The Complete Project Gutenberg Writings of Charles Dudley Warner (2024)

Produced by David Widger

By CHARLES D. WARNER

CONTENTS:

Baddeck and That Sort of Thing
My Summer In A Garden
Calvin A Study Of Character
Backlog Studies
In The Wilderness
How I Killed A Bear
Lost In The Woods
A Fight With A Trout
A-Hunting Of The Deer
A Character Study (Old Phelps)
Camping Out
A Wilderness Romance
What Some People Call Pleasure
How Spring Came In New England
Captain John Smith
The Story Of Pocahontas
Saunterings
Being A Boy
On Horseback

As We Were Saying (Essays)
Rose And Chrysanthemum
The Red Bonnet
The Loss In Civilization
Social Screaming
Does Refinement Kill Individuality?
The Directoire Gown
The Mystery Of The Sex
The Clothes Of Fiction
The Broad A
Chewing Gum
Women In Congress
Shall Women Propose?
Frocks And The Stage
Altruism
Social Clearing-House
Dinner-Table Talk
Naturalization
Art Of Governing
Love Of Display
Value Of The Commonplace
The Burden Of Christmas
The Responsibility Of Writers
The Cap And Gown
A Tendency Of The Age
A Locoed Novelist

As We Go (Essays)
Our President
The Newspaper-Made Man
Interesting Girls
Give The Men A Chance
The Advent Of Candor
The American Man
The Electric Way
Can A Husband Open His Wife's Letters?
A Leisure Class
Weather And Character
Born With An "Ego"
Juventus Mundi
A Beautiful Old Age
The Attraction Of The Repulsive
Giving As A Luxury
Climate And Happiness
The New Feminine Reserve
Repose In Activity
Women—Ideal And Real
The Art Of Idleness
Is There Any Conversation
The Tall Girl
The Deadly Diary
The Whistling Girl
Born Old And Rich
The "Old Soldier"
The Island Of Bimini
June

Nine Short Essays
A Night In The Garden Of The Tuileries
Truthfulness
The Pursuit Of Happiness
Literature And The Stage
The Life-Saving And Life Prolonging Art
"H.H." In Southern California
Simplicity
The English Volunteers During The Late Invasion
Nathan Hale

Fashions In Literature
The American Newspaper
Certain Diversities Of American Life
The Pilgrim, And The American Of Today—[1892]
Some Causes Of The Prevailing Discontent
The Education Of The Negro
The Indeterminate Sentence
Literary Copyright
The Relation Of Literature To Life
Biographical Sketch By Thomas R. Lounsbury.
The Relation Of Literature To Life
"Equality"
What Is Your Culture To Me?
Modern Fiction
Thoughts Suggested By Mr. Froude's "Progress"
England
The Novel And The Common School
The People For Whom Shakespeare Wrote

Trilogy
A Little Journey In The World
The Golden House
That Fortune

Their Pilgrimage
Washington Irving

By Charles Dudley Warner

PREFACE

TO JOSEPH H. TWICHELL

It would be unfair to hold you responsible for these light sketchesof a summer trip, which are now gathered into this little volume inresponse to the usual demand in such cases; yet you cannot escapealtogether. For it was you who first taught me to say the nameBaddeck; it was you who showed me its position on the map, and aseductive letter from a home missionary on Cape Breton Island, inrelation to the abundance of trout and salmon in his field of labor.That missionary, you may remember, we never found, nor did we see histackle; but I have no reason to believe that he does not enjoy goodfishing in the right season. You understand the duties of a homemissionary much better than I do, and you know whether he would belikely to let a couple of strangers into the best part of hispreserve.

But I am free to admit that after our expedition was started youspeedily relieved yourself of all responsibility for it, and turnedit over to your comrade with a profound geographical indifference;you would as readily have gone to Baddeck by Nova Zembla as by NovaScotia. The flight over the latter island was, you knew, however, nopart of our original plan, and you were not obliged to take anyinterest in it. You know that our design was to slip rapidly down,by the back way of Northumberland Sound, to the Bras d'Or, and spenda week fishing there; and that the greater part of this journey hereimperfectly described is not really ours, but was put upon us by fateand by the peculiar arrangement of provincial travel.

It would have been easy after our return to have made up fromlibraries a most engaging description of the Provinces, mixing itwith historical, legendary, botanical, geographical, and ethnologicalinformation, and seasoning it with adventure from your glowingimagination. But it seemed to me that it would be a more honestcontribution if our account contained only what we saw, in our rapidtravel; for I have a theory that any addition to the great body ofprint, however insignificant it may be, has a value in proportion toits originality and individuality,—however slight either is,—andvery little value if it is a compilation of the observations ofothers. In this case I know how slight the value is; and I can onlyhope that as the trip was very entertaining to us, the record of itmay not be wholly unentertaining to those of like tastes.

Of one thing, my dear friend, I am certain: if the readers of thislittle journey could have during its persual the companionship thatthe writer had when it was made, they would think it altogetherdelightful. There is no pleasure comparable to that of going aboutthe world, in pleasant weather, with a good comrade, if the mind isdistracted neither by care, nor ambition, nor the greed of gain. Thedelight there is in seeing things, without any hope of pecuniaryprofit from them! We certainly enjoyed that inward peace which thephilosopher associates with the absence of desire for money. For, asPlato says in the Phaedo, "whence come wars and fightings andfactions? whence but from the body and the lusts of the body? Forwars are occasioned by the love of money." So also are the majorityof the anxieties of life. We left these behind when we went into theProvinces with no design of acquiring anything there. I hope it maybe my fortune to travel further with you in this fair world, undersimilar circ*mstances.

NOOK FARM, HARTFORD, April 10, 1874.

C. D. W.

BADDECK AND THAT SORT OF THING

"Ay, now I am in Arden: the more fool I; when I was at home,
I was in a better place; but travellers must be content."
—TOUCHSTONE.

Two comrades and travelers, who sought a better country than theUnited States in the month of August, found themselves oneevening in apparent possession of the ancient town of Boston.

The shops were closed at early candle-light; the fashionableinhabitants had retired into the country, or into thesecond-story-back, of their princely residences, and even an air oftender gloom settled upon the Common. The streets were almost empty,and one passed into the burnt district, where the scarred ruins andthe uplifting piles of new brick and stone spread abroad under theflooding light of a full moon like another Pompeii, without anyincrease in his feeling of tranquil seclusion. Even the news-officeshad put up their shutters, and a confiding stranger could nowhere buya guide-book to help his wandering feet about the reposeful city, orto show him how to get out of it. There was, to be sure, a cheerfultinkle of horse-car bells in the air, and in the creeping vehicleswhich created this levity of sound were a few lonesome passengers ontheir way to Scollay's Square; but the two travelers, not havingwell-regulated minds, had no desire to go there. What would havebecome of Boston if the great fire had reached this sacred point ofpilgrimage no merely human mind can imagine. Without it, I supposethe horse-cars would go continually round and round, never stopping,until the cars fell away piecemeal on the track, and the horsescollapsed into a mere mass of bones and harness, and thebrown-covered books from the Public Library, in the hands of thefading virgins who carried them, had accumulated fines to anincalculable amount.

Boston, notwithstanding its partial destruction by fire, is still agood place to start from. When one meditates an excursion into anunknown and perhaps perilous land, where the flag will not protecthim and the greenback will only partially support him, he likes tosteady and tranquilize his mind by a peaceful halt and a serenestart. So we—for the intelligent reader has already identified uswith the two travelers resolved to spend the last night, beforebeginning our journey, in the quiet of a Boston hotel. Some peoplego into the country for quiet: we knew better. The country is noplace for sleep. The general absence of sound which prevails atnight is only a sort of background which brings out more vividly thespecial and unexpected disturbances which are suddenly sprung uponthe restless listener. There are a thousand pokerish noises that noone can account for, which excite the nerves to acute watchfulness.

It is still early, and one is beginning to be lulled by the frogs andthe crickets, when the faint rattle of a drum is heard,—just a fewpreliminary taps. But the soul takes alarm, and well it may, for aroll follows, and then a rub-a-dub-dub, and the farmer's boy who ishandling the sticks and pounding the distended skin in a neighboringhorse-shed begins to pour out his patriotism in that unendingrepetition of rub-a-dub-dub which is supposed to represent love ofcountry in the young. When the boy is tired out and quits the field,the faithful watch-dog opens out upon the stilly night. He is theguardian of his master's slumbers. The howls of the faithfulcreature are answered by barks and yelps from all the farmhouses fora mile around, and exceedingly poor barking it usually is, until allthe serenity of the night is torn to shreds. This is, however, onlythe opening of the orchestra. The co*cks wake up if there is thefaintest moonshine and begin an antiphonal service between responsivebarn-yards. It is not the clear clarion of chanticleer that is heardin the morn of English poetry, but a harsh chorus of cracked voices,hoarse and abortive attempts, squawks of young experimenters, andsome indescribable thing besides, for I believe even the hens crow inthese days. Distracting as all this is, however, happy is the manwho does not hear a goat lamenting in the night. The goat is themost exasperating of the animal creation. He cries like a desertedbaby, but he does it without any regularity. One can accustomhimself to any expression of suffering that is regular. Theannoyance of the goat is in the dreadful waiting for the uncertainsound of the next wavering bleat. It is the fearful expectation ofthat, mingled with the faint hope that the last was the last, thataggravates the tossing listener until he has murder in his heart.He longs for daylight, hoping that the voices of the night will thencease, and that sleep will come with the blessed morning. But he hasforgotten the birds, who at the first streak of gray in the east haveassembled in the trees near his chamber-window, and keep up for anhour the most rasping dissonance,—an orchestra in which each artistis tuning his instrument, setting it in a different key and to play adifferent tune: each bird recalls a different tune, and none sings"Annie Laurie,"—to pervert Bayard Taylor's song.

Give us the quiet of a city on the night before a journey. As wemounted skyward in our hotel, and went to bed in a serene altitude,we congratulated ourselves upon a reposeful night. It began well.But as we sank into the first doze, we were startled by a suddencrash. Was it an earthquake, or another fire? Were the neighboringbuildings all tumbling in upon us, or had a bomb fallen into theneighboring crockery-store? It was the suddenness of the onset thatstartled us, for we soon perceived that it began with the clash ofcymbals, the pounding of drums, and the blaring of dreadful brass.It was somebody's idea of music. It opened without warning. The mencomposing the band of brass must have stolen silently into the alleyabout the sleeping hotel, and burst into the clamor of a rattlingquickstep, on purpose. The horrible sound thus suddenly let loosehad no chance of escape; it bounded back from wall to wall, like theclapping of boards in a tunnel, rattling windows and stunning allcars, in a vain attempt to get out over the roofs. But such musicdoes not go up. What could have been the intention of this assaultwe could not conjecture. It was a time of profound peace through thecountry; we had ordered no spontaneous serenade, if it was aserenade. Perhaps the Boston bands have that habit of going into analley and disciplining their nerves by letting out a tune too big forthe alley, and taking the shock of its reverberation. It may be wellenough for the band, but many a poor sinner in the hotel that nightmust have thought the judgment day had sprung upon him. Perhaps theband had some remorse, for by and by it leaked out of the alley, inhumble, apologetic retreat, as if somebody had thrown something at itfrom the sixth-story window, softly breathing as it retired the notesof "Fair Harvard."

The band had scarcely departed for some other haunt of slumber andweariness, when the notes of singing floated up that prolific alley,like the sweet tenor voice of one bewailing the prohibitory movement;and for an hour or more a succession of young bacchanals, who wereevidently wandering about in search of the Maine Law, lifted up theirvoices in song. Boston seems to be full of good singers; but theywill ruin their voices by this night exercise, and so the city willcease to be attractive to travelers who would like to sleep there.But this entertainment did not last the night out.

It stopped just before the hotel porter began to come around to rousethe travelers who had said the night before that they wanted to beawakened. In all well-regulated hotels this process begins at twoo'clock and keeps up till seven. If the porter is at all faithful,he wakes up everybody in the house; if he is a shirk, he only rousesthe wrong people. We treated the pounding of the porter on our doorwith silent contempt. At the next door he had better luck. Pound,pound. An angry voice, "What do you want?"

"Time to take the train, sir."

"Not going to take any train."

"Ain't your name Smith?"

"Yes."

"Well, Smith"—

"I left no order to be called." (Indistinct grumbling from Smith'sroom.)

Porter is heard shuffling slowly off down the passage. In a littlewhile he returns to Smith's door, evidently not satisfied in hismind. Rap, rap, rap!

"Well, what now?"

"What's your initials? A. T.; clear out!"

And the porter shambles away again in his slippers, grumblingsomething about a mistake. The idea of waking a man up in the middleof the night to ask him his "initials" was ridiculous enough tobanish sleep for another hour. A person named Smith, when hetravels, should leave his initials outside the door with his boots.

Refreshed by this reposeful night, and eager to exchange thestagnation of the shore for the tumult of the ocean, we departed nextmorning for Baddeck by the most direct route. This we found, bydiligent study of fascinating prospectuses of travel, to be by theboats of the International Steamship Company; and when, at eighto'clock in the morning, we stepped aboard one of them from CommercialWharf, we felt that half our journey and the most perplexing part ofit was accomplished. We had put ourselves upon a great line oftravel, and had only to resign ourselves to its flow in order toreach the desired haven. The agent at the wharf assured us that itwas not necessary to buy through tickets to Baddeck,—he spoke of itas if it were as easy a place to find as Swampscott,—it was aconspicuous name on the cards of the company, we should go right onfrom St. John without difficulty. The easy familiarity of thisofficial with Baddeck, in short, made us ashamed to exhibit anyanxiety about its situation or the means of approach to it.Subsequent experience led us to believe that the only man in theworld, out of Baddeck, who knew anything about it lives in Boston,and sells tickets to it, or rather towards it.

There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning ofit, when the traveler is settled simply as to his destination, andcommits himself to his unknown fate and all the anticipations ofadventure before him. We experienced this pleasure as we ascended tothe deck of the steamboat and snuffed the fresh air of Boston Harbor.What a beautiful harbor it is, everybody says, with its irregularlyindented shores and its islands. Being strangers, we want to knowthe names of the islands, and to have Fort Warren, which has anational reputation, pointed out. As usual on a steamboat, no one iscertain about the names, and the little geographical knowledge wehave is soon hopelessly confused. We make out South Boston veryplainly: a tourist is looking at its warehouses through hisopera-glass, and telling his boy about a recent fire there. We find outafterwards that it was East Boston. We pass to the stern of the boatfor a last look at Boston itself; and while there we have thepleasure of showing inquirers the Monument and the State House. Wedo this with easy familiarity; but where there are so many tallfactory chimneys, it is not so easy to point out the Monument as onemay think.

The day is simply delicious, when we get away from the unozoned airof the land. The sky is cloudless, and the water sparkles like thetop of a glass of champagne. We intend by and by to sit down andlook at it for half a day, basking in the sunshine and pleasingourselves with the shifting and dancing of the waves. Now we arebusy running about from side to side to see the islands, Governor's,Castle, Long, Deer, and the others. When, at length, we find FortWarren, it is not nearly so grim and gloomy as we had expected, andis rather a pleasure-place than a prison in appearance. We areconscious, however, of a patriotic emotion as we pass its green turfand peeping guns. Leaving on our right Lovell's Island and the Greatand Outer Brewster, we stand away north along the jaggedMassachusetts shore. These outer islands look cold and wind-swepteven in summer, and have a hardness of outline which is very far fromthe aspect of summer isles in summer seas. They are too low and barefor beauty, and all the coast is of the most retiring and humbledescription. Nature makes some compensation for this lowness by aneccentricity of indentation which looks very picturesque on the map,and sometimes striking, as where Lynn stretches out a slender armwith knobby Nahant at the end, like a New Zealand war club. We sitand watch this shore as we glide by with a placid delight. Itscurves and low promontories are getting to be speckled with villagesand dwellings, like the shores of the Bay of Naples; we see the whitespires, the summer cottages of wealth, the brown farmhouses with anoccasional orchard, the gleam of a white beach, and now and then theflag of some many-piazzaed hotel. The sunlight is the glory of itall; it must have quite another attraction—that of melancholy—undera gray sky and with a lead-colored water foreground.

There was not much on the steamboat to distract our attention fromthe study of physical geography. All the fashionable travelers hadgone on the previous boat or were waiting for the next one. Thepassengers were mostly people who belonged in the Provinces and hadthe listless provincial air, with a Boston commercial traveler ortwo, and a few gentlemen from the republic of Ireland, dressed intheir uncomfortable Sunday clothes. If any accident should happen tothe boat, it was doubtful if there were persons on board who coulddraw up and pass the proper resolutions of thanks to the officers. Iheard one of these Irish gentlemen, whose satin vest was insufficientto repress the mountainous protuberance of his shirt-bosom,enlightening an admiring friend as to his idiosyncrasies. Itappeared that he was that sort of a man that, if a man wantedanything of him, he had only to speak for it "wunst;" and that one ofhis peculiarities was an instant response of the deltoid muscle tothe brain, though he did not express it in that language. He went onto explain to his auditor that he was so constituted physically thatwhenever he saw a fight, no matter whose property it was, he lost allcontrol of himself. This sort of confidence poured out to a singlefriend, in a retired place on the guard of the boat, in an unexcitedtone, was evidence of the man's simplicity and sincerity. The veryact of traveling, I have noticed, seems to open a man's heart, sothat he will impart to a chance acquaintance his losses, hisdiseases, his table preferences, his disappointments in love or inpolitics, and his most secret hopes. One sees everywhere thisbeautiful human trait, this craving for sympathy. There was the oldlady, in the antique bonnet and plain cotton gloves, who got aboardthe express train at a way-station on the Connecticut River Road.She wanted to go, let us say, to Peak's Four Corners. It seemed thatthe train did not usually stop there, but it appeared afterwards thatthe obliging conductor had told her to get aboard and he would lether off at Peak's. When she stepped into the car, in a flusteredcondition, carrying her large bandbox, she began to ask all thepassengers, in turn, if this was the right train, and if it stoppedat Peak's. The information she received was various, but the weightof it was discouraging, and some of the passengers urged her to getoff without delay, before the train should start. The poor woman gotoff, and pretty soon came back again, sent by the conductor; but hermind was not settled, for she repeated her questions to every personwho passed her seat, and their answers still more discomposed her."Sit perfectly still," said the conductor, when he came by. "Youmust get out and wait for a way train," said the passengers, whoknew. In this confusion, the train moved off, just as the old ladyhad about made up her mind to quit the car, when her distraction wascompleted by the discovery that her hair trunk was not on board. Shesaw it standing on the open platform, as we passed, and after onelook of terror, and a dash at the window, she subsided into her seat,grasping her bandbox, with a vacant look of utter despair. Fate nowseemed to have done its worst, and she was resigned to it. I am sureit was no mere curiosity, but a desire to be of service, that led meto approach her and say, "Madam, where are you going?"

"The Lord only knows," was the utterly candid response; but then,forgetting everything in her last misfortune and impelled to a burstof confidence, she began to tell me her troubles. She informed methat her youngest daughter was about to be married, and that all herwedding-clothes and all her summer clothes were in that trunk; and asshe said this she gave a glance out of the window as if she hoped itmight be following her. What would become of them all now, all brandnew, she did n't know, nor what would become of her or her daughter.And then she told me, article by article and piece by piece, all thatthat trunk contained, the very names of which had an unfamiliar soundin a railway-car, and how many sets and pairs there were of each. Itseemed to be a relief to the old lady to make public this cataloguewhich filled all her mind; and there was a pathos in the revelationthat I cannot convey in words. And though I am compelled, by way ofillustration, to give this incident, no bribery or torture shall everextract from me a statement of the contents of that hair trunk.

We were now passing Nahant, and we should have seen Longfellow'scottage and the waves beating on the rocks before it, if we had beennear enough. As it was, we could only faintly distinguish theheadland and note the white beach of Lynn. The fact is, that intravel one is almost as much dependent upon imagination and memory ashe is at home. Somehow, we seldom get near enough to anything. Theinterest of all this coast which we had come to inspect was mainlyliterary and historical. And no country is of much interest untillegends and poetry have draped it in hues that mere nature cannotproduce. We looked at Nahant for Longfellow's sake; we strained oureyes to make out Marblehead on account of Whittier's ballad; wescrutinized the entrance to Salem Harbor because a genius once sat inits decaying custom-house and made of it a throne of the imagination.Upon this low shore line, which lies blinking in the midday sun, thewaves of history have beaten for two centuries and a half, andromance has had time to grow there. Out of any of these coves mighthave sailed Sir Patrick Spens "to Noroway, to Noroway,"

"They hadna sailed upon the sea
A day but barely three,

Till loud and boisterous grew the wind,
And gurly grew the sea."

The sea was anything but gurly now; it lay idle and shining in anAugust holiday. It seemed as if we could sit all day and watch thesuggestive shore and dream about it. But we could not. No man, andfew women, can sit all day on those little round penitential stoolsthat the company provide for the discomfort of their passengers.There is no scenery in the world that can be enjoyed from one ofthose stools. And when the traveler is at sea, with the land failingaway in his horizon, and has to create his own scenery by an effortof the imagination, these stools are no assistance to him. Theimagination, when one is sitting, will not work unless the back issupported. Besides, it began to be cold; notwithstanding the shiny,specious appearance of things, it was cold, except in a shelterednook or two where the sun beat. This was nothing to be complained ofby persons who had left the parching land in order to get cool. Theyknew that there would be a wind and a draught everywhere, and thatthey would be occupied nearly all the time in moving the littlestools about to get out of the wind, or out of the sun, or out ofsomething that is inherent in a steamboat. Most people enjoy ridingon a steamboat, shaking and trembling and chow-chowing along inpleasant weather out of sight of land; and they do not feel anyennui, as may be inferred from the intense excitement which seizesthem when a poor porpoise leaps from the water half a mile away."Did you see the porpoise?" makes conversation for an hour. On oursteamboat there was a man who said he saw a whale, saw him just asplain, off to the east, come up to blow; appeared to be a young one.I wonder where all these men come from who always see a whale. Inever was on a sea-steamer yet that there was not one of these men.

