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                          Transcriber’s Notes

This e-text is based on ‘The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine,’
from May 1913. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation have been
retained, but punctuation and typographical errors have been corrected.
However, passages in English dialect and in languages other than
English have not been altered.

Italic text is represented by _underscores_; small caps are symbolised
by ~tilde characters~.

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                              THE CENTURY

                          ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY

                               MAGAZINE


                              VOL. LXXXVI
                         NEW SERIES: VOL. LXIV
                         MAY TO OCTOBER, 1913

                            [Illustration]

                       THE CENTURY CO., NEW YORK

                      HODDER & STOUGHTON, LONDON




                 Copyright, 1913, by ~The Century Co.~


                          THE DE VINNE PRESS




                                 INDEX

                                  TO

                         THE CENTURY MAGAZINE

                VOL. LXXXVI      NEW SERIES: VOL. LXIV


                                                                    PAGE

  ~Adams, John Quincy, in Russia.~
    (Unpublished letters.)
    Introduction and notes by Charles
      Francis Adams. Portraits of John
      Quincy Adams and Madame de Staël                               250

  ~After-Dinner Stories.~
    An Anecdote of McKinley.              _Silas Harrison_           319

  ~After-the-War Series,
    The Century’s.~
    The Hayes-Tilden Contest for the
      Presidency.                         _Henry Watterson_            3
        Pictures from photographs and
          cartoons.

  Another View of “The Hayes-Tilden
   Contest”.                              _George F. Edmunds_        192
        Portrait of Ex-Senator Edmunds.

  ~Americans, New-Made.~ Drawings by      _W. T. Benda_ Facing page  894

  ~Artists Series, American, The
    Century’s.~
    John S. Sargent: Nonchalance.                                     44
    Carl Marr: The Landscape-Painter.                                110
    Frank W. Benson: My Daughter.                                    264

  ~Auto-Comrade, The~                     _Robert Haven Schauffler_  850

  ~Avocats, Les deux.~ From the
    painting by                           _Honoré Daumier_
                                                        Facing page  654


  ~Balkan Peninsula, Skirting the~        _Robert Hichens_

    III. The Environs of Athens.                                      84
        Pictures by Jules Guérin and
          from photographs.

     IV. Delphi and Olympia.                                         224
        Pictures by Jules Guérin and
          from photographs.

      V. In Constantinople.                                          374
        Pictures by Jules Guérin and
          from photographs.

     VI. Stamboul, the City of Mosques.                              519
        Pictures by Jules Guérin, two
          printed in color.

  ~Beelzebub Came to the Convent, How~    _Ethel Watts Mumford_      323
      Picture by N. C. Wyeth.

  “~Black Blood.~”                        _Edward Lyell Fox_         213
      Pictures by William H. Foster.

  ~Book of his Heart, The~                _Allan Updegraff_          701
      Picture by Herman Pfeifer.

  ~Borrowed Lover, The~                   _L. Frank Tooker_          348

  ~British Uncommunicativeness.~          _A. C. Benson_             567

  ~Brother Leo.~                          _Phyllis Bottome_          181
      Pictures by W. T. Benda.

  ~Business in the Orient.~               _Harry A. Franck_          475


  ~Camilla’s First Affair.~               _Gertrude Hall_            400
      Pictures by Emil
        Pollak-Ottendorff.

  ~Cartoons.~
    Noise Extracted without Pain.         _Oliver Herford_           155
    Foreign Labor.                        _Oliver Herford_           477
    Ninety Degrees in the Shade.          _J. R. Shaver_             477
    A Boy’s Best Friend.                  _May Wilson Preston_       634
    “The Fifth Avenue Girl” and “A Bit
      of Gossip.” Sculpture by            _Ethel Myers_              635
    The Child de Luxe.                    _Boardman Robinson_        636
    The “Elite” Bathing-Dress.            _Reginald Birch_           797
    From Grave to Gay.                    _C. F. Peters_             798
    Died: Rondeau Rymbel.                 _Oliver Herford_           955
    A Triumph for the Fresh Air Fund.     _F. R. Gruger_             957
    Newport Note.                         _Reginald Birch_           960

  ~Casus Belli.~                                                     955

  ~Century, the, The Spirit of~           _Editorial_                789

  ~Choate, Joseph H.~ From a charcoal
    portrait by                           _John S. Sargent_
                                                        Facing page  711

  ~Christmas, On Allowing the Editor
    to Shop Early for~                    _Leonard Hatch_            473

  ~Clown’s Rue.~                          _Hugh Johnson_             730
      Picture, printed in tint, by
        H. C. Dunn.

  ~Cole’s (Timothy) Engravings of
    Masterpieces in American Galleries.~
      Une Dame Espagnole. From the
        painting by                       _Fortuny_                    2

  ~Coming Sneeze, The~                    _Harry Stillwell Edwards_  368
      Picture by F. R. Gruger.

  ~Common Sense in the White House.~      _Editorial_                149

  ~Country Roads of New England.~
      Drawings by                         _Walter King Stone_        668

  ~Devil, The, his Due~                   _Philip Curtiss_           895

  ~Dinner of Herbs,” “Better is a.~
      Picture by                          _Edmund Dulac_
                                                        Facing page  801

  ~Dormer-Window, the, The Country of~    _Henry Dwight Sedgwick_    720
      Pictures by W. T. Benda.

  ~Dorothy McK----, Portrait of~          _Wilhelm Funk_             211

  ~Down-town in New York.~
      Drawings by                         _Herman Webster_           697

  ~Elephant Round-up, An~                 _D. P. B. Conkling_        236
      Pictures from photographs.

  ~Elephants, Wild, Noosing~              _Charles Moser_            240
      Pictures from photographs.

  ~Elixir of Youth, The~                  _Albert Bigelow Paine_      21
      Picture by O. F. Schmidt.

  ~Floods, The Great, in the Middle
    West~                                 _Editorial_                148

  ~French Art, Examples of Contemporary.~
    A Corner of the Table. From the
      painting by                         _Charles Chabas_            83

  ~Garage in the Sunshine, A~             _Joseph Ernest_            921
      Picture by Harry Raleigh.

  ~Get Something by Giving Something Up,
    On How to~                            _Simeon Strunsky_          153

  ~“Ghosts,” “Dey Ain’t No”~              _Ellis Parker Butler_      837
      Pictures by Charles Sarka.

  ~Going Up.~                             _Frederick Lewis Allen_    632
      Picture by Reginald Birch.

  ~Golf, Mind Versus Muscle in~           _Marshall Whitlatch_       606

  ~Government, The Changing View of~      _Editorial_                311

  ~Grand Cañon of the Colorado, The~      _Joseph Pennell_           202
    Six lithographs drawn from
      nature for “The Century.”

  ~Gutter-Nickel, The~                    _Estelle Loomis_           570
      Picture by J. Montgomery Flagg.

  ~Hard Money, The Return to~             _Charles A. Conant_        439
      Portraits, and cartoons by
        Thomas Nast.

  ~Her Own Life.~                         _Allan Updegraff_           79

  ~Home.~ I. An Anonymous Novel.                                     801
      Illustrations by Reginald Birch.

  ~Homer and Humbug.~                     _Stephen Leacock_          952

  ~Hyperbole in Advertising, On the
    Use of~                               _Agnes Repplier_           316

  ~Illusion of Progress, The~             _Kenyon Cox_                39

  ~Impractical Man, The~                  _Elliott Flower_           549
      Pictures by F. R. Gruger.

  ~International Club, the, On the
    Collapse of~                          _G. K. Chesterton_         151

  ~Japanese Child, a, The Training of~    _Frances Little_           170
      Pictures from photographs.

  ~Japan, the New, American Makers of~    _William Elliot Griffis_   597
      Pictures from photographs.

  ~Jefferson, Thomas.~ From the statue
    for the Jefferson Memorial in St.
    Louis by                              _Karl Bitter_               27

  ~Juryman, the, The Mind of~             _Hugo Münsterberg_         711

  ~Lady and her Book, the, On~            _Helen Minturn Seymour_    315

  ~Lawlessness in Art.~                   _Editorial_                150

  ~Life After Death.~                     _Maurice Maeterlinck_      655

  ~Literature Factory.~                   _E. P. Butler_             638

  ~Louise.~ Color-Tone, from the
    marble bust by                        _Evelyn Beatrice Longman_
                                                        Facing page  766

  ~Love by Lightning.~                    _Maria Thompson Daviess_   641
      Pictures, printed in tint,
        by F. R. Gruger.

  ~Mannering’s Men.~                      _Marjorie L. C. Pickthall_ 427

  ~Man who did not Go to Heaven on
    Tuesday, The~                         _Ellis Parker Butler_      340

  ~Millet’s Return to his Old Home.~      _Truman H. Bartlett_       332
      Pictures from pastels
        by Millet.

  ~Money behind the Gun, The~             _Editorial_                470

  ~Morgan’s, Mr., Personality~            _Joseph B. Gilder_         459
      Picture from photograph.

  ~Moving-picture, the, The Widening
    Field of~                             _Charles B. Brewer_         66
      Pictures from photographs.

  ~Mrs. Longbow’s Biography.~             _Gordon Hall Gerould_       56

  ~Nemours: A Typical French Provincial
    Town.~                                _Roger Boutet de Monvel_   844
      Pictures by Bernard Boutet de
        Monvel.

  ~Newspaper Invasion of Privacy.~        _Editorial_                310

  ~Niagara again in Danger.~              _Editorial_                150

  ~Noteworthy Stories of the Last
    Generation.~
      The Tachypomp.                      _Edward P. Mitchell_        99
        Portrait of the author, and
          drawings by Reginald Birch.
      Belles Demoiselles Plantation.      _George W. Cable_          273
        With portrait of the author,
          and new pictures by W. M.
          Berger.
      The New Minister’s Great
        Opportunity.                      _C. H. White_              390
        With portrait of the author,
          and new picture by Harry
          Townsend.

  ~One Way to make Things Better.~        _Editorial_                471

  ~Oregon Muddle,” “The~                  _Victor Rosewater_         764

  ~Paderewski at Home.~                   _Abbie H. C. Finck_        900
      Picture from a portrait by
        Emil Fuchs.

  ~Paris.~                                _Theodore Dreiser_         904
      Pictures by W. J. Glackens.

  “~Peggy.~” From the marble bust by      _Evelyn Beatrice Longman_  362

  ~Polo Team, Undefeated American,
    Bronze Group of the~                  _Herbert Hazeltine_
                                                        Facing page  641

  ~Progressive Party, The~                _Theodore Roosevelt_       826
      Portrait of the author.

  ~Puns, A Paper of~                      _Brander Matthews_         290
      Head-piece by Reginald Birch.

  ~Remington, Frederic, Recollections
    of~                                   _Augustus Thomas_          354
      Pictures by Frederic Remington,
        and portrait.

  ~Romain Rolland.~                       _Alvan F. Sanborn_         512
      Picture from portrait of Rolland
        from a drawing by Granié.

  ~St. Bernard, The Great~                _Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg_  161
      Pictures by André Castaigne.

  ~St. Elizabeth of Hungary.~ By
    Francisco Zubarán. Engraved
    on wood by                            _Timothy Cole_             437

  ~Scarlet Tanager, The.~ Printed in
    color from the painting by            _Alfred Brennan_            29

  “~Schedule K~”.                         _N. I. Stone_              111

  ~“Schedule K,” Comments on~             _Editorial_                472

  ~Sculpture.~                            _Charles Keck_             917

  ~Senior Wrangler, The~                                             958
      Snobbery--America vs. England.
      Our Tender Literary Celebrities.

  ~Sigiriya, “The Lion’s Rock” of
    Ceylon.~                              _Jennie Coker Gay_         265
      Pictures by Duncan Gay.

  ~Socialism in the Colleges.~            _Editorial_                468

  ~Spinster, American, The~               _Agnes Repplier_           363

  ~Summer Hills,” the, In “The
    Circuit of~                           _John Burroughs_           878
      Portrait of the author by Alvin
        L. Coburn.

  ~Sunset on the Marshes.~ From the
    painting by                           _George Inness_
                                                        Facing page  824

  “~Them Old Moth-eaten Lovyers~”.        _Charles Egbert Craddock_  120
      Pictures by George Wright.

  ~Trade of the World Papers, The~        _James Davenport Whelpley_
      XVII. If Canada were to Annex the
        United States                                                534
          Pictures from photographs.
      XVIII. The Foreign Trade of the
        United States                                                886

  ~T. Tembarom.~                          _Frances Hodgson Burnett_
                                            130, 296, 413, 610, 767, 929
      Drawings by Charles S. Chapman.

  ~Two-billion-dollar Congress, The~      _Editorial_                313

  ~Uncommercial Traveler, An, in London~  _Theodore Dreiser_         736
      Pictures by W. J. Glackens.

  ~Under which Flag, Ladies, Order or
    Anarchy?~                             _Editorial_                309

  ~Venezuela Dispute, the, The Monroe
    Doctrine in~                          _Charles R. Miller_        750
      Cartoons from “Punch,” and a map.

  ~Verita’s Stratagem.~                   _Anne Warner_              430

  ~Voyage Over, The First~                _Theodore Dreiser_         586
      Pictures by W. J. Glackens.

  ~Wagner, Richard, If, Came Back~        _Henry T. Finck_           208
      Portrait of Wagner from photograph.

  ~Wall Street, The News in~              _James L. Ford_            794
      Pictures by Reginald Birch and May
        Wilson Preston.

  ~War against War.~                      _Editorial_                147

  ~War-horses of Famous Generals.~        _James Grant Wilson_        45
      Pictures from paintings and
        photographs.

  ~War Worth Waging, A~                   _Richard Barry_             31
      Picture by Jay Hambidge.

  ~Washington, Fresh Light on~                                       635

  ~Watterson’s, Colonel, Rejoinder to
    Ex-Senator Edmunds~                   _Henry Watterson_          285
      Comments on “Another View of ‘The
        Hayes-Tilden Contest.’”

  ~Whistler, A Visit to~                  _Maria Torrilhon Buel_     694

  ~White Linen Nurse, The~                _Eleanor Hallowell Abbott_
                                                           483, 672, 857
      Pictures, printed in tint, by
        Herman Pfeifer.

  ~Widow, The.~ From the painting by      _Couture_                  457
      An example of French portraiture.

  ~World Reformers--and Dusters.~         _The Senior Wrangler_      792
      Picture by Reginald Birch.

  ~Year, The Most Important~              _Editorial_                951


VERSE

  ~Ballade of Protest, A~                 _Carolyn Wells_            476

  ~Beggar, The~                           _James W. Foley_           877

  ~Belle Dame Sans Merci, La~             _John Keats_               388
      Republished with pictures by
        Stanley M. Arthurs.

  ~Blank Page, For a~                     _Austin Dobson_            458

  ~Brother Mingo Millenyum’s Ordination.~ _Ruth McEnery Stuart_      475

  ~Continued in the Ads.~                 _Sarah Redington_          795

  ~Cubist Romance, A~                     _Oliver Herford_           318
      Picture by Oliver Herford.

  ~Daddy Do-funny’s, Old, Wisdom Jingles~ _Ruth McEnery Stuart_
                                                           154, 319, 478

  ~Double Star, A~                        _Leroy Titus Weeks_        511

  ~Emergency.~                            _William Rose Benét_       916

  ~Experimenters, the, To~                _Charles Badger Clark, Jr._ 43

  ~Finis.~                                _William H. Hayne_         295

  ~Gentle Reader, The~                    _Arthur Davison Ficke_     692

  ~House-without-Roof.~                   _Edith M. Thomas_          339

  ~Husband Shop, The~                     _Oliver Herford_           956
      Picture by Oliver Herford.

  ~Invulnerable.~                         _William Rose Benét_       308

  ~Justice, At the Closed Gates of~       _James D. Corrothers_      272

  ~Lady Clara Vere de Vere: New Style.~   _Anne O’Hagan_             793
      Picture by E. L. Blumenschein.

  ~Last Faun, The~                        _Helen Minturn Seymour_    717
      Picture, printed in tint, by
        Charles A. Winter.

  ~Last Message, A~                       _Grace Denio Litchfield_    26

  ~Life’s Aspiration.~                    _Louis Untermeyer_         156
      Drawing by George Wolfe Plank.

  ~Limericks.~:
      Text and pictures by Oliver Herford.

      XXVII.  The Somnolent Bivalve.                                 157
      XXVIII. The Ounce of Detention.                                158
      XXIX.   The Kind Armadillo.                                    320
      XXX.    The Gnat and the Gnu.                                  479
      XXXI.   The Sole-Hungering Camel.                              480
      XXXII.  The Eternal Feminine.                                  639
      XXXIII. Tra-la-Larceny.                                        640
      XXXIV.  The Conservative Owl.                                  799
      XXXV.   The Omnivorous Book-worm.                              800

  ~Little People, The~                    _Amelia Josephine Burr_    387

  ~Maeterlinck, Maurice~                  _Stephen Phillips_         467

  ~Marvelous Munchausen, The~             _William Rose Benét_       563
      Pictures by Oliver Herford.

  ~May, from my Window.~                  _Frances Rose Benét_       155
      Drawing by Oliver Herford.

  ~Message from Italy, A~                 _Margaret Widdemer_        547
      Drawing printed in tint by
        W. T. Benda.

  ~Mother, The~                           _Timothy Cole_             920
      Picture by Alpheus Cole.

  ~My Conscience.~                        _James Whitcomb Riley_     331
      Decoration by Oliver Herford.

  ~Myself,” “I Sing of~                   _Louis Untermeyer_         960

  ~New Art, The~                          _Corinne Rockwell Swain_   156

  ~Noyes, Alfred, To~                     _Edwin Markham_            288

  ~Off Capri.~                            _Sara Teasdale_            223

  ~Parents, Our~                          _Charles Irvin Junkin_     959
      Pictures by Harry Raleigh.

  ~Prayers for the Living.~               _Mary W. Plummer_          367

  ~Ritual.~                               _William Rose Benét_       788

  ~Royal Mummy, To a~                     _Anna Glen Stoddard_       631

  ~Rymbels~:
      Pictures by Oliver Herford.
    The Girl and the Raspberry Ice.       _Oliver Herford_           637
    The Yellow Vase.                      _Charles Hanson Towne_     637
    Tragedy.                              _Theodosia Garrison_       638
    “On Revient toujours à Son Premier
      Amour”.                             _Oliver Herford_           638
    A Rymbel of Rhymers.                  _Carolyn Wells_            796
    The Prudent Lover.                    _L. Frank Tooker_          797
    On a Portrait of Nancy.               _Carolyn Wells_            797

  ~Same Old Lure, The~                    _Berton Braley_            478

  ~Scarlet Tanager, To a~                 _Grace Hazard Conkling_     28

  ~Sierra Madre.~                         _Henry Van Dyke_           347

  ~Socratic Argument.~                    _John Carver Alden_        960

  ~Submarine Mountains.~                  _Cale Young Rice_          693

  ~Triolet, A~                            _Leroy Titus Weeks_        636

  ~Wine of Night, The~                    _Louis Untermeyer_         119

  ~Wingèd Victory.~                       _Victor Whitlock_          596
      Photograph and decoration.

  ~Wise Saint, The~                       _Herman Da Costa_          798
      Picture by W. T. Benda.

  ~Young Heart in Age, The~               _Edith M. Thomas_           78

[Illustration]




[Illustration:

    TIMOTHY COLE’S
    WOOD ENGRAVINGS
    OF
    MASTERPIECES
    IN
    AMERICAN GALLERIES

    UNE DAME ESPAGNOLE
    BY
    FORTUNY
]




[Illustration: Owned by the Metropolitan Museum, New York

UNE DAME ESPAGNOLE. BY FORTUNY

(TIMOTHY COLE’S WOOD ENGRAVINGS OF MASTERPIECES IN AMERICAN GALLERIES)]




Copyright 1913, by ~The Century Co.~ All rights reserved.




~The Century Magazine~

    ~Vol. LXXXVI~       MAY, 1913       ~No. 1~




THE HAYES-TILDEN CONTEST FOR THE PRESIDENCY

INSIDE HISTORY OF A GREAT POLITICAL CRISIS

(THE CENTURY’S AFTER-THE-WAR SERIES)

BY HENRY WATTERSON

Editor of the Louisville “Courier-Journal”


I

The time is coming, if it has not already arrived, when among
fair-minded and intelligent Americans there will not be two opinions
touching the Hayes-Tilden contest for the Presidency in 1876-77--that
both by the popular vote and a fair count of the electoral vote Tilden
was elected and Hayes was defeated--but the whole truth underlying the
determinate incidents which led to the rejection of Tilden and the
seating of Hayes will never be known.

“All history is a lie,” observed Sir Robert Walpole, the corruptionist,
mindful of what was likely to be written about himself, and, “What is
history,” asked Napoleon, the conqueror, “but a fable agreed upon?”

In the first administration of Mr. Cleveland, there were present
at a dinner-table in Washington, the President being of the party,
two leading Democrats and two leading Republicans who had sustained
confidential relations to the principals and played important parts
in the drama of the Disputed Succession. These latter had been long
upon terms of personal intimacy. The occasion was informal and joyous,
the good-fellowship of the heartiest. Inevitably the conversation
drifted to the Electoral Commission, which had counted Tilden out
and Hayes in, and of which each of the four had some story to tell.
Beginning in banter, with interchanges of badinage, it presently fell
into reminiscence, deepening as the interest of the listeners rose to
what under different conditions might have been described as unguarded
gaiety, if not imprudent garrulity. The little audience was rapt.
Finally, Mr. Cleveland raised both hands and exclaimed, “What would
the people of this country think if the roof could be lifted from this
house and they could hear these men!” And then one of the four, a
gentleman noted for his wealth both of money and humor, replied, “But
the roof is not going to be lifted from this house, and if any one
repeats what I have said I will denounce him as a liar.”

Once in a while the world is startled by some revelation of the unknown
which alters the estimate of an historic event or figure; but it is
measurably true, as Metternich declares, that those who make history
rarely have time to write it.

It is not my wish in recurring to the events of five-and-thirty years
ago to invoke and awaken any of the passions of that time, nor my
purpose to assail the character or motives of any of the leading
actors. Most of them, including the principals, I knew well; to many
of their secrets I was privy. As I was serving, in a sense, as Mr.
Tilden’s personal representative in the Lower House of the Forty-fourth
Congress, and as a member of the joint Democratic Advisory or Steering
Committee of the two Houses, all that passed came more or less, if not
under my supervision, yet to my knowledge; and long ago I resolved
that certain matters should remain a sealed book in my memory. I make
no issue of veracity with the living; the dead should be sacred. The
contradictory promptings, not always crooked; the double constructions
possible to men’s actions; the intermingling of ambition and patriotism
beneath the lash of party spirit; often wrong unconscious of itself;
sometimes equivocation deceiving itself; in short, the tangled web of
good and ill inseparable from great affairs of loss and gain, made
debatable ground for every step of the Hayes-Tilden proceeding.

I shall bear sure testimony to the integrity of Mr. Tilden. I directly
know that the Presidency was offered to him for a price and that he
refused it; and I indirectly know and believe that two other offers
came to him which also he declined. The accusation that he was willing
to buy, and through the cipher despatches and other ways tried to buy,
rests upon appearance supporting mistaken surmise. Mr. Tilden knew
nothing of the cipher despatches until they appeared in the “New-York
Tribune.” Neither did Mr. George W. Smith, his private secretary, and
later one of the trustees to his will. It should be sufficient to say
that, so far as they involved No. 15 Gramercy Park, they were the work
solely of Colonel Pelton, acting on his own responsibility, and, as
Mr. Tilden’s nephew, exceeding his authority to act; that it later
developed that during this period Colonel Pelton had not been in his
perfect mind, but was at least semi-irresponsible; and that on two
occasions when the vote or votes sought seemed within reach, Mr. Tilden
interposed to forbid. Directly and personally, I know this to be true.

The price, at least in patronage, which the Republicans actually paid
for possession is of public record. Yet I not only do not question
the integrity of Mr. Hayes, but I believe him, and most of those
immediately about him, to have been high-minded men who thought they
were doing for the best in a situation unparalleled and beset with
perplexity. What they did tends to show that men will do for party and
in concert what the same men never would be willing to do each on his
own responsibility. In his “Life of Samuel J. Tilden,” John Bigelow
says:

    Why persons occupying the most exalted positions should have
    ventured to compromise their reputations by this deliberate
    consummation of a series of crimes which struck at the very
    foundations of the Republic, is a question which still puzzles
    many of all parties who have no charity for the crimes themselves.
    I have already referred to the terrors and desperation with which
    the prospect of Tilden’s election inspired the great army of
    office-holders at the close of Grant’s administration. That army,
    numerous and formidable as it was, was comparatively limited.
    There was a much larger and justly influential class who were
    apprehensive that the return of the Democratic party to power
    threatened a reactionary policy at Washington, to the undoing of
    some or all the important results of the war. These apprehensions
    were inflamed by the party press until they were confined to no
    class, but more or less pervaded all the Northern States. The
    Electoral Tribunal, consisting mainly of men appointed to their
    positions by Republican Presidents, or elected from strong
    Republican States, felt the pressure of this feeling, and from
    motives compounded in more or less varying proportions of dread of
    the Democrats, personal ambition, zeal for their party, and respect
    for their constituents, reached the conclusion that the exclusion
    of Tilden from the White House was an end which justified whatever
    means were necessary to accomplish it. They regarded it like the
    emancipation of the slaves, as a war measure.

[Illustration: PRESIDENT AND MRS. HAYES IN 1877, AT THE TIME OF THEIR
SILVER WEDDING]


II

The nomination of Horace Greeley in 1872 and the overwhelming defeat
that followed left the Democratic party in an abyss of despair. The old
Whig party, after the disaster that overtook it in 1852, had been not
more demoralized. Yet in the general elections of 1874 the Democrats
swept the country, carrying many Northern States and sending a great
majority to the Forty-fourth Congress.

Reconstruction was breaking down of its very weight and rottenness. The
panic of 1873 reacted against the party in power. Dissatisfaction with
Grant, which had not sufficed two years before to displace him, was
growing apace. Favoritism bred corruption, and corruption grew more and
more defiant. Succeeding, scandals cast their shadows before. Chickens
of “carpet-baggery” let loose upon the South were coming home to roost
at the North. There appeared everywhere a noticeable subsidence of the
sectional spirit and a rising tide of the national spirit. Reform was
needed alike in the State governments and the National government, and
the cry for reform proved something other than an idle word. All things
made for Democracy.

[Illustration: From a photograph by W. Kurtz

SAMUEL J. TILDEN, GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK, 1875-76]

Yet there were many and serious handicaps. The light and leading of
the historic Democratic party which had issued from the South were in
obscurity and abeyance, while most of those surviving who had been
distinguished in the party conduct and counsels were disabled by act
of Congress. Of the few prominent Democrats left at the North, many
were tainted by what was called Copperheadism (sympathy with the
Confederacy). To find a chieftain wholly free from this contamination,
Democracy, having failed of success in presidential campaigns not
only with Greeley but with McClellan and Seymour, was turning to such
disaffected Republicans as Chase, Field, and Davis of the Supreme
Court. At last Heaven seemed to smile from the clouds upon the
disordered ranks and to summon thence a man meeting the requirements of
the time. This was Samuel Jones Tilden.

[Illustration: From a photograph owned by F. H. Meserve

SENATOR ZACHARIAH CHANDLER

Chairman of the Republican National Committee in the Hayes-Tilden
campaign.]

To his familiars, Mr. Tilden was a dear old bachelor who lived in
a fine old mansion in Gramercy Park. Though sixty years of age, he
seemed in the prime of his manhood; a genial and overflowing scholar;
a trained and earnest doctrinaire; a public-spirited, patriotic
citizen, well known and highly esteemed, who had made fame and fortune
at the bar and had always been interested in public affairs. He was a
dreamer with a genius for business, a philosopher yet an organizer. He
pursued the tenor of his life with measured tread. His domestic fabric
was disfigured by none of the isolation and squalor which so often
attend the confirmed celibate. His home life was a model of order and
decorum, his home as unchallenged as a bishopric, its hospitality,
though select, profuse and untiring. An elder sister presided at his
board, as simple, kindly, and unostentatious, but as methodical as
himself. He was a lover of books rather than music and art, but also
of horses and dogs and out-of-door activity. He was fond of young
people, particularly of young girls; he drew them about him, and was a
veritable Sir Roger de Coverley in his gallantries toward them and his
zeal in amusing them and making them happy. His tastes were frugal and
their indulgence was sparing. He took his wine not plenteously, though
he enjoyed it--especially his “blue seal” while it lasted--and sipped
his whisky-and-water on occasion with a pleased composure redolent of
discursive talk, of which, when he cared to lead the conversation, he
was a master. He had early come into a great legal practice and held
a commanding professional position. His judgment was believed to be
infallible; and it is certain that after 1871 he rarely appeared in the
courts of law except as counselor, settling in chambers most of the
cases that came to him.

[Illustration: From a photograph by Sherman & McHugh

CONGRESSMAN ABRAM S. HEWITT

Chairman of the Democratic National Committee in the Hayes-Tilden
campaign.]

It was such a man whom, in 1874, the Democrats nominated for Governor
of New York. To say truth, it was not thought by those making the
nomination that he had much chance to win. He was himself so much
better advised that months ahead he prefigured very near the exact
vote. The afternoon of the day of election one of the group of friends,
who even thus early had the Presidency in mind, found him in his
library confident and calm.

“What majority will you have?” he asked cheerily.

“Any,” replied the friend sententiously.

“How about fifteen thousand?”

“Quite enough.”

“Twenty-five thousand?”

“Still better.”

“The majority,” he said, “will be a little in excess of fifty
thousand.” It was 53,315. His estimate was not guesswork. He had
organized his campaign by school-districts. His canvass system
was perfect, his canvassers were as penetrating and careful as
census-takers. He had before him reports from every voting precinct
in the State. They were corroborated by the official returns. He had
defeated General John A. Dix, thought to be invincible, by a majority
very nearly the same as that by which Governor Dix had been elected two
years before.


III

The time and the man had met. Although Mr. Tilden had not before held
executive office, he was ripe and ready for the work. His experience
in the pursuit and overthrow of the Tweed Ring in New York, the great
metropolis, had prepared and fitted him to deal with the Canal Ring at
Albany, the State Capital. Administrative Reform was now uppermost in
the public mind, and here in the Empire State of the Union had come
to the head of affairs a Chief Magistrate at once exact and exacting,
deeply versed not only in legal lore but in a knowledge of the methods
by which political power was being turned to private profit, and of
the men--Democrats as well as Republicans--who were preying upon the
substance of the people.

The story of the two years that followed relates to investigations that
investigated, to prosecutions that convicted, to the overhauling of the
civil fabric, to the rehabilitation of popular censorship, to reduced
estimates and lower taxes.

The campaign for the presidential nomination began as early as the
autumn of 1875. The Southern end of it was easy enough. A committee of
Southerners residing in New York was formed. Never a leading Southern
man came to town who was not “seen.” If of enough importance, he was
taken to No. 15 Gramercy Park. Mr. Tilden measured to the Southern
standard of the gentleman in politics. He impressed the disfranchised
Southern leaders as a statesman of the old order and altogether after
their own idea of what a President ought to be. The South came to St.
Louis, the seat of the National Convention, represented by its foremost
citizens and almost a unit for the Governor of New York. The main
opposition sprang from Tammany Hall, of which John Kelly was then the
Chief. Its very extravagance proved an advantage to Tilden. Two days
before the meeting of the Convention I sent this message to Mr. Tilden:
“Tell Blackstone [his favorite riding horse] that he wins in a walk.”
The anti-Tilden men put up the Hon. S. S. (“Sunset”) Cox, for Temporary
Chairman. It was a clever move. Mr. Cox, though sure for Tammany, was
popular everywhere and especially at the South. His backers thought
that with him they could count upon a majority of the National
Committee.

The night before the assembling, Mr. Tilden’s two or three leading
friends on the Committee came to me and said: “We can elect you
Chairman over Cox, but no one else.” I demurred at once. “I don’t know
one rule of parliamentary law from another,” I said. “We will have the
best parliamentarian on the continent right by you all the time,” they
said. “I can’t see to recognize a man on the floor of the convention,”
I said. “We’ll have a dozen men to tell you,” they replied. So it was
arranged, and thus at the last moment I was chosen.

I had barely time to write the required “key-note” speech, but
not to commit it to memory, nor sight to read it, even had I been
willing to adopt that mode of delivery. It would not do to trust to
extemporization. A friend, Colonel Stoddard Johnston, who was familiar
with my penmanship, came to the rescue. Concealing my manuscript behind
his hat, he lined the words out to me between the cheering, I having
mastered a few opening sentences.

[Illustration: From a photograph owned by F. H. Meserve THOMAS F.
BAYARD of Delaware

From a photograph by Brady FRANCIS KERNAN of New York

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell

ALLEN G. THURMAN of Ohio

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell JOSEPH E. McDONALD of Indiana

From a photograph by Brady JOHN W. STEVENSON of Kentucky

SENATORS OF THE DEMOCRATIC “ADVISORY COMMITTEE” IN THE HAYES-TILDEN
CONTEST]

Luck was with me. It went with a bang--not, however, wholly without
detection. The Indianians, devoted to Hendricks, were very wroth.
“See that fat man behind the hat telling him what to say,” said one to
his neighbor, who answered, “Yes, and wrote it for him, too, I’ll be
bound.”

One might as well attempt to drive six horses by proxy as preside over
a National Convention by hearsay. I lost my parliamentarian at once. I
just made my parliamentary law as we went. Never before nor since did
any deliberative body proceed under manual so startling and original.
But I delivered each ruling with a resonance--it were better called
an impudence--which had an air of authority. There was a good deal of
quiet laughter on the floor among the knowing ones, though I knew the
mass was as ignorant as I was myself; but, realizing that I meant to
be just and was expediting business, the Convention soon warmed to
me, and, feeling this, I began to be perfectly at home. I never had a
better day’s sport in all my life.

One incident was particularly amusing. Much against my will and over my
protest, I was brought to promise that Miss Phœbe Couzins, who bore
a Woman’s Rights Memorial, should at some opportune moment be given the
floor to present it. I foresaw what a row it was bound to occasion.
Toward noon, when there was a lull in the proceedings, I said with
an emphasis meant to carry conviction, “Gentlemen of the Convention,
Miss Phœbe Couzins, a representative of the Woman’s Association of
America, has a Memorial from that body and, in the absence of other
business, the chair will now recognize her.”

Instantly, and from every part of the hall, arose cries of “No!” These
put some heart into me. Many a time as a school-boy I had proudly
declaimed the passage from John Home’s tragedy, “My name is Norval.”
Again I stood upon “the Grampian hills.” The Committee was escorting
Miss Couzins down the aisle. When she came within the radius of my
poor vision I saw that she was a beauty and dressed to kill! That was
reassurance. Gaining a little time while the hall fairly rocked with
its thunder of negation, I laid the gavel down and stepped to the
edge of the platform and gave Miss Couzins my hand. As she appeared
above the throng there was a momentary “Ah!” and then a lull broken
by a single voice: “Mr. Chairman, I rise to a point of order.” Leading
Miss Couzins to the front of the stage, I took up the gavel and gave a
gentle rap, saying, “The gentleman will take his seat.”

“But, Mr. Chairman, I rise to a point of order,” he vociferated.

“The gentleman will take his seat instantly,” I answered in a tone of
one about to throw the gavel at his head. “No point of order is in
order when a lady has the floor.”

After that Miss Couzins received a positive ovation, and having
delivered her message retired in a blaze of glory.

Mr. Tilden was nominated on the second ballot. The campaign that
followed proved one of the most memorable in our history. When it came
to an end the result showed on the face of the returns 196 in the
Electoral College, 11 more than a majority, and in the popular vote
4,300,316, a majority of 264,300 over Hayes.

How this came to be first contested and then complicated so as
ultimately to be set aside has been minutely related by its authors.
The newspapers, both Republican and Democratic, of November 8, 1876,
the morning after the election, conceded an overwhelming victory for
Tilden and Hendricks. There was, however, a single exception. “The
New York Times” had gone to press with its first edition, leaving the
result in doubt but inclining toward the success of the Democrats.
In its later editions this tentative attitude was changed to the
statement that Mr. Hayes lacked the vote only of Florida--“claimed by
the Republicans”--to be sure of the required 185 votes in the Electoral
College.

The story of this surprising discrepancy between midnight and daylight
reads like a chapter of fiction.

[Illustration:

    CONGRESSMEN OF THE DEMOCRATIC “ADVISORY
    COMMITTEE” IN THE HAYES-TILDEN CONTEST

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell

R. L. GIBSON of Louisiana

From a photograph WILLIAM S. HOLMAN of Indiana

From a photograph by Sarony HENRY WATTERSON of Kentucky

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell SAMUEL J. RANDALL of
Pennsylvania (Speaker)

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell EPPA HUNTON of Virginia

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell

L. Q. C. LAMAR of Mississippi

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell

HENRY B. PAYNE of Ohio]

After the early edition of the “Times” had gone to press certain
members of the editorial staff were at supper, very much cast down by
the returns, when a messenger brought a telegram from Senator Barnum
of Connecticut, financial head of the Democratic National Committee,
asking for the “Times’s” latest news from Oregon, Louisiana, Florida,
and South Carolina. But for that unlucky telegram Tilden would
probably have been inaugurated President of the United States.

[Illustration: FIRE AND WATER MAKE VAPOR.

WHAT A COOLING OFF WILL BE THERE, MY COUNTRYMEN!

From “Harper’s Weekly” of February 3, 1877

THOMAS NAST’S CARTOON ON COLONEL WATTERSON’S SUGGESTION OF A GATHERING
OF ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DEMOCRATS IN WASHINGTON

The ice-water is being applied by Murat Halstead, editor of the
Cincinnati “Commercial,” which was opposed to Tilden; but in the
Greeley campaign of 1872 Halstead had worked with Watterson. (See
~The Century~ for November, 1912.)]

The “Times” people, intense Republican partizans, at once saw an
opportunity. If Barnum did not know, why might not a doubt be raised?
At once the editorial in the first edition was revised to take a
decisive tone and declare the election of Hayes. One of the editorial
council, Mr. John C. Reid, hurried to Republican Headquarters in the
Fifth Avenue Hotel, which he found deserted, the triumph of Tilden
having long before sent everybody to bed. Mr. Reid then sought the room
of Senator Zachariah Chandler, Chairman of the National Republican
Committee. While upon this errand he encountered in the hotel corridor
“a small man wearing an enormous pair of goggles, his hat drawn over
his ears, a greatcoat with a heavy military cloak, and carrying a
gripsack and newspaper in his hand. The newspaper was the ‘New-York
Tribune,’” announcing the election of Tilden and the defeat of Hayes.
The new-comer was Mr. William E. Chandler, even then a very prominent
Republican politician, just arrived from New Hampshire and very much
exasperated by what he had read.

Mr. Reid had another tale to tell. The two found Mr. Zachariah
Chandler, who bade them leave him alone and do whatever they thought
best. They did so consumingly, sending telegrams to Columbia,
Tallahassee, and New Orleans, stating to each of the parties addressed
that the result of the election depended upon his State. To these were
appended the signature of Zachariah Chandler. Later in the day Senator
Chandler, advised of what had been set on foot and its possibilities,
issued from National Republican Headquarters this laconic message:
“Hayes has 185 electoral votes and is elected.” Thus began and was put
in motion the scheme to confuse the returns and make a disputed count
of the vote.


IV

The day after the election I wired Mr. Tilden suggesting that, as
Governor of New York, he propose to Mr. Hayes, the Governor of Ohio,
that they unite upon a committee of eminent citizens, composed in
equal numbers of the friends of each, who should proceed at once
to Louisiana, which appeared to be the objective point of greatest
moment to the already contested result. Pursuant to a telegraphic
correspondence which followed, I left Louisville that night for New
Orleans. I was joined en route by Mr. Lamar of Mississippi, and
together we arrived in the Crescent City Friday morning.

[Illustration: “ONE TOUCH OF NATURE MAKES”--EVEN HENRY WATTERSON GIVE IN

“Let us have peace. I don’t care who is the next President,” cries our
bold Patriarch at the ~FIRST~ arrival.

“The Hon. Henry Watterson has just been presented with a son--weight,
11 pounds.”--_Washington Correspondence._

    This cartoon by Thomas Nast, with the above titles and explanation,
    appeared in “Harper’s Weekly” of March 10, 1877, as an apology for
    the lampoon on the opposite page. (See page 17.)]

It has since transpired that the Republicans were promptly advised by
the Western Union Telegraph Company of all that passed over its wires,
my despatches to Mr. Tilden being read in Republican Headquarters at
least as soon they reached Gramercy Park.

[Illustration: From a photograph owned by F. H. Meserve

STANLEY MATTHEWS OF OHIO]

Mr. Tilden did not adopt the plan of a direct proposal to Mr. Hayes.
Instead, he chose a body of Democrats to go to the “seat of war.” But
before any of them had arrived General Grant, the actual President,
anticipating what was about to happen, appointed a body of Republicans
for the like purpose, and the advance guard of these appeared on the
scene the following Monday.

Within a week the St. Charles Hotel might have been mistaken for a
caravansary of the National Capital. Among the Republicans were John
Sherman, Stanley Matthews, Garfield, Evarts, Logan, Kelley, Stoughton,
and many others. Among the Democrats, besides Lamar and myself, came
Lyman Trumbull, Samuel J. Randall, William R. Morrison, McDonald, of
Indiana, and many others. A certain degree of personal intimacy existed
between the members of the two groups, and the “entente” was quite as
unrestrained as might have existed between rival athletic teams. A
Kentucky friend sent me a demijohn of what was represented as very old
Bourbon, and I divided it with “our friends the enemy.” New Orleans was
new to most of the “visiting statesmen,” and we attended the places of
amusement, lived in the restaurants, and “saw the sights,” as if we
had been tourists in a foreign land and not partizans charged with the
business of adjusting a presidential election from implacable points of
view.

My own relations were especially friendly with John Sherman and James
A. Garfield, a colleague on the Committee of Ways and Means, and with
Stanley Matthews, a near kinsman by marriage, who had stood as an elder
brother to me from my childhood.

Corruption was in the air. That the Returning Board was for sale and
could be bought was the universal impression. Every day some one turned
up with pretended authority and an offer. Most of these were of course
the merest adventurers. It was my own belief that the Returning Board
was playing for the best price it could get from the Republicans and
that the only effect of any offer to buy on our part would be to assist
this scheme of blackmail.

The Returning Board consisted of two white men, Wells and Anderson,
and two <DW64>s, Kenner and Casanave. One and all they were without
character. I was tempted through sheer curiosity to listen to a
proposal which seemed to come direct from the Board itself, the
messenger being a well-known State senator. As if he were proposing to
dispose of a horse or a dog he stated his errand.

“You think you can deliver the goods?” said I.

“I am authorized to make the offer,” he answered.

“And for how much?” I asked.

“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” he replied. “One hundred
thousand each for Wells and Anderson and twenty-five thousand apiece
for the <DW65>s.”

To my mind it was a joke. “Senator,” said I, “the terms are as cheap as
dirt. I don’t happen to have the amount about me at the moment, but I
will communicate with my principal and see you later.”

Having no thought of entertaining the proposal, I had forgotten the
incident, when two or three days later my man met me in the lobby of
the hotel and pressed for a definite reply. I then told him I had found
that I possessed no authority to act and advised him to go elsewhere.

It is asserted that Wells and Anderson did agree to sell and were
turned down by Mr. Hewitt, and, being refused their demands for cash by
the Democrats, took their final pay, at least in patronage, from their
own party.[1]


V

I passed the Christmas week of 1876 in New York with Mr. Tilden.
On Christmas day we dined alone. The outlook, on the whole, was
cheering. With John Bigelow and Manton Marble Mr. Tilden had been
busily engaged compiling the data for a constitutional battle to be
fought by the Democrats in Congress, maintaining the right of the
House of Representatives to concurrent jurisdiction with the Senate
in the counting of the electoral vote, pursuant to an unbroken line
of precedents established by the method of proceeding in every
presidential election between 1793 and 1872.

There was very great perplexity in the public mind. Both parties
appeared to be at sea. The dispute between the Democratic House and the
Republican Senate made for thick weather. Contests of the vote of three
States--Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida, not to mention single
votes in Oregon and Vermont--which presently began to blow a gale, had
already spread menacing clouds across the political sky. Except Mr.
Tilden, the wisest among the leaders knew not precisely what to do.

From New Orleans, on the Saturday night succeeding the presidential
election, I had telegraphed to Mr. Tilden, detailing the exact
conditions there and urging active and immediate agitation. The chance
had been lost. I thought then, and I still think, that the conspiracy
of a few men to use the corrupt Returning Boards of Louisiana, South
Carolina, and Florida to upset the election and make confusion in
Congress, might, by prompt exposure and popular appeal, have been
thwarted. Be this as it may, my spirit was depressed and my confidence
discouraged the intense quietude on our side, for I was sure that
beneath the surface the Republicans, with resolute determination and
multiplied resources, were as busy as bees.

[Illustration: From a photograph owned by F. H. Meserve

WILLIAM E. CHANDLER OF NEW HAMPSHIRE]

Mr. Robert M. McLane, later Governor of Maryland and Minister to
France--a man of rare ability and large experience, who had served in
Congress and in diplomacy, and was an old friend of Mr. Tilden--had
been at a Gramercy Park conference when my New Orleans report arrived,
and had then and there urged the agitation recommended by me. He was
now again in New York. When a lad he had been in England with his
father, Lewis McLane, then American Minister to the Court of St.
James’s, during the excitement over the Reform Bill of 1832. He had
witnessed the popular demonstrations and had been impressed by the
direct force of public opinion upon law-making and law-makers. An
analogous situation had arrived in America. The Republican Senate was
as the Tory House of Lords. We must organize a movement such as had
been so effectual in England. Obviously something was going amiss with
us and something had to be done.

[Illustration: From the painting by Cordelia Adele Fassett, in
the Senate wing of the Capitol at Washington. After a photograph,
copyright, 1878, by Mrs. S. M. Fassett

THE SESSION OF THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION TO CONSIDER THE CASE OF THE
FLORIDA RETURNS, IN THE SUPREME COURT ROOM, FEBRUARY 5, 1877]

    NOTE TO “THE SESSION OF THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION,” ETC. (SEE THE
    PREVIOUS PAGE)

    With the purpose of making a picture typical of the sessions of the
    Electoral Commission, Mrs. Fassett included prominent people who
    were in Washington at the time, and who gave the artist sittings in
    the Supreme Court Room.

    The Commissioners on the bench, from left to right are: Senators
    Thurman, Bayard (writing), Frelinghuysen, Morton, Edmunds; Supreme
    Court Justices Strong, Miller, Clifford, Field, Bradley; Members
    of the House, Payne, Hunton, Abbott, Garfield, and Hoar. At the
    left, below Thurman, is the head of Senator Kernan who acted as
    substitute for the former when ill.

    William M. Evarts, counsel for Hayes, is addressing the Commission,
    and his associate, E. W. Stoughton (white-haired), sits behind him;
    Charles O’Conor, chief counsel for Tilden, sits at his left. Other
    members of counsel are grouped in the middle-ground. At the left
    is seen George Bancroft (with long white beard), and in the middle
    foreground (looking out), James G. Blaine.

It was agreed that I return to Washington and make a speech “feeling
the pulse” of the country, with the suggestion that in the National
Capital should assemble “a mass convention of at least one hundred
thousand peaceful citizens,” exercising “the freeman’s right of
petition.”

The idea was one of many proposals of a more drastic kind and was the
merest venture. I, myself, had no great faith in it. But I prepared the
speech, and after much reading and revising, it was held by Mr. Tilden
and Mr. McLane to cover the case and meet the purpose, Mr. Tilden
writing Mr. Randall, Speaker of the House of Representatives, a letter,
carried to Washington by Mr. McLane, instructing him what to do in the
event that the popular response should prove favorable.

Alack-the-day! The Democrats were equal to nothing affirmative. The
Republicans were united and resolute. I delivered the speech, not in
the House, as had been intended, but at a public meeting which seemed
opportune. The Democrats at once set about denying the sinister and
violent purpose ascribed to it by the Republicans, who, fully advised
that it had emanated from Gramercy Park, and came by authority, started
a counter agitation of their own.

I became the target for every kind of ridicule and abuse. Nast drew a
grotesque cartoon of me, distorting my suggestion for the assembling of
one hundred thousand citizens, which was both offensive and libelous.

Being on friendly terms with the Harpers, I made my displeasure so
resonant in Franklin Square--Nast himself having no personal ill-will
toward me--that a curious and pleasing opportunity which came to pass
was taken to make amends. A son having been born to me, “Harper’s
Weekly” contained an atoning cartoon representing the child in its
father’s arms, and, above, the legend: “10,000 sons from Kentucky,
alone.” Some wag said that the son in question, was “the only one of
the hundred thousand in arms who came when he was called.”

For many years afterward I was pursued by this unlucky speech, or
rather by the misinterpretation given to it alike by friend and foe.
Nast’s first cartoon was accepted as a faithful portrait, and I was
accordingly satirized and stigmatized, although no thought of violence
ever had entered my mind, and in the final proceedings I had voted for
the Electoral Commission Bill and faithfully stood by its decisions.
Joseph Pulitzer, who immediately followed me on the occasion named,
declared that he wanted my “one hundred thousand” to come fully armed
and ready for business; yet he never was taken to task or reminded of
his temerity.


VI

The Electoral Commission Bill was considered with great secrecy by the
Joint Committees of the House and Senate. Its terms were in direct
contravention of Mr. Tilden’s plan. This was simplicity itself. He was
for asserting, by formal resolution, the conclusive right of the two
Houses acting concurrently to count the electoral vote and determine
what should be counted as electoral votes, and for denying, also by
formal resolution, the pretension set up by the Republicans that the
President of the Senate had lawful right to assume that function. He
was for urging that issue in debate in both Houses and before the
country. He thought that if the attempt should be made to usurp for
the President of the Senate a power to make the count, and thus
practically to control the Presidential election, the scheme would
break down in process of execution.

Strange to say, Mr. Tilden was not consulted by the party leaders in
Congress until the fourteenth of January, and then only by Mr. Hewitt,
the extra-constitutional features of the Electoral Tribunal measure
having already received the assent of Mr. Bayard and Mr. Thurman, the
Democratic members of the Senate Committee. Standing by his original
plan, and answering Mr. Hewitt’s statement that Mr. Bayard and Mr.
Thurman were fully committed, Mr. Tilden said: “Is it not, then,
rather late to consult me?” to which Mr. Hewitt replied: “They do
not consult you. They are public men, and have their own duties and
responsibilities. I consult you.” In the course of the discussion with
Mr. Hewitt which followed Mr. Tilden said, “If you go into conference
with your adversary, and can’t break off because you feel you must
agree to something, you cannot negotiate--you are not fit to negotiate.
You will be beaten upon every detail.” Replying to the apprehension
of a collision of force between the parties, Mr. Tilden thought it
exaggerated, but said: “Why surrender now? You can always surrender.
Why surrender before the battle, for fear you may have to surrender
after the battle?”

In short, Mr. Tilden condemned the proceeding as precipitate. It
was a month before the time for the count, and he saw no reason why
opportunity should not be given for consideration and consultation by
all the representatives of the people. He treated the state of mind of
Bayard and Thurman as a panic in which they were liable to act in haste
and repent at leisure. He stood for publicity and wider discussion,
distrusting a scheme to submit such vast interests to a small body
sitting in the Capitol, as likely to become the sport of intrigue and
fraud.

Mr. Hewitt returned to Washington and, without communicating to Mr.
Tilden’s immediate friends in the House his attitude and objection,
united with Mr. Thurman and Mr. Bayard in completing the bill and
reporting it to the Democratic Advisory Committee, as, by a caucus
rule, had to be done with all measures relating to the great issue then
before us. No intimation had preceded it. It fell like a bombshell
upon the members of the Committee. In the debate that followed Mr.
Bayard was very insistent, answering the objections at once offered by
me, first aggressively and then angrily, going the length of saying,
“If you do not accept this plan I shall wash my hands of the whole
business, and you can go ahead and seat your President in your own way.”

Mr. Randall, the Speaker, said nothing, but he was with me, as was a
majority of my colleagues. It was Mr. Hunton, of Virginia, who poured
oil on the troubled waters, and, somewhat in doubt as to whether the
changed situation had changed Mr. Tilden, I yielded my better judgment,
declaring it as my opinion that the plan would seat Hayes, and there
being no other protestant the Committee finally gave a reluctant assent.

In “open session” a majority of Democrats favored the bill. Many of
them made it their own. They passed it. There was belief that justice
David Davis, who was expected to become a member of the Commission, was
sure for Tilden. If, under this surmise, he had been, the political
complexion of “eight to seven” would have been reversed. Elected to the
United States Senate from Illinois, Judge Davis declined to serve, and
Mr. Justice Bradley was chosen for the Commission in his place. The day
after the inauguration of Hayes my kinsman, Stanley Matthews, said to
me, “You people wanted Judge Davis. So did we. I tell you what I know,
that Judge Davis was as safe for us as Judge Bradley. We preferred him
because he carried more weight.” The subsequent career of Judge Davis
in the Senate gives conclusive proof that this was true.

When the consideration of the disputed votes before the Commission
had proceeded far enough to demonstrate the likelihood that its final
decision would be for Hayes, a movement of obstruction and delay, “a
filibuster,” was organized by about forty Democratic members of the
House. It proved rather turbulent than effective. The South stood
very nearly solid for carrying out the agreement in good faith.
“Toward the close the filibuster received what appeared formidable
reinforcement from the Louisiana Delegation.” This was in reality
merely a “bluff,” intended to induce the Hayes people to make certain
concessions touching their State government. It had the desired effect.
Satisfactory assurances having been given, the count proceeded to the
end--a very bitter end, indeed, for the Democrats.

