.38. The $4,500,000,000 of Federal
taxes[7] of the last eleven years have not been exclusively
appropriated to reduction of debt and defraying necessary expenditures.
Officials have been needlessly multiplied, jobs have been created,
peculation is common, and millions have been squandered on contracts
made with hungry partisans. Such an exhaustion of national resources is
governmental robbery. In the purer days it was a political maxim that
no more money was to be taken from the people than was necessary for
the constitutional and economical wants of the Government. Large
revenues and large expenditures are mutually recreative. Mr. Calhoun,
the most sagacious and philosophical statesman of this century, said,
in 1839, "I am disposed to regard it as a political maxim in free
States, that an impoverished treasury, once in a generation at least,
is almost indispensable to the preservation of their institutions and
liberty." All experience shows that excessive revenue and large
expenditures increase the patronage of the government and corrupt
public and private morals. Some palliation may be found in the fact
that wars are demoralizing, necessitate much assumption of power, and
that our conflict was gigantic; but after all due allowances the
corruptions in America must find a parallel in that period of English
history when the sovereign was the pensioner of a foreign potentate.
The centennial anniversary of our republic finds a record so scandalous
that all honest men blush, and the Fourth of July eulogists have to
make the humiliating confession of much of vice and shame in our
national life, of a decline from the former high standard of political
and moral purity, and of the blister of corruption in high places, upon
Executive and judiciary, upon laws, and on the acts of prominent
officials. (See speeches of Dr. Storrs and Hon. C. F. Adams.)

      [7] This is somewhat in excess of the actual amount, which is,
      however, quite large enough, $3,809,722,765; viz., customs,
      $1,973,589,621; internal revenue, $1,826,185,813; direct tax,
      $9,947,331. It is well to remember, too, that the expenditures of
      the Government have decreased one-half in this period; viz., from
      $520,809,417, in 1866, to $258,469,797 in 1876. Of this decrease,
      thirty-three millions is in the interest on the public
      debt.--ED. GALAXY.

As cause and consequence of oppressive taxes, and wasteful and corrupt
extravagance, I may instance the centripetal tendencies of the Federal
Government. The patriot must deprecate the rapid strides toward
consolidation. Our government was designed as a government of
clearly-defined limitations upon power. It is now practically absolute.
In its complex character, a division of powers mutually exclusive
betwixt Federal and State governments, "divisibility of sovereignty,"
as some phrase it, was contemplated. Now the States are provinces
dependent on, submissive to, the central head, just as the Colonies
were looked upon, prior to our independence, as a species of
feudatories for the benefit of the mother country. By popular vote, by
elastic constructions or palpable violations of the Constitution, by
unprecedented assumptions, our Federal system has been revolutionized.
It is the height of absurdity to talk of the restrictions of a written
Constitution, when a dominant majority interprets finally that
instrument, and there are no remedies to protect against invasion or
encroachment.[8] It is a mere glittering generality to boast of a
constitutional republic, if a President can violate the organic law
with impunity, or if Congress is restrained in its assumptions only by
its own sense of justice. Much recent executive, legislative, and
judicial action has tended to absorb State rights and prerogatives. Mr.
Boutwell's proposition to remand a State to territorial pupilage would
be but the legal enactment and the logical sequence of what has had the
enthusiastic approval of a large number of citizens. Encroachments have
been so numerous and violent, submission has been so tame, that
governors are coolly set aside on the demand of a petty marshal, and
legislatures on the bidding of Mr. Jones. Once States were supposed to
have the right of eminent domain; to have exclusive control of
education, of litigation among its own citizens; to determine the
elective franchise; to regulate the relations of parent and child,
husband and wife, guardian and ward; but that was in the purer days of
the republic, when States were not mere counties, but political
communities, with, a large residuum of undelegated powers. The earlier
amendments to the Constitution imposed checks and limitations upon the
general Government, because of the watchful jealousy on the part of the
States of their sovereignty and independence. Following the tendency to
centralize, to despotize, the late amendments are in the direction of
consolidation, and take away from the States what was once universally
regarded as their _exclusive_ prerogative in reference to the elective
franchise. Now, under amendments and "_appropriate_ legislation for
carrying them into effect," the _national_ Government can control
voting, make a registration of voters, and very soon, if there be no
arrest of tyranny, the ballot box will be under the guardianship of
Presidential appointees. Federal election laws thus degrade States into
petty municipalities and subvert liberty.

      [8] Not only that government is tyrannical which is tyrannically
      administered, but all governments are tyrannical which have not
      in their constitution a sufficient security against arbitrary
      power.--_Burgh's Pol. Disquis._, 378.

Passing from these grievances, applicable to the whole Union, I
approach what is to my apprehension the most unmatchable outrage ever
inflicted by a civilized people. Some acts, like the partition of
Poland, stand out on the pages of history as disgraceful national
crimes; but most of them shade into minor offences compared with the
crime-breeding, race-endangering, liberty-imperiling savagery of
conferring the right of suffrage upon the <DW64>s _en masse_. In other
countries liberty has been not so much a creation as a growth. In
conservative England, suffrage has been slowly, temperately enlarged,
always preserving restrictions so as not to commit the destinies of the
kingdom to an ignorant mob. Giving the elective franchise to the
suddenly emancipated <DW64>s, placing the government of States in the
hands of such a class, wholly unprepared by education or experience, if
not such a repeating crime, would be a farce for the ages. Every person
of the least intelligence knows that generally the voting of the
<DW64>s is a mere sham. He votes as a machine. He is the tool of the
demagogue, the pawn of a political party. That men with no intelligent
understanding of rights and duties, unable to read, untrained in
political affairs, wholly ignorant of the commonest matters pertaining
to government, superstitious, credulous, victims of impostors, paying
no capitation tax, should decide upon grave questions of organic or
statute law, upon the financial or foreign policy of the country,
should control counties, cities, States, is an offence that will stink
in the nostrils of coming centuries. What has occurred since the
Presidential election is demonstration that both parties at the North
regard unlimited <DW64> suffrage as subversive of the principle of
reliance upon moral worth and clear intelligence. The presence of the
military in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, the hurrying to and
fro of partisans, the secret conclaves and cabalistic telegrams, the
jealous superintendence of the counting of votes, the criminations and
recriminations in reference to fraud and intimidation, are the
legitimate results of the attempt to sustain a party by such extreme
medicine. Our novel experiment of free government cannot endure many
more such tests. Prof. Huxley, speaking to Americans during his late
visit, said: "You and your descendants have to ascertain whether the
great mass of people will hold together under the forms of a republic
and the despotic reality of universal suffrage; whether centralization
will get the better without the actual or disguised monarchy; whether
shifting corruption is better than a permanent bureaucracy." It need
not take long to work out the problem if the ballot box is to be
controlled by ignorance. Sometimes we are lectured to be grateful to
the North for its magnanimity toward the South. Legislation does not
sustain the self-eulogy. It is alleged that mercy was shown to "rebels
and traitors." Passing over the _petitio principii_ in the phraseology,
a thousand times better it would have been to have hung President, and
Cabinet, and every Congressman, and every general, than to have
fastened upon us this incurable cancer, eating up the life-blood of the
Union.

In the South, the administration of government in some instances has
been marked by oppressive tyranny and open corruption. Incompetent and
dishonest men have been appointed to positions, and with full knowledge
of their wrong doings have been retained to accomplish party ends. This
injustice and tyranny have demoralized somewhat our own people. Tyranny
always corrupts. A lower standard of morality is first tolerated, and
then becomes popular. Lax motives of honor are taking the place of
chivalrous integrity. Payment of honest debts is evaded. Grinding
poverty has made some unduly covetous of riches. Enormous taxation,
selfish and immoral legislation, have partially undermined the
foundations of private virtue. The ease and frequency with which the
rewards of honest toil are filched away give insecurity to property and
take away much of the stimulus to diligent toil. Some have sunk into
despair, while others, with more of unsubdued energy, are willing for
almost anything to turn up which gives promise or possibility of
change.

The South in seeking relief need not delude herself by reliance upon
any _party_ to reform evils and restore prosperity. Some difficulties
are independent of party action, or even political policy, and have
their origin in more general causes. A portion of the commercial and
financial troubles is probably due to some "wider misadjustment of
labor and capital" than can be rectified by one country, and requires
broad and sound statesmanship. The Republican party is held together,
in part, by the "cohesive power of public plunder," or compacted into
unity by distrust or hatred of the South. The Democratic party, as
unsound as its antagonist on the vital questions of tariff, currency,
finances, and the character of the General Government, has practised
the fatal maxim that "to the victors belong the spoils," and, in
special localities, has been implicated in corruption. The history of
parties in England and the United States shows that any party long in
power will become corrupt. To rely upon any party, or the wisdom or
sense of justice of any government, for protection of property or
guaranty of civil or religious liberty, is to lean upon a broken reed;
for rights never enforce themselves, and are soon gone unless sustained
by more potent means than the justice or honor of those in power. A
President is impotent of himself, soon passes into private life, and is
at best but a man.

Alike futile is the notion, sometimes finding audible expression, that
an arbitrary government or a monarchy would bring relief. Our fathers,
in throwing off a kingly government and setting up a constitutional
republic, acted in the full light thrown on popular rights by all
preceding history. They did not live in prehistoric or barbaric times,
but acted with rare wisdom and patriotism. More sagacious men never
planned a government, and blindly and suicidally would we act to prefer
or accept a monarchy. The centuries of the past are eloquent with
wisdom and plethoric with instructive examples on this subject. God has
never given any exclusive rights to special families, and all
historical records confirm, with the Scriptures, the folly of choosing
a king. How often in such governments is public policy dependent on
royal whims, on palace intrigues, on the taste or caprice of the
boudoir! Monarchy has been the rule of violence; inequality and
centralization are of its essence. The rebellion in England and the
French revolution were the long-delayed protests of outraged peoples
against ruinous taxation and hurtful tyranny and cankerous corruption.
When the disgraceful crimes by men in high places were exposed last
year European journals made themselves merry over the corruptions which
they alleged were the legitimate outgrowths of democratic institutions.
In the first place, our Government is not a democracy, and never was
intended to be. Secondly, monarchies are not in a condition to cast the
first stone. Italy, Spain, Austria, Russia, and France have had
corruption enough to make them blush. As England is held up for our
copying, and is less censurable than the others, I cite a few instances
from her history. May, in "Constitutional History of England," Vol. I.,
p. 299 says: "Our Parliamentary history has been tainted with this
disgrace of vulgar bribes for political support from the reign of
Charles II. far into that of George III." For shamefulness of public
life Charles II. stands without a rival. He was a pensioner of the King
of France, and applied to his own privy purse large sums of money which
had been appropriated by Parliament for carrying on the war. The
equipoise designed to be secured in the National Legislature by the
House of Commons was defeated because the House was at once dependent
and corrupt. Borough nominations, places, pensions, contracts, shares
in loans and lotteries, and even pecuniary bribes, secured the
ascendency of Crown and Lords in the councils and government of the
State. Sunderland, Secretary of State under James II., stipulated to
receive 25,000 crowns from the King of France for services to be
rendered. Walpole's and Pelham's administrations were notorious for the
very audacity of their corruptions. In the reign of Anne Parliamentary
corruption was extensive and unblushing. Sir John Trevor, the Speaker,
accepted a bribe and did the dirty work of bribing other members. In
the reign of George I., during his first Parliament, 271 members held
offices, pensions, and sinecures; in the first of George II., 257. In
1776 Lord Chatham accused the ministers of "servility, incapacity,
corruption." Macaulay says Lord North's administration was supported by
vile and corrupt means, and the King, George III., was not only
cognizant of Parliamentary bribery, but advised it and contributed
money to it. Although there has been much improvement in the character
and purity of the public men, yet as late as 1829 the pension list was
above L750,000.

The principle of a representative constitutional republic is right.
Much of the evil which afflicts us is the result of a departure from
our original system; is an accident rather than essential, and is
certainly not to be cured by a monarchical government.

In suggesting some remedies or palliatives for present ills it is not
needful to startle by novelties. Truth is generally commonplace,
honesty always. A return to justice and right, frugality and economy,
as applicable to the body politic and to individual life, a recurrence
to fundamental principles, are of prime importance.

As a people we must, if possible, preserve what remains of the
Constitution and of the federative system. Sober, honest purpose can
reform some abuses. Imperious necessity will compel the North to take
effective steps for restoring the violated purity of the Government. If
present tendencies are not arrested, liberty will be sacrificed. As the
tendency of every government is to excess, a constitution is more or
less perfect according as it is full of limitations of authority. The
grant and the distribution of public functions should be accompanied
with safeguards. Our Federal Constitution cautiously delegates to
various public functionaries certain powers of government, defines and
limits the powers thus delegated, and reserves to the people of the
States their sovereignty over all things not delegated. Our organic law
thus seeks to restrain the Government within narrow and prescribed
limits, to guard weaker and dissimilar interests against inequality, to
interpose efficient checks, to prevent the stronger from oppressing the
weaker. Ours is a government under a written compact, and _in its
purity the best ever devised_. The war between the States is much
misunderstood. It was a gigantic conflict of _political_ ideas, a
controversy, not for or between dynasties, but on the nature and
character and power of the Federal Government. Three things were
settled by the war:

1. Emancipation and citizenship of the <DW64>s.

2. The surrender of any claim of resort to secession in case of dispute
as to powers of the Government, or as a remedy for violated compact.

3. The recognition of such a person as a citizen of the United States,
independent of citizenship in a State.

Besides these, nothing else of a political character was settled, and
the second was determined only by the stern arbitrament of war. The
right of search was, however, similarly adjusted, and the treaty of
peace effected at Ghent, on December 24, 1814, contains no allusion to
the _casus belli_. There are few, if any, who do not rejoice at the
accomplishment of the first. The mode of emancipation was not such as
we would have chosen; but as the problem baffled the wisdom of all the
statesmen of the past, we may as well be grateful that African slavery
no longer exists to perplex and confound patriots and Christians. The
opinions of the framers of the Constitution were reversed on these
three subjects by the war. All else remains intact, or can be put _in
statu quo ante bellum_. The Constitution was not abolished. No vital
principle of the Federal system, State interposition excepted, was
destroyed. "The invasions of the Constitution have resulted from
administrative abuses," says Governor Jenkins, "and not from structural
changes in the government. This distinction should be kept constantly
in view. In a complex government like our own let it never be conceded
that a power once usurped is thenceforth a power transferred, nor that
a right once suppressed is for that cause a right extinguished, nor
that a Constitution a thousand times violated becomes a Constitution
abolished." The war did not decide that the powers of the Federal
Government were indefinite and unlimited. That is subsequent
usurpation. The war did not decide that State lines were to be
obliterated, State flags torn down, State governments reduced to
municipalities, and the elements of civil authority fused into one
conglomerate and centralized mass. Whatever may be the fate or the
construction of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, they cannot
mean the concentration of all power at Washington and the complete
control of the States by the general Government. Our Constitution-makers
could not have contemplated political irresponsibility; that the
minority should be at the mercy of the majority; and that the residuary
mass of undelegated powers was to be swallowed up by the delegated.
The fathers felt that no body of men could be safely entrusted with
unrestrained authority, and they knew that "all restrictions on
authority unsustained by an equal antagonist power must for ever prove
wholly inefficient in practice." That a mere party majority can rule as
they please, is hateful despotism. A majority, unhindered by any rule
but their discretion, is anything but free government; for human nature
cannot endure unlimited power, and bodies of men are not more discreet
in their tyranny than individual tyrants. The distinction between the
granting and the executing, the Constitution-making and the law-making
power, is to be reaffirmed. The general Government and the States have
separate and distinct objects and peculiar interests--"the States,
acting separately, representing and protecting the local and peculiar
interests, and acting jointly, through one general government,
representing and protecting the interests of the whole; and thus
perfecting, by an admirable but simple arrangement, the great principle
of representation and responsibility, without which no government can
be free or just."--_VI. Calhoun_, 66.