We sailed from Boston Harbor straight for Cape Ann, and passed closeby the twin lighthouses of Thacher, so near that we could see thelanterns and the stone gardens, and the young barbarians of Thacherall at play; and then we bore away, straight over the tracklessAtlantic, across that part of the map where the title and thepublisher's name are usually printed, for the foreign city of St.John. It was after we passed these lighthouses that we did n't seethe whale, and began to regret the hard fate that took us away from aview of the Isles of Shoals. I am not tempted to introduce them intothis sketch, much as its surface needs their romantic color, fortruth is stronger in me than the love of giving a deceitful pleasure.There will be nothing in this record that we did not see, or mightnot have seen. For instance, it might not be wrong to describe acoast, a town, or an island that we passed while we were performingour morning toilets in our staterooms. The traveler owes a duty tohis readers, and if he is now and then too weary or too indifferentto go out from the cabin to survey a prosperous village where alanding is made, he has no right to cause the reader to suffer by hisindolence. He should describe the village.

I had intended to describe the Maine coast, which is as fascinatingon the map as that of Norway. We had all the feelings appropriate tonearness to it, but we couldn't see it. Before we came abreast of itnight had settled down, and there was around us only a gray andmelancholy waste of salt water. To be sure it was a lovely night,with a young moon in its sky,

"I saw the new moon late yestreen
Wi' the auld moon in her arms,"

and we kept an anxious lookout for the Maine hills that push soboldly down into the sea. At length we saw them,—faint, duskyshadows in the horizon, looming up in an ashy color and with a mostpoetical light. We made out clearly Mt. Desert, and felt repaid forour journey by the sight of this famous island, even at such adistance. I pointed out the hills to the man at the wheel, and askedif we should go any nearer to Mt. Desert.

"Them!" said he, with the merited contempt which officials in thiscountry have for inquisitive travelers,—"them's Camden Hills. Youwon't see Mt. Desert till midnight, and then you won't."

One always likes to weave in a little romance with summer travel on asteamboat; and we came aboard this one with the purpose and thelanguage to do so. But there was an absolute want of material, thatwould hardly be credited if we went into details. The first meetingof the passengers at the dinner-table revealed it. There is a kindof female plainness which is pathetic, and many persons can truly saythat to them it is homelike; and there are vulgarities of manner thatare interesting; and there are peculiarities, pleasant or thereverse, which attract one's attention: but there was absolutelynothing of this sort on our boat. The female passengers were allneutrals, incapable, I should say, of making any impression whatevereven under the most favorable circ*mstances. They were probablywomen of the Provinces, and took their neutral tint from the foggyland they inhabit, which is neither a republic nor a monarchy, butmerely a languid expectation of something undefined. My comrade wasdisposed to resent the dearth of beauty, not only on this vessel butthroughout the Provinces generally,—a resentment that could be shownto be unjust, for this was evidently not the season for beauty inthese lands, and it was probably a bad year for it. Nor should anAmerican of the United States be forward to set up his standard oftaste in such matters; neither in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, norCape Breton have I heard the inhabitants complain of the plainness ofthe women.

On such a night two lovers might have been seen, but not on our boat,leaning over the taffrail,—if that is the name of the fence aroundthe cabin-deck, looking at the moon in the western sky and the longtrack of light in the steamer's wake with unutterable tenderness.For the sea was perfectly smooth, so smooth as not to interfere withthe most perfect tenderness of feeling; and the vessel forged aheadunder the stars of the soft night with an adventurous freedom thatalmost concealed the commercial nature of her mission. It seemed—this voyaging through the sparkling water, under the scintillatingheavens, this resolute pushing into the opening splendors of night—like a pleasure trip. "It is the witching hour of half past ten,"said my comrade, "let us turn in." (The reader will notice theconsideration for her feelings which has omitted the usualdescription of "a sunset at sea.")

When we looked from our state-room window in the morning we saw land.We were passing within a stone's throw of a pale-green and rathercold-looking coast, with few trees or other evidences of fertilesoil. Upon going out I found that we were in the harbor of Eastport.I found also the usual tourist who had been up, shivering in hiswinter overcoat, since four o'clock. He described to me themagnificent sunrise, and the lifting of the fog from islands andcapes, in language that made me rejoice that he had seen it. He knewall about the harbor. That wooden town at the foot of it, with thewhite spire, was Lubec; that wooden town we were approaching wasEastport. The long island stretching clear across the harbor wasCampobello. We had been obliged to go round it, a dozen miles out ofour way, to get in, because the tide was in such a stage that wecould not enter by the Lubec Channel. We had been obliged to enteran American harbor by British waters.

We approached Eastport with a great deal of curiosity andconsiderable respect. It had been one of the cities of theimagination. Lying in the far east of our great territory, amilitary and even a sort of naval station, a conspicuous name on themap, prominent in boundary disputes and in war operations, frequentin telegraphic dispatches,—we had imagined it a solid city, withsome Oriental, if decayed, peculiarity, a port of trade and commerce.The tourist informed me that Eastport looked very well at a distance,with the sun shining on its white houses. When we landed at itswooden dock we saw that it consisted of a few piles of lumber, asprinkling of small cheap houses along a sidehill, a big hotel with aflag-staff, and a very peaceful looking arsenal. It is doubtless avery enterprising and deserving city, but its aspect that morning wasthat of cheapness, newness, and stagnation, with no compensatingpicturesqueness. White paint always looks chilly under a gray skyand on naked hills. Even in hot August the place seemed bleak. Thetourist, who went ashore with a view to breakfast, said that itwould be a good place to stay in and go a-fishing and picnicking onCampobello Island. It has another advantage for the wicked overother Maine towns. Owing to the contiguity of British territory, theMaine Law is constantly evaded, in spirit. The thirsty citizen orsailor has only to step into a boat and give it a shove or two acrossthe narrow stream that separates the United States from Deer Islandand land, when he can ruin his breath, and return before he ismissed.

This might be a cause of war with, England, but it is not the mostserious grievance here. The possession by the British of the islandof Campobello is an insufferable menace and impertinence. I writewith the full knowledge of what war is. We ought to instantlydislodge the British from Campobello. It entirely shuts up andcommands our harbor, one of our chief Eastern harbors and warstations, where we keep a flag and cannon and some soldiers, andwhere the customs officers look out for smuggling. There is no wayto get into our own harbor, except in favorable conditions of thetide, without begging the courtesy of a passage through Britishwaters. Why is England permitted to stretch along down our coast inthis straggling and inquisitive manner? She might almost as well ownLong Island. It was impossible to prevent our cheeks mantling withshame as we thought of this, and saw ourselves, free Americancitizens, land-locked by alien soil in our own harbor.

We ought to have war, if war is necessary to possess Campobello andDeer Islands; or else we ought to give the British Eastport. I amnot sure but the latter would be the better course.

With this war spirit in our hearts, we sailed away into the Britishwaters of the Bay of Fundy, but keeping all the morning so close tothe New Brunswick shore that we could see there was nothing on it;that is, nothing that would make one wish to land. And yet the bestpart of going to sea is keeping close to the shore, however tame itmay be, if the weather is pleasant. A pretty bay now and then, arocky cove with scant foliage, a lighthouse, a rude cabin, a levelland, monotonous and without noble forests,—this was New Brunswickas we coasted along it under the most favorable circ*mstances. Butwe were advancing into the Bay of Fundy; and my comrade, who had beenbrought up on its high tides in the district school, was on thelookout for this phenomenon. The very name of Fundy is stimulatingto the imagination, amid the geographical wastes of youth, and theyoung fancy reaches out to its tides with an enthusiasm that is givenonly to Fingal's Cave and other pictorial wonders of the text-book.I am sure the district schools would become what they are not now, ifthe geographers would make the other parts of the globe as attractiveas the sonorous Bay of Fundy. The recitation about that is always aneasy one; there is a lusty pleasure in the mere shouting out of thename, as if the speaking it were an innocent sort of swearing. Fromthe Bay of Fundy the rivers run uphill half the time, and the tidesare from forty to ninety feet high. For myself, I confess that, inmy imagination, I used to see the tides of this bay go stalking intothe land like gigantic waterspouts; or, when I was better instructed,I could see them advancing on the coast like a solid wall of masonryeighty feet high. "Where," we said, as we came easily, and neitheruphill nor downhill, into the pleasant harbor of St. John,—-"whereare the tides of our youth?"

They were probably out, for when we came to the land we walked outupon the foot of a sloping platform that ran into the water by theside of the piles of the dock, which stood up naked and blackenedhigh in the air. It is not the purpose of this paper to describe St.John, nor to dwell upon its picturesque situation. As one approachesit from the harbor it gives a promise which its rather shabbystreets, decaying houses, and steep plank sidewalks do not keep. Acity set on a hill, with flags flying from a roof here and there, anda few shining spires and walls glistening in the sun, always lookswell at a distance. St. John is extravagant in the matter offlagstaffs; almost every well-to-do citizen seems to have one on hispremises, as a sort of vent for his loyalty, I presume. It is a goodfashion, at any rate, and its more general adoption by us would addto the gayety of our cities when we celebrate the birthday of thePresident. St. John is built on a steep sidehill, from which itwould be in danger of sliding off, if its houses were not mortisedinto the solid rock. This makes the house-foundations secure, butthe labor of blasting out streets is considerable. We note thesethings complacently as we toil in the sun up the hill to the VictoriaHotel, which stands well up on the backbone of the ridge, and fromthe upper windows of which we have a fine view of the harbor, and ofthe hill opposite, above Carleton, where there is the brokenlytruncated ruin of a round stone tower. This tower was one of thefirst things that caught our eyes as we entered the harbor. It gavean antique picturesqueness to the landscape which it entirely wantedwithout this. Round stone towers are not so common in this worldthat we can afford to be indifferent to them. This is called aMartello tower, but I could not learn who built it. I could notunderstand the indifference, almost amounting to contempt, of thecitizens of St. John in regard to this their only piece of curiousantiquity. "It is nothing but the ruins of an old fort," they said;"you can see it as well from here as by going there." It was,however, the one thing at St. John I was determined to see. But wenever got any nearer to it than the ferry-landing. Want of time andthe vis inertia of the place were against us. And now, as I think ofthat tower and its perhaps mysterious origin, I have a longing for itthat the possession of nothing else in the Provinces could satisfy.

But it must not be forgotten that we were on our way to Baddeck; thatthe whole purpose of the journey was to reach Baddeck; that St. Johnwas only an incident in the trip; that any information about St.John, which is here thrown in or mercifully withheld, is entirelygratuitous, and is not taken into account in the price the readerpays for this volume. But if any one wants to know what sort of aplace St. John is, we can tell him: it is the sort of a place that ifyou get into it after eight o'clock on Wednesday morning, you cannotget out of it in any direction until Thursday morning at eighto'clock, unless you want to smuggle goods on the night train toBangor. It was eleven o'clock Wednesday forenoon when we arrived atSt. John. The Intercolonial railway train had gone to Shediac; ithad gone also on its roundabout Moncton, Missaquat River, Truro,Stewiack, and Shubenacadie way to Halifax; the boat had gone to DigbyGut and Annapolis to catch the train that way for Halifax; the boathad gone up the river to Frederick, the capital. We could go to noneof these places till the next day. We had no desire to go toFrederick, but we made the fact that we were cut off from it anaddition to our injury. The people of St. John have thispeculiarity: they never start to go anywhere except early in themorning.

The reader to whom time is nothing does not yet appreciate theannoyance of our situation. Our time was strictly limited. Theactive world is so constituted that it could not spare us more thantwo weeks. We must reach Baddeck Saturday night or never. To gohome without seeing Baddeck was simply intolerable. Had we not toldeverybody that we were going to Baddeck? Now, if we had gone toShediac in the train that left St. John that morning, we should havetaken the steamboat that would have carried us to Port Hawkesbury,whence a stage connected with a steamboat on the Bras d'Or, which(with all this profusion of relative pronouns) would land us atBaddeck on Friday. How many times had we been over this route on themap and the prospectus of travel! And now, what a delusion itseemed! There would not another boat leave Shediac on this routetill the following Tuesday,—quite too late for our purpose. Thereader sees where we were, and will be prepared, if he has a map (andany feelings), to appreciate the masterly strategy that followed.

II

During the pilgrimage everything does not suit the tastes of thepilgrim.—TURKISH PROVERB.

One seeking Baddeck, as a possession, would not like to be detained aprisoner even in Eden,—much less in St. John, which is unlike Edenin several important respects. The tree of knowledge does not growthere, for one thing; at least St. John's ignorance of Baddeckamounts to a feature. This encountered us everywhere. So dense wasthis ignorance, that we, whose only knowledge of the desired placewas obtained from the prospectus of travel, came to regard ourselvesas missionaries of geographical information in this dark provincialcity.

The clerk at the Victoria was not unwilling to help us on ourjourney, but if he could have had his way, we would have gone to aplace on Prince Edward Island which used to be called Bedeque, but isnow named Summerside, in the hope of attracting summer visitors. Asto Cape Breton, he said the agent of the Intercolonial could tell usall about that, and put us on the route. We repaired to the agent.The kindness of this person dwells in our memory. He entered at onceinto our longings and perplexities. He produced his maps andtime-tables, and showed us clearly what we already knew. The PortHawkesbury steamboat from Shediac for that week had gone, to be sure,but we could take one of another line which would leave us at Pictou,whence we could take another across to Port Hood, on Cape Breton.This looked fair, until we showed the agent that there was no steamerto Port Hood.

"Ah, then you can go another way. You can take the Intercolonialrailway round to Pictou, catch the steamer for Port Hawkesbury,connect with the steamer on the Bras d'Or, and you are all right."

So it would seem. It was a most obliging agent; and it took us halfan hour to convince him that the train would reach Pictou half a daytoo late for the steamer, that no other boat would leave Pictou forCape Breton that week, and that even if we could reach the Bras d'Or,we should have no means of crossing it, except by swimming. Theperplexed agent thereupon referred us to Mr. Brown, a shipper on thewharf, who knew all about Cape Breton, and could tell us exactly howto get there. It is needless to say that a weight was taken off ourminds. We pinned our faith to Brown, and sought him in hiswarehouse. Brown was a prompt business man, and a traveler, andwould know every route and every conveyance from Nova Scotia to CapeBreton.

Mr. Brown was not in. He never is in. His store is a rustywarehouse, low and musty, piled full of boxes of soap and candles anddried fish, with a little glass cubby in one corner, where a thinclerk sits at a high desk, like a spider in his web. Perhaps he is aspider, for the cubby is swarming with flies, whose hum is the onlynoise of traffic; the glass of the window-sash has not been washedsince it was put in apparently. The clerk is not writing, and hasevidently no other use for his steel pen than spearing flies. Brownis out, says this young votary of commerce, and will not be in tillhalf past five. We remark upon the fact that nobody ever is "in"these dingy warehouses, wonder when the business is done, and go outinto the street to wait for Brown.

In front of the store is a dray, its horse fast-asleep, and waitingfor the revival of commerce. The travelers note that the dray is ofa peculiar construction, the body being dropped down from the axlesso as nearly to touch the ground,—a great convenience in loading andunloading; they propose to introduce it into their native land. Thedray is probably waiting for the tide to come in. In the deep sliplie a dozen helpless vessels, coasting schooners mostly, tipped ontheir beam ends in the mud, or propped up by side-pieces as if theywere built for land as well as for water. At the end of the wharf isa long English steamboat unloading railroad iron, which will returnto the Clyde full of Nova Scotia coal. We sit down on the dock,where the fresh sea-breeze comes up the harbor, watch the lazilyswinging crane on the vessel, and meditate upon the greatness ofEngland and the peacefulness of the drowsy after noon. One's feelingof rest is never complete—unless he can see somebody else at work,—but the labor must be without haste, as it is in the Provinces.

While waiting for Brown, we had leisure to explore the shops ofKing's Street, and to climb up to the grand triumphal arch whichstands on top of the hill and guards the entrance to King's Square.

Of the shops for dry-goods I have nothing to say, for they tempt theunwary American to violate the revenue laws of his country; but hemay safely go into the book-shops. The literature which is displayedin the windows and on the counters has lost that freshness which itonce may have had, and is, in fact, if one must use the term,fly-specked, like the cakes in the grocery windows on the side streets.There are old illustrated newspapers from the States, cheap novelsfrom the same, and the flashy covers of the London and Edinburghsixpenny editions. But this is the dull season for literature, wereflect.

It will always be matter of regret to us that we climbed up to thetriumphal arch, which appeared so noble in the distance, with thetrees behind it. For when we reached it, we found that it was builtof wood, painted and sanded, and in a shocking state of decay; andthe grove to which it admitted us was only a scant assemblage ofsickly locust-trees, which seemed to be tired of battling with theunfavorable climate, and had, in fact, already retired from thebusiness of ornamental shade trees. Adjoining this square is anancient cemetery, the surface of which has decayed in sympathy withthe mouldering remains it covers, and is quite a model in thisrespect. I have called this cemetery ancient, but it may not be so,for its air of decay is thoroughly modern, and neglect, and notyears, appears to have made it the melancholy place of repose it is.Whether it is the fashionable and favorite resort of the dead of thecity we did not learn, but there were some old men sitting in itsdamp shades, and the nurses appeared to make it a rendezvous fortheir baby-carriages,—a cheerful place to bring up children in, andto familiarize their infant minds with the fleeting nature ofprovincial life. The park and burying-ground, it is scarcelynecessary to say, added greatly to the feeling of repose which stoleover us on this sunny day. And they made us long for Brown and hisinformation about Baddeck.

But Mr. Brown, when found, did not know as much as the agent. He hadbeen in Nova Scotia; he had never been in Cape Breton; but hepresumed we would find no difficulty in reaching Baddeck by so andso, and so and so. We consumed valuable time in convincing Brownthat his directions to us were impracticable and valueless, and thenhe referred us to Mr. Cope. An interview with Mr. Cope discouragedus; we found that we were imparting everywhere more geographicalinformation than we were receiving, and as our own stock was small,we concluded that we should be unable to enlighten all theinhabitants of St. John upon the subject of Baddeck before we ranout. Returning to the hotel, and taking our destiny into our ownhands, we resolved upon a bold stroke.

But to return for a moment to Brown. I feel that Brown has been letoff too easily in the above paragraph. His conduct, to say thetruth, was not such as we expected of a man in whom we had put ourentire faith for half a day,—a long while to trust anybody in thesetimes,—a man whom we had exalted as an encyclopedia of information,and idealized in every way. A man of wealth and liberal views andcourtly manners we had decided Brown would be. Perhaps he had asuburban villa on the heights over-looking Kennebeckasis Bay, and,recognizing us as brothers in a common interest in Baddeck,not-withstanding our different nationality, would insist upon takingus to his house, to sip provincial tea with Mrs. Brown and VictoriaLouise, his daughter. When, therefore, Mr. Brown whisked into hisdingy office, and, but for our importunity, would have paid no moreattention to us than to up-country customers without credit, and whenhe proved to be willingly, it seemed to us, ignorant of Baddeck, ourfeelings received a great shock. It is incomprehensible that a manin the position of Brown with so many boxes of soap and candles todispose of—should be so ignorant of a neighboring province. We hadheard of the cordial unity of the Provinces in the New Dominion.Heaven help it, if it depends upon such fellows as Brown! Of course,his directing us to Cope was a mere fetch. For as we have intimated,it would have taken us longer to have given Cope an idea of Baddeck,than it did to enlighten Brown. But we had no bitter feelings aboutCope, for we never had reposed confidence in him.

Our plan of campaign was briefly this: To take the steamboat at eighto'clock, Thursday morning, for Digby Gut and Annapolis; thence to goby rail through the poetical Acadia down to Halifax; to turn northand east by rail from Halifax to New Glasgow, and from thence to pushon by stage to the Gut of Canso. This would carry us over the entirelength of Nova Scotia, and, with good luck, land us on Cape BretonIsland Saturday morning. When we should set foot on that island, wetrusted that we should be able to make our way to Baddeck, bywalking, swimming, or riding, whichever sort of locomotion should bemost popular in that province. Our imaginations were kindled byreading that the "most superb line of stages on the continent" ranfrom New Glasgow to the Gut of Canso. If the reader perfectlyunderstands this programme, he has the advantage of the twotravelers at the time they made it.

It was a gray morning when we embarked from St. John, and in fact alittle drizzle of rain veiled the Martello tower, and checked, likethe cross-strokes of a line engraving, the hill on which it stands.The miscellaneous shining of such a harbor appears best in a goldenhaze, or in the mist of a morning like this. We had expected days offog in this region; but the fog seemed to have gone out with the hightides of the geography. And it is simple justice to thesepossessions of her Majesty, to say that in our two weeks'acquaintance of them they enjoyed as delicious weather as ever fallson sea and shore, with the exception of this day when we crossed theBay of Fundy. And this day was only one of those cool interludes oflow color, which an artist would be thankful to introduce among agroup of brilliant pictures. Such a day rests the traveler, who isoverstimulated by shifting scenes played upon by the dazzling sun.So the cool gray clouds spread a grateful umbrella above us as we ranacross the Bay of Fundy, sighted the headlands of the Gut of Digby,and entered into the Annapolis Basin, and into the region of aromantic history. The white houses of Digby, scattered over thedowns like a flock of washed sheep, had a somewhat chilly aspect, itis true, and made us long for the sun on them. But as I think of itnow, I prefer to have the town and the pretty hillsides that standabout the basin in the light we saw them; and especially do I like torecall the high wooden pier at Digby, deserted by the tide and soblown by the wind that the passengers who came out on it, with theirtossing drapery, brought to mind the windy Dutch harbors thatBackhuysen painted. We landed a priest here, and it was a pleasureto see him as he walked along the high pier, his broad hat flapping,and the wind blowing his long skirts away from his ecclesiasticallegs.

It was one of the coincidences of life, for which no one can account,that when we descended upon these coasts, the Governor-General of theDominion was abroad in his Provinces. There was an air ofexpectation of him everywhere, and of preparation for his coming; hislordship was the subject of conversation on the Digby boat, hismovements were chronicled in the newspapers, and the gracious bearingof the Governor and Lady Dufferin at the civic receptions, balls, andpicnics was recorded with loyal satisfaction; even a literary flavorwas given to the provincial journals by quotations from hislordship's condescension to letters in the "High Latitudes." It wasnot without pain, however, that even in this un-American region wediscovered the old Adam of journalism in the disposition of thenewspapers of St. John toward sarcasm touching the well-meantattempts to entertain the Governor and his lady in the provincialtown of Halifax,—a disposition to turn, in short, upon thedemonstrations of loyal worship the faint light of ridicule. Therewere those upon the boat who were journeying to Halifax to take partin the civic ball about to be given to their excellencies, and as wewere going in the same direction, we shared in the feeling ofsatisfaction which proximity to the Great often excites.