The final conference between the Louisianians and the accredited
representatives of Mr. Hayes was held at Wormley’s Hotel and came to
be called “the Wormley Conference.” It was the subject of uncommon
interest and heated controversy at the time and long afterward.
Without knowing why or for what purpose, I was asked to be present
by my colleague, Mr. Ellis, of Louisiana, and later in the day the
same invitation came to me from the Republicans through Mr. Garfield.
Something was said about my serving as “a referee.” Just before the
appointed hour General M. C. Butler, of South Carolina, afterward
so long a Senator in Congress, said to me: “This meeting is called
to enable Louisiana to make terms with Hayes. South Carolina is as
deeply concerned as Louisiana, but we have nobody to represent us in
Congress and hence have not been invited. South Carolina puts herself
in your hands and expects you to secure for her whatever terms are
given to Louisiana.” So, of a sudden, I found myself invested with
responsibility equally as an “agent” and a “referee.”

It is hardly worth while repeating in detail all that passed at
this Wormley Conference, made public long ago by Congressional
investigation. When I entered the apartment of Mr. Evarts at Wormley’s
I found, besides Mr. Evarts, Mr. John Sherman, Mr. Garfield, Governor
Dennison and Mr. Stanley Matthews, of the Republicans, and Mr. Ellis,
Mr. Levy, and Mr. Burke, Democrats of Louisiana. Substantially, the
terms had been agreed upon during previous conferences; that is, the
promise that, if Hayes came in, the troops should be withdrawn and
the people of Louisiana be left free to set their house in order to
suit themselves. The actual order withdrawing the troops was issued by
President Grant two or three days later, just as he was going out of
office.

“Now, gentlemen,” said I, half in jest, “I am here to represent South
Carolina, and if the terms given to Louisiana are not equally applied
to South Carolina, I become a filibuster myself to-morrow morning.”
There was some chaffing as to what right I had there and how I got in,
when with great earnestness Governor Dennison, who had been the bearer
of a letter from Mr. Hayes which he had read to us, put his hand on my
shoulder and said, “As a matter of course, the Southern policy to which
Mr. Hayes has here pledged himself embraces South Carolina as well as
Louisiana.” Mr. Sherman, Mr. Garfield, and Mr. Evarts concurred warmly
in this, and, immediately after we separated, I communicated the fact
to General Butler.

In the acrimonious discussion which subsequently sought to make
“bargain, intrigue, and corruption” of this Wormley Conference, and
to involve certain Democratic members of the House who were nowise
party to it, but had sympathized with the purpose of Louisiana and
South Carolina to obtain some measure of relief from intolerable
local conditions, I never was questioned or assailed. No one doubted
my fidelity to Mr. Tilden, who had been promptly advised of all that
passed and who justified what I had done. Though “conscripted,” as
it were, and rather a passive agent, I could see no wrong in the
proceeding. I had spoken and voted in favor of the Electoral Tribunal
Bill and, losing, had no thought of repudiating its conclusions.
Hayes was already as good as seated. If the States of Louisiana and
South Carolina could save their local autonomy out of the general
wreck, there seemed no good reason to forbid. On the other hand, the
Republican leaders were glad of an opportunity to make an end of the
corrupt and tragic farce of Reconstruction; to unload their party of a
dead weight which had been burdensome and was growing dangerous; mayhap
to punish their Southern agents who had demanded so much for doctoring
the returns and making an exhibit in favor of Hayes.


VII

Mr. Tilden accepted the result with equanimity. “I was at his house,”
says John Bigelow, “when his exclusion was announced to him, and also
on the fourth of March when Mr. Hayes was inaugurated, and it was
impossible to remark any change in his manner, except perhaps that he
was less absorbed than usual and more interested in current affairs.”
His was an intensely serious mind; and he had come to regard the
Presidency as rather a burden to be borne--an opportunity for public
usefulness--involving a life of constant toil and care, than as an
occasion for personal exploitation and rejoicing.

However much of captivation the idea of the Presidency may have had for
him when he was first named for the office, I cannot say, for he was as
unexultant in the moment of victory as he was unsubdued in the hour of
defeat; but it is certainly true that he gave no sign of disappointment
to any of his friends. He lived nearly ten years longer, at Greystone,
in a noble homestead he had purchased for himself overlooking the
Hudson River, the same ideal life of the scholar and gentleman that he
had passed in Gramercy Park.

Looking back over these untoward and sometimes mystifying events,
I have often asked myself: Was it possible, with the elements what
they were, and he himself what he was, to seat Mr. Tilden in the
office to which he had been elected? The missing ingredient in a
character intellectually and morally great, and a personality far from
unimpressive, was the touch of the dramatic discoverable in most of the
leaders of men: even in such leaders as William of Orange and Louis the
XI, as Cromwell and Washington.

There was nothing spectacular about Mr. Tilden. Not wanting the
sense of humor, he seldom indulged it. In spite of his positiveness
of opinion and amplitude of knowledge, he was always courteous and
deferential in debate. He had none of the audacious daring, let us say,
of Mr. Blaine, the energetic self-assertion of Mr. Roosevelt. Either,
in his place, would have carried all before him.

It would be hard to find a character farther from that of a subtle
schemer--sitting behind his screen and pulling his wires--which
his political and party enemies discovered him to be as soon as he
began to get in the way of the Machine and obstruct the march of the
self-elect. His confidences were not effusive nor their subjects
numerous. His deliberation was unfailing, and sometimes it carried the
idea of indecision, not to say actual love of procrastination. But in
my experience with him I found that he usually ended where he began,
and it was nowise difficult for those whom he trusted to divine the
bias of his mind where he thought it best to reserve its conclusions.
I do not think that in any great affair he ever hesitated longer than
the gravity of the case required of a prudent man, or that he had a
preference for delays, or that he clung over-tenaciously to both horns
of the dilemma, as his professional training and instinct might lead
him to do, and did certainly expose him to the accusation of doing.

He was a philosopher and took the world as he found it. He rarely
complained and never inveighed. He had a discriminating way of
balancing men’s good and bad qualities and of giving each the benefit
of a generous accounting, and a just way of expecting no more of a man
than it was in him to yield. As he got into deeper water his stature
rose to its level, and, from his exclusion from the Presidency in 1877
to his renunciation of public affairs in 1884 and his death in 1886,
his walks and ways might have been a study for all who would learn
life’s truest lessons and know the real sources of honor, happiness,
and fame.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]


THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH

BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

Author of “The Bread-Line,” “Elizabeth,” “Mark Twain: A Biography,” etc.


Then, it being no use to try, Carringford let the hand holding the
book drop into his lap and from his lap to his side. His eyes stared
grimly into the fire, which was dropping to embers.

“I suppose I’m getting old,” he said; “that’s the reason. The books are
as good as ever they were--the old ones, at any rate. Only they don’t
interest me any more. It’s because I don’t believe in them as I did. I
see through them all. I begin taking them to pieces as soon as I begin
to read, and of course romance and glamour won’t stand dissection. Yes,
it’s because I’m getting old; that’s it. Those things go with youth.
Why, I remember when I would give up a dinner for a new book, when
a fresh magazine gave me a positive thrill. I lost that somewhere,
somehow; I wonder why. It is a ghastly loss. If I had to live my life
over, I would at least try not to destroy my faith in books. It seems
to me now just about the one thing worth keeping for old age.”

The book slipped from the hand hanging at his side. The embers broke,
and, falling together, sent up a tongue of renewed flame. Carringford’s
mind was slipping into by-paths.

“If one only might live his life over!” he muttered. “If one might be
young again!”

He was not thinking of books now. A procession of ifs had come filing
out of the past--a sequence of opportunities where, with the privilege
of choice, he had chosen the wrong, the irrevocable thing.

“If one only might try again!” he whispered. “If one only might! Good
God!” Something like a soft footfall on the rug caused him to turn
suddenly. “I beg your pardon,” he said, rising, “I did not hear you. I
was dreaming, I suppose.”

A man stood before him, apparently a stranger.

“I came quietly,” he said. “I did not wish to break in upon your
thought. It interested me, and I felt that I--might be of help.”

Carringford was trying to recall the man’s face,--a studious,
clean-shaven face,--to associate it and the black-garbed, slender
figure with a name. So many frequented his apartment, congenial, idle
fellows who came and went, and brought their friends if they liked,
that Carringford was not surprised to be confronted by one he could not
place. He was about to extend his hand, confessing a lack of memory,
when his visitor spoke again.

“No,” he said in a gentle, composed voice, “you would not know it if
you heard it. I have never been here before. I should not have come now
only that, as I was passing below, I heard you thinking you would like
to be young again--to live your life over, as they say.”

Carringford stared a moment or two at the smooth, clean-cut features
and slender, black figure of his visitor before replying. He was used
to many curious things, and not many things surprised him.

“I beg your pardon,” he repeated, “you mentioned, I believe, that you
heard me thinking as you were passing on the street below?”

The slender man in black bowed.

“Wishing that you might be young again, that you might have another try
at the game of life. I believe that was the exact thought.”

“And, may I ask, is it your habit to hear persons think?”

“When their thoughts interest me, yes, as one might overhear an
interesting conversation.”

Carringford had slipped back into his chair and motioned his guest to
another. Wizard or unbalanced, he was likely to prove a diversion. When
the cigars were pushed in his direction, he took one, lighted it, and
smoked silently. Carringford smoked, too, and looked into the fire.

“You were saying,” he began presently, “that you pick up interesting
thought-currents as one might overhear bits of conversation. I suppose
you find the process quite as simple as hearing in the ordinary way.
Only it seems a little--well, unusual. Of course that is only my
opinion.”

The slender man in black assented with a slight nod.

“The faculty is not unusual; it is universal. It is only undeveloped,
uncontrolled, as yet. It was the same with electricity a generation
ago. Now it has become our most useful servant.”

Carringford gave his visitor an intent look. This did not seem the
inconsequential phrasing of an addled brain.

“You interest me,” he said. “Of course I have heard a good deal of
such things, and all of us have had manifestations; but I think I have
never before met any one who was able to control--to demonstrate, if
you will--this particular force. It is a sort of mental wireless, I
suppose--wordless, if you will permit the term.”

“Yes, the true wireless, the thing we are approaching--speech of mind
to mind. Our minds are easily attuned to waves of mutual interest. When
one vibrates, another in the same wave will answer to it. We are just
musical instruments: a chord struck on the piano answers on the attuned
harp. Any strong mutual interest forms the key-note of mental harmonic
vibration. We need only develop the mental ear to hear, the mental eye
to see.”

The look of weariness returned to Carringford’s face. These were
trite, familiar phrases.

“I seem to have heard most of those things before,” he said. Then, as
his guest smoked silently, he added, “I am only wondering how it came
that my thought of the past and its hopelessness should have struck a
chord or key-note which would send you up my stair.”

The slender, black figure rose and took a turn across the room, pausing
in front of Carringford.

“You were saying as I passed your door that you would live your life
over if you could. You were thinking: ‘If one might be young again! If
one only might try again! If only one might!’ That was your thought, I
believe.”

Carringford nodded.

“That was my thought,” he said, “through whatever magic you came by it.”

“And may I ask if there was a genuine desire behind that thought?
Did you mean that you would indeed live your life over if you could?
That, if the opportunity were given to tread the backward way to a new
beginning, you would accept it?”

There was an intensity of interest in the man’s quiet voice, an eager
gleam in his half-closed eyes, a hovering expectancy in the attitude
of the slender, black figure. Carringford had the feeling of having
been swept backward into a time of sorcery and incantation. He vaguely
wondered if he had not fallen asleep. Well, he would follow the dream
through.

“Yes, I would live my life over if I could,” he said. “I have made a
poor mess of it this time. I could play the game better, I know, if the
Fates would but deal me a new hand. If I could start young again, with
all the opportunities of youth, I would not so often choose the poorer
thing.”

The long, white fingers of Carringford’s guest had slipped into his
waistcoat pocket. They now drew forth a small, bright object and held
it to the light. Carringford saw that it was a vial, filled with a
clear, golden liquid that shimmered and quivered in the light and was
never still. Its possessor regarded it for a moment through half-closed
lashes, then placed it on a table under the lamp, where it continued to
glint and tremble.

Carringford watched it, fascinated, half hypnotized by the marvel of
its gleam. Surely there was magic in this. The man was an alchemist, a
sort of reincarnation from some forgotten day.

Carringford’s guest also watched the vial. The room seemed to have
grown very still. Then after a time his thin lips parted.

“If you are really willing to admit failure,” he began slowly,
carefully selecting each word, “if behind your wish there lies a
sincere desire to go back to youth and begin life over, if that desire
is strong enough to grow into a purpose, if you are ready to make
the experiment, there you will find the means. That vial contains
the very essence of vitality, the true elixir of youth. It is not
a magic philter, as I see by your thought you believe. There is no
magic. Whatever is, belongs to science. I am not a necromancer, but a
scientist. From boyhood my study has been to solve the subtler secrets
of life. I have solved many such. I have solved at last the secret of
life itself. It is contained in that golden vial, an elixir to renew
the tissues, to repair the cells, of the wasting body. Taken as I
direct, you will no longer grow old, but young. The gray in your hair
will vanish, the lines will smooth out of your face, your step will
become buoyant, your pulses quick, your heart will sing with youth.”
The speaker paused a moment, and his gray eyes rested on Carringford
and seemed probing his very soul.

“It will take a little time,” he went on; “for as the natural processes
of decay are not rapid, the natural restoration may not be hurried. You
can go back to where you will, even to early youth, and so begin over,
if it is your wish. Are you willing to make the experiment? If you are,
I will place the means in your hands.”

While his visitor had been speaking, Carringford had been completely
absorbed, filled with strange emotions, too amazed, too confused for
utterance.

“I see a doubt in your mind as to the genuineness, the efficacy, of my
discovery,” the even voice continued. “I will relieve that.” From an
inner pocket he drew a card photograph and handed it to Carringford.
“That was taken three years ago. I was then approaching eighty. I am
now, I should say, about forty-five. I could be younger if I chose, but
forty-five is the age of achievement--the ripe age. Mankind needs me
at forty-five.”

Carringford stared at the photograph, then at the face before him,
then again at the photograph. Yes, they were the same, certainly they
were the same, but for the difference of years. The peculiar eyes, the
clean, unusual outlines were unmistakable. Even a curious cast in the
eye was there.

“An inheritance,” explained his visitor. “Is the identification enough?”

Carringford nodded in a dazed way and handed back the picture. Any
lingering doubt of the genuineness of this strange being or his science
had vanished. His one thought now was that growing old need be no more
than a fiction, after all that one might grow young instead, might
lay aside the wrinkles and the gray hairs, and walk once more the way
of purposes and dreams. His pulses leaped, his blood surged up and
smothered him.

The acceptance of such a boon seemed too wonderful a thing to be put
into words. His eyes grew wide and deep with the very bigness of it,
but he could not for the moment find speech.

“You are willing to make the experiment?” the man asked. “I see many
emotions in your mind. Think--think clearly, and make your decision.”

Words of acceptance rushed to Carringford’s lips. They were upon the
verge of utterance when suddenly he was gripped by an old and dearly
acquired habit--the habit of forethought.

“But I should want to keep my knowledge of the world,” he said, “to
profit by my experience, my wisdom, such as it is. I should want to
live my life over, knowing what I know now.”

The look of weariness which Carringford’s face had worn earlier had
found its way to the face of the visitor.

“I seem to have heard most of those things before,” he said, with a
faint smile.

“But shall I not remember the life I have lived, with its shortcomings,
its blunders?”

“Yes, you will remember as well as you do now--better, perhaps, for
your faculties will be renewed; but whether you will profit by it--that
is another matter.”

“You mean that I shall make the same mistakes, commit the same sins?”

“Let us consider to a moment. You will go back to youth. You will
be young again. Perhaps you have forgotten what it is to be young.
Let me remind you.” The man’s lashes met; his voice seemed to come
from a great distance. “It is to be filled with the very ecstasy of
living,” he breathed--“its impulses, its fevers, the things that have
always belonged to youth, that have always made youth beautiful. Your
experience? Yes, you will have that, too; but it will not be the
experience of that same youth, but of another--the youth that you
were.” The gray eyes gleamed, the voice hardened a little. “Did you
ever profit by the experience of another in that earlier time?”

Carringford shook his head.

“No,” he whispered.

His guest pointed to the book-shelves.

“Did you ever, in a later time, profit by the wisdom set down in those?”

Carringford shook his head.

“No,” he whispered.

“Yet the story is all there, and you knew the record to be true. Have
you always profited even by your own experience? Have you always
avoided the same blunder a second, even a third, time? Do you always
profit by your own experience even now?”

Carringford shook his head.

“No,” he whispered.

“And yet you think that if you could only live your life over, you
would avoid the pitfalls and the temptations, remembering what they had
cost you before. No, oh, no; I am not here to promise you that. I am
not a magician; I am only a scientist, and I have not yet discovered
the elixir of wisdom or of morals. I am not superhuman; I am only
human, like yourself. I am not a god, and I cannot make you one. Going
back to youth means that you will be young again--young! Don’t you see?
It does not mean that you will drag back with you the strength and the
wisdom and the sobered impulses of middle age. That would not be youth.
Youth cares nothing for such things, and profits by no experience, not
even its own.”

Carringford’s eyes had wandered to the yellow vial under the lamp--to
the quivering, shimmering fascination of its dancing gold. His gaze
rested there a moment, then again sought the face of his guest--that
inscrutable face where seemed mingled the look of middle age with the
wisdom of the centuries.

“You do not care to go back further?” Carringford said.

The man’s eyes closed for a moment, and something that was akin to
fierce human emotion swept his features.

“Yes, oh, yes, I care,” he said quickly. “It is the temptation I
fight always. Oh, you do not know what it means to feel that you are
growing young! To feel your body renew, your heart beat stronger, to
feel your blood take on a swifter flow, like the sap of a tree in
spring! You have known the false stimulus of wine. Ah, it is a feeble
thing compared with this! For this is not false, but true. This is the
substance of renewal, not the fire of waste. To wake in the morning
feeling that you are not older than yesterday, but younger, better able
to cope and to enjoy; to travel back from fourscore to forty-five--I
have done that. Do you realize what that means? It means treading the
flowery way, lighted by eternal radiance, cheered by the songs of
birds. And then to stop--you cannot know what it means to stop! Oh,
yes, it was hard to stop; but I must stop now, or not at all this side
of youth. Only at forty-five would one have the strength to stop--the
age of reason and will, the age of achievement. And I need to achieve,
for I still have much to do. So I stopped when I had the strength and
had reached the fullness of my power. While I have work to do I shall
not go further back. I shall remain as I am, and as you are, at middle
age--the age of work.”

He had been pacing up and down in front of Carringford as he spoke. He
now halted, facing him, gazing down.

“I must not linger,” he said. “These are my hours for labor, and I
have so much to do, so much, it will keep me busy for a thousand
years. I have only begun. Perhaps some day I may discover the elixir
of wisdom. Perhaps I may yet solve the secret of genius. Perhaps”--His
voice lowered--“I shall one day unveil the secret of the soul. The
vial I leave with you, for I see in your mind that you cannot reach
a conclusion now. On the attached label you will find instructions
for its use. Think, ponder, and be sure before you set out on that
flowery backward way. Be sure that you want youth again, with all that
youth means, before you start back to find it.” He laid his hand in
Carringford’s for an instant, and was gone.

[Illustration: Drawn by O. F. Schmidt. Half-tone plate engraved by H.
C. Merrill

“HE BALANCED THE PRECIOUS VIAL MORE QUICKLY”]

For a while Carringford did not move, but sat as one in a dream,
staring at the dancing fluid gold in the bottle beneath the lamp.

Youth--youth, how he had longed for that vanished gold, which he had so
prodigally wasted when it was in his grasp! How often he had said, as
he had said to-night, “Oh, to have one more chance, to be able to begin
the game anew!” He reached out and grasped the vial, and held it up to
the light. The glinting radiance in it began a wild, new dance at his
touch.

Youth, life renewed, yes, that is what it was, its very essence; to
taste of that elixir, and start back along the flowery, sunlit way of
which his guest had spoken; to feel the blood start more quickly in his
veins, a new spring in his muscles; to know that a new bloom had come
into his cheek, a new light into his eye.

But, then, the other things, they would come, too. Along that
fair backward way lurked all the temptations, the dangers, the
heartbreaks--all the efforts and the failures he had once left behind.
Did he want to face them again? Did he want to endure again all those
years of the struggle of human wisdom with human weakness? He knew it
would mean that, and that the same old fights and failures would be his
share. He had never thought of it before, but he knew now that it must
be so.

Yet, to tread that flowery way, to begin to-night!

He wheeled around to the dying fire, and sat staring into the deep
coals and flickering blaze, balancing the golden vial in his hand, as
one weighing a decision.

To tread that flowery way, with its blue skies and its singing birds,
to feel one’s heart bursting with a new ecstasy, to reach again the
land of hope and love, and to linger there with some one--some one with
a heart full of love and life! He had always been so lonely!

The age of work, his own age, his guest had chosen to linger there; had
resisted all other temptations for that. With the wisdom of fourscore
years and all his subtle gift for detecting and avoiding dangers, he
had chosen the middle age of life for his abiding-place. The age of
work, yes, it was that, if one only made it his vantage-ground.

But, oh, the glory of the flowery way, with all its dangers and all its
heartbreaks! His decision was swinging to and fro, like a pendulum: the
age of work, the flowery way, the age of work?

And he had been so idle. Perhaps that had been the trouble all along.

“The age of work,” he whispered, “the age of achievement!”

He balanced the precious vial more quickly. It caught the flicker of a
waning blaze and became a great, throbbing ruby in his hand.

“To live life over! To go back and begin the game anew! Good God!”

Then--he did not know how it happened--the little bottle toppled, fell,
and struck the stone hearth, splashing its contents into the dying
embers. There was a leap of yellow flame, which an instant later had
become vivid scarlet, changing as quickly to crimson, deep purple, then
to a flare of blinding white, and was gone.

Carringford, startled for a moment, sat gazing dumbly at the ashes of
his dying fire.

“The question has decided itself,” he said.




A LAST MESSAGE

BY GRACE DENIO LITCHFIELD


    Dear, I lie dying, and thou dost not know--
          Thou whom of all the world I love the best,
          And wilt not know until I lie at rest,
          With lips forever closed and lids dropped low.
    O Love, O Love, I cannot leave thee so!
          Cannot, still undivined, still unexpressed,
          Unheeding to the last my heart’s behest,
          Dumb into the eternal silence go!
    What reck I in this moment of disgrace?
          Albeit the whole world hear what my heart saith,
          I cry aloud to thee across all space,
    To thee--to thee--I call with my last breath!
          O Love, lean forth from out thy dwelling-place!
          Listen, and learn I loved thee, Love, till death.

[Illustration: THOMAS JEFFERSON

FROM THE STATUE BY KARL BITTER, FOR THE JEFFERSON MEMORIAL IN ST. LOUIS

This statue will be unveiled in the presence of a congressional
committee on April 30, 1913, the one hundred and tenth anniversary of
the Louisiana Purchase.]




[Illustration]


TO A SCARLET TANAGER

BY GRACE HAZARD CONKLING


    My tanager, what crescent coast,
      Curving beyond what seas of air,
    Invites your elfin commerce most?
      For I would fain inhabit there.
    Is it a corner of Cathay,
      That I could reach by caravan,
    Or do you traffic far away
      Beyond the mountains of Japan?

    If, where some iridescent isle
      Wears like a rose its calm lagoon,
    You plan to spend a little while,--
      An April or a fervid June,--
    Deign to direct my wanderings,
      And I shall be the one who sees
    Your scarlet pinnace furl its wings
      And come to anchor in the trees.

    Do you collect for merchandise
      Ribbons of weed and jeweled shells,
    And dazzle color-hungry eyes
      With rainbows from the coral wells?
    But when your freight is asphodels,
      You must be fresh from Enna’s lawn.
    Who buys, when such a merchant sells,
      And in what market roofed with dawn?

    Much would it ease my spirit if
      To-day I might embark with you,
    Low-drifting like the milkweed-skiff,
      Or voyaging against the blue,
    To learn who speeds your ebon sails,
      And what you do in Ispahan.
    Do you convey to nightingales
      Strange honey-dew from Hindustan?

    With you for master mariner,
      I yet might travel very far;
    Discover whence your cargoes were,
      And whither tending, by a star;
    Or what ineffable bazaar
      You most frequent in Samarkand;
    Or even where those harbors are
      Keats found forlorn in fairy-land.

[Illustration: Owned by Mrs. Frank H. Scott

THE SCARLET TANAGER

FROM THE PAINTING, IN WATER-COLORS, BY ALFRED BRENNAN]




[Illustration]


A WAR WORTH WAGING

THE SUCCESSFUL FIGHT TO IMPROVE THE HEALTH OF NEW YORK CITY

(AVERAGE LIFE IN 1866, THIRTY YEARS; IN 1912, SIXTY-SIX YEARS.
DEATH-RATE IN 1866, 34 PER THOUSAND; IN 1912, 14.11 PER THOUSAND)

BY RICHARD BARRY


Professor Fisher, of the Committee of One Hundred appointed to consider
the problem of the national health, was laboring with Senator Works of
California, the official representative in Washington of the Christian
Scientists.

“Your approval, Senator,” he said, “of such measures as clean streets
and playgrounds is really an indorsement of preventive medicine.”

“But,” exclaimed Senator Works, “I did not know you meant those things
as being preventive medicine. I thought preventive medicine meant
serums.”

“No,” said Professor Fisher, laughing; “it means mosquito-bars and
bath-tubs.”

It is not only serums and bacteriology, but mosquito-bars and
bath-tubs, clean streets and plenty of sewers, together with an
efficient organization to perfect the operation of such things, that
have revolutionized the conditions of health in New York City.

Consider what has been done for poor children alone. Recently I stood
in one of the fifty-five diet-kitchens maintained by the city. A poor
woman of the neighborhood entered, carrying in her arms a sickly baby.
Evidently familiar with the proper course of procedure, she said to
the nurse in charge, “I have given him castor-oil and barley gruel;
now what shall I do?” This incident is remarkable because the woman
never before had come within the reach of the Health Department. In
the danger that menaced the child, she had learned to take the first
essential steps not through experience or instruction, but merely
through neighborhood gossip.


CONDITION OF NEW YORK HALF A CENTURY AGO

Ten years ago such a thing would have been impossible in New York or in
any other large city. The tremendous agencies that now exist for the
medical enlightenment of the masses were then unheard of. A generation
ago New York was in a condition of almost primeval darkness concerning
questions of public health. Canton or Constantinople is to-day little
worse off than was America’s chief city then.

In 1866 the public health conditions of New York were in so low a state
that the average length of life of the inhabitants was thirty years.
In 1912 these conditions had been improved so that the average length
of life was sixty-six years. Thus the value of human life, reckoned in
terms of time alone, had more than doubled in less than half a century.

Let us go back to the year following the Civil War. The only paving
in New York then was of cobblestones, and many streets were unpaved.
All were in filthy condition, being irregularly cleaned by contractors,
who shirked their work. There was no general system for the removal
of ashes and garbage, and these were thrown loosely upon the streets.
In three quarters of the city, cellars were in foul condition, often
flooded with water and undrained. At that time, incredible as it may
seem to the modern New Yorker, few houses were connected with sewers.
Offensive trades, such as the boiling of bones, offal, and fat, were
carried on without hindrance. There were numerous cesspools and
cisterns overflowing with filth. Much of the city’s milk was obtained
from cows kept in dark, crowded, ill-ventilated stables and fed upon
swill from distilleries. The animals were diseased, and the milk was
unclean, unwholesome, and frequently was watered.

In alleyways and back yards great quantities of manure were allowed
to accumulate. Farmers sometimes bought it and carted it off for
fertilizing; but if no farmer happened to come along, the stuff stayed
there indefinitely. Outhouses were neglected, and never were properly
cared for by the scavengers, who worked for grafting contractors. The
practice of keeping swine in the built-up portions of the city was
common. The slaughterhouses were in horrible condition, and the offal
from these could not be properly cared for because of defective sewers.

Tenement-house conditions were as bad as they have ever been anywhere.
No space was left unoccupied. Sheds, basements, and even cellars were
rented to families and lodgers. The vast numbers of immigrants pouring
in, and the constricted space on Manhattan Island, made rents so high
that even a corner in a cellar brought an exorbitant price. Single
rooms were divided by partitions, and whole families occupied each
section.

In 1866 it was estimated that 20,000 People were then living in cellars
in New York. Ten years before that period many of the city houses had
been shaky from quick building; after the war, figuratively speaking,
they had fallen into the cellars. At that time New York could hardly
claim distinction as a great city. Travelers referred to it as an
overgrown village, into which had been shoveled slovenly hordes
of European immigrants. The annual death-rate was thirty-four per
thousand, while that of London was about twenty-three per thousand. And
it must be remembered that New York’s new population was composed of
vigorous men and women, the cream of other localities, with what should
have been healthy offspring, who had quickly centered here, ambitious
and active; whereas London was an ancient city, bearing the ills of
its own age. It must be remembered also that at that time the medical
profession knew little of bacteriology; antitoxins were unknown; people
lived like ostriches, with their heads in the sand concerning questions
of sex hygiene and child hygiene; and the science of sociology had yet
to be discovered.

Cities had always existed, it is true, but they had to be constantly
replenished by fresh blood from the country, and most of them had space
to spread out into the country, and thus absorb naturally some of the
health that comes from fresh air. But here was a city that had little
chance to spread. It was confined to a narrow, rocky island, and was
growing more rapidly than any other city in the history of the world.
“Bounded on one side by a bluff and on the other side by a sound,” it
was burrowing into the earth and climbing constantly into the air to
make room for its fast-growing population. It was the center of the
fiercest contest for money and power, yet it failed to hold long those
who came there. The men that made money went to Europe to spend it, and
those that fell in the fight went to the West to recuperate. Immigrants
that arrived there with money went on to the West or the South; those
without money stayed.

The result was that New York did not primarily become a city of
residence, but the resort of those who either through the necessity of
poverty or the necessity of ambition sojourned there. Of all American
cities it became the most artificial; there life came to be lived at
its highest tension; there the struggle for existence became fiercest.

It is apparent that in such a city Nature cannot be left to her own
devices. When man deserts Nature, she promptly retaliates by deserting
man. And, in substitution of so-called “natural” living, there has
been developed the present-day mode, built up of scientific analysis,
skilful treatment, and thorough organization.


A NEW DEPARTURE

The health campaigns of the last forty-five years divide themselves
naturally into two groups, those that came before 1900 and those that
came after that year. The early campaigns were the more obvious; the
later campaigns are the more subtle in their tactics, but none the
less effective. Before 1900 the death-rate had been reduced by more
than one third. In 1866 it was 34 per thousand; in 1900 it was 20.57
per thousand. During this period of thirty-four years wells had been
gradually eliminated as sources of drinking-water, until not one was
left in the principal parts of the city. Young children who never had
been in the country were brought to the well in Central Park and they
gazed into it as a curiosity, just as they looked at the bears and
the greenhouses. At the same time the general water-supply was vastly
improved. To live in cellars was made illegal, and there was a general
improvement in the condition of dwellings. Street-cleaning became well
organized; sewers were laid in almost all the streets, and refuse was
cared for scientifically. The public supervision of contagious diseases
became effective; good use was made of new medical discoveries, such as
diphtheria antitoxin, and the public hospitals were improved.

Yet the advances in sanitary safeguarding since 1900 are more wonderful
than those that came before. In the last twelve years the death-rate
has been reduced by a quarter from its comparatively high rate at the
beginning of the century. In 1911 it was 15.13 per thousand. For 1912
it was 14.11 per thousand. However, this reduction of more than six per
thousand has been won with over twice the effort that was necessary to
make the first fourteen per thousand. The city budget for 1912 carried
an appropriation for the Department of Health of more than $3,000,000.
As much more was spent the same year by the seventy-odd organizations,
private or semi-public, the purpose of which is the betterment of
health conditions. Besides, there has been the devoted labor of more
than seven thousand physicians.

In all this vast field of effort, as diversified as the entire scope
of modern science, as complex as civilization itself, two main lines
stand out conspicuously. New York was a pioneer among cities in both.
These concerned the treatment of tuberculosis and children’s diseases.
The organized fight against tuberculosis in New York, under the
latest approved scientific methods, dates only from 1904. Before that
time there was no successful effort on the part of the authorities
to diagnose the disease properly, nor any attempt to deal with it
intelligently when it was discovered accidentally. Yet New York is
as great a sufferer from the white plague as any other locality.
Its congested living, its large <DW64> population, and its indigent
foreigners, ignorant of our language and customs, make it a fertile
breeding-ground for the tubercle bacillus.

Within eight years, twenty-nine tuberculosis clinics have been
established, and several day camps have been built where sufferers
can recuperate without expense and without leaving the city. In all
these thorough blood and sputum tests are made with modern scientific
apparatus. At the same time, it has been widely made known that to
recover from the dread disease it is not necessary to leave the city,
which, situated between two bodies of water, is swept constantly by
fresh air, the chief necessity in the treatment of tuberculosis.


SAVING THE BABIES

But the really remarkable work in the reduction of the death-rate
within the last few years has been done among the children. It is here
that the war worth waging has been carried on most effectively. If, as
Ellen Key says, this is the century of the child, New York proved it
in its first decade by concentrating the health battalions on infant
mortality.

“A baby that comes into the world has less chance to live one week than
an old man of ninety, and less chance to live a year than a man of
eighty,” Bergeron, the French authority on children’s diseases, said
ten years ago. Within five years those chances have been increased by
a third in New York. In 1911, throughout the United States one death
in every five was that of a child under one year of age, while in New
York only one death in every eight was that of a child under one year
of age. Yet five years before that time New York’s average of infant
mortality had been equal to that of the rest of the country. And in
1912 the infant mortality was further decreased by six per cent., a
greater decrease than that of any other city.

[Illustration: Drawn by Jay Hambidge. Half-tone plate engraved by H. C.
Merrill

WEIGHING THE BABIES AT AN INFANTS’ MILK STATION IN NEW YORK]

What has accomplished this result? Primarily, two causes: first, the
attention of the Board of Health, whose department of child hygiene now
receives a larger annual appropriation than any other (in 1913 it will
have more than $600,000, a fifth of the entire budget); and, second,
the work of the New York Milk Committee, a semi-public organization
composed of many of the chief physicians and philanthropists of the
city.

Eight years ago there was not one infants’ milk station in New York.
The babies of the poor were obliged to live on what milk could be
found easily for them. Few could afford and still fewer could find
what is known as “Grade A” milk, which sells in the commercial market
for from fifteen to twenty-five cents a quart, and which is thoroughly
inspected and certified. At the close of 1912 there were seventy-nine
such stations in the city. At every one Grade A milk was sold at the
nominal price of eight cents a quart, so as to be in easy competition
with ordinary commercial milk. Every day thousands of mothers with
their babies throng these stations. However, their chief purpose is
not the mere selling of pure, rich milk. They serve principally as
dispensaries. The milk is used by the city as a lure by means of which
ignorant mothers are brought within the reach of the physicians of
the Health Department. With the milk, thorough instruction and advice
as to the care of infants is given gratis. The old idea that mothers
know entirely how best to care for their own children has been proved
erroneous. Not all mothers in a large city know how to care for their
children. Many of them are virtually as helpless as the children
themselves. They have to be taken in hand, trained, and taught in the
care of their offspring as completely as the children themselves are
taken in hand a few years later in the public schools.

In addition to the seventy-nine dispensaries of milk and medical
knowledge, the city maintains a large corps of trained nurses who make
visits, especially during the summer, to the homes to complete the
instruction. In the poorer districts, every child under a year old is
visited by a city nurse at least once in ten days. The average cost is
fifty cents a month for each child. At the same time the inspection of
the general milk-supply has become thorough. The city’s inspectors now
cover all farms within two hundred miles from the city hall, and the
sources of supply are thus kept in proper sanitary condition.

The city also gives ice in summer to those families (with children)
that are unable to buy it. In the summer of 1912, 900,000 pounds were
thus distributed. This is in addition to the accepted efforts to secure
better playgrounds, better ventilated schools, etc.

A decade ago the summer death-rate among children in New York was from
two to three times as high as the winter death-rate. For the last four
years it has been steadily decreasing, and in 1912 it was almost as low
as the winter death-rate. Deaths from diarrheal diseases among children
have been reduced to a minimum through the concentrated efforts of a
few years. The next work to be taken up will be the winter deaths from
respiratory diseases. This is a more difficult problem.

Yet the greatest problem in infant mortality has still to be solved.
This is the care of the “institution” baby. As in England and in
France, the largest number of deaths among New York children occur
among the illegitimate and those lacking a mother’s care during the
early months of life. In 1911 more than forty per cent. of the deaths
of infants under one year in Manhattan occurred in institutions.

The institutions that receive foundlings are too few and too poorly
equipped. One day Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan saw in the street, within
a block of his home, a poor woman hugging despairingly to her
breast a new-born infant. In consequence, he caused to be built the
million-dollar lying-in hospital on Stuyvesant Square, which has
already been the means of saving many an innocent life. But that
superb hospital, large as it is, has not the facilities for taking
care of more than a small number of the infants that require such an
institution.

The material agencies, efficient and marvelous as they have become,
have not been the chief aid in the reduction of the death-rate,
especially among children. Public education has really had more to do
with it. Even those in direct charge of the work in infant mortality do
not assert that the entire credit for the satisfactory progress should
be given to the milk stations, the dispensaries, and the hospitals.
Pamphlets, lectures, newspaper articles, and school-room instruction
are at the base of the advance. Publicity has proved to be a greater
force than milk inspection. Certain popular newspapers in New York
have the power to achieve definite radical reforms in modes of living
whenever they choose to prosecute a vigorous campaign. Just as the
newspapers can expose corruption in any of the city’s departments, so
almost as readily they can uproot or at least substantially lessen
certain sanitary evils. A case in point is their campaign against the
fly last summer. By means of wide-spread and vigorous news articles and
editorials they succeeded in so rousing the mass of the people that
the fly pest was visibly reduced. Health Department officials testify
readily to this.

The work of the social settlements, of the mothers’ clubs, of
the neighborhood nursing associations, of the diet-kitchens, all
contribute to the general education that is bringing about a condition
of excellent public sanitation. This work is necessarily of slow
growth. Its effect is not nearly so evident as that of vaccination, of
smallpox segregation, or of typhoid diagnosis. It is not so simple as
establishing proper sewers or purifying the water-supply; but it is no
less important.


THE STUDY OF SEX HYGIENE

In all this tremendous volume of public sanitary education, no one
feature stands out more clearly than the work being done in sex
hygiene. Prudery is passing; there can be no doubt of that. Within
the last five years every public school in New York has introduced a
course of teaching in its physiology or biology department the aim of
which is to acquaint the growing boy and girl with the essential facts
of sex life, to open their eyes to sexual evils, and to prepare them
to treat with sexual diseases intelligently. Ignorant mothers, both
foreign-born and native, or those whose false modesty is worse than
their ignorance, are day by day being taught by their daughters of
twelve and fourteen, who have learned their lessons in school or in
neighborhood classes, certain essential facts of sex life, ignorance of
which has brought about pitiful conditions of disease and death.

The effect of this is not yet fully apparent in a decreased death-rate,
but there can be little doubt that within a very few years it will have
its result. For instance, one third of the infant mortality is due to
prenatal conditions, congenital diseases which afflict the child at
birth, and which mean either speedy death or a lingering, crippled
life. The larger part of these untoward prenatal conditions are due to
sexual diseases. To eliminate them will require two sustained efforts:
the further abolishing of prudery, with consequent rigorous sex
hygiene, and the enactment and enforcement of laws that will require
proper medical examination before marriage.

A physician told me recently that in his opinion within a decade laws
will be enacted providing that every man and woman desiring to marry
can do so only with a doctor’s certificate that shall carry with it a
clean bill of health. Once that is done, it is confidently believed
that the death-rate among infants will fall off perhaps by a quarter,
and surely by a fifth or a sixth. The educational work in this field is
being done for the future. With present adults there is little hope;
but the fathers and mothers of the next generation will be much better
equipped.


THE FIGHT AGAINST TYPHOID GERMS

In one more campaign the immediate future seems likely to yield
great results perhaps almost as important as those resulting from
the discovery of antitoxin. This will be from the use of the new
anti-typhoid serum, which the Department of Health in December, 1912,
decided to use as extensively as possible in New York. This decision
followed close on the War Department’s public declaration that the
anti-typhoid serum had proved a success, virtually eliminating the
disease from the army. In 1909 there were more cases of typhoid in
the United States than of the plague in India, despite the fact that
India’s population is two and a half times that of the United States.
In 1907 there were more cases of typhoid in New York than of pellagra
in Italy, though Italy’s population is six times that of New York. In
this work, as in children’s diseases and in tuberculosis, New York
is a pioneer, and yet New York is better off regarding typhoid than
many other American cities, for it has a lower typhoid death-rate
than Boston, Chicago, Washington, or Philadelphia; yet its typhoid
death-rate is higher than that of London, Paris, Berlin, or Hamburg.

Last spring when Wilbur Wright, the aviator, died of typhoid fever at
the age of forty-five, several newspapers were honest enough to speak
of it as a murder--a murder by the American people, through neglect and
ignorance, of a genius who, had he been allowed, might have lived to be
of still more distinguished service to the world.

In the last two years the New York Department of Health has been able
to trace definitely several typhoid-fever outbreaks. In nearly every
instance it was found that the disease could be traced to a “carrier.”
A carrier is a person who has recovered from an attack of typhoid, but
who remains infected. One outbreak of four hundred cases was traced to
the infection of a milk-supply by a typhoid carrier who had had the
disease forty-seven years before. In another outbreak of fifty cases
the contamination was traced to a man who had the disease seven years
before.

Within the last few months the case of “Typhoid Mary” has received much
attention. This woman has recently brought suit against the Department
of Health for damaging her career as a cook. For more than six months
she was kept in a sort of exile by the department. Before that time she
had been a cook in many households, and wherever she went typhoid fever
followed her. Although she had suffered with the disease many years
before she was apprehended, the germs were said to be still very lively
in her system. The authorities asserted that her blood tests revealed
that she was likely to communicate typhoid to any one at any time; and
therefore Mary did no more cooking.

There is no telling how many carriers are loose in New York at
present, and the only known way of averting the danger is by the use
of the serum which the army has found efficacious. It is estimated
that about three per cent. of those recovering from typhoid become
bacillus-carriers. As yet typhoid vaccination is not compulsory among
the public at large, as in the army; but a strong movement is felt
in the city to make it so. When typhoid-fever becomes as thoroughly
controlled as smallpox, or even as diphtheria, the death-rate will drop
another point or two. It will be the last of the filth diseases to go.
It is asserted by competent authorities that eighty-five per cent. of
the cases are preventable.


OPINIONS OF AN EXPERT

Dr. Lederle, Health Commissioner of New York City, says that while
typhoid vaccination is likely to prove of untold benefit, other
specific improvements should be made. There should be a more
perfect control of the milk-supply. At present there is no central
testing-station. He recommends also an improved method of sewage
disposal, either by treatment or by carrying it farther out to sea,
thus preventing pollution of the harbor. There should be a drainage
of surrounding land to do away with mosquitos; improved methods
of street-cleaning that would result in the prevention of flying
dust-clouds; and the open garbage receptacles and dumps should be
abolished in favor of cremation of all refuse. The campaign against the
fly must be carried on more vigorously every year, and immediate steps
are to be taken for the protection of all foods from fly contamination.
This will be an extension of the control of food, together with
the proper filtration of the public water-supply. Dr. Lederle says
further that increased hospital facilities for contagious diseases are
needed. There will be further popular education in sanitary matters,
special stress being laid on the need of fresh air in homes, schools,
factories, offices, theaters, and churches; and a comprehensive
publication will be made, chiefly for the aid of the poorer classes,
of the comparative nutritive and cost values of foods; and further
changes in the customs of the time, due to these plans and to other
activities, will result in a simpler manner of living. This should
render overeating less frequent and reduce the consumption of alcohol
and medicines.

Finally, in addition to these efforts, which are under the direction
of public officers, the health commissioner declares that if the
death-rate is to be further reduced, there must be in the immediate
future two changes: first, a definite advance in bacteriological
knowledge; and, second, a change in the attitude toward the health of
our adult population.

“Save the babies!” was the cry of the last decade. “Save the
middle-aged!” will be the cry of this. The real race suicide is not
in the insufficiency of births, but in the inadequate knowledge of
the diseases of maturity, and in the inadequate care and prevention
of these diseases. Deaths from arterio-sclerosis, apoplexy, kidney
affections, stomach disorders, and cancer are continuously on the
increase, and have been for ten years past. Of the 75,000 persons that
died in New York in 1911, 17,000 died of “middle-age complaints.”

The intense life of New Yorkers, their intemperance in eating,
drinking, and working, contributes chiefly to the increase in the
middle-age death-rate. However, Bright’s disease, diabetes, and cancer
are not more a mystery than diphtheria was before antitoxin was
discovered. Bacteriology has its fields of further effort well laid out
in those directions.

It is the contention of those that give their lives to the study of the
subject that “public health is a purchasable commodity.” The struggle,
then, is between the death-rate and the dollar rate. Contribute more
money to the cause of public health, and the death-rate will go down.
Forty thousand babies were saved in 1910 at an average cost of eighteen
dollars. It would have cost more to bury them, as the cheapest sort of
funeral costs twenty-five dollars.

The appropriation for the care of the public health in New York is not
niggardly; it is larger than in most cities. Still, it is not enough.
Where the health officers ask for a dollar and a half, they get a
dollar. The excuse is that the rest of the desired money is needed to
improve parks and streets, for the police and fire departments, for
the city government, the water-fronts, etc. Besides, the people of
this city are absolutely obliged to spend about $100,000,000 a year
on automobiles, candy, theaters, alcoholic drinks, tobacco, diamonds,
and such other urgent needs of life. What is left over, after those
necessities are provided for, goes toward the preservation of health!

The average expectation of life for man varies in different countries
in direct proportion to the application of efficient principles of
hygiene and sanitation. In India, for instance, where sanitation is low
and the majority of the population live, like Kim, on “the ravellings
of circumstance,” the average duration of life is less than twenty-five
years. In Sweden and Denmark, where life is methodical and ideals are
high, and the Government takes up the ash-heaps regularly, a normal man
may expect to live more than seventy years. In Massachusetts, which
is the only one of our States to furnish us with reliable statistics,
the average duration of life is forty-five years. Wherever sanitary
science is active, the length of life is steadily increasing. In India
it is stationary; in Europe it has doubled in the last 350 years; in
New York, as we have seen, it has doubled within the last half-century.
Despite the many obstacles, it seems likely that when the next general
census is taken the death-rate of the metropolis will be down to
thirteen per thousand. With such a rate, every person in the city may
expect to live to be seventy years old. And most of them will say,
“Isn’t that old enough?”

[Illustration]




[Illustration]


THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS[2]

BY KENYON COX


In these days all of us, even Academicians, are to some extent
believers in progress. Our golden age is no longer in the past, but in
the future. We know that our early ancestors were a race of wretched
cave-dwellers, and we believe that our still earlier ancestors were
possessed of tails and pointed ears. Having come so far, we are
sometimes inclined to forget that not every step has been an advance,
and to entertain an illogical confidence that each future step must
carry us still further forward; having indubitably progressed in many
things, we think of ourselves as progressing in all. And as the pace
of progress in science and in material things has become more and more
rapid, we have come to expect a similar pace in art and letters, to
imagine that the art of the future must be far finer than the art of
the present or than that of the past, and that the art of one decade,
or even of one year, must supersede that of the preceding decade or
the preceding year, as the 1913 model in automobiles supersedes the
model of 1912. More than ever before “To have done, is to hang quite
out of fashion,” and the only title to consideration is to do something
quite obviously new or to proclaim one’s intention of doing something
newer. The race grows madder and madder. It is hardly two years since
we first heard of “Cubism” and already the “Futurists” are calling the
“Cubists” reactionary. Even the gasping critics, pounding manfully in
the rear, have thrown away all impedimenta of traditional standards in
the desperate effort to keep up with what seems less a march than a
stampede.

But while we talk so loudly of progress in the arts we have an uneasy
feeling that we are not really progressing. If our belief in our own
art were as full-blooded as was that of the great creative epochs, we
should scarce be so reverent of the art of the past. It is, perhaps, a
sign of anemia that we have become founders of museums and conservers
of old buildings. If we are so careful of our heritage, it is surely
from some doubt of our ability to replace it. When art has been
vigorously alive, it has been ruthless in its treatment of what has
gone before. No cathedral builder thought of reconciling his own work
to that of the builder who preceded him; he built in his own way,
confident of its superiority. And when the Renaissance builder came,
in his turn, he contemptuously dismissed all medieval art as “Gothic”
and barbarous, and was as ready to tear down an old façade as to build
a new one. Even the most cock-sure of our moderns might hesitate to
emulate Michelangelo in his calm destruction of three frescos by
Perugino to make room for his own “Last Judgment.” He at least had the
full courage of his convictions, and his opinion of Perugino is of
record.

Not all of us would consider even Michelangelo’s arrogance entirely
justified, but it is not only the Michelangelos who have had this
belief in themselves. Apparently the confidence of progress has been as
great in times that now seem to us decadent as in times that we think
of as truly progressive. The past, or at least the immediate past,
has always seemed “out of date,” and each generation, as it made its
entrance on the stage, has plumed itself upon its superiority to that
which was leaving it. The architect of the most debased baroque grafted
his “improvements” upon the buildings of the high Renaissance with an
assurance not less than that with which David and his contemporaries
banished the whole charming art of the eighteenth century. Van Orley
and Frans Floris were as sure of their advance upon the ancient Flemish
painting of the Van Eycks and of Memling as Rubens himself must have
been of his advance upon them.

We can see plainly enough that in at least some of these cases the
sense of progress was an illusion. There was movement, but it was
not always forward movement. And if progress was illusory in some
instances, may it not, possibly, have been so in all? It is at least
worth inquiry how far the fine arts have ever been in a state of true
progress, going forward regularly from good to better, each generation
building on the work of its predecessors and surpassing that work,
in the way in which science has normally progressed when material
conditions were favorable.

If, with a view to answering this question, we examine, however
cursorily, the history of the five great arts, we shall find a somewhat
different state of affairs in the case of each. In the end it may be
possible to formulate something like a general rule that shall accord
with all the facts. Let us begin with the greatest and simplest of the
arts, the art of poetry.

In the history of poetry we shall find less evidence of progress than
anywhere else, for it will be seen that its acknowledged masterpieces
are almost invariably near the beginning of a series rather than
near the end. Almost as soon as a clear and flexible language has
been formed by any people, a great poem has been composed in that
language, which has remained not only unsurpassed, but unequaled, by
any subsequent work. Homer is for us, as he was for the Greeks, the
greatest of their poets; and if the opinion could be taken of all
cultivated readers in those nations that have inherited the Greek
tradition, it is doubtful whether he would not be acclaimed the
greatest poet of the ages. Dante has remained the first of Italian
poets, as he was one of the earliest. Chaucer, who wrote when our
language was transforming itself from Anglo-Saxon into English,
has still lovers who are willing for his sake to master what is to
them almost a foreign tongue, and yet other lovers who ask for new
translations of his works into our modern idiom; while Shakspere, who
wrote almost as soon as that transformation had been accomplished, is
universally reckoned one of the greatest of world-poets. There have,
indeed, been true poets at almost all stages of the world’s history,
but the preëminence of such masters as these can hardly be questioned,
and if we looked to poetry alone for a type of the arts, we should
almost be forced to conclude that art is the reverse of progressive.
We should think of it as gushing forth in full splendor when the world
is ready for it, and as unable ever again to rise to the level of its
fount.

The art of architecture is later in its beginning than that of poetry,
for it can exist only when men have learned to build solidly and
permanently. A nomad may be a poet, but he cannot be an architect; a
herdsman might have written the Book of Job, but the great builders
are dwellers in cities. But since men first learned to build they
have never quite forgotten how to do so. At all times there have been
somewhere peoples who knew enough of building to mold its utility into
forms of beauty, and the history of architecture may be read more
continuously than that of any other art. It is a history of constant
change and of continuous development, each people and each age forming
out of the old elements a new style which should express its mind,
and each style reaching its point of greatest distinctiveness only
to begin a further transformation into something else; but is it a
history of progress? Building, indeed, has progressed at one time or
another. The Romans, with their domes and arches, were more scientific
builders than the Greeks, with their simple post and lintel, but were
they better architects? We of to-day, with our steel construction,
can scrape the sky with erections that would have amazed the boldest
of medieval craftsmen; can we equal his art? If we ask where in the
history of architecture do its masterpieces appear, the answer must be
“Almost anywhere.” Wherever men have had the wealth and the energy to
build greatly, they have builded beautifully, and the distinctions are
less between style and style or epoch and epoch than between building
and building. The masterpieces of one time are as the masterpieces of
another, and no man may say that the nave of Amiens is finer than the
Parthenon or that the Parthenon is nobler than the nave of Amiens. One
may say only that each is perfect in its kind, a supreme expression of
the human spirit.

Of the art of music I must speak with the diffidence becoming to the
ignorant; but it seems to me to consist of two elements and to contain
an inspirational art as direct and as simple as that of poetry, and
a science so difficult that its fullest mastery is of very recent
achievement. In melodic invention it is so far from progressive that
its most brilliant masters are often content to elaborate and to
decorate a theme old enough to have no history--a theme the inventor of
which has been so entirely forgotten that we think of it as sprung not
from the mind of one man, but from that of a whole people, and call it
a folk-song. The song is almost as old as the race, but the symphony
has had to wait for the invention of many instruments and for a mastery
of the laws of harmony, and so symphonic music is a modern art. We
are still adding new instruments to the orchestra and admitting to
our compositions new combinations of sounds, but have we in a hundred
years made any essential progress even in this part of the art? Have we
produced anything, I will not say greater, but anything as great as the
noblest works of Bach and Beethoven?

Already, and before considering the arts of painting and sculpture, we
are coming within sight of our general law. This law seems to be that,
so far as an art is dependent upon any form of exact knowledge, so far
it partakes of the nature of science and is capable of progress. So
far as it is expressive of a mind and soul, its greatness is dependent
upon the greatness of that mind and soul, and it is incapable of
progress. It may even be the reverse of progressive, because as an art
becomes more complicated and makes ever greater demands upon technical
mastery, it becomes more difficult as a medium of expression, while
the mind to be expressed becomes more sophisticated and less easy of
expression in any medium. It would take a greater mind than Homer’s to
express modern ideas in modern verse with Homer’s serene perfection;
it would take, perhaps, a greater mind than Bach’s to employ all the
resources of modern music with his glorious ease and directness. And
greater minds than those of Bach and Homer the world has not often the
felicity to possess.