We need civil service reform in the United States, States, and cities,
reducing the number, increasing the competency and responsibility of
office-holders, and abolishing the pestiferous maxim that to the
victors in a party contest belong of right the offices of the country.
We need rigid economy, public and private, civic purity, honest
administration. To take a citizen's money, except for the just and
economical administration of affairs, is governmental robbery. Economy
is not possible in Federal, or State, or municipal governments, with
high taxes. Men will steal. The Bible says that the love of money is
the root of all evil. Handling large sums of the people's money is a
temptation before which many have yielded. "Economy and accountability
are virtues without which free and popular governments cannot long
endure."

Closely allied is the good old homely virtue of honesty. Under the
temptation of loss of property, men have sought to accumulate by any
methods and get back to ante-secession pecuniary condition. Public
corruption has been contagious. Men contract debts loosely and
improvidently, and wipe out easily by bankrupt laws. Tweedism has
fastened itself upon elections. False registration, ballot-box
stuffing, the machinery and appliances for fraud, are not the exclusive
practice of one section or party. "Cheating never thrives." It is as
true in politics as in religion that there is no good in sin. It is
essentially and always evil. Party is a great tyrant at best, and the
caucus system enslaves men, and few have the courage to disobey its
edicts and encounter its vengeance; but when party to the terrible
enginery of a caucus, controlled by the vulgar and the vicious, adds
fraud and bribery, woe be to our republic and to our civilization!

An indispensable factor to the product of the South's upbuilding is the
introduction of a more healthful public opinion as a positive element
in politics. It ought to be an ever-present and a permanent force in
elections and the choice of candidates. Any thing like union of church
and State, or the prescribing of a Christian profession as a test for
office, is not to be thought of, except to resist the first hint at
such a possibility; but such opposition should not prevent moral and
Christian men from demanding honesty in officials, fairness and
openness in party machinery, and common decency and morality in
candidates. In cities, political preferment and success in nominating
caucuses are largely the result of party machinery by "pot-house
politicians," by grog shops and gambling saloons, and by men not
conspicuous for virtue or intelligence. So foul is the atmosphere of
party politics, to such dishonoring and degrading practices are
applicants for office often reduced, so necessary is it to spend
money corruptly and to pension the _claqueurs_ and intriguers and
wire-pullers, that the virtuous and patriotic are often disgusted, and
many Christians are unwilling to peril spiritual health and life by
contact with such impurities. The complications and "trimming"
expediences often deter the pure and refined from political
associations, and those who control American politics are quite content
to dispense with the presence, except at the ballot-box, of those who
ought to give tone and direction to public opinion. Moral character,
sobriety, decency, chastity, are not the elements of availability in
the selection of candidates. Drunkards, profligates, connivers at
fraud, plotters, are apparently as acceptable for nomination and
election as those whose intelligence and virtues should commend them to
public approval. Macaulay has a sentiment which ought to be printed on
satin and hung up in every house to be memorized by every voter: "The
practice of begging for votes is absurd, pernicious, and altogether at
variance with the true principles of representative government. The
suffrage of an elector ought not to be asked, or to be given, as a
personal favor. It is as much for the interests of constituents to
choose well as it can be for the interest of a candidate to be
chosen.... A man who surrenders his vote to caresses and supplications
forgets his duty as much as if he sold it for a bank-note. I hope to
see the day when an Englishman (an American) will think it as great an
affront to be courted and fawned upon in his capacity of elector as in
his capacity of juryman."

              Not lightly fall
              Beyond recall
    The written scrolls a breath can float:
              The crowning fact,
              The kingliest act
    Of freedom is the freeman's vote.

The too common practice in all portions of the Union honors vice and
gives scant encouragement to noblest qualities. If a community bestow
its rewards and honors on inferior or vicious men, higher qualities
will decay and perish or seek other fields. If honors and rewards be
allotted to the noble and the good, the demand will develop
intelligence and nobility. In America there is lamentably a plentiful
lack of great men. Whatever may be the demand, the supply is
inadequate. Woe to the country, said Metternich, whose condition and
institutions no longer produce great men to manage its affairs. The
country needs men of earnest convictions and noble aims, "to whom power
is not a possession to be grasped, but a trust to be fulfilled." A
nation can have no purer wealth than the stainless honor of its public
men. The philosophic Macintosh enunciated almost a maxim when he said,
"There can be no scheme or measure as beneficial to the State as the
mere existence of men who would not do a base act for any public
advantage." By some, politics seems to be regarded as a game in which
the sharpest are to win. Federal, State, or municipal government can
never be safely committed to any party or men as the result of fraud or
connivance at fraud.

Since the Federal Government dispensed with a period of probation as
preparatory to suffrage, and refused to leave the whole question of
suffrage to the States where it properly belongs, the presence of the
<DW64>s becomes to the South fearfully ominous of peril. Giving the
right to vote to the ignorant and incapable is only a part of the evils
associated with the inhabitancy of such a multitude of citizens of a
different and inferior race. Such is the climate of the South, the
fertility of soil, the ease of bare subsistence, that little labor and
but scant clothing and shelter are needed by the <DW64>s, with their
thriftlessness, and without taste or desire for any large measure of
artificial comforts, and with few incentives to patient industry. Their
presence will prevent any early or large immigration of Europeans. The
removal of the <DW64>s is an obvious suggestion, but the policy pursued
toward the Indians, undesirable, as coinhabitants, but as capable as
<DW64>s of free government, seems impracticable from want of territory
for colonization and because of the large number of the <DW64>s. This
displacement at present may be impossible, and would certainly be
tedious and expensive. Close contact of the two races becomes a
necessity of this cooeccupancy of territory. The Southern white people
should cultivate kindliest feelings and make wise and strenuous efforts
for the improvement of their former slaves. Already the whites bear the
expense of educating the blacks. In the last six years the expenditure
in Virginia for " schools" has amounted to near $1,668,000, and
it would be safe to say that one and a half millions of this sum were
paid by white citizens. So also we take care of their blind, and deaf,
and dumb, and idiotic, pay for the trial and safe-keeping of their
criminals, and bear the burdens of government. Impartial justice should
be administered without reference to race, color, or previous
condition; freedom and the right to hold and inherit property should be
guaranteed; protection against all violence or wrong should be
afforded; but there should be formed no party nor other affiliations
which may tend to efface the line of social separation, or ignore the
predestined distinction of color. The attempt in Africa to Europeanize
the <DW64> and ignore his idiosyncrasies as a race has utterly failed.
The races here should be kept from abnormal admixture. Rigid laws,
springing from and enforced by an inflexible public opinion, should
prevent intermarriage. Miscegenation will degrade the Caucasian. Red
and white deteriorate, _a fortiori_, white and black. The fusion
would lower the white race in the scale of civilization, of moral and
mental power, and would reproduce the ignorance, superstition,
priestcraft, and chronic revolutions of Mexico with her mongrel
population.

A felt want of the South is the restoration of old-fashioned love of
country. A sore need is to feel in our souls, as a passion, that this
is _our_ country; that _we_ have part and lot in it; and to be
deeply interested in its welfare and perpetuity. To keep alive
animosities is unchristian. Brooke found it impossible to frame an
indictment against a whole people. It ought to be equally hard to
involve a whole party, or geographical section, in sweeping accusations
of injustice, and tyranny, and fraud. Strong as is the provocation at
times to bitterness and hatred, the South should not cherish
resentment, but rather seek that which makes for peace and
reconciliation. It is better, as far as possible, to obliterate
unpleasant memories, to practise toleration and forgiveness, to
cultivate a genuine patriotism, ardent love for this ancient birth land
of the free. It is easy by cheap rhetoric to open wounds afresh and
inflame hostility; but every true son and daughter of the South should
strive not to transmit a legacy of hate, nor make our land a Poland or
an Ireland. The noble ambition ought rather to be to lift up the South
and the United States to the level of its privileges, and in the future
to harmonize the ideal and the actual. The South needs the development
of her material resources, the diversification of industry, the
construction of permanent highways, the power of machinery in its
manifold applications, sounder notions of labor, rigid economy and
responsibility in all offices. The whole country should encourage
universal education in universities, colleges, academies, and public
schools; elevate the tone of a free press; preserve an able and
independent judiciary; insist upon juster and more enlarged ideas of
official duty; maintain the principles of constitutional liberty and
absolute freedom of religion, and above all, a spirit of subordination
to the divine law, and a reverent acknowledgment of Him in whose hands
are the destinies of nations.

J. L. M. CURRY.




DRIFT-WOOD.




TALK ABOUT NOVELS.


IF the St. Louis preacher who lately tilted against novels chose
judiciously his points of attack, he presumably won a victory. His own
Sunday-school library is very likely filled with wishy-washy fiction
for bright young minds that might be harvesting works worth
remembering, whether of romance or history. The prudent Quakers of
Germantown rejoice in a free library without a novel, and a librarian
who never read one. Indiscriminate novel reading is as sorry a tipple
as addiction to newspapers, which also, in fact, are largely works of
the imagination. Besides, the moral of even a goody-good story may be
ingeniously twisted by perverse readers. The other day a lad was
indicted in England for breaking into the Rev. Mr. Sherratt's
schoolroom, where he stole some books and cake, trudging off with them
in a wheelbarrow at midnight. He was an old pupil, the son of
respectable parents; in his pocket was a book entitled "Industry
Without Honesty," and his ambition was to become a _Chevalier
d'Industrie_ of the sort he had been reading about. It is said that
Dumas's story, "Monsieur Fromentin," so spread the rage for lottery
gambling that the author in great grief bought up and burned every copy
he could lay hands on. For generations English youth have turned
footpads or thieves, in emulation of Sir Richard Turpin, Lord John
Sheppard, and other knights of the road whose careers are set forth in
the shining pages of biographical romance. French youngsters have a
like exemplar in Louis Cartouche. Two San Francisco lads are now in
jail for trying to rob a stagecoach, in Claude Duval style--luckless
little victims, knocked down by the passengers in a way not recorded in
the novels that had ruined them. Lads are for ever running away to sea
in imitation of some Jack Halyard or Ben the Bo's'n; and surely we know
that urchins of all ages and sizes are picked up on their way west to
"fight Injuns," thanks to their dogs'-eared dime novels narrating the
prowess of Buffalo Bills and Texas Jacks. Boyish sympathy goes out
toward the Paul Cliffords, the Arams of romance. I remember, as if it
were of yesterday, the sad fate of Red Rover, and how the overwrought
little reader, when he came to the hero's death, put by the book that
he could not finish, and walked about in the twilight of a Saturday
whose hours had slipped unnoticed away, inconsolable with sympathy and
grief.

But the preacher need not rest his case on "Mike Martin," or "Rinaldo
Rinaldini," or "The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main," or any of the
predatory heroes embalmed in story for the improvement of youth, since
he has also the field of poisonous French romance to complain of, with
its imitations in our tongue. In short, he can indict in a lump the bad
books of fiction, and against the good he may charge that they exhaust
our tears and passion on imaginary distresses.

Still, nothing would then have been said of novels which could not be
said in a degree of the newspapers, the drama, the law, the pulpit
itself. We must not judge them by their worst fruits. "Pamela" was
praised from the pulpits of its day, although, to be sure, it would
hardly now be given to young women. I well remember, when prowling
about the homestead bookcase, coming upon Rowland Hill's "Village
Dialogues." Their characters were fictitious, the distresses imaginary;
still I presume the St. Louis preacher would not object to "Socinianism
Unmasked," the "Evils of Seduction," and the "Awful Death of Alderman
Greedy." Everybody sees how fiction is a weapon of philanthropy. Christ
himself taught by parables. Clergymen resort to romance to achieve what
the sermon cannot do, and men of science to achieve what the essay
cannot do. Religious newspapers publish serial novels. The
anti-slavery, temperance, prison reform, and poor law agitations owe
immeasurably to novels. Daniel Webster said of Dickens that he had done
more to ameliorate the condition of the British poor than all the
statesmen that ever sat in Parliament. And this present wonderful
movement of the Jews to recover Palestine--what does it not owe to a
novel?

A noble influence, too, comes from some novels that do not aim to be
_doctrinaire_ or proselyting. A story of Thackeray is a tonic to the
scorn of base action; a story of Charles Kingsley is a trumpet call to
Christian duty; a story of George Eliot is an inspiration to high
thought and honorable living. Some of her sisterhood are probably
capable of uneasily disliking George Eliot because she has a depth of
intelligence quite beyond their plummet, which the world admires; but I
should think that most women would be proud of the strength and vast
influence of one who, in succeeding to the royal line of feminine
novelists, has carried its triumphs far beyond anything achieved by
Miss Burney, Jane Austin, Miss Porter, Miss Martineau, Charlotte
Bronte, and Georges Sand.

We lay aside some authors with a sense of fulness that will not let the
attention be immediately distracted to other persons and things. The
greatest books put the mind at once into a fruitful state, as if it had
received seed of instantly bearing power. Less great books may still
give us the desire to imitate their heroes or follow their maxims. Only
dead books neither beget new thoughts nor incite by examples. As the
characters of children are partly moulded from their surroundings, so
the imaginary friends of fiction are mental associates for good or ill.
We take heart and hope from the novelist's scenes, or are so wrought
upon by his personages that these phantoms move us more than most real
men and women. If all we know of Adam Bede is what we read of him, pray
what more do we know of Czar Peter? Instead of lamenting the
fascination of the story-wright, let us rather plead for its noble use,
saying of him, as a great and generous brother writer said of Dickens:
"What a place it is to hold in the affections of men! What an awful
responsibility hanging over a writer! What man holding such a place,
and knowing that his words go forth to vast congregations of
mankind--to grown folks, to their children, and perhaps to their
children's children--but must think of his calling with a solemn and
humble heart! May love and truth guide such a man always!"