We had other if not deeper causes of satisfaction. We were sailingalong the gracefully moulded and tree-covered hills of the AnnapolisBasin, and up the mildly picturesque river of that name, and we wereabout to enter what the provincials all enthusiastically call theGarden of Nova Scotia. This favored vale, skirted by low ranges ofhills on either hand, and watered most of the way by the AnnapolisRiver, extends from the mouth of the latter to the town of Windsor onthe river Avon. We expected to see something like the fertilevalleys of the Connecticut or the Mohawk. We should also passthrough those meadows on the Basin of Minas which Mr. Longfellow hasmade more sadly poetical than any other spot on the WesternContinent. It is,—this valley of the Annapolis,—in the belief ofprovincials, the most beautiful and blooming place in the world, witha soil and climate kind to the husbandman; a land of fair meadows,orchards, and vines. It was doubtless our own fault that this landdid not look to us like a garden, as it does to the inhabitants ofNova Scotia; and it was not until we had traveled over the rest ofthe country, that we saw the appropriateness of the designation. Theexplanation is, that not so much is required of a garden here as insome other parts of the world. Excellent apples, none finer, areexported from this valley to England, and the quality of the potatoesis said to ap-proach an ideal perfection here. I should think thatoats would ripen well also in a good year, and grass, for those whocare for it, may be satisfactory. I should judge that the otherproducts of this garden are fish and building-stone. But weanticipate. And have we forgotten the "murmuring pines and thehemlocks"? Nobody, I suppose, ever travels here without believingthat he sees these trees of the imagination, so forcibly has the poetprojected them upon the uni-versal consciousness. But we were unableto see them, on this route.

It would be a brutal thing for us to take seats in the railway trainat Annapolis, and leave the ancient town, with its modern houses andremains of old fortifications, without a thought of the romantichistory which saturates the region. There is not much in the smart,new restaurant, where a tidy waiting-maid skillfully depreciates ourcurrency in exchange for bread and cheese and ale, to recall theearly drama of the French discovery and settlement. For it is to theFrench that we owe the poetical interest that still invests, like agarment, all these islands and bays, just as it is to the Spaniardsthat we owe the romance of the Florida coast. Every spot on thiscontinent that either of these races has touched has a color that iswanting in the prosaic settlements of the English.

Without the historical light of French adventure upon this town andbasin of Annapolis, or Port Royal, as they were first named, Iconfess that I should have no longing to stay here for a week;notwithstanding the guide-book distinctly says that this harbor has"a striking resemblance to the beautiful Bay of Naples." I am notoffended at this remark, for it is the one always made about aharbor, and I am sure the passing traveler can stand it, if the Bayof Naples can. And yet this tranquil basin must have seemed a havenof peace to the first discoverers.

It was on a lovely summer day in 1604, that the Sieur de Monts andhis comrades, Champlain and the Baron de Poutrincourt, beating aboutthe shores of Nova Scotia, were invited by the rocky gateway of thePort Royal Basin. They entered the small inlet, says Mr. Parkman,when suddenly the narrow strait dilated into a broad and tranquilbasin, compassed with sunny hills, wrapped with woodland verdure andalive with waterfalls. Poutrincourt was delighted with the scene,and would fain remove thither from France with his family. SincePoutrincourt's day, the hills have been somewhat denuded of trees,and the waterfalls are not now in sight; at least, not under such agray sky as we saw.

The reader who once begins to look into the French occupancy ofAcadia is in danger of getting into a sentimental vein, and sentimentis the one thing to be shunned in these days. Yet I cannot but stay,though the train should leave us, to pay my respectful homage to oneof the most heroic of women, whose name recalls the most romanticincident in the history of this region. Out of this past there risesno figure so captivating to the imagination as that of Madame de laTour. And it is noticeable that woman has a curious habit of comingto the front in critical moments of history, and performing someexploit that eclipses in brilliancy all the deeds of contemporarymen; and the exploit usually ends in a pathetic tragedy, that fixesit forever in the sympathy of the world. I need not copy out of thepages of De Charlevoix the well-known story of Madame de la Tour; Ionly wish he had told us more about her. It is here at Port Royalthat we first see her with her husband. Charles de St. Etienne, theChevalier de la Tour,—there is a world of romance in these merenames,—was a Huguenot nobleman who had a grant of Port Royal and ofLa Hive, from Louis XIII. He ceded La Hive to Razilli, thegovernor-in-chief of the provinces, who took a fancy to it, for aresidence. He was living peacefully at Port Royal in 1647, when theChevalier d'Aunay Charnise, having succeeded his brother Razilli atLa Hive, tired of that place and removed to Port Royal. De Charnisewas a Catholic; the difference in religion might not have producedany unpleasantness, but the two noblemen could not agree in dividingthe profits of the peltry trade,—each being covetous, if we may soexpress it, of the hide of the savage continent, and determined totake it off for himself. At any rate, disagreement arose, and De laTour moved over to the St. John, of which region his father hadenjoyed a grant from Charles I. of England,—whose sad fate it is notnecessary now to recall to the reader's mind,—and built a fort atthe mouth of the river. But the differences of the two ambitiousFrenchmen could not be composed. De la Tour obtained aid fromGovernor Winthrop at Boston, thus verifying the Catholic predictionthat the Huguenots would side with the enemies of France on occasion.De Charnise received orders from Louis to arrest De la Tour; but alittle preliminary to the arrest was the possession of the fort ofSt. John, and this he could not obtain, although be sent all hisforce against it. Taking advantage, however, of the absence of De laTour, who had a habit of roving about, he one day besieged St. John.Madame de la Tour headed the little handful of men in the fort, andmade such a gallant resistance that De Charnise was obliged to drawoff his fleet with the loss of thirty-three men,—a very seriousloss, when the supply of men was as distant as France. But DeCharnise would not be balked by a woman; he attacked again; and thistime, one of the garrison, a Swiss, betrayed the fort, and let theinvaders into the walls by an unguarded entrance. It was Eastermorning when this misfortune occurred, but the peaceful influence ofthe day did not avail. When Madame saw that she was betrayed, herspirits did not quail; she took refuge with her little band in adetached part of the fort, and there made such a bold show ofdefense, that De Charnise was obliged to agree to the terms of hersurrender, which she dictated. No sooner had this unchivalrousfellow obtained possession of the fort and of this Historic Woman,than, overcome with a false shame that he had made terms with awoman, he violated his noble word, and condemned to death all themen, except one, who was spared on condition that he should be theexecutioner of the others. And the poltroon compelled the bravewoman to witness the execution, with the added indignity of a roperound her neck,—or as De Charlevoix much more neatly expresses it,"obligea sa prisonniere d'assister a l'execution, la corde au cou."

To the shock of this horror the womanly spirit of Madame de la Toursuccumbed; she fell into a decline and died soon after. De la Tour,himself an exile from his province, wandered about the New World inhis customary pursuit of peltry. He was seen at Quebec for twoyears. While there, he heard of the death of De Charnise, andstraightway repaired to St. John. The widow of his late enemyreceived him graciously, and he entered into possession of the estateof the late occupant with the consent of all the heirs. To removeall roots of bitterness, De la Tour married Madame de Charnise, andhistory does not record any ill of either of them. I trust they hadthe grace to plant a sweetbrier on the grave of the noble woman towhose faithfulness and courage they owe their rescue from obscurity.At least the parties to this singular union must have agreed toignore the lamented existence of the Chevalier d'Aunay.

With the Chevalier de la Tour, at any rate, it all went wellthereafter. When Cromwell drove the French from Acadia, he grantedgreat territorial rights to De la Tour, which that thrifty adventurersold out to one of his co-grantees for L16,000; and he no doubtinvested the money in peltry for the London market.

As we leave the station at Annapolis, we are obliged to put Madame dela Tour out of our minds to make room for another woman whose name,and we might say presence, fills all the valley before us. So it isthat woman continues to reign, where she has once got a foothold,long after her dear frame has become dust. Evangeline, who is asreal a personage as Queen Esther, must have been a different womanfrom Madame de la Tour. If the latter had lived at Grand Pre, shewould, I trust, have made it hot for the brutal English who drove theAcadians out of their salt-marsh paradise, and have died in herheroic shoes rather than float off into poetry. But if it shouldcome to the question of marrying the De la Tour or the Evangeline, Ithink no man who was not engaged in the peltry trade would hesitatewhich to choose. At any rate, the women who love have more influencein the world than the women who fight, and so it happens that thesentimental traveler who passes through Port Royal without a tear forMadame de la Tour, begins to be in a glow of tender longing andregret for Evangeline as soon as he enters the valley of theAnnapolis River. For myself, I expected to see written over therailway crossings the legend,

"Look out for Evangeline while the bell rings."

When one rides into a region of romance he does not much notice hisspeed or his carriage; but I am obliged to say that we were nothurried up the valley, and that the cars were not too luxurious forthe plain people, priests, clergymen, and belles of the region, whorode in them. Evidently the latest fashions had not arrived in theProvinces, and we had an opportunity of studying anew those that hadlong passed away in the States, and of remarking how inappropriate afashion is when it has ceased to be the fashion.

The river becomes small shortly after we leave Annapolis and beforewe reach Paradise. At this station of happy appellation we lookedfor the satirist who named it, but he has probably sold out andremoved. If the effect of wit is produced by the sudden recognitionof a remote resemblance, there was nothing witty in the naming ofthis station. Indeed, we looked in vain for the "garden" appearanceof the valley. There was nothing generous in the small meadows orthe thin orchards; and if large trees ever grew on the borderinghills, they have given place to rather stunted evergreens; thescraggy firs and balsams, in fact, possess Nova Scotia generally aswe saw it,—and there is nothing more uninteresting and wearisomethan large tracts of these woods. We are bound to believe that NovaScotia has somewhere, or had, great pines and hemlocks that murmur,but we were not blessed with the sight of them. Slightly picturesquethis valley is with its winding river and high hills guarding it, andperhaps a person would enjoy a foot-tramp down it; but, I think hewould find little peculiar or interesting after he left theneighborhood of the Basin of Minas.

Before we reached Wolfville we came in sight of this basin and someof the estuaries and streams that run into it; that is, when the tidegoes out; but they are only muddy ditches half the time. The AcadiaCollege was pointed out to us at Wolfville by a person who said thatit is a feeble institution, a remark we were sorry to hear of a placedescribed as "one of the foremost seats of learning in the Province."But our regret was at once extinguished by the announcement that thenext station was Grand Pre! We were within three miles of the mostpoetic place in North America.

There was on the train a young man from Boston, who said that he wasborn in Grand Pre. It seemed impossible that we should actually benear a person so felicitously born. He had a justifiable pride inthe fact, as well as in the bride by his side, whom he was taking tosee for the first time his old home. His local information, impartedto her, overflowed upon us; and when he found that we had read"Evangeline," his delight in making us acquainted with the scene ofthat poem was pleasant to see. The village of Grand Pre is a milefrom the station; and perhaps the reader would like to know exactlywhat the traveler, hastening on to Baddeck, can see of the famouslocality.

We looked over a well-grassed meadow, seamed here and there by bedsof streams left bare by the receding tide, to a gentle swell in theground upon which is a not heavy forest growth. The trees partlyconceal the street of Grand Pre, which is only a road bordered bycommon houses. Beyond is the Basin of Minas, with its sedgy shore,its dreary flats; and beyond that projects a bold headland, standingperpendicular against the sky. This is the Cape Blomidon, and itgives a certain dignity to the picture.

The old Normandy picturesqueness has departed from the village ofGrand Pre. Yankee settlers, we were told, possess it now, and thereare no descendants of the French Acadians in this valley. I believethat Mr. Cozzens found some of them in humble circ*mstances in avillage on the other coast, not far from Halifax, and it is there,probably, that the

"Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun,
And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story,
While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest."

At any rate, there is nothing here now except a faint tradition ofthe French Acadians; and the sentimental traveler who laments thatthey were driven out, and not left behind their dikes to rear theirflocks, and cultivate the rural virtues, and live in the simplicityof ignorance, will temper his sadness by the reflection that it is tothe expulsion he owes "Evangeline" and the luxury of his romanticgrief. So that if the traveler is honest, and examines his own soulfaithfully, he will not know what state of mind to cherish as hepasses through this region of sorrow.

Our eyes lingered as long as possible and with all eagerness uponthese meadows and marshes which the poet has made immortal, and weregretted that inexorable Baddeck would not permit us to be pilgrimsfor a day in this Acadian land. Just as I was losing sight of theskirt of trees at Grand Pre, a gentleman in the dress of a ruralclergyman left his seat, and complimented me with this remark: "Iperceive, sir, that you are fond of reading."

I could not but feel flattered by this unexpected discovery of mynature, which was no doubt due to the fact that I held in my hand oneof the works of Charles Reade on social science, called "Love meLittle, Love me Long," and I said, "Of some kinds, I am."

"Did you ever see a work called 'Evangeline'?"

"Oh, yes, I have frequently seen it."

"You may remember," continued this Mass of Information, "that thereis an allusion in it to Grand Pre. That is the place, sir!"

"Oh, indeed, is that the place? Thank you."

"And that mountain yonder is Cape Blomidon, blow me down, you know."

And under cover of this pun, the amiable clergyman retired,unconscious, I presume, of his prosaic effect upon the atmosphere ofthe region. With this intrusion of the commonplace, I suffered aneclipse of faith as to Evangeline, and was not sorry to have myattention taken up by the river Avon, along the banks of which wewere running about this time. It is really a broad arm of the basin,extending up to Windsor, and beyond in a small stream, and would havebeen a charming river if there had been a drop of water in it. Inever knew before how much water adds to a river. Its slimy bottomwas quite a ghastly spectacle, an ugly gash in the land that nothingcould heal but the friendly returning tide. I should think it wouldbe confusing to dwell by a river that runs first one way and then theother, and then vanishes altogether.

All the streams about this basin are famous for their salmon andshad, and the season for these fish was not yet passed. There seemsto be an untraced affinity between the shad and the strawberry; theyappear and disappear in a region simultaneously. When we reachedCape Breton, we were a day or two late for both. It is impossiblenot to feel a little contempt for people who do not have theseluxuries till July and August; but I suppose we are in turn despisedby the Southerners because we do not have them till May and June.So, a great part of the enjoyment of life is in the knowledge thatthere are people living in a worse place than that you inhabit.

Windsor, a most respectable old town round which the railroad sweeps,with its iron bridge, conspicuous King's College, and handsome churchspire, is a great place for plaster and limestone, and would be agood location for a person interested in these substances. Indeed,if a man can live on rocks, like a goat, he may settle anywherebetween Windsor and Halifax. It is one of the most sterile regionsin the Province. With the exception of a wild pond or two, we sawnothing but rocks and stunted firs, for forty-five miles, a monotonyunrelieved by one picturesque feature. Then we longed for the"Garden of Nova Scotia," and understood what is meant by the name.

A member of the Ottawa government, who was on his way to theGovernor-General's ball at Halifax, informed us that this country isrich in minerals, in iron especially, and he pointed out spots wheregold had been washed out. But we do not covet it. And we were notsorry to learn from this gentleman, that since the formation of theDominion, there is less and less desire in the Provinces forannexation to the United States. One of the chief pleasures intraveling in Nova Scotia now is in the constant reflection that youare in a foreign country; and annexation would take that away.

It is nearly dark when we reach the head of the Bedford Basin. Thenoble harbor of Halifax narrows to a deep inlet for three miles alongthe rocky slope on which the city stands, and then suddenly expandsinto this beautiful sheet of water. We ran along its bank for fivemiles, cheered occasionally by a twinkling light on the shore, andthen came to a stop at the shabby terminus, three miles out of town.This basin is almost large enough to float the navy of Great Britain,and it could lie here, with the narrows fortified, secure from theattacks of the American navy, hovering outside in the fog. Withthese patriotic thoughts we enter the town. It is not the fault ofthe railroad, but its present inability to climb a rocky hill, thatit does not run into the city. The suburbs are not impressive in thenight, but they look better then than they do in the daytime; and thesame might be said of the city itself. Probably there is notanywhere a more rusty, forlorn town, and this in spite of itsmagnificent situation.

It is a gala-night when we rattle down the rough streets, and havepointed out to us the somber government buildings. The Halifax ClubHouse is a blaze of light, for the Governor-General is being receivedthere, and workmen are still busy decorating the Provincial Buildingfor the great ball. The city is indeed pervaded by his lordship, andwe regret that we cannot see it in its normal condition of quiet; thehotels are full, and it is impossible to escape the festive feelingthat is abroad. It ill accords with our desires, as tranquiltravelers, to be plunged into such a vortex of slow dissipation.These people take their pleasures more gravely than we do, andprobably will last the longer for their moderation. Havingascertained that we can get no more information about Baddeck herethan in St. John, we go to bed early, for we are to depart from thisfascinating place at six o'clock.

If any one objects that we are not competent to pass judgment on thecity of Halifax by sleeping there one night, I beg leave to plead theusual custom of travelers,—where would be our books of travel, ifmore was expected than a night in a place?—and to state a fewfacts. The first is, that I saw the whole of Halifax. If I wereinclined, I could describe it building by building. Cannot one seeit all from the citadel hill, and by walking down by thehorticultural garden and the Roman Catholic cemetery? and did not Iclimb that hill through the most dilapidated rows of brown houses,and stand on the greensward of the fortress at five o'clock in themorning, and see the whole city, and the British navy riding atanchor, and the fog coming in from the Atlantic Ocean? Let thereader go to! and if he would know more of Halifax, go there. Wefelt that if we remained there through the day, it would be a day ofidleness and sadness. I could draw a picture of Halifax. I couldrelate its century of history; I could write about its free-schoolsystem, and its many noble charities. But the reader always skipssuch things. He hates information; and he himself would not stay inthis dull garrison town any longer than he was obliged to.

There was to be a military display that day in honor of the Governor.

"Why," I asked the bright and light-minded colored boy who soldpapers on the morning train, "don't you stay in the city and see it?"

"Pho," said he, with contempt, "I'm sick of 'em. Halifax is playedout, and I'm going to quit it."

The withdrawal of this lively trader will be a blow to the enterpriseof the place.

When I returned to the hotel for breakfast—which was exactly likethe supper, and consisted mainly of green tea and dry toast—therewas a commotion among the waiters and the hack-drivers over a nervouslittle old man, who was in haste to depart for the morning train. Hewas a specimen of provincial antiquity such as could not be seenelsewhere. His costume was of the oddest: a long-waisted coatreaching nearly to his heels, short trousers, a flowered silk vest,and a napless hat. He carried his baggage tied up in mealbags, andhis attention was divided between that and two buxom daughters, whowere evidently enjoying their first taste of city life. The littleold man, who was not unlike a petrified Frenchman of the lastcentury, had risen before daylight, roused up his daughters, and hadthem down on the sidewalk by four o'clock, waiting for hack, orhorse-car, or something to take them to the station. That he mightbe a man of some importance at home was evident, but he had lost hishead in the bustle of this great town, and was at the mercy of alladvisers, none of whom could understand his mongrel language. As wecame out to take the horse-car, he saw his helpless daughters drivenoff in one hack, while he was raving among his meal-bags on thesidewalk. Afterwards we saw him at the station, flying about in thegreatest excitement, asking everybody about the train; and at last hefound his way into the private office of the ticket-seller. "Get outof here!" roared that official. The old man persisted that hewanted a ticket. "Go round to the window; clear out!" In a veryflustered state he was hustled out of the room. When he came to thewindow and made known his destination, he was refused tickets,because his train did not start for two hours yet!

This mercurial old gentleman only appears in these records because hewas the only person we saw in this Province who was in a hurry to doanything, or to go anywhere.

We cannot leave Halifax without remarking that it is a city of greatprivate virtue, and that its banks are sound. The appearance of itspaper-money is not, however, inviting. We of the United States leadthe world in beautiful paper-money; and when I exchanged my crisp,handsome greenbacks for the dirty, flimsy, ill-executed notes of theDominion, at a dead loss of value, I could not be reconciled to thetransaction. I sarcastically called the stuff I received"Confederate money;" but probably no one was wounded by the severity;for perhaps no one knew what a resemblance in badness there isbetween the "Confederate" notes of our civil war and the notes of theDominion; and, besides, the Confederacy was too popular in theProvinces for the name to be a reproach to them. I wish I hadthought of something more insulting to say.

By noon on Friday we came to New Glasgow, having passed through acountry where wealth is to be won by hard digging if it is won atall; through Truro, at the head of the Cobequid Bay, a placeexhibiting more thrift than any we have seen. A pleasant enoughcountry, on the whole, is this which the road runs through up theSalmon and down the East River. New Glasgow is not many miles fromPictou, on the great Cumberland Strait; the inhabitants buildvessels, and strangers drive out from here to see the neighboringcoal mines. Here we were to dine and take the stage for a ride ofeighty miles to the Gut of Canso.

The hotel at New Glasgow we can commend as one of the mostunwholesome in the Province; but it is unnecessary to emphasize itscondition, for if the traveler is in search of dirty hotels, he willscarcely go amiss anywhere in these regions. There seems to be afashion in diet which endures. The early travelers as well as thelater in these Atlantic provinces all note the prevalence of dry,limp toast and green tea; they are the staples of all the meals;though authorities differ in regard to the third element fordiscouraging hunger: it is sometimes boiled salt-fish and sometimesit is ham. Toast was probably an inspiration of the first woman ofthis part of the New World, who served it hot; but it has become nowa tradition blindly followed, without regard to temperature; and thecustom speaks volumes for the non-inventiveness of woman. At the innin New Glasgow those who choose dine in their shirt-sleeves, andthose skilled in the ways of this table get all they want in sevenminutes. A man who understands the use of edged tools can get alongtwice as fast with a knife and fork as he can with a fork alone.

But the stage is at the door; the coach and four horses answer theadvertisem*nt of being "second to none on the continent." We mountto the seat with the driver. The sun is bright; the wind is in thesouthwest; the leaders are impatient to go; the start for the longride is propitious.