The arts of painting and sculpture are imitative arts above all others,
and therefore more dependent than any others upon exact knowledge, more
tinged with the quality of science. Let us see how they illustrate our
supposed law.

Sculpture depends, as does architecture, upon certain laws of
proportion in space which are analogous to the laws of proportion
in time and in pitch upon which music is founded. But as sculpture
represents the human figure, whereas architecture and music represent
nothing, sculpture requires for its perfection the mastery of an
additional science, which is the knowledge of the structure and
movement of the human body. This knowledge may be acquired with some
rapidity, especially in times and countries where man is often seen
unclothed. So, in the history of civilizations, sculpture developed
early, after poetry, but with architecture, and before painting and
polyphonic music. It reached the greatest perfection of which it
is capable in the age of Pericles, and from that time progress was
impossible to it, and for a thousand years its movement was one of
decline. After the dark ages sculpture was one of the first arts to
revive, and again it develops rapidly, though not so rapidly as before,
conditions of custom and climate being less favorable to it, until it
reaches, in the first half of the sixteenth century, something near
its former perfection. Again it can go no further; and since then
it has changed, but has not progressed. In Phidias, by which name
I would signify the sculptor of the pediments of the Parthenon, we
have the coincidence of a superlatively great artist with the moment
of technical and scientific perfection in the art, and a similar
coincidence crowns the work of Michelangelo with a peculiar glory.
But, apart from the work of these two men, the essential value of a
work of sculpture is by no means always equal to its technical and
scientific completeness. There are archaic statues that are almost as
nobly beautiful as any work by Phidias, and more beautiful than almost
any work that has been done since his time. There are bits of Gothic
sculpture that are more valuable expressions of human feeling than
anything produced by the contemporaries of Buonarroti. Even in times
of decadence a great artist has created finer things than could be
accomplished by a mediocre talent of the great epochs, and the world
could ill spare the “Victory” of Samothrace or the portrait busts of
Houdon.

As sculpture is one of the simplest of the arts, painting is one of the
most complicated. The harmonies it constructs are composed of almost
innumerable elements of lines and forms and colors and degrees of light
and dark, and the science it professes is no less than that of the
visible aspect of the whole of nature--a science so vast that it never
has been and perhaps never can be mastered in its totality. Anything
approaching a complete art of painting can exist only in an advanced
stage of civilization. An entirely complete art of painting never has
existed and probably never will exist. The history of painting, after
its early stages, is a history of loss here balancing gain there, of a
new means of expression acquired at the cost of an old one.

We know comparatively little of the painting of antiquity, but we have
no reason to suppose that that art, however admirable, ever attained
to ripeness, and we know that the painting of the Orient has stopped
short at a comparatively early stage of development. For our purpose
the art to be studied is the painting of modern times in Europe from
its origin in the Middle Ages. Even in the beginning, or before the
beginning, while painting is a decadent reminiscence of the past rather
than a prophecy of the new birth, there are decorative splendors in
the Byzantine mosaics hardly to be recaptured. Then comes primitive
painting, an art of the line and of pure color with little modulation
and no attempt at the rendering of solid form. It gradually attains to
some sense of relief by the use of degrees of light and less light;
but the instant it admits the true shadow, the old brightness and
purity of color have become impossible. The line remains dominant for
a time, and is carried to the pitch of refinement and beauty, but the
love for solid form gradually overcomes it, and in the art of the high
Renaissance it takes a second place. Then light and shade begins to be
studied for its own sake; color, no longer pure and bright, but deep
and resonant, comes in again; the line vanishes altogether, and even
form becomes secondary. The last step is taken by Rembrandt, and even
color is subordinated to light and shade, which exists alone in a world
of brownness. At every step there has been progress, but there has also
been regress. Perhaps the greatest balance of gain against loss, and
the nearest approach to a complete art of painting, was with the great
Venetians. The transformation is still going on, and in our own day we
have conquered some corners of the science of visible aspects which
were unexplored by our ancestors. But the balance has turned against
us; our loss has been greater than our gain; and our art, even in its
scientific aspect, is inferior to that of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.

And just because there never has been a complete art of painting,
entirely rounded and perfected, it is the clearer to us that the
final value of a work in that art never has depended on its approach
to such completion. There is no one supreme master of painting, but
a long succession of masters of different yet equal glory. If the
masterpieces of architecture are everywhere because there has often
been a complete art of architecture, the masterpieces of painting are
everywhere for the opposite reason. And if we do not always value a
master the more as his art is more nearly complete, neither do we
always value him especially who has placed new scientific conquests
at the disposal of art. Palma Vecchio painted by the side of Titian,
but he is only a minor master; Botticelli remained of the generation
before Leonardo, but he is one of the immortal great. Paolo Ucello, by
his study of perspective, made a distinct advance in pictorial science,
but his interest for us is purely historic; Fra Angelico made no
advance whatever, but he practised consummately the current art as he
found it, and his work is eternally delightful. At every stage of its
development the art of painting has been a sufficient medium for the
expression of a great man’s mind; and wherever and whenever a great man
has practised it, the result has been a great and permanently valuable
work of art.

For this seems, finally, to be the law of all the arts: the one
essential prerequisite to the production of a great work of art is a
great man. You cannot have the art without the man, and when you have
the man you have the art. His time and his surroundings will color him,
his art will not be at one time or place precisely what it might be at
another; but at bottom the art is the man, and at all times and in all
countries is just as great as the man.

Let us clear our minds, then, of the illusion that there is in any
important sense such a thing as progress in the fine arts. We may with
a clear conscience judge every new work for what it appears in itself
to be, asking of it that it be noble and beautiful and reasonable, not
that it be novel or progressive. If it be great art, it will always
be novel enough; for there will be a great mind behind it, and no two
great minds are alike. And if it be novel without being great, how
shall we be the better off? There are enough forms of mediocre or evil
art in the world already. Being no longer intimidated by the fetish of
progress, when a thing calling itself a work of art seems to us hideous
and degraded, indecent and insane, we shall have the courage to say
so and shall not care to investigate it further. Detestable things
have been produced in the past, and they are none the less detestable
because we are able to see how they came to be produced. Detestable
things are produced now, and they will be no more admirable if we learn
to understand the minds that create them. Even should such things prove
to be not the mere freaks of a diseased intellect that they seem, but a
necessary outgrowth of the conditions of the age and a true prophecy of
“the art of the future,” they are not necessarily the better for that.
It is only that the future will be very unlucky in its art.




TO THE EXPERIMENTERS

BY CHARLES BADGER CLARK, JR.


    Help me live long, O keen, cool servants of science!
    Give me a hundred years, for life is good and I love it,
    And wonders are easy for you.
    Yet, by a rule that is older than Æsculapius,
    I still must reckon my time to that luckless day
    When a ’whelming foe will cross a frontier unguarded
    Into this myriad nation of cells that bears my name,
    Storming fort after fort till the swarming defenders have perished
    And the strangled empire shall fall.
    My friends, simple folk, will weep and say, “He is dead!”
    But you will smile at their terrible, black-winged angel,
    And jot his name and description down in your note-book--
    The bitter song of the ages in a line of chemic formula!
    Aye, and perchance you can take the components of living,--
    Provinces, ravaged and waste, of that ruinous empire,--
    And cunningly right them again.
    Then call in the mourners.
    “Say you your friend is dead?
    See through that glass how his heart is pulsating steadily.
    Look there, and there, at the beautiful play of the organs--
    All the reactions of life restored by our science!
    Where is your death?”
    But I--is there not an I?--catch you that in a test-tube!

[Illustration: Owned by Mr. Hugo Reisinger

NONCHALANCE

FROM THE PAINTING BY JOHN S. SARGENT]




WAR-HORSES OF FAMOUS GENERALS

WASHINGTON--WELLINGTON--NAPOLEON--GRANT--LEE--SHERMAN--SHERIDAN

BY JAMES GRANT WILSON


When Colonel Washington accompanied General Braddock as aide-de-camp in
the Virginia campaign against the French and their Indian allies, he
took with him three war-horses. Of these his favorite was “Greenway,” a
fiery steed of great speed and endurance. In the disastrous battle of
July 9, 1755, Braddock was mortally wounded, after having five horses
killed under him, a record, so far as the writer is aware, unequaled
in the annals of war. Washington lost two horses. One of these was
replaced by the dying general, who presented to him his best charger,
which had escaped the carnage. A week later the young colonel wrote of
the engagement to his brother John:

    By the all powerful dispensation of Providence, I have been
    protected beyond all human probability or expectation: for I have
    had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet
    escaped unhurt, although death was on every side of me.

After the capture of Canada and the close of the war, Washington
frequently followed the foxhounds mounted on “Braddock,” as he named
that soldier’s powerful dark bay, or on “Greenway,” which was a dark
gray, and it was seldom that the Virginian was not in the lead.

On June 20, 1775, Colonel Washington received his commission as
Commander-in-Chief of the American Army, and on the following morning,
accompanied by Generals Charles Lee and Philip Schuyler, he set out for
Cambridge, Massachusetts. He took with him five horses, his favorite
being a spirited stallion called “Douglas,” on which Washington first
appeared before the army at Cambridge, charming all beholders with
his manly grace and military bearing. Jefferson called him “the best
horseman of his age.” Before the close of the Revolutionary War the
general acquired by gift or purchase seven additional chargers. His
bay horse “Fairfax” was so badly wounded at the battle of Trenton that
he was left behind. At the battle of Monmouth, Washington rode a white
steed presented to him by William Livingston, Governor of New Jersey.
Such was the excessive heat on that June day, as well as the deep and
sandy nature of the soil, that the spirited charger sank under the
general, dying on the spot. His portrait is preserved in Trumbull’s
full-length painting of Washington, in the City Hall of New York. He
then mounted a high-bred chestnut mare with long, flowing mane and tail
named “Dolly.” Lafayette said of her and her rider:

    At Monmouth I commanded a division, and it may be supposed I
    was pretty well occupied; still, I took time, amid the roar and
    confusion of the conflict, to admire our beloved chief, who,
    mounted on a splendid charger, rode along the ranks amid the shouts
    of the soldiers, cheering them by his voice and example, and
    restoring to our standard the fortunes of the fight. I thought I
    had never seen so superb a man.

Another of Washington’s war-horses, and the last to be mentioned, was
“Nelson,” a light chestnut, sixteen hands high, with white face and
legs. He was a gift from Governor Thomas Nelson of Virginia, and was
named in his honor. He was used for the last time at the surrender of
Lord Cornwallis, afterward leading a life of leisure at Mount Vernon
and following Washington’s bier in the funeral procession. Before the
Civil War, while on a visit to the general’s adopted son, Mr. Custis of
Arlington, I was informed that when a youth he had ridden “Buckskin”
and “Nelson,” and that the handsome white horse that fell on the field
of Monmouth was painted from memory by Colonel Trumbull. Mr. Custis
said:

    Among the many troublesome and unbroken horses ridden by
    Washington, he was never thrown, and he was perhaps the strongest
    man of his time. Mounted on “Buckskin,” I occasionally accompanied
    the general when making his daily morning rounds at Mount Vernon,
    riding “Yorktown,” the youngest of his war-horses, and the last
    mounted by him, only a few days before his death. On one of those
    occasions Washington saw with displeasure two stalwart <DW64>s
    vainly endeavoring to raise a heavy stone to the top of a wall.
    Throwing “Yorktown’s” bridle to me, he sprang from his saddle,
    strode forward, pushed the slaves aside, leaned over, and, grasping
    the huge stone with his large, strong hands, slowly but surely
    raised it to its place, and remounted without any remark.

[Illustration: WASHINGTON’S FAVORITE WHITE CHARGER “LEXINGTON,” AT THE
BATTLE OF MONMOUTH

FROM THE PAINTING BY JOHN TRUMBULL]

       *       *       *       *       *

At four o’clock on a June morning ninety-eight years ago, when Napoleon
was defeated by Wellington in one of the sixteen decisive battles of
the world, the illustrious English soldier mounted his celebrated
charger “Copenhagen,” remaining in the saddle for eighteen hours.
“Copenhagen” was a powerful chestnut, grandson of the famous war-horse
“Eclipse,” and the son of “Lady Catherine,” the charger ridden by
Field-Marshal Lord Grosvenor at the siege of Copenhagen, when she was
in foal with the colt which afterward carried Wellington at Waterloo.
The war-horse cost him, in 1813, four hundred guineas. Two years
later, when the famous victory was won, and Wellington had held his
historic interview with Blücher, the duke dismounted at ten o’clock.
As “Copenhagen” was led away by the groom, he playfully threw out
his heels as a “good-night” salutation to his successful master. It
was Wellington’s last act before leaving Strathfieldsaye for London
on public or private business, to walk out to the adjacent paddock
to pat his favorite charger, and to feed him with chocolate or other
confectionery, of which he was inordinately fond.

[Illustration: NAPOLEON’S FAMOUS WAR-HORSE “MARENGO”

FROM THE PAINTING BY MEISSONIER]

For more than a dozen years before his death “Copenhagen,” leading the
easy, comfortable career of a well-pensioned veteran who had retired
from all the activities of life, was only twice surreptitiously saddled
and ridden by the duke’s eldest son, the Marquis of Douro. The second
Duke of Wellington, who died in 1884, erected two monuments on the
grounds of Strathfieldsaye, that fine estate of nearly seven thousand
acres on which is situated Silchester, the site of a Roman station,
presented to the “Iron Duke” by the British government for a day’s work
at Waterloo. One of these, a superb and lofty marble column, is to the
memory of his illustrious father, the other to that of “Copenhagen.”
The former stands just outside the park at the point where, immediately
in front of one of the lodges, the London road meets at right angles
that which connects Reading with Basingstoke. A simple marble tombstone
standing under the shadow of a spreading Turkish oak marks the spot
where the brave steed was buried with military honors, and bears the
following inscription from the pen of the second duke:

    Here lies Copenhagen, the charger ridden by the Duke of Wellington
    the entire day of the battle of Waterloo. Born 1808, died 1836.

    God’s humbler instrument though meaner clay
    Should share the glory of that glorious day.

[Illustration: WELLINGTON’S WATERLOO CHARGER “COPENHAGEN”

FROM THE PAINTING BY JAMES WARD, R.A.]

As we stood by “Copenhagen’s” grave in the summer of 1872, the duke
said to me:

    Several years after my father’s death an old servant of the family
    came to me in the library, and, producing a paper parcel, spoke as
    follows: “Your Grace, I do not believe that I have long to live,
    and before I die I wish to place in your hands what belongs to
    you.” With no small degree of surprise I inquired what it was, and
    when he opened the package and produced a horse’s hoof he said:
    “Your Grace, when Copenhagen died I cut off this hoof. None of us
    imagined that the duke would trouble his head about the body of
    the war-horse, but, to our great surprise, he walked down to the
    stables on his sudden return from London to see him buried. He
    instantly observed that his right forefoot was gone, and was in
    a fearful passion. No one dared tell him how it happened. I have
    preserved the hoof carefully for thirty years, and I now return it
    to your Grace.”

[Illustration: GRANT’S THREE FAVORITE WAR-HORSES: “EGYPT” (ON THE
LEFT), “CINCINNATI” (IN THE MIDDLE), AND “JEFF DAVIS” (ON THE RIGHT)

By permission of “Harper’s Weekly”

SHERMAN’S FAVORITE STEED “LEXINGTON”

FROM A DRAWING BY THURE DE THULSTRUP

SHERIDAN’S FAMOUS WAR-HORSE “WINCHESTER”]

Lady de Ros, the last survivor of those who danced at the Duchess
of Richmond’s ball in Brussels on the evening before the battle of
Waterloo, also the last among those who had mounted “Copenhagen,”
published a little volume of recollections of Wellington which
contained the following extract:

    We often stayed with the duke at Abbaye, Mount St. Martin,
    Cambrai, and one morning he announced that there would be a sham
    battle, and that he had given orders to Sir George Scovell that
    the ladies riding should be taken prisoners, so he recommended our
    keeping close to him. I had no difficulty in doing so, as I was
    riding the duke’s Waterloo charger “Copenhagen,” and I found myself
    the only one within a square where they were firing. To the duke’s
    great amusement, he heard one of the soldiers saying to another:
    “Take care of that ’ere horse; he kicks out. We knew him well in
    Spain,” pointing to “Copenhagen.” He was a most unpleasant horse to
    ride, but always snorted and neighed with pleasure at the sight of
    troops. I was jumping with him when the stirrup broke, and I fell
    off. In the evening the duke had a dance, and said to me, “Here’s
    the heroine of the day--got kicked off, and didn’t mind it.”

[Illustration: LEE’S CELEBRATED CHARGER “TRAVELLER”]

The first Duchess of Wellington, with whom “Copenhagen” was a great
favorite, wore a bracelet of his hair, as did several of her friends.
Her daughter-in-law, the second duchess, who died in August, 1894,
and who was much admired by the great duke, accompanying him on his
last visit to the field of Waterloo, showed the writer a bracelet and
breastpin made of “Copenhagen’s” mane. On my last sojourn of several
days at Strathfieldsaye in September, 1883, I received from the second
duke as a parting gift a precious lock of the Waterloo hero’s hair and
a sheaf of the charger’s tail. It may be mentioned _en passant_ that
Sir William Gomm’s redoubtable Waterloo charger “Old George,” once
mounted by Wellington, which lived to the unusual age for war-horses of
thirty-three years, is buried beneath a stone seat at Stoke Pogis, the
pastoral scene of Gray’s familiar and beautiful elegy.

On the authority of his eldest son, who mentioned the circumstance
to the writer, it may be stated in conclusion that the last time
Wellington walked out of Walmer Castle, on the afternoon of the day
previous to his death, it was to visit his stable and to give orders to
the groom concerning his horses.

       *       *       *       *       *

Chief among the most celebrated battle-chargers of the nineteenth
century was “Marengo,” Napoleon’s favorite war-horse. He was named in
honor of one of the most remarkable victories ever achieved by the
illustrious soldier. The day was lost by the French, and then gained
by the resistless charges of cavalry led by Desaix and Kellermann.
Their success caused the beaten infantry to rally and, taking heart,
to attack the Austrians with fury, and the field was finally won. In
view of the several hundred biographies of Bonaparte, it is certainly
surprising that so little should be known with any degree of certainty
concerning the world-famous Arab which he rode for eight hours at
Waterloo, and previously in scores of battles, as well as during the
disastrous Russian campaign. To an American visitor to the Bonapartes
at Chiselhurst in the summer of 1872, Louis Napoleon, in speaking of
his own horses and those of his uncle, said:

    The emperor’s “Marengo” was an Arabian of good size and style and
    almost white. He rode him in his last battle of Mont St. Jean,
    where the famous war-horse received his seventh wound. I mounted
    him once in my youth, and only a short time before his death in
    England at the age of thirty-six. Another favorite was “Marie,”
    and was used by the emperor in many of his hundred battles. Her
    skeleton is to be seen in the ancient castle of Ivenach on the
    Rhine, the property of the Von Plessen family. Of the other sixty
    or seventy steeds owned by Napoleon and used in his campaigns,
    perhaps the most celebrated were “Ali,” “Austerlitz,” “Jaffa,” and
    “Styrie.” He had nineteen horses killed under him.

The American might have mentioned, but did not, that Field-Marshal
Blücher had twenty shot in battle, while in the American Civil War
Generals Custer of the North and Forrest of the South are believed to
have lost almost as many in the short period of four years. “Marie”
is thus described by Victor Hugo in the words of a soldier of the Old
Guard:

    On the day when he [Napoleon] gave me the cross, I noticed the
    beast. It had its ears very far apart, a deep saddle, a fine head
    marked with a black star, a very long neck, prominent knees,
    projecting flanks, oblique shoulders, and a strong crupper. She was
    a little above fifteen hands high.

    When “Marengo” was slightly wounded in the near haunch, Napoleon
    mounted “Marie,” and finished his final battle on her. On his
    downfall, a French gentleman purchased “Jaffa” and “Marengo” and
    sent them to his English estate at Glastonbury, Kent. The tombstone
    of the former may be seen there, with the inscription, “Under this
    stone lies Jaffa, the celebrated charger of Napoleon.”

The last trumpet-call sounded for “Marengo” in September, 1829. After
his death the skeleton was purchased and presented to the United
Service Institution at Whitehall, London, and is at present among its
most highly treasured relics. Another interesting souvenir of the
famous steed is one of his hoofs, made into a snuff-box, which makes
its daily rounds after dinner at the King’s Guards, in St. James’s
Palace. On its silver lid is engraved the legend, “Hoof of Marengo,
barb charger of Napoleon, ridden by him at Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena,
Wagram, in the Russian campaign, and at Waterloo,” and round the
silver shoe the legend continues: “Marengo was wounded in the near hip
at Waterloo, when his great master was on him in the hollow road in
advance of the French. He had frequently been wounded before in other
battles.” Near his skeleton may be seen an oil painting of “Marengo,”
by James Ward, R.A., who also was commissioned by Wellington to paint
a picture of “Copenhagen,” Napoleon’s pocket-telescope, and other
articles found in his carriage at Genappe, near Waterloo, where he was
nearly captured, but escaped by mounting the fleet “Marengo.” In the
museum is also displayed the saddle used by Blücher at Waterloo, and a
letter written by the fiery old field-marshal, the day after the fierce
battle, of which the following is a translation:

    Gossalines June 19, 1815.

    You remember, my dear wife, what I promised you, and I have kept
    my word. The superiority of the enemy’s numbers obliged me to
    give way on the 17th; but yesterday, in conjunction with my friend
    Wellington, I put an end forever to Bonaparte’s dancing. His army
    is completely routed, and the whole of his artillery, baggage,
    caissons, and equipage are in my hands. I have had two horses
    killed under me since the beginning of this short campaign. It will
    soon be all over with Bonaparte.

From a recent Paris publication, written by General Gourgaud, we learn
that at St. Helena Napoleon said that the finest charger he ever
owned was not the famous “Marengo,” but one named “Mourad Bey,” of
which, unfortunately, no further information is afforded by the French
general. In his St. Helena diary, Gourgaud writes:

    L’Empereur passé à l’equitation. Il n’avait pas peur à cheval,
    parce qu’il n’avait jamais appris. “J’avais de bons chevaux le
    Mourad-Bey etait le meilleur et le plus beau à l’armée d’Italie.
    J’en avait un excellent: Aussi, pour invalide, l’ai-je mis à
    Saint-Cloud, où il passait en liberté.”

The last horse used by Napoleon was purchased at St. Helena. He
was a small bay of about fifteen hands called “King George,” but
afterward named by the emperor “Scheik,” which became much attached
to him. Captain Frederick Lahrbush of the Sixtieth Rifles, who was
then stationed on the island and who, as he could speak French,
became intimate with Napoleon, gave me a description of “Scheik” and
bequeathed to me his silver Waterloo medal and a lock of the emperor’s
hair, received as a parting gift on his departure from St. Helena.

       *       *       *       *       *

As far as I am aware, no great commander ever possessed so valuable a
charger as “Cincinnati,” General Grant’s favorite during the fourth
year of the Civil War, and after his great victory at Chattanooga,
during which he rode “Egypt,” another of his six war-horses. A few
weeks later, when in Cincinnati, Grant received the gift of the noble
steed, which he named after that city. He was a son of “Lexington,”
with a single exception the fastest four-mile thoroughbred that ever
ran on an American race-course, having made the distance in 7:19¾
minutes. The general was offered $10,000 for the horse, as his record
almost equaled that of his sire and his half-brother “Kentucky.” He
was a spirited and superb dark bay of great endurance, Grant riding
him almost daily during the Wilderness campaign of the summer of 1864,
and until the war closed in the following spring. “Cincinnati” was
seventeen hands, and, in the estimation of the illustrious soldier, the
grandest horse that he had ever seen, perhaps the most valuable ever
ridden by an army commander from the time of Alexander down to our own
day.

The general very rarely permitted any person but himself to mount him.
Only two exceptions are recalled by the writer, once when Admiral
Daniel Ammen, who saved Grant when a small boy from being drowned,
visited him at his headquarters at City Point on the James River, and
when, a little later, President Lincoln came to the same place from
Washington to spend a week with the general. On the admiral’s return
from a two-hours’ ride, accompanied by a young aide-de-camp, Grant
asked how he liked “Cincinnati.”

Ammen answered, “I have never backed his equal.”

“Nor have I,” said the general.

In his “Personal Memoirs” Grant writes:

    Lincoln spent the last days of his life with me. He came to City
    Point in the last month of the war, and was with me all the
    time. He lived on a despatch-boat in the river, but was always
    around headquarters. He was a fine horseman, and rode my horse
    “Cincinnati” every day. He visited the different camps, and I did
    all that I could to interest him. The President was exceedingly
    anxious about the war closing, and was apprehensive that we could
    not stand another campaign.

Soon after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee and his army at
Appomattox Court House, Virginia, in April, 1865, “Cincinnati” was
retired from active service, thereafter enjoying almost a decade of
peace and comfort on Admiral Ammen’s Maryland estate near Washington
until the end came in September, 1874, and he then received honorable
burial. The charger is fully entitled to a prominent place among the
most celebrated chargers of the nineteenth century, which includes
General Lee’s “Traveller,” General Sherman’s “Lexington,” and General
Sheridan’s “Winchester,” which died in 1878, and was skilfully mounted
by a taxidermist. “Winchester” is included among the relics of the
Mexican and later wars in the interesting collection of the Military
Service Institution on Governor’s Island, New York Harbor.

It is interesting to record that Washington, who was six feet and two
inches in stature, weighed at the time of the siege of Yorktown 195
pounds; Wellington, five feet seven inches, weighed at Waterloo 140
pounds; Napoleon, five feet six inches, at the same date, 158 pounds;
and Grant, five feet eight inches, weighed at Appomattox Court House
145 pounds; General Lee at Gettysburg weighed 180 pounds; Sherman at
Atlanta 165 pounds; and Sheridan, in the battle of Cedar Creek, about
150 pounds. Washington was the tallest, and Sheridan the shortest of
the seven generals whose war-horses are described in this article. It
will be seen, therefore, that Washington’s war-horse “Nelson” had a
much heavier weight to carry than the chargers “Copenhagen,” “Marengo,”
and “Cincinnati,” in their masters’ concluding campaigns.

       *       *       *       *       *

The most celebrated charger in the Confederacy during our four years’
war was General Robert E. Lee’s “Traveller,” described to the writer by
Sheridan, who first saw him on the day of surrender at Appomattox, as
“a chunky gray horse.” He was born near Blue Sulphur Springs in West
Virginia in April, 1857, and when a colt won the first prize at the
Greenbrier Fair under the name of “Jeff Davis.” When purchased by the
great Virginian early in February, 1862, his name was changed by Lee
to “Traveller,” his master being very careful always to spell the word
with a double _l_. The horse was sixteen hands, above half bred, well
developed, of great courage and kindness, and carried his head well up.
He liked the excitement of battle, and at such times was a superb and
typical war-steed. General Fitzhugh Lee said to me that “Traveller” was
much admired for his rapid, springy walk, high spirit, bold carriage,
and muscular strength.

It may be doubted if any of the great commanders mentioned in American
history possessed greater admiration for a fine horse than General
Lee, who said, “There is many a war-horse that is more entitled to
immortality than the man who rides him.” On the third day of the battle
of Gettysburg, when Pickett’s gallant charge had been successfully
repulsed by Hancock, and the survivors of his broken and decimated
command were returning to the Confederate position, Lee appeared and
spoke encouragingly to his defeated troops. While he was thus occupied,
observing an officer beating his horse for shying at the bursting of
a shell, he shouted: “Don’t whip him, Captain! Don’t whip him! I have
just such another foolish horse myself, and whipping does no good.” A
moment later an excited officer rode up to Lee and “Traveller,” and
reported the broken condition of his brigade. “Never mind, General,”
responded Lee, cheerfully; “all this has been my fault. It is I that
have lost the battle, and you must help me out of it in the best way
you can.”

As with Napoleon and Wellington at Waterloo, so was it with Grant and
Lee, who saw each other but once during their many fierce encounters
about Richmond in the eleven months previous to the final surrender,
and then only at a great distance, Grant, as he told me, recognizing
the gray horse, but not his rider. The illustrious soldiers had met
in Mexico while serving under General Scott, but after separating in
April, 1865, never saw each other again but once--when General Lee
called at the White House to see President Grant.

Soon after the close of the Civil War, Lee accepted the presidency
of Washington and Lee University. For five years, until his death,
he almost daily rode or fed his favorite charger. At the hero’s
funeral, “Traveller” was equipped for service and placed close to
the hearse. When the flower-covered coffin was carried out from the
church, the faithful horse put his nose on it and whinnied! He survived
his attached master for two years, when a nail penetrated his right
forefoot while grazing in a field, and, although it was immediately
removed, and everything possible was done to save him, lockjaw
developed, and he died during the summer of 1872. “Traveller’s”
skeleton was preserved, and is to be seen at Lexington, Virginia, as
well as Stonewall Jackson’s famous “Sorrel,” which was skilfully set
up by a veteran taxidermist. “Traveller,” like Sheridan’s celebrated
charger “Winchester,” enjoyed the very great distinction of having
his illustrious master for a biographer. In the sketch Lee mentions
his other horses, saying: “Of all, ‘Traveller’s’ companions in
toil,--‘Richmond,’ ‘Brown Roan,’ ‘Ajax,’ and quiet ‘Lucy Long,’--he is
the only one that retained his vigor. The first two expired under their
onerous burdens, and the last two failed.” During the Mexican War,
the general’s favorite was “Grace Darling,” a handsome and powerful
chestnut, which was seven times wounded, but never seriously.

Referring to the photograph of “Traveller,” General Custis Lee wrote to
me:

    You will observe that my father’s position in the picture which
    I send you, is that “to gather the horse,” in order to keep him
    quiet. The legs are crossed behind the girth, and the hand is
    slightly raised. “Traveller” injured both my father’s hands at the
    second battle of Manassas, and General Lee could not thereafter
    hold the reins in the regulation manner.

The brilliant Sherman’s favorite war-horse was killed under him in
the first day of the bloody battle of Shiloh, and two others were
shot while in charge of his orderly. Later in the four years’ contest
his most famous steeds were “Lexington” and “Sam.” The former was a
Kentucky thoroughbred, and is mentioned in his memoirs. Sherman was
photographed on “Lexington” in Atlanta, and he rode him in the grand
review in Washington, May 24, 1865. The horse that under the homely
name of “Sam” most firmly established himself in the affection and
confidence of the general was a large, half-thoroughbred bay, sixteen
and a half hands, which he purchased soon after losing his three steeds
at Shiloh. “Sam” possessed speed, strength, and endurance, and was so
steady under fire that Sherman had no difficulty in writing orders from
the saddle and giving attention to other matters. While as steady as a
rock under fire, “Sam” was nevertheless prudent and sagacious in his
choice of shelter from hostile shot and shell. The charger was wounded
several times when mounted, and the fault was wholly due to his master.
He acquired wide reputation as a forager, and always contrived to
obtain a full allowance of rations, sometimes escaping on independent
expeditions for that purpose.

What first endeared “Sam” to Sherman was that he became a favorite
with his son Willie, whom the writer well remembers when he came to
Vicksburg on a visit during the siege only a brief period before his
untimely death. The general told us that he always felt safe when his
boy was absent on “Sam,” knowing that he would keep out of danger and
return in time for dinner. Sherman rode him in many pitched battles,
and placed him on an Illinois farm, where he was pensioned, dying of
extreme old age in the summer of 1884. The general’s son Tecumseh
writes: “Sam was hardly the heroic horse to place with the others
you mention, but he was a strong, faithful animal who did perfectly
the varied and dangerous work allotted to him, and made a march as
long and difficult as any recorded in history--that from Vicksburg to
Washington,” via Atlanta, Savannah, Columbia, and Richmond.

A few months before his death Sherman said to me: “Now remember,
Wilson, when I am gone, you are not to hand around a hat for a
monument. I have paid for one in St. Louis, and all you have to do is
to place me under it.”

“General,” was the reply, “your wishes shall be respected; but of
course your troops of friends and admirers will certainly erect statues
in New York and Washington, and I am certain our Society of the Army of
the Tennessee will expect to honor their great commander with a statue
in some city of the West.”

“Oh, well, that’s all right,” said the old hero, “if they think I am
worthy of them; but don’t put me on a circus horse.”

This comment I repeated at the Metropolitan Club luncheon which
followed the unveiling of Saint-Gaudens’s equestrian statue of the
illustrious soldier. While McKim, who designed the pedestal, the poet
Stedman, and others smiled, the gifted sculptor looked solemn. The
steed, whose feet are not all where Sherman wished them to be, is
supposed to be a counterfeit presentment of “Lexington.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Philip H. Sheridan, who was in half a hundred battles and skirmishes
without ever being wounded, wrote to an army friend in January, 1876:

    In regard to the black horse, I am glad to say that he is still
    living, and is now in my stable. He has been a pensioner for the
    past eight years, never being used save in the way of necessary
    exercise. He is of the Black Hawk stock, was foaled at, or near,
    Grand Rapids, Michigan, and was brought into the army by one of
    the officers of the Second Michigan Cavalry, of which I was made
    Colonel in 1862. Early in the spring of that year, while the
    regiment was stationed at Rienzi, Miss., the horse was presented to
    me by the officers, and at that time was rising three years old. He
    is over seventeen hands in height, powerfully built, with a deep
    chest, strong shoulders, has a broad forehead, a clear eye, and is
    an animal of great intelligence. In his prime he was one of the
    strongest horses I have ever known, very active, and the fastest
    walker in the army, so far as my experience goes.[3] I rode him
    constantly from 1862 to the close of the war, in all the actions
    and in all the raids, as well as campaigns in which I took part. He
    was never ill, and his staying powers were superb. At present he
    is a little rheumatic, fat and lazy; but he has fairly earned his
    rest, and so long as I live he will be taken care of.

The celebrated charger died in October, 1878, when Sheridan made a
slight addition to his biography, saying:

    He always held his head high, and by the quickness of his movements
    gave many persons the impression that he was exceedingly impetuous.
    This was not the case, for I could at any time control him by a
    firm hand and a few words, and he was as cool and quiet under
    fire as one of my old soldiers. I doubt if his superior for field
    service was ever ridden by any one.

The poet-painter Buchanan Read, Herman Melville, and many minor writers
made “Winchester” the subject of poems and sketches, while several
sculptors and painters delineated him in marble and bronze and on
canvas. On every returning Memorial day many gray-haired survivors of
Sheridan’s rough-riders who remember the services of his

    Steed as black as the steeds of night,

cross over from New York to Governor’s Island museum, and place flowers
on the glass case containing the celebrated charger, whose body,
after being set up by a skilled taxidermist, was, accompanied by his
accoutrements, presented by the general to the United States Military
Service Institution.

Near the close of his career, when General Grant lost his fortune in
Wall Street, he voluntarily surrendered all his property with a single
exception. He retained Read’s spirited painting of Sheridan’s “Ride,”
representing “Winchester” and his master, the greatest _sabreur_
that our country has produced, perhaps not surpassed by any cavalry
commander since the days of Murat. Read’s poem of “Sheridan’s Ride”
will probably outlive his famous picture.

    Hurrah, hurrah for Sheridan!
    Hurrah, hurrah for horse and man!
    And when their statues are placed on high
    Under the dome of the Union sky,
    The American soldier’s temple of fame,
    There with the glorious General’s name
    Be it said in letters both bold and bright:
    “Here is the steed that saved the day
    By carrying Sheridan into the fight,
    From Winchester--twenty miles away.”

May I be permitted, in conclusion, to mention that none of the hundreds
of battle-chargers ridden by Washington, Napoleon, Wellington, Grant,
Lee, Sherman, and Sheridan, suffered mutilation by the barbarous modern
practice of docking their tails, which even uncivilized savages never
perpetrate on their horses.




[Illustration]


MRS. LONGBOW’S BIOGRAPHY

BY GORDON HALL GEROULD


My acquaintance with Mrs. Longbow was due to my early friendship with
her son Charles. Mrs. Longbow and her two daughters swung into my
orbit quite unimportantly at first as shadowy persons to whom Charlie
wrote letters home while we were boys at school; later I came to know
the mother as an imposing figure, shiny with black jet, who eyed the
school from a platform on those great occasions when Charlie received
prizes and I did not. I never learned her weight, but I saw that her
displacement was enormous. By successive stages, as I increased in
stature and in years, my knowledge of her grew. I visited her son,
I danced with her daughters, I frequently conversed with her,--she
preferred to converse rather than to talk,--and I came to know as much
of her habit and attitude of mind, perhaps, as one could who was thirty
years her junior, not actively engaged in reforming the world, and of
the despised sex.

Mrs. Longbow--Amelia E. Longbow, to designate her at once by the name
that she made illustrious--was of the older school of philanthropists,
who combined militant activity with the literary graces and a
tremendous sense of personal dignity. She could despise men and yet
receive them in her drawing-room without embarrassment; she could
wage a bitter warfare on wickedness and, when deeply stirred, write
a tolerable sonnet. She was indefatigable in her labors, but she was
never, to my knowledge, flurried or hurried. A large presence, she
moved through life with the splendid serenity of a steam-roller. She
was capable of prodigious labor, but not of idleness. Whatever her
hands found to do she did with all her might--and in her own way. At
one time or another she was engaged in reforming most things that are
susceptible of improvement or of disturbance. If she did not leave the
world better than she found it, the fault was the world’s, not hers.

It was a considerable shock to me that she should leave the world
at all, so necessary had she seemingly become to its proper
administration, let alone its progress. I read the news of her death
in London just as I was sailing for home after a summer’s holiday,
and I felt a touch of pride that I had known the woman whose career
was written large that day in the journals of a sister nation. But,
as I reflected, neither America nor England had waited till her death
to pay their homage. She had lived long, and on many great occasions
during three decades she had been signally and publicly honored as the
most remarkable of her sex. The cable-despatches announced that she
left a comfortable fortune, and leading articles agreed that she was
wholly admirable. I felt sure that she would have regarded the praise
as unmerited if she had not shown her ability by leaving a respectable
inheritance to her children. I had reason also to believe that she
never lost her self-confident assurance of her own worth: she died, the
newspapers said, quite peacefully.

Once back in New York, I took an early occasion to call on my friend
Charles Longbow. I had always liked him ever since the day that I
fished him, a shivering mite, out of the skating-pond at school. I had
been his chum thereafter until the end of my college course. Though I
could not emulate his distinction in scholarship or public speaking, I
could at least be useful to him, by virtue of my year’s seniority, in
protecting him from the consequences of his mother’s celebrity. I even
did him some service by pushing him into the thick of undergraduate
life. I was really very fond of him, and I was sure he liked me.

If I had seen less of Charlie in later years, it was merely because
our paths did not often cross in a natural way. We boast about our
civilization a good deal, but we keep to our trails much as savages
do--or animals, for that matter. Besides, for some years I had a good
reason, not connected with Charlie’s mother or himself, for keeping
away from the Longbow house. So I had been with him less than I could
have wished, though I had never lost the habit of his friendship. I was
busy in my own way, and he was occupied in his. He had never been the
conspicuous success that his youth had promised, but he was more widely
known than many men with a greater professional reputation. To the
larger public he was always, of course, his mother’s son. At forty he
was what one might call a philanthropic lawyer. He did a certain amount
of ordinary business, and he wrote on many topics of contemporary
interest for the reviews, made many addresses to gatherings of earnest
people, served on many boards and commissions. He had retained the
modesty and generosity of his boyhood, which made some of us devoted
to him even though we were not in full sympathy with all of his
activities. Pride and vain-glory in him were purely vicarious: he was a
little conceited about his mother.

As far back as my college days I had begun to distrust the estimate in
which Mrs. Longbow was held by her family and, as well as one could
judge, by herself. All of them, be it said, were supported in their
opinion of her greatness and her abounding righteousness by the world
at large. It was one of my earliest disillusionments to discover the
yawning vacuity that lay behind her solid front of fame; it was a sad
day for me, though it fostered intellectual pride, when I found out
that she was not such a miracle of goodness as she seemed. Though
Charles, as a matter of course, knew her much more intimately than I,
I think that he never penetrated her disguise.

With his sisters the case was somewhat different, as I began to suspect
not long after my own private discovery. They were a little older than
Charles, and had better opportunities of watching their mother at close
range. Helen married, when she was about twenty-five, a man of her own
age, who eventually became one of the most prominent editors in New
York--Henry Wakefield Bradford. She made him a good wife, no doubt, and
had some share in his success both as debtor and as creditor. Whether
she loved him or not, she supported his interests loyally. Though she
had made an escape from her mother’s house, she did not desert her.
Indeed, in Helen’s marriage Mrs. Longbow might truly have been said to
have gained a son rather than to have lost a daughter. The Bradfords
were ardent worshipers at the shrine, and they worshiped very publicly.
In private, however, I detected a faint acidity of reference, a tinge
of irony, that made me suspect them of harboring envious feelings.
Perhaps they resented the luster of satellites, and would have liked to
emulate Mrs. Longbow’s glow of assured fame. Helen never seemed to me a
very good sort, though we were accounted friends. She had many of her
mother’s most striking qualities.

Margaret, who was only a year older than Charles, never married. She
was her mother’s secretary and a most devoted daughter. She received
with her, traveled with her, labored for her without apparent repining.
Whether she ever had time to think seriously of marrying, or of leaving
her mother on other terms, always seemed to me doubtful. At all events,
she said as much to me repeatedly when at the age of twenty-five I
proposed to her. Without question, she had a great deal to do in
helping Mrs. Longbow to transact efficiently the business of the
universe. She was prettier than Helen, who grew large and stately by
her thirtieth year and was of too bold and mustached an aquiline type
for beauty. Margaret was fair, and retained the girlish lines of her
slender figure until middle age. She was clever, too, like the rest of
the family, and had seen much of the world in her mother’s company. She
wrote stories that had considerable success, and she would have had
personal distinction as a member of any other family. My only reason
for suspecting that she sometimes wearied of her filial rôle was a
remark that she once made to me when I complimented her on a pretty
novel she had published.

“Oh, yes,” she replied, “one has to do something on one’s own account
in self-defense. Mother swallows everybody--she is so wonderful.” The
final phrase, I thought, did not altogether let Mrs. Longbow out.

They were all writers, you see, all well known on the platform and in
the press, all active in good works and reform; but the children’s
celebrity shone mainly with a borrowed light. Irreverently enough, I
used to think of the mother as being like a hen with chicks. The hen’s
maternal clucking calls less attention to her brood than to herself.

When I went to see Charles, I expected to find him overwhelmed with
genuine grief, and Margaret, if she appeared at all, endeavoring to
conceal the relief that was sure to be mixed with her natural sense of
loss. Of course, Helen--Mrs. Bradford, that is--I should not see, for
she had her own house. I should have to pay her a visit of condolence
separately. I dreaded this first meeting, though I was really very
sorry for Charles, whose devotion to his mother could not be doubted.
I knew that he would expect me to say things at once consoling and
laudatory, which would be difficult to frame. With so vocal a family,
the pressure of a hand and a murmured word would be insufficient
expressions of sympathy.

When I reached the old house rather too far east on Thirty-eighth
Street, I was in a state of mind so craven that I would gladly have
shirked my duty on any pretext whatsoever; but I could think of none.
Instead, I had to tell both Margaret and Charles how deeply I felt
their loss. I found them up-stairs in the library, a dismal room
with too much furniture of the seventies, a mean grate, and heavy
bookcases filled with an odd collection of standard sets, reports of
philanthropic societies and commissions, and presentation copies of
works in all fields of literature and learning. I cherished a peculiar
dislike for this room, and I found no help in its dreadful reminders of
Mrs. Longbow’s active life. I did not quit myself well, but I managed
to speak some phrases of commonplace sympathy.

Charles, lean, dark, and bearded, took up my words, while Margaret
drooped in her chair as though some spring had gone wrong inside her.

“It was good of you to come so soon,” he said. “I’m sorry that you
couldn’t have been here for the funeral. Our friends were magnificent.
We were overwhelmed by the tide of sympathy. I think I might say that
the whole country mourned with us. You would have appreciated it, as we
did. It made one proud of America to see how she was revered; it made
me personally ready to ask forgiveness for all my cheap outbursts of
temper when I’ve thought the country was going wrong.”

“The papers on the other side were full of praises for her,” I remarked
uncomfortably.

“I know,” returned Charles. “The world must be better than we have
thought. I’d like to believe that the moral awakening in which she was
a leader has stirred men and women everywhere to right the wrongs of
humanity. But it will take more lives like hers to complete the work.”

“She interested a great many people in reform who wouldn’t have taken
it up if it hadn’t been for her influence. And all of you are carrying
on work along the same lines.” I had to say something, and I could
think of nothing less inane.

“Yes,” Charlie answered, wrinkling his forehead; “we must go on as well
as we can. But it’s like losing a pilot. She had genius.”

Margaret Longbow suddenly straightened herself and began to wipe her
eyes delicately.

“Mother had strength for it,” she said in a broken voice; “she had
wonderful energy.”

“But think what you have done--all of you!” I protested. “As a family,
you are the most active people I know.”

“I can’t go on--now. I’m going away as soon as things are straightened
out. I’m going to Italy to rest.” Margaret’s figure relaxed as suddenly
as it had stiffened. She lay back against a pile of cushions with the
inertness of utter fatigue.

“Margaret!” Charles exclaimed sharply. “What would mother have said?”

Margaret’s thin lip curled. She made me wonder what explosion was going
to follow.

“It doesn’t matter about Robert,” she said, turning her head ever so
slightly in my direction. “He knows that I’ve tagged behind mother all
my life; he knows that I never could keep up. He even knows how hard
I used to try. I’m not good enough and I’m not clever enough. She was
a whirlwind. I feel her death more than any of you,--I understood her
better,--but you don’t know what it has been like.”

She was sobbing now, gently, indeed, but with every sign of an
hysterical outburst, save that her voice never rose above its ordinary
key. I felt sure that she was not being histrionic even for her own
benefit, sure that she was filled with despairing grief, sure that she
was holding hard to the crumbling edge of self-control; but I wondered
what martyrdom of stifled individualism she was keeping back. Evidently
Charles and I did not understand.

Pale, horrified, obviously angry at the sudden exposure of his sister’s
weakness, Charles Longbow rose from his chair and confronted her.

“Margaret,” he said, and I detected in him, as he spoke, a comical
resemblance to Mrs. Longbow, “I can’t see, to be sure, why you should
behave so childishly. You ought to know better than any one else the
importance of mother’s work, and you owe it to her not to drop out now
that she is dead. She liked Italy, too, but she had a sense of duty.”

“She had--oh, I know all about it!” Margaret had suddenly grown calm,
and spoke with something like scorn. “But you don’t know what it was
to live with her so many hours every day--to be so dependent on her. I
haven’t cultivated any sense of duty of my own.”

“You must need to rest,” I remarked, wishing more than ever that I
could go away, and feeling sure that Charles would give anything to get
me out of the house. “A winter in Italy would do both of you a lot of
good, I feel sure, after all the strain you’ve been through. Why don’t
you go with Margaret, Charlie?”

He looked at me, sad-eyed and a little wondering.

“I couldn’t possibly take the time, Bob; but I dare say Margaret does
need a change. I’m sorry it I spoke impatiently. Only I can’t stand
it, Sister, when you speak as though mother were somehow to blame.”

“It’s all right, Charlie,” said Margaret, smiling from her cushions. “I
shouldn’t have broken out so. My nerves are on edge, I suppose. Perhaps
I shall come back from Italy after a while quite ready to take hold.
And one can write even in Italy.”

“That reminds me.” Charles turned again to me. “I’ve been hoping to see
you soon about one thing. We agreed the other day that you ought to be
asked about it before we made any move. The public naturally expects an
authorized biography of mother. The demand for it has already begun.
Don’t you think Henry Bradford is the person to do it? Helen thinks he
would be willing to.”

“He would do it well, undoubtedly,” I answered, rather startled by the
abruptness of the question. I was really unprepared to give a judicial
opinion about the matter.

“Henry would like to do it,” said Margaret, “and he would give a very
just estimate of her public life. Helen could look after the English;
she always does. Only I won’t have Henry or anybody else rummaging
through all mother’s private papers.”

“Of course we should--I mean, you ought to look them over first,”
returned Charles, uneasily.

“Henry has no discretion whatever,” commented Margaret. “Besides,
mother never liked him particularly, as both of you know perfectly
well. She liked you, Robert, a great deal better. Helen would be
furious if I said it to her, but it’s true.”

“Yes, yes, Henry tried her sometimes,” Charles murmured; “but he knows
about everything in which she was interested.”

“Why shouldn’t _you_ do it?” I asked him.

“Oh, it ought to be some one further removed from her,” he
answered--“some one who could speak quite freely. I couldn’t do it.”

“There’s one other possible plan,” I remarked. “Haven’t you thought of
it? Why shouldn’t the three of you collaborate in a life? It seems to
me that might be the most suitable arrangement. All of you write; you
have all been associated with your mother in her work. Why shouldn’t
you?”

“That plan hasn’t occurred to us,” returned Charles, hesitatingly. “It
might be appropriate: ‘The Life of Mrs. Longbow, by Her Children.’ What
do you think, Margaret? Would Helen think well of it?”

“Helen might,” replied Margaret. “I don’t quite know. I’d rather be
left out of it myself.”

“Oh, I couldn’t work with Helen alone,” said Charles. “She would
overrule me at every turn.”

“There you are!” Margaret put in. “It would be a beautiful idea, no
doubt; but we should find it hard to agree.”

“Yet we ought to consider the plan before we ask any one else to do the
book,” said Charles, looking at me as though for confirmation. He had
been walking about while we talked, and now stood facing us from behind
the library table.

“You certainly ought,” I agreed, rising to go.

A few days later I paid a visit to the Bradfords. Helen was alone. She
received me graciously and spoke of her mother with much feeling and
pride. Very soon, however, she turned the conversation to her sister.

“I’m troubled about Margaret,” she said. “You’ve seen her. I’d like to
know exactly what you think. She seems to me to be on the edge of a
nervous collapse, but she won’t see a doctor.”

“She is very tired, evidently,” I responded, “but I thought she had
herself well in hand. Perhaps it may be a good thing for her to put
through her plan of going to Italy.”

“Perhaps so. The poor child needs a rest, certainly. But I’m not at
all sure that she ought to be allowed to go away by herself.” Helen
Bradford eyed me significantly. “What worries me is her fixed idea that
mother has somehow been unjust to her. It is almost insane, this idea,
and it distresses me more than I can say. You see, I shouldn’t speak of
it at all except that you have known her so long. You see how absurd
the idea is. Margaret has had greater advantages from mother’s society
than any one else, as you know. It was a great privilege.”

“Undoubtedly.” I could not bring myself to say more than that, for I
had a swift vision of what forty-two years of constant association with
Mrs. Longbow must have been like. “But the strain on her these last two
months must have been very great.”

“Hardly greater than for me,” remarked Helen Bradford, stiffly. “I
relieved her at every turn. I think I did my full duty to mother.
Besides, mother never gave trouble; she was almost painfully anxious to
avoid doing so.”

“I am sure of it,” I hastened to say; “but I suspect that Margaret has
not the strength of Mrs. Longbow. You are more like your mother in
many respects.” I was not quite sure whether Helen would take this as
a compliment, whether she might not detect a flavor of irony in the
speech; but I was relieved when it brought to her lips an amiable smile.

“That is very good of you,” she said. “Margaret--poor dear!--has always
been perfectly well, but she has never had much vitality. That is very
important for us who are busy with so many kinds of work. Charles
doesn’t get tired in the same way, but he gets worried and anxious.
Mother never did. Margaret and Charles are more like my father. You
never knew him, I think?”

All through her speech Helen Bradford had been pluming herself much as
I have seen fat geese do. The comparison is inelegant, but it conveys
the impression she gave me. At the end she sighed.

“No,” I answered, “he died before I knew Charlie.”

“I remember him vividly,” said Helen, “though I was a mere girl when
he died, and I have often heard mother say that he fretted himself to
death over non-essentials, quite selfishly. I am, I hope and believe,
whatever my faults may be, not like that.”

I could truthfully say that she was not, and I added some commonplace
about Margaret’s restoration.

“I shall have to look after her,” she went on. “Charles can’t be
depended on to do so. It is a great pity she has never married. A great
deal will come on me, now that mother is gone. For instance, there is
her biography. I must arrange for it without too much delay. I am aware
that people will be waiting for it eagerly.”

“We can hardly hope to have the complete record of so active a life
immediately,” I said, thinking to be polite.

“Perhaps not,” she answered, “but my husband says that the success of
a biography depends very largely on when it is issued. It mustn’t be
too long delayed. You may not know that mother kept a copious journal
all through the years, from her earliest girlhood. With the letters she
saved, it will be of the greatest service to her biographer, I feel
sure.”

“I am convinced of it,” I returned. Indeed, I could picture to myself
the amazing confessions that must be hidden in any really intimate
journal by Mrs. Longbow. I suspected that the revelation of it would
shock right-minded persons; but I did not doubt that the spectacle of
self-immolation finding its reward in worldly success and fame would
give to thousands the thrill of true romance.

“Charles tells me,” proceeded Mrs. Bradford, “that you suggested the
possibility of our collaborating--the three of us--in the biography. It
is a very beautiful idea. ‘Mrs. Longbow, by Her Children!’ The great
public servant as seen by those nearest and dearest to her, by those
whom she brought into the world and trained to follow in her steps!
Mother would have appreciated your thinking of it, Robert, I feel sure.
But you must see how impracticable it would be. Margaret is in such a
state, and Charles would never get anything done. He is very busy with
his work, of course, as all of us are; and he is apt to weigh things
very critically. I should have great trouble in getting the biography
written within a reasonable time. I have thought that perhaps we ought
to get Henry to do it.”

“He would no doubt do it very effectively,” I said, and rose to go.

“We must consider carefully a great many things, mustn’t we?” she
remarked brightly. “And the matter is so very important! It is a great
responsibility for one to be the child of such a mother. So kind of you
to come, Robert! I prize your sympathy not only for itself, but because
I know how greatly you admired mother. It has been a great consolation
to see you.”