Most of us have known an era in life when we looked down on novels like
Miss Muloch's, with their gentle refrain: "He was so handsome, how
could she help loving him? She was so beautiful, what could he do but
adore her?" Better worth reading were stories of frontier trails,
knightly tourneys, chases of smuggler and corvette--those stimulating
feasts that we swallowed rather too hastily for health, and which, I
grant the St. Louis preacher, formed so rich a mixture that nightmare
sometimes followed a _pate_ of adventure and murder on which we had too
bountifully supped.

Yet who would willingly forget the terror of that moment when Crusoe
discovers the footprints on the lonely shore? I fancy many a lad has
borne testimony to the genius of De Foe by popping his curly pate
beneath the bed clothes at that awful juncture, in as great fright as
if he himself had just seen the track in the sand. Or perhaps, living
by the seaside, he has rowed his wherry to some neighboring bunch of
rocks, to take possession of it, Crusoe fashion, bribing some less
enthusiastic companion to act the role of Friday, until, unworthy of
his faithful prototype, the extemporized Friday sulks and throws off
his allegiance. I lately heard that Crusoe's isle was now tenanted by
industrious German colonists, who had planted and stocked it, not like
Robinson, but under all agricultural advantages, and that Juan
Fernandez was a regular entrepot for whale ships. Think of it! Yankee
tars revictual where the lonely mariner saw cannibals feasting! But it
is only Selkirk's domain that is thus invaded; Crusoe's right there is
none to dispute; safe in the keeping of genius, his monarchy can no
more be annexed by filibuster or colonist than the magic isle of
Prospero.

Musing on popular novels, one is struck by the changes of fashion in
fiction. Who now reads "Clarissa," which Dr. Johnson pronounced the
first book of the world for knowledge of the human heart; which
D'Alembert styled unapproachably greater than any romance ever written
in any language; for which Diderot predicted an immortality as
illustrious as that of Homer? Who reads "Cecilia," which Burke sat up
all night to read? The romances over which our great grandmothers
simpered and sighed are to our age intolerable bores. Reade, not
Richardson, is the man for our money; Miss Braddon, not Miss Burney, is
the rage at the circulating libraries. Whither are gone those stories
that a few years ago could not be printed fast enough--"The
Lamplighter," "Hot Corn," and the rest of that brood? They are hidden
under dust in the alcoves, or have been carted off to the pulp mill.
Could mind of man have fancied, an oblivion so swift for those
favorites of the public? Could mortal ken have foretold its present
fate for the "Wide, Wide World"?--a story now quite dropped out of
sight, but once the town's rage, and whose heroine I remember as a sort
of inexhaustible human watering cart with the tear tap always turned
on.

What has become, too, of those learned novels, patterned after
Bulwer--extracts from Lempriere in dialogue form, sandwiched with
layers of low life? "Surely, my dear niece, you remember what Athenaeaus
quotes on this subject from the Leontium of Hermesianax of Colophon,
the friend of Philetas?" "Perfectly, aunt, and methinks mention is also
made of the same elegiac poem in Pausanias, and again in Antoninus
Liberalis, the latter saying," etc. Where, I say, are the novels in
that vein, with their charming mixture of murder, mythology, and
metaphysics? They have their run, strut their brief hour, and give way
to some "Madcap Violet" or "Helen's Babies." Never fear a lack of fresh
novels. If the lads lose Mayne Reid, they find Jules Verne. The secret
is an open one: the novel is the best paid branch of literature--always
excepting Mr. Gladstone's pamphlets. Times have changed since "Evelina"
was sold for L20.

Perhaps of all novelists Victor Hugo receives the largest earnings for
a single work. One of his clerical enemies, Mgr. de Segur, has bitterly
attacked him for his gains--"$100,000 for 'Les Miserables' alone," said
the critic in angry extravagance. But Hugo's admirers will not grudge
his gains.

The English have put a premium on prolix novels by giving them a
regulation length of just three volumes, to be cold for a guinea and a
half. This droll uniformity has much less basis of reason than the old
custom of writing tragedies and comedies just five acts long; for there
is sense in making a play last out an evening. Trouble to writer and
weariness to reader must come of spinning a novel against space,
overlaying a plot with trivial incidents, and stuffing a story with
padding, merely to reach a standard of length both arbitrary and
absurd. Yet prodigious was the patience of our novel-reading ancestry
prior to Fielding. The "Grand Cyrus" was issued in ten volumes,
"Clarissa Harlowe" in eight, and sometimes an heroic romance reached
twelve. Jules Janin puts Richardson on Shakespeare's level, and modern
French readers appreciate "Clarissa" more than English--but they get it
abridged. Mr. Dallas, following Janin, has abridged the famous novel
with care for English readers, too, and a more recent editor likewise
aims to evade its monotony by striking out "tediously unnecessary
passages and unimportant details," though old-fashioned readers may
still like to take "Clarissa" in all its prolixity. As to the romances
that preceded it, they seem to our age duller than any ever
written--"huge folios of inanity," said Sir Walter, "over which our
ancestors yawned themselves to sleep." I warrant their descendants
never yawned over "Guy Mannering."

Still, modern novels as a class are more apt to be voluble than prolix.
Story-writers like Trollope, Mrs. Edwards, and McCarthy amaze us at the
ductility which the English tongue assumes for them. They seem less to
compose than to _reel off_ their pages. To Trollope's free-and-easy
flow is there any stop? None, surely, through mental exhaustion. His
bright loquacity and productiveness remind one of that bewitched salt
mill in the story of Nicholas, which ground on for ever, without effort
or wearying, until it had salted the whole sea.




PRIMOGENITURE AND PUBLIC BEQUESTS.


SOMETHING was said, in a former "Driftwood" essay, regarding the
frequent dedications of private fortunes, in America, to public uses.
We see a philanthropic millionaire stripping himself, even in hale
life, of all his wealth save a slender annuity and the portions
reserved for his heirs and legatees; or we see the bulk of a great
fortune given to charities in a testamentary bequest.

Certainly Americans, though often overreaching in making a fortune, are
proverbially lavish in distributing it. New England, the home of
'cuteness in trade, is extraordinary for the number and extent of its
charitable bequests. Americans may do things that an Englishman will
not in getting the best of a bargain, but quite as quickly as the
average Englishman, they give the whole fruits of the sharp trade to
some sufferer. Unscrupulous in a contest of wits, they yet have bowels
of compassion beyond many other nations, are perhaps the least cruel of
all, and have made American private endowments of educational and
charitable institutions famous the world over.

But can we put all the credit of these endowments to the score of
national character? Is not some part traceable simply to the abolition
of the old privileges and customs of primogeniture? I fancy that were
it American usage to pass the bulk of great estates to a succession of
eldest sons or to the nearest heir, we should see fewer great bequests
to the public. "The heir" would ever be an overshadowing figure in the
rich man's plans; whereas now, if kith and kin be well provided for, no
one finds it strange that the bulk of an estate like Mr. Peabody's or
Mr. Lick's or Mr. Cornell's should go to public education and charity.

Our English-speaking race, as we all know, has ever had a thirst for
posthumous power; so bent were our ancestors on tying up their estates
in perpetuity that when the law came in to forbid it many were the
devices to prolong the grasp. Privileges of primogeniture are still
jealously guarded in England, for the sake of accumulating family
honors and wealth. Even in America older brothers sometimes oddly think
themselves sole managers of the parental estate--a fancy due, perhaps,
to the influence of our English derivation. We see its traces where
even an estimable oldest brother, as self-appointed head of the family,
deals with the inherited estate as if it were all his own: prescribes
the household expenses, "invests" the portions of others as may seem
good unto him, loses them in his speculations without qualm of
conscience, or doles out from his gains to his younger brothers and
sisters with the air of a munificent prince giving bounties.
Paterfamilias was eminently just in taking him into the historic firm
on a third share, but it would be preposterous to do the same by
brother Tom. Let Tom and Harry, after a few years' longer probation of
clerkship than Primus needed, be generously taken in; but let them
divide a third of the partnership between them. Primogeniture, I
repeat, still leaves its curious traces with us in these unpleasant
delusions of the oldest male child; but the abolition of its ancient
privileges, and the habit of distributing fortunes and opportunities
share and share alike among equal heirs or legatees, have accustomed
many rich men besides childless millionaires to sparing a generous
portion for charities and colleges. This view is strengthened by
observing that the famous dedications of private fortunes to public
uses are made by men who have earned their wealth, not inherited it.
Inherited wealth is more likely to be transmitted to its owner's heirs
than broken up for public benefactions. And so, in fine, we may trace a
part of our national celebrity for public bequests to the lack of
primogenital laws and of any social system of retaining the bulk of
family wealth in a line of eldest sons.

We are sometimes unjust toward men of prodigious wealth who disappoint
public expectation by bequeathing nothing for public purposes. The
American who keeps fifty millions intact in his family only does what
is customary in other lands, and what may be done without reproach. If
he break no law, a man may do what he will with his own--although, to
be sure, so may his countrymen talk as they will of what he does; and
they will hardly lump in a common eulogy the public benefactors and
those who devise none of their prodigious wealth to the public weal.
For these latter the one or two of their fellow men who have become
millionaires by their wills may properly raise memorial churches, and
stained windows, and chimes of bells; but such wills have earned no
paeans of public gratitude.

PHILIP QUILIBET.




SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.




PHOTOGRAPHING FROM THE RETINA.


ONE of the first fruits of the daguerreotypic art was the suggestion
that unknown murderers could be detected by photographing the last
image left on the retina of the murdered person's eye. The idea
that this could be done seems to have taken strong hold of many
imaginations, and we believe this suggestion is repeated to the police
authorities of New York on the occurrence of every noticeable and
mysterious murder. That such a detective task will ever be accomplished
by photography is extremely doubtful, on account of the length of time
that usually passes before the discovery of a murder. But science has
now advanced so far that the image on the retina _has been fixed and
photographed_. This has been done by Prof. Kuehne of Heidelberg, but not
with human subjects, as decapitation is one necessary part of the
process. Prof. Kuehne placed a rabbit four and a half feet from a closed
window, in the shutter of which was an opening twelve inches square.
The animal's head was first covered by a black cloth for five minutes
and then exposed for three minutes. The head was then instantly cut
off, and one eye taken out in a room illuminated by yellow light. The
eyeball was opened and instantly plunged into a five per cent. solution
of alum. This occupied two minutes, and the other eye, still remaining
in the head, was then exposed at the window just as the first had been.
It was then taken out and placed in the alum solution like its fellow.
The next morning the two retinae were carefully isolated, separated from
the optic nerve, and turned. On a beautiful rose red ground a sharp
image, somewhat more than one millimetre (one-twenty-fifth inch) square
was found. The image on the first retina--that which was exposed during
life--was somewhat reddish and not so sharply defined as that on the
other.

This fixature of the last impression on the living retina is by no
means an accidental discovery, but is the final step in a laborious
series of delicate researches. Nor is it the triumph of one man alone,
the preliminary work having been performed by two distinguished
physiologists. Prof. Boll of Rome discovered that the external layer of
the retina in all living animals has a purple color, which is destroyed
by light. During life the color is perpetually restored by darkness,
but after death, Boll thought, it disappeared entirely. Prof. Kuehne
followed up this wonderful discovery and confirmed it in general, while
correcting some of Boll's conclusions. He first ascertained that death
does not necessarily destroy the color, since a retina that is not
exposed to white light, but is kept in a room lighted by a yellow
sodium flame, retains this "vision purple" for twenty-four or
twenty-eight hours, even though incipient decomposition may have set
in. It is destroyed at the temperature of boiling water or by immersion
in alcohol, glacial acetic acid, and strong solution of soda, but in
strong ammonia, saturated solution of common salt, or glycerine, it
remains undiminished for twenty-four hours. On testing the effect of
different  lights upon this "vision purple," he found that the
most refrangible rays change it most, while red has hardly more effect
than yellow light. The color is not so delicate as Boll supposed. A few
moments' exposure to daylight does not bleach the retina. This requires
exposure for a considerable time to direct sunlight. The source of the
color was found to be the inner surface of the choroid upon which the
retina lies. If a portion of the retina is disengaged from the choroid
and raised up, it bleaches, though the remainder, still attached
portion, retains its color. If the raised flap is carefully replaced
upon the choroid, it regains its purple hue. This restoration is
believed to be a function of the living choroid, and probably of the
retinal epithelium, though it is independent of the black pigment which
this epithelium contains. This vision purple is the latest discovery in
optical physiology, and it cannot fail to be a most important one. How
far it will alter the received views upon the subject of changes in the
strength of vision, which are now attributed to alterations in the
distance of the crystalline lens, cannot be foretold. But it may be
found possible to stimulate by drugs the restorative action of the
choroid, and thus by gaining increased "definition," improve weak
sight. As to the detection of murderers by photographing the last
retinal picture from their victims' eyes, while these discoveries do
not leave this an impossibility, they do not much improve the
probability of its ever being done. Very often the sight of the
assassin is not the last which comes within the victim's vision. Too
long a time also usually elapses before discovery. These and similar
difficulties must prevent the utilization of these discoveries in this
direction, even if they should prove to be in themselves all that is
hoped. The retinal picture has not yet been photographed, but it seems
probable, from the above recounted experiments, that it can be.




ACTION OF ORGANIC ACIDS ON MINERALS.


DR. H. C. BOLTON of the New York School of Mines has made the
interesting discovery that minerals may be decomposed by boiling with
organic acids, just as they are by treatment with the strong mineral
acids. He has tried the action of such acids as citric, tartaric,
oxalic, acetic, malic, and other acids, on finely powdered carbonates,
silicates, sulphides, and other classes of mineral. All the carbonates
examined (fourteen in number) dissolved with effervescence, sulphides
were decomposed with evolution of sulphuretted hydrogen, and silicates
with formation of gelatinous silica. This important discovery will
greatly add to the resources of the mineralogist, who is compelled to
do much of his work in the field. Hitherto he has been debarred from
using the mineral acids (the action of which sometimes forms a decisive
test) by the impossibility of carrying them in the pocket or wallet
without danger. The organic acids are solid, and can be conveniently
stowed away. Their action, however, is not so decided as that of the
mineral acids, but this is not always a defect, but offers additional
means of determination. For example, all the specimens of bornite and
pyrrhotite examined yielded sulphuretted hydrogen with tartaric,
citric, and oxalic acids, but chalcopyrite and pyrite do not. On the
other hand, the use of the organic acids may give rise in some cases to
the formation of nitric acid, which in its nascent condition will
afford a very powerful agent of decomposition. Thus all the sulphides
examined (seventeen), with the exception of molybdenite and cinnabar,
were quickly attacked by citric or tartaric acid, to which a little
potassium nitrate had been added. Potassium chlorate produces a similar
though slower action. These examples are sufficient to show that Dr.
Bolton has found a promising field of inquiry, and, singular to say,
considering the attention which the action of organic acids has
received, it is a field believed to be entirely new. He is continuing
his researches.