But on the back seat in the coach is the inevitable woman, young andsickly, with the baby in her arms. The woman has paid her farethrough to Guysborough, and holds her ticket. It turns out, however,that she wants to go to the district of Guysborough, to St. Mary'sCross Roads, somewhere in it, and not to the village of Guysborough,which is away down on Chedabucto Bay. (The reader will notice thisgeographical familiarity.) And this stage does not go in thedirection of St. Mary's. She will not get out, she will notsurrender her ticket, nor pay her fare again. Why should she? Andthe stage proprietor, the stage-driver, and the hostler mull over theproblem, and sit down on the woman's hair trunk in front of thetavern to reason with her. The baby joins its voice from the coachwindow in the clamor of the discussion. The baby prevails. Thestage company comes to a compromise, the woman dismounts, and we areoff, away from the white houses, over the sandy road, out upon ahilly and not cheerful country. And the driver begins to tell usstories of winter hardships, drifted highways, a land buried in snow,and great peril to men and cattle.

III

"It was then summer, and the weather very fine; so pleased was I withthe country, in which I had never travelled before, that my delightproved equal to my wonder."—BENVENUTO CELLINI.

There are few pleasures in life equal to that of riding on thebox-seat of a stagecoach, through a country unknown to you andhearing the driver talk about his horses. We made the intimateacquaintance of twelve horses on that day's ride, and learned thepeculiar disposition and traits of each one of them, their ambitionof display, their sensitiveness to praise or blame, theirfaithfulness, their playfulness, the readiness with which theyyielded to kind treatment, their daintiness about food and lodging.

May I never forget the spirited little jade, the off-leader in thethird stage, the petted belle of the route, the nervous, coquettish,mincing mare of Marshy Hope. A spoiled beauty she was; you could seethat as she took the road with dancing step, tossing her pretty headabout, and conscious of her shining black coat and her tail done up"in any simple knot,"—like the back hair of Shelley's BeatriceCenci. How she ambled and sidled and plumed herself, and now andthen let fly her little heels high in air in mere excess of larkishfeeling.

"So! girl; so! Kitty," murmurs the driver in the softest tones ofadmiration; "she don't mean anything by it, she's just like akitten."

But the heels keep flying above the traces, and by and by the driveris obliged to "speak hash" to the beauty. The reproof of thedispleased tone is evidently felt, for she settles at once to herwork, showing perhaps a little impatience, jerking her head up anddown, and protesting by her nimble movements against the moredeliberate trot of her companion. I believe that a blow from thecruel lash would have broken her heart; or else it would have made alittle fiend of the spirited creature. The lash is hardly ever goodfor the sex.

For thirteen years, winter and summer, this coachman had driven thismonotonous, uninteresting route, with always the same sandy hills,scrubby firs, occasional cabins, in sight. What a time to nurse histhought and feed on his heart! How deliberately he can turn thingsover in his brain! What a system of philosophy he might evolve outof his consciousness! One would think so. But, in fact, thestagebox is no place for thinking. To handle twelve horses everyday, to keep each to its proper work, stimulating the lazy andrestraining the free, humoring each disposition, so that the greatestamount of work shall be obtained with the least friction, making eachtrip on time, and so as to leave each horse in as good condition atthe close as at the start, taking advantage of the road, refreshingthe team by an occasional spurt of speed,—all these things requireconstant attention; and if the driver was composing an epic, thecoach might go into the ditch, or, if no accident happened, thehorses would be worn out in a month, except for the driver's care.

I conclude that the most delicate and important occupation in life isstage-driving. It would be easier to "run" the Treasury Departmentof the United States than a four-in-hand. I have a sense of theunimportance of everything else in comparison with this business inhand. And I think the driver shares that feeling. He is theautocrat of the situation. He is lord of all the humble passengers,and they feel their inferiority. They may have knowledge and skillin some things, but they are of no use here. At all the stables thedriver is king; all the people on the route are deferential to him;they are happy if he will crack a joke with them, and take it as afavor if he gives them better than they send. And it is his jokethat always raises the laugh, regardless of its quality.

We carry the royal mail, and as we go along drop little sealed canvasbags at way offices. The bags would not hold more than three pintsof meal, and I can see that there is nothing in them. Yet somebodyalong here must be expecting a letter, or they would not keep up themail facilities. At French River we change horses. There is a millhere, and there are half a dozen houses, and a cranky bridge, whichthe driver thinks will not tumble down this trip. The settlement mayhave seen better days, and will probably see worse.

I preferred to cross the long, shaky wooden bridge on foot, leavingthe inside passengers to take the risk, and get the worth of theirmoney; and while the horses were being put to, I walked on over thehill. And here I encountered a veritable foot-pad, with a club inhis hand and a bundle on his shoulder, coming down the dusty road,with the wild-eyed aspect of one who travels into a far country insearch of adventure. He seemed to be of a cheerful and sociableturn, and desired that I should linger and converse with him. But hewas more meagerly supplied with the media of conversation than anyperson I ever met. His opening address was in a tongue that failedto convey to me the least idea. I replied in such language as I hadwith me, but it seemed to be equally lost upon him. We then fellback upon gestures and ejacul*tions, and by these I learned that hewas a native of Cape Breton, but not an aborigine. By signs he askedme where I came from, and where I was going; and he was so muchpleased with my destination, that he desired to know my name; andthis I told him with all the injunction of secrecy I could convey;but he could no more pronounce it than I could speak his name. Itoccurred to me that perhaps he spoke a French patois, and I askedhim; but he only shook his head. He would own neither to German norIrish. The happy thought came to me of inquiring if he knew English.But he shook his head again, and said,

"No English, plenty garlic."

This was entirely incomprehensible, for I knew that garlic is not alanguage, but a smell. But when he had repeated the word severaltimes, I found that he meant Gaelic; and when we had come to thisunderstanding, we cordially shook hands and willingly parted. Oneseldom encounters a wilder or more good-natured savage than thisstalwart wanderer. And meeting him raised my hopes of Cape Breton.

We change horses again, for the last stage, at Marshy Hope. As weturn down the hill into this place of the mournful name, we dash pasta procession of five country wagons, which makes way for us:everything makes way for us; even death itself turns out for thestage with four horses. The second wagon carries a long box, whichreveals to us the mournful errand of the caravan. We drive into thestable, and get down while the fresh horses are put to. Thecompany's stables are all alike, and open at each end with greatdoors. The stable is the best house in the place; there are three orfour houses besides, and one of them is white, and has vines growingover the front door, and hollyhocks by the front gate. Three or fourwomen, and as many barelegged girls, have come out to look at theprocession, and we lounge towards the group.

"It had a winder in the top of it, and silver handles," says one.

"Well, I declare; and you could 'a looked right in?"

"If I'd been a mind to."

"Who has died?" I ask.

"It's old woman Larue; she lived on Gilead Hill, mostly alone. It'sbetter for her."

"Had she any friends?"

"One darter. They're takin' her over Eden way, to bury her where shecome from."

"Was she a good woman?" The traveler is naturally curious to knowwhat sort of people die in Nova Scotia.

"Well, good enough. Both her husbands is dead."

The gossips continued talking of the burying. Poor old woman Larue!It was mournful enough to encounter you for the only time in thisworld in this plight, and to have this glimpse of your wretched lifeon lonesome Gilead Hill. What pleasure, I wonder, had she in herlife, and what pleasure have any of these hard-favored women in thisdoleful region? It is pitiful to think of it. Doubtless, however,the region isn't doleful, and the sentimental traveler would not havefelt it so if he had not encountered this funereal flitting.

But the horses are in. We mount to our places; the big doors swingopen.

"Stand away," cries the driver.

The hostler lets go Kitty's bridle, the horses plunge forward, and weare off at a gallop, taking the opposite direction from that pursuedby old woman Larue.

This last stage is eleven miles, through a pleasanter country, and wemake it in a trifle over an hour, going at an exhilarating gait, thatraises our spirits out of the Marshy Hope level. The perfection oftravel is ten miles an hour, on top of a stagecoach; it is greaterspeed than forty by rail. It nurses one's pride to sit aloft, andrattle past the farmhouses, and give our dust to the cringing foottramps. There is something royal in the swaying of the coach body,and an excitement in the patter of the horses' hoofs. And what anhonor it must be to guide such a machine through a region of rusticadmiration!

The sun has set when we come thundering down into the pretty Catholicvillage of Antigonish,—the most home-like place we have seen on theisland. The twin stone towers of the unfinished cathedral loom uplarge in the fading light, and the bishop's palace on the hill—thehome of the Bishop of Arichat—appears to be an imposing white barnwith many staring windows. At Antigonish—with the emphasis on thelast syllable—let the reader know there is a most comfortable inn,kept by a cheery landlady, where the stranger is served by the comelyhandmaidens, her daughters, and feels that he has reached a home atlast. Here we wished to stay. Here we wished to end this wearypilgrimage. Could Baddeck be as attractive as this peaceful valley?Should we find any inn on Cape Breton like this one?

"Never was on Cape Breton," our driver had said; "hope I never shallbe. Heard enough about it. Taverns? You'll find 'em occupied."

"Fleas?

"Wus."

"But it is a lovely country?"

"I don't think it."

Into what unknown dangers were we going? Why not stay here and behappy? It was a soft summer night. People were loitering in thestreet; the young beaux of the place going up and down with thebelles, after the leisurely manner in youth and summer; perhaps theywere students from St. Xavier College, or visiting gallants fromGuysborough. They look into the post-office and the fancy store.They stroll and take their little provincial pleasure and make love,for all we can see, as if Antigonish were a part of the world. Howthey must look down on Marshy Hope and Addington Forks and Tracadie!What a charming place to live in is this!

But the stage goes on at eight o'clock. It will wait for no man.
There is no other stage till eight the next night, and we have no
alternative but a night ride. We put aside all else except duty and
Baddeck. This is strictly a pleasure-trip.

The stage establishment for the rest of the journey could hardly becalled the finest on the continent. The wagon was drawn by twohorses. It was a square box, covered with painted cloth. Withinwere two narrow seats, facing each other, affording no room for thelegs of passengers, and offering them no position but a strictlyupright one. It was a most ingeniously uncomfortable box in which toput sleepy travelers for the night. The weather would be chillybefore morning, and to sit upright on a narrow board all night, andshiver, is not cheerful. Of course, the reader says that this is nohardship to talk about. But the reader is mistaken. Anything is ahardship when it is unpleasantly what one does not desire or expect.These travelers had spent wakeful nights, in the forests, in a coldrain, and never thought of complaining. It is useless to talk aboutthe Polar sufferings of Dr. Kane to a guest at a metropolitan hotel,in the midst of luxury, when the mosquito sings all night in his ear,and his mutton-chop is overdone at breakfast. One does not like tobe set up for a hero in trifles, in odd moments, and in inconspicuousplaces.

There were two passengers besides ourselves, inhabitants of CapeBreton Island, who were returning from Halifax to Plaster Cove, wherethey were engaged in the occupation of distributing alcoholic liquorsat retail. This fact we ascertained incidentally, as we learned thenationality of our comrades by their brogue, and their religion bytheir lively ejacul*tions during the night. We stowed ourselves intothe rigid box, bade a sorrowing good-night to the landlady and herdaughters, who stood at the inn door, and went jingling down thestreet towards the open country.

The moon rises at eight o'clock in Nova Scotia. It came above thehorizon exactly as we began our journey, a harvest-moon, round andred. When I first saw it, it lay on the edge of the horizon as iftoo heavy to lift itself, as big as a cart-wheel, and its disk cut bya fence-rail. With what a flood of splendor it deluged farmhousesand farms, and the broad sweep of level country! There could not bea more magnificent night in which to ride towards that geographicalmystery of our boyhood, the Gut of Canso.

A few miles out of town the stage stopped in the road before apost-station. An old woman opened the door of the farmhouse to receivethe bag which the driver carried to her. A couple of sprightly littlegirls rushed out to "interview" the passengers, climbing up to asktheir names and, with much giggling, to get a peep at their faces. Andupon the handsomeness or ugliness of the faces they saw in themoonlight they pronounced with perfect candor. We are not obliged tosay what their verdict was. Girls here, no doubt, as elsewhere, losethis trustful candor as they grow older.

Just as we were starting, the old woman screamed out from the door,in a shrill voice, addressing the driver, "Did you see ary a sick man'bout 'Tigonish?"

"Nary."

"There's one been round here for three or four days, pretty bad off;'s got the St. Vitus's. He wanted me to get him some medicine for itup to Antigonish. I've got it here in a vial, and I wished you couldtake it to him."

"Where is he?"

"I dunno. I heern he'd gone east by the Gut. Perhaps you'll hear ofhim." All this screamed out into the night.

"Well, I'll take it."

We took the vial aboard and went on; but the incident powerfullyaffected us. The weird voice of the old woman was exciting initself, and we could not escape the image of this unknown man, dancingabout this region without any medicine, fleeing perchance by nightand alone, and finally flitting away down the Gut of Canso. Thisfugitive mystery almost immediately shaped itself into the followingsimple poem:

"There was an old man of Canso,
Unable to sit or stan' so.
When I asked him why he ran so,
Says he, 'I've St. Vitus' dance so,
All down the Gut of Canso.'"

This melancholy song is now, I doubt not, sung by the maidens of
Antigonish.

In spite of the consolations of poetry, however, the night wore onslowly, and soothing sleep tried in vain to get a lodgment in thejolting wagon. One can sleep upright, but not when his head is everymoment knocked against the framework of a wagon-cover. Even a jollyyoung Irishman of Plaster Cove, whose nature it is to sleep underwhatever discouragement, is beaten by these circ*mstances. He wisheshe had his fiddle along. We never know what men are on casualacquaintance. This rather stupid-looking fellow is a devotee ofmusic, and knows how to coax the sweetness out of the unwillingviolin. Sometimes he goes miles and miles on winter nights to drawthe seductive bow for the Cape Breton dancers, and there isenthusiasm in his voice, as he relates exploits of fiddling fromsunset till the dawn of day. Other information, however, the youngman has not; and when this is exhausted, he becomes sleepy again, andtries a dozen ways to twist himself into a posture in which sleepwill be possible. He doubles up his legs, he slides them under theseat, he sits on the wagon bottom; but the wagon swings and jolts andknocks him about. His patience under this punishment is admirable,and there is something pathetic in his restraint from profanity.

It is enough to look out upon the magnificent night; the moon is nowhigh, and swinging clear and distant; the air has grown chilly; thestars cannot be eclipsed by the greater light, but glow with achastened fervor. It is on the whole a splendid display for the sakeof four sleepy men, banging along in a coach,—an insignificantlittle vehicle with two horses. No one is up at any of thefarmhouses to see it; no one appears to take any interest in it,except an occasional baying dog, or a rooster that has mistaken thetime of night. By midnight we come to Tracadie, an orchard, afarmhouse, and a stable. We are not far from the sea now, and cansee a silver mist in the north. An inlet comes lapping up by the oldhouse with a salty smell and a suggestion of oyster-beds. We knockup the sleeping hostlers, change horses, and go on again, deadsleepy, but unable to get a wink. And all the night is blazing withbeauty. We think of the criminal who was sentenced to be kept awaketill he died.

The fiddler makes another trial. Temperately remarking, "I am verysleepy," he kneels upon the floor and rests his head on the seat.This position for a second promises repose; but almost immediatelyhis head begins to pound the seat, and beat a lively rat-a-plan onthe board. The head of a wooden idol couldn't stand this treatmentmore than a minute. The fiddler twisted and turned, but his headwent like a triphammer on the seat. I have never seen a devotionalattitude so deceptive, or one that produced less favorable results.The young man rose from his knees, and meekly said,

"It's dam hard."

If the recording angel took down this observation, he doubtless madea note of the injured tone in which it was uttered.

How slowly the night passes to one tipping and swinging along in aslowly moving stage! But the harbinger of the day came at last.When the fiddler rose from his knees, I saw the morning-star burstout of the east like a great diamond, and I knew that Venus wasstrong enough to pull up even the sun, from whom she is never distantmore than an eighth of the heavenly circle. The moon could not puther out of countenance. She blazed and scintillated with a dazzlingbrilliance, a throbbing splendor, that made the moon seem a pale,sentimental invention. Steadily she mounted, in her fresh beauty,with the confidence and vigor of new love, driving her more domesticrival out of the sky. And this sort of thing, I suppose, goes onfrequently. These splendors burn and this panorama passes nightafter night down at the end of Nova Scotia, and all for thestage-driver, dozing along on his box, from Antigonish to the strait.

"Here you are," cries the driver, at length, when we have becomewearily indifferent to where we are. We have reached the ferry. Thedawn has not come, but it is not far off. We step out and find achilly morning, and the dark waters of the Gut of Canso flowingbefore us lighted here and there by a patch of white mist. Theferryman is asleep, and his door is shut. We call him by all thenames known among men. We pound upon his house, but he makes nosign. Before he awakes and comes out, growling, the sky in the eastis lightened a shade, and the star of the dawn sparkles lessbrilliantly. But the process is slow. The twilight is long. Thereis a surprising deliberation about the preparation of the sun forrising, as there is in the movements of the boatman. Both appear tobe reluctant to begin the day.

The ferryman and his shaggy comrade get ready at last, and we stepinto the clumsy yawl, and the slowly moving oars begin to pull usupstream. The strait is here less than a mile wide; the tide isrunning strongly, and the water is full of swirls,—the littlewhirlpools of the rip-tide. The morning-star is now high in the sky;the moon, declining in the west, is more than ever like a silvershield; along the east is a faint flush of pink. In the increasinglight we can see the bold shores of the strait, and the squareprojection of Cape Porcupine below.

On the rocks above the town of Plaster Cove, where there is a blackand white sign,—Telegraph Cable,—we set ashore our companions ofthe night, and see them climb up to their station for retailing thenecessary means of intoxication in their district, with the mournfulthought that we may never behold them again.

As we drop down along the shore, there is a white sea-gull asleep onthe rock, rolled up in a ball, with his head under his wing. Therock is dripping with dew, and the bird is as wet as his hard bed.We pass within an oar's length of him, but he does not heed us, andwe do not disturb his morning slumbers. For there is no such crueltyas the waking of anybody out of a morning nap.

When we land, and take up our bags to ascend the hill to the whitetavern of Port Hastings (as Plaster Cove now likes to be called), thesun lifts himself slowly over the treetops, and the magic of thenight vanishes.

And this is Cape Breton, reached after almost a week of travel. Hereis the Gut of Canso, but where is Baddeck? It is Saturday morning;if we cannot make Baddeck by night, we might as well have remained inBoston. And who knows what we shall find if we get there? A forlornfishing-station, a dreary hotel? Suppose we cannot get on, and areforced to stay here? Asking ourselves these questions, we enter thePlaster Cove tavern. No one is stirring, but the house is open, andwe take possession of the dirty public room, and almost immediatelydrop to sleep in the fluffy rocking-chairs; but even sleep is notstrong enough to conquer our desire to push on, and we soon rouse upand go in pursuit of information.

No landlord is to be found, but there is an unkempt servant in thekitchen, who probably does not see any use in making her toilet morethan once a week. To this fearful creature is intrusted the daintyduty of preparing breakfast. Her indifference is equal to her lackof information, and her ability to convey information is fettered byher use of Gaelic as her native speech. But she directs us to thestable. There we find a driver hitching his horses to a two-horsestage-wagon.

"Is this stage for Baddeck?"

"Not much."

"Is there any stage for Baddeck?"

"Not to-day."

"Where does this go, and when?"

"St. Peter's. Starts in fifteen minutes."

This seems like "business," and we are inclined to try it, especiallyas we have no notion where St. Peter's is.

"Does any other stage go from here to-day anywhere else?"

"Yes. Port Hood. Quarter of an hour."

Everything was about to happen in fifteen minutes. We inquirefurther. St. Peter's is on the east coast, on the road to Sydney.Port Hood is on the west coast. There is a stage from Port Hood toBaddeck. It would land us there some time Sunday morning; distance,eighty miles.

Heavens! what a pleasure-trip. To ride eighty miles more withoutsleep! We should simply be delivered dead on the Bras d'Or; that isall. Tell us, gentle driver, is there no other way?

"Well, there's Jim Hughes, come over at midnight with a passengerfrom Baddeck; he's in the hotel now; perhaps he'll take you."

Our hope hung on Jim Hughes. The frowzy servant piloted us up to hissleeping-room. "Go right in," said she; and we went in, according tothe simple custom of the country, though it was a bedroom that onewould not enter except on business. Mr. Hughes did not like to bedisturbed, but he proved himself to be a man who could wake upsuddenly, shake his head, and transact business,—a sort of Napoleon,in fact. Mr. Hughes stared at the intruders for a moment, as if hemeditated an assault.

"Do you live in Baddeck?" we asked.

"No; Hogamah,—half-way there."

"Will you take us to Baddeck to-day?"

Mr. Hughes thought. He had intended to sleep—till noon. He hadthen intended to go over the Judique Mountain and get a boy. But hewas disposed to accommodate. Yes, for money—sum named—he wouldgive up his plans, and start for Baddeck in an hour. Distance, sixtymiles. Here was a man worth having; he could come to a decisionbefore he was out of bed. The bargain was closed.

We would have closed any bargain to escape a Sunday in the PlasterCove hotel. There are different sorts of hotel uncleanliness. Thereis the musty old inn, where the dirt has accumulated for years, andslow neglect has wrought a picturesque sort of dilapidation, themouldiness of time, which has something to recommend it. But thereis nothing attractive in new nastiness, in the vulgar union ofsmartness and filth. A dirty modern house, just built, a housesmelling of poor whiskey and vile tobacco, its white paint grimy, itsfloors unclean, is ever so much worse than an old inn that neverpretended to be anything but a rookery. I say nothing against thehotel at Plaster Cove. In fact, I recommend it. There is a kind ofharmony about it that I like. There is a harmony between thebreakfast and the frowzy Gaelic cook we saw "sozzling" about in thekitchen. There is a harmony between the appearance of the house andthe appearance of the buxom young housekeeper who comes upon thescene later, her hair saturated with the fatty matter of the bear.The traveler will experience a pleasure in paying his bill anddeparting.