I left the house, glad that the interview was over and determined to
see as little of the Longbows as possible, unless I could get Charles
by himself. It struck me that, in donning her mother’s prophetic
mantle, of which she obviously considered herself the rightful heiress,
Mrs. Bradford found compensation for her responsibilities. I could not
see why I should be troubled about the question of a proper tribute to
Mrs. Longbow, whose personality I disliked as cordially as I disliked
most of her agitations. I wondered whether other friends had suffered
in the same way.

I was, indeed, not altogether pleased the following week when I
received from Margaret Longbow an invitation to dine informally with
her brother and herself.

“Helen and her husband are to be here Friday night,” she wrote, “and
I feel the need of outside support. They seem to think me harmlessly
insane, but will perhaps treat me less like a mental invalid if you
are here. I’m sure you will be bored; but I hope you will come, if you
can, for old friendship’s sake.” I could think of no polite excuse for
not responding to this signal of distress, and accordingly found myself
once more gathered to the collective bosom of the Longbows. I could
only hope that they would have the decency not to appeal to me for any
further advice.

The family was assembled before I arrived at the house. Margaret and
Charles looked a little uneasy, I thought; but the Bradfords, as usual,
were superbly aware only of their superiorities. Henry Bradford,
well-fed and carefully dressed, exuded success at every pore, but only
the delicate aroma of success. As an experienced editor, he had learned
to be tactful, and he had made himself the plump embodiment of tact.
His features composed themselves on this occasion with a becoming trace
of regretful melancholy and an apparent willingness to be as cheerful
as seemed proper. The only discordant note in his whole well-rounded
presentation of a journalist in easy circumstances was the top of his
head. Seen through a sparse thicket of hair, it was shiny, like a coat
worn too long. His wife had the impressive exterior of a volcano in
repose.

During the simple dinner we talked pleasantly about a variety of things
that were within the province of the Longbows: municipal reform,
Tolstoy, labor-unions, a plain-spoken novel by Mrs. Virgin, Turkish
misgovernment, the temperance movement. We did not mention Mrs.
Longbow’s name, but we felt, I am sure, that her spirit hovered over
us. I, at least, had an abiding sense of her immanence. When we went
back to the drawing-room together, I expected that her virtues would
become the topic of general conversation, and I dreaded the hour to
follow.

My fears were relieved, however, by the prompt withdrawal of Mrs.
Bradford and Charles. He wished her to sign some document. Margaret
and I were left for Henry Bradford to amuse, which he did to his own
satisfaction. He was kind enough to be interested in my humble efforts
to live honestly by my pen: he expressed himself almost in those terms.
When his wife appeared in the doorway and announced briefly, “Henry
dear, I want you,” I saw him waddle away without feeling myself moved
to sympathy.

“Henry is insufferable, isn’t he?” said Margaret, quietly. “I don’t see
how Helen can stand him except that he stands her.”

“Oh, come,” I answered, “you’re too hard on them. Besides, you wouldn’t
like it if I agreed with you.”

“Really, I shouldn’t mind at all. I’ve stood by the family all my
life, and I’ll stand by Charlie now; but I’ve never been deceived into
believing that I cared for Helen or Henry. I wouldn’t hurt them even
by saying what I think of them to anybody except you, but I prefer not
to see them. That’s one reason why I’m going abroad. We sha’n’t be so
intimate after I get back.”

She rose languidly from her chair and fidgeted nervously with some
books on the table.

“How long do you plan to stay?” I asked, crossing the room to her side.

“You think it will take me a good while to get free of their clutches?
I’m going to stay till I feel safe, that’s all. I don’t want to do
anything for anybody again, and I sha’n’t come back as long as there’s
a chance of my being asked.”

She spoke vindictively, with more vehemence than I had ever seen in
her. She gave me the impression that the stifled flame of rebellion was
breaking free at last, but only when the food for it was exhausted. In
her trim and faded prettiness she was mildly tragic--futilely tragic
would perhaps be the better phrase. Life and Mrs. Longbow had sapped
her vitality; that was clear. They had taken much from her, and given
her little in exchange. I wondered fatuously whether she had chosen
well twenty years before in devoting herself to reform and her mother
rather than to me.

Doubtless I hesitated longer than was conventionally polite over
framing my reply, for she turned to me with a rather mocking laugh and
went on:

“It’s very sad about me, isn’t it? But you needn’t pity me, Robert. You
gave me a chance to get out once, you remember, and I chose to do good
to all the world instead of battening on you. It was foolish of me, but
it was probably a lucky thing for you.”

“I’ve never married, Margaret,” I answered, feeling somewhat grim and a
little uncomfortable.

“Pure habit, I suppose,” she answered lightly, “but it ought to give
you satisfaction that I’m sorry both of us haven’t. You needn’t be
frightened, even though Helen has the absurd notion of throwing me at
your head now. You see what I am--just dregs. Mother and Helen have
never got over thinking me a young girl, and they’ve always planned for
you to marry whatever was left of me after they’d finished.”

“I’ve never been very proud of my own behavior,” I put in. “I ought to
have been able to make you marry me back there, but--”

“You were no match for mother.” Margaret ended the sentence for me.
“Nobody ever was. But even she shouldn’t have expected to keep that old
affair in cold storage for twenty years. I’m a baby to be complaining,
but I can’t help it this once. Things are so terribly dead that I can
safely tell you now that you ought to marry--not that I suppose you
have been restrained on my account for some fifteen years! I’m merely
showing you my death-certificate in the hope that you’ll avoid my
unhappy end.”

“But, Margaret, what _are_ you going to do?” I cried, too disturbed by
the situation not to realize that she had diagnosed it correctly.

“Oh, as I’ve said, I’m going to inter myself decently in Italy, where I
shall probably write a book about my mother. I can stay away just so
much longer.”

At that moment the others came in and stopped whatever reply I could
have made.

“So sorry we had to leave you like this,” said Mrs. Bradford, sailing
majestically into the room; “but you are such an old friend that we
treat you like one of the family, you see.” She smiled in a way that
made her meaning plain.

“It doesn’t matter about Bob, of course,” said Charles, who was clearly
so much engrossed by his own affairs as to be impervious to anything
else. “He and Margaret ought to be able to entertain each other.”

“I think we do very well, thank you,” I remarked with a flicker of
amusement. “At least I do.”

Charles, quite serious and earnest, planted himself in full view of the
group of us.

“Look here,” he said “--all of you. I wish to talk to you about
mother’s biography.”

“Yes, indeed,” responded Mrs. Bradford, settling heavily into a chair,
“we ought to consider the matter at once. It was largely on account of
it that Henry and I took the time to come here to-night.” She assumed
her most business-like expression.

“There’s really nothing more to consider,” went on Charles, puckering
his forehead. “I simply wish to tell you that I have received an
excellent offer from Singleton for a work in two volumes, and have
accepted it. He will give a large sum for the book--a very large sum.”

“Charles,” said Helen Bradford, severely, “how can you speak of money
in such a connection? I think that you acted very unwisely in not first
consulting your family. As a matter of fact, your precipitate action is
very embarrassing, isn’t it, Henry?”

“You certainly should have told us that the offer had been made,”
concurred Bradford, looking aggrieved. “It does complicate things.”

“I can’t see why,” said Charles, with a sudden burst of anger. “I’m
mother’s executor, as well as her only son, and I surely have the right
to make my own arrangements about her biography. I thought at first
that some one outside the family ought to write it, but I’ve been
shown quite clearly that it is my duty to do it.”

Mrs. Bradford’s firm jaw dropped a little.

“_You_ do it!” she cried. “I’ve decided that it will be most suitable
for me to write it myself. In point of fact, Henry has already made
satisfactory arrangements for me with Banister. So you see--”

“I see,” said Charles, impatiently, “that you and Henry have been
meddling in the most unwarrantable fashion, quite as usual. You’ll have
to get out of it with Banister the best way you can, that’s all.”

Margaret’s even voice broke in on the dispute.

“It may interest you to know that I’m proposing to write a book about
mother myself. The Henrysons naturally wish one to go with their
edition of her writings, and they pay quite handsomely. What they
want isn’t a complete biography, you know--just the recollections of
a daughter. They seem to think me the one best qualified to do it.
Perhaps, after all, I am.”

“It is impossible!” exclaimed Helen Bradford. “I cannot allow this
thing to go on. At great personal inconvenience I have agreed to do
the book; and I refuse to be placed in the undignified position into
which you are trying to force me. I decided that I’d better write it
myself, partly because you seemed to be jealous about having Henry
do it. I have prepared to give valuable time to it. And what is my
reward? You have gone ahead secretly and made arrangements on your own
account not for one biography, but for two. I think it most selfish and
inconsiderate of you.”

“It will injure sales,” put in Henry Bradford, knowingly.

“Of course you don’t need to go ahead with yours, Helen, if you feel
like that,” said Margaret.

“I don’t see why--” began Mr. Bradford, but he was interrupted by his
wife.

“I don’t see why either. There _is_ no reason. I’m not going to let you
get all the honor and reward of it. What would people think of me?”

Margaret laughed.

“Only that you were too busy to write, my dear,” she remarked; “that
you had left it to less important members of the family.”

“I shall write the book in spite of you,” Mrs. Bradford replied. She
was furiously angry and a quite unlovely spectacle. A volcano in
eruption is not necessarily beautiful. “Mother always taught me,” she
continued, “never to be too busy to do my duty. I couldn’t bear to
think of leaving her great personality in the hands of either of you.
You are undutiful children.”

Charles Longbow’s frown had deepened, but he had regained his composure.

“I think, Helen,” he said, “that mother wouldn’t like to see us
quarreling like this. She believed in peace and calm.” For a moment his
natural generosity seemed to assert itself. “You are so much like her
that I can’t bear to have anything come between us. I’m sorry I didn’t
know you wanted to write the book.”

“You did very wrong in not consulting me,” replied Helen, with angry
dignity. “I was at least mother’s eldest child, and took a considerable
share in her great work. You ought to see Singleton and get him to
release you from your contract.”

“Perhaps Helen ought to have her own way,” remarked Margaret, wearily.
“She always has.”

“I’m certainly not going to change my arrangements now,” Charles
returned, with sudden stiffness. “I shall bring out a work in suitable
form, something on a scale worthy of mother. What is more, her journal
and all her papers are mine to do what I please with.”

“Come, Henry!” cried Mrs. Bradford. “You may like to have insults
heaped upon me, but I won’t remain to hear them.”

Magnificently, explosively, she swept from the room, followed close by
her husband. For a moment the brother and sister stood looking at each
other like naughty children apprehended in a fault. I was forgotten. At
length Margaret sank into the chair from which her sister had risen and
gave a nervous laugh.

“I hope you have enjoyed the entertainment we’ve been giving you,
Robert,” she said, turning her head in my direction. “This will be the
end of everything. All the same, Charlie dear, I hope you’ll let me
sort mother’s papers before I go away.”

“Oh, come, Charlie,”--I plucked up my courage to play the peacemaker,
for I felt that this dance on a newly made grave would disturb even
Mrs. Longbow’s serene and righteous soul,--“there’s no reason why Helen
shouldn’t write a book as well as you. The public will stand for it. I
hope you’ll tell her so.”

Charles’s solemn face cracked with a grin.

“I sha’n’t have to,” he said. “But I’m sorry you were here-you know
what I mean. I’m ashamed.”

I could not fail to see that his pride was touched to the
bleeding-point, and that Margaret was utterly weary. With only a
hand-shake and a word of parting I went away, glad enough, you can
understand, to make my escape.

I met none of them again till I went to the docks, a month later, to
say farewell to Margaret. Charles was with her, but Helen was not
there. Margaret looked very old and ill, I thought. Just before the
boat sailed, she managed to screen herself from her brother, and
hurriedly slipped an envelop into my hand.

“Please give this to Charlie when I’m well out to sea,” she whispered.
“I can’t bear to send it through the post-office.”

“How soon?” I asked under my breath, supposing her secrecy to be the
whim of a nervous invalid.

“Give me three days,” she replied, glancing furtively at her brother,
who was just then absorbed by the spectacle of a donkey-engine on a
lower deck. “It’s about mother’s journal and her papers. Don’t you
see? I looked them over,--Charlie told me to,--but I couldn’t bear to
explain to him, and I haven’t had time yet to copy them. My letter
tells about it.”

She turned from me quickly and took her brother’s arm, insisting that
both he and I must leave the ship at once. Twenty minutes later she
waved gaily to us as the cables slackened and the boat swung out into
the river.

I disliked my new commission, but I had been given no opportunity to
refuse it. At the time appointed I carried the letter to Charles,
whom I found in the family library amid heaps of faded and disorderly
manuscript. As I entered the room, he rose excitedly.

“It’s extraordinary!” he exclaimed. “Mother’s journals are gone, and so
is all her intimate correspondence. Where can Margaret have put them?
She went through everything.”

“Perhaps this will tell you,” I said, handing him the letter. “Margaret
gave it to me just before we left the boat, and told me to keep it till
to-day.”

He read the letter, frowning.

“What does the girl think!” he cried when he had ended. “It’s extremely
careless of her--she has carried off all of mother’s really important
papers; says she hadn’t finished arranging them, and will return them
when that’s done. She must be out of her head to think of trusting such
invaluable documents to any carrier in the world. And how does she
suppose I’m to go on with my book in the meantime? It’s mad.”

“I don’t quite see, myself,” I responded, though in reality I was able
to understand her motives: evidently she wished to spare Charles the
full light of their mother’s self-revelation.

“No one could see,” he returned, his lean cheeks flushed with anger.
“It’s impossible. It’s going to be a great inconvenience, even if the
things don’t get lost, and it may cost me a lot of money.”

“Can’t you be working through what’s left?” I asked. “There seems to be
a lot of material.”

“That’s just the trouble,” he replied. “Margaret has sorted everything,
and she’s left the rubbish--papers that couldn’t be of any use for the
book I’m engaged to write.”

I was sympathetic, and willing to give Margaret her due measure of
blame. If she had been less worn and flurried, she might have found
some more discreet way of protecting her brother’s happiness and her
mother’s reputation. Yet I rather admired her courage. I wondered
how she would manage to Bowdlerize the journal without exciting her
brother’s suspicions. I awaited the outcome with curiosity and some
misgivings. When I left Charles, he was writing a peremptory demand for
the immediate return of the papers.

My curiosity was amply satisfied, and my misgivings were realized, when
I received a letter from Margaret three weeks after she sailed. It was
post-marked Gibraltar, and it ran astoundingly:

    Dear Robert:

    I’m too ill to write, but I must. Try, if you can, to invent
    some plausible excuse for me, and tell Charlie about it. I can’t
    possibly write to him. I tried--I really tried--to arrange the
    papers so that he’d get only a favorable impression from them; but
    I couldn’t--and I couldn’t let him find mother out. If he had, he’d
    have been hurt, and he’d have filled his book with reservations.
    He’s terribly conscientious. I couldn’t bear to have poor mother’s
    name injured, even if she did treat me badly. She did a lot of good
    in her way, and she was rather magnificent. So one night I dropped
    the papers overboard, journal and all. It’s a great deal better so.

    I sha’n’t stop till I get to Assisi. Don’t let Charlie be angry
    with me. I trust you to understand.

    Ever sincerely yours,
    ~Margaret Longbow~.

I give the letter in full because it explains why no complete biography
of Mrs. Longbow has ever been published. Conscientious Charles,
naturally, has been unwilling to write a two-volume life without the
essential documents, and Margaret has never put her recollections into
a book. Helen Bradford’s pompous work, “The Public and Private Life
of My Mother,” hardly serves as a biography; it really gives more
information about Mrs. Bradford than about Mrs. Longbow. To supply the
public’s need of an intimate picture of the great philanthropist I have
here set down my impressions of her.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]


THE WIDENING FIELD OF THE MOVING-PICTURE

ITS COMMERCIAL, EDUCATIONAL, AND ARTISTIC VALUE

BY CHARLES B. BREWER


It has been variously estimated that there are already from fifteen
thousand to thirty thousand moving-picture show-places in the United
States. Greater New York alone has six hundred. Their development as
an industry has been very recent. For while as early as 1864 a French
patent was granted to Ducos for a battery of lenses, which, actuated
in rapid succession, depicted successive stages of movement, this
device could not have fulfilled the requirements of the moving-picture
of to-day for the important reason, if for no other, that the dry,
sensitized plate of that day could not receive impressions with
sufficient rapidity. With the advent of instantaneous photography came
what was probably the direct forerunner of the motion-picture in the
work of Eadweard Muybridge, a photographer who, about 1878, began his
camera studies of “The Horse in Motion,”[4] “Animal Locomotion,”[5] and
other motion studies. His work was begun in California, on the private
race-course of Governor Leland Stanford. Here he employed a battery of
twenty-four cameras, spaced a foot apart, the shutters of which were
sprung by the horse coming in contact with threads stretched across the
track.

Mr. Edison’s kinetoscope camera, begun in 1889, was described in
court[6] as “capable of producing an indefinite number of negatives on
a single, sensitized, flexible film, at a speed theretofore unknown.”
In his patent specification, Mr. Edison refers to this speed by saying,
“I have been able to take with a single camera and tape film as many as
forty-six photographs per second.”

A recently published account of what seemed a novel development served
to show that other inventors were also busy on the subject nearly
twenty years ago. The innovation makes use of glass plates instead of
the ordinary films. The pictures are taken in rows, 162 to a plate, and
the finished plate resembles a sheet of postage-stamps. Provision is
made for carrying eighteen plates and for automatically shifting the
plates to take the pictures in proper sequence.

Mr. Edison first showed the world his completed invention at the
world’s fair in Chicago in 1893; but it was nearly 1900 before this
infant industry could be said to be fairly started, though one
enterprising manager had a regular place of exhibition as early as
1894. Two years ago it was estimated that in a single year the country
paid over a hundred million dollars in admissions. There are no
definite figures available, though the census officials contemplate
gathering such statistics this year. It is probably safe, however,
to place the present revenue from admissions at close to two hundred
million dollars.

[Illustration: From a photograph, copyright by The Biograph Co.

TABLEAU: THE DEPARTURE OF ENOCH ARDEN]

The Department of Justice, which has recently instituted action for
alleged combination of the ten leading film-makers of the country,
states that the total of pictures printed by these ten leading
companies, which handle between seventy and eighty per cent. of the
country’s business, fill between 2,500,000 and 3,000,000 feet of film
every week. This means between 25,000 and 30,000 miles of pictures
annually.

[Illustration: From a photograph, copyright by The Biograph Co.

SCENE FROM “THE LAST DROP OF WATER.” AN ATTACK BY HOSTILE INDIANS IN
THE DESERT]

[Illustration: By permission of the Jungle Film Company. From a
photograph, copyright by Paul J. Rainey

BEAR-HOUNDS PURSUING A CHETAH (FROM THE LIFE)]

There is an ever-increasing demand for films, and many manufacturers
are kept busy. From an original film about two hundred positives are
usually reproduced and sent broadcast to the forty-five distributing
agencies of the general company, which do the work formerly done by
about one hundred and fifty independent exchanges in the various
cities of the country. The reels were formerly sold; but are now leased
to various theaters. Dates of exhibition are arranged with as much care
and business acumen as are the great plays of the stage.

[Illustration: From a photograph, copyright by the Famous Players Film
Co.

SARAH BERNHARDT AS QUEEN ELIZABETH SIGNING THE DEATH WARRANT OF THE
EARL OF LEICESTER]

The larger places attempt to have one “first-night” reel among the
several shown at every performance. The reels usually rent to the
exhibitor for from $20 to $25 for the first night, the price being
scaled down each succeeding night about twenty per cent., until finally
the rent is as low as a dollar a night. Hence a reel may travel every
day, much the same as a theatrical troop in visiting small cities. The
writer once had occasion to trace one of the Edison films, known as
“Target Practice of the Atlantic Fleet.” The exchange had a complete
schedule of just where this film would be shown for three weeks. It had
been shown in several places in Washington, where it was scheduled to
return, but was then in Richmond, Virginia, and was billed to appear
the next day in Frederick, Maryland.

The admissions are small, but the expenses are usually not great. Most
of the exhibition places are cared for by an operator, usually paid not
more than twenty-five dollars per week; a piano-player, a doorkeeper,
and a ticket-seller, varying from fifteen to eight dollars per week.
Many proprietors operate a chain of several places, and many fenced-in
city lots are pressed into service in summer.

The moral tone of the pictures now exhibited has been greatly benefited
by the movement started in New York by those public-spirited citizens,
headed by the late Mr. Charles Sprague-Smith, known as the National
Board of Censorship, which wisely serves without compensation.
The film-makers voluntarily submit their work, and are more than
glad to have it reviewed, and it is said on good authority that no
manufacturer has ever refused to destroy a film which did not receive
the indorsement of the board. In a recent letter to “The Outlook,” Mr.
Darrell Hibbard, director of boys’ work, Y. M. C. A., Indianapolis,
discusses this phase of the subject. He writes: “Why is it that
from juvenile, divorce, and criminal courts we hear constant blame
for wayward deeds laid on the ‘five-cent shows’? The one answer is
the word ‘Greed.’” He adds that when a film has passed the National
Board of Censors, copies of it go to distributing agencies, in whose
hands “it can be made over uncensored, strips can be inserted, or
any mutilation made that fancy or trade may dictate.... A so-called
class of ‘pirated’ films are the extreme of irresponsibility.... They
are either manufactured locally or smuggled in from Europe, and thus
miss the National Board of Censors.... The only way that the people,
and especially the children, can be safeguarded from the influence of
evil pictures is by careful regulation of the places of exhibition....
The nation-wide supervision of public exhibitions should be under the
Department of Education or Child Welfare at Washington.”

[Illustration: Produced by Thomas A. Edison, Inc.

A SCENE FROM “THE BLACK ARROW”

This picture, showing the “Battle of Shorebytown,” was posed near New
York City.]

There are now many auxiliary boards. Some are under the city
governments, and are compulsory, as in Chicago. Last year this board
passed on more than 3000 reels of pictures, comprising 2,604,000 feet
of films. They found it necessary to reject less than three per cent.
If, however, on investigation Mr. Hibbard’s fears are found to be
justified, the recently organized Children’s Bureau of the Department
of Commerce and Labor will here obtain an early chance to justify its
existence, as probably ninety-five per cent. of the films, as articles
of interstate commerce, can now be subjected to its jurisdiction. Such
supervision should also be welcomed by film-makers as an important step
in furthering an advancement in the moral tone of films, long since on
the upward grade, and thus to open up an even wider field of usefulness
than they now exert.


THE FILMS

The smaller illustrations show the exact size of the pictures as they
appear on the film. They are an inch wide and three quarters of an inch
deep. A reel is usually a thousand feet long, and contains sixteen
thousand pictures. On a screen twelve feet square, which is smaller
than the usual size, there is surface enough to show twenty-seven
thousand of the pictures side by side if they are reproduced without
enlargement. Yet if every enlarged picture were shown on a separate
twelve-foot screen, a single reel would require a stretch of canvas
thirty-six miles long. Likewise a screen twenty feet square would
accommodate over seventy-six thousand of the little pictures, and the
stretch of canvas required for the enlarged pictures would be sixty
miles long. After witnessing a performance, few realize that they have
seen any such stretch of pictures as the figures show.

[Illustration: By permission of “The American Quarterly of
Roentgenology” and “The Archives of the Roentgen Ray”

SERIES OF RADIOGRAPHS SHOWING THE MOTIONS OF A STOMACH SUFFERING FROM
GASTRIC PERISTALSIS]

The life of a film is usually from three to six months, though varying,
of course, with the treatment in handling. “The Scientific American”
gives credit for superiority to films of French make, and attributes
their excellence to the many tests to which they are subjected to
secure exact dimensions, adequate strength, and other properties.

It is almost as vain to speak of the cost of producing a film as it
is to speak of the cost of producing a painting. We know the cost
of the canvas of the latter, and we also know the cost of the bare
film is three cents per foot; but the cost of what is on the film may
be represented only by the cost of developing and the labor of the
machine-operator, as, for example, in such pictures as “An Inaugural
Parade,” or the famous pictures showing the “Coronation of George V.”
Sometimes, however, the cost runs as high as fifty thousand dollars, as
did the film known as “The Landing of Columbus.” These films require
many people, necessitate the taking of long journeys to provide an
appropriate setting, and need from two to three years to finish them.
Before the film known as “The Crusaders” was ready for the public, six
hundred players and nearly three hundred horses had appeared in front
of the lens. The film of “The Passion Play,” now in preparation, will
cost, it is said, a hundred thousand dollars.

Mr. Paul Rainey has stated that his wonderful animal pictures, which
showed his happenings from the unloading of his expedition from an
Atlantic steamer on the coast of Africa, through the various hunts,
and up to his departure, likewise cost fifty thousand dollars.
Some of these wonderful films demonstrated how practical was his
much-laughed-at theory that the Mississippi hounds used for hunting
bear could successfully hunt the destructive African lion and the
chetah. These pictures, which were taken with the idea of permitting
Mr. Rainey’s friends at home to journey with him in spirit in his
travels, were first shown publicly last winter at the National
Geographic Society in Washington to illustrate a lecture by Mr.
Rainey. Those who then enjoyed them can feel only satisfaction to know
that they have now been placed on public exhibition, to show to the
people at large what Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, President of the
American Museum of Natural History, has declared to be “the greatest
contribution to natural history of the last decade.” The writer
recently saw these pictures, and while the films are naturally not
as perfect as when first shown in Washington, all the essentials are
faithfully reproduced.

It is only recently that the streaky, flickering, eye-straining
series of pictures first brought out have been supplanted by pictures
so improved and so steady and continuous that the setting of a room
or a landscape made up of hundreds of pictures appears as a single
photograph. This is admirably illustrated by a portion of Mr. Rainey’s
pictures, which show, through the peculiarly clear African atmosphere,
a range of mountains ninety miles away. Again, his picture of the
drinking-place, where, owing to a long drought, some of the animals had
come eighty miles to scratch in the sand for water, shows the stillness
of an immense landscape broken only by the swaying of the nests of half
a hundred weaver-birds in a single tree, and by the scamper of monkeys,
baboons, and other small animals two hundred and fifty yards from the
camera. The same still background is shown as these little animals
cautiously approach, drink, and are driven away by those of larger
size, who in turn give way to companies of zebras, giraffes, rhinos,
and elephants.

In a recent lecture given to benefit a fund to establish an animal
hospital in New York, Dr. Joseph K. Dixon is credited with having shown
a rare set of films which took his audience on a most interesting trip
through the Yellowstone Park, and showed them an animal hospital which
nature had provided in a secluded spot of aspen-trees, where injured
creatures went for rest and convalescence. Many vivid pictures showed
lame deer, wounded elk, and bears having their cuts and bruises healed
by their own applications of oil taken from the trees.

[Illustration: By permission of “The American Quarterly of
Roentgenology” and “The Archives of the Roentgen Ray”

SERIES OF RADIOGRAPHS SHOWING MOTIONS OF THE STOMACH DURING DIGESTION]


SCIENTIFIC AND EDUCATIONAL,--MICROCINEMATOGRAPH FILMS AND
ROENTGENCINEMATOGRAPHY

Though the work of the cinematograph is only in its infancy, the range
of its possibilities seems almost boundless. When the target-practice
pictures mentioned above were taken, it was said that some of the
pictures showed a twelve-inch shell actually in flight. The writer
saw these pictures, and while he did not see this point illustrated,
possibly due to the breaking and imperfect repairing of the film, the
statement can be credited, as it is feasible to see this with the naked
eye if the observer is well in the line of flight. Another remarkable
instance which illustrates the capabilities and speed of the lens has
been cited in the case of a picture which shows a rifle-bullet on the
inside of a soap-bubble, from which it was learned that the bubble
does not break until the bullet leaves the opposite side from which it
entered.

[Illustration: Produced by Thomas A. Edison, Inc.

SCENE FROM “WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE”]

The moving-picture is more and more being used for educational and
scientific purposes. It has been used for recruiting, and pictures were
taken of the convention at Chicago for use in the national campaign.
Pictures showing the methods of teaching in New York schools have
been shown in many parts of the country. Dr. William M. Davidson,
superintendent of public schools in the District of Columbia, is
strongly advocating the passage of a bill now pending before Congress
to use the schools as social centers for exhibiting educational
moving-pictures. Likewise Superintendent Maxwell is urging their use
in the New York public schools. Mr. Edison has very recently been
quoted as saying: “I intend to do away with books in the school;
that is, I mean to try to do away with school-books. When we get the
moving-pictures in the school, the child will be so interested that he
will hurry to get there before the bell rings, because it’s the natural
way to teach, through the eye. I have half a dozen fellows writing
scenari now on A and B.” An eight-year course is being planned which it
is expected will be started in Orange, New Jersey, in about a year.

By the use of the moving-picture, the St. Louis Medical Society has
recently shown the method of inoculating animals with disease-germs
and the effect of the germs on the blood. Circulation of the blood
and action of numerous species of bacilli were also illustrated.
In a micro-cinematograph film showing the circulation of the blood
in a living body, prepared by M. Camandon, a French scientist, and
exhibited by MM. Pathe Frères, the London “Nature” states that the
white corpuscles of the blood are shown gradually altering their shape
and position and fulfilling one of their best-known functions in acting
as scavengers and absorbing such abnormal substances as microbes,
disease-cells, and granules of inert matter. “By reproducing at a
slower pace the changes,” this journal continues, “the cinematograph
can assist us to attain a clearer perception of the nature of the
alteration as it takes place.... No amount of imagination can supply
the clearness and comprehension which actual seeing can give. The
cinematograph might well become a most sufficient aid to the teaching
of very many biological and especially medical subjects.”

[Illustration: Produced by Thomas A. Edison, Inc.

SCENE FROM “THE LAND BEYOND THE SUNSET”

This picture shows the fairies guiding a little newsboy to the land of
his dreams.]

Utilizing the moving-picture with the microscope has given the layman
an insight into a world almost beyond comprehension, and yet this field
particularly is only in its infancy. At the recent World’s Hygienic
Congress in Washington, the large attendance at the lecture of Dr.
Fullerborn of Hamburg, illustrated with microscopic moving-pictures,
demonstrated the keen public interest in this subject. The pictures
showed the skin of a guinea-pig being shaved, how it was inoculated
with the hook-worm, the surgeon cutting out a piece of the skin and
preparing his microscope. The remainder of the film showed just how
the rapid multiplication of the much-talked-of hook-worm is revealed
through the microscope.

The peculiar opaqueness necessary for the X-ray is obtained by
administering to a patient, who is in a fasting condition, two ounces
of bismuth subcarbonate mixed with two glasses of buttermilk. Many
radiographs are then made in rapid succession. These are reduced to
cinematographic size and projected upon a screen, giving a very
graphic representation of the motions of the stomach during digestion.
The films used in this paper were made by Dr. Lewis Gregory Cole,
Radiologist to Cornell University Medical College, and were shown at
a recent meeting of the American Medical Association, and published
in the journal of that society and in the Archives of Roentgen Ray.
This procedure is termed “Roentgencinematography” by Kaestle, Rieder,
and Rosenthal, to whom Dr. Cole gives much credit for previous work
along the same line. In the articles referred to above Dr. Cole advises
this method of examination for determining the presence of cancers and
ulcers of the stomach.

[Illustration: Produced by Thomas A. Edison, Inc.

SCENE FROM “THE STARS AND THE STRIPES”

This picture shows the surrender of the British captain to John Paul
Jones in the famous fight between the _Bonhomme Richard_ and the
_Serapis_. The scene was arranged in the Edison Studio, the American
ship being stationary and the other arranged to run on rollers.]

“Photographing time” has a spectacular sound, yet patents were
recently issued to the writer which virtually accomplished this.
Between the shutter and the film of the moving-picture machine are
introduced the marked edges of revolving transparent dials, actuated by
clock-movement. The figures in the three dials denote the hour, minute,
second, and smaller divisions, and are arranged to come to a prescribed
position as the shutter opens. By this means the exact time at which
any motion is photographed is imprinted on the different pictures of
the film independent of the varying speed of the hand-crank. Such
records promise to be most useful in the “scientific management” field
and medical pictures, from which comparative time studies can be made
from a number of films at the same time or from a single film by
reproducing it on the screen in the usual manner.

Over twenty years ago, Mr. Edison stated in his patent specification
in referring to his ability to take forty-six photographs per second,
“I have also been able to hold the tape at rest for nine tenths of
the time.” It was probably not intended to convey the impression that
he could take anything approaching ten times the number of pictures,
as it is of course necessary to provide for rest periods; but it
is significant that very recently a machine has been perfected for
portraying such rapid motion as projectiles in flight, etc., which
takes the almost inconceivable number of two hundred and fifty pictures
per second. Indeed, experiments are in progress which promise even four
hundred per second.

Films are also being utilized to show the news of the day. A member
of ~The Century~ staff was in Rome last year when the king was
fired upon. Two days later, in Perugia, he saw a moving-picture of the
king appearing on the balcony of the palace before an enormous crowd
assembled to congratulate him on his escape. More recently a London
theater which shows the news of the day in motion-pictures is regularly
opened and important events are shown on the screen two hours after
their occurrence, a promptness approaching that of the press “extra.”


TRICK FILMS

The old saying is that figures do not lie; but a modern one is that
they can be made to. Just so the trick film places before one’s very
eyes what to one’s inner consciousness is impossible. Two favorite
devices of the trickster are brought into play in a recent film which
shows a cleverly produced romance woven about such an absurdity as the
painting of a landscape by the switching of a cow’s tail. The film
tells the story of a ne’er-do-well, in love, pretending to study art.
The father frowns on the match, but promises his favor if the son will
produce an example of his skill. In desperation the brush and palette
are taken to a field, and while the lovers are despairing, a friendly
cow approaches the easel. The switching begins at once, and a change
in the canvas is seen with every movement until a creditable painting
appears. What has appeared astonishing would have attracted less
attention had the audience seen that the pictures showing the restless
cow were taken at intervals, between which, while the camera was
stopped, a real artist worked on the picture, and stepped to one side
when the camera was put into action.

The work of the trickster is shown to advantage in reversing a
film depicting a building operation. When run backward, a brand-new
structure is seen to be pulled to pieces, and its various members
hauled away in wagons running backward.

One operator, who had shown boys diving from a high spring-board, has
related how, by reversing the film, he let his audience see the boys
come out of the water feet foremost, rise through the air the same
way, and by a graceful turn land on their feet on the spring-board.
Another has told how, by the same reverse motion, firemen, who a moment
before had rescued occupants from a burning building, were seen to
carry their victims back into the flames. We may perhaps look for some
of these enterprising tricksters to illustrate the possibility of that
expression of impossibility, “the unscrambling of eggs,” or for one
of them, with rare presence of mind, to catch on his lens an accident
shattering a number of valuable cut-glass pieces, and then to convert
a loss into profit by exhibiting the film reversed, and showing with
wonderful effectiveness a mass of broken glass ascend through space and
form itself on the table into the perfect originals.


THE PHOTO-PLAY

The moving-picture has developed an important branch in the field
of literature. Several periodicals are devoted entirely to the
subject, and in many of the standard magazines can be found regular
advertisements for short “photo-plays.” The scenario-writers engaged in
the work do not seem to be able to keep up with the increasing demand.
Standard plays are pressed into service, and the leading managers and
actors of the world are found among those producing the 5000 plays
which moving-picture audiences require every year.

The drama on the white sheet dates back to the autumn of 1894, when
Alexander Black of New York brought out the first “picture-play” before
a distinguished literary audience. This first picture-play, called
“Miss Jerry,” like later white-sheet plays by the same author and
artist, was accompanied by a spoken monologue giving all the speeches
and covering all the transitions of the action. The pictures, the
making of which was begun before the appearance of the motion-picture
device, were produced in series, indoors and out, from a living cast,
as in the present plays, and were put on the screen with registered
backgrounds by the aid of a double stereopticon at the rate of from
three to five per minute, thus presenting stages of action--a prophecy
of the continuous action perfected in the plays of to-day.

When Mr. Black gave “Miss Jerry” for the first time in Boston, Edward
Everett Hale, greeting the author after the performance, exclaimed,
“Black, it’s so _inevitable_ that I’m chagrined to think that I didn’t
invent it myself.” It seemed inevitable, also, that the motion-picture
machine would take up the play idea; yet for a considerable time
motion exploitation was confined to short, episodic films. Indeed,
the early motion films were far less smooth in effect than the
modern product, and at the beginning a prolonged run appeared like a
hazardous undertaking for the eyes. Within the present season certain
films have been run in almost unbroken continuity (as in Bernhardt’s
“Queen Elizabeth”) for an hour and a half, which is to say that the
motion-pictures are now giving the full dramatic progression suggested
by the original lantern-play as seen by Dr. Hale.

Doubtless the value of the moving-picture drama will be greatly
enhanced if speaking and singing parts in moving-picture performances,
with the aid of the phonograph, have been made thoroughly practical
by means of an instrument known as the “magnaphone,” as is claimed by
promoters of the device. The promoters are so well satisfied with the
outcome of their experiments that they claim it will soon be used in
all parts of the country. The instruments are not sound-magnifiers,
but consist of a number of instruments resembling the megaphone which
are placed in various parts of the audience, and the voice from the
phonograph, which comes over a wire, is thus brought close enough to
all parts of the house to make it plainly audible to every one.[7]

The following progress of “Picture Plays” has been kindly furnished by
Mr. Alexander Black:

1--First “plays,” in three acts, written, photographed, and presented
by Alexander Black--1894.

2--Episodic motion-pictures placed in series.

3--Short five-minute comedies in motion pictures.

4--Scenes of travel in motion-pictures.

5--Scenes from novels in motion-pictures (“Vanity Fair,” for example,
presented in consecutive series--1911).

6--Scenes from “Odyssey” in consecutive series--1911-12.

7--Sarah Bernhardt in “Queen Elizabeth”--1912.


PICTURES IN NATURAL COLORS

With other improvements have come the admirable pictures in natural
colors, all mechanically produced. For some time we have had
hand- films, but these have required extraordinary patience on
the part of the colorist, who had to treat each of the sixteen thousand
pictures one at a time. Excessive care was also necessary as an overlap
of a thirty-second part of an inch would show the color many inches out
of place when the picture was shown enlarged on the screen. The work
is so tedious that the capacity of the colorist is said to be limited
to about thirty-five feet of film per day; the cost is thus made
excessive. And the market needs, which frequently require two hundred
reproductions of a reel, render the hand- film commercially
impracticable.

The machine which now produces beautiful color pictures is known as the
“kinemacolor.” It is the joint work of Mr. Charles Urban, an American
who went to London a few years ago as a representative of manufacturers
of an American motion-picture machine, and a London photographer. The
machine differs from the ordinary cinematograph in several important
particulars. The most noticeable difference is a rapidly driven,
revolving skeleton frame known as a color-filter, which is located
between the lens and the shutter. This color-filter is made up of
different sections of specially prepared gelatin, two sections of which
are <DW52>, one red and the other green. The filter-screen is revolved
while the pictures are taken, as well as when they are reproduced,
being so geared that the red section of the filter appears in line with
the lens for one photograph, and the green section for the next.

The photographs are all in pairs, and twice the number of pictures are
taken and reproduced as in the ordinary machine, and the speed is also
twice as great, the kinemacolor taking and reproducing thirty-two--and
sometimes as many as fifty-five--per second, and the ordinary machine
sixteen. Incidentally, to care for the greater speed the kinemacolor
machine is also driven by a motor instead of by the ordinary hand-crank.

When a negative is produced through the red screen, red light is
chiefly transmitted, and red- objects in the original will
appear transparent on the copy produced from the negative. Where the
next section of negative has moved into place the green section of the
filter has come into position, and the red- objects on this
part of the negative will appear dark. This can be noticed in the
illustrations, where such objects as the red coats of the horsemen and
the red of the flowers, as shown in the enlarged pictures, in the small
pictures appear light in every second view, and dark in each succeeding
one. When the pictures are thrown on a screen, the transparent parts
allow the colors of the filter to pass through, and the revolutions
of the filter are arranged for showing the appropriate color for
every picture. This will cause confusion, if, in repairing a broken
kinemacolor film, an uneven number of pictures are cut out and the
“pairs” thus interfered with.

The successful reproducing of these wonderful colors is largely due to
what we know as “persistence of vision” (the same principle on which
the kinetoscope is based), and is easily recognized when we remember
that the lighted point of a stick appears to our vision as a ring of
fire when the stick is rapidly revolved. Just so with these pictures:
they are produced so rapidly that the red of one lingers on the retina
of the eye until the green appears, and the red of the first picture
melts into the green of the next, which does not appear, however, until
the red one has passed away. The green selected for the filter has in
it a certain amount of blue, and the red a certain amount of orange,
and in the fusion of the colors may be seen pleasing combinations of
greenish-yellow, orange, grays, blues, and even rich indigos.

The early products of this kinemacolor process were the pictures of
the George V “Coronation” and the “Durbar.” The coronation pictures
are noteworthy for the brilliancy of the scenes, showing in action
thousands of horses, some bay, some chestnut, while others are pure
white, black, or of a peculiar cream color, all of them carrying
gay horsemen, with bright red coats, before a sea of color shown in
the gorgeous hats and exquisite gowns of the spectators and court
attendants. The durbar pictures, of course, are more recent. They
consist of 64,000 feet of pictures taken in Bombay, Calcutta, and
Delhi, where the actual durbar ceremonial of coronation was held. The
pictures at Calcutta, showing the royal elephants, are probably those
which will most impress Americans, particularly those showing the
superb control displayed when, at the mahout’s bidding, the elephants
go into and under the water, head and all, and leave the mahout on his
back apparently standing on the water’s surface. One set of pictures
shows the elephants in the pageant, and illustrates the wonderful color
capabilities of the process by distinctly reproducing on the enormous
cloth of gold covering the elephants the sheen as its folds move with
the elephants’ steps.

In another part of these durbar pictures is shown a sea of color where
fifty thousand troops pass in review before the eyes of the spectator
in ten minutes. Two sets of the pictures show how quick is the action
of this particular process. These are the polo tournament at Delhi and
the cavalry charge, the action in which was so rapid as to require
the machine to take fifty-five pictures a second, in order to show
faithfully all of the movement.

After witnessing pictures so full of interest and so wonderful in
color effect and action, one accustomed to democratic ideas could but
wonder to see moving upon the screen, on a mechanically revolved table,
so inanimate an object as a crown of jewels. Interest, however, was
aroused when it was learned that the appearance of this picture was
due to the fact that, as a mark of high appreciation of the coronation
and durbar pictures, the king broke many precedents and permitted his
crown to be taken for photographing to the private studio of Mr.
Urban, the inventor of the process. Incidentally, too, the crown was
more wonderful than its appearance at a distance indicated; for the
company informed the writer that it is made up of 6170 diamonds, 24
rubies, and 25 emeralds, the largest of which weighs thirty-four carats.

Another mark of the king’s appreciation was his storing away in the
“Jewel Office” of the Tower of London, in hermetically sealed vessels,
a complete set of the pictures, to show posterity at successive
coronations the exact manner in which George V became King of England
and Emperor of India.


FROM BUD TO BLOSSOM

A rare set of pictures taken by this color process which had not been
given to the public was courteously shown to the writer in the private
theater of the company. These, which are called “From Bud to Blossom,”
show a stream of pictures in such rapid succession that they simulate
the trick of the Eastern magician who makes flowers grow into being
before the eyes of the spectator. The pictures are taken in intervals
of about three minutes by an automatic arrangement which continues the
work for a period required for the flower to blossom, which is usually
about three days. The speed of the growth, as seen by the spectator,
is thus magnified about from six thousand to nine thousand times the
actual growth of the flowers. So faithfully has the camera performed
its task that even the loosening of the petals can be counted one by
one, and in one picture, where two buds of a poppy are shown, the
growth of one is far enough ahead of the other to show its shattered
petals wither and drop while the companion is left in its magnificence.
In another picture the water in the glass is seen to evaporate to one
fourth its quantity before the flowers have fully blossomed.

As a fitting climax, to excel in gorgeousness the pictures of the
flowers, there were retained until the last a series of pictures of
a battle “unto death” in an aquarium between water-beetles and a
magnificently marked snake. It almost passes the imagination to see
the distinct preservation of the many and varied colors of the snake
as it writhes and twists among the rocks on the bottom in its endeavor
to loose the hold of the beetles. The thought is delayed too long,
for soon after the bottom is reached one of the beetles finishes his
well-planned attack, and the neck of the snake is shown where these
vigorous little insects of the water have chewed it half-way through.
Vanquished, the snake gives up the battle as its lifeless form is
stretched on the rocks at the bottom.

[Illustration]




THE YOUNG HEART IN AGE

BY EDITH M. THOMAS


    Let fall the ashen veil
      On locks of ebon sheen;
    And let Time’s furrowing tale
      On once-smooth brows be seen.

    And let my eyes forego
      Their once-keen shaft of sight;
    Let hands and feet not know
      Their former skill or might.

    Take all of outward grace,
      Ye Aging Powers--but hold!
    Touch not the inner place,
      Let not my heart be old!

    Then, Youth, to me repair;
      And be my soothéd guest;
    All things with you I share
      Save one,--that wild unrest!




[Illustration]


HER OWN LIFE

BY ALLAN UPDEGRAFF


She paid the landlady five dollars from a plump little purse of gold
mesh.

“And I’m expecting a--a gentleman to see me within the next half-hour,”
she said.

“Certainly, ma’am; I’ll show him right into the drawring-room and call
you. I hope you’ll like the surroundings, ma’am; I have nobody in my
house but the most refined--”

“Oh, I’m sure I shall. Good day.”

She sat on the edge of the bed in the furnished room she had just
rented, and her face had the look of the girl’s face in a little
autotype of “The Soul’s Awakening through Books” that hung on the
wall opposite her. At last _her_ soul was awake; she could hear it
whispering, whispering in her bosom. Or was that sound merely the
exultation of her excited heart?

At any rate, her soul was awake. She knew it, she could feel it, and it
made her tingle. At last she had broken her bonds, she had proclaimed
herself a real person in a real world. Her doll existence and her
doll-self were further behind than the doll’s house she had left. She
was free--free to be herself, free to live her own life as her own
desires decreed.

“Free! free!” she repeated under her breath. “Free!”

Her very presence gave a glamour to the shabby little room, so
palpitating with life was she, so dainty and pretty and sweet, and so
palpably young. The coils of her bright-brown hair were smooth and
artfully simple, as only the fingers of an expert hair-dresser could
have made them; her clear-skinned, brunette coloring showed the fine
hand of nature given every chance to produce its best; the delicate,
dark curves of her eyebrows, the carmine bows of her lips, the
changing, liquid velvet of her gold-brown eyes, were masterpieces of
the same supreme artist. She was as fair as an April morning that has
somehow strayed into the luxuriance of June.

Suddenly she realized that the air in the little room was close, that
the single tall window was closed top and bottom. With a quick rustle
of silken draperies, she fluttered over to it and threw it wide.
The sounds that came in were not the metallic tenor shriek of the
“elevated,” the rumbling of wagons on cobblestones, the whining of
surface cars: they were voices of the world. She held out her arms to
them before returning to her perch on the bed.

There was such a dazzling host of things to be done that she could
not begin to do anything. Her two big cowhide suitcases, standing in
rather disdainful opulence beside the shabby chiffonier, invited her to
unpack; but she dismissed the invitation with a toss of her head. How
could she desecrate her first hour of freedom by putting clothing into
bureau drawers? A mote-filled streak of sunshine, oblique with late
afternoon, offered more congenial occupation. She let her eyes rest on
it, and dreamed. It was pale golden, like hope, like the turrets of
castles in Spain, like the wealth awaiting claimants at the foot of a
rainbow. For a long time she looked into it, and her face put off its
first flush of exultation for the wistful doubtfulness of reverie.

There was a knock at her door.

“Yes?” she answered.

“Your gentleman friend is a-waiting for you in the drawring-room,
ma’am,” announced the landlady’s voice from outside.

“All right; thank you. I’ll be right down,” she said.

She arose in a small flutter of excitement, and patted her faultless
hair before the mirror, turning her head this way and that. Gone was
her doubtfulness, her wistfulness; she had brightened like a mirror
when a lamp is brought into the room. The warm color in her cheeks
deepened, and her eyes felicitated their doubles in the mirror. Lightly
she fluttered down the broad stairway to the tiled hall below. At the
entrance to the parlor she paused a moment, then swept back the heavy
curtain with such an air as one might use in unveiling a statue.

A man, sitting in the big Turkish rocking-chair between the front
windows, rose hastily to his feet. He was a compact, short-statured,
middle-aged man, with a look of grave alertness behind the friendly set
of his face.

“Mrs. Wendell?” he murmured, coming forward.

“And so you,” she said, still poising between the curtains, “are Ames
Hallton!” Immediately she laughed. “That sounds like melodrama,” she
exclaimed. “I’m very glad to see you.”

They shook hands. Her eyes continued to regard him with the puzzled
interest that wonderful objects frequently inspire when seen closely.
There was a faint shadow of disappointment on her face, but she did not
allow it to linger.

“It was kind--it was awf’ly kind of you to come,” she said. “Sha’n’t we
sit down? Do you know, I almost thought you wouldn’t come.”

“Your letter was very interesting,” he returned dryly.

“I tried to make it that way--so interesting that you just couldn’t
keep from coming.” She folded her hands in her brown-silk lap and
gravely bowed her head so that light from the window could bring out
the copper tints in her hair. She felt the judicial expression of
the gray eyes watching her, and chose the simplest means of making
partizans of them. “I was quite desperate, and after I’d read your
‘Love’s Ordeal’ I knew you were the one person who could help me.”

“Have you already left your husband?” he inquired.

She winced a little, and her brows protested. “You remind me of a
surgeon,” she said; “but that’s what I need--that’s what attracted me
to you in your book. It’s all so calm and simple and scientific. It
made me realize for the first time what I was--it and Ibsen’s ‘Doll’s
House.’ I was nothing but a plaything, a parasite, a mistress, a doll.”
She bowed her head in shame. The warm color flooding her cheeks was as
flawless as that in the finest tinted bisque.

“What you say is very, very interesting,” murmured Hallton; and she
knew from his changed tone that the fact of her beauty had at last been
borne in upon him.

With renewed confidence, almost with boldness, she lifted her head and
continued: “You see, I was married when I was only eighteen--just out
of boarding-school. I was already sick of hearing about love; everybody
made love to me.”

“Of course,” said Hallton, slightly sarcastic.

“I couldn’t help that, could I?” she complained, turning the depths of
her gold-brown eyes full upon him.

He lowered his own eyes and pursed his lips.

“No, of course not,” he admitted. “And then, when you realized that you
were--inconveniently situated, you decided to imitate _Nora_ in the
‘Doll’s House,’ and get out? Is that it?”

“Well, yes; but--”

“So you explained to your husband how you felt, and left him?”

“I didn’t exactly explain; my thoughts seemed to be all mixed up: I
thought it would be better to write, after I’d thought a little more.”
Again she allowed the glory of her eyes to be her best apologist. “I
was going to write as soon as I’d had a talk with you. You see, I came
away only two hours ago, and Harry--my husband--will just think I’ve
gone to visit somewhere.” Her beauty made a confident appeal that he
would sanction her position.

But Hallton looked out of the window.

“And what do you expect to do to earn your living,” he asked, “now that
you’ve decided to quit being a parasite?”

It was cruelly unfamiliar ground, this necessity he put upon her of
answering questions with mere words; she had become accustomed to use
glances as a final statement of her position, as a full and sufficient
answer for any question that a man could ask her. Nevertheless, she
drew herself together and addressed Hallton’s unappreciative profile:

“My husband will give me an allowance, I’m sure, until I decide on
some suitable occupation; or, if he is mean enough not to, there’ll be
alimony or--or something like that, won’t there?” Her eyebrows began to
arch a little as Hallton continued to look out of the window, and her
lips lost some of their softness. “That is one of the things I wished
to speak to you about,” she explained. “I thought perhaps I might take
up writing, and I thought you might tell me the best way to begin.”

Hallton put one hand to his forehead.

“However, of course the most important thing,” she resumed steadily,
“is for me to live my own life. That’s what I’ve come to realize: I
must express myself, I must be free. Why, I didn’t know I had a soul
until I found myself alone a short time ago in the little room that
I had rented myself, all for myself. I’ve been a chattel--yes, a
chattel!” Her voice quavered; she hesitated, waiting for at least a
glance of encouragement.

“I hoped you’d understand, that you’d advise me,” she murmured. “I’m
afraid I’m frightfully helpless; I’ve always been that way.”

“My God! yes, madam!” he exploded, facing her; “I should think you
were!”

She made no reply; she did not even show surprise by a change of
expression; she simply sat up very straight and faced him with the look
of clear-eyed intelligence that she had found best suited to situations
utterly beyond her comprehension. She waited, calm-browed, level-eyed,
judicious-mouthed, for him to explain, to apologize.

“I beg your pardon,” he said.

Her silence demanded more.

“I was rather overcome; I was about to take a cheap, narrow view of
your--your dilemma,” he explained. “I was about to say that your
troubles were as common as dirt, and that you were wrong to take them
so idealistically, and not to realize the simplest fundamentals, of--.
Women are going through a period of readjustment just now, of course.
Your troubles probably aren’t much greater than those of any woman, or
man, who goes out to hunt a job. You don’t need to smash things, to
kick up a row.”

She watched, with the penetrating gaze of a Muse, his half-disgusted
attempts to be polite. She had not the slightest idea what he was
driving at; she merely understood that only his regard for her beauty
and womanhood kept him from saying wild, irrational things. It occurred
to her that he might be mentally unbalanced; geniuses often were.

“Look here,” he continued, growing increasingly excited under her look
of beautiful, understanding aloofness, “wouldn’t it be a good thing if
you decided, before beginning to live your own life, just what sort of
life your own life is--what you want to make of it? You’re breaking
away from a beastly artificial environment; aren’t you afraid you’ll
have as hard a time as, say, a pet canary turned out to make a living
among the sparrows? Besides, canaries are quite as useful as sparrows.”

“I hardly think,” she said with great determination, “that I can
be compared to a pet canary; and I’ll have to ask you to be more
considerate in referring to my husband. He may not understand me, but
he is kind, and as good as he knows--”

“Excuse me,” interrupted Hallton, putting his hand to his forehead;
“but I have no recollection of referring to your husband at all.”