SCIENTIFIC ORCHESTRATION.


Prof. Mayer has turned his valuable researches in acoustical science to
aesthetic uses, and criticises the present mode of arranging orchestras,
the defects of which he proves by experiment. He took an old silver
watch, beating four times a second, and caused it to gain thirty
seconds per hour, so that every two minutes its tick coincided with the
tick of an ordinary spring balance American clock, also making four
beats the second. The latter was placed several feet, and the watch two
feet, from the ear. In this position the ticks of the watch were lost
for _nine seconds_, about the time of coincidence. The tick of the
watch disappeared, "with a sharp _chirp_, like a cricket's, and
reappears with a sound like that made by a boy's marble falling upon
others in his pocket." This experiment shows most effectively that one
sonorous impression may overcome and obliterate another, but to do so
it must be more intense and of lower pitch. If of higher pitch, it
cannot neutralize the other sound, however much the first may exceed
the latter in intensity. This discovery, Prof. Mayer thinks, is, "next
after the demonstration of the fact that the ear is capable of
analyzing compound musical sounds into their constituent or partial
simple tones, the most important addition yet made to our knowledge of
hearing." High sounds cannot obliterate low ones, but, on the contrary,
the sensation of each partial tone of which compound musical sounds is
formed is diminished by all the tones below it in pitch. These
discoveries he applies to orchestration as follows: "In a large
orchestra I have repeatedly witnessed the complete obliteration of all
sounds from violins by the deeper and more intense sounds of the wind
instruments, the double basses alone holding their own. I have also
observed the sounds of the clarinets lose their peculiar quality of
tone, and consequent charm, from the same cause. No doubt the conductor
of the orchestra heard all his violins ranged as they always are, close
around him, and did not perceive that his clarinets had lost that
quality of tone on which _the composer_ had relied for producing a
special character of expression. The function of the conductor seems to
be threefold: First, to regulate and fix the time. Second, to regulate
the intensity of the sounds produced by individual instruments, for the
purpose of expression. Third, to give the proper quality of tone or
_feeling_ to the whole sound of his orchestra, considered as a
single instrument, by regulating the _relative intensities_ of
sounds produced by the various classes of instruments employed. Now
this third function, the regulation of relative intensities, has
hitherto been discharged through the judgment of the ears of a
conductor, who is placed in the most disadvantageous position for
judging by his ears. Surely he is not conducting for his own personal
gratification, but for the gratification of his audience, whose ears
stand in very different relations from his own in respect to their
distance from the various instruments in action. Is it not time that he
should pay more attention to his third function, and place himself in
the position occupied by an average hearer? This position would be
elevated, and somewhere in the midst of the audience. That the position
at present occupied by the conductor of an orchestra has often allowed
him to deprive his audience of some of the most delicate and touching
qualities of orchestral and concerted vocal music, I have no doubt, and
I firmly believe that when he changes his position in the manner now
proposed, the audience will have some of that enjoyment which he has
too long kept to himself." These views were verified by Prof. Mayer
visiting different parts of the house during a public performance, and
observing the different effects of the music. It is not to be supposed
that a satisfactory change can be made at once. A quantitative analysis
of the compound tones of all musical instruments must be made. On this
work he is now engaged. One noteworthy result of his researches is the
opinion that orchestral instruments should be made on different
principles from those used in solos. The reason for this is, that
certain over tones should predominate in orchestral instruments in
order to give them their due expression in the midst of graver sounds.
These exaggerated peculiarities will unfit them to be played alone. If
the learned Professor's views are carried out, a theatre or opera
manager will be obliged to own the instruments of his orchestra, and
perhaps to have different sets for different musical works!




THE NITROGEN OF PLANTS.


The direct source of the nitrogen contained in plants is an unsolved
mystery, though the ultimate source of much of it must be the
atmosphere. A wheat crop gave on unmanured land from 15.9 to 25.2
pounds of nitrogen, per acre, yearly, but the amount found in the
rainwater of the same district was only from 6.23 to 8.58 pounds per
acre. Singular to say, the use of a fertilizer, called a "complex
mineral manure" in the reports, added only about two pounds of nitrogen
per acre. But the case is altered when potassic manure is used, and
especially when applied to land bearing beans. Such a crop gains 13-1/2
pounds of nitrogen by the addition of saltpetre, or 28 per cent. A
similar result was obtained with clover--a leguminous crop. A potassic
fertilizer increased the yield of nitrogen one-third. One of the
anomalies observed in the study of plant growth is that a good crop
instead of exhausting the soil seems to improve it. The better the
crop, and the more nitrogen removed, the better will the succeeding
crop be. Thus clover removes a much larger amount of nitrogen than
wheat, the quantity being on unmanured land, say 30.5 pounds per acre
for clover and 20.7 pounds for wheat, and yet the wheat crop is
improved if clover is occasionally interpolated or a fair rotation of
crops kept up. In 1874 barley succeeding barley gave 39.1 pounds of
nitrogen, while barley following clover gave 69.4 pounds of nitrogen
withdrawn from an acre of soil. These amounts take no account of the
nitrogen carried off by the drainage of the soil, which analysis of
drainwater proves to be considerable. The source of all this nitrogen
is undoubtedly the atmosphere, but the mode of conveying it into the
soil is unknown.




IMPORTANT PREHISTORIC DISCOVERIES.


Few persons are aware of the wealth of what are called "prehistoric"
remains. The finding of an isolated skeleton, in a cave, with
stalagmite completely covering it, is accepted as an occurrence that is
not very remarkable. However ancient it may be, the preservation of the
bones is exceptional. But a late discovery in France, near
Hastiere-sur-Meuse, is of much more importance. No less than fifteen
burial caverns were found, and from the five that have been explored no
less than fifty-five human skeletons have been taken, among which are
thirty-five well-preserved skulls.

In addition to these "finds" the plateaux yielded sixteen dwelling
places of the old inhabitants from which have been taken a quantity of
stone implements. These show the age of the skeletons to be that of the
polished, or "new" stone period. The prospect of being able to restore
the men who lived before the earliest recorded dates is now very good.
Some hundreds of their skeletons, with a valuable series of skulls and
enormous collections of their handiworks, are now in the museums of the
world.

Some of the more remarkable of these discoveries have been alluded to
at different times in this Miscellany. One of the latest and most
interesting consists of some pointed sticks, found in a Swiss coal bed,
the pointing having been done by hand. It may be thought difficult to
establish so remarkable a fact in a mass of coal in which the rods have
been pressed flat and perfectly carbonized. But a microscopic
examination of one of these pieces shows that the fibres of the wood
run in two different directions, the two systems meeting at an angle.
One of the sticks has had its end shaved down, the cut surface being
then applied to the other, and some substance, probably bark, being
wound around the joint. The marks of this wrapping are perfectly
distinct, and in one case the wrapping itself remains. As the bark used
for this purpose was different from the natural bark of the rods, the
microscope is now able to distinguish between the two, though both are
turned to coal. Descriptions and illustrations of these interesting
relics are published in the "Primeval World of Switzerland," by the
celebrated Professor Heer. There is no doubt they formed part of some
basket work. Their age is still doubtful, but must be very great.




THE PHYLLOXERA CONQUERED.


The investigation instituted by the French Academy of Sciences into the
best means of destroying the phylloxera, or grapevine pest, has ended
in the conclusion that the sulpho-carbonates are a complete antidote to
these destructive insects. This result has already been announced in
this Miscellany, and it only remains to explain the action of these
salts. Under the influence of carbonic acid, which is always present in
soils containing organic substances, they decompose. A carbonate is
formed, and sulphuretted hydrogen and bisulphide of carbon are evolved.
Both of these are deadly poisons to the phylloxera as well as to man.
To complete the fitness of these salts to agricultural uses, the
sulpho-carbonate of potassium has an excellent effect upon the vines,
potash being one of the most valued constituents of manures. Success in
using the antidote depends upon bringing it in contact with every part
of the root-system of the plant. This can be done by dissolving the
salt, but it is better to mix it with half its weight of lime and
sprinkle it on the ground at the beginning of the rainy season, which
in France lasts from October to March. M. Mouillefert, who examined
this subject under direction of the Academy, reports that as an
antidote the sulpho-carbonates are a proved success, and nothing now
remains but to educate the vine growers to their proper use. This
subject has peculiar interest to Americans, for the phylloxera is our
evil gift to France. It is matter of common observation, both in animal
and vegetable physiology, that one race or species may live in comfort
with an enemy--be it a disease or a parasite--which is destructive to
other species. The American vineyards are by no means free from the
phylloxera. On the contrary, they are full of this insect, but the
vines do not lose their hardiness in consequence. They flourish in
spite of their enemy.




THE SUN'S HEAT.


Prof. Langley of the Allegheny observatory has made a direct comparison
between the heat of the sun and that of the flame in the mouth of a
Bessemer steel convertor. Estimates of the sun's temperature probably
vary among themselves more than any other attempts at scientific
knowledge, ranging from 10,000,000 down to 1,500 deg. We have already
published in this Miscellany some late French determinations which
place it below 2,000 deg. C. Prof. Langley's choice of a standard is
excellent. The flame of the Bessemer convertor results from the burning
of carbon, silicon, iron, and manganese within the vessels, the result
of using this once novel fuel being a heat so great that the most
refractory iron or steel is melted to thin fluidity and so much excess
of heat imparted, that the mass will remain fluid, without further
heat, a considerable time. The temperature of the flame is not known,
though 4,000 or 5,000 deg. Fahr. has been suggested as an approximation.
This does not vitiate Prof. Langley's experiment, for he used it merely
as one of the most powerful artificial sources of light obtainable. His
method was to compare its light with that of the sun by an arrangement
that resembled a camera obscura, the light from the sun and the flame
being repeatedly superposed upon each other. The arrangement worked
admirably, and the observer was able to note the spots on the sun. He
found that the intensely hot flame was like a dark spot compared to the
sun's light and that the latter must be at least 2,168 times hotter
than the flame. This carries the result in favor of the largest
estimates. The flame of the convertor is not so hot as the melted
steel from which it comes, but it offers better opportunities for
observation. The steel itself as it was poured from the convertor was
found to be not more than one-sixty-fourth as hot as the sun.




DEAF MUTES IN POLAND.


Mr. George Darwin has brought forward statistics to prove that the
intermarriage of near relations does not have the unfavorable effect
upon offspring which is commonly supposed. But the director of the
Warsaw Institute for Deaf Mutes and the Blind combats this theory, and
says that the registers kept at that and similar institutions support
the popular opinion. The system of instruction at this asylum is very
perfect. Mimic language being almost totally prohibited, the pupils are
taught to understand the motion of the lips and to speak more or less
distinctly; and after a four years' residence in the Institute, they
generally attain in both a high degree of perfection. With great
judgment the managers have made the technical instruction at the school
of the best kind, so that the pupils readily find situations on
leaving, and indeed there are never enough to fill all the situations
offered. This appears to be the true method with students who would
otherwise find themselves at a disadvantage with more favored
competitors.




THE COMPASS PLANT.


The well-known dispute as to the "compass plant" has recently been
settled by Mr. Meehan in a manner which recalls the opinions of
judicial officers who deal with other than scientific questions. One
party of observers say that this plant always points its leaves north
and south, the leaf standing edgewise to the earth and the two sides
facing to the east and west. This plant is found on the prairies and
plains, and is known scientifically as _silphium lacinatum_, popularly
as pilot weed, rosin weed, and turpentine weed. It stands from three to
six feet high, and the trappers and Indians are said to find their way
in dark nights by feeling its leaves. These assertions of polarity are
denied by the other party. Mr. Meehan now says that both are right.
When the leaves are young and small the pointing to the north is
unmistakable, but when they become larger, are beaten down by rains,
and weighted with sand and dew, they are not able to recover their lost
bearings.




BALLOONS IN METEOROLOGY.


Balloon ascensions are quietly but frequently used by scientific men
for the purpose of studying the upper parts of the atmosphere. Russian
savants have lately paid especial attention to this work, but have been
prevented from extending their examinations to any great height. Prof.
Mendeleef of St. Petersburg now undertakes to accomplish this also, and
devotes the profits of two books published by him to the construction
of a balloon. This is to have a capacity of two or three thousand cubic
yards, and will be filled by means arranged by him. France also pursues
this path of investigation with great vigor. Count Bathyani recently
took up a radiometer to a height of about a mile. At the earth it made
in the shade thirty-five revolutions per minute. At the height of 5,000
feet it made sixty-four revolutions, also in the shade. In the sun,
2,300 feet above the earth, it made fifty-four revolutions. Count
Bathyani also took up an ethereal apparatus for the purpose of
condensing water vapor at various heights, in order to collect the
microscopic particles floating in the air. This line of investigation
will be continued by means of an apparatus filled with methylic ether.
This will give a temperature of -20 deg. C., or -15 deg. Fahr. The
moisture will condense as ice which will be scraped off the vessels.
All the solid particles floating in the immediate neighborhood of the
apparatus will also be obtained.




THE LEAD PRODUCT.


The mining of lead is a business in which Americans are successfully
using the remarkable resources of this country. In 1866 the amount made
here was only 14,342 tons, while we imported 23,330 tons. In fact the
importation has exceeded the home product ever since 1850 with the
exception of one year--1860. This improper "balance of trade" was due
to the system and intelligence with which foreign smelting works are
conducted, and the ignorance which prevailed in our own country where
the mining resources are really superior to those of Europe. But this
state of things has changed with the foundation of mining schools and
the spread of mining knowledge in this country. In 1873 the "balance"
turned the other way. The importations have been since then 22,114,
17,674, 7,305, and 4,685 tons; while the home product shows a rise
corresponding closely to this falling off, being for the same years,
37,983, 46,500, 53,250, 57,210 tons. In fact we export as much as we
import, for the 4,300 tons of pig lead imported is balanced by the
quantity sent back to Europe in the form of bullets. This change in the
business is traceable to the fact that refining has been found to pay
in America, and our lead is thus in request by the white paint makers.
For years our product lay under a stigma, and it was said that it was
not suited to the manufacture of the best lead. This evident error has
been corrected; the refined virgin lead of Missouri and Illinois makes
the best white lead, and the mining of the metal is not likely to
suffer from so many causes of depression again. The Territories are now
large producers, the five principal sources of supply being in 1876--

                                      Tons.