Although Plaster Cove seems remote on the map, we found that we wereright in the track of the world's news there. It is the transferstation of the Atlantic Cable Company, where it exchanges messageswith the Western Union. In a long wooden building, divided into twomain apartments, twenty to thirty operators are employed. At eighto'clock the English force was at work receiving the noon messagesfrom London. The American operators had not yet come on, for NewYork business would not begin for an hour. Into these rooms ispoured daily the news of the world, and these young fellows toss itabout as lightly as if it were household gossip. It is a marvelousexchange, however, and we had intended to make some reflections hereupon the en rapport feeling, so to speak, with all the world, whichwe experienced while there; but our conveyance was waiting. Wetelegraphed our coming to Baddeck, and departed. For twenty-fivecents one can send a dispatch to any part of the Dominion, except theregion where the Western Union has still a foothold.

Our conveyance was a one-horse wagon, with one seat. The horse waswell enough, but the seat was narrow for three people, and the entireestablishment had in it not much prophecy of Baddeck for that day.But we knew little of the power of Cape Breton driving. It becameevident that we should reach Baddeck soon enough, if we could clingto that wagon-seat. The morning sun was hot. The way was souninteresting that we almost wished ourselves back in Nova Scotia.The sandy road was bordered with discouraged evergreens, throughwhich we had glimpses of sand-drifted farms. If Baddeck was to belike this, we had come on a fool's errand. There were some savage,low hills, and the Judique Mountain showed itself as we got away fromthe town. In this first stage, the heat of the sun, the monotony ofthe road, and the scarcity of sleep during the past thirty-six hourswere all unfavorable to our keeping on the wagon-seat. We noddedseparately, we nodded and reeled in unison. But asleep or awake, thedriver drove like a son of Jehu. Such driving is the fashion on CapeBreton Island. Especially downhill, we made the most of it; if thehorse was on a run, that was only an inducement to apply the lash;speed gave the promise of greater possible speed. The wagon rattledlike a bark-mill; it swirled and leaped about, and we finally got theexciting impression that if the whole thing went to pieces, we shouldsomehow go on,—such was our impetus. Round corners, over ruts andstones, and uphill and down, we went jolting and swinging, holdingfast to the seat, and putting our trust in things in general. At theend of fifteen miles, we stopped at a Scotch farmhouse, where thedriver kept a relay, and changed horse.

The people were Highlanders, and spoke little English; we had struckthe beginning of the Gaelic settlement. From here to Hogamah weshould encounter only the Gaelic tongue; the inhabitants are allCatholics. Very civil people, apparently, and living in a kind ofnigg*rdly thrift, such as the cold land affords. We saw of thisfamily the old man, who had come from Scotland fifty years ago, hisstalwart son, six feet and a half high, maybe, and two buxomdaughters, going to the hay-field,—good solid Scotch lassies, whosmiled in English, but spoke only Gaelic. The old man could speak alittle English, and was disposed to be both communicative andinquisitive. He asked our business, names, and residence. Of theUnited States he had only a dim conception, but his mind ratherrested upon the statement that we lived "near Boston." He complainedof the degeneracy of the times. All the young men had gone away fromCape Breton; might get rich if they would stay and work the farms.But no one liked to work nowadays. From life, we diverted the talkto literature. We inquired what books they had.

"Of course you all have the poems of Burns?"

"What's the name o' the mon?"

"Burns, Robert Burns."

"Never heard tell of such a mon. Have heard of Robert Bruce. He wasa Scotchman."

This was nothing short of refreshing, to find a Scotchman who hadnever heard of Robert Burns! It was worth the whole journey to takethis honest man by the hand. How far would I not travel to talk withan American who had never heard of George Washington!

The way was more varied during the next stage; we passed through somepleasant valleys and picturesque neighborhoods, and at length,winding around the base of a wooded range, and crossing its point, wecame upon a sight that took all the sleep out of us. This was thefamous Bras d'Or.

The Bras d'Or is the most beautiful salt-water lake I have ever seen,and more beautiful than we had imagined a body of salt water couldbe. If the reader will take the map, he will see that two narrowestuaries, the Great and the Little Bras d'Or, enter the island ofCape Breton, on the ragged northeast coast, above the town of Sydney,and flow in, at length widening out and occupying the heart of theisland. The water seeks out all the low places, and ramifies theinterior, running away into lovely bays and lagoons, leaving slendertongues of land and picturesque islands, and bringing into therecesses of the land, to the remote country farms and settlements,the flavor of salt, and the fish and mollusks of the briny sea.There is very little tide at any time, so that the shores are cleanand sightly for the most part, like those of fresh-water lakes. Ithas all the pleasantness of a fresh-water lake, with all theadvantages of a salt one. In the streams which run into it are thespeckled trout, the shad, and the salmon; out of its depths arehooked the cod and the mackerel, and in its bays fattens the oyster.This irregular lake is about a hundred miles long, if you measure itskillfully, and in some places ten miles broad; but so indented isit, that I am not sure but one would need, as we were informed, toride a thousand miles to go round it, following all its incursionsinto the land. The hills about it are never more than five or sixhundred feet high, but they are high enough for reposeful beauty, andoffer everywhere pleasing lines.

What we first saw was an inlet of the Bras d'Or, called, by thedriver, Hogamah Bay. At its entrance were long, wooded islands,beyond which we saw the backs of graceful hills, like the capes ofsome poetic sea-coast. The bay narrowed to a mile in width where wecame upon it, and ran several miles inland to a swamp, round the headof which we must go. Opposite was the village of Hogamah. I had mysuspicions from the beginning about this name, and now asked thedriver, who was liberally educated for a driver, how he spelled"Hogamah."

"Why-ko-ko-magh. Hogamah."

Sometimes it is called Wykogamah. Thus the innocent traveler ismisled. Along the Whykokomagh Bay we come to a permanent encampmentof the Micmac Indians,—a dozen wigwams in the pine woods. Thoughlumber is plenty, they refuse to live in houses. The wigwams,however, are more picturesque than the square frame houses of thewhites. Built up conically of poles, with a hole in the top for thesmoke to escape, and often set up a little from the ground on atimber foundation, they are as pleasing to the eye as a Chinese orTurkish dwelling. They may be cold in winter, but blessed be thetenacity of barbarism, which retains this agreeable architecture.The men live by hunting in the season, and the women support thefamily by making moccasins and baskets. These Indians are most ofthem good Catholics, and they try to go once a year to mass and asort of religious festival held at St. Peter's, where their sins areforgiven in a yearly lump.

At Whykokomagh, a neat fishing village of white houses, we stoppedfor dinner at the Inverness House. The house was very clean, and thetidy landlady gave us as good a dinner as she could of the inevitablegreen tea, toast, and salt fish. She was Gaelic, but Protestant, asthe village is, and showed us with pride her Gaelic Bible andhymn-book. A peaceful place, this Whykokomagh; the lapsing waters ofBras d'Or made a summer music all along the quiet street; the bay laysmiling with its islands in front, and an amphitheater of hills rosebehind. But for the line of telegraph poles one might have fanciedhe could have security and repose here.

We put a fresh pony into the shafts, a beast born with an everlastinguneasiness in his legs, and an amount of "go" in him which suited hisreckless driver. We no longer stood upon the order of our going; wewent. As we left the village, we passed a rocky hay-field, where theGaelic farmer was gathering the scanty yield of grass. A comelyIndian girl was stowing the hay and treading it down on the wagon.The driver hailed the farmer, and they exchanged Gaelic reparteewhich set all the hay-makers in a roar, and caused the Indian maid todarkly and sweetly beam upon us. We asked the driver what he hadsaid. He had only inquired what the man would take for the load—asit stood! A joke is a joke down this way.

I am not about to describe this drive at length, in order that thereader may skip it; for I know the reader, being of like passion andfashion with him. From the time we first struck the Bras d'Or forthirty miles we rode in constant sight of its magnificent water. Nowwe were two hundred feet above the water, on the hillside, skirting apoint or following an indentation; and now we were diving into anarrow valley, crossing a stream, or turning a sharp corner, butalways with the Bras d'Or in view, the afternoon sun shining on it,softening the outlines of its embracing hills, casting a shadow fromits wooded islands. Sometimes we opened on a broad water plainbounded by the Watchabaktchkt hills, and again we looked over hillafter hill receding into the soft and hazy blue of the land beyondthe great mass of the Bras d'Or. The reader can compare the view andthe ride to the Bay of Naples and the Cornice Road; we did nothing ofthe sort; we held on to the seat, prayed that the harness of the ponymight not break, and gave constant expression to our wonder anddelight. For a week we had schooled ourselves to expect nothing morefrom this wicked world, but here was an enchanting vision.

The only phenomenon worthy the attention of any inquiring mind, inthis whole record, I will now describe. As we drove along the sideof a hill, and at least two hundred feet above the water, the roadsuddenly diverged and took a circuit higher up. The driver said thatwas to avoid a sink-hole in the old road,—a great curiosity, whichit was worth while to examine. Beside the old road was a circularhole, which nipped out a part of the road-bed, some twenty-five feetin diameter, filled with water almost to the brim, but not runningover. The water was dark in color, and I fancied had a brackishtaste. The driver said that a few weeks before, when he came thisway, it was solid ground where this well now opened, and that a largebeech-tree stood there. When he returned next day, he found thishole full of water, as we saw it, and the large tree had sunk in it.The size of the hole seemed to be determined by the reach of theroots of the tree. The tree had so entirely disappeared, that hecould not with a long pole touch its top. Since then the water hadneither subsided nor overflowed. The ground about was compactgravel. We tried sounding the hole with poles, but could makenothing of it. The water seemed to have no outlet nor inlet; atleast, it did not rise or fall. Why should the solid hill give wayat this place, and swallow up a tree? and if the water had anyconnection with the lake, two hundred feet below and at some distanceaway, why didn't the water run out? Why should the unscientifictraveler have a thing of this kind thrown in his way? The driver didnot know.

This phenomenon made us a little suspicious of the foundations ofthis island which is already invaded by the jealous ocean, and isanchored to the continent only by the cable.

The drive became more charming as the sun went down, and we saw thehills grow purple beyond the Bras d'Or. The road wound around lovelycoves and across low promontories, giving us new beauties at everyturn. Before dark we had crossed the Middle River and the BigBaddeck, on long wooden bridges, which straggled over sluggish watersand long reaches of marsh, upon which Mary might have been sent tocall the cattle home. These bridges were shaky and wanted a plank atintervals, but they are in keeping with the enterprise of thecountry. As dusk came on, we crossed the last hill, and were bowlingalong by the still gleaming water. Lights began to appear ininfrequent farmhouses, and under cover of the gathering night thehouses seemed to be stately mansions; and we fancied we were on anoble highway, lined with elegant suburban seaside residences, andabout to drive into a town of wealth and a port of great commerce.We were, nevertheless, anxious about Baddeck. What sort of havenwere we to reach after our heroic (with the reader's permission) weekof travel? Would the hotel be like that at Plaster Cove? Were ourthirty-six hours of sleepless staging to terminate in a night ofmisery and a Sunday of discomfort?

We came into a straggling village; that we could see by thestarlight. But we stopped at the door of a very unhotel-likeappearing hotel. It had in front a flower-garden; it was blazingwith welcome lights; it opened hospitable doors, and we were receivedby a family who expected us. The house was a large one, for twoguests; and we enjoyed the luxury of spacious rooms, an abundantsupper, and a friendly welcome; and, in short, found ourselves athome. The proprietor of the Telegraph House is the superintendent ofthe land lines of Cape Breton, a Scotchman, of course; but his wifeis a Newfoundland lady. We cannot violate the sanctity of whatseemed like private hospitality by speaking freely of this lady andthe lovely girls, her daughters, whose education has been soadmirably advanced in the excellent school at Baddeck; but we canconfidently advise any American who is going to Newfoundland, to geta wife there, if he wants one at all. It is the only new article hecan bring from the Provinces that he will not have to pay duty on.And here is a suggestion to our tariff-mongers for the "protection"of New England women.

The reader probably cannot appreciate the delicious sense of rest andof achievement which we enjoyed in this tidy inn, nor share theanticipations of undisturbed, luxurious sleep, in which we indulgedas we sat upon the upper balcony after supper, and saw the moon riseover the glistening Bras d'Or and flood with light the islands andheadlands of the beautiful bay. Anchored at some distance from theshore was a slender coasting vessel. The big red moon happened tocome up just behind it, and the masts and spars and ropes of thevessel came out, distinctly traced on the golden background, makingsuch a night picture as I once saw painted of a ship in a fiord ofNorway. The scene was enchanting. And we respected then theheretofore seemingly insane impulse that had driven us on to Baddeck.

IV

"He had no ill-will to the Scotch; for, if he had been conscious ofthat, he never would have thrown himself into the bosom of theircountry, and trusted to the protection of its remote inhabitants witha fearless confidence."—BOSWELL'S JOHNSON.

Although it was an open and flagrant violation of the Sabbath day asit is kept in Scotch Baddeck, our kind hosts let us sleep late onSunday morning, with no reminder that we were not sleeping the sleepof the just. It was the charming Maud, a flitting sunbeam of a girl,who waited to bring us our breakfast, and thereby lost theopportunity of going to church with the rest of the family,—an actof gracious hospitality which the tired travelers appreciated.

The travelers were unable, indeed, to awaken into any feeling ofSabbatical straitness. The morning was delicious,—such a morning asnever visits any place except an island; a bright, sparkling morning,with the exhilaration of the air softened by the sea. What a day itwas for idleness, for voluptuous rest, after the flight by day andnight from St. John! It was enough, now that the morning was fullyopened and advancing to the splendor of noon, to sit upon the upperbalcony, looking upon the Bras d'Or and the peaceful hills beyond,reposeful and yet sparkling with the air and color of summer, andinhale the balmy air. (We greatly need another word to describe goodair, properly heated, besides this overworked "balmy.") Perhaps itmight in some regions be considered Sabbath-keeping, simply to restin such a soothing situation,—rest, and not incessant activity,having been one of the original designs of the day.

But our travelers were from New England, and they were not willing tobe outdone in the matter of Sunday observances by such anout-of-the-way and nameless place as Baddeck. They did not setthemselves up as missionaries to these benighted Gaelic people, toteach them by example that the notion of Sunday which obtained twohundred years ago in Scotland had been modified, and that thesacredness of it had pretty much disappeared with the unpleasantnessof it. They rather lent themselves to the humor of the hour, andprobably by their demeanor encouraged the respect for the day on CapeBreton Island. Neither by birth nor education were the travelersfishermen on Sunday, and they were not moved to tempt the authoritiesto lock them up for dropping here a line and there a line on theLord's day.

In fact, before I had finished my second cup of Maud-mixed coffee, mycompanion, with a little show of haste, had gone in search of thekirk, and I followed him, with more scrupulousness, as soon as Icould without breaking the day of rest. Although it was Sunday, Icould not but notice that Baddeck was a clean-looking village ofwhite wooden houses, of perhaps seven or eight hundred inhabitants;that it stretched along the bay for a mile or more, straggling offinto farmhouses at each end, lying for the most part on the slopingcurve of the bay. There were a few country-looking stores and shops,and on the shore three or four rather decayed and shaky wharves raninto the water, and a few schooners lay at anchor near them; and theusual decaying warehouses leaned about the docks. A peaceful andperhaps a thriving place, but not a bustling place. As I walked downthe road, a sailboat put out from the shore and slowly disappearedround the island in the direction of the Grand Narrows. It had asmall pleasure party on board. None of them were drowned that day,and I learned at night that they were Roman Catholics fromWhykokornagh.

The kirk, which stands near the water, and at a distance shows apretty wooden spire, is after the pattern of a New Englandmeeting-house. When I reached it, the house was full and the servicehad begun. There was something familiar in the bareness anduncompromising plainness and ugliness of the interior. The pews hadhigh backs, with narrow, uncushioned seats. The pulpit was high,—asort of theological fortification,—approached by wide, curvingflights of stairs on either side. Those who occupied the near seatsto the right and left of the pulpit had in front of them a blankboard partition, and could not by any possibility see the minister,though they broke their necks backwards over their high coat-collars.The congregation had a striking resemblance to a country New Englandcongregation of say twenty years ago. The clothes they wore had beenSunday clothes for at least that length of time.

Such clothes have a look of I know not what devout and painfulrespectability, that is in keeping with the worldly notion of rigidScotch Presbyterianism. One saw with pleasure the fresh androsy-cheeked children of this strict generation, but the women of theaudience were not in appearance different from newly arrived andrespectable Irish immigrants. They wore a white cap with long frillsover the forehead, and a black handkerchief thrown over it andhanging down the neck,—a quaint and not unpleasing disguise.

The house, as I said, was crowded. It is the custom in this regionto go to church,—for whole families to go, even the smallestchildren; and they not unfrequently walk six or seven miles to attendthe service. There is a kind of merit in this act that makes up forthe lack of certain other Christian virtues that are practicedelsewhere. The service was worth coming seven miles to participatein!—it was about two hours long, and one might well feel as if hehad performed a work of long-suffering to sit through it. Thesinging was strictly congregational. Congregational singing is good(for those who like it) when the congregation can sing. Thiscongregation could not sing, but it could grind the Psalms of Davidpowerfully. They sing nothing else but the old Scotch version of thePsalms, in a patient and faithful long meter. And this is regarded,and with considerable plausibility, as an act of worship. Itcertainly has small element of pleasure in it. Here is a stanza fromPsalm xlv., which the congregation, without any instrumentalnonsense, went through in a dragging, drawling manner, and withperfect individual independence as to time:

"Thine arrows sharply pierce the heart of th' enemies of the king,
And under thy sub-jec-shi-on the people down do bring."

The sermon was extempore, and in English with Scotch pronunciation;and it filled a solid hour of time. I am not a good judge ofsermons, and this one was mere chips to me; but my companion, who knowsa sermon when he hears it, said that this was strictly theological,and Scotch theology at that, and not at all expository. It wasdoubtless my fault that I got no idea whatever from it. But theadults of the congregation appeared to be perfectly satisfied withit; at least they sat bolt upright and nodded assent continually.The children all went to sleep under it, without any hypocriticalshow of attention. To be sure, the day was warm and the house wasunventilated. If the windows had been opened so as to admit thefresh air from the Bras d'Or, I presume the hard-working farmers andtheir wives would have resented such an interference with theirordained Sunday naps, and the preacher's sermon would have seemedmore musty than it appeared to be in that congenial and drowsy air.Considering that only half of the congregation could understand thepreacher, its behavior was exemplary.

After the sermon, a collection was taken up for the minister; and Inoticed that nothing but pennies rattled into the boxes,—amelancholy sound for the pastor. This might appear nigg*rdly on thepart of these Scotch Presbyterians, but it is on principle that theyput only a penny into the box; they say that they want a free gospel,and so far as they are concerned they have it. Although the farmersabout the Bras d'Or are well-to-do they do not give their ministerenough to keep his soul in his Gaelic body, and his poor support iseked out by the contributions of a missionary society. It wasgratifying to learn that this was not from stinginess on the part ofthe people, but was due to their religious principle. It seemed tous that everybody ought to be good in a country where it costs nextto nothing.

When the service was over, about half of the people departed; therest remained in their seats and prepared to enter upon their Sabbathexercises. These latter were all Gaelic people, who had understoodlittle or nothing of the English service. The minister turnedhimself at once into a Gaelic preacher and repeated in that languagethe long exercises of the morning. The sermon and perhaps theprayers were quite as enjoyable in Gaelic as in English, and thesinging was a great improvement. It was of the same Psalms, but thecongregation chanted them in a wild and weird tone and manner, aswailing and barbarous to modern ears as any Highland devotionaloutburst of two centuries ago. This service also lasted about twohours; and as soon as it was over the faithful minister, without anyrest or refreshment, organized the Sunday-school, and it must havebeen half past three o'clock before that was over. And this isconsidered a day of rest.

These Gaelic Christians, we were informed, are of a very old pattern;and some of them cling more closely to religious observances than tomorality. Sunday is nowhere observed with more strictness. Thecommunity seems to be a very orderly and thrifty one, except uponsolemn and stated occasions. One of these occasions is thecelebration of the Lord's Supper; and in this the ancient Highlandtraditions are preserved. The rite is celebrated not oftener thanonce a year by any church. It then invites the neighboring churchesto partake with it,—the celebration being usually in the summer andearly fall months. It has some of the characteristics of a"camp-meeting." People come from long distances, and as many as twothousand and three thousand assemble together. They quarterthemselves without special invitation upon the members of theinviting church. Sometimes fifty people will pounce upon one farmer,overflowing his house and his barn and swarming all about hispremises, consuming all the provisions he has laid up for his family,and all he can raise money to buy, and literally eating him out ofhouse and home. Not seldom a man is almost ruined by one of thesereligious raids,—at least he is left with a debt of hundreds ofdollars. The multitude assembles on Thursday and remains overSunday. There is preaching every day, but there is somethingbesides. Whatever may be the devotion of a part of the assembly, thefour days are, in general, days of license, of carousing, ofdrinking, and of other excesses, which our informant said he wouldnot particularize; we could understand what they were by reading St.Paul's rebuke of the Corinthians for similar offenses. The evil hasbecome so great and burdensome that the celebration of this sacredrite will have to be reformed altogether.

Such a Sabbath quiet pervaded the street of Baddeck, that the fastdriving of the Gaels in their rattling, one-horse wagons, crowdedfull of men, women, and children,—released from their long sanctuaryprivileges, and going home,—was a sort of profanation of the day;and we gladly turned aside to visit the rural jail of the town.

Upon the principal street or road of Baddeck stands the dreadfulprison-house. It is a story and a quarter edifice, built of stoneand substantially whitewashed; retired a little from the road, with asquare of green turf in front of it, I should have taken it for theresidence of the Dairyman's Daughter, but for the iron gratings atthe lower windows. A more inviting place to spend the summer in, avicious person could not have. The Scotch keeper of it is an old,garrulous, obliging man, and keeps codfish tackle to loan. I thinkthat if he had a prisoner who was fond of fishing, he would take himwith him on the bay in pursuit of the mackerel and the cod. If theprisoner were to take advantage of his freedom and attempt to escape,the jailer's feelings would be hurt, and public opinion would hardlyapprove the prisoner's conduct.