“You spoke of my breaking away from him,” she said, “and you called
him a beastly artificial--I won’t repeat what you said.” The delicate
curves of her cheeks warmed with the memory of the unfamiliar
appellation, with faint doubt as to her first idea of its value.
“However, that’s neither here nor there. I wish to ask you a simple,
straightforward question, Mr. Hallton: do you, or do you not, think it
is right for persons to live their own lives?”

For a moment she thought she had succeeded in bringing him back to a
humble consideration of her case; he looked at her with something like
consternation in his face, his alert, gray eyes blinking rapidly. Light
from the window made her massed hair a soft, golden glimmer above the
sweet, injured, girlish seriousness of her face; her lips softened,
curved downward, like a troubled child’s.

But Hallton turned from her to look out of the window.

“Your own life, your own life!” he exploded again. “Why, you great,
big, beautiful doll, that’s your own life--a doll’s life! When is a
doll not a doll?” He got out of his chair and jerked his coat together
at the throat. His lower jaw protruded; he looked through rather
than at her, and his eyes were sick and tired. “Even your talk is
the talk of an automaton; you haven’t an idea without a forest of
quotation-marks around it,” he said. “If you weren’t so good-looking,
you’d be a private in that big brigade of female nincompoops who write
their soul-troubles to the author of the latest successful book. Your
beauty removes you from that class--at least as long as I look at you.”

He bowed to her, with an expression slightly resembling a sneer.

“Your beauty makes you a temptation; for you’d soon be looking for
another cage, or another doll’s house, and any man might be glad to
feed you. If I weren’t so busy, and you weren’t so devoid of character,
common sense, everything else that--”

“Oh, you brute!” she cried, recoiling from the crassly material
admiration in his eyes. “How dare you speak to me like that?”

“Perfect!” He bowed with his hand on his heart. “I press the
button, and you utter the absolutely obvious remarks. You are a
masterpiece--such a doll as would grace any home of the middle of the
last century. And my advice to you is to go back to your home and to
your devoted husband. I take it for granted that he is devoted: the
prices which you mechanical beauties command usually include devotion
by the bucketful. But perhaps I’m unnecessarily harsh because I see you
slipping through my fingers. Good day, Mrs. Wendell; and good luck!”

She saw him go with a feeling that the universe had suddenly been
inverted and that she was scrambling around amid a Noah’s ark load
of displaced properties. It was not so much that he had disturbed
her ideals, her plans, her dream of freedom, but that he could have
treated her so cavalierly; that he could have been so impolite, so
unreasonable, so brutal; that he could so completely have failed to
understand her--that was what left her as dazed and terrified as a lost
child.

“Oh, he is a cad, a perfect beast!” she gasped to herself as she fled
up the broad stairway to her room.

She threw herself down on the hard little bed, crumpled silks, crumpled
hair, crumpled rose-petals of cheeks, crumpled <DW29>s-and-dew of eyes.
All her sweetness and delicacy wilted and drooped and quivered in the
cold, gathering gloom of the little room. The city snarled and rumbled
and hissed and groaned outside, and its great composite voice was the
voice of loneliness incarnate.

“Oh, there’s no one to take care of me!” she sobbed suddenly, and burst
into a flood of tears.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: Half-tone plate engraved by H. Davidson

A CORNER OF THE TABLE

FROM THE PAINTING BY CHARLES CHABAS

(EXAMPLES OF CONTEMPORARY FRENCH ART)]




[Illustration: Drawn by André Castaigne

A DISTANT VIEW OF THE ACROPOLIS AT SUNSET]


SKIRTING THE BALKAN PENINSULA

FROM TRIEST TO CONSTANTINOPLE

THIRD PAPER: THE ENVIRONS OF ATHENS

BY ROBERT HICHENS

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

WITH PICTURES BY JULES GUÉRIN AND PHOTOGRAPHS


Upon the southern <DW72> of the Acropolis, beneath the limestone
precipices and the great golden-brown walls above which the Parthenon
shows its white summit, are many ruins; among them the Theater of
Dionysus and the Odeum of Herodes Atticus, the rich Marathonian who
spent much of his money in the beautification of Athens, and who taught
rhetoric to two men who eventually became Roman emperors. The Theater
of Dionysus, in which Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides produced their
dramas, is of stone and silver-white marble. Many of the seats are
arm-chairs, and are so comfortable that it is no uncommon thing to see
weary travelers, who have just come down from the Acropolis, resting in
them with almost unsuitable airs of unbridled satisfaction.

It is evident to any one who examines this great theater carefully that
the Greeks considered it important for the body to be at ease while
the mind was at work; for not only are the seats perfectly adapted to
their purpose, but ample room is given for the feet of the spectators,
the distance between each tier and the tier above it being wide enough
to do away with all fear of crowding and inconvenience. The marble
arm-chairs were assigned to priests, whose names are carved upon them.
In the theater I saw one high arm-chair, like a throne, with lion’s
feet. This is Roman, and was the seat of a Roman general. The fronts
of the seats are pierced with small holes, which allow the rain-water
to escape. Below the stage there are some sculptured figures, most
of them headless. One which is not is a very striking and powerful,
though almost sinister, old man, in a crouching posture. His rather
round forehead resembles the very characteristic foreheads of the
Montenegrins.

Herodes Atticus restored this theater. Before his time it had been
embellished by Lycurgus of Athens, the orator, and disciple of Plato.
It is not one of the gloriously placed theaters of the Greeks, but
from the upper tiers of seats there is a view across part of the Attic
plain to the isolated grove of cypresses where the famous Schliemann is
buried, and beyond to gray Hymettus.

Standing near by is another theater, Roman-Greek, not Greek, the Odeum
of Herodes Atticus, said to have been built by him in memory of his
wife. This is not certain, and there are some authorities who think
that, like the beautiful arch near the Olympieion, this peculiar, very
picturesque structure was raised by the Emperor Hadrian, who was much
fonder of Athens than of Rome.

The contrast between the exterior, the immensely massive, three-storied
façade with Roman arches, and the interior, or, rather, what was once
the interior, of this formerly roofed-in building, is very strange.
They do not seem to belong to each other, to have any artistic
connection the one with the other.

[Illustration: From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood

THEATER OF DIONYSUS ON THE SOUTHERN <DW72> OF THE ACROPOLIS]

The outer walls are barbarically huge and heavy, and superb in color.
They gleam with a fierce-red gold, and are conspicuous from afar. The
almost monstrous, but impressive, solidity of Rome, heavy and bold,
indeed almost crudely imperious, is shown forth by them--a solidity
absolutely different from the Greek massiveness, which you can study
in the Doric temples, and far less beautiful. When you pass beyond and
this towering façade, which might well be a section of the Colosseum
transferred from gladiatorial Rome to intellectual Athens, you find
yourself in a theater which looks oddly, indeed, almost meanly, small
and pale and graceful. With a sort of fragile timidity it seems to be
cowering behind the flamboyant walls. When all its blanched marble
seats were crowded with spectators it contained five thousand persons.
As you approach the outer walls, you expect to find a building that
might accommodate perhaps twenty-five thousand. There is something
bizarre in the two colors, fierce and pale, in the two sizes, huge
and comparatively small, that are united in the odeum. Though very
remarkable, it seems to me to be one of the most inharmonious ruins in
Greece.

The modern Athenians are not very fond of hard exercise, and except in
the height of summer, when many of them go to Kephisia and Phalerum,
and others to the islands, or to the baths near Corinth for a “cure,”
they seem well content to remain within their city. They are governed,
it seems, by fashion, like those who dwell in less-favored lands. When
I was in Athens the weather was usually magnificent and often very
hot. Yet Phalerum, perhaps half an hour by train from Constitution
Square, was deserted. In the vast hotel there I found only two or three
children, in the baths half a dozen swimmers. The pleasure-boats lay
idle by the pier. I asked the reason of this--why at evening dusty
Athens was crammed with strollers, and the pavements were black with
people taking coffee and ices, while delightful Phalerum, with its
cooler air and its limpid waters, held no one but an English traveler?

“The season is over,” was the only reply I received, delivered with a
grave air of finality. I tried to argue the matter, and suggested that
anxiety about the war had something to do with it. But I was informed
that the “season” closed on a certain day, and that after that day the
Athenians gave up going to Phalerum.

The season for many things seemed “over” when I was in Athens.
Round-about the city, and within easy reach of it, there is fascinating
country--country that seems to call you with a smiling decision to
enjoy all Arcadian delights; country, too, that has great associations
connected with it. From Athens you can go to picnic at Marathon or at
Salamis, or you can carry a tea-basket to the pine-woods which <DW72>
down to the Convent of Daphni, and come back to it after paying a visit
to Eleusis. Or, if you are not afraid of a “long day,” you can motor
out and lunch in the lonely home of the sea-god under the columns at
Sunium. If you wish to go where a king goes, you can spend the day
in the thick woods at Tatoï. If you are full of social ambition, and
aim at “climbing,” a train in not many minutes will set you down at
Kephisia, the summer home of “the fifty-two” on the <DW72> of a spur of
Mount Pentelicus.

Thither I went one bright day. But, as at Phalerum, I found a deserted
paradise. The charming gardens and arbors were empty. The villas,
Russian, Egyptian, Swiss, English, French, and even now and then
Greek in style, were shuttered and closed. All in vain the waterfalls
sang, all in vain the silver poplars and the yellow-green pines gave
their shade. No one was there. I went at length to a restaurant to
get something to eat. Its door was unlocked, and I entered a large,
deserted room, with many tables, a piano, and a terrace. No one came.
I called, knocked, stamped, and at length evoked a thin elderly lady
in a gray shawl, who seemed alarmed at the sight of me, and in a frail
voice begged to know what I wanted. When I told her, she said there
was nothing to eat except what they were going to have themselves. The
season was over. Eventually she brought me _mastika_ and part of her
own dinner to the terrace, which overlooked a luxuriant and deserted
garden. And there I spent two happy, golden hours. I had sought the
heart of fashion, and found the exquisite peace that comes to places
when fashion has left them. Henceforth I shall always associate
beautiful Kephisia with silence, flowers, and one thin old woman in a
gray shawl.

[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF POSEIDON AND ATHENE AT SUNIUM

PAINTED FOR THE CENTURY BY JULES GUÉRIN]

Greece, though sparsely inhabited, is in the main a very
cheerful-looking country. The loneliness of much of it is not
depressing, the bareness of much of it is not sad. I began to
understand this on the day when I went to the plain of Marathon, which,
fortunately, lies away from railroads. One must go there by carriage or
motor or on horseback. The road is bad both for beasts and machinery,
but it passes through country which is typical of Greece, and through
which it would be foolish to go in haste. Go quietly to Marathon, spend
two hours there, or more, and when you return in the evening to Athens
you will have tasted a new joy. You will have lived for a little while
in an exquisite pastoral--a pastoral through which, it is true, no
pipes of Pan have fluted to you,--I heard little music in Greece,--but
which has been full of that lightness, brightness, simplicity, and
delicacy peculiar to Greece. The soil of the land is light, and, I
believe, though Hellenes have told me that in this I am wrong, that the
heart of the people is light. Certainly the heart of one traveler was
as he made his way to Marathon along a white road thickly powdered with
dust.

[Illustration: From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood

THE PLAIN OF MARATHON]

Has not each land its representative tree? America has its maple,
England its oak, France its poplar, Italy its olive, Turkey its
cypress, Egypt its palm, and so on. The representative tree of Greece
is the pine. I do not forget the wild olive, from which in past days
the crowns were made, nor the fact that the guide-books say that
in a Greek landscape the masses of color are usually formed by the
silver-green olive-trees. It seemed to me, and it seems to me still in
remembrance, that the lovely little pine is the most precious ornament
of the Grecian scene.

Marathon that day was a pastoral of yellow and blue, of pines and
sea. On the way I passed through great olive-groves, in one of
which long since some countrymen of mine were taken by brigands and
carried away to be done to death. And there were mighty fig-trees, and
mulberry-trees, and acres and acres of vines, with here and there an
almost black cypress among them. But the pines, more yellow than green,
and the bright blue sea made the picture that lives in my memory.

[Illustration: From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood

RUINS OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF THE MYSTERIES AT ELEUSIS]

Not very long after we were clear of the town we passed not far from
the village of “Louis,” who won the first Marathon race that was run
under King George’s scepter, Marousi, where the delicious water is
found that Athens loves to drink. And then away we went through the
groves and the little villages, where dusty soldiers were buying up
mules for the coming war; and Greek priests were reading newspapers;
and olive-skinned children, with bright, yet not ungentle, eyes, were
coming from school; and outside of ramshackle cafés, a huddle of
wood, a vine, a couple of tables, and a few bottles, old gentlemen,
some of them in native dress, with the white fustanelle, a sort of
short skirt not reaching to the knees, and shoes with turned-up toes
ornamented with big black tassels, were busily talking politics. Carts,
not covered with absurd but lively pictures, as they are in Sicily,
lumbered by in the dust. Peasants, sitting sidewise with dangling feet,
met us on trotting donkeys. Now and then a white dog dashed out, or
a flock of thin turkeys gobbled and stretched their necks nervously
as they gave us passage. Women, with rather dingy handkerchiefs tied
over their heads, were working in the vineyards or washing clothes
here and there beside thin runlets of water. Two German beggars, with
matted hair uncovered to the sun, red faces, and fingers with nails
like the claws of birds, tramped by, going to Athens. And farther on we
met a few Turkish Gipsies, swarthy and full of a lively malice, whose
tents were visible on a hillside at a little distance, in the midst of
a grove of pines. All the country smiled at us in the sunshine. One
jovial man in a fustanelle leaned down from a cart as we passed, and
shouted in Greek: “Enjoy yourselves! Enjoy yourselves!” And the gentle
hills, the olive-and pine-groves, the stretching vineyards, seemed to
echo his cry.

[Illustration: Half-tone plate engraved by H. Davidson

THE ODEUM OF HERODES ATTICUS IN ATHENS

FROM THE PAINTING MADE FOR THE CENTURY BY JULES GUÉRIN]

What is the magic of pastoral Greece? What is it that gives to you
a sensation of being gently released from the cares of life and the
boredom of modern civilization, with its often unmeaning complications,
its unnecessary luxuries, its noisy self-satisfactions? This is not
the tremendous, the spectacular release of the desert, an almost
savage tearing away of bonds. Nothing in the Greece I saw is savage;
scarcely anything is spectacular. But, oh, the bright simplicity of
the life and the country along the way to Marathon! It was like an
early world. One looked, and longed to live in those happy woods like
the Turkish Gipsies. Could life offer anything better? The pines are
small, exquisitely shaped, with foliage that looks almost as though
it had been deftly arranged by a consummate artist. They curl over
the <DW72>s with a lightness almost of foam cresting a wave. Their
color is quite lovely. The ancient Egyptians had a love color: well,
the little pine-trees of Greece are the color of happiness. You smile
involuntarily when you see them. And when, descending among them, you
are greeted by the shining of the brilliant-blue sea, which stretches
along the edge of the plain of Marathon, you know radiance purged of
fierceness.

The road winds down among the pines till, at right angles to it,
appears another road, or rough track just wide enough for a carriage.
This leads to a large mound which bars the way. Upon this mound a
habitation was perched. It was raised high above the ground upon a sort
of tripod of poles. It had yellow walls of wheat, and a roof and floor
of brushwood and maize. A ladder gave access to it, and from it there
was a wide outlook over the whole crescent-shaped plain of Marathon.
This dwelling belonged to a guardian of the vineyards, and the mound is
the tomb of those who died in the great battle.

I sat for a long time on this strange tomb, in the shadow of the
rustic watch-house, and looked out over the plain. It is quite flat,
and is now cultivated, though there are some bare tracts of unfruitful
ground. In all directions I saw straggling vines. Not far away was
one low, red-tiled house belonging to a peasant, whose three small,
dirty, and unhealthy-looking children presently approached, and gazed
at me from below. In the distance a man on a white horse rode slowly
toward the pine-woods, and to my left I saw a group of women bending
mysteriously to accomplish some task unknown to me. No other figures
could I see between me and the bright-blue waters that once bore up
the fleet of Persia. Behind me were stony and not very high hills,
ending in the <DW72>s down which Miltiades made his soldiers advance
“at a running pace.” One hundred and ninety-two brave men gone to dust
beneath me; instead of the commemorative lion, the little watch-house
of brushwood and wheat and maize, silence the only epitaph. The
mound, of hard, sun-baked earth, was yellow and bare. On one side a
few rusty-looking thorn-bushes decorated it harshly. But about it grew
aloes, and the wild oleander, with its bright-pink flowers, and near
by were many great fig-trees. A river intersects the plain, and its
course is marked by sedges and tall reeds. Where the land is bare, it
takes a tawny-yellow hue. Some clustering low houses far off under the
hills form the Albanian village of Marathon. Just twenty-two miles
from Athens, this place of an ancient glory, this tomb of men who, I
suppose, will not be forgotten so long as the Hellenic kingdom lasts,
seems very far away, hidden from the world between woods and waters,
solitary, but not sad. Beyond the plain and the sea are ranges of
mountains and the island of Eubœa.

A figure slowly approaches. It is the guardian of the vineyards,
coming back to his watch-house above the grave of his countrymen,
smiling, with a cigarette between his white teeth. As I go, he calls
out “Addio!” Then he mounts his ladder carefully and withdraws to his
easy work. How strange to be a watcher of vineyards upon the tumulus of
Marathon!

If you care at all for life in the open, if you have the love of
camping in your blood, Greece will call to you at every moment to throw
off the dullness of houses, to come and stay under blue heaven and be
happy. Yet I suppose the season for all such joys was over when I was
in Greece, for I never met any citizens of Athens taking their pleasure
in the surrounding country. In Turkey and Asia Minor, near any large
town, when the weather is hot and fine, one may see cheerful parties of
friends making merry in the open air, under trees and in arbors; or men
dreaming idly in nooks that might have made old Omar’s delight, shaded,
and sung to by a stream. In Greece it is not so. Once you are out in
the country, you come upon no one but peasants, shepherds, goatherds,
Gipsies, turkey-drivers, and, speaking generally, “sons of the soil.”

[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF ATHENE, ISLAND OF ÆGINA

PAINTED FOR THE CENTURY BY JULES GUÉRIN]

In the very height of summer, I am told, the Athenians do condescend to
go to the pine-woods. They sleep during part of the day, and stay out
of doors at night, often driving into the country, and eating under the
trees or by the sea. But even in the heat of a rainless September,
if I may judge by my own experience, they prefer Constitution Square
and “the Dardanelles” to any more pastoral pleasures.

I did not imitate them, but followed the Via Sacra one morning, past
the oldest olive-tree in Greece, a small and corrugated veteran said to
have been planted in the time of Pericles, to the Convent of Daphni,
now fallen into a sort of poetic decay.

Once more I was among pine-trees. They thronged the almost park-like
<DW72>s under Ægaleos. They crowded toward the little Byzantine church,
which stands on the left of the road on the site of a vanished temple
of Apollo, with remains of its once strongly fortified walls about it.
Lonely, but smiling, as though with a radiant satisfaction at its own
shining peace, is the country in whose bosom the church lies. A few
sheep, small, with shaggy coats of brown and white, were grazing near
it; a dog lay stretched out in the sun; and some lean, long-tailed
horses were standing with bowed heads, as if drowsing. An ancient and
very deep well was close by. In the marble well-head the friction of
many drawn cords has cut grooves, some of them nearly an inch in depth.
The court of the convent is roughly paved and is inclosed within rough
walls. In it are a few trees, an acacia or two, a wild pepper-tree,
and one gigantic cypress. From a branch near the entrance a big bell
hung by a chain. But the only sound of bells came to me from without
the walls, where some hidden goats were moving to pasture. Fragments
of broken columns and two or three sarcophagi lay on the hot ground
at my feet. To my right, close to the church, a flight of very old
marble steps led to a rustic loggia with wooden supports, full of red
geraniums and the flowers of a plant like a very small convolvulus.
From the loggia, which fronted her abiding-place, a cheerful, kindly
faced woman came down and let me into the church, where she left me
with two companions, a black kitten playing with a bee under the gilded
cupola.

The church, like almost all the Byzantine churches I saw in Greece,
is very small, but it is tremendously solid and has a tall belfry.
The exterior, stained by weather, is now a sort of earthy yellow;
the cupola is covered with red tiles. The interior walls look very
ancient, and are blackened in many places by the fingers of Time. Made
more than eight hundred years ago, the remains of the Byzantine mosaics
are very curious and interesting. In the cupola, on a gold ground, is
a very large head of a Christ (“Christos Pantokrator”), which looks
as though it were just finished. The face is sinister and repellent,
but expressive. There are several other mosaics, of the apostles,
of episodes in the life of the Virgin, and of angels. None of them
seemed to me beautiful, though perhaps not one looks so wicked as the
Christos, which dominates the whole church. Until comparatively recent
times there were monks attached to this convent, but now they are gone.

I passed through a doorway and came into a sort of tiny cloister,
shaded by a huge and evidently very ancient fig-tree with enormous
leaves. Here I found the remains of an old staircase of stone. As I
returned to the dim and massive little church, glimmering with gold
where the sunlight fell upon the mosaics, the eyes of the Christos
seemed to rebuke me from the lofty cupola. The good-natured woman
locked the door behind me with a large key, handed to me a bunch of the
flowers I had noticed growing in the loggia, and bade me “Addio!” And
soon the sound of the goat-bells died away from my ears as I went on my
way back to Eleusis.

There is nothing mysterious about this road which leads to the site
of the Temple of the Mysteries. It winds down through the pine-woods
and rocks of the Pass of Daphni into the cheerful and well-cultivated
Thriasian plain, whence across a brilliant-blue stretch of water, which
looks like a lake, but which is the bay of Eleusis, you can see houses
and, alas! several tall chimneys pouring forth smoke. The group of
houses is Eleusis, now an Albanian settlement, and the chimneys belong
to a factory where olive-oil soap is made. The road passes between the
sea and a little salt lake, which latter seems to be prevented from
submerging it only by a raised coping of stone. The color of this lake
is a brilliant purple. In the distance is the mountainous and rocky
island of Salamis.

When I reached the village, I found it a cheery little place of
small white, yellow, and rose- houses, among which a few
cypress-trees grow. Although one of the most ancient places in Greece,
it now looks very modern. And it is difficult to believe, as one
glances at the chimneys of the soap factory, and at two or three black
and dingy steamers lying just off the works to take in cargo, that
here Demeter was worshiped with mysterious rites at the great festival
of the Eleusinia. Yet, according to the legend, it was here that she
came, disguised as an old hag, in search of her lost Persephone; here
that she taught Triptolemus how to sow the plain, and to reap the first
harvest of yellow wheat, as a reward for the hospitable welcome given
to her by his father Celeus.

The ruins at Eleusis are disappointing to the ordinary traveler,
though interesting to the archæologist. They have none of the pathetic
romance which, notwithstanding the scoldings of many vulgar persons
set forth in a certain visitors’ book, broods gently over poetic
Olympia. Above the village is a vast confusion of broken columns,
defaced capitals, bits of wall, bits of pavement, marble steps, fallen
medallions, vaults, propylæa, substructures, scraps of architraves
carved with inscriptions, and subterranean store-rooms. In the pavement
of the processional way, by which the chariots came up to the Temple
of Demeter, the chief glory and shrine of Eleusis, are the deep ruts
made by the chariot-wheels. The remnants of the hall of the initiated
bears witness to the long desire of poor human beings in all ages to
find that peace which passeth our understanding. Of beauty there is
little or none. Nevertheless, even now, it is not possible in the midst
of this tragic _débâcle_ to remain wholly unmoved. Indeed, the very
completeness of the disaster that time and humanity have wrought here
creates emotion when one remembers that here great men came, such men
as Cicero, Sophocles, and Plato; that here they worshiped and adored
under cover of the darkness of night; that here, seeking, they found,
as has been recorded, peace and hope to sustain them when, the august
festival over, they took their way back into the ordinary world along
the shores of sea and lake. Eleusis is no longer beautiful. It is a
home of devastation. It is no longer mysterious. A successful man is
making a fortune out of soap there. But it is a place one cannot
easily forget. And just above the ruins there is a small museum which
contains several very interesting things, and one thing that is superb.

This last is the enormous and noble upper part of the statue of a
woman wearing ear-rings. I do not know its history, though some one
assured me that it was a caryatid. It was dug up among the ruins, and
the color of it is akin to that of the earth. The roughly undulating
hair is parted in the middle of a majestic, goddess-like head. The
features are pure and grand; but the two things that most struck me,
as I looked at this great work of art, were the expression of the face
and the deep bosom, as of the earth-mother and all her fruitfulness.
In few Greek statues have I seen such majesty and power, combined with
such intensity, as this nameless woman shows forth. There is indeed
almost a suggestion of underlying fierceness in the face, but it is the
fierceness that may sometimes leap up in an imperial nature. Are there
not royal angers which flame out of the pure furnaces of love? This
noble woman seems to me to be the present glory of Eleusis.

The mountainous island of Salamis, long and calm, with gray and orange
rocks, lies like a sentinel keeping guard over the harbor of the
Piræus. It is so near to the mainland that the sea between the two
shores looks like a lake, lonely and brilliant, with the two-horned
peak called “the throne of Xerxes” standing out characteristically
behind the low-lying bit of coast where the Greeks have set up an
arsenal. Whether Xerxes did really watch the famous battle from a
throne placed on the hill with which his name is associated is very
doubtful. But many travelers like to believe it, and the kind guides of
Athens are quite ready to stiffen their credulity.

The shores of this beautiful inclosed bit of sea are wild. The water is
wonderfully clear, and is shot with all sorts of exquisite colors. The
strip of mainland, against which the liquid maze of greens and blues
and purples seems to lie motionless, like a painted marvel, is a tangle
of wild myrtle and dwarf shrubs growing in a sandy soil interspersed
with rocks. Gently the land curves, forming a series of little shallow
bays and inlets, each one of which seems more delicious than the
last as you coast along in a fisherman’s boat. But, unfortunately,
the war-ships of Greece often lie snug in harbor in the shadow of
Salamis not far from the arsenal, and, as I have hinted already, their
commander-in-chief has little sympathy with the inquiring traveler. I
shall not easily forget the expression that came into his face when,
in reply to his question, “What did you come here for?” I said, “To
visit the scene of the celebrated battle.” A weary incredulity made
him suddenly look very old; and I believe it was then that, taking a
pen, he wrote on the margin of his report about me that I was “a very
suspicious person.”

It is safer, especially in war-time, to keep away from Salamis; but if
you care for smiling wild places where the sea is, where its breath
gives a vivid sense of life to the wilderness, you may easily forget
her myrtle-covered shores and the bays of violet and turquoise.

Of the many wonderful haunts of the sea which I visited in Greece, Cape
Sunium is perhaps the most memorable, though I never shall forget the
glories of the magnificent drive along the mountains between Athens and
Corinth. But Sunium has its ruined temple, standing on a great height.
And in some of us a poet has wakened a wondering consciousness of its
romance, perhaps when we sat in a Northern land beside the winter fire.
And in some of us, too, an immortal painter has roused a longing to see
it, when we never thought to be carried by our happy fate to Greece.

In going to Sunium I passed through the famous mining district of
Laurium, where now many convicts work out their sentences. In ancient
times slaves toiled there for the benefit of those citizens who had
hereditary leases granted by the state. They worked the mines for
silver, but now lead is the principal product. It happened that just as
we were in the middle of the dingy town, or village, where the miners
and their families dwell, for only some of them are convicts, a tire
of the motor burst. This of course delayed us, and I was able to see
something of the inhabitants. In Athens I had heard that they were a
fierce and ill-mannered population. I found them, on the contrary, as
I found almost all those whom I met in Greece, cheerful, smiling, and
polite. Happy, if rather dirty, children gathered round us, delighted
to have something to look at and wonder about. Men, going to or coming
from the works, paused to see what was the matter and to inquire where
I came from. From the windows of the low, solid-looking houses women
leaned eagerly out with delighted faces. Several of the latter talked
to me. I could not understand what they said, and all they could
understand was that I came from London, a circumstance which seemed
greatly to impress them, for they called it out from one to another
up the street. We carried on intercourse mainly by facial expression
and elaborate gesture, assisted genially by the grubby little boys.
And when I got into the car to go we were all the best of friends.
The machine made the usual irritable noises, but from the good people
of Laurium came only cries of good-will, among them that pleasant
admonition which one hears often in Greece: “Enjoy yourself! Enjoy
yourself!”

When Laurium was left behind, we were soon in wild and deserted
country. Now and then we passed an Albanian on horseback, with a
gun over his shoulder, a knife stuck in his belt, or we came upon a
shepherd watching his goats as they browsed on the low scrub which
covered the hills. All the people in this region are Albanians, I was
told. They appeared to be very few. As we drew near to the ancient
shrine of Poseidon we left far behind us the habitations of men. At
length the car stopped in the wilderness, and on a height to my left I
saw the dazzling white marble columns of the Temple of Sunium.

Almost all the ruins I saw in Greece were weather-stained. Their
original color was mottled with browns and grays, with saffron, with
gold and red gold. But the columns of Sunium have kept their brilliant
whiteness, although they stand on a great, bare cliff above the sea,
exposed to the glare of the sun and to the buffeting of every wind of
heaven. They are raised not merely on this natural height, but also on
a great platform of the famous Poros-stone. In the time of Byron there
were sixteen columns standing. There are now eleven, with a good deal
of architrave. These columns are Doric, and are about twenty feet in
height. They have not the majesty of the Parthenon columns, but, on the
contrary, have a peculiar delicacy and even grace, which is lacking
both in the Parthenon and in the Theseum. They do not move you to awe
or overwhelm you; they charm and delight you. In their ivory-white
simplicity, standing out against the brilliant blue of sea and sky on
the white and gray platform, there is something that allures.

Upon one of the columns I found the name of Byron carved in bold
letters. But I looked in vain for the name of Turner. Byron loved the
Cape of Sunium. Fortunately, nothing has been done to make it less
wonderful since his time. It is true that fewer columns are standing
to bear witness to the old worship of the sea-god; but such places
as Sunium are not injured when some blocks of marble fall, but when
men begin to build. Still the noble promontory thrusts itself boldly
forward into the sea from the heart of an undesecrated wilderness.
Still the columns stand quite alone. All the sea-winds can come to
you there, and all the winds of the hills--winds from the Ægean and
Mediterranean, from crested Eubœa, from Melos, from Hydra, from
Ægina, with its beautiful Doric temple, from Argolis and from the
mountains of Arcadia. And it seems as though all the sunshine of heaven
were there to bathe you in golden fire, as though there could be none
left over for the rest of the world. The coasts of Greece stretch away
beneath you into far distances, curving in bays, thrusting out in
promontories, here tawny and volcanic, there gray and quietly sober in
color, but never cold or dreary. White sails, but only two or three,
are dreaming on the vast purple of Poseidon’s kingdom--white sails of
mariners who are bound for the isles of Greece. Poets have sung of
those isles. Who has not thought of them with emotion? Now, between the
white marble columns, you can see their mountain ranges, you can see
their rocky shores.

Behind and below me I heard a slight movement. I got up and looked. And
there on a slab of white marble lay a snow-white goat warming itself
in the sun. White, gold, and blue, and far off the notes of white were
echoed not only by the mariner’s sails, but by tiny Albanian villages
inland, seen over miles of bare country, over flushes of yellow, where
the pines would not be denied.

There is an ineffable charm in the landscape, in the atmosphere, of
Greece. No other land that I know possesses an exactly similar spell.
Wildness and calm seem woven together, a warm and almost caressing
wildness with a calm that is full of romance. There the wilderness
is indeed a haven to long after, and there the solitudes call you as
though with the voices of friends.

As I turned at last to go away from Poseidon’s white marble ruin, a
one-armed man came up to me, and in English told me that he was the
guardian of the temple.

“But where do you live?” I asked him, looking over the vast solitude.

Smiling, he led the way down to a low whitewashed bungalow at a
little distance. There, in a rough but delicious loggia, paved and
fronting the sea, I found two brown women sitting with a baby among
some small pots of flowers. Remote from the world, with only the
marble columns for neighbors, with no voice but the sea’s to speak
to them, dwell these four persons. The man lived and worked for many
years in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he lost his arm in some
whirring machinery. Now he has come home and entered the sea-god’s
service. Pittsburgh and the Hellenic wilderness--what a contrast! But
my one-armed friend takes it philosophically. He shrugs his shoulder,
points to his stump, and says, “I guess I couldn’t go on there like
this, so I had to quit, and they put me here.”

They put him “here,” on Cape Sunium, and on Cape Sunium he has built
himself a house and made for himself a loggia, white, cool, brightened
with flowers, face to face with the purple sea, and the isles and
the mountains of Greece. And at Sunium he intends to remain because,
unfortunately, having lost an arm, he is no longer wanted in Pittsburgh.

I gave him some money, accepted the baby’s wavering but insistent hand,
and left him to his good or ill fortune in the exquisite wilderness.


(To be continued)




[Illustration]


THE TACHYPOMP[8]

A MATHEMATICAL DEMONSTRATION

(NOTEWORTHY STORIES OF THE LAST GENERATION)

BY EDWARD P. MITCHELL

WITH A PORTRAIT, AND NEW DRAWINGS BY REGINALD BIRCH


There was nothing mysterious about Professor Surd’s dislike for me. I
was the only poor mathematician in an exceptionally mathematical class.
The old gentleman sought the lecture-room every morning with eagerness,
and left reluctantly. For was it not a thing of joy to find seventy
young men who, individually and collectively, preferred _x_ to XX; who
had rather differentiate than dissipate; and for whom the limbs of the
heavenly bodies had more attractions than those of earthly stars upon
the spectacular stage?

So affairs went on swimmingly between the professor of mathematics
and the junior class at Polyp University. In every man of the seventy
the sage saw the logarithm of a possible La Place, of a Sturm, or of
a Newton. It was a delightful task for him to lead them through the
pleasant valleys of conic sections, and beside the still waters of the
integral calculus. Figuratively speaking, his problem was not a hard
one. He had only to manipulate and eliminate and to raise to a higher
power, and the triumphant result of examination day was assured.

But I was a disturbing element, a perplexing unknown quantity, which
had somehow crept into the work, and which seriously threatened to
impair the accuracy of his calculations. It was a touching sight to
behold the venerable mathematician as he pleaded with me not so utterly
to disregard precedent in the use of cotangents; or as he urged, with
eyes almost tearful, that ordinates were dangerous things to trifle
with. All in vain. More theorems went on to my cuff than into my head.
Never did chalk do so much work to so little purpose. And, therefore,
it came that Furnace Second was reduced to zero in Professor Surd’s
estimation. He looked upon me with all the horror which an unalgebraic
nature could inspire. I have seen the professor walk around an entire
square rather than meet the man who had no mathematics in his soul.

For Furnace Second were no invitations to Professor Surd’s house.
Seventy of the class supped in delegations around the periphery of the
professor’s tea-table. The seventy-first knew nothing of the charms of
that perfect ellipse, with its twin bunches of fuchsias and geraniums
in gorgeous precision at the two foci.

This, unfortunately enough, was no trifling deprivation. Not that I
longed especially for segments of Mrs. Surd’s justly celebrated lemon
pies; not that the spheroidal damsons of her excellent preserving had
any marked allurements; not even that I yearned to hear the professor’s
jocose table-talk about binomials, and chatty illustrations of abstruse
paradoxes. The explanation is far different. Professor Surd had a
daughter. Twenty years before, he made a proposition of marriage to the
present Mrs. S. He added a little corollary to his proposition not long
after. The corollary was a girl.

Abscissa Surd was as perfectly symmetrical as Giotto’s circle, and as
pure withal as the mathematics her father taught. It was just when
spring was coming to extract the roots of frozen-up vegetation that I
fell in love with the corollary. That she herself was not indifferent I
soon had reason to regard as a self-evident truth.

The sagacious reader will already recognize nearly all the elements
necessary to a well-ordered plot. We have introduced a heroine,
inferred a hero, and constructed a hostile parent after the most
approved model. A movement for the story, a _deus ex machina_, is alone
lacking. With considerable satisfaction I can promise a perfect novelty
in this line, a _deus ex machina_ never before offered to the public.

It would be discounting ordinary intelligence to say that I sought
with unwearying assiduity to figure my way into the stern father’s
good-will; that never did dullard apply himself to mathematics more
patiently than I; that never did faithfulness achieve such meager
reward. Then I engaged a private tutor. His instructions met with no
better success.

My tutor’s name was Jean-Marie Rivarol. He was a unique Alsatian,
though Gallic in name, thoroughly Teuton in nature; by birth a
Frenchman, by education a German. His age was thirty; his profession,
omniscience; the wolf at his door, poverty; the skeleton in his closet,
a consuming but unrequited passion. The most recondite principles of
practical science were his toys; the deepest intricacies of abstract
science, his diversions. Problems which were foreordained mysteries
to me were to him as clear as Tahoe water. Perhaps this very fact
will explain our lack of success in the relation of tutor and pupil;
perhaps the failure is alone due to my own unmitigated stupidity.
Rivarol had hung about the skirts of the university for several years,
supplying his few wants by writing for scientific journals or by
giving assistance to students who, like myself, were characterized by
a plethora of purse and a paucity of ideas; cooking, studying, and
sleeping in his attic lodgings; and prosecuting queer experiments all
by himself.

We were not long discovering that even this eccentric genius could not
transplant brains into my deficient skull. I gave over the struggle in
despair. An unhappy year dragged its slow length around. A gloomy year
it was, brightened only by occasional interviews with Abscissa, the
Abbie of my thoughts and dreams.

Commencement day was coming on apace. I was soon to go forth, with
the rest of my class, to astonish and delight a waiting world.
The professor seemed to avoid me more than ever. Nothing but the
conventionalities, I think, kept him from shaping his treatment of me
on the basis of unconcealed disgust.

At last, in the very recklessness of despair, I resolved to see him,
plead with him, threaten him if need be, and risk all my fortunes on
one desperate chance. I wrote him a somewhat defiant letter, stating my
aspirations, and, as I flattered myself, shrewdly giving him a week to
get over the first shock of horrified surprise. Then I was to call and
learn my fate.

During the week of suspense I nearly worried myself into a fever. It
was first crazy hope, and then saner despair. On Friday evening, when I
presented myself at the professor’s door, I was such a haggard, sleepy,
dragged-out specter that even Miss Jocasta, the harsh-favored maiden
sister of the Surds, admitted me with commiserate regard, and suggested
pennyroyal tea.

Professor Surd was at a faculty meeting. Would I wait?

Yes, till all was blue, if need be. Miss Abbie?

Abscissa had gone to Wheelborough to visit a school-friend. The aged
maiden hoped I would make myself comfortable, and departed to the
unknown haunts which knew Jocasta’s daily walk.

Comfortable! But I settled myself in a great uneasy chair, and waited
with the contradictory spirit common to such junctures, dreading every
step lest it should herald the man whom, of all men, I wished to see.

I had been there at least an hour and was growing right drowsy.

At length Professor Surd came in. He sat down in the dusk opposite me,
and I thought his eyes glinted with malignant pleasure as he said,
abruptly:

“So, young man, you think you are a fit husband for my girl?”

I stammered some inanity about making up in affection what I lacked
in merit, about my expectations, family, and the like. He quickly
interrupted me.

“You misapprehend me, sir. Your nature is destitute of those
mathematical perceptions and acquirements which are the only sure
foundations of character. You have no mathematics in you. You are fit
for treason, stratagems, and spoils--Shakspere. Your narrow intellect
cannot understand and appreciate a generous mind. There is all the
difference between you and a Surd, if I may say it, which intervenes
between an infinitesimal and an infinite. Why, I will even venture to
say that you do not comprehend the Problem of the Couriers!”

I admitted that the Problem of the Couriers should be classed rather
without my list of accomplishments than within it. I regretted this
fault very deeply, and suggested amendment. I faintly hoped that my
fortune would be such--

“Money!” he impatiently exclaimed. “Do you seek to bribe a Roman
senator with a penny whistle? Why, boy, do you parade your paltry
wealth, which, expressed in mills, will not cover ten decimal places,
before the eyes of a man who measures the planets in their orbits, and
close crowds infinity itself?”

I hastily disclaimed any intention of obtruding my foolish dollars, and
he went on:

“Your letter surprised me not a little. I thought _you_ would be the
last person in the world to presume to an alliance here. But having
a regard for you personally,”--and again I saw malice twinkle in his
small eyes,--“and still more regard for Abscissa’s happiness, I have
decided that you shall have her--upon conditions. Upon conditions,” he
repeated, with a half-smothered sneer.

“What are they?” cried I, eagerly enough. “Only name them.”

“Well, sir,” he continued, and the deliberation of his speech seemed
the very refinement of cruelty, “you have only to prove yourself worthy
an alliance with a mathematical family. You have only to accomplish a
task which I shall presently give you. Your eyes ask me what it is. I
will tell you. Distinguish yourself in that noble branch of abstract
science in which, you cannot but acknowledge, you are at present sadly
deficient. I will place Abscissa’s hand in yours whenever you shall
come before me and square the circle to my satisfaction. No, that is
too easy a condition. I should cheat myself. Say perpetual motion.
How do you like that? Do you think it lies within the range of your
mental capabilities? You don’t smile. Perhaps your talents don’t run
in the way of perpetual motion. Several people have found that theirs
didn’t. I’ll give you another chance. We were speaking of the Problem
of the Couriers, and I think you expressed a desire to know more of
that ingenious question. You shall have the opportunity. Sit down
some day when you have nothing else to do and discover the principle
of infinite speed. I mean the law of motion which shall accomplish an
infinitely great distance in an infinitely short time. You may mix in a
little practical mechanics, if you choose. Invent some method of taking
the tardy courier over his road at the rate of sixty miles a minute.
Demonstrate me this discovery (when you have made it!) mathematically,
and approximate it practically, and Abscissa is yours. Until you can, I
will thank you to trouble neither myself nor her.”

I could stand his mocking no longer. I stumbled mechanically out of
the room and out of the house. I even forgot my hat and gloves. For
an hour I walked in the moonlight. Gradually I succeeded to a more
hopeful frame of mind. This was due to my ignorance of mathematics. Had
I understood the real meaning of what he asked, I should have been
utterly despondent.

Perhaps this problem of sixty miles a minute was not so impossible,
after all. At any rate, I could attempt, though I might not succeed.
And Rivarol came to my mind. I would ask him. I would enlist his
knowledge to accompany my own devoted perseverance. I sought his
lodgings at once.

The man of science lived in the fourth story back. I had never been
in his room before. When I entered, he was in the act of filling a
beer-mug from a carboy labeled _aqua fortis_.

“Seat you,” he said. “No, not in that chair. That is my
Petty-Cash-Adjuster.”

But he was a second too late. I had carelessly thrown myself into
a chair of seductive appearance. To my utter amazement, it reached
out two skeleton arms, and clutched me with a grasp against which I
struggled in vain. Then a skull stretched itself over my shoulder and
grinned with ghastly familiarity close to my face.

Rivarol came to my aid with many apologies. He touched a spring
somewhere, and the Petty-Cash-Adjuster relaxed its horrid hold. I
placed myself gingerly in a plain cane-bottomed rocking-chair, which
Rivarol assured me was a safe location.

“That seat,” he said, “is an arrangement upon which I much felicitate
myself. I made it at Heidelberg. It has saved me a vast deal of
small annoyance. I consign to its embraces the friends who bore, and
the visitors who exasperate, me. But it is never so useful as when
terrifying some tradesman with an insignificant account. Hence the
pet name which I have facetiously given it. They are invariably too
glad to purchase release at the price of a bill receipted. Do you well
apprehend the idea?”

While the Alsatian diluted his glass of _aqua fortis_, shook into it an
infusion of bitters, and tossed off the bumper with apparent relish, I
had time to look around the strange apartment.

The four corners of the room were occupied respectively by a
turning-lathe, a Rhumkorff coil, a small steam-engine, and an orrery
in stately motion. Tables, shelves, chairs, and floor supported an odd
aggregation of tools, retorts, chemicals, gas-receivers, philosophical
instruments, boots, flasks, paper-collar boxes, books diminutive, and
books of preposterous size. There were plaster busts of Aristotle,
Archimedes, and Compte, while a great drowsy owl was blinking away,
perched on the benign brow of Martin Farquhar Tupper. “He always roosts
there when he proposes to slumber,” explained my tutor. “You are a bird
of no ordinary mind. _Schlafen Sie wohl._”

Through a closet door, half open, I could see a human-like form covered
with a sheet. Rivarol caught my glance.

“That,” said he, “will be my masterpiece. It is a microcosm, an
android, as yet only partly complete. And why not? Albertus Magnus
constructed an image perfect to talk metaphysics and confute the
schools. So did Sylvester II; so did Robertus Greathead. Roger Bacon
made a brazen head that held discourses. But the first named of these
came to destruction. Thomas Aquinas got wrathful at some of its
syllogisms and smashed its head. The idea is reasonable enough. Mental
action will yet be reduced to laws as definite as those which govern
the physical. Why should not I accomplish a manikin which will preach
as original discourses as the Rev. Dr. Allchin, or talk poetry as
mechanically as Paul Anapest? My android can already work problems in
vulgar fractions and compose sonnets. I hope to teach it the Positive
philosophy.”

Out of the bewildering confusion of his effects Rivarol produced two
pipes, and filled them. He handed one to me.

“And here,” he said, “I live and am tolerably comfortable. When my coat
wears out at the elbows, I seek the tailor and am measured for another.
When I am hungry, I promenade myself to the butcher’s and bring home
a pound or so of steak, which I cook very nicely in three seconds by
this oxy-hydrogen flame. Thirsty, perhaps, I send for a carboy of _aqua
fortis_. But I have it charged, all charged. My spirit is above any
small pecuniary transaction. I loathe your dirty greenbacks and never
handle what they call scrip.”

“But are you never pestered with bills?” I asked. “Don’t the creditors
worry your life out?”

“Creditors!” gasped Rivarol. “I have learned no such word in your
very admirable language. He who will allow his soul to be vexed by
creditors is a relic of an imperfect civilization. Of what use is
science if it cannot avail a man who has accounts current? Listen. The
moment you or any one else enters the outside door this little electric
bell sounds me warning. Every successive step on Mrs. Grimler’s
staircase is a spy and informer vigilant for my benefit. The first
step is trod upon. That trusty first step immediately telegraphs your
weight. Nothing could be simpler. It is exactly like any platform
scale. The weight is registered up here upon this dial. The second step
records the size of my visitor’s feet. The third his height, the fourth
his complexion, and so on. By the time he reaches the top of the first
flight I have a pretty accurate description of him right here at my
elbow, and quite a margin of time for deliberation and action. Do you
follow me? It is plain enough. Only the A B C of my science.”

[Illustration: EDWARD P. MITCHELL

From a photograph taken in 1872, the year in which he wrote “The
Tachypomp.” Mr. Mitchell is now the editor of the New York “Sun.”]

“I see all that,” I said, “but I don’t see how it helps you any. The
knowledge that a creditor is coming won’t pay his bill. You can’t
escape unless you jump out of the window.”

Rivarol laughed softly. “I will tell you. You shall see what becomes
of any poor devil who goes to demand money of me--of a man of science.
Ha! ha! It pleases me. I was seven weeks perfecting my Dun-Suppressor.
Did you know,” he whispered exultingly--“did you know that there is
a hole through the earth’s center? Physicists have long suspected
it; I was the first to find it. You have read how Rhuyghens, the
Dutch navigator, discovered in Kerguellen’s Land an abysmal pit which
fourteen hundred fathoms of plumb-line failed to sound. Herr Tom,
that hole has no bottom! It runs from one surface of the earth to
the antipodal surface. It is diametric. But where is the antipodal
spot? You stand upon it. I learned this by the merest chance. I
was deep-digging in Mrs. Grimler’s cellar to bury a poor cat I had
sacrificed in a galvanic experiment, when the earth under my spade
crumbled, caved in, and, wonder-stricken, I stood upon the brink of
a yawning shaft. I dropped a coal-hod in. It went down, down, down,
bounding and rebounding. In two hours and a quarter that coal-hod came
up again. I caught it, and restored it to the angry Grimler. Just think
a minute. The coal-hod went down faster and faster, till it reached
the center of the earth. There it would stop were it not for acquired
momentum. Beyond the center its journey was relatively upward, toward
the opposite surface of the globe. So, losing the velocity, it went
slower and slower till it reached that surface. Here it came to rest
for a second, and then fell back again, eight thousand odd miles,
into my hands. Had I not interfered with it, it would have repeated
its journey time after time, each trip of shorter extent, like the
diminishing oscillations of a pendulum, till it finally came to eternal
rest at the center of the sphere. I am not slow to give a practical
application to any such grand discovery. My Dun-Suppressor was born of
it. A trap just outside my chamber door, a spring in here, a creditor
on the trap--need I say more?”

“But isn’t it a trifle inhuman,” I mildly suggested, “plunging an
unhappy being into a perpetual journey to and from Kerguellen’s Land
without a moment’s warning?”

“I give them a chance. When they come up the first time I wait at the
mouth of the shaft with a rope in hand. If they are reasonable and will
come to terms, I fling them the line. If they perish, ’tis their own
fault. Only,” he added, with a melancholy smile, “the center is getting
so plugged up with creditors that I am afraid there soon will be no
choice whatever for ’em.”

By this time I had conceived a high opinion of my tutor’s ability. If
anybody could send me waltzing through space at an infinite speed,
Rivarol could do it. I filled my pipe and told him the story. He heard
with grave and patient attention. Then for full half an hour he whiffed
away in silence. Finally he spoke.

“The ancient cipher has overreached himself. He has given you a choice
of two problems, both of which he deems insoluble. Neither of them is
insoluble. The only gleam of intelligence old Cotangent showed was when
he said that squaring the circle was too easy. He was right. It would
have given you your _Liebchen_ in five minutes. I squared the circle
before I discarded pantalets. I will show you the work; but it would
be a digression, and you are in no mood for digressions. Our first
chance, therefore, lies in perpetual motion. Now, my good friend, I
will frankly tell you that, although I have compassed this interesting
problem, I do not choose to use it in your behalf. I, too, Herr Tom,
have a heart. The loveliest of her sex frowns upon me. Her somewhat
mature charms are not for Jean-Marie Rivarol. She has cruelly said that
her years demand of me filial rather than connubial regard. Is love a
matter of years or of eternity? This question did I put to the cold,
yet lovely, Jocasta.”

“Jocasta Surd!” I remarked in surprise, “Abscissa’s aunt!”

“The same,” he said sadly. “I will not attempt to conceal that upon the
maiden Jocasta my maiden heart has been bestowed. Give me your hand, my
nephew, in affliction as in affection!”

Rivarol dashed away a not discreditable tear, and resumed:

“My only hope lies in this discovery of perpetual motion. It will give
me the fame, the wealth. Can Jocasta refuse these? If she can, there is
only the trap-door and--Kerguellen’s Land!”

I bashfully asked to see the perpetual-motion machine. My uncle in
affliction shook his head.

“At another time,” he said. “Suffice it at present to say that it is
something upon the principle of a woman’s tongue. But you see now why
we must turn in your case to the alternative condition, infinite speed.
There are several ways in which this may be accomplished theoretically.
By the lever, for instance. Imagine a lever with a very long and a
very short arm. Apply power to the shorter arm which will move it with
great velocity. The end of the long arm will move much faster. Now
keep shortening the short arm and lengthening the long one, and as you
approach infinity in their difference of length, you approach infinity
in the speed of the long arm. It would be difficult to demonstrate this
practically to the professor. We must seek another solution. Jean-Marie
will meditate. Come to me in a fortnight. Good night. But stop! Have
you the money--_das Gelt_?”

“Much more than I need.”

“Good! Let us strike hands. Gold and knowledge, science and love, what
may not such a partnership achieve? We go to conquer thee, Abscissa.
_Vorwärts!_”

When at the end of a fortnight I sought Rivarol’s chamber, I
passed with some little trepidation over the terminus of the air
line to Kerguellen’s Land, and evaded the extended arms of the
Petty-Cash-Adjuster. Rivarol drew a mug of ale for me, and filled
himself a retort of his own peculiar beverage.

“Come,” he said at length, “let us drink success to the Tachypomp.”

“The Tachypomp?”

“Yes. Why not? _Tachu_, quickly, and _pempo_, _pepompa_, to send. May
it send you quickly to your wedding-day! Abscissa is yours. It is done.
When shall we start for the prairies?”

“Where is it?” I asked, looking in vain around the room for any
contrivance which might seem calculated to advance matrimonial
prospects.

“It is here,” and he gave his forehead a significant tap. Then he held
forth didactically.

“There is force enough in existence to yield us a speed of sixty miles
a minute or even more. All we need is the knowledge how to combine
and apply it. The wise man will not attempt to make some great force
yield some great speed. He will keep adding the little force to the
little force, making each little force yield its little speed, until
an aggregate of little forces shall be a great force, yielding an
aggregate of little speeds, a great speed. The difficulty is not in
aggregating the forces; it lies in the corresponding aggregation of
the speeds. One musket-ball will go, say, a mile. It is not hard
to increase the force of muskets to a thousand, yet the thousand
musket-balls will go no farther and no faster than the one. You see,
then, where our trouble lies. We cannot readily add speed to speed,
as we add force to force. My discovery is simply the utilization of a
principle which extorts an increment of speed from each increment of
power. But this is the metaphysics of physics. Let us be practical or
nothing.

“When you have walked forward on a moving train from the rear car
toward the engine, did you ever think what you were really doing?”

“Why, yes, I have generally been going to the smoking-car to have a
cigar.”

[Illustration: Drawn by Reginald Birch

“THAT SHE HERSELF WAS NOT INDIFFERENT I SOON HAD REASON TO REGARD AS A
SELF-EVIDENT TRUTH”]

“Tut! tut! not that! I mean did it ever occur to you on such an
occasion that absolutely you were moving faster than the train? The
train passes the telegraph-poles at the rate of thirty miles an hour,
say. You walk toward the smoking-car at the rate of four miles an hour.
Then _you_ pass the telegraph-poles at the rate of thirty-four miles.
Your absolute speed is the speed of the engine, plus the speed of your
own locomotion. Do you follow me?”