    Importation                       4,685
    Sales of Government old lead      1,050
    Missouri                         17,165
    Galena district                   6,425
    Utah, Nevada, California         33,630
                                     ------
                                     62,955

The production of some few selected places was: Palmer mine, 466 tons,
Mine LaMotte, 1,657, St. Joseph mines, 1,938, Granby mines, 4,423 tons,
these being all Missouri; Omaha smelting works, 11,336 tons, St. Louis
and Pennsylvania smelting works, 8,000 tons, New York and Newark works,
7,776 tons, California, Nevada, and Utah works, 6,518. The latter four
items amount to 33,630 tons, which is all made from silver-lead ores,
mostly by the zinc process of refining.




ARCTIC EXPLORATION.

In fitting out the lately returned Arctic expedition the English
government attempted to make it the last one of its kind. That is, it
appropriated a million dollars and engaged the cooeperation of the best
scientific authorities, and sent out its best men, who departed in the
full knowledge that their enterprise had aroused a real national
enthusiasm, and that the most strenuous effort was expected of them.
The purpose of these accumulated advantages was to so fortify the
voyagers that their success or failure should satisfy the world upon
the subject of polar exploration. They went, struggled so bravely that
their loss of life was greater than on any expedition since the fatal
one under Franklin--and came back without succeeding. Their commander
deliberately declared success to be impossible from the nature of the
difficulties which always exist near the pole, and that this goal of
nine centuries' effort would never be reached.

But, in spite of Captain Nares's positiveness, the Arctic question is
now just where he took it up. Seventy miles has been added to the
distance covered, but the world is just as unsatisfied as ever, and
polar exploration is just as ardently desired as ever. The spirit is
unchanged, but the name is altered. Against the uniform report of the
explorers who have been so numerous during the last decade that a mere
journey to the pole is not likely to yield much addition to man's
knowledge, it is hardly possible for even the most enthusiastic
navigators to stand up. But when Lieutenant Payer, on returning from
the Austrian expedition north of Spitzbergen, declared that there was
but one way to make the icy northern regions yield up their scientific
secrets, and that was by colonizing parties within the Arctic circle,
to stay there long enough to make a continued study of its meteorology
and physics, the scientific world gave him its unqualified support.
Several nations have been reported to be on the point of organizing
such a colony, but America seems likely to be the first to act
energetically on the suggestion. Captain Howgate of the Signal Service
Corps has petitioned Congress for $50,000 with which to send out a
company of forty men, provided with supplies for three years. They are
to be taken by a government vessel to some point between 81 deg. and 83
deg., the route taken to be by Smith's sound. There they will be left,
the vessel returning. An annual visit is to be paid the colony, but
otherwise they will be left to themselves. To prevent the scandalous
quarrels which ruined the Polaris expedition, the whole party will be
enlisted in the United States service, and strict discipline will be
maintained. The fact that the suggestion for the expedition comes from
a Signal Service officer will give the country confidence in the plan,
and also ensure proper attention to that science which may hope to reap
the greatest benefit from Arctic observations, the science of
meteorology and cosmic physics. The scientific members of the party are
to include an astronomer, one or more meteorologists, and two or more
naturalists. The project is by no means on a sure footing as yet, but
it has got so far as to be favorably reported on by the Naval Committee
of the House of Representatives. It certainly embodies the plan which
scientific men all over the world unite in endorsing, and which seems
to offer the most promising rewards to effort. But disguise the fact as
we will, it still remains true that it is in exploration and discovery
that such schemes find their surest ground for support. The gains to
science have uniformly been greater than the satisfaction to curiosity,
and this plan is professedly made with especial care to secure the
greatest return to science. But the march to the pole is the thing that
is inviting, and it entices now just as strongly, after all the
failures, as it ever did. Captain Howgate's plan provides for this.
During their three years' stay his men will be on the watch for
opportunities to advance northward, and if they find none, they intend
to make such a study of currents, ice, and seasons as will give the cue
to others in after years.

The principal difficulties in pushing far northward may be summed up in
a few words. The attempt must be made in summer (the Arctic day), when
the ice is liable to break up. A boat must therefore be carried, and
this makes the sledge train heavy. The ice to be crossed is extremely
rough, and explorers have not been able to find smoother spots of any
considerable size. By rough we mean that it is covered with deep rifts,
blocks and snow drifts from five to twenty feet or more in height, and
these impediments cover the surface so closely as to leave no
alternative but a slow tugging of the sledges over the most available
parts of them. The English expedition found these drifts to lie
directly across their course, having been formed by a west wind. The
labor of crossing them is performed with the thermometer far below the
freezing point. There is no fire, provisions have to be carefully
husbanded, sleep is dangerous unless frequently broken, and if one of
the party breaks down, the strength of the whole is seriously
diminished, while its task is greatly increased. Such has been the
history of exploration up to within 400 miles of the pole, and it is at
least probable that many of these difficulties will be intensified as
that point is reached. The north pole may now be considered to occupy
the centre of an area 800 miles in diameter, the condition of things
within which it is not possible even to conjecture. We may plausibly
suppose (1) that it is not land, for the ice of the Arctic sea is never
more than 150 feet thick, and there are no glaciers; (2) that it is a
shallow sea; and (3) that the precipitation of moisture in the centre
must be considerable, as the ice is moving in all directions from the
centre during the summer. The theory of an open sea at the pole is now
discarded by most scientific men, and, we believe, by all experienced
explorers except Hayes. In the present state of knowledge it rests upon
the presumption that the polar sea is very shallow, so that the deep
and warm currents which are known to enter the Arctic ocean may be
forced to the surface there; and that the ice drift removes the ice as
fast as it forms.




EXPLORATION NOTES.


THE Portuguese government has decided to spend $100,000 on a
scientific expedition to Central Africa.


EVERY exploring expedition across the continent of Australia has to
taste the extreme difficulties of travel in the barren parts of that
extraordinary country. Mr. Giles, the last explorer, says: "From the
end of the watershed in longitude 120 deg. 20 min., the latitude being
near the 24th parallel, to the Rawlinson range of my last horse
expedition, in longitude 127 deg., the country was all open spinifex
sandhill desert. At starting into the desert most of the camels were
continually poisoned, the plant which poisoned them not being allied in
any way to the poison plants of the settled districts of Western
Australia. I now know it well, and have brought specimens. The longest
stretch without water was a ten days' march. One old cow camel died
after reaching the water. We had some rain on May 8 before reaching the
Ashburton, and some of it must have extended into the desert. It was
the only chance water we obtained."


PROF. NORDENSKIOLD, who sailed from Norway to the mouth of the river
Jenesei, in Siberia, is now preparing for a voyage from that river
along the shore of the Arctic sea to Behrings straits. It may be that
the navigation of the Arctic sea, which is impossible away from land,
can be accomplished in its neighborhood. The return journey will be
made by way of China, India, and the Suez canal, the whole forming the
most remarkable voyage ever undertaken by one ship.

                     *      *      *      *      *

BRADFORD, Pennsylvania, is lighted with gas from a well situated about
two miles from town.


IN the United States heavy rains are less frequent between 4:35 P.M.
and 11 P.M than at any other part of the day. The greatest number are
between 7:35 A.M. and 4:35 P.M.


IN the Alps the snow line is 8,900 feet high on the northern side and
9,200 feet on the southern. In the Himalayas it is 16,600 feet on the
northern side and 16,200 feet on the southern.


THE eminent physicist, Prof. J. C. Poggendorff, for many years
professor in the Berlin university, and editor of "Poggendorff's
Annalen," has died in Berlin, in his eighty-first year.


THE magnitude of the prizes which may be drawn by exploring
antiquarians in Europe is shown by the recent finding near Verona,
Italy, of two large amphorae containing 50,000 coins of the Emperor
Gallienus and his immediate successors. The majority of them are of
bronze, but there are some of silver. Nearly all of them are in the
finest state of preservation, and are so fresh from the mint as to make
it evident that they were never put into circulation.


PROF. LOOMIS says that in this country great rainfalls do not generally
continue over eight hours, and very rarely do they continue for
twenty-four hours, either at one place or a number of places considered
successively.


ACCORDING to the Washington "Gazette," the paint makers are grinding up
Egyptian mummies for the fine brown color which they make when
powdered. This color is due to the asphaltum with which the cloths
wrapped around the mummies was impregnated.


THE Washington monument is probably doomed. In its present condition it
is a grievous eyesore in the Washington landscape, and a board of army
engineers now say that its foundations are not strong enough to permit
raising the shaft higher, and it is proposed to take it down.


MR. H. BYASSON has produced a kind of petroleum by the mutual action of
steam, carbonic acid, and sulphuretted hydrogen in presence of iron at
a white heat. All these substances are known to be contained in the
rocks of the earth's crust, which also has at various times afforded
the necessary heat.


GOLD, though the principal standard of value, is not moved about the
world much. The entire import of London, the greatest banking city in
the world, was only $116,222,350 in 1876, and the export was
$81,097,850. Nearly the whole of the difference went into the vaults of
the Bank of England, the stock of which increased $34,992,020.


PROF. HAWES has proved the existence of metallic iron in the basalt
<DW18>s of New Hampshire. It exists as small specks in the centre of
grains of magnetite. This contradicts the theory that the metallic iron
of the <DW18>s is the result of carbon acting upon the magnetite in them,
and proves that the iron is the primary and the magnetite the secondary
product.


THOUGH agricultural professorships are not considered to have produced
all the good that was once expected from them, there is one lately
established by the French Government which might well be copied in
other countries. It is a professorship of comparative agriculture at
Vincennes, and its occupant will make a systematic comparison of home
and foreign agriculture.


THE character of the Yale lectures to mechanics is seen from the
following titles to some of the lectures: "Forester and Forest
Products," Prof. William H. Brewer; "Mosses," Prof. C. D. Eaton; "Our
Red Sandstone," G. W. Hawes; "The Usury Laws," Prof. F. A. Walker; and
"Sanitary Engineering," Prof. W. P. Trowbridge. The course contains
thirteen lectures, and costs $1.


A FRENCH paper says that "an American company proposes to introduce fur
seals from Alaska into Lake Superior! The temperature of the lake is
considered to be sufficiently cold for the purpose, and the company
hopes to obtain from Congress and the Canadian Parliament an act
protecting the creatures from slaughter for twenty years, after which
time it is supposed that they will be sufficiently acclimatized and
numerous to form subjects of sport." As the fur seal is a marine animal
and Lake Superior is a body of fresh water, the success of the
experiment, and even the authenticity of the story, is at least
doubtful!


M. GIFFARD, inventor of the steam injector which bears his name, has
entered upon a line of invention of which Americans have been very
fond. He is building a small steamer to ply, during the French
Exposition, over the three miles of the Seine between Pont Royal and
the Exhibition. The steamer will be thirty metres, or one hundred feet
long and three and a half metres, or eleven feet eight inches broad,
and is to make forty-five miles an hour! The length is to the beam,
therefore, as 8-1/2 to 1. It is singular that marine engineering has
gained but little from these attempts to attain excessive speeds. The
real advances have been obtained by small successive improvements.




CURRENT LITERATURE.


MR. HENRI VAN LAUN is known in the world of letters by his admirable
translation of Taine's "History of English Literature," and also by his
not yet completed translation of Moliere's works; the latter being not
merely a translation, but a very thoroughly worked English edition of
the great French dramatist. He now presents us with the first volume of
an original critical work of great importance and interest[9]--nothing
less than a history of French literature. Mr. Van Laun's work is not a
mere critical appreciation of French writers, which of itself would be
an undertaking of very considerable moment, and which would fill a
place hitherto unoccupied in our critical literature. The present work
is in fact a history of French thought, and even more; it is a history
of the French people as exhibited in the writings of Frenchmen from the
very earliest period. The author accepts the theory which has lately
come into vogue among the more elaborate, if not the profounder
critics, that the literature of an age is a manifestation of its
spirit; that a nation, or rather a people, has a soul like an
individual man, and that that soul is manifested and is to be read in
the pages of its authors; that as it, the people, is developed,
intellectually, morally, socially, and politically, from age to age,
the changes through which it passes are reflected in its literature,
and that there no less, perhaps even more, than in the record of its
doings at home, abroad, in the family, in society, in commerce, in
manufactures, in art, and on the field of battle, is to be found its
true portraiture. Indeed, he begins his book with the assertion that
"the history of a literature is the history of a people; if not this,
it is worthless."

      [9] "_History of French Literature._" By HENRI VAN LAUN. I. From
      its Origin to the Renaissance. 8vo, pp. 342. New York: G. P.
      Putnam's Sons.

To this theory and its general acceptance we owe chiefly the very wide
scope and the philosophical profundity of most modern critical writing
of the higher kind. Critics are not content nowadays with taking up a
poem, novel, essay, or history, and looking at it by itself as an
individual and isolated work of art. They must look into the personal
life of the writer; they must discover and estimate all the influences
by which he was surrounded; and among these they give a very important
place to the condition of the society in which he lived, the political
and religious forces which were at work while he was studying,
thinking, writing. Briefly, they regard him not as an isolated
individual force, but as a manifestation, a result of many forces, as
doing his work less by personal volition than as the unconscious agent
or representative of the times in which he lived. Consequently a
critical edition or appreciation of a great writer has come to be not a
purely literary task, but an attempt to unfold the mental and moral
condition of a people and a period. Compare, for example, Addison's
criticism of the "Paradise Lost," to which in a great measure the
general appreciation of that poem is due, with David Masson's "Life of
Milton." The former can all be included in a thin duodecimo volume, and
has been so printed; the latter, still unfinished, fills several
ponderous octavo volumes. Addison concerns himself with the poem
itself; Masson writes an elaborate history of Puritanism and of the
English people during the development and completion of that religious,
social, and political revolution which produced the Commonwealth in Old
England and the Puritan emigration to America, with the formation of
the religious commonwealths of New England. True, Addison did not
undertake to do what Masson undertook, and allowance must be made for
the avowed difference between the methods of the two writers. But still
that very difference is the significant exponent of the critical spirit
of the times in which they lived. The very fact that the Victorian
critic has undertaken his tremendous task, which Addison or any man of
his time would not have thought of, is significant of the change in
critical manner to which we have referred.

That the new theory of the proper scope of criticism is well founded,
cannot be entirely denied. Literature to a certain degree is a
characteristic product of the age and of the people for which, if not
by which, it is produced. And if Mr. Van Laun had confined himself to
the affirmative part of his proposition, his position would have been
less disputable than it became when he added his negative assertion. It
is not quite true that the history of a literature is the history of a
people; still further from the truth is it that literary history which
is not the history of a people is worthless. It might be easily shown
that some of the very greatest literary productions known to the world
have very slight relations, or none at all, to the condition of the
society in which they were written. What, for example, is there in
Shakespeare's plays, or in Sir Walter Scott's poems and novels, which
is a manifestation of the spirit of their time? Scott, Wordsworth,
Byron, and Moore were strictly contemporaries. What could be more
unlike than their poems in spirit or in substance? What one trait have
they in common? The theory in question is an example of the tendency of
men to over generalization of particular facts, and of a like tendency
to over subtlety in critical philosophy.