The jail door was hospitably open, and the keeper invited us toenter. Having seen the inside of a good many prisons in our owncountry (officially), we were interested in inspecting this. It wasa favorable time for doing so, for there happened to be a manconfined there, a circ*mstance which seemed to increase the keeper'sfeeling of responsibility in his office. The edifice had four roomson the ground-floor, and an attic sleeping-room above. Three ofthese rooms, which were perhaps twelve feet by fifteen feet, werecells; the third was occupied by the jailer's family. The familywere now also occupying the front cell,—a cheerful room commanding aview of the village street and of the bay. A prisoner of aphilosophic turn of mind, who had committed some crime of sufficientmagnitude to make him willing to retire from the world for a seasonand rest, might enjoy himself here very well.

The jailer exhibited his premises with an air of modesty. In therear was a small yard, surrounded by a board fence, in which theprisoner took his exercise. An active boy could climb over it, andan enterprising pig could go through it almost anywhere. The keepersaid that he intended at the next court to ask the commissioners tobuild the fence higher and stop up the holes. Otherwise the jail wasin good condition. Its inmates were few; in fact, it was rather aptto be empty: its occupants were usually prisoners for debt, or forsome trifling breach of the peace, committed under the influence ofthe liquor that makes one "unco happy." Whether or not the people ofthe region have a high moral standard, crime is almost unknown; thejail itself is an evidence of primeval simplicity. The greatincident in the old jailer's life had been the rescue of a well-knowncitizen who was confined on a charge of misuse of public money. Thekeeper showed me a place in the outer wall of the front cell, wherean attempt had been made to batter a hole through. The Highland clanand kinsfolk of the alleged defaulter came one night and threatenedto knock the jail in pieces if he was not given up. They bruised thewall, broke the windows, and finally smashed in the door and tooktheir man away. The jailer was greatly excited at this rudeness, andwent almost immediately and purchased a pistol. He said that for atime he did n't feel safe in the jail without it. The mob had thrownstones at the upper windows, in order to awaken him, and had insultedhim with cursing and offensive language.

Having finished inspecting the building, I was unfortunately moved byI know not what national pride and knowledge of institutions superiorto this at home, to say,

"This is a pleasant jail, but it doesn't look much like our greatprisons; we have as many as a thousand to twelve hundred men in someof our institutions."

"Ay, ay, I have heard tell," said the jailer, shaking his head inpity, "it's an awfu' place, an awfu' place,—the United States. Isuppose it's the wickedest country that ever was in the world. Idon't know,—I don't know what is to become of it. It's worse thanSodom. There was that dreadful war on the South; and I hear now it'svery unsafe, full of murders and robberies and corruption."

I did not attempt to correct this impression concerning my nativeland, for I saw it was a comfort to the simple jailer, but I tried toput a thorn into him by saying,

"Yes, we have a good many criminals, but the majority of them, themajority of those in jails, are foreigners; they come from Ireland,England, and the Provinces."

But the old man only shook his head more solemnly, and persisted,
"It's an awfu' wicked country."

Before I came away I was permitted to have an interview with the soleprisoner, a very pleasant and talkative man, who was glad to seecompany, especially intelligent company who understood about things,he was pleased to say. I have seldom met a more agreeable rogue, orone so philosophical, a man of travel and varied experiences. He wasa lively, robust Provincial of middle age, bullet-headed, with a massof curly black hair, and small, round black eyes, that danced andsparkled with good humor. He was by trade a carpenter, and had awork-bench in his cell, at which he worked on week-days. He had beenput in jail on suspicion of stealing a buffalo-robe, and he lay injail eight months, waiting for the judge to come to Baddeck on hisyearly circuit. He did not steal the robe, as he assured me, but itwas found in his house, and the judge gave him four months in jail,making a year in all,—a month of which was still to serve. But hewas not at all anxious for the end of his term; for his wife wasoutside.

Jock, for he was familiarly so called, asked me where I was from. AsI had not found it very profitable to hail from the United States,and had found, in fact, that the name United States did not conveyany definite impression to the average Cape Breton mind, I venturedupon the bold assertion, for which I hope Bostonians will forgive me,that I was from Boston. For Boston is known in the easternProvinces.

"Are you?" cried the man, delighted. "I've lived in Boston, myself.
There's just been an awful fire near there."

"Indeed!" I said; "I heard nothing of it.' And I was startled withthe possibility that Boston had burned up again while we werecrawling along through Nova Scotia.

"Yes, here it is, in the last paper." The man bustled away and foundhis late paper, and thrust it through the grating, with the inquiry,"Can you read?"

Though the question was unexpected, and I had never thought beforewhether I could read or not, I confessed that I could probably makeout the meaning, and took the newspaper. The report of the fire"near Boston" turned out to be the old news of the conflagration inPortland, Oregon!

Disposed to devote a portion of this Sunday to the reformation ofthis lively criminal, I continued the conversation with him. Itseemed that he had been in jail before, and was not unaccustomed tothe life. He was not often lonesome; he had his workbench andnewspapers, and it was a quiet place; on the whole, he enjoyed it,and should rather regret it when his time was up, a month from then.

Had he any family?

"Oh, yes. When the census was round, I contributed more to it thananybody in town. Got a wife and eleven children."

"Well, don't you think it would pay best to be honest, and live withyour family, out of jail? You surely never had anything but troublefrom dishonesty."

"That's about so, boss. I mean to go on the square after this. But,you see," and here he began to speak confidentially, "things arefixed about so in this world, and a man's got to live his life. Itell you how it was. It all came about from a woman. I was acarpenter, had a good trade, and went down to St. Peter's to work.There I got acquainted with a Frenchwoman,—you know what Frenchwomenare,—and I had to marry her. The fact is, she was rather lowfamily; not so very low, you know, but not so good as mine. Well, Iwanted to go to Boston to work at my trade, but she wouldn't go; andI went, but she would n't come to me, so in two or three years I cameback. A man can't help himself, you know, when he gets in with awoman, especially a Frenchwoman. Things did n't go very well, andnever have. I can't make much out of it, but I reckon a man 's gotto live his life. Ain't that about so?"

"Perhaps so. But you'd better try to mend matters when you get out.Won't it seem rather good to get out and see your wife and familyagain?"

"I don't know. I have peace here."

The question of his liberty seemed rather to depress this cheerfuland vivacious philosopher, and I wondered what the woman could befrom whose companionship the man chose to be protected by jail-bolts.I asked the landlord about her, and his reply was descriptive andsufficient. He only said,

"She's a yelper."

Besides the church and the jail there are no public institutions inBaddeck to see on Sunday, or on any other day; but it has very goodschools, and the examination-papers of Maud and her elder sisterwould do credit to Boston scholars even. You would not say that theplace was stuffed with books, or overrun by lecturers, but it is anorderly, Sabbath-keeping, fairly intelligent town. Book-agents visitit with other commercial travelers, but the flood of knowledge, whichis said to be the beginning of sorrow, is hardly turned in thatdirection yet. I heard of a feeble lecture-course in Halifax,supplied by local celebrities, some of them from St. John; but so faras I can see, this is a virgin field for the platform philosophersunder whose instructions we have become the well-informed people weare.

The peaceful jail and the somewhat tiresome church exhaust one'sopportunities for doing good in Baddeck on Sunday. There seemed tobe no idlers about, to reprove; the occasional lounger on theskeleton wharves was in his Sunday clothes, and therefore within thestatute. No one, probably, would have thought of rowing out beyondthe island to fish for cod,—although, as that fish is ready to bite,and his associations are more or less sacred, there might be excusesfor angling for him on Sunday, when it would be wicked to throw aline for another sort of fish. My earliest recollections are of thecodfish on the meeting-house spires in New England,—his sacred tailpointing the way the wind went. I did not know then why this emblemshould be placed upon a house of worship, any more than I knew whycodfish-balls appeared always upon the Sunday breakfast-table. Butthese associations invested this plebeian fish with something of areligious character, which he has never quite lost, in my mind.

Having attributed the quiet of Baddeck on Sunday to religion, we didnot know to what to lay the quiet on Monday. But its peacefulnesscontinued. I have no doubt that the farmers began to farm, and thetraders to trade, and the sailors to sail; but the tourist felt thathe had come into a place of rest. The promise of the red sky theevening before was fulfilled in another royal day. There was aninspiration in the air that one looks for rather in the mountainsthan on the sea-coast; it seemed like some new and gentle compound ofsea-air and land-air, which was the perfection of breathing material.In this atmosphere, which seemed to flow over all these Atlanticisles at this season, one endures a great deal of exertion withlittle fatigue; or he is content to sit still, and has no feeling ofsluggishness. Mere living is a kind of happiness, and the easy-goingtraveler is satisfied with little to do and less to see, Let thereader not understand that we are recommending him to go to Baddeck.Far from it. The reader was never yet advised to go to any place,which he did not growl about if he took the advice and went there.If he discovers it himself, the case is different. We know too wellwhat would happen. A shoal of travelers would pour down upon CapeBreton, taking with them their dyspepsia, their liver-complaints,their "lights" derangements, their discontent, their guns andfishing-tackle, their big trunks, their desire for rapid travel,their enthusiasm about the Gaelic language, their love for nature;and they would very likely declare that there was nothing in it. Andthe traveler would probably be right, so far as he is concerned.There are few whom it would pay to go a thousand miles for the sakeof sitting on the dock at Baddeck when the sun goes down, andwatching the purple lights on the islands and the distant hills, thered flush in the horizon and on the lake, and the creeping on of graytwilight. You can see all that as well elsewhere? I am not so sure.There is a harmony of beauty about the Bras d'Or at Baddeck which islacking in many scenes of more pretension. No. We advise no personto go to Cape Breton. But if any one does go, he need not lackoccupation. If he is there late in the fall or early in the winter,he may hunt, with good luck, if he is able to hit anything with arifle, the moose and the caribou on that long wilderness peninsulabetween Baddeck and Aspy Bay, where the old cable landed. He mayalso have his fill of salmon fishing in June and July, especially onthe Matjorie River. As late as August, at the time, of our visit, ahundred people were camped in tents on the Marjorie, wiling thesalmon with the delusive fly, and leading him to death with a hook inhis nose. The speckled trout lives in all the streams, and can becaught whenever he will bite. The day we went for him appeared to bean off-day, a sort of holiday with him.

There is one place, however, which the traveler must not fail tovisit. That is St. Ann's Bay. He will go light of baggage, for hemust hire a farmer to carry him from the Bras d'Or to the branch ofSt. Ann's harbor, and a part of his journey will be in a row-boat.There is no ride on the continent, of the kind, so full ofpicturesque beauty and constant surprises as this around theindentations of St. Ann's harbor. From the high promontory whererests the fishing village of St. Ann, the traveler will cross toEnglish Town. High bluffs, bold shores, exquisite sea-views,mountainous ranges, delicious air, the society of a member of theDominion Parliament, these are some of the things to be enjoyed atthis place. In point of grandeur and beauty it surpasses Mt. Desert,and is really the most attractive place on the whole line of theAtlantic Cable. If the traveler has any sentiment in him, he willvisit here, not without emotion, the grave of the Nova Scotia Giant,who recently laid his huge frame along this, his native shore. A manof gigantic height and awful breadth of shoulders, with a hand as bigas a shovel, there was nothing mean or little in his soul. While thevisitor is gazing at his vast shoes, which now can be used only assledges, he will be told that the Giant was greatly respected by hisneighbors as a man of ability and simple integrity. He was notspoiled by his metropolitan successes, bringing home from his foreigntriumphs the same quiet and friendly demeanor he took away; he isalmost the only example of a successful public man, who did not feelbigger than he was. He performed his duty in life withoutostentation, and returned to the home he loved unspoiled by theflattery of constant public curiosity. He knew, having tried both,how much better it is to be good than to be great. I should like tohave known him. I should like to know how the world looked to himfrom his altitude. I should like to know how much food it took atone time to make an impression on him; I should like to know whateffect an idea of ordinary size had in his capacious head. I shouldlike to feel that thrill of physical delight he must have experiencedin merely closing his hand over something. It is a pity that hecould not have been educated all through, beginning at a high school,and ending in a university. There was a field for the multifariousnew education! If we could have annexed him with his island, Ishould like to have seen him in the Senate of the United States. Hewould have made foreign nations respect that body, and fear hislightest remark like a declaration of war. And he would have been athome in that body of great men. Alas! he has passed away, leavinglittle influence except a good example of growth, and a grave whichis a new promontory on that ragged coast swept by the winds of theuntamed Atlantic.

I could describe the Bay of St. Ann more minutely and graphically, ifit were desirable to do so; but I trust that enough has been said tomake the traveler wish to go there. I more unreservedly urge him togo there, because we did not go, and we should feel no responsibilityfor his liking or disliking. He will go upon the recommendation oftwo gentlemen of taste and travel whom we met at Baddeck, residentsof Maine and familiar with most of the odd and striking combinationsof land and water in coast scenery. When a Maine man admits thatthere is any place finer than Mt. Desert, it is worth making a noteof.

On Monday we went a-fishing. Davie hitched to a rattling wagonsomething that he called a horse, a small, rough animal with a greatdeal of "go" in him, if he could be coaxed to show it. For the firsthalf-hour he went mostly in a circle in front of the inn, movingindifferently backwards or forwards, perfectly willing to go down theroad, but refusing to start along the bay in the direction of MiddleRiver. Of course a crowd collected to give advice and make remarks,and women appeared at the doors and windows of adjacent houses.Davie said he did n't care anything about the conduct of the horse,—he could start him after a while,—but he did n't like to have allthe town looking at him, especially the girls; and besides, such anexhibition affected the market value of the horse. We sat in thewagon circling round and round, sometimes in the ditch and sometimesout of it, and Davie "whaled" the horse with his whip and abused himwith his tongue. It was a pleasant day, and the spectatorsincreased.

There are two ways of managing a balky horse. My companion knew oneof them and I the other. His method is to sit quietly in the wagon,and at short intervals throw a small pebble at the horse. The theoryis that these repeated sudden annoyances will operate on a horse'smind, and he will try to escape them by going on. The spectatorssupplied my friend with stones, and he pelted the horse with measuredgentleness. Probably the horse understood this method, for he didnot notice the attack at all. My plan was to speak gently to thehorse, requesting him to go, and then to follow the refusal by onesudden, sharp cut of the lash; to wait a moment, and then repeat theoperation. The dread of the coming lash after the gentle word willstart any horse. I tried this, and with a certain success. Thehorse backed us into the ditch, and would probably have backedhimself into the wagon, if I had continued. When the animal was atlength ready to go, Davie took him by the bridle, ran by his side,coaxed him into a gallop, and then, leaping in behind, lashed himinto a run, which had little respite for ten miles, uphill or down.Remonstrance on behalf of the horse was in vain, and it was only onthe return home that this specimen Cape Breton driver began toreflect how he could erase the welts from the horse's back before hisfather saw them.

Our way lay along the charming bay of the Bras d'Or, over thesprawling bridge of the Big Baddeck, a black, sedgy, lonesome stream,to Middle River, which debouches out of a scraggy country into abayou with ragged shores, about which the Indians have encampments,and in which are the skeleton stakes of fish-weirs. Saturday nightwe had seen trout jumping in the still water above the bridge. Wefollowed the stream up two or three miles to a Gaelic settlement offarmers. The river here flows through lovely meadows, sandy,fertile, and sheltered by hills,—a green Eden, one of the fewpeaceful inhabited spots in the world. I could conceive of no newscoming to these Highlanders later than the defeat of the Pretender.Turning from the road, through a lane and crossing a shallow brook,we reached the dwelling of one of the original McGregors, or at leastas good as an original. Mr. McGregor is a fiery-haired Scotchman andbrother, cordial and hospitable, who entertained our wayward horse,and freely advised us where the trout on his farm were most likely tobe found at this season of the year.

It would be a great pleasure to speak well of Mr. McGregor'sresidence, but truth is older than Scotchmen, and the reader looks tous for truth and not flattery. Though the McGregor seems to have agood farm, his house is little better than a shanty, a rathercheerless place for the "woman" to slave away her uneventful lifein, and bring up her scantily clothed and semi-wild flock ofchildren. And yet I suppose there must be happiness in it,—therealways is where there are plenty of children, and milk enough forthem. A white-haired boy who lacked adequate trousers, small thoughhe was, was brought forward by his mother to describe a trout he hadrecently caught, which was nearly as long as the boy himself. Theyoung Gael's invention was rewarded by a present of real fish-hooks.We found here in this rude cabin the hospitality that exists in allremote regions where travelers are few. Mrs. McGregor had none ofthat reluctance, which women feel in all more civilized agriculturalregions, to "break a pan of milk," and Mr. McGregor even pressed usto partake freely of that simple drink. And he refused to take anypay for it, in a sort of surprise that such a simple act ofhospitality should have any commercial value. But travelersthemselves destroy one of their chief pleasures. No doubt we plantedthe notion in the McGregor mind that the small kindnesses of life maybe made profitable, by offering to pay for the milk; and probably thenext travelers in that Eden will succeed in leaving some small changethere, if they use a little tact.

It was late in the season for trout. Perhaps the McGregor was awareof that when he freely gave us the run of the stream in his meadows,and pointed out the pools where we should be sure of good luck. Itwas a charming August day, just the day that trout enjoy lying incool, deep places, and moving their fins in quiet content,indifferent to the skimming fly or to the proffered sport of rod andreel. The Middle River gracefully winds through this Vale of Tempe,over a sandy bottom, sometimes sparkling in shallows, and then gentlyreposing in the broad bends of the grassy banks. It was in one ofthese bends, where the stream swirled around in seductive eddies,that we tried our skill. We heroically waded the stream and threwour flies from the highest bank; but neither in the black water norin the sandy shallows could any trout be coaxed to spring to thedeceitful leaders. We enjoyed the distinction of being the onlypersons who had ever failed to strike trout in that pool, and thiswas something. The meadows were sweet with the newly cut grass, thewind softly blew down the river, large white clouds sailed highoverhead and cast shadows on the changing water; but to all thesegentle influences the fish were insensible, and sulked in their coolretreats. At length in a small brook flowing into the Middle Riverwe found the trout more sociable; and it is lucky that we did so, forI should with reluctance stain these pages with a fiction; and yetthe public would have just reason to resent a fish-story without anyfish in it. Under a bank, in a pool crossed by a log and shaded by atree, we found a drove of the speckled beauties at home, dozens ofthem a foot long, each moving lazily a little, their black backsrelieved by their colored fins. They must have seen us, but at firstthey showed no desire for a closer acquaintance. To the red ibis andthe white miller and the brown hackle and the gray fly they werealike indifferent. Perhaps the love for made flies is an artificialtaste and has to be cultivated. These at any rate were uncivilized-trout, and it was only when we took the advice of the young McGregorand baited our hooks with the angleworm, that the fish joined in ourday's sport. They could not resist the lively wiggle of the wormbefore their very noses, and we lifted them out one after an other,gently, and very much as if we were hooking them out of a barrel,until we had a handsome string. It may have been fun for them but itwas not much sport for us. All the small ones the young McGregorcontemptuously threw back into the water. The sportsman will perhapslearn from this incident that there are plenty of trout in CapeBreton in August, but that the fishing is not exhilarating.

The next morning the semi-weekly steamboat from Sydney came into thebay, and drew all the male inhabitants of Baddeck down to the wharf;and the two travelers, reluctant to leave the hospitable inn, and thepeaceful jail, and the double-barreled church, and all the lovelinessof this reposeful place, prepared to depart. The most conspicuousperson on the steamboat was a thin man, whose extraordinary heightwas made more striking by his very long-waisted black coat and hisvery short pantaloons. He was so tall that he had a littledifficulty in keeping his balance, and his hat was set upon the backof his head to preserve his equilibrium. He had arrived at thatstage when people affected as he was are oratorical, and overflowingwith information and good-nature. With what might in strict art becalled an excess of expletives, he explained that he was a civilengineer, that he had lost his rubber coat, that he was a greattraveler in the Provinces, and he seemed to find a humoroussatisfaction in reiterating the fact of his familiarity with Painsecjunction. It evidently hovered in the misty horizon of his mind as ajoke, and he contrived to present it to his audience in that light.From the deck of the steamboat he addressed the town, and then, tothe relief of the passengers, he decided to go ashore. When the boatdrew away on her voyage we left him swaying perilously near the edgeof the wharf, good-naturedly resenting the grasp of his coat-tail bya friend, addressing us upon the topics of the day, and wishing usprosperity and the Fourth of July. His was the only effort in thenature of a public lecture that we heard in the Provinces, and wecould not judge of his ability without hearing a "course."

Perhaps it needed this slight disturbance, and the contrast of thishazy mind with the serene clarity of the day, to put us into the mostcomplete enjoyment of our voyage. Certainly, as we glided out uponthe summer waters and began to get the graceful outlines of thewidening shores, it seemed as if we had taken passage to theFortunate Islands.

V

"One town, one country, is very like another; …… there are indeedminute discriminations both of places and manners, which, perhaps,are not wanting of curiosity, but which a traveller seldom stays longenough to investigate and compare."—DR. JOHNSON.

There was no prospect of any excitement or of any adventure on thesteamboat from Baddeck to West Bay, the southern point of the Brasd'Or. Judging from the appearance of the boat, the dinner might havebeen an experiment, but we ran no risks. It was enough to sit ondeck forward of the wheel-house, and absorb, by all the senses, thedelicious day. With such weather perpetual and such scenery alwayspresent, sin in this world would soon become an impossibility. Eventowards the passengers from Sydney, with their imitation English waysand little insular gossip, one could have only charity and the mostkindly feeling.

The most electric American, heir of all the nervous diseases of allthe ages, could not but find peace in this scene of tranquil beauty,and sail on into a great and deepening contentment. Would the voyagecould last for an age, with the same sparkling but tranquil sea, andthe same environment of hills, near and remote! The hills approachedand fell away in lines of undulating grace, draped with a tendercolor which helped to carry the imagination beyond the earth. Atthis point the narrative needs to flow into verse, but my comrade didnot feel like another attempt at poetry so soon after that on the Gutof Canso. A man cannot always be keyed up to the pitch ofproduction, though his emotions may be highly creditable to him. Butpoetry-making in these days is a good deal like the use of profanelanguage,—often without the least provocation.