I began to get an inkling of his meaning, and told him so.

“Very well. Let us advance a step. Your addition to the speed of the
engine is trivial, and the space in which you can exercise it, limited.
Now, suppose two stations, A and B, two miles distant by the track.
Imagine a train of platform cars, the last car resting at station A.
The train is a mile long, say. The engine is therefore within a mile
of station B. Say the train can move a mile in ten minutes. The last
car, having two miles to go, would reach B in twenty minutes, but the
engine, a mile ahead, would get there in ten. You jump on the last car
at A in a prodigious hurry to reach Abscissa, who is at B. If you stay
on the last car, it will be twenty long minutes before you see her. But
the engine reaches B and the fair lady in ten. You will be a stupid
reasoner and an indifferent lover if you don’t put for the engine over
those platform cars as fast as your legs will carry you. You can run
a mile, the length of the train, in ten minutes. Therefore you reach
Abscissa when the engine does, or in ten minutes--ten minutes sooner
than if you had lazily sat down upon the rear car and talked politics
with the brakeman. You have diminished the time by one half. You have
added your speed to that of the locomotive to some purpose. _Nicht
wahr?_”

I saw it perfectly; much plainer, perhaps, for his putting in the
clause about Abscissa.

He continued:

“This illustration, though a slow one, leads up to a principle which
may be carried to any extent. Our first anxiety will be to spare
your legs and wind. Let us suppose that the two miles of track are
perfectly straight, and make our train one platform car, a mile long,
with parallel rails laid upon its top. Put a little dummy engine on
these rails, and let it run to and fro along the platform car, while
the platform car is pulled along the ground track. Catch the idea? The
dummy takes your place. But it can run its mile much faster. Fancy that
our locomotive is strong enough to pull the platform car over the two
miles in two minutes. The dummy can attain the same speed. When the
engine reaches B in one minute, the dummy, having gone a mile atop the
platform car, reaches B also. We have so combined the speeds of those
two engines as to accomplish two miles in one minute. Is this all we
can do? Prepare to exercise your imagination.”

I lit my pipe.

“Still two miles of straight track between A and B. On the track a long
platform car, reaching from A to within a quarter of a mile of B. We
will now discard ordinary locomotives and adopt as our motive power a
series of compact magnetic engines, distributed underneath the platform
car all along its length.”

“I don’t understand those magnetic engines.”

“Well, each of them consists of a great iron horseshoe, rendered
alternately a magnet and not a magnet by an intermittent current of
electricity from a battery, this current in its turn regulated by
clockwork. When the horseshoe is in the circuit, it is a magnet, and it
pulls its clapper toward it with enormous power. When it is out of the
circuit, the next second, it is not a magnet, and it lets the clapper
go. The clapper, oscillating to and fro, imparts a rotatory motion to a
fly-wheel, which transmits it to the drivers on the rails. Such are our
motors. They are no novelty, for trial has proved them practicable.

“With a magnetic engine for every truck of wheels, we can reasonably
expect to move our immense car, and to drive it along at a speed, say,
of a mile a minute.

“The forward end, having but a quarter of a mile to go, will reach B
in fifteen seconds. We will call this platform car number I. On top
of number I are laid rails on which another platform car, number II,
a quarter of a mile shorter than number I, is moved in precisely the
same way. Number II, in its turn, is surmounted by number III, moving
independently of the tiers beneath, and a quarter of a mile shorter
than number II. Number II is a mile and a half long; number III a mile
and a quarter. Above, on successive levels, are number IV, a mile long;
number V, three quarters of a mile; number VI, half a mile; number VII,
a quarter of a mile, and number VIII, a short passenger-car on top of
all.

“Each car moves upon the car beneath it, independently of all the
others, at the rate of a mile a minute. Each car has its own magnetic
engines. Well, the train being drawn up with the latter end of each car
resting against a lofty bumping-post at A, Tom Furnace, the gentlemanly
conductor, and Jean-Marie Rivarol, engineer, mount by a long ladder to
the exalted number VIII. The complicated mechanism is set in motion.
What happens?

[Illustration: Drawn by Reginald Birch

“‘THIS IS THE TACHYPOMP. DOES IT JUSTIFY THE NAME?’”]

“Number VIII runs a quarter of a mile in fifteen seconds, and reaches
the end of number VII. Meanwhile number VII has run a quarter of a
mile in the same time, and reached the end of number VI; number VI, a
quarter of a mile in fifteen seconds, and reached the end of number
V; number V, the end of number IV; number IV, of number III; number
III, of number II; number II, of number I. And number I, in fifteen
seconds, has gone its quarter of a mile along the ground track, and
has reached station B. All this has been done in fifteen seconds.
Wherefore, numbers I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, and VIII come to rest
against the bumping-post at B, at precisely the same second. We, in
number VIII, reach B just when number I reaches it. In other words, we
accomplish two miles in fifteen seconds. Each of the eight cars, moving
at the rate of a mile a minute, has contributed a quarter of a mile to
our journey, and has done its work in fifteen seconds. All the eight
did their work at once, during the same fifteen seconds. Consequently
we have been whizzed through the air at the somewhat startling speed of
seven and a half seconds to the mile. This is the Tachypomp. Does it
justify the name?”

[Illustration: Drawn by Reginald Birch

“IN FRONT OF ME STOOD PROFESSOR SURD HIMSELF, LOOKING DOWN WITH A NOT
UNPLEASANT SMILE”]

Although a little bewildered by the complexity of cars, I apprehended
the general principle of the machine. I made a diagram, and understood
it much better. “You have merely improved on the idea of my moving
faster than the train when I was going to the smoking-car?” I said.

“Precisely. So far we have kept within the bounds of the practicable.
To satisfy the professor, you can theorize in something after this
fashion: if we double the number of cars, thus decreasing by one half
the distance which each has to go, we shall attain twice the speed.
Each of the sixteen cars will have but one eighth of a mile to go. At
the uniform rate we have adopted, the two miles can be done in seven
and a half instead of fifteen seconds. With thirty-two cars, and a
sixteenth of a mile, or twenty rods difference in their length, we
arrive at the speed of a mile in less than two seconds; with sixty-four
cars, each traveling but ten rods, a mile under the second. More than
sixty miles a minute! If this isn’t rapid enough for the professor,
tell him to go on increasing the number of his cars and diminishing
the distance each one has to run. If sixty-four cars yield a speed of
a mile inside the second, let him fancy a Tachypomp of six hundred and
forty cars, and amuse himself calculating the rate of car number 640.
Just whisper to him that when he has an infinite number of cars with an
infinitesimal difference in their lengths, he will have obtained that
infinite speed for which he seems to yearn. Then demand Abscissa.”

I wrung my friend’s hand in silent and grateful admiration. I could say
nothing.

“You have listened to the man of theory,” he said proudly. “You
shall now behold the practical engineer. We will go to the west of
the Mississippi and find some suitably level locality. We will erect
thereon a model Tachypomp. We will summon thereunto the professor,
his daughter, and why not his fair sister Jocasta as well? We will
take them on a journey which shall much astonish the venerable Surd.
He shall place Abscissa’s digits in yours and bless you both with an
algebraic formula. Jocasta shall contemplate with wonder the genius of
Rivarol. But we have much to do. We must ship to St. Joseph the vast
amount of material to be employed in the construction of the Tachypomp.
We must engage a small army of workmen to effect that construction, for
we are to annihilate time and space. Perhaps you had better see your
bankers.”

I rushed impetuously to the door. There should be no delay.

“Stop! stop! _Um Gottes Willen_, stop!” shrieked Rivarol. “I launched
my butcher this morning and I haven’t bolted the--”

But it was too late. I was upon the trap. It swung open with a crash,
and I was plunged down, down, down! I felt as though I were falling
through illimitable space. I remember wondering, as I rushed through
the darkness, whether I should reach Kerguellen’s Land or stop at
the center. It seemed an eternity. Then my course was suddenly and
painfully arrested.

I opened my eyes. Around me were the walls of Professor Surd’s
study. Under me was a hard, unyielding plane which I knew too well
was Professor Surd’s study floor. Behind me was the black, slippery
haircloth chair which had belched me forth much as the whale served
Jonah. In front of me stood Professor Surd himself, looking down with a
not unpleasant smile.

“Good evening, Mr. Furnace. Let me help you up. You look tired, sir.
No wonder you fell asleep when I kept you so long waiting. Shall I
get you a glass of wine? No? By the way, since receiving your letter
I find that you are a son of my old friend Judge Furnace. I have made
inquiries, and see no reason why you should not make Abscissa a good
husband.”

Still, I can see no reason why the Tachypomp should not have succeeded.
Can you?

[Illustration]

[Illustration: THE LANDSCAPE-PAINTER

FROM THE PAINTING BY CARL MARR, IN THE MODERN GALLERY, BUDAPEST

(THE CENTURY’S AMERICAN ARTISTS SERIES)]




[Illustration]


“SCHEDULE K”

THE EFFECT OF THE TARIFF ON THE WOOL-GROWER, THE MANUFACTURER, THE
WORKMAN, AND THE CONSUMER

[Illustration]

BY N. I. STONE

Formerly Chief Statistician of the Tariff Board


No part of our tariff has been more scathingly denounced in Congress
and by the press than what is known as “Schedule K.” No schedule that
has received half the attention bestowed on Schedule K has managed
to withstand the fierce onslaughts of the united tariff reformers of
both political parties so successfully as the schedule covering wool
and its manufactures. Repeatedly raised during the Civil War, when
the urgent need of additional revenue was the sole motive of frequent
tariff revision, slightly reduced in 1872 and 1883, scaled down still
more in the Democratic Wilson act of 1894, it managed in the intervals
between these acts to recover lost ground and, since 1897, to eclipse
all previous records for high-tariff climbing.

The secret of this exceptional record in our tariff history is not far
to seek. It lies in the peculiar interlacing of interests between the
sheep-grower of the West and the manufacturer of the East, which has
no parallel in other industries. Most of the farm products are either
left on the free list, like cotton, or, if protected by a duty, are
not affected by it. Thus we have duties on corn, wheat, oats, rye,
and meat, but no one familiar with the situation has ever seriously
maintained that the duty has been more than a convenient embellishment
of our tariff for the use of campaign spellbinders in farm districts.
As long as we produce more cereals, meats, and other farm products than
we consume, and send the surplus to the world’s markets, the prices of
these products, under free competition at home, will be regulated by
conditions of world supply and demand, leaving the duties a dead letter
on the statute-books. Wool is a conspicuous exception in the list of
American farm products. After half a century of exceptionally high
protection, fixed by the beneficiaries of the tariff themselves, the
American wool-grower still falls short in his output to the extent of
more than one third of the domestic demand. The deficit must be covered
by importation from foreign countries, the price of imported wool being
enhanced by the amount of the duty. Under these conditions the duty
on raw wool acts as a powerful lever in increasing the price of the
domestic wool furnishing the remaining two thirds of our consumption.
No wonder that the wool-grower has always been an enthusiastic advocate
of a duty on raw wool.

On the other hand, the New England manufacturer, himself a believer
in high duties on woolen goods, has been rather skeptical as to the
merits of a duty on a raw material of which we have never been able
to produce enough, and are producing an ever diminishing share. Hence
the New England woolen manufacturer has been as enthusiastic for free
wool as the New England shoe manufacturer is for free hides, without
losing at the same time his faith in high duties on woolen goods.
However, the manufacturers discovered at an early stage in the game
that unless they were willing to acquiesce in a duty on their raw
material, the representatives from the wool-growing States in Congress
could not see any advantage in high duties on woolens. This is what led
to the powerful combination of these two great interests to which the
late Senator Dolliver, in his memorable speech in the Senate in the
extra session of Congress in 1909, referred as “that ceremony when the
shepherd’s crook and the weaver’s distaff were joined together in the
joyous wedlock which no man has been able to put asunder.” At that
joint meeting of the representatives of wool-growers and woolen-cloth
manufacturers held at Syracuse in December, 1865, when it was supposed
that, with the disappearance of the need for extraordinary revenue, the
war duties would be reduced, “it was agreed between them,” in the words
of the late John Sherman, who had a great deal to do with the shaping
of the tariff, “after full discussion, that the rates of duty reported
by the Senate bill should be given them, and they were satisfied with
them, and have never called them in question.”

It remained for a long-suffering public finally to call those rates
in question. And when a Republican President called Congress in
extraordinary session in March, 1909, to fulfil the pledges of his
party for a downward revision, he found, to use his own words, uttered
in the now famous Winona speech, that “Mr. Payne, in the House,
and Mr. Aldrich, in the Senate, although both favored reduction in
the schedule, found that in the Republican party the interests of
the wool-growers of the far West and the interests of the woolen
manufacturers in the East and in other States, reflected through their
representatives in Congress, was sufficiently strong to defeat any
attempt to change the woolen tariff, and that, had it been attempted,
it would have beaten the bill reported from either committee.”

However, the President thought that Schedule K should receive the
attention of Congress after the newly created Tariff Board had made a
thorough investigation of the woolen industry. Taking the President
at his word, the country waited two years more with great impatience
for the result of the findings of his board. But once more was the
country baffled by the united beneficiaries of Schedule K in its
efforts looking to the lowering of the rates. When a majority in
Congress composed of Democrats and Republican insurgents laid aside
party differences in a common effort to reduce the woolen duties, the
same leaders of whose tactics President Taft had complained were able
to persuade him that the revised schedule was so much at variance
with the findings of the Tariff Board as to justify his veto. Thus
the country is facing the new situation in the extraordinary session
of the Sixty-third Congress, with Schedule K still proudly holding
the fort on the pinnacle of the American tariff wall. The present is,
therefore, just the time for an analysis of the situation in which the
claims of the conflicting interests may be reviewed in the light of now
well-established facts.


WOOLENS AND WORSTEDS

Any one who has traveled abroad or had occasion to compare foreign
prices of cloths and dress-goods with those prevailing in this country
knows that on the average they can be bought in Europe, particularly
in free-trade England, at about half the price usually asked for
similar goods at home. As the investigation of the Tariff Board has
shown, there are many cloths on which the difference in price is not so
great, particularly on the finer grades, while, on the other hand, the
American price is more than double the English on some of the medium
and cheap grades of cloth. But, on the whole, it is safe to state that
our prices on woolen and worsted cloths are about double those in
England. The difference in price represents largely the toll paid by
ninety-odd million Americans for the support of the half-century-old
infant worsted and the century-old woolen industry. We have all been
vaguely aware of that fact, and yet have submitted to it for the
ultimate good of creating a raw-wool supply and a fine woolen and
worsted industry that would make us independent of the rest of the
world and give employment to American labor at American wages. Not
until the two wings of the industry, the woolen and the worsted, fell
out among themselves, and the carded-wool manufacturers showed to an
astonished public that the tariff, as it stood, throttled an important
branch of the industry, instead of building it up, was the layman
given an opportunity of getting a deeper insight into the workings of
Schedule K.

The woolen industry in the United States is as old as the country
itself. Carried on first as a household industry among the early
colonists, it entered the factory stage with the introduction of
mechanical power, first in connection with carding-machines in 1794,
then with its application to spinning between 1810 and 1820, and later
to weaving in the following decade.

Before the Civil War, all woolens were made by what is known as the
carded-woolen process, which produces a cloth with a rough surface.
Such cloths as tweeds, cheviots, cassimeres, meltons, and kerseys are
among the best-known types of woolen cloth. Just before the Civil War
the worsted industry made its appearance in this country. The worsted
fabric differs from the woolen cloth in being made of combed yarn, as
distinguished from the carded yarn which goes into the woolen cloth.
The combing process involves, to a greater or less extent, the use of
finer and longer grades of wool, and yields a fabric with a smooth
surface, on which the weave is plainly visible. Among the best-known
types of these cloths are the serges and the unfinished clay worsteds,
which constitute the plain varieties, and the so-called fancy worsteds,
showing a distinct pattern produced by the weave and the use of 
yarn.

How different the course of these two branches of the woolen industry
has been, since the adoption of Schedule K substantially in its
present form, is shown very strikingly by the figures of the United
States Census. In 1859, the last census year preceding the adoption of
Schedule K virtually in its present form, the value of the products of
the woolen industry was nearly $62,000,000, while the worsted could
boast of less than three and three quarter millions. In 1909, exactly
half a century later, the woolen industry produced $107,000,000 worth
of cloth, while the value of the worsteds exceeded $312,000,000. Put in
another form, while fifty years ago the worsted industry was only one
twentieth the size of the woolen, to-day it is three times as large as
its older rival. Nor does this tell the whole story. The decline of the
woolen industry has been not only relative, but absolute. Thus, after
increasing from $62,000,000 in 1859 to $161,000,000 in 1879, it dropped
to $134,000,000 in 1889, to $118,000,000 in 1899, and to $107,000,000
in 1909. On the other hand, the worsted industry showed a marked
increase in each succeeding decade, beating all previous records in the
first decade of the present century, when the value of its output rose
from $120,000,000 in 1899 to more than $312,000,000 in 1909.

A large part of the growth of the worsted industry at the expense of
the woolen is said to be due to change in fashion and taste, people
generally preferring the smooth, smart-looking worsteds to the rough
woolens. While this is, no doubt, true, the woolen-goods manufacturers
assert that the change of fashion is only partly responsible for
the decline of their industry. They insist that but for the unfair
discrimination of the tariff against their industry in favor of the
worsted it would continue to increase with the growth of population,
since it alone can turn out an all-wool cloth that is within the means
of poor people.

A feature which goes far to explain the superior advantage which the
worsted industry has over the woolen is that the former is essentially
the big capitalist’s field, while the woolen mills are still run to a
large extent by people of moderate means. According to the last census
report, in 1909 the average output per mill in the worsted industry
was nearly one million dollars, which was more than five times as
large as that of the average woolen mill. The prevailing type in the
former is the large corporation, managed by high-salaried officials; in
the latter, the typical mill is a comparatively small establishment,
personally managed by the owner or owners, who form a partnership which
in many cases has come down from earlier generations in the family and
has not improved much on the old ways.

The great factor in the worsted industry to-day is the American Woolen
Company, popularly known as the Woolen Trust, which was said to control
sixty per cent. of the country’s output at the time of its formation
in 1899, and can boast of the largest and best-equipped mills not
only in the United States, but in the entire world. Outside of the
so-called trust are other large concerns, such as the Arlington Mills,
largely owned by Mr. William Whitman, the most conspicuous figure in
the industry, who has probably had more to do with the shaping of
Schedule K than any other man in the country, and who has amassed a
large fortune in the business, most of the capital invested in his mill
having been built up from the profits of the business.

If the quarrel between the woolen and worsted manufacturers had no
other consequences than to affect our fashions, the rest of us could
well afford to let the rival forces fight it out among themselves.
But it affects the consumer very vitally, and particularly that part
of the consuming public that can ill afford to pay high prices for
its clothes. For woolen is distinctly the poor man’s cloth, while
worsted is the cloth of the well-to-do. As will be shown presently,
our tariff on raw wool is designed to keep out of this country the
cheap, short staple wools which our woolen industry could use to great
advantage. The tariff thus artificially restricts the manufacture of
woolens, while stimulating the production of worsteds, and, as the poor
man cannot afford a genuine worsted cloth, it has to be adulterated
with cotton to the extent of at least one half. Many of the “cotton
worsteds” contain only a small fraction of wool, most of the material
being cotton. It is this aspect of the effect of the tariff on the
consumer that has made the family quarrel between the two branches of
the wool manufacturing industry a matter of national concern.


THE DUTIES ON RAW WOOL

The root of all the evils springing from Schedule K is the specific
duty of eleven cents a pound on all clothing wools used by the woolen
industry and most of the wools used by the worsted industry. Wools
differ greatly in value. They may be long or short, fine or coarse,
comparatively clean, or so full of grease and dirt, which the sheep
accumulates in its shaggy coat while roaming in the fields, as to
shrink to one fifth of its purchased weight after it has been washed
and scoured in the mill.

Yet all of these wools, when brought to the gates of the United States
custom-house, would have to pay the same duty of eleven cents per
pound. On fine English wool, which contains only ten per cent. of
grease and dirt, this is equivalent to a little over twelve cents a
pound of clean wool. On a wool shrinking in weight, in the course of
scouring, to only one fifth of its raw weight, the eleven-cents duty
is equivalent to fifty-five cents per pound of clean wool, a figure
which no manufacturer can afford to pay, and which, therefore, keeps
the wool out of this country. Taken in connection with the price of
wool, the discrimination against the coarse, heavy-shrinking wools used
primarily by the woolen industry appears even more striking. Thus, on
the finer grades of wool quoted in London at forty-seven cents per
pound, the duty of eleven cents would be equivalent to twenty-three
per cent. ad valorem; while on the lower-priced wools, the only kind
that is available for the poor man’s cloth, the eleven-cents duty would
be equivalent to the prohibitive figure of anywhere from one hundred
to five hundred and fifty per cent. The result is that the durable,
weather-proof, and health-protecting cheap woolen cloth which the
English and Continental working-man can afford to wear, must give way
to the short-lived but dressy cotton worsted, which leaves the American
workman, compelled to work outdoors in all sorts of weather, poorly
protected against its inclemencies.


THE DUTY ON CLOTH

So much for the raw wool, which does not concern the consumer directly,
but which he must consider in order to understand the conditions under
which the woolen manufacturer is laboring.

When we come to cloth, the discrimination against the woolen
manufacturer and the burden imposed upon the consumer is no less
striking.

On the theory that all wool in this country is enhanced in price to the
extent of the duty,--a theory, by the way, which every protectionist
stoutly combats when discussing the effect of the tariff on domestic
prices,--the manufacturer of cloth is allowed not only a protective
duty of from fifty to fifty-five per cent. of the value of the imported
cloth, but, in addition to that, a “compensatory” duty on account of
the duty on raw wool. This compensatory duty is fixed at forty-four
cents per pound of cloth on most of the cloths imported into this
country.

It is based on the assumption that it takes four pounds of raw wool
to make one pound of cloth. This compensatory duty adds to the
discrimination against the woolen manufacturer in favor of the worsted
manufacturer in several ways.

In the first place, as already explained, the wool used by the worsted
manufacturer does not shrink as much as that which goes into the cloth
produced by the woolen manufacturer. Yet the compensatory duty is fixed
at a uniform rate for both cloths, which is equivalent to giving to
the worsted manufacturer about twice as much “compensation” as to his
less fortunate rival, and giving him, in most cases, compensation for a
greater loss than he actually sustains.

In the second place, the law takes no account of the admixture of
materials other than wool of which the cloth is made. A cotton worsted
may contain cotton to the extent of one half or more of its total
weight, yet the worsted manufacturer is allowed forty-four cents a
pound “compensation” on the entire weight of the cloth. Mr. Dale,
editor of “The Textile World Record,” quotes a typical instance of a
cotton worsted. In turning out 8750 pounds of this cloth, 3125 pounds
of raw wool were used, the remainder being cotton. Assuming that the
price of the wool in this country was enhanced to the extent of the
duty of eleven cents a pound, the manufacturer would be entitled to a
compensatory duty of 3125 times eleven, or $343.75. But the law, on the
four-to-one theory, allows a compensatory duty of forty-four cents per
pound of cloth, or 8750 times forty-four, which is equal to $3850. The
manufacturer is thus granted an extra protection of more than three and
one half thousand dollars in the guise of compensation for the duty on
wool which never entered the cloth.

In the discussion of the question in Congress, the stand-pat senators
stoutly maintained that the four-to-one ratio was only a fair
compensation to the American manufacturer. But the report of the
Tariff Board, which no one has yet accused of being unfair to the
manufacturers, has settled this point authoritatively by sustaining
in most emphatic terms every charge made here against the system of
levying duties under Schedule K.

In addition to the so-called compensatory duties, the tariff provides
a distinct protective duty of from fifty to fifty-five per cent.
on cloths. High as this duty appears in comparison with protective
duties in most of the European countries, it is not exceptionally
high as compared with the rates under other schedules of our tariff.
It is only when taken in combination with the compensatory duties,
which the official report of the Tariff Board has shown to be largely
protective, that the prohibitive character of the duties in Schedule K
comes to light. The figures of annual imports published by the Bureau
of Statistics throw an interesting light on this aspect of the case.
They show, for instance, that the duties on blankets in the fiscal year
1911 ranged from sixty-eight to one hundred and sixty-nine per cent.
of their foreign selling price; on carpets, from fifty to seventy-two
per cent., being the lowest duties imposed on any manufactures of
wool; on women’s dress-goods the duties varied from ninety-four to one
hundred and fifty-eight per cent.; on flannels, from seventy-one to one
hundred and twenty-one per cent.; on woolen and worsted cloths, from
ninety-four to one hundred and fifty per cent.; on knit fabrics, from
ninety-five to one hundred and fifty-three per cent.; on plushes and
pile fabrics, from one hundred to one hundred and twenty-two per cent.

None of these rates tells the whole story: they all understate the
duties to which foreign goods are subject under the law; for they
represent the duties on goods that were able to get into this country
over our tariff wall. In some cases the imports represent vanishing
quantities, only a few dollars’ worth, being probably the personal
purchases of returning travelers. The duties that are high enough to
keep foreign goods out of the country naturally do not find their way
into the returns of the Bureau of Statistics. An illustration of this
feature is furnished by the report of the Tariff Board. The duties upon
woolen and worsted cloths just cited from the report of the Bureau
of Statistics are shown to vary from ninety-four to one hundred and
fifty per cent. The Tariff Board, in making a comparative study of the
industry at home and abroad, obtained a set of representative samples
of English cloths with prices at which they are sold in England, the
duty they would have to pay if imported into the United States, and the
prices at which similar cloths are sold in the United States. Sixteen
of the samples, representing the cheapest cloths sold in England at
prices of from twelve to fifty-four cents a yard, are not imported
into the United States at all, owing to prohibitive duties ranging
from one hundred and thirty-two to two hundred and sixty per cent.
Thirteen out of the sixteen samples would have paid duties higher
than the highest rate of one hundred and fifty per cent. given in the
report of the Bureau of Statistics for cloths actually imported. This
illustration will suffice to explain why the rates quoted above for
various woolen products from the report of the Bureau of Statistics are
understatements of the duties imposed under Schedule K.

An invariable feature of this schedule is that the duties rise in
inverse ratio to the value of the commodities, so that the poor man’s
grades pay the highest rates, while those intended for people who can
best afford to pay the duties are subject to the lowest rates. In the
set of English samples collected by the board, the cheapest cloth
selling in England for twelve cents a yard would pay a duty in the
United States equal to two hundred per cent. ad valorem, while the
highest-priced fabric selling at $1.68 a yard would pay a duty of only
eighty-seven per cent.

Small wonder that under the fostering care of Schedule K imports have
been reduced to next to nothing. With a total domestic consumption
of women’s dress-goods valued at more than $105,000,000, we imported
six and one third million dollars’ worth of these goods in 1911. The
imports of woolen and worsted cloth were only two and one half per
cent. of the total domestic consumption. We imported blankets and
flannels in 1909 worth $125,000 as against a domestic production of
more than $10,500,000, making the imports only slightly more than one
per cent. of our total consumption; even in carpets, which are subject
to the lowest rates of duty imposed on manufactures under Schedule K,
our imports were only $195,000 worth against a domestic production of
$45,475,889, making the imports less than one half of one per cent. of
our own production.


THE STATE OF THE AMERICAN WOOL INDUSTRY

After enjoying for nearly half a century a protection averaging
forty-five per cent. and amounting to from one hundred to five hundred
and fifty per cent. on the cheaper grades of wool, the American
wool-grower is not able to satisfy as great a part of the national
demand for his product as he was at the time of the Civil War. During
the sixties we had to depend upon imports to the extent of little over
one fourth (26.8 per cent.) of our total consumption of wool. To-day
nearly one half of our needs have to be covered by foreign wools (about
forty-five per cent. in 1910). When wool was placed on the free list
under the Wilson Bill in 1894, it was charged that the abolition of the
duty was responsible for the increase in our imports. But our growing
dependence on imported wool despite the restoration of the duty under
the Dingley Act, in 1897, goes to show that the tariff is no remedy for
the shortage.

The wool-grower argues, however, that wool can be produced so much
cheaper in Argentina and Australia that, if admitted free of duty
to the United States, it would bring about the total disappearance
of the American wool industry. The latest available figures given
in the report of the Tariff Board show a world production of about
2,500,000,000 pounds of wool, of which the United States produces
about one eighth. The world supply would furnish less than a pound of
clean wool per head of population, not enough to give each of us more
than one suit in three years. Of course the latter estimates are only
approximate, but they are not far from the truth. If it were not for
the plentiful admixture of cotton and shoddy to the annual stock of new
wool, there would not be enough wool to clothe the people of the earth.
Under these conditions, there is no danger of the world failing to make
use of American wool. Any considerable curtailment in the production
of American wool would have the tendency of raising the world’s price
of wool to such an extent as to offer renewed encouragement to the
American wool-grower. So much for that. But is it true that it costs so
much to raise wool in the United States?

The Tariff Board reported that the average cost of production of wool
in this country is about three times as high as in Australia and
about double that in South America. On that basis our present duty is
ridiculously low, and it is a wonder that our wool industry has not
long gone out of existence. What is the secret of its miraculous escape
from total extinction?

The Tariff Board average represents widely different conditions
of production. A large part of the wool grown in this country--no
less than eleven per cent. of the wool covered by the board’s
investigation--is raised without any cost whatever to the wool-grower;
in fact, he gets “a net credit,” to quote the board, or a premium,
with each pound of wool coming from his sheep’s back. This is true of
sheep-growers who are employing up-to-date methods in their business
and have substituted the cross-bred merino sheep for the old-type pure
merino. The cross-bred sheep is raised primarily to meet the enormous
and rapidly growing demand for mutton. The price realized from the sale
of mutton is sufficient not only to cover the entire expense of raising
the sheep, but leaves the farmer a net profit, before he has sold a
pound of his wool, which has become a by-product with him, and the
proceeds from which represent a clear gain. It will be easily seen that
the up-to-date mutton-sheep breeder can do very well without any duty
on wool.

The mutton-sheep has come to stay, because we are fast getting to be
a mutton-eating people. Despite the enormous increase in population,
fewer cattle and hogs are being slaughtered to-day than twenty years
ago, while the number of sheep killed has more than doubled in the
same period. In 1880, for every sheep slaughtered at the Chicago
stock-yards, four heads of cattle and twenty-one hogs were killed. In
1900 the number of sheep received at the stock-yards exceeded that of
cattle, and in 1911, for every sheep slaughtered, there was only one
half of a beef carcass and one and one quarter of a hog. The rapid
increase in the demand for and supply of sheep out of all proportion
to other animals is in itself the best refutation of the cry that
sheep-growing is unprofitable. In his recent book on “Sheep Breeding
in America,” Mr. Wing, one of the foremost authorities on the subject
in this country, who investigated the sheep-breeding industry for the
Tariff Board in every part of the country where it is carried on, as
well as abroad, says that sheep-breeding is profitable despite the
woefully neglectful manner in which it is conducted in the United
States. Unlike some United States senators who have grown rich in the
business of raising sheep, Mr. Wing remains cheerful at the prospect
of a reduction of wool duties, and even their total abolition has
no terrors for him. His attitude is very significant, when it is
considered that he is a practical sheep-grower, still engaged in that
business, in addition to writing on the subject, and that all his
interests, both business and literary, are intimately wound up with the
sheep industry.

Not all growers, it is true, have adopted modern methods. The report
of the board shows five additional groups of farmers whose cost of
production of wool varies from less than five cents a pound to more
than twenty. Accepting these figures at their face-value, although they
are only approximate, and assuming that a raw material like wool of
which we cannot produce enough to satisfy our needs is a proper object
of protection, the question still remains whether the tariff is to be
high enough to afford protection to every man in the business, even
when the results obtained by his neighbors show that he has his own
inefficiency or backwardness to blame for his high costs, or whether
the duty is to measure the difference between the cost of production
of our efficient producers and that of their foreign competitors. If
the former be taken as a standard, then the present duty on raw wool is
not sufficiently high, and should be greatly increased; if the latter
be accepted as a basis in tariff-making, then, there being no cost
in raising wool on up-to-date American ranches, there seems to be no
valid reason for any duty, except possibly one of a transitory nature,
to allow sufficient time to the sheep-growers who need it to adjust
themselves to modern conditions of business.


MILL EFFICIENCY

The same general considerations which apply to raw wool hold good as
to its manufactures. There is no such thing as an average cost of
production of woolen cloth in the United States. The enormous variety
of cloths produced in the same mill proved an insuperable obstacle to
the Tariff Board, which gave up the attempt to ascertain the actual
cost of production. Instead, it undertook to obtain estimates from
manufacturers of the cost of producing cloths, samples of which were
furnished to them by the board. Assuming that all the estimates were
made in good faith and that the agents of the board were all competent
and equal to the task of checking them with the meager means at their
command, the average costs even by the board represent widely differing
conditions of industrial efficiency.

Industrial efficiency depends on a great many conditions an adequate
discussion of which would take in far afield. One fact, however, stands
out preëminently, and must be emphasized until it is seared into the
consciousness and conscience of the American citizen, and that is that
industrial efficiency, which is synonymous with low-labor cost, does
not mean, or depend upon, low wages. Yet the lower wages in Europe
constitute the stock argument in every plea for protection that is
dinned into the ears of Congress.

Not being in a position to make a comprehensive inquiry into the
efficiency of American mills in the woolen industry, the Tariff Board
made a study of labor efficiency in the various process of wool
manufacture in connection with output and wages paid. Almost invariably
the mill paying higher wages per hour showed lower costs than its
competitor with lower wages.

Thus, in wool scouring the lowest average wages paid to
machine-operatives in the thirty mills examined was found to be 12.16
cents per hour, and the highest 17.79. Yet the low-wage mill showed a
labor cost of twenty-one cents per hundred pounds of wool, while the
high-wage mill had a cost of only fifteen cents. One of the reasons for
this puzzling situation was that the low-wage mill paid nine cents per
hundred pounds for supervisory labor, such as foremen, etc., while the
high-wage mill paid only six cents. Apparently well-paid labor needs
less driving and supervising than low-paid labor.

In the carding department of seventeen worsted mills the mill paying
its machine-operatives an average wage of 13.18 cents per hour had a
machine labor cost of four cents per hundred pounds, while the mill
paying its machine-operatives only 11.86 cents per hour had a cost
of twenty-five cents per hundred pounds. This was due largely to
the fact that the lower-cost-high-wage mill had machinery enabling
every operator to turn out more than 326 pounds per hour, while the
high-cost-low-wage mill it turning out less than forty-eight pounds
per hour.

The same tendency was observed in the carding departments of twenty-six
woolen mills. The mill with the highest machine output per man per
hour, namely 57.7 pounds, had a machinery-labor cost of twenty-three
cents per hundred pounds, while the mill with a machine output of only
six pounds per operative per hour had a cost of $1.64 per hundred
pounds. Yet this mill, with a cost seven times higher than the other,
paid its operatives only 9.86 cents per hour, as against 13.09 cents
paid by its more successful competitor.

These examples could be repeated for every department of woolen and
worsted mills, but will suffice to illustrate the point that higher
wages do not necessarily mean higher costs. They show that mill
efficiency depends more on a liberal use of the most improved machinery
than on low wages. Thoughtful planning in arranging the machinery
to save unnecessary steps to the employees, careful buying of raw
materials, the efficient organization and utilization of the labor
force in the mill, systematic watching of the thousands of details,
each affecting the cost of manufacture, will reduce costs to an
astonishing degree. When the board, therefore, states that the labor
cost of production in this country is on the average, about double that
in foreign countries, we must bear in mind the difference in costs in
our own country, and the causes to which high costs are due. The fact
is that the woolen industry, being one of the best, if not the best,
protected industry in the country, shows an exceptional disposition to
cling to old methods and to use machinery which long ago should have
been consigned to the scrap-heap. That is where the chief cause of the
comparatively high cost of production in a large part of the industry
is to be looked for.

But, disregarding the question of efficiency, let us accept the figure
of the Tariff Board, which found the labor cost in England to be one
half that here, taking the manufacture from the time the wool enters
the mill until it is turned out as finished cloth. The entire labor
cost varies from twenty to fifty per cent. of the total cost of making
cloth, according to the character of the cloth, and but seldom exceeds
or approaches fifty per cent. If the protective duty is to measure the
difference in labor cost, it should be fixed at not above twenty-five
per cent. of the cost, that being the highest difference between the
American and English labor cost. As against that, we now have a duty of
about fifty-five per cent. of the selling price of the foreign cloth,
in addition to the concealed protection in the so-called compensatory
duty.

For decades we have been assured that all the manufacturer wanted was
a duty high enough to compensate him for the higher wages paid in this
country. In 1908 the Republican party laid down the formula that the
tariff is to measure the difference in the cost of production at home
and abroad, including a “reasonable profit to the manufacturer.” To-day
the party has advocates of all kinds of protection, from those who
wish the tariff to measure the difference in labor cost of the most
efficient mills in this and foreign countries, as advocated by Senator
LaFollette, to those who wish a tariff high enough to keep out foreign
importations.

Whatever may be done with Schedule K by the Democratic Congress, it is
time that we dismiss the hoary legend that the duties are maintained
solely in the interest of the highly paid American working-man. The
assertion comes with specially poor grace from the woolen and worsted
industry, the most highly protected industry in the United States,
paying the lowest wages to skilled labor. With the earnings of the
great bulk of its employees averaging through the year less than ten
dollars a week, while wages are about double that figure in less
protected industries; with its workmen compelled to send their wives
and children to the mills as an alternative to starvation on the
man’s earnings; with the horrors of living conditions of the Lawrence
mill-workers still ringing in our ears, it is time that we face the
situation squarely and, whatever degree of protection we decide to
maintain, that we frankly admit that it is primarily for the benefit of
the capital invested in our industries.

Russia, Germany, and France do so frankly, and free-trade England
manages to compete with them in the markets of the world, while paying
higher wages to its employees. In turn we beat these nations, in their
own and in the world’s markets, in the products of the very industries
in which we pay the highest wages.




THE WINE OF NIGHT

BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER


    Come, drink the mystic wine of Night,
      Brimming with silence and the stars;
    While earth, bathed in this holy light,
      Is seen without its scars.
    Drink in the daring and the dews,
      The calm winds and the restless gleam--
    This is the draught that Beauty brews;
      Drink--it is the Dream....

    Drink, oh my soul, and do not yield--
      These solitudes, this wild-rose air
    Shall strengthen thee, shall be thy shield
      Against the world’s despair.
    Oh, quaff this stirrup-cup of stars
      Trembling with hope and high desire--
    Then back into the hopeless wars
      With faith and fire!




“THEM OLD MOTH-EATEN LOVYERS”

BY CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK

Author of “In the Tennessee Mountains,” “Where the Battle was Fought,”
etc.

WITH PICTURES BY GEORGE WRIGHT


Hair snow-white, the drifts of many a winter, eyes sunken amid a
network of wrinkles, hands hardened and veinous, shoulders bent, and
step laggard and feeble, the old lovers were as beautiful to each
other, and as enthralled by mutual devotion, as on their wedding-day
forty-five years before. They were beautiful also to more discerning
eyes--to a wandering artist in quest of material, who painted them both
in divers poses, and carried off his canvases. As a recompense of some
sort, he left a masterly depiction of the god of love burned in the
wood of the broad, smooth board of the mantelpiece above the hearth,
where the fickle little deity, though furnished with wings for swiftest
flight, had long presided in constancy.

Doubtless some such sentiment had prompted the pyrography, but its
significance failed to percolate through the dense ignorance of the old
mountain woman.

“Folks from the summer hotel over yander nigh the bluffs air always
powerful tickled over that leetle critter,” she was wont to reply
to an admiring comment, “but he ‘pears ter me some similar ter a
flying-squirrel. I never seen no baby dee-formed with wings nohow,
an’ I tol’ the painter-man at the time that them legs war too fat ter
be plumb genteel. But, lawsy! I jes hed ter let him keep on workin’.
He war powerful saaft-spoken an’ perlite, though I war afeared he’d
disfigure every plain piece o’ wood about the house afore he tuk
hisself away.”

Years before, the romance of the old couple had been the idyl of the
country-side. They had indeed been lovers as children. They had made
pilgrimages to their trysting-place when the breadth of the dooryard
was a long journey. They had plighted their vows as they sat in
juvenile content, plump, tow-headed, bare-footed among the chips of
the wood pile. As they grew older it was the object of their lives
to save their treasures to bestow on each other. A big apple, a chunk
of maple-sugar, a buckeye of abnormal proportions, attained a certain
dignity regarded as _gages d’amour_. They were never parted for a day
till Editha was seventeen years old, when she was summoned to the care
of a paralytic aunt who dwelt in Shaftesville, twelve miles distant,
and who, in the death of her husband, had been left peculiarly helpless
and alone.

The separation was a dreary affliction to the lovers, but it proved the
busiest year of Benjamin Casey’s life, signalized by his preparations
for the home-coming of the bride to be. All the country-side took a
share in the “house-raising,” and the stanch log cabin went up like
magic on the rocky bit of land on the bluff, thus utilized to reserve
for the plow the arable spaces of the little farm. Every article of the
rude furniture common to the region was in its appropriate place when
Editha first stood on her own threshold and gazed into the glowing fire
aflare upon her own hearth; and humble though it was, she confronted
the very genius of home.

The guests who danced at the wedding and afterward at the infare felt
that the lifelong romance was a sort of community interest, and for
many a year its details were familiarized by repetition about the
fire-side or to the casual stranger. But Time is ever the mocker. The
generation which had known the pair in the bloom and freshness of
their beauty had in great part passed away. Their idyl of devotion
and constancy gradually became farcical as the years imposed their
blight. “Them old moth-eaten lovyers” was a phrase so apt in derisive
description that it commended itself for general use to a community of
later date and newer ideals. What a zest of jovial ridicule would the
iconoclasts have enjoyed had it been known that it was only when one
was sixty-five years of age and the other sixty-three that there had
occurred their first experience of a lovers’ quarrel! For Benjie and
Editha now were seriously regarded only by themselves.

A steady, sober man was Benjamin Casey, of a peculiarly sane and
reliable judgment, but it occasioned an outburst of unhallowed mirth in
the vicinity when it was bruited abroad that he had been chosen on the
venire for the petit jury at the next term of the court.

“I’ll bet Editha goes, too,” exclaimed a gossip at the cross-roads
store, delighted with the incongruity of the idea.

“Sure,” acceded his interlocutor. “Benjie can’t serve on no panel
’thout Editha sets on the jury, too.”

And, in fact, when the great day came for the journey to the county
town, the rickety little wagon with the old white mare stood harnessed
before the porch for an hour while Editha, in the toils of perplexity,
decided on the details of her toilet for the momentous occasion, and
Benjie bent the whole capacity of his substantial mind in the effort to
aid her. The finishing touch to her costume of staid, brown homespun
had a suggestion of sacrilege in the estimation of each.

“I’d lament it ef it war ter git sp’iled anyways, Benjie,” she
concluded at length, “but I dunno ez I will ever hev a more especial
occasion ter wear this big silk neckerchief what that painter-man sent
me in a letter from Glaston--I reckon fer hevin’ let him mark up my
mantel-shelf so scandalous. Jus’ the color of the sky it is, an’ ez big
ez a shoulder-shawl, an’ thick an’ glossy in the weave fer true. See!
I hev honed ter view how I would look in it, but I hev never made bold
ter put it on. Still, considerin’ I ain’t been in Shaftesvul sence the
year I spent thar forty-six years ago, I don’t want ter look tacky in
nowise; an’, then, I’ll he interjuced ter all them gentlemen of the
jury, too.”

Benjie solemnly averred himself of like opinion, and this important
question thus settled, the afternoon brought them to Shaftesville,
where they spent the night with relatives of Editha.

The criminal court-room of the old brick court-house was a revelation
of a new and awesome phase of life to the old couple when the jury
was impaneled early the next morning. Editha, decorous, though flushed
and breathless with excitement, sat among the spectators, who were
ranged on each side of the elevated and railed space inclosing the bar,
and Benjie, conspicuous among the jury, exercised the high privilege,
which most of his colleagues had sought to shirk, of aiding in the
administration of his country’s laws.

Although the taking of testimony occupied only two or three hours
during the morning, the rest of the jury obviously wearied at times
and grew inattentive, but Benjie continued alert, fresh, intent on a
true understanding of the case. More than once he held up his hand
for permission to speak, after the etiquette acquired as a boy at the
little district school, and when the judge accorded the boon of a
question, the point was so well taken and cut so trenchantly into the
perplexities involved, that both the arguments of the lawyers and the
charge from the bench were inadvertently addressed chiefly to this
single juryman, whose native capacity discounted the value of the
better-trained minds of the rest of the panel.

When the jury were about to retire to consider their verdict, the
unsophisticated pair were surprised to discover that Editha was
not to be allowed to sit with Benjie in the jury-room and aid the
deliberations of the panel. She had stood up expectantly in her place
as the jury began to file out toward an inner apartment, and had known
by intuition the import of Benjie’s remark to the constable in charge,
happily _sotto voce_, or it might have fractured the decorum of the
court-room beyond the possibility of repair. At the reply, Benjie
paused for a moment, looking dumfounded; then catching her eye, he
slowly shook his white head. The constable, young, pert, and brisk,
hastily circled about his “good and lawful men” with much the style
of a small and officious dog rounding up a few recalcitrant head of
cattle. The door closed inexorably behind them, and the old couple were
separated on the most significant instance in their quiet and eventless
lives.

For a few minutes Editha stood at a loss; then her interest in the
judicial proceedings having ceased with the retirement of Benjie
from the court-room, she drifted softly through the halls and thence
to the street. There had been many changes in Shaftesville since
the twelvemonth she had spent there forty-six years before, and she
presently developed the ardor of a discoverer in touring the town with
this large liberty of leisure while her husband was engrossed in the
public service.

[Illustration: Drawn by George Wright. Half-tone plate engraved by G.
M. Lewis.

“SHE HAD STOOD UP EXPECTANTLY IN HER PLACE AS THE JURY BEGAN TO FILE
OUT”]

As he sat constrained to the deliberations of the jury, Benjie was
beset with certain doubts and fears as to the dangers that might betide
her. Through the window beside him once he saw her passing on the
opposite side of the square, still safe, wavering to and fro before the
display of a dry-goods store, evidently amazed at the glories of the
fripperies of the fashion on view at the door.

Benjie sprang to his feet, then, realizing the exigencies of the
situation, sank back in his chair.

“Thar,” he said suddenly to his colleagues, waving his hand pridefully
toward the distant figure--“thar is Mis’ Casey, my wife, by Christian
name Editha.”

The jury, despite the untimeliness of the interruption, had the good
grace and the good manners to acknowledge this introduction, so to
speak, in the spirit in which it was tendered.

“Taking in the town, I suppose,” said the foreman, a well-known grocer
of the place.

“Jes so, jes so,” said the beaming Casey. “I war determinated that Mis’
Casey should visit Shaftesvul an’, ef so minded, take in the town.”

Editha vanished within the store, and Benjie’s mind was free to revert
to the matter in hand. It was not altogether a usual experience even
for one more habituated to jury service. The deliberations started with
some unanimity of opinion, the first three ballots showing eleven to
one, Benjie holding out in a stanch minority that bade fair to prevent
agreement, and enabling the foreman to perpetrate the time-honored joke
in the demand for supper.

“Constable,” he roared, “order a meal of victuals for eleven men and a
bale of hay for a mule.”

Later, however, Benjie was all a-tingle with pride when the foreman,
with a knitted brow at a crisis of the discussion observed, “There is
something worth considering in _one_ point of Mr. Casey’s contention.”

This impression grew until the jury called in the constable from
his station at the door to convey their request for instruction
upon a matter of law. Although long after nightfall, the court was
still in session, owing to the crowded state of the docket, and when
the jury were led into the court-room to receive from the bench an
explanation of the point in question, Benjie was elated to find that
the information they had sought aided and elucidated his position. The
first ballot taken after returning to the jury-room resulted in ten of
the jurors supporting his insistence against only two, and of these the
foreman was one. They balloted once more just before they started to go
to the hotel to bed, still guarded by the constable, who kept them, in
a compact body, from any communication with the public. On this ballot
only the foreman was in the opposition.

When they were standing in the hallway of the upper story of the hotel,
and the officer was assigning them to their rooms and explaining to the
foreman that he would be within call if anything was needed, Benjie,
now in high spirits, was moved to exclaim, “Never fear, sonny; a muel
is always ekal ter a good loud bray.”

All the jury applauded this turning of the tables, and laughed at the
foreman, and one demanded of Benjie what he fed on “up in the sticks to
get so all-fired sharp.”

The next morning, to the old mountaineer’s great satisfaction, the
foreman, having slept on his perplexities, awoke to Benjie’s way of
thinking, and when they were once more in the court-room he pridefully
stated that they had reached an agreement and found the prisoner
“Not guilty.” The crowd in the court-room cheered; in one moment the
prisoner looked like another man, and genially shook hands with each of
the jury; the judge thanked them before discharging them from further
duty; and as Benjie pushed out of the court-room in the crowd all this
was on the tip of his tongue to narrate for the eager wonderment and
interest of Editha.

An immediate start for home was essential in order not to tax old
Whitey too severely, for the clay roads were heavy as the result of
a recent rainfall, and they must reach the mountain before sunset,
in view of the steep and dangerous ascent. Therefore he sent word
to Editha to meet him at a certain corner, while he repaired to the
livery-stable for his vehicle; for he had happened to encounter her
hostess, a kinswoman, on his way from the court-room, and had taken
ceremonious leave of her on the street.

“I don’t want no more hand-shakin’ an’ farewells,” he said to
himself, flustered and eager for the start, so delighted was he to be
homeward-bound with Editha and fairly launched on the recital of his
wondrous experiences while serving on the jury.

His lips were vaguely moving, now with a word, now with a pleased
smile, formulating the sequences of his story, as he jogged along in
his little wagon and suddenly caught sight of his wife awaiting him at
the appointed corner.

At the first glance he remarked the change. It was Editha in semblance,
but not the Editha he knew or had ever known.

“Editha!” he murmured faintly, all his being resolved into eyes, as he
checked old Whitey and drew up close to the curb.

No meager old woman this, wont to hold herself a trifle
stoop-shouldered, to walk with a slow, shuffling gait. Her thin figure
was braced alertly, like some slender girl’s. She stepped briskly,
lightly, from the high curb, and with two motions, as the soldiers say,
she put her foot on the hub of the wheel and was seated beside him in
the wagon. Then he saw her face, through the tunnel of her dark-blue
sunbonnet, suffused with a pink bloom as delicate as a peach-blossom.
Her eyes were as blue and as lustrous as the silk muffler, which the
artist had doubtless selected with a realization of the accord of
these fine tints. A curl of her silky, white hair lay on her forehead,
and another much longer hung down beneath the curtain of her bonnet,
scarcely more suggestive of age than if it had been discreetly
powdered. Her lips were red, and there was a vibration of joyous
excitement in her voice.

“Waal, sir, Shaftesvul!” she exclaimed, turning to survey the vanishing
town, for it had required scarcely a moment to whisk them beyond its
limited precincts. “It’s the beauty-spot of the whole world, sure.
But,” she added as she settled herself straight on the seat and turned
her face toward the ranges in the distance, “we must try ter put up
with the mountings. One good thing is that we air used ter them, else
hevin’ ter go back arter this trip would be powerful’ hard on us, sure.
Benjie, who do ye reckon I met up with in Shaftesvul? Now, _who_?”

“I dunno,” faltered Benjie, all ajee and out of his reckoning. Luckily
old Whitey knew the way home, for the reins lay slack on her back. “War
it yer Cousin Lucindy Jane?” Benjie ventured.

“Cousin Lucindy Jane!” Editha echoed with a tone closely resembling
contempt. “Of course I met up with Cousin Lucindy Jane, an’ war
interjuced ter her cow an’ all her chickens. Cousin Lucindy Jane!” she
repeated slightingly. Then essaying no further to foster his lame
guesswork, “Benjie,” she laid her hand impressively on his arm, “I met
up with Leroy Tresmon’!”

She gazed at him with wide, bright eyes, challenging his outbreak
of surprise. But Benjie only dully fumbled with the name. “Leroy
Tresmon’?” he repeated blankly. “Who’s him?”

“Hesh, Benjie!” cried Editha in a girlish gush of laughter. “Don’t ye
let on ez I hev never mentioned Leroy Tresmon’s name ter you-’uns.
Gracious me! Keep that secret in the sole of yer shoe. He’d never git
over it ef he war ter find that out, vain an’ perky ez he be.”

“But--but when did ye git acquainted with him?”

“Why, that year ’way back yander when I lived with Aunt Dor’thy in
Shaftesvul. My! my! my! why, ’Roy war ez reg’lar ez the town clock
in comin’ ter see me. But, lawsy! it be forty-six year’ ago now.
I never would hev dreampt of the critter remembering me arter all
these years.” She bridled into a graceful erectness, and threw her
beautiful eyes upward in ridicule of the idea as she went on: “I war
viewin’ the show-windows of that big dry-goods store. They call it
‘the palace’”--Benjie remembered that he had seen her at that very
moment--“an’ it war all so enticin’ ter the eye that I went inside to
look closer at some of the pretties; an’ ez I teetered up an’ down the
aisle I noticed arter awhile a man old ez you-’uns, Benjie, but mighty
fine an’ fixed up an’ scornful an’ perky, an’ jes gazin’ an’ _gazin’_
at me. But I passed on heedless, an’ presently, ez I war about ter turn
ter leave, a clerk stepped up ter me--I hed noticed out of the corner
of my eye the boss-man whisper ter him--an’ this whipper-snapper he
say, ‘Excuse me, Lady, but did you give yer name ter hev any goods sent
up?’ An’ I say, ‘I hev bought no goods; I be a stranger jes viewin’
the town.’ Then ez I started toward the door this boss-man suddint
kem out from behind his desk an’ appeared before me. ‘Surely,’ he
said, smiling--he hed the whitest teeth, Benjie, an’ a-many of ’em, ez
reg’lar ez grains of corn--”

Benjie instinctively closed his lips quickly over his own dental
vacancies and ruins as Editha resumed her recital:

“‘Surely,’ he said, smiling, ‘thar never war two sech pairs of
eyes--made out of heaven’s own blue. Ain’t this Editha Bruce?’