The spirit of a people is, however, undeniably manifest in the writings
of its best and most favored authors; and to trace the rise of that
spirit and the gradual formation of a national or popular character is
a legitimate and a very instructive part of the task of a critic who
undertakes to present a full appreciation of a national literature.

Mr. Van Laun certainly begins at the beginning. He shows us what the
French people are; how the French nation arose and gradually grew into
an individual existence; and he thus imitates and emulates the
distinguished French critic whose work he has translated. M. Taine is
strong on the manifestation of Anglo-Saxonism in English literature,
and even finds the results of English beef and beer, and of the very
rain and fog of England, in the books of English writers.

Mr. Van Laun's theory of the origin of the French people is not a very
clear one; not even in his own mind, it would seem. He starts with the
assertion, in very positive terms, that the Iberians were the vanguard
of the invading races who overwhelmed and swept before them the oldest
known inhabitants of Western Europe--the Celts; and his language
implies that the former were and the latter were not an Indo-European
race; that the vanguard of the Indo-European invaders _found_ the Celts
in Europe and overcame them. But there is no doubt, we believe, that
the Celts themselves were, or are, an Indo-European race, and that they
are the oldest representatives of that race in Europe. Their position
in the extreme west, even in the Highlands of Scotland and in Ireland,
shows this. As to the Iberians, the name itself is rather vague as that
of a people or a race; but as far as we know anything of the race which
Mr. Van Laun seems to have in view, _they_ were found in the west of
Europe by the invading Celts. The Basques are regarded by philologists
and ethnologists as the modern representatives of the "Iberians," if
that name must be used--at any rate of the prehistoric inhabitants of
Western Europe. Of this Mr. Van Laun himself seems to have an inkling,
for he says "they were possibly themselves an indigenous European race
driven back upon the Celts by the invading tribes which so persistently
trod upon their heels." He finds a confirmation of this supposition in
a curious etymological coincidence. In the Basque tongue _atzean_
signifies "behind," and _atzea_ "a foreigner." He accounts for this by
supposing that the Iberian, pushed hard by the invaders, made common
cause with the Celt, and that therefore the ever-encroaching Goth and
Frank were "the people behind him." But if his "Iberians" were an
indigenous European race, how could they be "driven back" upon the
Celts unless the latter had gone through and through them, and so
actually got before them, leaving the indigenous people between
them--the Celts--and the succeeding Indo-European invaders? The fact is
that Mr. Van Laun has begun so very far back that he is in deep water,
rather out of his depth--out of any one's depth indeed. For as to the
Basques, they are still an ethnological and philological puzzle. The
balance of probabilities, however, seems to be in favor of their being
the, or an, indigenous European race, not connected with the Aryan or
Indo-European races, against whom they, a small remnant, have managed
to hold their own, and preserve their individuality in language, law,
and customs for more than two thousand years. The first element, the
ground, so to speak, of the French nation, is, however, doubtless
Celtic; and as to how much of an intermingling there may have been
between them and the "Iberians," or the indigenous race represented by
the Basques, we do not know. Judging by the very remarkable
individuality of that strange people, their boldness, and their
disposition to keep themselves to themselves, the probabilities of any
very great intermingling between them and their conquerors are very
small indeed.

Upon the Celts came the Greeks and the Romans. The former took no such
hold of the country as the latter did; but yet there seems to be some
reason for Mr. Van Laun's summary of the influence upon Gaul, (not yet
France) of the two great nations of antiquity when he says: "Greece,
the commercial nation, had charmed and penetrated her hosts by her
poetry, her rhetoric, her arts; Rome, the military nation, remodelled
her victims by her laws, her administration, her moral vigor." This is
somewhat loosely expressed for a work of such literary pretensions as
those of the book before us; but it suggests the truth. There was,
however, in the end, to use a popular phrase, "no comparison" between
the influence of the Greeks and that of the Romans upon Gaul. It was in
letters as in society and in politics; the intellectual existence of
Gaul, as well as her physical existence, was to be inextricably
interwoven with that of her Roman conquerors. Gaul became Romanized;
the language of the country, whatever it had been, was driven out, and
Latin took its place. The people of the country became one of what are
now known as the Latin races, chiefly because of their languages.
French is little more than Latin first debased and then by culture
reformed into a language having a character and laws of its own. The
words which form the bulk of the French language may be traced, have
been traced, down step by step from the original Latin forms; and it is
found that changes from ancient Latin to modern French took place
according to certain phonetic laws so absolute that, given a Latin
word, philologists can tell surely under what form it must appear in
French.

After the Romans came the Teutonic invaders; and of these the Franks so
imposed themselves upon the country that they gave it their name, and
Gaul became France. Charlemagne was neither Celtic nor Latin, but
simply Karl the Great, a Teutonic monarch under whose sceptre all the
Franks were united. The predominance of the Franks in Gaul for many
generations had a modifying influence upon the people. The Celtic Gaul
was a lively, spirited, vain, bold, but not a very steadily courageous
man. The Teutonic was a quieter, steadier, more reserved, and more
thoughtful man. He was a bigger man, too, and like big men, he took
things more quietly; he had the steady courage which the dashing and
gaily caparisoned Celt somewhat lacked. And yet it is remarkable that
in the end the Celtic nature reasserted itself in France, although with
some modification; and to-day the Frenchman is a Celt, as fond of talk,
of fanciful poetry, of fine dress, and show, and dash, as his
forefather was fifteen hundred years ago.

It was not until about the year 850 that the language of the people of
France assumed a form distinctively French, according to the modern
standard; and even then it was so rude and unformed that to a modern
uneducated Frenchman it would be quite as strange and incomprehensible
as Latin itself. From the very first the great distinction between the
language of the north and that of the south seems to have existed. The
_langue d'oc_ and the _langue d'oil_ contended for the mastery, which
was finally won by the latter. This is remarkable, as the former was
the softer and more cultivated tongue. The finest and the most of the
very early poetry of France was written in the _langue d'oc_. To this
literature and to the condition of the society in which it was produced
Mr. Van Laun gives much attention, as might have been expected. This
part of his book is interesting to students of literary history; but we
must confess that the songs of the troubadours have to us very rarely
any of the charms of poetry, and that we think that much of the
admiration of them which has been expressed by literary antiquarians is
fictitious. There is occasionally in these poems a touch of natural
feeling; but generally they are cold and full of conceits. Form seems
to have been more important in the poet's eyes than spirit; and instead
of genuine fervor we have deliberate extravagance. The great epic poem
of the French language--its greatest if not its only great poem--the
"Chanson de Roland"--is written in the _langue d'oil_. Mr. Van Laun
notices this poem of course, and gives a brief summary of its plot, or
we might better say of its incidents; but we are surprised that he does
not give it more attention. It is far more worthy of critical
examination than the fantastic love poems of the troubadours.

In his account of feudal society and of the effect which its conditions
had upon such literature as there was in that day, Mr. Van Laun could
hardly pass over those tribunals so characteristic and so foreign to
our modes of thought and feeling nowadays--the courts of love, of which
the troubadours were, in a sort, the advocates. These courts were
governed by a Code of Love, which had thirty-one statutes or ruling
maxims. Of these maxims the most significant, and some of the most
remarkable, are the following:

    The plea of wedlock is not a sufficient excuse from love.

    None can be bound by a double love.

    It is undoubted that love is always diminishing or increasing.

    A two years' widowhood is enjoined for a deceased lover.

    It is shameful to love those with whom marriage would be shameful.

    A true lover does not desire the embrace of any one save his
    companion in love.

    Love rarely endures when made public.

    Easy acceptance renders love contemptible; a slow acceptance causes
    it to be held dear.

    A man full of love is ever full of fear.

    Love can deny nothing to a lover.

    There is nothing to prevent one woman from being loved by two men,
    nor one man by two women.

In the last quoted of these remarkable laws (which were the work of
women and of a few men who wished to please women), it will be observed
that no authority or countenance is given to the loving of two women by
one man. Our author regards the effect of these courts and their code
as on the whole beneficial. His judgment may be sound, monstrous as the
code seems to us, recognizing and even sanctioning as it did relations
of the sexes not formed according to civil laws; for, as he says, "it
refined the inevitable evil, substituted an easy for an almost
impracticable moral code, and being compelled to draw a new line
between venial offences and coarse licentiousness, exacted a rigid
obedience to those laws." There is also some force in his plea that the
courts of love "rescued woman from what would have become a condition
of intolerable degradation, elevated affection rather than passion into
the place of honor, and encouraged devotion in the stronger sex, grace
and propriety in the weaker." It is undoubtedly true that when society
became more rigid in sexual morality, and the mediaeval code of love
disappeared, there remained the tenderness and courtesy for the fairer
and weaker sex which that code had done so much to develop.

Mr. Van Laun's first volume brings us down only to the Renaissance. But
at that period the characteristic trait of French literature developed
itself strongly. That trait is satire; not the bloody scourge of
Juvenal, but a light, caustic, reserved, and almost pleasant although
malicious satire--malicious in the French sense of _malice_, which is
not so strong a word as its English counterpart. The difference between
the French spirit and the English is shown by the fact that with free
thought in the English race came stubborn dissent; in the French,
light-hearted satire. "Satire," as Mr. Van Laun justly says, "is at the
root of the French character, an instinct among the descendants of the
ancient Gauls, who loved to fight and to talk well." This satire broke
out in the sixteenth century with a brightness and causticity which has
ever since distinguished French literature. The leader was Marguerite,
sister to Francis I., the well-known Queen of Navarre. Her "Heptameron"
is a strange book for a woman, and not a bad woman, a lady, and a
queen, to have written. In it "she vents her contemptuous scorn upon
husbands, although [perhaps because] she was married; against monks,
though she was an ardent devotee of religion; against lawyers and
doctors, though she was a queen." But it is most happily added that
"her shrewdest satire of all is unconsciously pointed against herself;
for she stands revealed to us a very woman, the rivals for whose favor
are God and the devil, and who affords to neither of these more than a
short coquettish glance."

It was at this period that the present school of French literature had
its beginning; the spirit then so strongly manifested, the tendency to
clearness, brightness, and high finish of style which then appeared
among French writers, have since that time been the signs and tokens of
the French mind and hand in literature. All that goes before is rude or
fantastic or pedantic; then French literature rises in its splendor; we
can hardly say its grandeur. Mr. Van Laun's first volume is full of
interest which, however, is rather historical than literary; in the
succeeding part of his work we may look for criticism more acceptable
to the general reader.

--We pass easily from this history of the earliest days of French
literature to its very latest, and we may add, one of its most
characteristic productions. Alphonse Daudet's novel, "Fromont Jeune et
Risler Aine," has suddenly attained one of those rare and brilliant
successes which seem possible only in France. Within an incredibly
short time sixty thousand copies of it were sold, and it was "crowned"
by the French Academy; whatever that may mean, whether an actual
crowning of either book or author, it certainly does imply the awarding
of the highest honors by the most eminent literary tribunal in France.
It has now been reproduced here in a translation which leaves nothing
to be desired, whether as a transfusion of the French spirit of the
book, or as an example of a fine English narrative style.[10] Indeed,
it unites these two most important requisites of a good translation in
a rare and remarkable manner. As to the book itself, although it is a
very good novel, and carries upon its face the evidence that it is a
careful study of a certain phase of French life, we are at a loss to
account for its phenomenal success. It is all about Sidonie, who may be
called its heroine, as Becky Sharp is the heroine of "Vanity Fair." Now
Sidonie is a pretty, vulgar, vile-souled shop girl who uses her beauty
to make her way to a certain sort of _bourgeois_ fashionable life, but
who is really a far more infamous creature than many a common harlot.
For she is not wanton; she is not merely venal; she is pitilessly
selfish and fiendishly malicious. She has no honesty of any kind--of
mind, heart, soul, or body. A baser, viler creature in female, and
therefore in human form, it would be impossible to conceive. For to all
grovelling, debasing vice she adds a monstrous, cold-hearted cruelty.
With all this she is not remarkable for anything except a pretty,
blooming face and a low cunning. What need to familiarize us with the
life of such a creature? She ruins the happiness of two men, one of a
noble soul and the other a weak-minded creature; she breaks up a
family; she brings her principal victim to suicide; and all this not
even for a grand passion, but that she may have fine dresses, diamonds,
and a social success. This is very barren business. We do not care to
have such a life as this laid before us with all the particularity of
treatment which belongs to the realistic school. But granted that we
did desire it, we must confess that we could not wish for it better
done. The life-portraiture, inner as well as outer, is perfect and
minute to admiration. The end is brought about in fine melodramatic
style. Around Sidonie are grouped several personages lovable and
unlovable, admirable and unadmirable, but all painted with perfect,
clear conception and firm, minute touch. The distinctive Frenchness of
the author is manifest in every page. It is shown particularly in the
absence of any touch of humor in the portraiture of Sidonie. Unlike
Becky Sharp, she hems no little shirt in public until a little Rawdon
has long outgrown it. The hard portrait of her hard soul has no such
softening touch as that. The book is of a bad sort; but of its sort
most admirable.

      [10] "_Sidonie._" From the French of ALPHONSE DAUDET. 16mo, pp.
      262. Boston: Estes & Lauriat.

                     *      *      *      *      *

The Lenten season is peculiarly the time for religious books, and the
publishers have not failed to take advantage of it this year. Among the
most interesting and valuable of the new works is Dr. Gregory's
examination into the reason for having Four Gospels.[11] Why there
should be two, three, or any number more than one, or less than eleven,
is a question that has been considered significant for many centuries.
Why out of eleven faithful disciples, precisely four should be inspired
to write the history of the founder of the Church is certainly a
problem that must be worth examining. The first idea, and it is one
that has not died out yet, was that the four Gospels were so many
incomplete but supplementary narratives, and in the second century
efforts were made to improve upon the Biblical record by the
Harmonists, who tried to compile what they considered a consistent and
progressive account of the acts of Christ's ministry. They were
followed by the Allegorists, who took the vision of Ezekiel, with its
likeness of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle, and applied it to the
writers of the Gospels as an exemplification of the meaning each of the
narratives was intended to have. Though they, and their modern
followers also, have not been able to agree upon this symbolical
purport, the four Evangelists have retained in art those symbolical
figures. The lion and St. Mark, the eagle and St. John are indissolubly
connected in ecclesiastical art and story. The other schools of
interpretation are, according to Dr. Gregory, the rationalists and "the
common-sense critics." His own answer to the question, Why Four
Gospels? is, that Christ had a mission to the Jews, and Matthew
presented that argument for his divinity which was best calculated to
impress that people; and to the Romans, to whom Mark was an
interpreter; and to the Greeks, to whom Luke spoke; and to the Church
at large, for whom John wrote his gospel of gentleness and love. The
Jew, the Roman, and the Greek then composed the world of
civilization--the existing society of that day--and in the Bible we
find one writer for each of these nations, and one for the whole
Church. This is certainly a rational and unembarrassed explanation. Dr.
Gregory enforces it with great force and learning.