Twelve miles from Baddeck we passed through the Barra Strait, or theGrand Narrows, a picturesque feature in the Bras d'Or, and came intoits widest expanse. At the Narrows is a small settlement with aflag-staff and a hotel, and roads leading to farmhouses on the hills.Here is a Catholic chapel; and on shore a fat padre was waiting inhis wagon for the inevitable priest we always set ashore at such aplace. The missionary we landed was the young father from Arichat,and in appearance the pleasing historical Jesuit. Slender is toocorpulent a word to describe his thinness, and his stature wasprimeval. Enveloped in a black coat, the skirts of which reached hisheels, and surmounted by a black hat with an enormous brim, he hadthe form of an elegant toadstool. The traveler is always gratefulfor such figures, and is not disposed to quarrel with the faith whichpreserves so much of the ugly picturesque. A peaceful farmingcountry this, but an unremunerative field, one would say, for thecolporteur and the book-agent; and winter must inclose it in alonesome seclusion.

The only other thing of note the Bras d'Or offered us before wereached West Bay was the finest show of medusm or jelly-fish thatcould be produced. At first there were dozens of these disk-shaped,transparent creatures, and then hundreds, starring the water likemarguerites sprinkled on a meadow, and of sizes from that of a teacupto a dinner-plate. We soon ran into a school of them, a convention,a herd as extensive as the vast buffalo droves on the plains, acollection as thick as clover-blossoms in a field in June, miles ofthem, apparently; and at length the boat had to push its way througha mass of them which covered the water like the leaves of thepondlily, and filled the deeps far down with their beautifulcontracting and expanding forms. I did not suppose there were somany jelly-fishes in all the world. What a repast they would havemade for the Atlantic whale we did not see, and what inward comfortit would have given him to have swum through them once or twice withopen mouth! Our delight in this wondrous spectacle did not preventthis generous wish for the gratification of the whale. It isprobably a natural human desire to see big corporations swallow uplittle ones.

At the West Bay landing, where there is nothing whatever attractive,we found a great concourse of country wagons and clamorous drivers,to transport the passengers over the rough and uninteresting ninemiles to Port Hawkesbury. Competition makes the fare low, butnothing makes the ride entertaining. The only settlement passedthrough has the promising name of River Inhabitants, but we could seelittle river and less inhabitants; country and people seem to belongto that commonplace order out of which the traveler can extractnothing amusing, instructive, or disagreeable; and it was a greatrelief when we came over the last hill and looked down upon thestraggling village of Port Hawkesbury and the winding Gut of Canso.

One cannot but feel a respect for this historical strait, on accountof the protection it once gave our British ancestors. Smollett makesa certain Captain C——tell this anecdote of George II. and hisenlightened minister, the Duke of Newcastle: "In the beginning of thewar this poor, half-witted creature told me, in a great fright, thatthirty thousand French had marched from Acadie to Cape Breton.'Where did they find transports?' said I. 'Transports!' cried he; 'Itell you, they marched by land.' By land to the island of CapeBreton?' 'What! is Cape Breton an island?' 'Certainly.' 'Ha! areyou sure of that?' When I pointed it out on the map, he examined itearnestly with his spectacles; then taking me in his arms, 'My dearC——!' cried he, you always bring us good news. I'll go directlyand tell the king that Cape Breton is an island.'"

Port Hawkesbury is not a modern settlement, and its public house isone of the irregular, old-fashioned, stuffy taverns, with low rooms,chintz-covered lounges, and fat-cushioned rocking-chairs, the decayand untidiness of which are not offensive to the traveler. It has alow back porch looking towards the water and over a mouldy garden,damp and unseemly. Time was, no doubt, before the rush of travelrubbed off the bloom of its ancient hospitality and set a vigilantman at the door of the dining-room to collect pay for meals, thatthis was an abode of comfort and the resort of merry-making andfrolicsome provincials. On this now decaying porch no doubt loverssat in the moonlight, and vowed by the Gut of Canso to be fond ofeach other forever. The traveler cannot help it if he comes upon thetraces of such sentiment. There lingered yet in the house an air ofthe hospitable old time; the swift willingness of the waiting-maidsat table, who were eager that we should miss none of the home-madedishes, spoke of it; and as we were not obliged to stay in the hoteland lodge in its six-by-four bedrooms, we could afford to make alittle romance about its history.

While we were at supper the steamboat arrived from Pictou. Wehastened on board, impatient for progress on our homeward journey.But haste was not called for. The steamboat would not sail on herreturn till morning. No one could tell why. It was not on accountof freight to take in or discharge; it was not in hope of morepassengers, for they were all on board. But if the boat had returnedthat night to Pictou, some of the passengers might have left her andgone west by rail, instead of wasting two, or three days loungingthrough Northumberland Sound and idling in the harbors of PrinceEdward Island. If the steamboat would leave at midnight, we couldcatch the railway train at Pictou. Probably the officials were awareof this, and they preferred to have our company to Shediac. Wemention this so that the tourist who comes this way may learn topossess his soul in patience, and know that steamboats are not runfor his accommodation, but to give him repose and to familiarize himwith the country. It is almost impossible to give the unscientificreader an idea of the slowness of travel by steamboat in theseregions. Let him first fix his mind on the fact that the earth movesthrough space at a speed of more than sixty-six thousand miles anhour. This is a speed eleven hundred times greater than that of themost rapid express trains. If the distance traversed by a locomotivein an hour is represented by one tenth of an inch, it would need aline nine feet long to indicate the corresponding advance of theearth in the same time. But a tortoise, pursuing his ordinary gaitwithout a wager, moves eleven hundred times slower than an expresstrain. We have here a basis of comparison with the provincialsteamboats. If we had seen a tortoise start that night from PortHawkesbury for the west, we should have desired to send letters byhim.

In the early morning we stole out of the romantic strait, and bybreakfast-time we were over St. George's Bay and round his cape, andmaking for the harbor of Pictou. During the forenoon something inthe nature of an excursion developed itself on the steamboat, but ithad so few of the bustling features of an American excursion that Ithought it might be a pilgrimage. Yet it doubtless was a highlydeveloped provincial lark. For a certain portion of the passengershad the unmistakable excursion air: the half-jocular manner towardseach other, the local facetiousness which is so offensive touninterested fellow-travelers, that male obsequiousness about ladies'shawls and reticules, the clumsy pretense of gallantry with eachother's wives, the anxiety about the company luggage and the companyhealth. It became painfully evident presently that it was anexcursion, for we heard singing of that concerted and determined kindthat depresses the spirits of all except those who join in it. Theexcursion had assembled on the lee guards out of the wind, and wasenjoying itself in an abandon of serious musical enthusiasm. Wefeared at first that there might be some levity in this performance,and that the unrestrained spirit of the excursion was working itselfoff in social and convivial songs. But it was not so. The singerswere provided with hymn-and-tune books, and what they sang theyrendered in long meter and with a most doleful earnestness. It isagreeable to the traveler to see that the provincials disportthemselves within bounds, and that an hilarious spree here does notdiffer much in its exercises from a prayer-meeting elsewhere. Butthe excursion enjoyed its staid dissipation amazingly.

It is pleasant to sail into the long and broad harbor of Pictou on asunny day. On the left is the Halifax railway terminus, and threerivers flow into the harbor from the south. On the right the town ofPictou, with its four thousand inhabitants, lies upon the side of theridge that runs out towards the Sound. The most conspicuous buildingin it as we approach is the Roman Catholic church; advanced to theedge of the town and occupying the highest ground, it appears large,and its gilt cross is a beacon miles away. Its builders understoodthe value of a striking situation, a dominant position; it is a partof the universal policy of this church to secure the commandingplaces for its houses of worship. We may have had no prejudices infavor of the Papal temporality when we landed at Pictou, but thischurch was the only one which impressed us, and the only one we tookthe trouble to visit. We had ample time, for the steamboat after itsarduous trip needed rest, and remained some hours in the harbor.Pictou is said to be a thriving place, and its streets have a cinderyappearance, betokening the nearness of coal mines and the presence offurnaces. But the town has rather a cheap and rusty look. Itsstreets rise one above another on the hillside, and, except a fewcomfortable cottages, we saw no evidences of wealth in the dwellings.The church, when we reached it, was a commonplace brick structure,with a raw, unfinished interior, and weedy and untidy surroundings,so that our expectation of sitting on the inviting hill and enjoyingthe view was not realized; and we were obliged to descend to the hotwharf and wait for the ferry-boat to take us to the steamboat whichlay at the railway terminus opposite. It is the most unfair thing inthe world for the traveler, without an object or any interest in thedevelopment of the country, on a sleepy day in August, to express anyopinion whatever about such a town as Pictou. But we may say of it,without offence, that it occupies a charming situation, and may havean interesting future; and that a person on a short acquaintance canleave it without regret.

By stopping here we had the misfortune to lose our excursion, a lossthat was soothed by no know ledge of its destination or hope ofseeing it again, and a loss without a hope is nearly always painful.Going out of the harbor we encounter Pictou Island and Light, andpresently see the low coast of Prince Edward Island,—a coastindented and agreeable to those idly sailing along it, in weatherthat seemed let down out of heaven and over a sea that sparkled butstill slept in a summer quiet. When fate puts a man in such aposition and relieves him of all responsibility, with a book and agood comrade, and liberty to make sarcastic remarks upon hisfellow-travelers, or to doze, or to look over the tranquil sea, he maybe pronounced happy. And I believe that my companion, except in thematter of the comrade, was happy. But I could not resist a worryinganxiety about the future of the British Provinces, which not even theremembrance of their hostility to us during our mortal strife with theRebellion could render agreeable. For I could not but feel that theostentatious and unconcealable prosperity of "the States" over-shadowsthis part of the continent. And it was for once in vain that I said,"Have we not a common land and a common literature, and no copyright,and a common pride in Shakespeare and Hannah More and Colonel Newcomeand Pepys's Diary?" I never knew this sort of consolation to failbefore; it does not seem to answer in the Provinces as well as it doesin England.

New passengers had come on board at Pictou, new and hungry, and notall could get seats for dinner at the first table. Notwithstandingthe supposed traditionary advantage of our birthplace, we were unableto dispatch this meal with the celerity of our fellow-voyagers, andconsequently, while we lingered over our tea, we found ourselves atthe second table. And we were rewarded by one of those pleasingsights that go to make up the entertainment of travel. There satdown opposite to us a fat man whose noble proportions occupied at theboard the space of three ordinary men. His great face beamed delightthe moment he came near the table. He had a low forehead and a widemouth and small eyes, and an internal capacity that was a prophecy offamine to his fellow-men. But a more good-natured, pleased animalyou may never see. Seating himself with unrepressed joy, he lookedat us, and a great smile of satisfaction came over his face, thatplainly said, "Now my time has come." Every part of his vast bulksaid this. Most generously, by his friendly glances, he made uspartners in his pleasure. With a Napoleonic grasp of his situation,he reached far and near, hauling this and that dish of fragmentstowards his plate, giving orders at the same time, and throwing intohis cheerful mouth odd pieces of bread and pickles in an unstudiedand preliminary manner. When he had secured everything within hisreach, he heaped his plate and began an attack upon the contents,using both knife and fork with wonderful proficiency. The man'sgood-humor was contagious, and he did not regard our amusem*nt asdifferent in kind from his enjoyment. The spectacle was worth ajourney to see. Indeed, its aspect of comicality almost overcame itsgrossness, and even when the hero loaded in faster than he couldswallow, and was obliged to drop his knife for an instant to arrangematters in his mouth with his finger, it was done with such a beamingsmile that a pig would not take offense at it. The performance wasnot the merely vulgar thing it seems on paper, but an achievementunique and perfect, which one is not likely to see more than once ina lifetime. It was only when the man left the table that his facebecame serious. We had seen him at his best.

Prince Edward Island, as we approached it, had a pleasing aspect, andnothing of that remote friendlessness which its appearance on the mapconveys to one; a warm and sandy land, in a genial climate, withoutfogs, we are informed. In the winter it has ice communication withNova Scotia, from Cape Traverse to Cape Tormentine,—the route of thesubmarine cable. The island is as flat from end to end as a floor.When it surrendered its independent government and joined theDominion, one of the conditions of the union was that the governmentshould build a railway the whole length of it. This is in process ofconstruction, and the portion that is built affords greatsatisfaction to the islanders, a railway being one of the necessaryadjuncts of civilization; but that there was great need of it, orthat it would pay, we were unable to learn.

We sailed through Hillsborough Bay and a narrow strait toCharlottetown, the capital, which lies on a sandy spit of landbetween two rivers. Our leisurely steamboat tied up here in theafternoon and spent the night, giving the passengers an opportunityto make thorough acquaintance with the town. It has the appearanceof a place from which something has departed; a wooden town, withwide and vacant streets, and the air of waiting for something.Almost melancholy is the aspect of its freestone colonial building,where once the colonial legislature held its momentous sessions, andthe colonial governor shed the delightful aroma of royalty. Themansion of the governor—now vacant of pomp, because that officialdoes not exist—is a little withdrawn from the town, secluded amongtrees by the water-side. It is dignified with a winding approach,but is itself only a cheap and decaying house. On our way to it wepassed the drill-shed of the local cavalry, which we mistook for askating-rink, and thereby excited the contempt of an old lady of whomwe inquired. Tasteful residences we did not find, nor that attentionto flowers and gardens which the mild climate would suggest. Indeed,we should describe Charlottetown as a place where the hollyhock inthe dooryard is considered an ornament. A conspicuous building is alarge market-house shingled all over (as many of the public buildingsare), and this and other cheap public edifices stand in the midst ofa large square, which is surrounded by shabby shops for the mostpart. The town is laid out on a generous scale, and it is to beregretted that we could not have seen it when it enjoyed the glory ofa governor and court and ministers of state, and all theparaphernalia of a royal parliament. That the productive island,with its system of free schools, is about to enter upon a prosperouscareer, and that Charlottetown is soon to become a place of greatactivity, no one who converses with the natives can doubt; and Ithink that even now no traveler will regret spending an hour or twothere; but it is necessary to say that the rosy inducements totourists to spend the summer there exist only in the guide-books.

We congratulated ourselves that we should at least have a night ofdelightful sleep on the steamboat in the quiet of this secludedharbor. But it was wisely ordered otherwise, to the end that weshould improve our time by an interesting study of human nature.Towards midnight, when the occupants of all the state-rooms weresupposed to be in profound slumber, there was an invasion of thesmall cabin by a large and loquacious family, who had been making anexcursion on the island railway. This family might remind anantiquated novel-reader of the delightful Brangtons in "Evelina;"they had all the vivacity of the pleasant cousins of the heroine ofthat story, and the same generosity towards the public in regard totheir family affairs. Before they had been in the cabin an hour, wefelt as if we knew every one of them. There was a great squabble asto where and how they should sleep; and when this was over, therevelations of the nature of their beds and their peculiar habits ofsleep continued to pierce the thin deal partitions of the adjoiningstate-rooms. When all the possible trivialities of vacant mindsseemed to have been exhausted, there followed a half-hour of"Goodnight, pa; good-night, ma;" "Goodnight, pet;" and "Are youasleep, ma?" "No." "Are you asleep, pa?" "No; go to sleep, pet.""I'm going. Good-night, pa; good-night, ma." "Goodnight, pet.""This bed is too short." "Why don't you take the other?" "I'm allfixed now." "Well, go to sleep; good-night." "Good-night, ma;goodnight, pa,"—no answer. "Good-night,pa." "Goodnight, pet.""Ma, are you asleep?" "Most." "This bed is all lumps; I wish I'dgone downstairs." "Well, pa will get up." "Pa, are you asleep?""Yes." "It's better now; good-night, pa." "Goodnight, pet.""Good-night, ma." "Good-night, pet." And so on in an exasperatingrepetition, until every passenger on the boat must have beenthoroughly informed of the manner in which this interesting familyhabitually settled itself to repose.

Half an hour passes with only a languid exchange of family feeling,and then: "Pa?" "Well, pet." "Don't call us in the morning; wedon't want any breakfast; we want to sleep." "I won't." "Goodnight,pa; goodnight, ma. Ma?" "What is it, dear?" "Good-night, ma.""Good-night, pet." Alas for youthful expectations! Pet shared herstateroom with a young companion, and the two were carrying on aprivate dialogue during this public performance. Did these youngladies, after keeping all the passengers of the boat awake till nearthe summer dawn, imagine that it was in the power of pa and ma toinsure them the coveted forenoon slumber, or even the morning snooze?The travelers, tossing in their state-room under this domesticinfliction, anticipated the morning with grim satisfaction; for theyhad a presentiment that it would be impossible for them to arise andmake their toilet without waking up every one in their part of theboat, and aggravating them to such an extent that they would stayawake. And so it turned out. The family grumbling at the unexpecteddisturbance was sweeter to the travelers than all the exchange offamily affection during the night.

No one, indeed, ought to sleep beyond breakfast-time while sailingalong the southern coast of Prince Edward Island. It was a sparklingmorning. When we went on deck we were abreast Cape Traverse; thefaint outline of Nova Scotia was marked on the horizon, and NewBrunswick thrust out Cape Tomentine to greet us. On the still, sunnycoasts and the placid sea, and in the serene, smiling sky, there wasno sign of the coming tempest which was then raging from Hatteras toCape Cod; nor could one imagine that this peaceful scene would, a fewdays later, be swept by a fearful tornado, which should raze to theground trees and dwelling-houses, and strew all these now invitingshores with wrecked ships and drowning sailors,—a storm which haspassed into literature in "The Lord's-Day Gale" of Mr Stedman.

Through this delicious weather why should the steamboat hasten, inorder to discharge its passengers into the sweeping unrest ofcontinental travel? Our eagerness to get on, indeed, almost meltedaway, and we were scarcely impatient at all when the boat loungedinto Halifax Bay, past Salutation Point and stopped at Summerside.This little seaport is intended to be attractive, and it would givethese travelers great pleasure to describe it, if they could at allremember how it looks. But it is a place that, like some faces,makes no sort of impression on the memory. We went ashore there, andtried to take an interest in the ship-building, and in the littleoysters which the harbor yields; but whether we did take an interestor not has passed out of memory. A small, unpicturesque, woodentown, in the languor of a provincial summer; why should we pretend aninterest in it which we did not feel? It did not disturb ourreposeful frame of mind, nor much interfere with our enjoyment of theday.

On the forward deck, when we were under way again, amid a groupreading and nodding in the sunshine, we found a pretty girl with acompanion and a gentleman, whom we knew by intuition as the "pa" ofthe pretty girl and of our night of anguish. The pa might have beena clergyman in a small way, or the proprietor of a femaleboarding-school; at any rate, an excellent and improving person totravel with, whose willingness to impart information made even thetravelers long for a pa. It was no part of his plan of this familysummer excursion, upon which he had come against his wish, to have anyhour of it wasted in idleness. He held an open volume in his hand, andwas questioning his daughter on its contents. He spoke in a loudvoice, and without heeding the timidity of the young lady, who shrankfrom this public examination, and begged her father not to continueit. The parent was, however, either proud of his daughter'sacquirements, or he thought it a good opportunity to shame her out ofher ignorance. Doubtless, we said, he is instructing her upon thegeography of the region we are passing through, its early settlement,the romantic incidents of its history when French and English foughtover it, and so is making this a tour of profit as well as pleasure.But the excellent and pottering father proved to be no disciple of thenew education. Greece was his theme and he got his questions, and hisanswers too, from the ancient school history in his hand. The lessonwent on:

"Who was Alcibiades?

"A Greek."

"Yes. When did he flourish?"

"I can't think."

"Can't think? What was he noted for?"

"I don't remember."

"Don't remember? I don't believe you studied this."

"Yes, I did."

"Well, take it now, and study it hard, and then I'll hear you again."

The young girl, who is put to shame by this open persecution, beginsto study, while the peevish and small tyrant, her pa, is nagging herwith such soothing remarks as, "I thought you'd have more respect foryour pride;" "Why don't you try to come up to the expectations ofyour teacher?" By and by the student thinks she has "got it," andthe public exposition begins again. The date at which Alcibiades"flourished" was ascertained, but what he was "noted for" gothopelessly mixed with what Thernistocles was "noted for." Themomentary impression that the battle of Marathon was fought bySalamis was soon dissipated, and the questions continued.

"What did Pericles do to the Greeks?"

"I don't know."

"Elevated 'em, did n't he? Did n't he elevate Pem?"

"Yes, sir."

"Always remember that; you want to fix your mind on leading things.
Remember that Pericles elevated the Greeks. Who was Pericles?

"He was a"—

"Was he a philosopher?"

"Yes, sir."

"No, he was n't. Socrates was a philosopher. When did he flourish?"

And so on, and so on.

O my charming young countrywomen, let us never forget that Pericleselevated the Greeks; and that he did it by cultivating the nationalgenius, the national spirit, by stimulating art and oratory and thepursuit of learning, and infusing into all society a higherintellectual and social life! Pa was this day sailing through seasand by shores that had witnessed some of the most stirring andromantic events in the early history of our continent. He might havehad the eager attention of his bright daughter if he had unfoldedthese things to her in the midst of this most living landscape, andgiven her an "object lesson" that she would not have forgotten allher days, instead of this pottering over names and dates that were asdry and meaningless to him as they were uninteresting to hisdaughter. At least, O Pa, Educator of Youth, if you are insensibleto the beauty of these summer isles and indifferent to their history,and your soul is wedded to ancient learning, why do you not teachyour family to go to sleep when they go to bed, as the classic Greeksused to?

Before the travelers reached Shediac, they had leisure to ruminateupon the education of American girls in the schools set apart forthem, and to conjecture how much they are taught of the geography andhistory of America, or of its social and literary growth; andwhether, when they travel on a summer tour like this, these coastshave any historical light upon them, or gain any interest from thedaring and chivalric adventurers who played their parts here so longago. We did not hear pa ask when Madame de la Tour "flourished,"though "flourish" that determined woman did, in Boston as well as inthe French provinces. In the present woman revival, may we not hopethat the heroic women of our colonial history will have theprominence that is their right, and that woman's achievements willassume their proper place in affairs? When women write history, someof our popular men heroes will, we trust, be made to acknowledge thefemale sources of their wisdom and their courage. But at presentwomen do not much affect history, and they are more indifferent tothe careers of the noted of their own sex than men are.