“An’ I determinated ter skeer him a leetle, fer he war majorin’ round
powerful’ brash; so I said ez cool ez a cucumber, ‘Mis’ Benjamin Casey.’

“But, shucks! the critter knowed my voice ez well ez my eyes. He jes
snatched both my hands, an’ ef he said ‘Editha! Editha! Editha!’
once, he said it a dozen times, like he would bu’st out crying an’
sheddin’ tears in two minutes. He don’t call my name like you do,
Benjie, short-like, ‘’Ditha.’ He says it ‘_E_editha,’ drawn out, saaft,
an’ sweet. Oh, lawsy! I plumb felt like a fool or a gal seventeen
year’ old--same thing. Fer it hed jes kem ter me who _he_ war, but I
purtended ter hev knowed him all along. The conceits of the town ways
of Shaftesvul hev made me plumb tricky an’ deceitful; I tell ye now,
Benjie.” She gave a jocose little nudge of her elbow into his thin, old
ribs, and so strangely forlorn had Benjie begun to feel that he was
grateful even for this equivocal attention.

“Then ‘Roy Tresmon’ say--Now, Benjie, I dunno whether ye will think
_I_ done the perlite thing, fer I didn’t rightly know _what_ ter do
myself--he say, ‘Editha, fer old sake’s sake choose su’thin’ fer a gift
o’ remembrance outen my stock.’

“I never seen no cattle, so I s’posed he war talkin’ sorter townified
about his goods in the store. But I jes laffed an’ say, ‘My husband is
a man with a free hand, though not a very fat purse, an’ I prefer ter
spen’ a few dollars with ye, ez I expected ter do when I drifted in
hyar a stranger.’ Ye notice them lies, Benjie. I reckon I kin explain
them somehow at the las’ day, but they served my turn ez faithful ez
the truth yestiddy. I say, ‘Ye kin take one penny out of the change
an’ put a hole through it fer remembrance, an’ let old sake’s sake go
at that.’” Once more her caroling, girlish laughter echoed along the
lonely road.

“Though I really hedn’t expected ter spen’ a cent, I bought me some
thread an’ buttons, an’ some checked gingham fer aperns, an’ a leetle
woolen shoulder-shawl, an’ paid fer them, meanin’ of course ter tote
’em along with me under my arm; but ’Roy gin the clerk a look, an’ that
spry limber-jack whisked them all away, an’ remarked, ‘The goods will
be sent up immejetly ter Mrs. Jarney’s, whar ye say ye be stoppin’.’
An’, Benjie, whenst Cousin Sophy Jarney an’ me opened that parcel las’
night, what d’ ye s’pose we f’und?” She gave Benjie a clutch on the
wrist of the hand that held the reins; and feeling them tighten, old
Whitey mended her pace.

“Ye oughter been more keerful than ter hev lef’ the things at the store
arter payin’ cash money fer ’em,” rejoined Benjie, sagely, not that he
was suspicious of temperament, but unsophisticated of training.

“Shucks!” cried Editha, with a rallying laugh. “All them common things
that I bought war thar, an’ more besides, wuth trible the money,
Benjie. A fancy comb fer the hair--looks some similar ter a crown,
though jet-black an’ shiny--an’ a necklace o’ beads ter match. O
Benjie!” she gave his hand an ecstatic pressure. “I’ll show ’em ter ye
when we gits home--every one. They air in my kyarpet-bag thar in the
back of the wagon. An’ thar war besides a leetle lace cape with leetle
black jet beads winkin’ at ye all over it, an’ a pair o’ silk gloves,
not like mittens, but with separate fingers. Cousin Sophy Jarney she
jes squealed. She say, ‘I wish I hed a beau like that!’ Ned Jarney,
standin’ by, watchin’ me open the parcel, he say, ‘Ladies hev ter be
ez beautisome ez Cousin Editha ter hev beaus at command at her time of
life.’ Oh, my! Oh, my! Cousin Sophy she say, ‘Cousin Editha is yit,
ez she always war, a tremenjious flirt. I think I’ll try ter practise
a leetle bit ter git my hand in, ef ever _I_ should hev occasion
ter try.’ Oh, my! I’ll never furgit this visit ter Shaftesvul, the
beauty-spot of the nation.”

Editha’s admired eyes, alight with all the fervors of retrospection,
were fixed unseeing upon the majestic range of mountains, now turning
from blue to amethyst with a cast of the westering sun. The fences had
failed along the roadside, and for miles it had run between shadowy
stretches of forest that, save for now and again a break of fields or
pasture-lands, cut off the alluring view. A lovely stream had given the
wayfarers its company, flowing beside the highway, clear as crystal,
and when once more it expanded into shallows the road ran down to the
margin to essay a ford. Here, as old Whitey paused to drink from the
lustrous depths, the reflection of the deep-green, overhanging boughs,
the beetling, gray rocks, and the blue sky painted a picture on the
surface too refreshingly vivid and sweet for the senses to discriminate
at once all its keen sources of joy.

[Illustration: Drawn by George Wright. Half-tone plate engraved by R.
Varley.

“‘AN’ WILL YE TELL ME WHAT’S THE REASON I COULDN’T HEV HED RICHES--OLD
TOM FOOL!’“]

Old Whitey had seemed to drink her fill, but as Benjie was about to
gather up the reins anew she bowed her pendulous lips once more to the
shining surface.

“Fust off,” resumed Mrs. Casey, with a touch of gravity, “I felt plumb
mortified about them presents. I knowed all that stuff had cost ’Roy
an onpleasing price of money. But, then, I reminded myself I hed no
accountability. He done it of his own accord, an’ he could well afford
it. I remembered when I war fust acquainted with ’Roy, when I war jes a
young gal an’ he nuthin’ but a peart cockerel, he hed _then_ the name
of bein’ one of the richest men in Shaftesvul. His dad bein’ dead,
’Roy owned what he hed his own self. An’ jedgin’ by his ‘stock,’ ez
he called it, an’ his ‘palace,’ he must hev been makin’ money hand
over hand ever sence. So I made up my mind ter enjoy the treat whenst
he invited me an’ Sophy an’ her husband, Ned Jarney, ter go ter the
pictur’-show last night an’ eat supper arterward. An’, Benjie, I never
seen sech fine men-folks’s clothes ez ’Roy Tresmon’ stepped out in. He
hed on a b’iled shirt stiff ez a board; he mought hev leaned up ag’in’
it ef he felt tired. His white collar war ekally stiff, an’ ez high ez
a staked-an’-ridered fence. Whenst he looked over it he ’peared some
similar ter a jumpin’ muel in a high paddock. He hed leetle, tiny,
shiny buttons in his shirt-front,--Sophy said they war pure gold,--an’
his weskit war cut down jes so--lem me show ye how.”

She had turned to take hold of Benjie’s humble jeans clothing
to illustrate the fashion of the garb of the merchant prince of
Shaftesville when her hand faltered on the lapel of his coat. “Why,
Benjie,” she cried sharply, “what makes ye look so plumb pale an’
peaked? Air ye ailin’ anyways?”

“Naw, naw.” Benjie testily repudiated the suggestion. “Tell on yer
tale.” Then by way of excuse or explanation he added, “I ain’t sick,
but settin’ on a jury is a wearin’ business.”

“Mought be ter the britches, but not ter the health,” Editha rejoined.
Then she burst out laughing at her jest, and it brought to her mind a
new phase of her triumphs. “’Roy Tresmon’ he said I war the wittiest
lady he ever seen. He meant plumb jokified,” she explained tolerantly.
“An’ sure’ I did keep him on the grin. He ’lowed it war wuth twice
the price of his entertainment ter escort me ter the pictur’-show an’
theater-supper arterward; fer when the show war over, me an’ him an’
Sophy an’ Jarney went ter an eatin’-store, whar they hed a whole passel
o’ leetle tables set out in the floor an’ the biggest lookin’-glass I
ever see on the wall. But, lawsy! Benjie, be ye a-goin’ ter let that
old mare stand slobberin’ in the river plumb till sunset? Git up,
Whitey!”

As the wagon went jolting up the steep bank, Editha resumed:

“But I tell ye now, Benjie, ’Roy Tresmon’ didn’t do all the fine
dressin’. I cut a dash myself. Sophy begged me ter wear a dress of
hern ter the pictur’-show an’ the theater-supper, ez they called it,
arterward, which I war crazy ter do all the time, though I kep’ on
sayin’ ter her, ‘What differ do it make what a’ old mounting woman
wears?’ But I let myself be persuaded into a white muslin frock with
black spots, an’, Benjie, with the lace cape an’ the jet necklace,
an’ the fancy jet comb in my hair, I made that man’s eyes shine ekal
ter them gold buttons in his shirt-front. Lem me show ye how Sophy did
up my hair. I scarcely dared turn my head on the pillow las’ night fer
fear of gittin’ it outen fix, an’ I never teched comb nor bresh ter it
this mornin’ so ez ye mought hev some idee how it looked.”

With the word she removed her sunbonnet with gingerly care and sat
smiling at him, expectant of plaudits. In fact, the snow-white
redundancy of her locks, piled into crafty puffs and coiled in heavy
curls by the designing and ambitious Sophy, a close student of the
fashion items as revealed in the patent inside of the county paper,
achieved a coiffure that might have won even discriminating encomiums.
But Benjie looked at her dully and drearily as she sat, all rejuvenated
by the artifices of the mode, roseate and bland and suavely smiling. A
sudden shadow crossed her face.

“Why, Benjie,” she cried anxiously, “what kin ail you-’uns? Ye look
plumb desolated.”

“Oh, you g’ long, g’ long!” cried the goaded Benjie. Luckily she
imagined the adjuration addressed to the old mare, now beginning the
long, steep ascent of the mountain to their home on the bluff, and thus
took no exceptions to the discourtesy.

“I’ll be bound ye eat su’thin’ ez disagreed with you in the town-folk’s
victuals. I expec’ I’ll hev ter give ye some yarb tea afore ye feel
right peart ag’in. Ye would hev a right to the indigestion ef ye hed
been feedin’ like me nigh on ter midnight. I be goin’ ter tell ye
about the pictur’-show arter I finish about ’Roy Tresmon’ an’ me. That
supper--waal, sir, he invited Sophy an’ Ned Jarney, too, an’ paid fer
us all, though some o’ them knickknacks war likely ter hev been paid
fer with thar lives. Toadstools did them misguided sinners eat with
thar chicken, an’ I expected them presently ter be laid out stiff in
death. _I_ never teched the rank p’ison, nor the wine nuther. I say
ter ’Roy ez I never could abide traffickin’ with corn-juice. An’ he
grinned an’ say, ‘This is grape-juice, Editha.’ But ye mought know it
warn’t no common grape-juice. The waiter kep’ a folded napkin round
the bottle ez it poured, an’ the sniff of that liquor war tremenjious
fine. It war like a whole flower-gyardin full of perfume. Them two
men, ’Roy an’ Jarney, war breakin’ the dry-town law, I believe. They
kep’ lookin’ at each other an’ laffin’, an’ axin’ which brand of soft
drinks war the mos’ satisfyin’. An’ the man what kep’ the eatin’-store
looked p’intedly skeered as he said ter the waiter, ‘Ye needn’t put
_that_ bottle on the table.’ An’ they got gay fer true; my best
cherry-bounce couldn’t hev made ’Roy mo’ glib than he war. An’ ’Roy hed
no sense lef’ nuther. Sophy she say she seen the bill the waiter laid
by his plate,-ye know how keen them leetle, squinched-up eyes of hern
be,--an’ she say it war over ten dollars. Lawsy!--lawsy! what a thing
it is ter be rich! ’Roy Tresmon’ jes stepped up ter the counter an’
paid it ’thout battin’ an eye.”

The old couple had left the wagon now, and were walking up a
particularly steep and stony stretch of the road to lighten the load
on old Whitey, dutifully pulling the rattling, rickety vehicle along
with scant guidance. Editha kept in advance, swinging her sunbonnet
by the string, her elaborately coiffed head still on display. Now and
then as she recalled an item of interest to detail, she paused and
stepped backward after a nonchalant girlish fashion, while Benjie, old
and battered and broken, found it an arduous task to plod along with
laggard, dislocated, and irregular gait at the tail-board of the wagon.
They were in the midst of the sunset now. It lay in a broad, dusky-red
splendor over all the far, green valleys, and the mountains had garbed
themselves in richest purple. Sweets were in the air, seeming more
than fragrance; the inhalation was like the quaffing of some delicious
elixir, filling the veins with a sort of ethereal ecstasy. The balsam
firs imbued the atmosphere with subtle strength, and the lungs expanded
to garner it. Flowers under foot, the fresh tinkle of a crystal
rill, the cry of a belated bird, all the bliss of home-coming in his
thrilling note as he winged his way over the crest--these were the
incidents of the climb.

“I tell ye, Benjie,”--Editha once more turned to walk slowly backward,
swinging her bonnet by the string,--“it’s a big thing ter be rich.”

“Oh,” suddenly cried the anguished Benjie, with a poignant wail, his
fortitude collapsing at last, “I wish you war rich! That be what ye
keer fer; I know it now. I wish ye could hev hed riches--yer heart’s
desire! I wish I hed never seen you-’uns, an’ ye hed never seen me!”

Editha stood stock-still in the road as though petrified. Old
Whitey, her progress barred, paused not unwillingly, and the rattle
of the wagon ceased for the nonce. Benjie, doubly disconsolate in
the consciousness of his self-betrayal, leaned heavily against the
motionless wheel and gazed shrinkingly at the visible wrath gathering
in his helpmate’s eyes.

“Man,” she cried, and Benjie felt as though the mountain had fallen
on him, “hev ye plumb turned fool? Now,” she went on with a stern
intonation, “ye tell me what ye mean by that sayin’, else I’ll fling ye
over the bluff or die tryin’.”

“Oh, nuthin’, nuthin’, ’Ditha,” said the miserable Benjie, all the
cherished values of his life falling about him in undiscriminated wreck.

“Then I’ll make my own understandin’ outen yer words, an’ I’ll hold the
gredge ag’in’ ye ez long ez I live,” she protested.

“Waal, then,” snarled Benjie, “ye take heed ye make the words jes like
I said ’em. I’ll stand ter ’em. _I_ never f’und out how ter tell lies
in Shaftesvul. I’ll stand ter my words.”

“Ye wished I could hev hed riches,” Editha ponderingly recapitulated
his phrases. Then she looked up, her blue eyes severe and her flushed
face set. “An’ will ye tell me what’s the reason I couldn’t hev hed
riches--old Tom fool!”

Thus the lovers!

“You-’uns, ’Ditha?” Benjie faltered, bewildered by the incongruity of
the idea. “You, _riches_?”

“I could hev hed long ago sech riches ez ’Roy Tresmon’ hev got, sartain
sure,” she declared. “An’ considerin’ ye hev kem in yer old age ter
wish ye hed never seen me, ’pears like it mought hev been better ef I
hed thought twice afore I turned him off forty-six year’ ago.”

“Turned off ’Roy Tresmon’! Forty-six year’ ago! What did ye do that
fer, ’Ditha?” Benjie bungled, aghast. He had a confused, flustered
sentiment of rebuke: what had possessed Editha in her youth to have
discarded this brilliant opportunity!

“To marry you-’uns, of course,” retorted Editha, amazed in her turn.

“An’ now, oh, ’Ditha, that we hev kem so nigh the eend of life’s
journey ye air sorry fer it,” wailed Benjie. “But I never knowed ez ye
hed the chance.”

Editha tossed her head. “The chance! I hed the chance three times
whenst he war young an’ personable an’ mighty nigh ez rich ez he be
now.” She began to check off the occasions on her fingers. “Fust,
at the big barn dance, when the Dimmycrats hed a speakin’ an’ a
percession. Then one night whenst we-’uns war kemin’ home together from
prayer-meetin’ he tol’ ag’in ‘his tale of love,’ ez he called it,” she
burst forth in a shrill cackle of derision. “Then that Christmus I
spent in Shaftesvul the year I stayed with Aunt Dor’thy he begged me
ter kem out ter the gate jes at sun-up ter receive my present, which
war his heart; an’ I tol’ him ez I war much obleeged, but I wouldn’t
deprive him of it. Ha! ha! ha! Lawsy! we-’uns war talkin’ ’bout them
old times all ’twixt the plays at the pictur’-show, an’ he declared he
hed stayed a bachelor all these years fer my sake. I tol’ him that ef I
war forty-five years younger I’d hev more manners than ter listen ter
sech talk ez that, ha! ha! ha! ’T war all mighty funny an’ gamesome,
an’ I laffed an’ laffed.”

“’Ditha,” said the contrite Benjie, taking heart of grace from her
relaxing seriousness, “I love ye so well that it hurts me to think I
cut ye out of any good thing.”

“Waal, ye done it, sure,” said the uncompromising Editha. “But fer
you-’uns I would hev married that man and owned all he hev got from his
‘palace’ ter his store teeth.”

“Did--did you-’uns say his teeth war jes store teeth?” demanded Benjie,
excitedly.

“Did you-’uns expec’ the critter ter cut a new set of teeth at his time
of life?” laughed Editha.

“O ’Ditha, I felt so cheap whenst ye tol’ ’bout his fine clothes,”
Benjie began.

“He used ter wear jes ez fine clothes forty-five years ago,”
interrupted Editha, “an’ he war then ez supple a jumping-jack ez ever
ye see, not a hirpling old codger; but, lawsy! I oughtn’t ter laff at
his rheumatics, remembering all them beads on that cape.”

As they climbed into the wagon, the ascent being completed, and resumed
their homeward way, Benjie was moved to seek to impress his own merits.
“I hed considerable attention paid ter my words whenst settin’ on the
jury, ’Ditha. They all kem round ter my way of thinkin’ whenst they
heard me talk.”

“Waal, I don’t follow thar example,” Editha retorted. “The more I hear
ye talk, the bigger fool ye seem ter be. Hyar ye air now thinkin’ it
will make me set more store by ye ter know that eleven slack-twisted
town-men hearkened ter yer speech. Ye suits me, an’ always did. I’d
think of ye jes the same if every juryman hed turned ag’in’ ye,
stiddier seein’ the wisdom of yer words.”

A genial glow sprang up in Benjie’s heart, responsive to the brusk
sincerities of this fling, and when the house was reached, and the
flames again flared, red and yellow from the hickory logs in the
deep chimney-place, the strings of scarlet peppers swinging from the
ceiling, the gaily flowered curtains fluttering at the windows, the
dogs fawning about their feet on the hearthstone, Editha’s exclamation
seemed the natural sequence of their arrival.

“Home fer sure!” she cried with a joyous nesting instinct, and reckless
of inconsistency. “An’, lawsy! don’t it look good an’ sensible! ’Pears
like Shaftesvul is away, away off yander in a dream, an’ ’Roy Tresmon’,
with his big white teeth an’ fine clothes an’ rheumatic teeter, is some
similar ter a nightmare, though I _oughter_ hev manners enough ter
remember them beads on that cape, an’ speak accordin’. I be done with
travelin’, Benjie, an’ nex’ time ye set on a jury ye’ll hev ter do it
by yer lone.”

The firelight showed the cheery radiance of the smile with which
the old “moth-eaten lovyers” gazed at each other, and the quizzical
expression of the little Cupid delineated on the mantelpiece, peering
out at them from beneath the bandage of his eyes, his useless wings
spread above the hearth he hallowed.




[Illustration]


T. TEMBAROM

BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

Author of “That Lass o’ Lowrie’s,” “The Shuttle,” etc.

WITH DECORATIVE PICTURES BY CHARLES S. CHAPMAN


CHAPTER XV

To employ the figure of Burrill, Tembarom was indeed “as pleased as
Punch.” He was one of the large number of men who, apart from all
sentimental relations, are made particularly happy by the kindly
society of women; who expand with quite unconscious rejoicing when
a women begins to take care of them in one way or another. The
unconsciousness is a touching part of the condition. The feminine
nearness supplies a primeval human need. The most complete of men, as
well as the weaklings, feel it. It is a survival of days when warm arms
held and protected, warm hands served, and affectionate voices soothed.
An accomplished male servant may perform every domestic service
perfectly, but the fact that he cannot be a women leaves a sense of
lack. An accustomed feminine warmth in the surrounding daily atmosphere
has caused many a man to marry his housekeeper or even his cook, as
circumstances prompted.

Tembarom had known no woman well until he had met Little Ann. His
feeling for Mrs. Bowse herself had verged on affection, because he
would have been fond of any woman of decent temper and kindliness,
especially if she gave him opportunities to do friendly service. Little
Ann had seemed the apotheosis of the feminine, the warmly helpful,
the subtly supporting, the kind. She had been to him an amazement
and a revelation. She had continually surprised him by revealing new
characteristics which seemed to him nicer things than he had ever
known before, but which, if he had been aware of it, were not really
surprising at all. They were only the characteristics of a very nice
young feminine creature.

The presence of Miss Alicia, with the long-belated fashion of her
ringlets and her little cap, was delightful to him. He felt as though
he would like to take her in his arms and hug her. He thought perhaps
it was partly because she was a little like Ann, and kept repeating
his name in Ann’s formal little way. Her delicate terror of presuming
or intruding he felt in its every shade. Mentally she touched him
enormously. He wanted to make her feel that she need not be afraid of
him in the least, that he liked her, that in his opinion she had more
right in the house than he had. He was a little frightened lest through
ignorance he should say things the wrong way, as he had said that thing
about wanting to know what she expected him to do. What he ought to
have said was, “You’re not expecting me to let that sort of thing go
on.” It had made him sick when he saw what a break he’d made and that
she thought he was sort of insulting her. The room seemed all right
now that she was in it. Small and unassuming as she was, she seemed to
make it less over-sized. He didn’t so much mind the loftiness of the
ceiling, the depth and size of the windows, and the walls covered with
thousands of books he knew nothing whatever about. The innumerable
books had been an oppressing feature. If he had been one of those
“college guys” who never could get enough of books, what a “cinch” the
place would have been for him--good as the Astor Library! He hadn’t a
word to say against books,--good Lord! no,--but even if he’d had the
education and the time to read, he didn’t believe he was naturally that
kind, anyhow. You had to be “that kind” to know about books. He didn’t
suppose she--meaning Miss Alicia--was learned enough to make you throw
a fit. She didn’t look that way, and he was mighty glad of it, because
perhaps she wouldn’t like him much if she was. It would worry her when
she tried to talk to him and found out he didn’t know a darned thing he
ought to.

They’d get on together easier if they could just chin about common sort
of every-day things. But though she didn’t look like the Vassar sort,
he guessed that she was not like himself: she had lived in libraries
before, and books didn’t frighten her. She’d been born among people
who read lots of them and maybe could talk about them. That was why
she somehow seemed to fit into the room. He was aware that, timid
as she was and shabby as her neat dress looked, she fitted into the
whole place, as he did not. She’d been a poor relative and had been
afraid to death of old Temple Barholm, but she’d not been afraid of
him because she wasn’t his sort. She was a lady; that was what was
the matter with her. It was what made thing harder for her, too. It
was what made her voice tremble when she’d tried to seem so contented
and polite when she’d talked about going into one of those “decayed
almshouses.” As if the old ladies were vegetables that had gone wrong,
by gee! he thought.

He liked her little, modest, delicate old face and her curls and her
little cap with the ribbons so much that he smiled with a twinkling eye
every time he looked at her. He wanted to suggest something he thought
would be mighty comfortable, but he was half afraid he might be asking
her to do something which wasn’t “her job,” and it might hurt her
feelings. But he ventured to hint at it.

“Has Burrill got to come back and pour that out?” he asked, with an
awkward gesture toward the tea-tray.

“Oh, no, unless you wish it,” she answered. “Shall--may I give it to
you?”

“Will you?” he exclaimed delightedly. “That would be fine. I shall feel
like a regular Clarence.”

She was going to sit at the table in a straight-backed chair, but he
sprang at her.

“This big one is more comfortable,” he said, and he dragged it forward
and made her sit in it. “You ought to have a footstool,” he added, and
he got one and put it under her feet. “There, that’s all right.”

A footstool, as though she were a royal personage and he were a
gentleman in waiting, only probably gentlemen in waiting did not jump
about and look so pleased. The cheerful content of his boyish face when
he himself sat down near the table was delightful.

“Now,” he said, “we can ring up for the first act.”

She filled the tea-pot and held it for a moment, and then set it down
as though her feelings were too much for her.

“I feel as if I were in a dream,” she quavered happily. “I do indeed.”

“But it’s a nice one, ain’t it?” he answered. “I feel as if I was in
two. Sitting here in this big room with all these fine things about me,
and having afternoon tea with a relation! It just about suits me. It
didn’t feel like this yesterday, you bet your life!”

“Does it seem--nicer than yesterday?” she ventured. “Really, Mr. Temple
Barholm?”

“Nicer!” he ejaculated. “It’s got yesterday beaten to a frazzle.”

It was beyond all belief. He was speaking as though the advantage, the
relief, the happiness, were all on his side. She longed to enlighten
him.

“But you can’t realize what it is to me,” she said gratefully, “to sit
here, not terrified and homeless and--a beggar any more, with your
kind face before me. Do forgive me for saying it. You have such a kind
young face, Mr. Temple Barholm. And to have an easy-chair and cushions,
and actually a buffet brought for your feet!” She suddenly recollected
herself. “Oh, I mustn’t let your tea get cold,” she added, taking up
the tea-pot apologetically. “Do you take cream and sugar, and is it to
be one lump or two?”

“I take everything in sight,” he replied joyously, “and two lumps,
please.”

She prepared the cup of tea with as delicate a care as though it had
been a sacramental chalice, and when she handed it to him she smiled
wistfully.

“No one but you ever thought of such a thing as bringing a buffet for
my feet--no one except poor little Jem,” she said, and her voice was
wistful as well as her smile.

She was obviously unaware that she was introducing an entirely new
acquaintance to him. Poor little Jem was supposed to be some one whose
whole history he knew.

“Jem?” he repeated, carefully transferring a piece of hot buttered
crumpet to his plate.

“Jem Temple Barholm,” she answered. “I say little Jem because I
remember him only as a child. I never saw him after he was eleven years
old.”

“Who was he?” he asked. The tone of her voice and her manner of
speaking made him feel that he wanted to hear something more.

She looked rather startled by his ignorance. “Have you--have you never
heard of him?” she inquired.

“No. Is he another distant relation?”

Her hesitation caused him to neglect his crumpet, to look up at her.
He saw at once that she wore the air of a sensitive and beautifully
mannered elderly lady who was afraid she had made a mistake and said
something awkward.

“I am so sorry,” she apologized. “Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned
him.”

“Why shouldn’t he be mentioned?”

She was embarrassed. She evidently wished she had not spoken, but
breeding demanded that she should ignore the awkwardness of the
situation, if awkwardness existed.

“Of course--I hope your tea is quite as you like it--of course there is
no real reason. But--shall I give you some more cream? No? You see, if
he hadn’t died, he--he would have inherited Temple Barholm.”

Now he was interested. This was the other chap.

“Instead of me?” he asked, to make sure. She endeavored not to show
embarrassment and told herself it didn’t really matter--to a thoroughly
nice person. But--

“He was the next of kin--before you. I’m so sorry I didn’t know you
hadn’t heard of him. It seemed natural that Mr. Palford should have
mentioned him.”

“He did say that there was a young fellow who had died, but he didn’t
tell me about him. I guess I didn’t ask. There were such a lot of other
things. I’d like to hear about him. You say you knew him?”

“Only when he was a little fellow. Never after he grew up. Something
happened which displeased my father. I’m afraid papa was very easily
displeased. Mr. Temple Barholm disliked him, too. He would not have him
at Temple Barholm.”

“He hadn’t much luck with his folks, had he?” remarked Tembarom.

“He had no luck with any one. I seemed to be the only person who was
fond of him, and of course I didn’t count.”

“I bet you counted with him,” said Tembarom.

“I do think I did. Both his parents died quite soon after he was born,
and people who ought to have cared for him were rather jealous because
he stood so near to Temple Barholm. If Mr. Temple Barholm had not been
so eccentric and bitter, everything would have been done for him;
but as it was, he seemed to belong to no one. When he came to the
vicarage it used to make me so happy. He used to call me Aunt Alicia,
and he had such pretty ways.” She hesitated and looked quite tenderly
at the tea-pot, a sort of shyness in her face. “I am sure,” she burst
forth, “I feel quite sure that you will understand and won’t think it
indelicate; but I had thought so often that I should like to have a
little boy--if I had married,” she added in hasty tribute to propriety.

Tembarom’s eyes rested on her in a thoughtfulness openly touched with
affection. He put out his hand and patted hers two or three times in
encouraging sympathy.

“Say,” he said frankly, “I just believe every woman that’s the real
thing’d like to have a little boy--or a little girl--or a little
something or other. That’s why pet cats and dogs have such a cinch of
it. And there’s men that’s the same way. It’s sort of nature.”

“He had such a high spirit and such pretty ways,” she said again.
“One of his pretty ways was remembering to do little things to make
one comfortable, like thinking of giving one a cushion or a buffet
for one’s feet. I noticed so much because I had never seen boys or
men wait upon women. My own dear papa was used to having women wait
upon him--bring his slippers, you know, and give him the best chair.
He didn’t like Jem’s ways. He said he liked a boy who was a boy and
not an affected nincompoop. He wasn’t really quite just.” She paused
regretfully and sighed as she looked back into a past doubtlessly
enriched with many similar memories of “dear papa.” “Poor Jem! Poor
Jem!” she breathed softly.

Tembarom thought that she must have felt the boy’s loss very much,
almost as much as though she had really been his mother; perhaps more
pathetically because she had not been his mother or anybody’s mother.
He could see what a good little mother she would have made, looking
after her children and doing everything on earth to make them happy and
comfortable, just the kind of mother Ann would make, though she had not
Ann’s steady wonder of a little head or her shrewd far-sightedness. Jem
would have been in luck if he had been her son. It was a darned pity he
hadn’t been. If he had, perhaps he would not have died young.

“Yes,” he answered sympathetically, “it’s hard for a young fellow to
die. How old was he, anyhow? I don’t know.”

“Not much older than you are now. It was seven years ago. And if he had
only died, poor dear! There are things so much worse than death.”

“Worse!”

“Awful disgrace is worse,” she faltered. She was plainly trying to keep
moisture out of her eyes.

“Did he get into some bad mix-up, poor fellow?” If there had been
anything like that, no wonder it broke her up to think of him.

It surely did break her up. She flushed emotionally.

“The cruel thing was that he didn’t really do what he was accused of,”
she said.

“He didn’t?”

“No; but he was a ruined man, and he went away to the Klondike because
he could not stay in England. And he was killed--killed, poor boy! And
afterward it was found out that he was innocent--too late.”

“Gee!” Tembarom gasped, feeling hot and cold. “Could you beat that for
rotten luck! What was he accused of?”

Miss Alicia leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. It was too dreadful
to speak of aloud.

“Cheating at cards--a gentleman playing with gentlemen. You know what
that means.”

Tembarom grew hotter and colder. No wonder she looked that way, poor
little thing!

“But,”--He hesitated before he spoke,--“but he wasn’t that kind, was
he? Of course he wasn’t.”

“No, no. But, you see,”--She hesitated herself here,--“everything
looked so much against him. He had been rather wild.” She dropped her
voice even lower in making the admission.

Tembarom wondered how much she meant by that.

“He was so much in debt. He knew he was to be rich in the future, and
he was poor just in those reckless young days when it seemed unfair.
And he had played a great deal and had been very lucky. He was so
lucky that sometimes his luck seemed uncanny. Men who had played with
him were horrible about it afterward.”

“They would be,” put in Tembarom. “They’d be sore about it, and bring
it up.”

They both forgot their tea. Miss Alicia forgot everything as she poured
forth her story in the manner of a woman who had been forced to keep
silent and was glad to put her case into words. It was her case. To
tell the truth of this forgotten wrong was again to offer justification
of poor handsome Jem whom everybody seemed to have dropped talk of, and
even preferred not to hear mentioned.

“There were such piteously cruel things about it,” she went on. “He had
fallen very much in love, and he meant to marry and settle down. Though
we had not seen each other for years, he actually wrote to me and told
me about it. His letter made me cry. He said I would understand and
care about the thing which seemed to have changed everything and made
him a new man. He was so sorry that he had not been better and more
careful. He was going to try all over again. He was not going to play
at all after this one evening when he was obliged to keep an engagement
he had made months before to give his revenge to a man he had won a
great deal of money from. The very night the awful thing happened he
had told Lady Joan, before he went into the card-room, that this was to
be his last game.”

Tembarom had looked deeply interested from the first, but at her last
words a new alertness added itself.

“Did you say Lady Joan?” he asked. “Who was Lady Joan?”

“She was the girl he was so much in love with. Her name was Lady Joan
Fayre.”

“Was she the daughter of the Countess of Mallowe?”

“Yes. Have you heard of her?”

He recalled Ann’s reflective consideration of him before she had said,
“She’ll come after you.” He replied now: “Some one spoke of her to me
this morning. They say she’s a beauty and as proud as Lucifer.”

“She was, and she is yet, I believe. Poor Lady Joan--as well as poor
Jem!”

“She didn’t believe it, did she?” he put in hastily. “She didn’t throw
him down?”

“No one knew what happened between them afterward. She was in the
card-room, looking on, when the awful thing took place.”

She stopped, as though to go on was almost unbearable. She had been
so overwhelmed by the past shame of it that even after the passing
of years the anguish was a living thing. Her small hands clung hard
together as they rested on the edge of the table. Tembarom waited in
thrilled suspense. She spoke in a whisper again:

“He won a great deal of money--a great deal. He had that uncanny luck
again, and of course people in the other rooms heard what was going on,
and a number drifted in to look on. The man he had promised to give his
revenge to almost showed signs of having to make an effort to conceal
his irritation and disappointment. Of course, as he was a gentleman,
he was as cool as possible; but just at the most exciting moment, the
height of the game, Jem made a quick movement, and--and something fell
out of his sleeve.”

“Something,” gasped Tembarom, “fell out of his sleeve!”

Miss Alicia’s eyes overflowed as she nodded her beribboned little cap.

“It”--Her voice was a sob of woe--“it was a marked card. The man he was
playing against snatched it and held it up. And he laughed out loud.”

“Holy cats!” burst from Tembarom; but the remarkable exclamation was
one of genuine horror, and he turned pale, got up from his seat, and
took two or three strides across the room, as though he could not sit
still.

“Yes, he laughed--quite loudly,” repeated Miss Alicia, “as if he had
guessed it all the time. Papa heard the whole story from some one who
was present.”

Tembarom came back to her rather breathless.

“What in thunder did he do--Jem?” he asked.

She actually wrung her poor little hands.

“What could he do? There was a dead silence. People moved just a little
nearer to the table and stood and stared, merely waiting. They say it
was awful to see his face--awful. He sprang up and stood still, and
slowly became as white as if he were dying before their eyes. Some one
thought Lady Joan Fayre took a step toward him, but no one was quite
sure. He never uttered one word, but walked out of the room and down
the stairs and out of the house.”

“But didn’t he speak to the girl?”

“He didn’t even look at her. He passed her by as if she were stone.”

“What happened next?”

“He disappeared. No one knew where at first, and then there was a rumor
that he had gone to the Klondike and had been killed there. And a year
later--only a year! Oh, if he had only waited in England!--a worthless
villain of a valet he had discharged for stealing met with an accident,
and because he thought he was going to die, got horribly frightened,
and confessed to the clergyman that he had tucked the card in poor
Jem’s sleeve himself just to pay him off. He said he did it on the
chance that it would drop out where some one would see it, and a marked
card dropping out of a man’s sleeve anywhere would look black enough,
whether he was playing or not. But poor Jem was in his grave, and no
one seemed to care, though every one had been interested enough in the
scandal. People talked about that for weeks.”

Tembarom pulled at his collar excitedly.

“It makes me sort of strangle,” he said. “You’ve got to stand your own
bad luck, but to hear of a chap that’s had to lie down and take the
worst that could come to him and know it wasn’t his--just _know_ it!
And die before he’s cleared! That knocks me out.”

Almost every sentence he uttered had a mystical sound to Miss Alicia,
but she knew how he was taking it, with what hot, young human sympathy
and indignation. She loved the way he took it, and she loved the
feeling in his next words:

“And the girl--good Lord!--the girl?”

“I never met her, and I know very little of her; but she has never
married.”

“I’m glad of that,” he said. “I’m darned glad of it. How could she?”
Ann wouldn’t, he knew. Ann would have gone to her grave unmarried. But
she would have done things first to clear her man’s name. Somehow she
would have cleared him, if she’d had to fight tooth and nail till she
was eighty.

“They say she has grown very bitter and haughty in her manner. I’m
afraid Lady Mallowe is a very worldly woman. One hears they don’t get
on together, and that she is bitterly disappointed because her daughter
has not made a good match. It appears that she might have made several,
but she is so hard and cynical that men are afraid of her. I wish I had
known her a little--if she really loved Jem.”

Tembarom had thrust his hands into his pockets, and was standing deep
in thought, looking at the huge bank of red coals in the fire-grate.
Miss Alicia hastily wiped her eyes.

“Do excuse me,” she said.

“I’ll excuse you all right,” he replied, still looking into the coals.
“I guess I shouldn’t excuse you as much if you didn’t.” He let her cry
in her gentle way while he stared, lost in reflection.

“And if he hadn’t fired that valet chap, he would be here with you
now--instead of me. Instead of me,” he repeated.

And Miss Alicia did not know what to say in reply. There seemed to be
nothing which, with propriety and natural feeling, one could say.

       *       *       *       *       *

“It makes me feel just fine to know I’m not going to have my dinner all
by myself,” he said to her before she left the library.

She had a way of blushing about things he noticed, when she was shy or
moved or didn’t know exactly what to say. Though she must have been
sixty, she did it as though she were sixteen. And she did it when
he said this, and looked as though suddenly she was in some sort of
trouble.

“You are going to have dinner with me,” he said, seeing that she
hesitated--“dinner and breakfast and lunch and tea and supper and every
old thing that goes. You can’t turn me down after me staking out that
claim.”

“I’m afraid--” she said. “You see, I have lived such a secluded life.
I scarcely ever left my rooms except to take a walk. I’m sure you
understand. It would not have been necessary even if I could have
afforded it, which I really couldn’t--I’m afraid I have nothing--quite
_suitable_--for evening wear.”

“You haven’t!” he exclaimed gleefully. “I don’t know what is suitable
for evening wear, but I haven’t got it either. Pearson told me so with
tears in his eyes. It never was necessary for me either. I’ve got to
get some things to quiet Pearson down, but until I do I’ve got to eat
my dinner in a tweed cutaway; and what I’ve caught on to is that it’s
unsuitable enough to throw a man into jail. That little black dress
you’ve got on and that little cap are just ’way out of sight, they’re
so becoming. Come down just like you are.”

She felt a little as Pearson had felt when confronting his new
employer’s entire cheerfulness in face of a situation as exotically
hopeless as the tweed cutaway, and nothing else by way of resource.
But there was something so nice about him, something which was almost
as though he was actually a gentleman, something which absolutely, if
one could go so far, stood in the place of his being a gentleman. It
was impossible to help liking him more and more at every queer speech
he made. Still, there were of course things he did not realize, and
perhaps one ought in kindness to give him a delicate hint.

“I’m afraid,” she began quite apologetically. “I’m afraid that the
servants, Burrill and the footmen, you know, will be--will think--”

“Say,” he took her up, “let’s give Burrill and the footmen the Willies
out and out. If they can’t stand it, they can write home to their
mothers and tell ’em they’ve got to take ’em away. Burrill and the
footmen needn’t worry. They’re suitable enough, and it’s none of their
funeral, anyhow.”

He wasn’t upset in the least. Miss Alicia, who, as a timid dependent
either upon “poor dear papa” or Mr. Temple Barholm, had been secretly,
in her sensitive, ladylike little way, afraid of superior servants
all her life, knowing that they realized her utterly insignificant
helplessness, and resented giving her attention because she was
not able to show her appreciation of their services in the proper
manner--Miss Alicia saw that it had not occurred to him to endeavor
to propitiate them in the least, because somehow it all seemed a joke
to him, and he didn’t care. After the first moment of being startled,
she regarded him with a novel feeling, almost a kind of admiration.
Tentatively she dared to wonder if there was not something even
rather--rather _aristocratic_ in his utter indifference.

If he had been a duke, he would not have regarded the servants’ point
of view; it wouldn’t have mattered what they thought. Perhaps, she
hastily decided, he was like this because, though he was not a duke,
and boot-blacking in New York notwithstanding, he was a Temple Barholm.
There were few dukes as old of blood as a Temple Barholm. That must be
it. She was relieved.

Whatsoever lay at the root of his being what he was and as he was,
he somehow changed the aspect of things for her, and without doing
anything but be himself, cleared the atmosphere of her dread of the
surprise and mental reservations of the footmen and Burrill when she
came down to dinner in her high-necked, much-cleaned, and much-repaired
black silk, and with no more distinguishing change in her toilet than a
white lace cap instead of a black one, and with “poor dear mama’s” hair
bracelet with the gold clasp on her wrist, and a weeping-willow made of
“poor dear papa’s” hair in a brooch at her collar.

It was so curious, though still “nice,” but he did not offer her his
arm when they were going into the dining-room, and he took hold of hers
with his hand and affectionately half led, half pushed, her along with
him as they went. And he himself drew back her chair for her at the end
of the table opposite his own. He did not let a footman do it, and he
stood behind it, talking in his cheerful way all the time, and he moved
it to exactly the right place, and then actually bent down and looked
under the table.

“Here,” he said to the nearest man-servant, “where’s there a footstool?
Get one, please,” in that odd, simple, almost aristocratic way. It was
not a rude or dictatorial way, but a casual way, as though he knew the
man was there to do things, and he didn’t expect any time to be wasted.

And it was he himself who arranged the footstool, making it comfortable
for her, and then he went to his own chair at the head of the table
and sat down, smiling at her joyfully across the glass and silver and
flowers.

“Push that thing in the middle on one side, Burrill,” he said. “It’s
too high. I can’t see Miss Alicia.”

Burrill found it difficult to believe the evidence of his hearing.

“The epergne, sir?” he inquired.

“Is that what it’s called, an apern? That’s a new one on me. Yes,
that’s what I mean. Push the apern over.”

“Shall I remove it from the table, sir?” Burrill steeled himself to
exact civility. Of what use to behave otherwise? There always remained
the liberty to give notice if the worst came to the worst, though what
the worst might eventually prove to be it required a lurid imagination
to depict. The epergne was a beautiful thing of crystal and gold, a
celebrated work of art, regarded as an exquisite possession. It was
almost remarkable that Mr. Temple Barholm had not said, “Shove it on
one side,” but Burrill had been spared the poignant indignity of being
required to “shove.”

“Yes, suppose you do. It’s a fine enough thing when it isn’t in the
way, but I’ve got to see you while I talk, Miss Alicia,” said Mr.
Temple Barholm. The episode of the epergne--Burrill’s expression, and
the rigidly restrained mouths of Henry and James as the decoration was
removed, leaving a painfully blank space of table-cloth until Burrill
silently filled it with flowers in a low bowl--these things temporarily
flurried Miss Alicia somewhat, but the pleased smile at the head of the
table calmed even that trying moment.

Then what a delightful meal it was, to be sure! How entertaining and
cheerful and full of interesting conversation! Miss Alicia had always
admired what she reverently termed “conversation.” She had read of the
houses of brilliant people where they had it at table, at dinner and
supper parties, and in drawing-rooms. The French, especially the French
ladies, were brilliant conversationalists. They held “salons” in which
the conversation was wonderful--Mme. de Staël and Mme. Roland, for
instance; and in England, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Sydney Smith, and
Horace Walpole, and surely Miss Fanny Burney, and no doubt L. E. L.,
whose real name was Miss Letitia Elizabeth Landon--what conversation
they must have delighted their friends with and how instructive it
must have been even to sit in the most obscure corner and listen!

Such gifted persons seemed to have been chosen by Providence to delight
and inspire every one privileged to hear them. Such privileges had
been omitted from the scheme of Miss Alicia’s existence. She did not
know, she would have felt it sacrilegious to admit it even if the
fact had dawned upon her, that “dear papa” had been a heartlessly
arrogant, utterly selfish, and tyrannical old blackguard of the most
pronounced type. He had been of an absolute morality as far as social
laws were concerned. He had written and delivered a denunciatory sermon
a week, and had made unbearable by his ministrations the suffering
hours and the last moments of his parishioners during the long years
of his pastorate. When Miss Alicia, in reading records of the helpful
relationship of the male progenitors of the Brontes, Jane Austen, Fanny
Burney, and Mrs. Browning, was frequently reminded of him, she revealed
a perception of which she was not aware. He had combined the virile
qualities of all of them. Consequently, brilliancy of conversation at
table had not been the attractive habit of the household; “poor dear
papa” had confined himself to scathing criticisms of the incompetence
of females who could not teach their menials to “cook a dinner which
was not a disgrace to any decent household.” When not virulently
aspersing the mutton, he was expressing his opinion of muddle-headed
weakness which would permit household bills to mount in a manner which
could only bring ruin and disaster upon a minister of the gospel
who throughout a protracted career of usefulness had sapped his
intellectual manhood in the useless effort to support in silly idleness
a family of brainless and maddening fools. Miss Alicia had heard her
character, her unsuccessful physical appearance, her mind, and her
pitiful efforts at table-talk, described in detail with a choice of
adjective and adverb which had broken into terrified fragments every
atom of courage and will with which she had been sparsely dowered.

So, not having herself been gifted with conversational powers to
begin with, and never having enjoyed the exhibition of such powers in
others, her ideals had been high. She was not sure that Mr. Temple
Barholm’s fluent and cheerful talk could be with exactness termed
“conversation.” It was perhaps not sufficiently lofty and intellectual,
and did not confine itself rigorously to one exalted subject. But how
it did raise one’s spirits and open up curious vistas! And how good
tempered and humorous it was, even though sometimes the humor was a
little bewildering! During the whole dinner there never occurred even
one of those dreadful pauses in which dead silence fell, and one tried,
like a frightened hen flying from side to side of a coop, to think of
something to say which would not sound silly, but perhaps might divert
attention from dangerous topics. She had often thought it would be so
interesting to hear a Spaniard or a native Hindu talk about himself
and his own country in English. Tembarom talked about New York and its
people and atmosphere, and he did not know how foreign it all was. He
described the streets--Fifth Avenue and Broadway and Sixth Avenue--and
the street-cars and the elevated railroad, and the way “fellows” had
to “hustle” “to put it over.” He spoke of a boarding-house kept by a
certain Mrs. Bowse, and a presidential campaign, and the election of
a mayor, and a quick-lunch counter, and when President Garfield had
been assassinated, and a department store, and the electric lights, and
the way he had of making a sort of picture of everything was really
instructive and, well, fascinating. She felt as though she had been
taken about the city in one of the vehicles the conductor of which
described things through a megaphone.

Not that Mr. Temple Barholm suggested a megaphone, whatsoever that
might be, but he merely made you feel as if you had seen things.
Never had she been so entertained and enlightened. If she had been a
beautiful girl, he could not have seemed more as though in amusing her
he was also really pleasing himself. He was so very funny sometimes
that she could not help laughing in a way which was almost unladylike,
because she could not stop, and was obliged to put her handkerchief up
to her face and wipe away actual tears of mirth.

Fancy laughing until you cried, and the servants looking on!

Though once Burrill himself was obliged to turn hastily away, and
twice she heard him severely reprove an overpowered young footman in a
rapid undertone.

Tembarom at least felt that the unlifting heaviness of atmosphere which
had surrounded him while enjoying the companionship of Mr. Palford was
a thing of the past.

The thrilled interest, the surprise and delight, of Miss Alicia would
have stimulated a man in a comatose condition, it seemed to him.

The little thing just loved every bit of it--she just “eat it up.” She
asked question after question, sometimes questions which would have
made him shout with laughter if he had not been afraid of hurting her
feelings. She knew as little of New York as he knew of Temple Barholm,
and was, it made him grin to see, allured by it as by some illicit
fascination.

She did not know what to make of it, and sometimes she was obliged
hastily to conceal a fear that it was a sort of Sodom and Gomorrah; but
she wanted to hear more about it, and still more.

And she brightened up until she actually did not look frightened, and
ate her dinner with an excellent appetite.

“I really never enjoyed a dinner so much in my life,” she said when
they went into the drawing-room to have their coffee. “It was the
conversation which made it so delightful. Conversation is such a
stimulating thing!”

She had almost decided that it was “conversation,” or at least a
wonderful substitute.

When she said good night to him and went beaming to bed, looking
forward immensely to breakfast next morning, he watched her go up the
staircase, feeling wonderfully normal and happy.

“Some of these nights, when she’s used to me,” he said as he stuffed
tobacco into his last pipe in the library--“some of these nights I’m
darned if I sha’n’t catch hold of the sweet, little old thing and hug
her in spite of myself. I sha’n’t be able to help it.” He lit his pipe,
and puffed it even excitedly. “Lord!” he said, “there’s some blame’
fool going about the world right now that might have married her. And
he’ll never know what a break he made when he didn’t.”


[Illustration]


CHAPTER XVI

A fugitive fine day which had strayed into the month from the
approaching spring appeared the next morning, and Miss Alicia was
uplifted by the enrapturing suggestion that she should join her new
relative in taking a walk, in fact that it should be she who took him
to walk and showed him some of his possessions. This, it had revealed
itself to him, she could do in a special way of her own, because
during her life at Temple Barholm she had felt it her duty to “try to
do a little good” among the villagers. She and her long-dead mother
and sister had of course been working adjuncts of the vicarage, and
had numerous somewhat trying tasks to perform in the way of improving
upon “dear papa’s” harrying them into attending church, chivying,
the mothers into sending their children to Sunday-school, and being
unsparing in severity of any conduct which might be construed into
implying lack of appreciation of the vicar or respect for his eloquence.

It had been necessary for them as members of the vicar’s
family--always, of course, without adding a sixpence to the household
bills--to supply bowls of nourishing broth and arrowroot to invalids
and to bestow the aid and encouragement which result in a man of God’s
being regarded with affection and gratitude by his parishioners. Many
a man’s career in the church, “dear papa” had frequently observed,
had been ruined by lack of intelligence and effort on the part of the
female members of his family.

“No man could achieve proper results,” he had said, “if he was hampered
by the selfish influence and foolishness of his womenkind. Success in
the church depends in one sense very much upon the conduct of a man’s
female relatives.”

After the deaths of her mother and sister, Miss Alicia had toiled on
patiently, fading day by day from a slim, plain, sweet-faced girl
to a slim, even plainer and sweeter-faced middle-aged and at last
elderly woman. She had by that time read aloud by bedsides a great
many chapters in the Bible, had given a good many tracts, and bestowed
as much arrowroot, barley-water, and beef-tea as she could possibly
encompass without domestic disaster. She had given a large amount of
conscientious, if not too intelligent, advice, and had never failed
to preside over her Sunday-school class or at mothers’ meetings. But
her timid unimpressiveness had not aroused enthusiasm or awakened
comprehension. “Miss Alicia,” the cottage women said, “she’s well
meanin’, but she’s not one with a head.” “She reminds me,” one of them
had summed her up, “of a hen that lays a’ egg every day, but it’s too
small for a meal, and it ’u’d never hatch into anythin’.”

During her stay at Temple Barholm she had tentatively tried to do a
little “parish work,” but she had had nothing to give, and she was
always afraid that if Mr. Temple Barholm found her out, he would be
angry, because he would think she was presuming. She was aware that
the villagers knew that she was an object of charity herself, and a
person who was “a lady” and yet an object of charity was, so to speak,
poaching upon their own legitimate preserves. The rector and his wife
were rather grand people, and condescended to her greatly on the few
occasions of their accidental meetings. She was neither smart nor
influential enough to be considered as an asset.

It was she who “conversed” during their walk, and while she trotted
by Tembarom’s side, looking more early-Victorian than ever in a neat,
fringed mantle and a small black bonnet of a fashion long decently
interred by a changing world, Tembarom had never seen anything
resembling it in New York; but he liked it and her increasingly at
every moment.

It was he who made her converse. He led her on by asking her questions
and being greatly interested in every response she made. In fact,
though he was quite unaware of the situation, she was creating for him
such an atmosphere as he might have found in a book, if he had had the
habit of books. Everything she told him was new and quaint and very
often rather touching. She remembered things about herself and her poor
little past without knowing she was doing it. Before they had talked an
hour he had an astonishing clear idea of “poor dear papa” and “dearest
Emily” and “poor darling mama” and existence at Rowcroft Vicarage. He
“caught on to” the fact that though she was very much given to the word
“dear,”--people were “dear,” and so were things and places,--she never
even by chance slipped into saying “dear Rowcroft,” which she would
certainly have done if she had ever spent a happy moment in it. As she
talked to him he realized that her simple accustomedness to English
village life and its accompaniments of county surroundings would teach
him anything and everything he might want to know. Her obscurity had
been surrounded by stately magnificence, with which she had become
familiar without touching the merest outskirts of its privileges. She
knew names and customs and families and things to be cultivated or
avoided, and though she would be a little startled and much mystified
by his total ignorance of all she had breathed in since her birth, he
felt sure that she would not regard him either with private contempt or
with a lessened liking because he was a vandal pure and simple.

And she had such a nice, little, old polite way of saying things. When,
in passing a group of children, he failed to understand that their
hasty bobbing up and down meant that they were doing obeisance to him
as lord of the manor, she spoke with the prettiest apologetic courtesy.

“I’m sure you won’t mind touching your hat when they make their little
curtsies, or when a villager touches his forehead,” she said.

“Good Lord! no,” he said, starting. “Ought I? I didn’t know they
were doing it at me.” And he turned round and made a handsome bow
and grinned almost affectionately at the small, amazed party,
first puzzling, and then delighting, them, because he looked so
extraordinarily friendly. A gentleman who laughed at you like that
ought to be equal to a miscellaneous distribution of pennies in the
future, if not on the spot. They themselves grinned and chuckled and
nudged one another, with stares and giggles.