      [11] "_Why Four Gospels?_ or, The Gospel for all the World." By
      D. S. GREGORY, D.D. New York: Sheldon & Co.

                     *      *      *      *      *

MR. BUCHANAN'S "Shadow of the Sword"[12] has so many faults that it is
a wonder he could have written it to the end without arousing his own
disgust. It revives the long-neglected horrors of the time of the first
Napoleon, and deals with them in a way that is brutal, not artistic.
Its hero is a deserter, and he is so sharply followed by the gendarmes
that for a year or more he lives the life of a burrowing animal, until
reason itself is unseated. The only relief to a picture which the
author strives vigorously to make revolting is the love of the hero's
betrothed; but that too is so mingled with terror that it only throws a
more lurid light upon the sufferings her lover undergoes. The style is
as close an imitation of the French as the author can produce,
occasionally varied, however, most ludicrously by an unguarded
exhibition of English slang. The heroine has those eyes so rarely seen
outside of novels, of "that mystic color which can be soft as heaven
with joy and love, but dark as death with jealousy and wrath." For
those who get near enough to gaze long into them, they reveal "strange
depths of passion, and self-control, and pride." The individual who did
this gazing is a tall, lusty fellow, and healthy as the average of
fisherman's boys, but for all that he has the soul of romance within
him. When his comrades are lounging on the beach, _he_ is "walking in
some vast cathedral not made with hands," or performing daring feats of
strength. Unluckily forsaking his cathedral, to lounge on the beach
with his true love, like common mortals, they are caught by the tide,
and have to wade through the water to escape. She bares her legs for
the bath without hesitation or blush, for "she knew that they were
pretty, of course, and she felt no shame." But there is one thing this
young lady would not for worlds reveal, and that is _her hair_, which
is invariably concealed beneath a coif. But as the waters deepen, Rohan
throws the pretty-limbed creature over his shoulder and wades thigh
deep. As he lands her he looks up, "and lo! he saw a sight which
brought the bright blood to his own cheeks and made him tremble like a
tree beneath his load." _Her hair had fallen down_, and the cheeks
and neck that bore unmoved the exposure of her knees, were now "crimson
with a delicious shame." This incident "bared each to each in all the
nudity of passion," and it certainly bares the nudity of the author's
invention. He is nowhere prurient, and nowhere delicate. He describes
the revolting details of the story with as much unction as if they were
the important things, and he leaves his hero at the end a complete
failure in life and love, wasted in strength, and ruined in mind.

      [12] "_The Shadow of the Sword._" A Romance. By ROBERT BUCHANAN.
      New York: Lovell, Adam, Wesson & Co.

                     *      *      *      *      *

WE are glad to see Dr. McClellan persist in his study of the cholera
question.[13] We know of no publications which are better fitted than
his to awaken the people to a proper sense of the duty, and also of the
efficiency, of personal providence against disease. He is an advocate
of the Indian origin theory of the disease and its spread by personal
infection only, and in this pamphlet maintains two propositions: 1st,
that Asiatic cholera has never yet _originated on the American
continent_, but in every instance has spread from a first case which
reached its shores from some countries beyond the ocean; and 2d, that
it is diffused by the migrations of individuals who are infected by the
disease, a specific poison existing in their dejecta, which reproduces
the disease in any person to whom it gains access. This is a theory of
epidemic cholera which is rational, consistent with the constantly
developing facts of scientific research, and which happily includes a
remedy that is every way practicable and thorough. But it is a theory
that is not yet acknowledged by all authorities. Telluric conditions,
malaria, and other local influences are frequently pointed to as the
cause of the disease, and the doctrine of specific cholera poison still
demands strong partisan advocacy.

      [13] "_Lessons to be Learned from the Cholera Facts of the Past
      Year._" By ELY MCCLELLAN, M.D., Surgeon U.S.A. Reprinted from the
      "Richmond and Louisville Medical Journal."

--An anonymous pamphlet on vivisection, which takes ground against that
mode of obtaining knowledge, is not worth serious notice except for the
odd argument that crime is likely to increase if the vivisectionists
are allowed to experiment on cats and dogs, as the new English law
proposes! Criminals, says the authoress, rarely have had pets, and
_therefore_ if we kill all the pets, and thus deprive ourselves of the
refining influences of kitty and the ennobling example of doggy, we
shall the more readily turn to criminal ways. Another powerful
argument is that "the countries where vivisection has prevailed seem
to have secured no lasting blessing, but to have been the subjects of
peculiarly calamitous afflictions, direful disasters, unnatural
_internal tribulations_, and other multiplied evils." This is
theocracy with a vengeance.

                     *      *      *      *      *

FOR some years past the "North American Review" has been enriched by
papers from the late Mr. Chauncey Wright on various subjects in the
wide field of modern philosophy, but especially in the much disputed
theories of biology. They exhibited such proofs of independent judgment
and critical acumen as to give their author immediate standing among
European as well as home savants. These critiques have been collected
and published under the name "Philosophical Discussions."[14] Much as
we admired these articles when they first appeared, we do not see that
a republication of them is needed unless as a graceful monument to an
enthusiastic student. In their permanent form they lose the immediate
fitness to questions under universal discussion, which is the true
_raison d'etre_ of such papers. The extreme wordiness which was Mr.
Wright's principal literary fault is disagreeably manifest when his
book is laid by those of other masters in positive philosophy. This is
especially noticeable in the only strictly original discussion in the
book, the one on the arrangement of leaves in plants. In this paper the
editor has left out the "strictly inductive investigation" which
contains the kernel of the essay! He has omitted the soul and given the
"limbs and outward flourishes" of the author's discussion, and much to
the latter's discredit. Aside from this tendency to sentences and words
of philosophical length, Mr. Wright's style is extremely agreeable,
clear, and strong. It frequently shines with unexpected felicities of
expression, just as the author's argument frequently awakens the
perception with its unusual keenness and depth of thought.

      [14] "_Philosophical Discussions._" By CHAUNCEY WRIGHT. With a
      Biographical Sketch of the Author by Charles Eliot Norton. New
      York: Henry Holt & Co.

                     *      *      *      *      *

"THE CONVICTS,"[15] by Auerbach, will not increase that author's
reputation in America. It belongs to the distinctively romantic school
of German fiction. The story is that two convicts, reformed through the
agency of a charitable society, marry and bring up a large family of
children. These suffer pangs of sorrow when they learn of the stain
on their parents' name, but otherwise they do not appear to be
inconvenienced by their unfortunate origin. They marry into stations
very much above them, though in addition to the embarrassing criminal
history of their parents, they suffer what in Germany is the hardly
less disaster, of being the children of a railway signal man! We
suppose the object of this plot, and of much special social sentiment
which is introduced in the story, is to represent the increased
importance which the industrial classes have in Germany, as elsewhere
in the world. Here in America the improvement in the condition of the
working-man does not excite attention except from professed students of
political economy. But in Germany it is contrasted with a previous
state of almost complete vassalage, and the poets there seem to think
it indicates an approaching brotherhood of man. Wealth and worth are to
embrace each other, and the sins of the father are not to descend even
to the first generation of children. We cannot but sympathize with the
Councillor of State (whose granddaughter wants to, and does, marry one
of the convict flagman's sons, an artisan) when he says:

    See! see! This then is the latest ideal? Formerly the ideals were
    painters, musicians, hussar riding masters, and players. Now love
    also is practical. So then an artisan? All the enthusiasm runs to
    tunnels and viaducts.

      [15] "_The Convicts and their Children._" By BERTHOLD AUERBACH.
      Translated by Charles T. Brooks. Leisure Hour Series. New York:
      H. Holt & Co.

The book is marred by unnecessary exactitude in translation. Thouing
and theeing make no impression of intimacy and confidence on the
American understanding as they do on the German, and should be omitted.
Nor has the author the strength of his youth, and the beauty of his
fancy no longer atones for the weakness of the story. Nothing in the
whole of the book proper is so good as the following from the preface:

    A generation has passed away since I began to present in a
    framework of fiction the interior life of my countrymen and
    neighbors. If after another generation a poet shall again undertake
    to express the village life of my home, what will he perhaps find?
    Flowers bloom in all times out of the German soil, and Beauty will
    in all times bloom out of the German soul.

                     *      *      *      *      *

OF late years there has been a tendency to abandon the exhaustive
"manuals" which once formed the only style of school and hand-books
known, and to use in their place books which contain only so much of a
science as is taught in some one well-proportioned school. The change
is based on the rational supposition that whatever suffices for the
thorough instruction of students should also satisfy the wants of an
ordinary practical worker. Mr. Ricketts's "Notes on Assaying"[16]
belong to this modern kind of text-book. They contain what the students
in the School of Mines in New York learn, and as a thorough knowledge
of assaying is obviously necessary to a mining engineer, the author
considers that the same course if honestly worked through should
suffice for practice outside the school. The book covers both dry and
wet assaying, and gold parting, and there are chapters in which the
apparatus and chemical reagents are described. A few condensed notes on
blowpiping finish an extremely concise and useful book, always
available for reference, and in which the self-taught workman may find
his way without confusion.

      [16] "_Notes on Assaying and Assay Schemes._" By PIERRE DE
      PEYSTER RICKETTS, E.M. New York: The Art Printing Establishment.

--Under the pressure of incessant examinations for admission to and
promotion in many fields of human activity, from the Government service
to apprentices' workshops, English literature is receiving important
accessions to its facilities for teaching science. All kinds of
positive knowledge are condensed into class books, sometimes by the
very master minds of scientific research, sometimes by experienced
teachers. Of the latter kind is Mr. Lee's "Acoustics, Light and
Heat,"[17] which he has written to meet the wants of students for the
Advanced Stage Examination of the British Department of Science and
Art. Excellence in such a work requires that the main principles of the
science should be sufficiently covered, explanations be clear,
illustrations sufficient, and language as simple as possible. Mr. Lee's
book appears to us somewhat over-condensed, but otherwise conforms to
these requirements.

      [17] "_Acoustics, Light and Heat._" By WILLIAM LEES, M.A. With
      200 illustrations. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

                     *      *      *      *      *

LORD DUFFERIN'S "Letters from High Latitudes," describing the yacht
voyage he made in 1856 to Iceland, Jan Mayen, and Spitzbergen, are so
well known that it is only necessary to say they are republished by
Lovell, Adam, Wesson & Co., a Canadian firm that has lately established
itself in New York. In reading these familiar and gossipy letters, one
is painfully impressed with a sense of the dreariness of the Northern
regions. Whatever there is of interest is carried there by the
traveller. The country itself, even including Iceland, adds little to
the narrative, and sea life, whether stormy or calm, is not provocative
of incident. But in spite of these inherent discouragements, the author
maintains his cheerfulness throughout with such uniformity that we
cannot resist a suspicion of its genuineness. He comes up to the
inditing of each epistle with the determined smile of a much battered
pugilist, when a new round is called--and we are very much in his debt
for his pluck.




BOOKS RECEIVED.


"_Sir Roger de Coverley._" J. HADBERTON. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.00.

"_Childhood of the English Nation._" ELLA S. ARMITAGE. The same. $1.25.

"_Modern Materialism._" JAMES MARTINEAU. The same. $1.25.

"_Acoustics, Light and Heat._" W. LEES, M.A. The same. $1.50.

"_Letters from High Latitudes._" LORD DUFFERIN. Lovell, Adam, Wesson &
Co.

"_Shadow of the Sword._" ROBERT BUCHANAN. The same.

"_The Splendid Advantage of being a Woman._" CHAS. J. DUNPHIE. The
same.

"_King Saul._" A Tragedy. BYRON A. BROOKS. Nelson & Phillips.

"_U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories._" F. V. HAYDEN. Vols. IX.
and X., and Annual Report for 1875.

"_The Jukes._ A Study in Crime and Pauperism." E HARRIS, M.D. G. P.
Putnam's Sons.

"_Waverley Novels_," Riverside Edition. HURD & HOUGHTON.
    "_The Abbot._" $1.50.
    "_Kenilworth._" $1.50.
    "_Fortunes of Nigel._" $1.50.
    "_The Pirate._" $1.50.

"_Heritage of Langdaler._" Mrs. ALEXANDER. Henry Holt & Co. $1.25.

"_The New Church._" B. F. BARRETT. Claxton, Remsen & Halffelfinger.

"_List of Merchant Vessels of the United States._" Government Printing
Office.

"_Smithsonian Report 1875._" Government Printing Office.

"_Six Weeks in Norway._" E. L. ANDERSON. Robert Clarke & Co.

"_Alexander Hamilton._" Hon. GEORGE SHEA. Hurd & Houghton. $1.00.

"_Harriet Martineau's Autobiography._" Two volumes. M. W. CHAPMAN. J.
R. Osgood & Co. $6.00




NEBULAE.


--WE have not yet entered into rivalry with Mexico; and although to
those who looked upon our politics during the last two months from the
outside only, we have doubtless seemed to be tending toward anarchy,
revolution, and pronunciamentos, we were really in no such danger.
Teutonic blood and the English language (Anglo-Saxons and Germans are
both Teutonic) seem to carry with them a certain steadiness and
capacity of common-sense perception which are preventives of great
political folly; and although it is not the habit of our politicians to
speak very respectfully of each other from the opposite sides of a
political canvass, and the conduct of our Representatives at Washington
is not always quite so admirable and exemplary as it might be, we do
not, in French phrase, "descend into the streets," or raise barricades,
or fly at each other's throats unless we mean real revolutionary
business. Even then we are apt to go decorously, if not solemnly, about
our work, and talk about "the course of human events" and "a decent
respect for the opinions of mankind"; we at least did so once, and
notwithstanding the great changes that have taken place in our
political and social condition, it may be safely assumed that we should
do so again. Frothy talk at Washington gives occasion for leading
articles which are not always less frothy, and for sensation headings
that gladden the eyes of newsboys. The desperate political game played
at Washington for the Presidency has had a very bad effect upon our
reputation, and has increased the very political demoralization of
which it was an outward sign; but it is safe to say that when the most
furious politicians there talked revolution they did not "mean
business." Both parties stood before the world in a not very admirable
light. On the one hand, the Democrats digged a pit and fell into it
themselves. The Electoral Commission was their own contrivance; and
when they were moved to wrath and denunciation by the decisions against
their case, they only showed that they formed the Commission in the
supposed certainty that it would decide in their favor. They did not
want a tribunal of arbitration, but a decision under the forms of
arbitration. On the other hand, the Republicans appeared with changed
front on the subject of State sovereignty. No assertion of the purely
federative constitution of the Union could equal in force the decision
that, fraud or no fraud, Congress should not go behind the electoral
certificates of the Governors of the various States. Partisanship was
equally binding on both sides. If then all the Republicans on the
Commission always voted one way, with like "solidarity" all the
Democrats always voted the other. To adopt a phrase attributed to the
ex-Confederate General Jubal Early, the seven-spot couldn't take the
eight. One result of the struggle, and of the revelations which it
brought about, was the remarkable one of the destruction of the
prestige of the candidate who came within one electoral vote of the
Presidency. It is safe to say that if a new election had been brought
about, the Democrats would not have ventured to go into it with Mr.
Tilden in nomination.