“I am sorry to say that in a great many places the villagers are not
nearly so respectful as they used to be,” Miss Alicia explained. “In
Rowcroft the children were very remiss about curtseying. It’s quite
sad. But Mr. Temple Barholm was very strict indeed in the matter of
demanding proper respectfulness. He has turned men off their farms for
incivility. The villagers of Temple Barholm have much better manners
than some even a few miles away.”

“Must I tip my hat to all of them?” he asked.

“If you please. It really seems kinder. You--you needn’t quite lift it,
as you did to the children just now. If you just touch the brim lightly
with your hand in a sort of military salute--that is what they are
accustomed to.”

After they had passed through the village street she paused at the end
of a short lane and looked up at him doubtfully.

“Would you--I wonder if you would like to go into a cottage,” she said.

“Go into a cottage?” he asked. “What cottage? What for?”

He had not the remotest idea of any reason why he should go into a
cottage inhabited by people who were entire strangers to him, and Miss
Alicia felt a trifle awkward at having to explain anything so wholly
natural.

“You see, they are your cottages, and the people are your tenants,
and--”

“But perhaps they mightn’t like it. It might make ’em mad,” he argued.
“If their water-pipes had busted, and they’d asked me to come and look
at them or anything; but they don’t know me yet. They might think I was
Mr. Buttinski.”

“I don’t quite--” she began. “Buttinski is a foreign name; it sounds
Russian or Polish. I’m afraid I don’t quite understand why they should
mistake you for him.”

Then he laughed--a boyish shout of laughter which brought a cottager
to the nearest window to peep over the pots of fuchsias and geraniums
blooming profusely against the diamond panes.

“Say,” he apologized, “don’t be mad because I laughed. I’m laughing at
myself as much as at anything. It’s a way of saying that they might
think I was ‘butting in’ too much--pushing in where I wasn’t asked.
See? I said they might think I was Mr. Butt-in-ski! It’s just a bit of
fool slang. You’re not mad, are you?”

“Oh, no!” she said. “Dear me! no. It is very funny, of course. I’m
afraid I’m extremely ignorant about--about foreign humor.” It seemed
more delicate to say “foreign” than merely “American.” But her gentle
little countenance for a few seconds wore a baffled expression, and she
said softly to herself, “Mr. Buttinski, Butt-in--to intrude. It sounds
quite Polish; I think even more Polish than Russian.”

He was afraid he would yell with glee, but he did not. Herculean effort
enabled him to restrain his feelings, and present to her only an
ordinary-sized smile.

“I shouldn’t know one from the other,” he said; “but if you say it
sounds more Polish, I bet it does.”

“Would you like to go into a cottage?” she inquired. “I think it might
be as well. They will like the attention.”

“Will they? Of course I’ll go if you think that. What shall I say?” he
asked somewhat anxiously.

“If you think the cottage looks clean, you might tell them so, and ask
a few questions about things. And you must be sure to inquire about
Susan Hibblethwaite’s legs.”

“What?” ejaculated Tembarom.

“Susan Hibblethwaite’s legs,” she replied in mild explanation. “Susan
is Mrs. Hibblethwaite’s unmarried sister, and she has very bad legs.
It is a thing one notices continually among village people, more
especially the women, that they complain of what they call ‘bad
legs.’ I never quite know what they mean, whether it is rheumatism or
something different, but the trouble is always spoken of as ‘bad legs.’
And they like you to inquire about them, so that they can tell you
their symptoms.”

“Why don’t they get them cured?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure. They take a good deal of medicine when they
can afford it. I think they like to take it. They’re very pleased
when the doctor gives them ‘a bottle o’ summat,’ as they call it. Oh,
I mustn’t forget to tell you that most of them speak rather broad
Lancashire.”

“Shall I understand them?” Tembarom asked, anxious again. “Is it a sort
of <DW55> talk?”

“It is the English the working-classes speak in Lancashire. ‘Summat’
means ‘something.’ ‘Whoam’ means ‘home.’ But I should think you would
be very clever at understanding things.”

“I’m scared stiff,” said Tembarom, not in the least uncourageously;
“but I want to go into a cottage and hear some of it. Which one shall
we go into?”

There were several whitewashed cottages in the lane, each in its own
bit of garden and behind its own hawthorn hedge, now bare and wholly
unsuggestive of white blossoms and almond scent to the uninitiated.
Miss Alicia hesitated a moment.

“We will go into this one, where the Hibblethwaites live,” she
decided. “They are quite clean, civil people. They have a naughty,
queer, little crippled boy, but I suppose they can’t keep him in order
because he is an invalid. He’s rather rude, I’m sorry to say, but he’s
rather sharp and clever, too. He seems to lie on his sofa and collect
all the gossip of the village.”

They went together up the bricked path, and Miss Alicia knocked at
the low door with her knuckles. A stout, apple-faced woman opened it,
looking a shade nervous.

“Good morning, Mrs. Hibblethwaite,” said Miss Alicia in a kind but
remote manner. “The new Mr. Temple Barholm has been kind enough to come
to see you. It’s very good of him to come so soon, isn’t it?”

“It is that,” Mrs. Hibblethwaite answered rapidly, looking him over.
“Wilt tha coom in, sir?”

Tembarom accepted the invitation, feeling extremely awkward because
Miss Alicia’s initiatory comment upon his goodness in showing
himself had “rattled” him. It had made him feel that he must appear
condescending, and he had never condescended to any one in the whole
course of his existence. He had, indeed, not even been condescended to.
He had met with slanging and bullying, indifference and brutality of
manner, but he had not met with condescension.

“I hope you’re well, Mrs. Hibblethwaite,” he answered. “You look it.”

“I deceive ma looks a good bit, sir,” she answered. “Mony a day ma legs
is nigh as bad as Susan’s.”

“Tha ’rt jealous o’ Susan’s legs,” barked out a sharp voice from a
corner by the fire.

The room had a flagged floor, clean with recent scrubbing with
sandstone; the whitewashed walls were decorated with pictures cut
from illustrated papers; there was a big fireplace, and by it was a
hard-looking sofa covered with blue-and-white checked cotton stuff. A
boy of about ten was lying on it, propped up with a pillow. He had a
big head and a keen, ferret-eyed face, and just now was looking round
the end of his sofa at the visitors.

“Howd tha tongue, Tummas!” said his mother.

“I wun not howd it,” Tummas answered. “Ma tongue’s the on’y thing
about me as works right, an’ I’m noan goin’ to stop it.”

“He’s a young nowt,” his mother explained; “but he’s a <DW36>, an’ we
conna do owt wi’ him.”

“Do not be rude, Thomas,” said Miss Alicia, with dignity.

“Dun not be rude thysen,” replied Tummas. “I’m noan o’ thy lad.”

Tembarom walked over to the sofa.

“Say,” he began with jocular intent, “you’ve got a grouch on, ain’t
you?”

Tummas turned on him eyes which bored. An analytical observer or a
painter might have seen that he had a burning curiousness of look, a
sort of investigatory fever of expression.

“I dun not know what tha means,” he said. “Happen tha ’rt talkin’
’Merican?”

“That’s just what it is,” admitted Tembarom. “What are you talking?”

“Lancashire,” said Tummas. “Theer’s some sense i’ that.”

Tembarom sat down near him. The boy turned over against his pillow and
put his chin in the hollow of his palm and stared.

“I’ve wanted to see thee,” he remarked. “I’ve made mother an’ Aunt
Susan an’ feyther tell me every bit they’ve heared about thee in the
village. Theer was a lot of it. Tha coom fro’ ’Meriker?”

“Yes.” Tembarom began vaguely to feel the demand in the burning
curiosity.

“Gi’ me that theer book,” the boy said, pointing to a small table
heaped with a miscellaneous jumble of things and standing not far from
him. “It’s a’ atlas,” he added as Tembarom gave it to him. “Yo’ con
find places in it.” He turned the leaves until he found a map of the
world. “Theer’s ’Meriker,” he said, pointing to the United States.
“That theer’s north and that theer’s south. All the real ’Merikens
comes from the North, wheer New York is.”

“I come from New York,” said Tembarom.

“Tha wert born i’ the workhouse, tha run about the streets i’ rags, tha
pretty nigh clemmed to death, tha blacked boots, tha sold newspapers,
tha feyther was a common workin’-mon--and now tha’s coom into Temple
Barholm an’ sixty thousand a year.”

“The last part’s true all right,” Tembarom owned, “but there’s some
mistakes in the first part. I wasn’t born in the workhouse, and though
I’ve been hungry enough, I never starved to death--if that’s what
‘clemmed’ means.”

Tummas looked at once disappointed and somewhat incredulous.

“That’s the road they tell it i’ the village,” he argued.

“Well, let them tell it that way if they like it best. That’s not going
to worry me,” Tembarom replied uncombatively. Tummas’s eyes bored
deeper into him.

“Does na tha care?” he demanded.

“What should I care for? Let every fellow enjoy himself his own way.”

“Tha ’rt not a bit like one o’ the gentry,” said Tummas. “Tha ’rt quite
a common chap. Tha ’rt as common as me, for aw tha foine clothes.”

“People are common enough, anyhow,” said Tembarom. “There’s nothing
much commoner, is there? There’s millions of ’em everywhere--billions
of ’em. None of us need put on airs.”

“Tha ’rt as common as me,” said Tummas, reflectively. “An’ yet tha
owns Temple Barholm an’ aw that brass. I conna mak’ out how the loike
happens.”

“Neither can I; but it does all samee.”

“It does na happen i’ ’Meriker,” exulted Tummas. “Everybody’s equal
theer.”

“Rats!” ejaculated Tembarom. “What about multimillionaires?”

He forgot that the age of Tummas was ten. It was impossible not to
forget it. He was, in fact, ten hundred, if those of his generation had
been aware of the truth. But there he sat, having spent only a decade
of his most recent incarnation in a whitewashed cottage, deprived of
the use of his legs.

Miss Alicia, seeing that Tembarom was interested in the boy, entered
into domestic conversation with Mrs. Hibblethwaite at the other side
of the room. Mrs. Hibblethwaite was soon explaining the uncertainty of
Susan’s temper on wash-days, when it was necessary to depend on her
legs.

“Can’t you walk at all?” Tembarom asked. Tummas shook his head. “How
long have you been lame?”

“Ever since I weer born. It’s summat like rickets. I’ve been lyin’
here aw my days. I look on at foak an’ think ’em over. I’ve got to do
summat. That’s why I loike the atlas. Little Ann Hutchinson gave it to
me onct when she come to see her grandmother.”

Tembarom sat upright.

“Do you know her?” he exclaimed.

“I know her best o’ onybody in the world. An I loike her best.”

“So do I,” rashly admitted Tembarom.

“Tha does?” Tummas asked suspiciously. “Does she loike thee?”

“She says she does.” He tried to say it with proper modesty.

“Well, if she says she does, she does. An’ if she does, then you
an’ me’ll be friends.” He stopped a moment, and seemed to be taking
Tembarom in with thoroughness. “I could get a lot out o’ thee,” he said
after the inspection.

“A lot of what?” Tembarom felt as though he would really like to hear.

“A lot o’ things I want to know about. I wish I’d lived the life tha’s
lived, clemmin’ or no clemmin’. Tha’s seen things goin’ on every day o’
thy loife.”

“Well, there’s been plenty going on,” Tembarom admitted.

“I’ve been lying here for ten year’,” said Tummas, savagely. “An’ I’ve
had nowt i’ the world to do an’ nowt to think on but what I could mak’
foak tell me about the village. But nowt happens but this chap gettin’
drunk an’ that chap deein’ or losin’ his place, or wenches gettin’
married or havin’ childer. I know everything that happens, but it’s
nowt but a lot o’ women clackin’. If I’d not been a <DW36>, I’d ha’
been at work for mony a year by now, ’arnin’ money to save by an’ go to
’Meriker.”

“You seem to be sort of stuck on America. How’s that?”

“What dost mean?”

“I mean you seem to like it.”

“I dun not loike it nor yet not loike it, but I’ve heard a bit more
about it than I have about the other places on the map. Foak goes there
to seek their fortune, an’ it seems loike there’s a good bit doin’.”

“Do you like to read newspapers?” said Tembarom, inspired to his query
by a recollection of the vision of things “doin’” in the Sunday “Earth.”

“Wheer’d I get papers from?” the boy asked testily. “Foak like us
hasn’t got the brass for ’em.”

“I’ll bring you some New York papers,” promised Tembarom, grinning a
little in anticipation. “And we’ll talk about the news that’s in them.
The Sunday ‘Earth’ is full of pictures. I used to work on that paper
myself.”

“Tha did?” he cried excitedly. “Did tha help to print it, or was it the
one tha sold i’ the streets?”

“I wrote some of the stuff in it.”

“Wrote some of the stuff in it? Wrote it thaself? How could tha, a
common chap like thee?” he asked, more excited still, his ferret eyes
snapping.

“I don’t know how I did it,” Tembarom answered, with increased cheer
and interest in the situation. “It wasn’t high-brow sort of work.”

Tummas leaned forward in his incredulous eagerness.

“Does tha mean that they paid thee for writin’ it--paid thee?”

“I guess they wouldn’t have done it if they’d been Lancashire,”
Tembarom answered. “But they hadn’t much more sense than I had. They
paid me twenty-five dollars a week--that’s five pounds.”

“I dun not believe thee,” said Tummas, and leaned back on his pillow
short of breath.

“I didn’t believe it myself till I’d paid my board two weeks and bought
a suit of clothes with it,” was Tembarom’s answer, and he chuckled as
he made it.

But Tummas did believe it. This, after he had recovered from the shock,
became evident. The curiosity in his face intensified itself; his
eagerness was even vaguely tinged with something remotely resembling
respect. It was not, however, respect for the money which had been
earned, but for the store of things “doin’” which must have been
acquired. It was impossible that this chap knew things undreamed of.

“Has tha ever been to the Klondike?” he asked after a long pause.

“No. I’ve never been out of New York.”

Tummas seemed fretted and depressed.

“Eh, I’m sorry for that. I wished tha’d been to the Klondike. I want to
be towd about it,” he sighed. He pulled the atlas toward him and found
a place in it.

“That theer’s Dawson,” he announced. Tembarom saw that the region of
the Klondike had been much studied. It was even rather faded with the
frequent passage of searching fingers, as though it had been pored
over with special curiosity.

“There’s gowd-moines theer,” revealed Tummas. “An’ theer’s welly nowt
else but snow an’ ice. A young chap as set out fro’ here to get theer
froze to death on the way.”

“How did you get to hear about it?”

“Ann she browt me a paper onct.” He dug under his pillow, and brought
out a piece of newspaper, worn and frayed and cut with age and usage.
“This heer’s what’s left of it.” Tembarom saw that it was a fragment
from an old American sheet and that a column was headed “The Rush for
the Klondike.”

“Why didn’t tha go theer?” demanded Tummas. He looked up from his
fragment and asked his question with a sudden reflectiveness, as though
a new and interesting aspect of things had presented itself to him.

“I had too much to do in New York,” said Tembarom.

Tummas silently regarded him a moment or so.

“It’s a pity tha didn’t,” he said. “Happen tha’d never ha’ coom back.”

Tembarom laughed the outright laugh.

“Thank you,” he answered.

Tummas was still thinking the matter over and was not disturbed.

“I was na thinkin’ o’ thee,” he said in an impersonal tone. “I was
thinkin’ o’ t’other chap. If tha’d gone i’stead o’ him, he’d ha’ been
here i’stead o’ thee. Eh, but it’s funny.” And he drew a deep breath
like a sigh having its birth in profundity of baffled thought.

Both he and his evident point of view were “funny” in the Lancashire
sense, which does not imply humor, but strangeness and the
unexplainable. Singular as the phrasing was, Tembarom knew what he
meant, and that he was thinking of the oddity of chance. Tummas had
obviously heard of “poor Jem” and had felt an interest in him.

“You’re talking about Jem Temple Barholm I guess,” he said. Perhaps
the interest he himself had felt in the tragic story gave his voice
a tone somewhat responsive to Tummas’s own mood, for Tummas, after
one more boring glance, let himself go. His interest in this special
subject was, it revealed itself, a sort of obsession. The history of
Jem Temple Barholm had been the one drama of his short life.

“Aye, I was thinkin’ o’ him,” he said. “I should na ha’ cared for the
Klondike so much but for him.”

“But he went away from England when you were a baby.”

“The last toime he coom to Temple Barholm wur when I wur just born.
Foak said he coom to ax owd Temple Barholm if he’d help him to pay his
debts, an’ the owd chap awmost kicked him out o’ doors. Mother had just
had me, an’ she was weak an’ poorly an’ sittin’ at the door wi’ me in
her arms, an’ he passed by an’ saw her. He stopped an’ axed her how she
was doin’. An when he was goin’ away, he gave her a gold sovereign, an’
he says, ‘Put it in the savin’s-bank for him, an’ keep it theer till
he’s a big lad an’ wants it.’ It’s been in the savin’s-bank ever sin’.
I’ve got a whole pound o’ ma own out at interest. There’s not many lads
ha’ got that.”

“He must have been a good-natured fellow,” commented Tembarom. “It was
darned bad luck him going to the Klondike.”

“It was good luck for thee,” said Tummas, with resentment.

“Was it?” was Tembarom’s unbiased reply. “Well, I guess it was, one way
or the other. I’m not kicking, anyhow.”

Tummas naturally did not know half he meant. He went on talking about
Jem Temple Barholm, and as he talked his cheeks flushed and his eyes
lighted.

“I would na spend that sovereign if I was starvin’. I’m going to leave
it to Ann Hutchinson in ma will when I dee. I’ve axed questions about
him reet and left ever sin’ I can remember, but theer’s nobody knows
much. Mother says he was fine an’ handsome, an’ gentry through an’
through. If he’d coom into the property, he’d ha’ coom to see me again.
I’ll lay a shillin’, because I’m a <DW36> an’ I cannot spend his
sovereign. If he’d coom back from the Klondike, happen he’d ha’ towd
me about it.” He pulled the atlas toward him, and laid his thin finger
on the rubbed spot. “He mun ha’ been killed somewheer about here,” he
sighed. “Somewheer here. Eh, it’s funny.”

Tembarom watched him. There was something that rather gave you the
“Willies” in the way this little <DW36> seemed to have taken to the
dead man and worried along all these years thinking him over and asking
questions and studying up the Klondike because he was killed there. It
was because he’d made a kind of story of it. He’d enjoyed it in the
way people enjoy stories in a newspaper. You always had to give ’em a
kind of story; you had to make a story even if you were telling about
a milk-wagon running away. In newspaper offices you heard that was the
secret of making good with what you wrote. Dish it up as if it was a
sort of story.

He not infrequently arrived at astute enough conclusions concerning
things. He had arrived at one now. Shut out even from the tame drama
of village life, Tummas, born with an abnormal desire for action and
a feverish curiosity, had hungered and thirsted for the story in any
form whatsoever. He caught at fragments of happenings, and  and
dissected them for the satisfying of unfed cravings. The vanished man
had been the one touch of pictorial form and color in his ten years of
existence. Young and handsome and of the gentry, unfavored by the owner
of the wealth which some day would be his own possession, stopping
“gentry-way” at a cottage door to speak good-naturedly to a pale young
mother, handing over the magnificence of a whole sovereign to be saved
for a new-born child, going away to vaguely understood disgrace,
leaving his own country to hide himself in distant lands, meeting death
amid snow and ice and surrounded by gold-mines, leaving his empty place
to be filled by a boot-black newsboy--true there was enough to lie
and think over and to try to follow with the help of maps and excited
questions.

“I wish I could ha’ seen him,” said Tummas. “I’d awmost gi’ my
sovereign to get a look at that picture in the gallery at Temple
Barholm.”

“What picture?” Tembarom asked. “Is there a picture of him there?”

“There is na one o’ him, but there’s one o’ a lad as deed two hundred
year’ ago as they say wur the spit an’ image on him when he wur a lad
hissen. One o’ the owd servants towel mother it wur theer.”

This was a natural stimulus to interest and curiosity.

“Which one is it? Jinks! I’d like to see it myself. Do you know which
one it is? There’s hundreds of them.”

“No, I dun not know,” was Tummas’s dispirited answer, “an’ neither does
mother. The woman as knew left when owd Temple Barholm deed.”

“Tummas,” broke in Mrs. Hibblethwaite from the other end of the room,
to which she had returned after taking Miss Alicia out to complain
about the copper in the “wash-’us’--” “Tummas, tha ’st been talkin’
like a magpie. Tha ’rt a lot too bold an’ ready wi’ tha tongue. The
gentry’s noan comin’ to see thee if tha clacks the heads off theer
showthers.”

“I’m afraid he always does talk more than is good for him,” said Miss
Alicia. “He looks quite feverish.”

“He has been talking to me about Jem Temple Barholm,” explained
Tembarom. “We’ve had a regular chin together. He thinks a heap of poor
Jem.”

Miss Alicia looked startled, and Mrs. Hibblethwaite was plainly
flustered tremendously. She quite lost her temper.

“Eh,” she exclaimed, “tha wants tha young yed knocked off, Tummas
Hibblethwaite. He’s fair daft about the young gentleman as--as was
killed. He axes questions mony a day till I’d give him the stick if he
was na a <DW36>. He moithers me to death.”

“I’ll bring you some of those New York papers to look at,” Tembarom
said to the boy as he went away.

He walked back through the village to Temple Barholm, holding Miss
Alicia’s elbow in light, affectionate guidance and support, a little
to her embarrassment and also a little to her delight. Until he had
taken her into the dining-room the night before she had never seen such
a thing done. There was no over-familiarity in the action. It merely
seemed somehow to suggest liking and a wish to take care of her.

“That little fellow in the village,” he said after a silence in which
it occurred to her that he seemed thoughtful, “what a little freak he
is! He’s got an idea that there’s a picture in the gallery that’s said
to look like Jem Temple Barholm when he was a boy. Have you ever heard
anything about it? He says a servant told his mother it was there.”

“Yes, there is one,” Miss Alicia answered. “I sometimes go and look
at it. But it makes me feel very sad. It is the handsome boy who was
a page in the court of Charles II. He died in his teens. His name was
Miles Hugo Charles James. Jem could see the likeness himself. Sometimes
for a little joke I used to call him Miles Hugo.”

“I believe I remember him,” said Tembarom. “I believe I asked Palford
his name. I must go and have a look at him again. He hadn’t much better
luck than the fellow that looked like him, dying as young as that.”


(To be continued)

[Illustration]




[Illustration: TOPICS OF THE TIME]


WAR AGAINST WAR

TACTICS THAT THE FRIENDS OF PEACE MAY LEARN FROM THE MILITARISTS

Through Matthew Arnold we have been made familiar with one of the
figures clearly limned by Clarendon. It is that of Falkland, whose
humane spirit and love of peace made the casting of his lot in the time
of the civil war in England seem peculiarly tragic. Often in the course
of that bitter and bloody conflict he was heard to “ingeminate” the
word “peace.”

A similar feeling of grief and frustration in the presence of war is
one of the distinguishing marks of our own day. The best and wisest in
the world hold peace congresses and conferences on arbitration (as they
are to do soon in St. Louis), and seem to gain painful inches only to
have all their efforts made apparently vain by some inrush of the war
spirit. The Hague Tribunal is founded and The Hague agreement solemnly
entered into, but that does not prevent one of the covenanting nations
from seizing another’s land by the sword. Projects for universal
arbitration are mooted, amid the applause of Christendom, and plans
for the judicial settlement of international disputes are ripening, at
the very time when tens of thousands of men are about to be killed in
battle.

So it is that peace seems to be to the civilized world only an
unattainable longing. We think of war to-day, in the Scripture phrase,
with groanings that cannot be uttered. Never so hated, it sometimes
appears as if it were never so fated.

It is well for peace-lovers now and then to put the case thus
strongly, in order that they may face the difficulty at its darkest.
The fact that the evil they struggle against is persistent is but one
argument more for their own persistence. Pacifists must be as ready
and resourceful as the militarists. If ever it is right to learn
from an enemy, it surely is in this instance. Something has been
gained in this way. The late William James, for example, contended
that we must admit that there are some good, human weapons in the
hands of the war party, and that the peace men must study, not only
how to appreciate them, but how to use them. Professor James would
have sought in peaceful pursuits the equivalents of the appeal which
war makes to certain manly qualities. Heroism in private life, in
scientific pursuits, in exploration, in reform--this is what he urged.
The patriotic impulse transmuted into great engineering works, vast
plans for sanitation, campaigns against disease and misery--that is
what peace can offer to ardent youth. All this is sound, and good as
far as it goes; but the question arises to-day whether there is not
need of something more positive and aggressive, whether the spirit of
militarism cannot be turned against itself; whether, in a word, there
should not be war against war.

The conduct of a military campaign calls for an enormous amount of
preparation and organization. Let the advocates of peace take this
to heart. They cannot win simply by wishing to win. It is for them,
too, to be far-sighted, to lay careful plans, to enlist every modern
method of working in unison to a definite end. War mobilizes men. Peace
must muster ideas, sentiments, influences. In the _Kriegspiel_ the
strategist seeks to mass his troops upon the enemy’s weakest point. The
tactics of peace should be similar. Argument and persuasion and appeal
should be made to converge upon the exposed flank of the militarists.
This may be found, at one moment, in the pressure of taxation, which
needlessly swollen armaments would make unbearable. At another time,
it may appear that the thing to hammer upon is the pressing need of
social reforms, even attention to which will be endangered if all the
available money and time are squandered upon preparing for a war that
may never come. Let peace, too, acquire a General Staff, whose duty
it shall be to survey the whole field, to work out fruitful campaigns,
to tell us where to strike and how, to lay down the principles of the
grand strategy to be followed.

Nor need individual effort be ruled out. Despite the large and
coördinated movements of soldiers in a modern battle, there yet remains
room for personal initiative and daring. The shining moment comes when
some one in the ranks or in command is called upon to risk all with
the possibility of gaining all. And there are still “forlorn hopes” to
be led. Why should not these methods and appeals of war be imitated
by those who are fighting for peace? They can point to many services
calling for volunteers. There is ridicule to be faced, unpopular
opinion to be stood up for calmly in the teeth of opposition and even
scorn, testimony to be borne, questions to be asked, protests to be
made. There is, in short, every opportunity to import from war the
heroic element and give it scope and effect in the propaganda of peace.
The very wrath of man can be made to praise the growth of civilization.

War against war can be made very concrete and practical. Committees
can be formed to watch the military authorities and Congress, and to
elicit an expression of opinion when it will be most useful. It is a
matter of frequent lamenting on the part of peace men in the House
of Representatives that their hands are so feebly held up by the
opponents of war. The other side is alert and active. When big-navy
or big-army bills are pending, the mail of congressmen is loaded with
requests--usually, of course, interested requests--to vote for them.
The lovers of peace, on the other hand, appear to be smitten with
writer’s cramp. They act as if they were indifferent. This state of
things should not be permitted to go on. There should be minute-men of
the cause all over the land ready to spring into action. That a sound
opinion of the country exists, only needing concerted effort to call
it forth, has been shown again and again. It was proved at the time
when President Taft’s treaties of universal arbitration were pending
in the Senate. In those days the desire of the best people of the
United States came to Washington like the sound of the voice of many
waters. Schools and colleges, chambers of commerce and churches, sent
in petition piled on petition, and remonstrance heaped on protest. One
of the senators who opposed ratification admitted to the President that
he had never had so formidable a pressure from his own State as on this
question.

That lesson should not be lost. By organization, by watchfulness, by
determination, the peace spirit of the land can be given much more
effective expression than it has yet had. The situation is not at all
one that justifies discouragement; it simply calls for fresh and more
intelligent action, with heightened resolution. If only the genius of a
Von Moltke could be devoted to organizing and directing the forces that
make against war, we might reasonably hope for a realization of the
poet’s vision of peace lying like level shafts of light across the land.


THE GREAT FLOODS IN THE MIDDLE WEST

WITH THE RENEWED SUGGESTION OF A WIDE-REACHING PROJECT OF
FLOOD-MITIGATION

One cannot read of the recent disastrous overflow of the rivers of
the Ohio Valley watershed without a sinking of the heart, to think
how near is happiness to grief. That thousands, apparently through no
fault of their own, should be overwhelmed by the relentless powers of
nature, takes us back to a pagan conception of the universe, until
we begin to sum up the unpagan-like solidarity in the sympathy of
mankind, the touch of human nature that makes the whole world kin.
Senator Root recently said that “the progress of civilization is marked
by the destruction of isolation,” meaning, of course, by the drawing
together of men through common ideas, interests, and even sorrows. It
is no perfunctory thought that out of such calamities come many of
the heroisms, the sacrifices, the lightning-like-flashes of spiritual
revelation that ennoble humanity.

With becoming awe at what seems to have been unpreventable, it is
sadly appropriate to inquire what might have been done in past years
to lessen the recurrent tragedy of the western floods. To be sure,
one cannot by a gesture bid the tempest stand, but nothing is more
demonstrable than that the greed and neglect of man have greatly
contributed to the destructiveness of floods. The devastation of
the ax leads direct to the devastation of the waters. The excessive
deforesting of Ohio and Indiana for a hundred years is no illusory or
negligible factor in the crisis of death and desolation that has fallen
upon those States.

In this magazine for August, 1912, in an article entitled “A Duty of
the South to Itself,” written apropos of the Mississippi floods of
last year, we renewed a suggestion which we first made in 1904 and
have since several times repeated, looking toward the mitigation of
the annual peril to the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. It presented
the urgent necessity of setting on foot a policy of coöperation among
the Eastern States to save from destruction the flood-restraining
upper reaches of the entire Appalachian range. As a matter of public
interest, this article was sent to all senators and members of
Congress, to the Southern and other newspapers, and to the governors
and Chambers of Commerce in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. Although
the suggestion was in the plainest conformity with scientific opinion,
it apparently fell upon deaf ears. The imagination of no governor
or legislator has been roused to the point of action. After we have
reckoned up the cost of the recent floods in lives and money, shall we
lie down again to pleasant dreams, oblivious of the fact that to sow
neglect is to reap calamity?


COMMON SENSE IN THE WHITE HOUSE

NON-PARTIZAN QUESTIONS ON WHICH PRESIDENT WILSON BEGINS WELL

He is a poor patriot who can wish a new administration anything but
success--at least in policies unrelated to party differences--and it
is creditable to the American people that the new President enters
upon his difficult task amid general good-will. His lack of previous
acquaintance with “the way the thing is done” in Washington, though
it excited the apprehension of some of his warmest friends, proves
to be a positive advantage. If precedents are broken they are not
his, and sometimes the breaking is done with a naïveté just this side
of innocence, as in the discountenancing of the time-honored but
expensive and meaningless inaugural ball. The President evidently
realizes his responsibilities and the conventional obstacles that must
be cleared out of his path if he is to accomplish much for the good of
the country. The idealism of his inaugural address, with its appeal for
the coöperation of “honest, patriotic, and forward-looking men,” is
already being supplemented by practical action so fraught with “saving
common sense” as to seem revolutionary.

Seen in the retrospect, what could be done more wise or simple than
the shunting of the office-seekers to the heads of departments?
What more useful or self-respecting than the announced policy of
disapproval of legislation carrying “riders”--of which, by the way,
a flagrant example is found in the Panama tolls exemption, to which
both the President and the Vice-President have announced their
opposition? What more direct or reassuring than the kindly words of
warning to Central American revolutionists? What more prompt than the
announcement through the Secretary of State that the United States
cannot ignore its responsibilities toward Cuba? or, again, through
the Postmaster-General, that there is to be no wholesale looting of
the offices, with the object-lesson of the retention or promotion of
several public servants of marked efficiency? or, still again, the
immediate action through the Secretary of War and the Attorney-General
toward the safeguarding of the public interests in Niagara Falls? What
more prudent than the disentanglement of our relations in the Far East
from financial loans to China? These events, occurring in the first
fortnight of the administration, display a point of view of government
as an instrument of public service which, though it may do violence to
traditions, makes thoughtful citizens exclaim, “Why not?”

It is not to be expected that we are to have another Era of Good
Feeling, or that, when questions of party policy arise, Mr. Wilson’s
opponents will yield their convictions. He cannot fail to meet with
many a storm, within and without party lines; but he will do much
to advance his ideas if he shall preserve the poise of direct and
unsophisticated common sense which he has shown at the beginning.




LAWLESSNESS IN ART

THE EXPLOITATION OF WHIMSICALITY AS A PRINCIPLE

The recent admirably arranged exhibition in New York made by the
Association of American Painters and Sculptors, and including a full
representation of the work of the Cubists and the Post-Impressionists,
has proved in one respect a veritable success, namely, in point of
attendance. If not, as one critic puts it, a _succès de scandale_, it
has been a _succès de curiosité_. It contained pieces of historic work
of great beauty by eminent painters of France and America--Ingres,
Daumier, Puvis de Chavannes, Childe Hassam, Alden Weir, and others,
but no great point was made of their inclusion and they were not the
attraction for the crowds. What drew the curious were certain widely
talked-of eccentricities, whimsicalities, distortions, crudities,
puerilities, and madnesses, by which, while a few were nonplussed, most
of the spectators were vastly amused.

At the spring exhibition of the National Academy of Design, which
followed, one unaccustomed visitor was heard to say to another, “Oh,
come on, Bill, there’s nothing to laugh at here.” It will be impossible
to repeat the Parisian sensation another season; and, happily, the
eccentricities have served to awaken a new interest in genuine types of
art, both in and out of their own exhibition, and have furnished that
element of contrast which is useful if not essential in the formation
of a robust taste.

Meanwhile, for the benefit of the young and unthinking, it is well
to keep on inculcating the fact that while art is not a formula,
nor even a school, it is subject, whether in painting, sculpture,
poetry, architecture, or music, to certain general principles tending
to harmony, clarity, beauty, and the stimulus of the imagination.
A fundamental error is that its laws are hampering, the fact being
that it is only as one learns them that he can acquire the freedom
of individual expression. The exploitation of a theory of discords,
puzzles, uglinesses, and clinical details, is to art what anarchy is
to society, and the practitioners need not so much a critic as an
alienist. It is said that a well-known Russian musician has begun a
new composition with (so to speak) a keynote of discord involving the
entire musical scale, as a child might lay his hand sidewise upon all
the notes of the piano it can cover. A counterpart of this could have
been found in more than one ward of the recent exhibition. One can
fancy the laughter over the absinthe in many a Latin Quarter café of
those who are not mentally awry, but are merely imitators, poseurs, or
charlatans, at learning that their monstrosities, which have exhausted
the interest of Paris, have been seriously considered by some American
observers. They have only been trying to see how far they could go in
fooling the public. But he laughs best who laughs last, and we believe
that Americans have too much sense of humor not to see the point of
this colossal joke of eccentricity, or to endure its repetition.


NIAGARA AGAIN IN DANGER

THE COMMERCIALIZING OF GREAT SCENERY

One need not be afraid of exaggerating the peril to the beauty of
Niagara in allowing its waters to be used for commercial purposes when
a man of such moderation and public esteem as Senator Burton of Ohio
says, as he did in the Senate on the fourth of March:

    I want to say, Mr. President, that in all my experience in either
    house of Congress I have never known such an aggregation of persons
    to come here seeking to rob and to despoil as those who have come
    here after this power. If there is any one who wishes them to
    succeed he must answer to the country for it. They not only desired
    the water above the Falls, but they now desire to withdraw the
    waters below in the rapids, which are second in beauty only to the
    Falls themselves. Persons have come here under the guise of public
    spirit, or even of philanthropy, when it was but a thin veil to
    conceal a scheme to get possession of the waters of the Niagara
    River. We ask that for a year this law be continued to stay the
    hand of the despoiler.

The law referred to was the Burton Act under which for three years the
assaults of the commercial interests have been stayed. Even with a
concession to the companies of 250,000 horse-power instead of 160,000,
Mr. Burton, owing to a filibuster by Senator O’Gorman, was not able to
secure the desired extension, and the Falls seem to be at the mercy
of those who are interested in turning great scenery into dividends.
We are much mistaken if the new administration does not find some way
of thwarting this form of vandalism. Meanwhile it is well that public
opinion should be directed upon senators and representatives.

Of the damage that has already been done Senator Burton says: “...
The ruthless hand of the promoter has been laid upon this river; and
thus the cataract has been diminished in size and the scenic effect
has been impaired not only by diminishing the flow and the quantity of
the water, but by structures on the banks.” A question of jurisdiction
has been raised as between the State of New York and the National
Government, though the river as a boundary line has long been the
subject of an international treaty. The fact that the taking of water
for commercial purposes whether on the Canadian or the American side
has virtually the same effect on the river makes joint action of the
two countries imperative.

The willingness to destroy or impair great scenery by commercializing
it, whether at Niagara or in the Yosemite National Park, makes it
necessary that the fight for our natural treasures should be kept up
with vigilance. Happily, the good judgment of the late Secretary of the
Interior, Warren L. Fisher, has blocked the attempt of the city of San
Francisco to destroy the wonderful Hetch Hetchy valley by converting
it into a reservoir of water for drinking and power purposes,--which
confessedly can be had elsewhere in the Sierra “by paying for it,”--the
Secretary wisely holding that such a diversion of the valley from
the original purpose of its reservation is too important a matter to
be determined by any power but Congress. Three Secretaries of the
Interior--Hitchcock, Ballinger, and Fisher--are thus on record against
the ruthless project of the city authorities, and we believe it will
not be more successful with Secretary Lane. Should its advocates go
to Congress, it must be remembered that the same principle underlies
the defense of Niagara and of Hetch Hetchy--the conservation of great
scenery for the ultimate benefit of mankind.




[Illustration: OPEN LETTERS]


ON THE COLLAPSE OF THE INTERNATIONAL CLUB

    _My dear MacWhittlesey_:

No, I have not become a pessimist. If I ever was an optimist, I am
certainly one still. But to my mind the only use of being an optimist
about the universe is that one can the more boldly be a pessimist about
the world. That you may see I can discern the good signals as well as
the bad, I will tell you three recent things with which I am thoroughly
delighted. With brazen audacity, I will even put first the one topic
you know all about and I know nothing about. I am thoroughly delighted
with the election of the American President, with the election of the
French President, and with the victory in the Balkans. You may think
these three things have nothing to do with one another. Wait till I
have done explaining things; it will not last long or hurt much.

[Illustration]

Don’t imagine I have any newspaper illusions about any of the three.
I am a journalist and never believe the newspapers. I know there will
be a lot of merely fashionable fuss about the American and the French
presidents; I know we shall hear how fond Mr. Wilson is of canaries
or how interested M. Poincaré is in yachting. It is truer still, of
course, about the Balkan War. I have been anti-Turk through times when
nearly every one else was pro-Turk. I may therefore be entitled to say
that much of the turnover of sympathy is pure snobbery. Silly fashions
always follow the track of any victory. After 1870 our regiments
adopted Prussian spikes on their helmets, as though the Prussians had
fought with their heads, like bisons. Doubtless there will be a crop
of the same sort of follies after the Balkan War. We shall see the
altering of inscriptions, titles, and advertisements. Turkish baths may
be called Bulgarian baths. The sweetmeat called Turkish Delight may
probably be called Servian Delight. A Turkey carpet, very much kicked
about and discolored, may be sold again as a Montenegro carpet. These
cheap changes may easily occur, and in the same way the international
world (which consists of hotels instead of homes) may easily make the
same mistake about the French and American presidents. Thousands of
Englishmen will read the American affair as a mere question of Colonel
Roosevelt. Thousands will read of the Poincaré affair as a mere echo of
the Dreyfus case. Thousands have never thought of the near East except
as the sultan and Constantinople. For such masses of men Roosevelt is
the only American there ever was. For them the Dreyfus question was
the only French question there ever was. They had never heard that the
Servians had a country, let alone an army.

The fact in which the three events meet is this: they are all realities
on the spot. Most Englishmen have never heard of Mr. Woodrow Wilson;
so they know that Americans really trust him. Most Englishmen have
never heard of M. Poincaré; so they know that Frenchmen know he is a
Frenchman. Neither is a member of the International Club, the members
of which advertise one another.

Do you know what I mean? Do you not know that International Club? Like
many other secret societies, it is unaware of its own existence. But
there is a sort of ring of celebrities known all over the world, and
more important all over the world than any of them are at home. Even
when they do not know one another, they talk about one another. Let me
see if I can find a name that typifies them. Well, I have no thought
of disrespect to the memory of a man I liked and admired personally,
and who died with a tragic dignity fitted for one who had always longed
to be a link between your country and mine; but I think the late W. T.
Stead was the unconscious secretary of that unconscious International
Club. The other members, roughly speaking, were Colonel Roosevelt, the
German Emperor, Tolstoy, Cecil Rhodes, and somebody like Mr. Edison.
In an interview with Roosevelt, Rhodes would be the most important man
in England, the Kaiser (or Tolstoy) the most important man in Europe.
In an interview with Rhodes, the Kaiser would be important, Mr. Edison
more important, Mr. Stead rather important; Bulgaria and M. Poincaré
not important at all. Interview the Kaiser, and you will probably find
the only interviewer he remembers is Stead. Could Rhodes have been
taken to Russia you would probably find the only Russian he had really
heard of was Tolstoy. For the rest, the Nobel prize, the Harmsworth
newspaper group, the Marconi inventions, the attempts at a universal
language--all these strike the note. I forgot the British Empire, on
which the sun never sets, a horribly unpoetical state of things. Think
of having a native land without any sunsets!

This International Club is breaking up. Men are more and more trusting
men they know to have been honest in a small way; men faithful in one
city to rule over many cities. Imperialists like Roosevelt and Rhodes
stood for unrealities. Please observe that I do not for one moment say
insincerities. Tolstoy was splendidly sincere; but the cult of him was
an unreality to this extent, that it left large masses in America and
England with a general idea that he was the only Christian in the east
of Europe. Since then we have seen Christianity on the march as it was
in the Middle Ages, a thing of thousands, ready for pilgrimage and
crusade. I don’t ask you to like it if you don’t like it. I only say
it’s jolly different from Tolstoy, and equally sincere. It is a reality
on the spot.

Well, just as Russia and the Slavs meant for us Tolstoy, so France
and French literature meant for many of us Zola. Poincaré’s election
represents a France that hates Zola more than the Balkans hate the
Turk. The old definite, domestic, patriotic Frenchman has come
to the top. I can’t help fancying that with you the old serious,
self-governing, idealistic, and really republican American has come to
the top, too. But there I speak of things I know not, and await your
next letter with alarm.

    Faithfully yours,
    _G. K. Chesterton_.


ON HOW TO GET SOMETHING BY GIVING SOMETHING UP

_From a Victim of the Comparative-Statistics Habit_

    _My dear Harold_:

Can a man go in for tobacco and do his duty by the United States Navy?
Life seems to be getting more difficult every day. I can no longer
enjoy my after-dinner cigar as I used to. The trouble is not physical.
My nerves are in good condition. My heart behaves quite as it should,
occasionally rising into my mouth with fear, sometimes sinking toward
my diaphragm with anticipation, but for the most part going about
its work without attracting notice. I sleep as soundly as I ever
did. The quality of the tobacco they put into cigars nowadays may be
deteriorating, but I am easy to please. No; the trouble is with my
conscience. I simply find it impossible to smoke without feeling that I
am recreant to my social obligations.

[Illustration]

Don’t imagine I am referring to my family. It is old-fashioned
practice to show how the money disbursed upon tobacco by the head of a
household might buy a home in the suburbs and endowment insurance for
the children. To-day the sociological implications of a box of cigars
are much more serious. To-day no man of conscience can light his pipe
without inflicting injury on the United States Navy. All the comfort
goes out of a cigar when one reflects upon what one might be doing for
the encouragement of education among the Southern mountaineers. Now and
then I like the feel of a cigarette between my lips; but can a man go
in for cigarettes as long as the country stands in such bitter need of
a comprehensive system of internal waterways?

I imagine I am not making myself quite clear. What I mean is that there
are so many good causes abroad nowadays, and the advocates of each and
every cause have no trouble in showing how easily they might manage
to attain the specific thing they are after if only you would consent
to sacrifice something that your own heart is rather set upon. Just
imagine if all the money that is burned up in tobacco were devoted to
the expansion of the fleet! Can there be any doubt that within a year
we should take first place among the naval powers? Provided, that is,
the English and the Germans and the Japanese did not give up smoking
at the same time that we did. It may seem far-fetched to argue any
close connection between a ten-cent cigar and a ten-million-dollar
dreadnought. That is what I have been trying to say to myself. But I
cannot help feeling that if the day of Armageddon does arrive, and the
Japanese fleet comes gliding out of Magdalena Bay, and the star of
our national destiny goes down into defeat, I shall never be able to
forgive myself for the cigar I insisted on lighting every night after
the children had been put to bed. As it is, I suffer by anticipation.
The Japanese fleet keeps popping out at me from my tobacco-jar.

You will say I am oversensitive to outside suggestion. Perhaps I am.
The fact remains that the naval situation in the Pacific is what it
is. And there are so many other national obligations. We do need a
fifteen-foot channel from the lakes to the gulf. We do need free
schools for the poor whites in the Tennessee mountains. We do need
millions to rebuild our railroads. All these demands press upon me as I
sit facing my wife across the table and timidly light my cigar. Yes, I
smoke; but I look at my wife and wonder how she can live in unconscious
proximity to such startling moral degradation.

Perhaps I am oversensitive, as you say, but these suggestions from
the outside keep pouring in on one in an irresistible stream from
many different directions. You simply cannot escape the logic of the
comparative mathematicians. A naval officer of high rank shows that
because of the wanton destruction of bird-life in the United States
our farmers lose $800,000,000 a year from the ravages of insect pests;
“so that good bird laws would enable us to sustain an enormous navy.”
Not so big a navy as this distinguished officer imagines, of course,
because the internal-waterways people will want a great deal of that
bird money, and the Southern education people will ask for a handsome
share. It does not matter that personally I have never slain birds
either for their flesh or their plumage, but I share in the indirect
responsibility. Instead of idling in my chair with a cigar, I ought to
be writing to my congressman, demanding the enactment of adequate bird
laws in the name of our naval supremacy in the Pacific and the defense
of the Panama Canal.

Such is the established mode of procedure to-day. If one is planning
the expenditure of a very large amount of public money, let him point
out how easily the money may be saved or earned by somebody else. If I
have seemed to harp too much on the man with the cigar, it is because
he is the classic type of the victim in the case. Just consider what a
trifling favor one is asked for--merely to give up a nasty, unsanitary
habit, and not only be happier oneself, but bring happiness to the
big-navy man, the internal-waterways man, the Association for the
Encouragement of Grand Opera among the Masses, the Society for the
Pensioning of Decayed Journalists, the Society for Damming the Arctic
Current on the Banks of Newfoundland, the Society for the Construction
of Municipal Airships. These enthusiastic gentry find no habit too hard
for the other man to break, no economy too difficult for the other man
to adopt, and no remedy too complicated for the other man to put into
effect. Smith is amazed that any one could refuse him $200,000,000 for
the navy.

“Why, look at your birds and your insect-ridden crops!”

“You grudge me the money for a hundred-foot automobile highway from
New York to San Francisco?” says Jones. “Why, consider your wasteful
steam-engines, with their ridiculous loss of ninety-seven per cent. of
the latent coal energy!”

“Double the efficiency of your steam-engines, and you have enough for a
dozen automobile highways.”

You see, that is all that stands in the way, Harold, a mere trifle like
doubling the efficiency of the steam-engine.

“I want $5,000,000 to build a monument twelve hundred feet high to
Captain John Smith and Pocahontas,” says Robinson. “You can’t spare
the money? Sir, take the revolving storm-doors in New York City
alone, which now represent so much wasted human energy, and harness
these doors to a series of storage batteries, and you will have your
$5,000,000 back in the course of a year.”

Will some one kindly run out and electrify all the revolving doors in
New York City?

I have a confession to make. My heart goes out to the shiftless
American farmer. He is responsible for almost as many good causes dying
of lack of nutrition as is the habitual smoker.

If the American farmer would plow deep instead of merely scratching
the soil, we could blow Japan out of the water. If he would study the
chemistry of soils, we could give free railroad rides to every man and
woman in the United States between the ages of thirty and forty-five.
If we would build decent roads, we could pay off the national debt.

In other words, if the American farmer could be persuaded to make his
land produce, say, only ten times its present yield, the millennium
would be here in a jump.

I sometimes think that to the truly social-minded person the most
immoral spectacle in life is an unscientific American farmer smoking a
five-cent cigar in a buggy mired up to the axle on a country road.

    Yours,
    _Simeon Strunsky_.




[Illustration: IN LIGHTER VEIN]


OLD DADDY DO-FUNNY’S WISDOM JINGLES

BY RUTH MC ENERY STUART


THE MOSQUITO

    Wid so much Christian blood in ’is veins,
      You’d think Brer ’Skitty would take some pains
    To love ’is neighbor an’ show good-will,
    But he’s p’izenin’ an’ backbitin’ still.
      An’ he ain’t by ’isself in dat, in dat--
      No, he ain’t by ’isself in dat.


THE RAT

    Brer Rat in de corn-bin overfed
    An’ underworked, an’ now he’s dead;
    He craved to live lak a bloated chief,
    An’ now he ain’t nothin’ but a ol’ dead thief.
      An’ he ain’t by ’isself in dat, in dat--
      An’ he ain’t by ’isself in dat.


[Illustration: Drawn by Oliver Herford]


MAY, FROM MY WINDOW

BY FRANCES ROSE BENÉT

    A sparkling morning after weeks of rain;
      All fresh and fragrant glows my world, new-made.
    Bluebirds sing ballads; sparrows chirp refrain;
      Old Mother Spider, peering from the shade,
    With gastronomic joy surveys a fly,
    Her table-cloth hung on a bush to dry.

    A little lizard creeps from out his crack
      To bask in sunshine till he’s done quite brown;
    A butterfly starts on her breathless track,
      Her errand gay, to lure a lad from town;
    Even the garden’s foe, the slimy snail,
    Leaves on the walk an iridescent trail.

    Fat Doctor Robin now comes hurrying by,
      His neat attire touched up with claret vest.
    “Important case!” I see it in his eye.
      “No time to sing, with babies in that nest.”
    Quick! little doctor! _Will_ he catch the train?
      Sudden he stops; my heart jumps to my throat.
    “Thunder and Mars!” I hear him say quite plain,
      “I’ve left my wallet in my other coat!”


[Illustration: NOISE EXTRACTED WITHOUT PAIN

~Waiter~ (to single gentleman):--“Excuse me, sir, but that lady
and gentleman wish me to recommend to you one of those new Maxim soup
silencers!”]


LIFE’S ASPIRATION

(A more-than-symbolic sonnet for a picture of the same sort by George
Wolfe Plank)

BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER

    Urged by the peacocks of our vanity,
      Up the frail tree of life we climb and grope;
      About our heads the tragic branches <DW72>,
      Heavy with time and xanthic mystery.

    Beyond, the brooding bird of fate we see
      Viewing the world with eyes forever ope’,
      And lured by all the phantom fruits of hope,
      We cling in anguish to this fragile tree.

    O lowering skies! O clouds, that point in scorn,
      With the lean fingers of a wrinkled wrath!
      O dedal moon, that rears its ghostly horn!

    O hidden stars, that tread the cosmic path!
      Shall we attain the glory of the morn,
      Or sink into some awful aftermath!

[Illustration]


THE NEW ART

(With apologies to Rossetti)

BY CORINNE ROCKWELL SWAIN

    The cubist damosel leaned out
      From a neurotic heaven;
    Her face was stranger than the dreams
      Of topers filled at even:
    She had four facets to her nose,
      And the eyes in her head were seven.

    Her robe, concrete from clasp to hem,
      Six angles did adorn,
    With a white parallelogram
      For trimming neatly worn:
    Her hair rose up in pentagons,
      Like yellow ears of corn.

    It was a post-impression house
      That she was standing on;
    While maudlin quadrilateral clouds
      O’er mystic gardens spun,
    And three denatured greyhounds ran
      Circlewise round the sun.

    “I wish that they could draw,” she moaned,
      “Nor throw such fits as this;
    Souza-Cardosa, and the five
      Who love weird symphonies:
    Fiebig, Picabia, Picasso,
      D’Erlanger, and Matisse.”

    She smiled, though her amorphous mouth
      Was vague beyond her ears;
    Then cast her beveled arms along
      The rhomboid barriers,
    And shedding asymmetric plinths,
      She wept. (I heard her tears.)


LIMERICKS

TEXT AND PICTURES BY OLIVER HERFORD

[Illustration]


THE SOMNOLENT BIVALVE

    Said the oyster: “To-morrow’s May-day;
    But don’t call me early, I pray.
            Just tuck me instead
            In my snug oyster-bed,
    And there till September I’ll stay.”

[Illustration]


THE OUNCE OF DETENTION

    Once a pound-keeper chanced to impound
    An ounce that was straying around.
          The pound-keeper straight
          Was fined for false weight,
    Since he’d only once ounce in his pound.


THE DE VINNE PRESS, NEW YORK




FOOTNOTES:

[1] At a meeting held at Chickering Hall on the evening of November
12, 1891, to sympathize with Governor Nichols’s war on the Louisiana
lottery system, the late Abram S. Hewitt was one of the speakers. In
the course of his remarks in denunciation of the lottery gambling in
Louisiana, Mr. Hewitt said:

    “I can’t find words strong enough to express my feelings regarding
    this brazen fraud.

    “This scheme of plunder develops a weak spot in the government of
    the United States, which I would not mention were it not for the
    importance of the issue. We all know that a single State frequently
    determines the result of a presidential election. The State of
    Louisiana has determined the result of a presidential election. The
    vote of that State was offered to me for money, and I declined to
    buy it. But the vote of that State was sold for money!”

[2] Read before the joint meeting of The American Academy of Arts and
Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, December 13,
1912. Now first published.

[3] I doubt if “Winchester,” previously known as “Rienzi,” could have
outwalked Sherman’s “Sam,” a terror to staff-officers, General Meade’s
“Baldy,” or McClellan’s “Black Dan,” for it was asserted they could all
walk five miles an hour.

[4] ~The Century~ for July, 1882.

[5] ~The Century~ for July, 1887.

[6] Federal Reporter, Vol. 110, page 660.

[7] Since this was written a device accomplishing the same purpose has
been placed in public service.

[8] Reprinted from “Scribner’s Monthly” (now ~The Century~) for March,
1874.






End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Century Illustrated Monthly
Magazine (May 1913), by Various

*** 