                     *      *      *      *      *

--THE struggle is over, and the uncertainty is past; and now, according
to very general anticipations, business ought to revive and prosperity
to return. We would gladly believe that such will be the result, but we
doubt it. Business will revive, prosperity will return; for the country
is rich, never more so, and is daily becoming richer. It is impossible
to stop the onward course of a people who have our advantages; but the
causes of our present depression lie too deep to be touched by the
settlement of a mere party contest. We are suffering from the effects
of a political, social, and moral revolution which has been in progress
for nearly twenty years, and which the rest of the world has felt
hardly less than ourselves. We have suffered the most because on the
one hand our financial position is at any time less stable than that of
other people, and on the other because we of all have undergone the
greatest moral deterioration. We have been brought to that sad
condition in which we are afraid to trust each other. So many of us
have been playing the part of adventurers, so many have been playing a
"confidence game," that confidence is gone in another sense than that
in which it is so often said to be wanting. Prosperity will return to
our business circles slowly and surely as our moral tone rises, and as
business is conducted upon stable principles and upon an honorable
basis. We must cease to "swap jackknives" in the shape of railway bonds
and unimproved land; we must do more productive work and keep better
faith. Hard work and honesty will do more for us than the settlement of
the Presidential question, although that will probably do something.

                     *      *      *      *      *

--THIRTY-FIVE years ago Charles Dickens, having visited the legislative
capital of a great nation, wrote thus about the men that he found
there: "I saw in them the wheels that move the meanest perversion of
virtuous political machinery that the worst tools ever wrought.
Despicable trickery at elections, underhanded tamperings with public
officers, cowardly attacks upon opponents with scurrilous newspapers
for shields, and hired pens for daggers, shameful trucklings to
mercenary knaves, whose claim to be considered is that every day and
week they sow new crops of ruin with their venal types, which are like
dragons' teeth of yore in everything but sharpness; aiding and abetting
of every bad inclination in the popular mind, and artful suppressions
of all its good influences--such things as these, and in a word,
Dishonest Faction, in its most depraved and unblushing form, stared at
me from every corner of the crowded hall." Of what country could he
have thus written? Manifestly some "effete monarchy" in the most
degraded stage of its decadence.

                     *      *      *      *      *

--THE effort to establish carnivals in America is not a very
encouraging sign of a healthy moral tone in the public mind. Surely
there was never an attempt more superfluous, untimely, or out of place.
Not only New York, but the whole country is swarming with thousands of
people who are in need of money to buy shelter, food, and clothing;
banks of discount, savings banks, trust companies, the very charitable
institutions, are brought to ruin and disgrace by fraudulent
bankruptcy; and this is the time that is chosen to entice people to
playing the fool publicly in the open streets. If ever a Lent should
have been kept in the sackcloth of humiliation and the ashes of
despair, it is that which has just passed. People who would take part
in a carnival now would dance upon the borders of their own open
graves. And what do we want of a carnival, even if we were prosperous?
Carnivals are not suited to our national traits. They suit the Latin
races of the south of Europe; and even among them they are fading away
before the light of diffused intelligence and the thoughtfulness that
comes of knowledge. To us they are entirely foreign. They do not suit
our sober, practical habits of life and thought; and if we attempted
them, we should only make ourselves ridiculous by our awkwardness.
Festivals of that kind require a volatile people, who at least can
practise folly gracefully. We should unite folly with dulness and
stupidity. Moreover, such festivals cannot be got up to order anywhere.
They are results; they are the growth of centuries. Italians and
Frenchmen do not say, Go to! we will have a carnival. The thing belongs
to them by inheritance; the memories of it mingle with their earliest
recollections. As for us, we might go through a carnival dolefully, as
a penance fitting to Lent; but as to enjoying one, except as
spectators, to us that is quite impossible. All such festivities are
foreign to our nature. We cannot even keep up an interest in
"Decoration Day." We revere the memories of our dead; but a ceremonial
exhibition of our reverence sits ill upon us. We do not take kindly to
public spectacles, and ourselves never appear well in them. As to the
sober procession for which the municipal laws in New York compelled the
projected masquerade to be changed, it will be, if it is at all, only a
means of advertising. That sort of display we take to hugely. It was
with difficulty that President Lincoln's obsequies were preserved
against the projects of advertisers. We turn the mountains into posters
and the hills into sign-posts. If we must do that, let us do it openly
and plainly; but a carnival! Fudge!

                     *      *      *      *      *

--WE cannot successfully imitate Europeans in their graceful follies;
but in their soberer and more practical habits we might well follow
their example. A step has been just taken in Germany which is more
needed here, and which yet there is hardly any hope that we shall
profit by. The union of German apothecaries has addressed a petition to
the Federal Council demanding that the secret medicines concocted and
advertised by quacks shall be officially tested before they are
permitted to be sold. A more creditable and needful step was never
taken, or one which was more indicative of enlightenment and high
civilization. Quack medicines are on the whole a curse to mankind. They
are generally imposed upon the ignorant and credulous by men who care
not what harm they do so long as they profit by their business. Many of
these medicines--so called--are very injurious, and a still greater
proportion of them are entirely useless. The very fact that their
composition is kept secret is against them. It is a law absolute among
all honorable physicians that no remedial agent shall be kept secret.
Such physicians, if in their practice they discover a remedy for any
disease, at once make it known to the whole profession. To keep such a
discovery secret would be to lose caste, if not to be entirely excluded
from honorable professional association and recognition. If such an
examination as that proposed in Germany is needed there, here it is
required by a tenfold greater necessity. America is the great field of
operation for the patent medicine vender. Here he thrives. Here he
accumulates huge fortunes if he will only advertise persistently and
with sufficient disregard of truth. And his chief victims are women and
children. He is one of the pests of our society. We cannot exclude him,
or extinguish him entirely; that would interfere with the individual
liberty of the citizen; not only of the seller, but of the buyer. If
people choose to poison themselves gradually, they insist upon their
right to do so unhindered by government action. But at least we might
do what the German apothecaries ask to have done, and require as a
condition of the granting of a patent for a medicine that it should be
tested and its contents officially declared. The effect of such a
measure upon the general health would be in the highest degree
beneficial; and at least the public would be protected against the
fraudulent representations of the majority of patent medicine makers
and venders.

                     *      *      *      *      *

--IN another matter, church chimes, we have imitated Europe, and not
discreetly, and we have had our first check. A certain chime of church
bells in Philadelphia became annoying to the people in the
neighborhood, who complained to the courts, and obtained an injunction
restricting the use of the chimes to certain times of day. Even were
this often bell-jangling not the annoyance that it is, the whole
American public would owe something to these good Philadelphians simply
for the good example of their action in this matter. They were annoyed
by some one, the agent of a corporation, who, although he did not
commit murder, burglary, or arson, interfered with their comfort and
marred their enjoyment of life; and they, like sensible men, instead of
putting up with the annoyance after the American fashion, and saying,
"Oh, no matter! What can we do to stop it? Let it go!" set themselves
to work to see if they couldn't stop it. They tested the question
whether a certain number of men might please their taste or their
religious fancy at the risk of disturbing and annoying others; and they
succeeded. It is to be hoped that the lesson will not be lost in regard
not only to the specific annoyance which was the cause of complaint,
but all other selfish indulgences by which some men interfere with the
rights of others. The law of common sense and justice in such matters
is that every man may enjoy himself as he pleases so long as he does
not interfere with the enjoyment of their natural rights by others. A
man may give his days and nights to ringing chimes so long as they are
not heard outside of his own house; but if they are so heard, and they
deprive a single person of rest, or even of a quiet enjoyment of life,
he has passed the limit of right. A dozen men may like a strong
perfume; but they have no right to load the common air with it to the
annoyance even of a thirteenth. This matter of ringing church chimes
has become somewhat of a religious and sentimental affectation. Chimes
have a very pretty effect in literature; and at a distance in the
country they are charming. But when they clang daily in the tower of a
city church within a few hundred yards of you, they become a great
nuisance. Nor is the annoyance they give diminished when the chimer,
instead of ringing such changes as are suited to bells, will insist
upon playing _affettuoso_. In fact, all church bells are an annoyance
in cities, and a needless one. They were first used to call people to
church when there were no clocks, and before watches were heard of.
Now, when the humblest apartment has a clock that strikes the hour,
"the church-going bell" is entirely superfluous for the object for
which it is rung, and is really a great annoyance not only to the sick,
but to those who are in health. It is a noisy anachronism which clamors
with iron tongue and brazen throat for its own suppression.

                     *      *      *      *      *

--AND so at last the marriage of Adelina Patti to the Marquis of Caux
has come to its natural end. What could the Marquis or the lady
expect? He married her for the money that she earned, and that he
might own so charming a celebrity; she accepted him as a husband for
his title. Years have passed, and nothing has occurred to bind them
more closely. The lady has no children, or any prospect of one; and so
there is nothing in the way of a judicial separation on account of
incompatibility. It is not necessary to suppose that the distinguished
prima donna has actually run away from her husband with a lover; but
it would only be natural if there were a man in the distance more to
her taste. It is remarkable, by the way, that so great an interest
should be taken by Americans in the fortunes of this lady, who, since
she has developed her extraordinary talent, has turned her back
entirely on this country. She is spoken of here often as an American
prima donna. This can only be the result of a very great and an absurd
misapprehension. Adelina Patti is an Italian. Her father and mother
were both Italians, who could speak hardly a word of English. Her
education and habits of life have been entirely Italian. Even if she
had been born here by the chance of a professional residence here by
her mother, that would not have made her anything else than Italian,
more than a like chance residence in Russia or in Turkey would have
made her a Russian or a Turk, or than the Irishman's being born in a
stable would have made him a horse. When a family emigrates and
resides permanently in another country, assuming the life and the
habits of that country, and intermarrying there, it changes its
nationality, but not otherwise. The eagerness which many Americans
show to claim as American everything meritorious in art over whose
supposed origin the Stars and Stripes may have been thrown, is a
witness to our real native poverty in that respect, which we reveal by
the very means by which we would conceal it. And besides all this,
Adelina Patti was not even born in this country. She came here from
Europe a little girl, with her mother, Katarina Barili-Patti, a prima
donna, who, although she had not her daughter's facility of execution
and range of voice, sang in the grand style, and who, as a dramatic
vocalist, was far beyond _la diva_, as Adelina is absurdly called. As
to her parting company with M. Caux, nothing is more probable than
that the restraint--at least external--which belongs to the life of a
marquise became too intolerable to her inborn Bohemianism, and that
she seeks deliverance not only from an unloved and unloving husband,
but from the galling restraints of dull respectability.

                     *      *      *      *      *

--THERE is a club in London, the Albemarle, which admits both men and
women as members, and which the wags have therefore nicknamed the
Middlesex club. An English gentleman being urged to join this club on
the ground that he could take his wife there, plumply refused on that
very ground, saying that the chief good in a club consisted in its
being a refuge for married men. Whereupon the average woman exclaims,
"The brute! What did he marry for if he wanted to be rid of his wife?"
A view of the case not unnatural perhaps in a woman, but most unwise.
Passing by the not very remote possibility that there are women (as
there are men) who in the matrimonial lottery could not be regarded as
prizes, there are strong reasons for the exclusion of women, even the
most charming, from clubs. For women a man may see at home daily or in
society. It is in those places that he expects to find them; there they
naturally belong; there they are attractive. But when he sets up a club
it is for the very purpose of enjoying man companionship and indulging
his mannish tastes. He wishes there to be entirely at his ease, and not
to be called on for "little attentions." He wears his hat in the
club-house if he likes, and he does not wish to be called upon to take
it off unless he likes. In short, he wishes there to be free, for a
time, from the restraints which the presence of ladies puts upon the
conduct and conversation of men, even of those who neither in act nor
in speech pass the bounds of reasonable decorum. Women in clubs are
pretty annoyances, fine things very much out of place. Moreover, it is
true, although by most women, particularly married women, it will not
be believed, that clubs, by their exclusion of women, make the society
of the sex more pleasant to the average man, and tend to keep warm the
marital love of the average husband. Woman, whether to her credit or
not we shall not undertake to decide, can bear the continued
companionship of a favored man much better than man can bear that of a
woman, no matter how beautiful, how charming, or how much beloved. But
even women are happier for the inevitable separation from them of their
husbands every day and during a greater part of the day. As to men,
unfortunately many of them would begin to weary of a woman, and at last
to dislike her, if they were compelled to pass every evening in her
company. Here the club steps in (we are not speaking of the mere "club
man"), and interposes its conservative influence. Many a man's love is
kept fresh by his having his club for a refuge; and many a love which
has cooled almost to indifference has been prevented from turning into
aversion by the soothing influences of that refuge. For the leisurely
classes of men clubs are a benign invention; and women should in their
own interests avoid giving them anything of a "middlesex" character.

                     *      *      *      *      *

--WHILE we write a new grand scandal is impending of the Beecher-Tilton
kind, which will attract less attention than that did because the
parties to it are less widely known. But as the principal person is a
late minister of Trinity Church in New York, and now the head, of the
far-famed charitable association known as "St. John's Guild," and as
the principal witness and complainant is this gentleman's wife, who is
the daughter of a late rector of Trinity, and as she has already,
before the investigation is begun, shown an inclination to have no
connubial reserves with the public, the affair promises to be what the
journalists call a rich case. It certainly is a very deplorable one,
however it may result to the persons principally interested. It is much
to be regretted that the investigation has been announced with such a
flourish of trumpets, calling in the wife, who declares herself so much
injured, inviting the press, and announcing that the investigation will
be held with open doors; and this after a publication almost in minute
detail of all the charges brought against the Reverend defendant--at
whose own request, by the way, the investigation is set on foot.
Investigations like these must needs sometimes take place; but
everything should be done to confine a knowledge of them to those who
are called upon to take part in them, either as parties, as referees,
or as advocates. On the contrary, everything is done to make them as
public and as injurious and offensive as possible. In this the press is
chiefly culpable. Nothing is gained for justice by such public
exhibitions, and much is lost to decency.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Galaxy, April, 1877, by Various

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