We expected to approach Shediac with a great deal of interest. Ithad been, when we started, one of the most prominent points in ourprojected tour. It was the pivot upon which, so to speak, weexpected to swing around the Provinces. Upon the map it was soattractive, that we once resolved to go no farther than there. Itonce seemed to us that, if we ever reached it, we should be contentedto abide there, in a place so remote, in a port so picturesque andforeign. But returning from the real east, our late interest inShediac seemed unaccountable to us. Firmly resolved as I was to noteour entrance into the harbor, I could not keep the place in mind; andwhile we were in our state-room and before we knew it, the steamboatJay at the wharf. Shediac appeared to be nothing but a wharf with arailway train on it, and a few shanty buildings, a part of themdevoted to the sale of whiskey and to cheap lodgings. This landing,however, is called Point du Chene, and the village of Shediac is twoor three miles distant from it; we had a pleasant glimpse of it fromthe car windows, and saw nothing in its situation to hinder itsgrowth. The country about it is perfectly level, and stripped of itsforests. At Painsec Junction we waited for the train from Halifax,and immediately found ourselves in the whirl of intercolonial travel.Why people should travel here, or why they should be excited aboutit, we could not see; we could not overcome a feeling of theunreality of the whole thing; but yet we humbly knew that we had noright to be otherwise than awed by the extraordinary intercolonialrailway enterprise and by the new life which it is infusing into theProvinces. We are free to say, however, that nothing can be lessinteresting than the line of this road until it strikes theKennebeckasis River, when the traveler will be called upon to admirethe Sussex Valley and a very fair farming region, which he would liketo praise if it were not for exciting the jealousy of the "Garden ofNova Scotia." The whole land is in fact a garden, but differingsomewhat from the Isle of Wight.

In all travel, however, people are more interesting than land, and soit was at this time. As twilight shut down upon the valley of theKennebeckasis, we heard the strident voice of pa going on with theGrecian catechism. Pa was unmoved by the beauties of Sussex or bythe colors of the sunset, which for the moment made picturesque thescraggy evergreens on the horizon. His eyes were with his heart, andthat was in Sparta. Above the roar of the car-wheels we heard hisnagging inquiries.

"What did Lycurgus do then?"

Answer not audible.

"No. He made laws. Who did he make laws for?"

"For the Greeks."

"He made laws for the Lacedemonians. Who was another greatlawgiver?"

"It was—it was—Pericles."

"No, it was n't. It was Solon. Who was Solon?"

"Solon was one of the wise men of Greece."

"That's right. When did he flourish?"

When the train stops at a station the classics continue, and thestudious group attracts the attention of the passengers. Pa is wellpleased, but not so the young lady, who beseechingly says,

"Pa, everybody can hear us."

"You would n't care how much they heard, if you knew it," repliesthis accomplished devotee of learning.

In another lull of the car-wheels we find that pa has skipped over to
Marathon; and this time it is the daughter who is asking a question.

"Pa, what is a phalanx?"

"Well, a phalanx—it's a—it's difficult to define a phalanx. It's astretch of men in one line,—a stretch of anything in a line. Whendid Alexander flourish?"

This domestic tyrant had this in common with the rest of us, that hewas much better at asking questions than at answering them. Itcertainly was not our fault that we were listeners to his instructivestruggles with ancient history, nor that we heard his petulantcomplaining to his cowed family, whom he accused of dragging him awayon this summer trip. We are only grateful to him, for a moreentertaining person the traveler does not often see. It was withregret that we lost sight of him at St. John.

Night has settled upon New Brunswick and upon ancient Greece beforewe reach the Kennebeckasis Bay, and we only see from the car windowsdimly a pleasant and fertile country, and the peaceful homes ofthrifty people. While we are running along the valley and comingunder the shadow of the hill whereon St. John sits, with a regaloutlook upon a most variegated coast and upon the rising and fallingof the great tides of Fundy, we feel a twinge of conscience at theinjustice the passing traveler must perforce do any land he hurriesover and does not study. Here is picturesque St. John, with itscouple of centuries of history and tradition, its commerce, itsenterprise felt all along the coast and through the settlements ofthe territory to the northeast, with its no doubt charming societyand solid English culture; and the summer tourist, in an idle moodregarding it for a day, says it is naught! Behold what "travels"amount to! Are they not for the most part the records of themisapprehensions of the misinformed? Let us congratulate ourselvesthat in this flight through the Provinces we have not attempted to doany justice to them, geologically, economically, or historically,only trying to catch some of the salient points of the panorama as itunrolled itself. Will Halifax rise up in judgment against us? Welook back upon it with softened memory, and already see it again inthe light of history. It stands, indeed, overlooking a gate of theocean, in a beautiful morning light; and we can hear now therepetition of that profane phrase, used for the misdirection ofwayward mortals,—-"Go to Halifax!" without a shudder.

We confess to some regret that our journey is so near its end.Perhaps it is the sentimental regret with which one always leaves theeast, for we have been a thousand miles nearer Ireland than Bostonis. Collecting in the mind the detached pictures given to our eyesin all these brilliant and inspiring days, we realize afresh thevariety, the extent, the richness of these northeastern lands whichthe Gulf Stream pets and tempers. If it were not for attractingspeculators, we should delight to speak of the beds of coal, thequarries of marble, the mines of gold. Look on the map and followthe shores of these peninsulas and islands, the bays, the penetratingarms of the sea, the harbors filled with islands, the protectedstraits and sounds. All this is favorable to the highest commercialactivity and enterprise. Greece itself and its islands are not moreindented and inviting. Fish swarm about the shores and in all thestreams. There are, I have no doubt, great forests which we did notsee from the car windows, the inhabitants of which do not showthemselves to the travelers at the railway-stations. In thedining-room of a friend, who goes away every autumn into the wilds ofNova Scotia at the season when the snow falls, hang trophies—enormous branching antlers of the caribou, and heads of the mightymoose—which I am assured came from there; and I have no reason todoubt that the noble creatures who once carried these superb hornswere murdered by my friend at long range. Many people have aninsatiate longing to kill, once in their life, a moose, and wouldtravel far and endure great hardships to gratify this ambition. Inthe present state of the world it is more difficult to do it than itis to be written down as one who loves his fellow-men.

We received everywhere in the Provinces courtesy and kindness, whichwere not based upon any expectation that we would invest in mines orrailways, for the people are honest, kindly, and hearty by nature.What they will become when the railways are completed that are tobind St. John to Quebec, and make Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, andNewfoundland only stepping-stones to Europe, we cannot say. Probablythey will become like the rest of the world, and furnish no materialfor the kindly persiflage of the traveler.

Regretting that we could see no more of St. John, that we couldscarcely see our way through its dimly lighted streets, we found theferry to Carleton, and a sleeping-car for Bangor. It was in theheart of the negro porter to cause us alarm by the intelligence thatthe customs officer would, search our baggage during the night. Asearch is a blow to one's self-respect, especially if one hasanything dutiable. But as the porter might be an agent of ourgovernment in disguise, we preserved an appearance of philosophicalindifference in his presence. It takes a sharp observer to tellinnocence from assurance. During the night, awaking, I saw a greatlight. A man, crawling along the aisle of the car, and poking underthe seats, had found my traveling-bag and was "going through" it.

I felt a thrill of pride as I recognized in this crouching figure anofficer of our government, and knew that I was in my native land.

and

CALVIN A STUDY OF CHARACTER

By Charles Dudley Warner

INTRODUCTORY LETTER

MY DEAR MR. FIELDS,—I did promise to write an Introduction to thesecharming papers but an Introduction,—what is it?—a sort ofpilaster, put upon the face of a building for looks' sake, andusually flat,—very flat. Sometimes it may be called a caryatid,which is, as I understand it, a cruel device of architecture,representing a man or a woman, obliged to hold up upon his or herhead or shoulders a structure which they did not build, and whichcould stand just as well without as with them. But an Introductionis more apt to be a pillar, such as one may see in Baalbec, standingup in the air all alone, with nothing on it, and with nothing for itto do.

But an Introductory Letter is different. There is in that noformality, no assumption of function, no awkward propriety or dignityto be sustained. A letter at the opening of a book may be only afootpath, leading the curious to a favorable point of observation,and then leaving them to wander as they will.

Sluggards have been sent to the ant for wisdom; but writers mightbetter be sent to the spider, not because he works all night, andwatches all day, but because he works unconsciously. He dare noteven bring his work before his own eyes, but keeps it behind him, asif too much knowledge of what one is doing would spoil the delicacyand modesty of one's work.

Almost all graceful and fanciful work is born like a dream, thatcomes noiselessly, and tarries silently, and goes as a bubble bursts.And yet somewhere work must come in,—real, well-considered work.

Inness (the best American painter of Nature in her moods of realhuman feeling) once said, "No man can do anything in art, unless hehas intuitions; but, between whiles, one must work hard in collectingthe materials out of which intuitions are made." The truth could notbe hit off better. Knowledge is the soil, and intuitions are theflowers which grow up out of it. The soil must be well enriched andworked.

It is very plain, or will be to those who read these papers, nowgathered up into this book, as into a chariot for a race, that theauthor has long employed his eyes, his ears, and his understanding,in observing and considering the facts of Nature, and in weavingcurious analogies. Being an editor of one of the oldest dailynews-papers in New England, and obliged to fill its columns day afterday (as the village mill is obliged to render every day so many sacksof flour or of meal to its hungry customers), it naturally occurred tohim, "Why not write something which I myself, as well as my readers,shall enjoy? The market gives them facts enough; politics, liesenough; art, affectations enough; criminal news, horrors enough;fashion, more than enough of vanity upon vanity, and vexation of purse.Why should they not have some of those wandering and joyous fancieswhich solace my hours?"

The suggestion ripened into execution. Men and women read, andwanted more. These garden letters began to blossom every week; andmany hands were glad to gather pleasure from them. A sign it was ofwisdom. In our feverish days it is a sign of health or ofconvalescence that men love gentle pleasure, and enjoyments that donot rush or roar, but distill as the dew.

The love of rural life, the habit of finding enjoyment in familiarthings, that susceptibility to Nature which keeps the nerve gentlythrilled in her homliest nooks and by her commonest sounds, is wortha thousand fortunes of money, or its equivalents.

Every book which interprets the secret lore of fields and gardens,every essay that brings men nearer to the understanding of themysteries which every tree whispers, every brook murmurs, every weed,even, hints, is a contribution to the wealth and the happiness of ourkind. And if the lines of the writer shall be traced in quaintcharacters, and be filled with a grave humor, or break out at timesinto merriment, all this will be no presumption against their wisdomor his goodness. Is the oak less strong and tough because the mossesand weather-stains stick in all manner of grotesque sketches alongits bark? Now, truly, one may not learn from this little book eitherdivinity or horticulture; but if he gets a pure happiness, and atendency to repeat the happiness from the simple stores of Nature, hewill gain from our friend's garden what Adam lost in his, and whatneither philosophy nor divinity has always been able to restore.

Wherefore, thanking you for listening to a former letter, whichbegged you to consider whether these curious and ingenious papers,that go winding about like a half-trodden path between the garden andthe field, might not be given in book-form to your million readers, Iremain, yours to command in everything but the writing of anIntroduction,

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

MY DEAR POLLY,—When a few of these papers had appeared in "TheCourant," I was encouraged to continue them by hearing that they hadat least one reader who read them with the serious mind from whichalone profit is to be expected. It was a maiden lady, who, I amsure, was no more to blame for her singleness than for her age; andshe looked to these honest sketches of experience for that aid whichthe professional agricultural papers could not give in the managementof the little bit of garden which she called her own. She may havebeen my only disciple; and I confess that the thought of her yieldinga simple faith to what a gainsaying world may have regarded withlevity has contributed much to give an increased practical turn to myreports of what I know about gardening. The thought that I hadmisled a lady, whose age is not her only singularity, who looked tome for advice which should be not at all the fanciful product of theGarden of Gull, would give me great pain. I trust that her autumn isa peaceful one, and undisturbed by either the humorous or thesatirical side of Nature.

You know that this attempt to tell the truth about one of the mostfascinating occupations in the world has not been without itsdangers. I have received anonymous letters. Some of them weremurderously spelled; others were missives in such elegant phrase anddress, that danger was only to be apprehended in them by one skilledin the mysteries of medieval poisoning, when death flew on the wingsof a perfume. One lady, whose entreaty that I should pause hadsomething of command in it, wrote that my strictures on "pusley" hadso inflamed her husband's zeal, that, in her absence in the country,he had rooted up all her beds of portulaca (a sort of cousin of thefat weed), and utterly cast it out. It is, however, to be expected,that retributive justice would visit the innocent as well as theguilty of an offending family. This is only another proof of thewide sweep of moral forces. I suppose that it is as necessary in thevegetable world as it is elsewhere to avoid the appearance of evil.

In offering you the fruit of my garden, which has been gathered fromweek to week, without much reference to the progress of the crops orthe drought, I desire to acknowledge an influence which has lent halfthe charm to my labor. If I were in a court of justice, orinjustice, under oath, I should not like to say, that, either in thewooing days of spring, or under the suns of the summer solstice, youhad been, either with hoe, rake, or miniature spade, of the least usein the garden; but your suggestions have been invaluable, and,whenever used, have been paid for. Your horticultural inquiries havebeen of a nature to astonish the vegetable world, if it listened, andwere a constant inspiration to research. There was almost nothingthat you did not wish to know; and this, added to what I wished toknow, made a boundless field for discovery. What might have becomeof the garden, if your advice had been followed, a good Providenceonly knows; but I never worked there without a consciousness that youmight at any moment come down the walk, under the grape-arbor,bestowing glances of approval, that were none the worse for not beingcritical; exercising a sort of superintendence that elevatedgardening into a fine art; expressing a wonder that was ascomplimentary to me as it was to Nature; bringing an atmosphere whichmade the garden a region of romance, the soil of which was set apartfor fruits native to climes unseen. It was this bright presence thatfilled the garden, as it did the summer, with light, and now leavesupon it that tender play of color and bloom which is called among theAlps the after-glow.

NOOK FARM, HARTFORD, October, 1870

C. D. W.

The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is thelatest. Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. Solong as we are dirty, we are pure. Fondness for the ground comesback to a man after he has run the round of pleasure and business,eaten dirt, and sown wild-oats, drifted about the world, and takenthe wind of all its moods. The love of digging in the ground (or oflooking on while he pays another to dig) is as sure to come back tohim as he is sure, at last, to go under the ground, and stay there.To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds andwatch, their renewal of life, this is the commonest delight of therace, the most satisfactory thing a man can do. When Cicero writesof the pleasures of old age, that of agriculture is chief among them:

"Venio nunc ad voluptates agricolarum, quibus ego incredibiliterdelector: quae nec ulla impediuntur senectute, et mihi ad sapientisvitam proxime videntur accedere." (I am driven to Latin because NewYork editors have exhausted the English language in the praising ofspring, and especially of the month of May.)

Let us celebrate the soil. Most men toil that they may own a pieceof it; they measure their success in life by their ability to buy it.It is alike the passion of the parvenu and the pride of thearistocrat. Broad acres are a patent of nobility; and no man butfeels more, of a man in the world if he have a bit of ground that hecan call his own. However small it is on the surface, it is fourthousand miles deep; and that is a very handsome property. And thereis a great pleasure in working in the soil, apart from the ownershipof it. The man who has planted a garden feels that he has donesomething for the good of the World. He belongs to the producers.It is a pleasure to eat of the fruit of one's toil, if it be nothingmore than a head of lettuce or an ear of corn. One cultivates a lawneven with great satisfaction; for there is nothing more beautifulthan grass and turf in our latitude. The tropics may have theirdelights, but they have not turf: and the world without turf is adreary desert. The original Garden of Eden could not have had suchturf as one sees in England. The Teutonic races all love turf: theyemigrate in the line of its growth.

To dig in the mellow soil-to dig moderately, for all pleasure shouldbe taken sparingly—is a great thing. One gets strength out of theground as often as one really touches it with a hoe. Antaeus (thisis a classical article) was no doubt an agriculturist; and such aprize-fighter as Hercules could n't do anything with him till he gothim to lay down his spade, and quit the soil. It is not simply beetsand potatoes and corn and string-beans that one raises in hiswell-hoed garden: it is the average of human life. There is life inthe ground; it goes into the seeds; and it also, when it is stirred up,goes into the man who stirs it. The hot sun on his back as he bends tohis shovel and hoe, or contemplatively rakes the warm and fragrantloam, is better than much medicine. The buds are coming out on thebushes round about; the blossoms of the fruit trees begin to show; theblood is running up the grapevines in streams; you can smell the Wildflowers on the near bank; and the birds are flying and glancing andsinging everywhere. To the open kitchen door comes the busy housewifeto shake a white something, and stands a moment to look, quitetransfixed by the delightful sights and sounds. Hoeing in the gardenon a bright, soft May day, when you are not obliged to, is nearly equalto the delight of going trouting.

Blessed be agriculture! if one does not have too much of it. Allliterature is fragrant with it, in a gentlemanly way. At the foot ofthe charming olive-covered hills of Tivoli, Horace (not he ofChappaqua) had a sunny farm: it was in sight of Hadrian's villa, whodid landscape gardening on an extensive scale, and probably did notget half as much comfort out of it as Horace did from his more simplytilled acres. We trust that Horace did a little hoeing and farminghimself, and that his verse is not all fraudulent sentiment. Inorder to enjoy agriculture, you do not want too much of it, and youwant to be poor enough to have a little inducement to work moderatelyyourself. Hoe while it is spring, and enjoy the best anticipations.It is not much matter if things do not turn out well.

FIRST WEEK

Under this modest title, I purpose to write a series of papers, someof which will be like many papers of garden-seeds, with nothing vitalin them, on the subject of gardening; holding that no man has anyright to keep valuable knowledge to himself, and hoping that thosewho come after me, except tax-gatherers and that sort of person, willfind profit in the perusal of my experience. As my knowledge isconstantly increasing, there is likely to be no end to these papers.They will pursue no orderly system of agriculture or horticulture,but range from topic to topic, according to the weather and theprogress of the weeds, which may drive me from one corner of thegarden to the other.

The principal value of a private garden is not understood. It is notto give the possessor vegetables or fruit (that can be better andcheaper done by the market-gardeners), but to teach him patienceand philosophy and the higher virtues, hope deferred andexpectations blighted, leading directly to resignation and sometimesto alienation. The garden thus becomes a moral agent, a test ofcharacter, as it was in the beginning. I shall keep this centraltruth in mind in these articles. I mean to have a moral garden, ifit is not a productive one,—one that shall teach, O my brothers!O my sisters! the great lessons of life.

The first pleasant thing about a garden in this latitude is, that younever know when to set it going. If you want anything to come tomaturity early, you must start it in a hot-house. If you put it outearly, the chances are all in favor of getting it nipped with frost;for the thermometer will be 90 deg. one day, and go below 32 deg. thenight of the day following. And, if you do not set out plants or sowseeds early, you fret continually; knowing that your vegetables willbe late, and that, while Jones has early peas, you will be watchingyour slow-forming pods. This keeps you in a state of mind. When youhave planted anything early, you are doubtful whether to desire tosee it above ground, or not. If a hot day comes, you long to see theyoung plants; but, when a cold north wind brings frost, you tremblelest the seeds have burst their bands. Your spring is passed inanxious doubts and fears, which are usually realized; and so a greatmoral discipline is worked out for you.

Now, there is my corn, two or three inches high this 18th of May, andapparently having no fear of a frost. I was hoeing it this morningfor the first time,—it is not well usually to hoe corn until aboutthe 18th of May,—when Polly came out to look at the Lima beans. Sheseemed to think the poles had come up beautifully. I thought theydid look well: they are a fine set of poles, large and well grown,and stand straight. They were inexpensive, too. The cheapness cameabout from my cutting them on another man's land, and he did not knowit. I have not examined this transaction in the moral light ofgardening; but I know people in this country take great liberties atthe polls. Polly noticed that the beans had not themselves come upin any proper sense, but that the dirt had got off from them, leavingthem uncovered. She thought it would be well to sprinkle a slightlayer of dirt over them; and I, indulgently, consented. It occurredto me, when she had gone, that beans always come up that way,—wrongend first; and that what they wanted was light, and not dirt.

Observation.—Woman always did, from the first, make a muss in agarden.

I inherited with my garden a large patch of raspberries. Splendidberry the raspberry, when the strawberry has gone. This patch hasgrown into such a defiant attitude, that you could not get withinseveral feet of it. Its stalks were enormous in size, and cast outlong, prickly arms in all directions; but the bushes were pretty muchall dead. I have walked into them a good deal with a pruning-knife;but it is very much like fighting original sin. The variety is onethat I can recommend. I think it is called Brinckley's Orange. Itis exceedingly prolific, and has enormous stalks. The fruit is alsosaid to be good; but that does not matter so much, as the plant doesnot often bear in this region. The stalks seem to be biennialinstitutions; and as they get about their growth one year, and bearthe next year, and then die, and the winters here nearly always killthem, unless you take them into the house (which is inconvenient ifyou have a family of small children), it is very difficult to inducethe plant to flower and fruit. This is the greatest objection thereis to this sort of raspberry. I think of keeping these fordiscipline, and setting out some others, more hardy sorts, for fruit.

SECOND WEEK

Next to deciding when to start your garden, the most important matteris, what to put in it. It is difficult to decide what to order fordinner on a given day: how much more oppressive is it to order in alump an endless vista of dinners, so to speak! For, unless yourgarden is a boundless prairie (and mine seems to me to be that when Ihoe it on hot days), you must make a selection, from the greatvariety of vegetables, of those you will raise in it; and you feelrather bound to supply your own table from your own garden, and toeat only as you have sown.

I hold that no man has a right (whatever his sex, of course) to havea garden to his own selfish uses. He ought not to please himself,but every man to please his neighbor. I tried to have a garden thatwould give general moral satisfaction. It seemed to me that nobodycould object to potatoes (a most useful vegetable); and I began toplant them freely. But there was a chorus of protest against them."You don't want to take up your ground with potatoes," the neighborssaid; "you can buy potatoes" (the very thing I wanted to avoid doingis buying things). "What you want is the perishable things that youcannot get fresh in the market."—"But what kind of perishablethings?" A horticulturist of eminence wanted me to sow lines ofstraw-berries and raspberries right over where I had put my potatoesin drills. I had about five hundred strawberry-plants in anotherpart of my garden; but this fruit-fanatic wanted me to turn my wholepatch into vines and runners. I suppose I could raise strawberriesenough for all my neighbors; and perhaps I ought to do it. I had alittle space prepared for melons,—muskmelons,—which I showed to anexperienced friend.

"You are not going to waste your ground on muskmelons?" he asked."They rarely ripen in this climate thoroughly, before frost." He hadtried for years without luck. I resolved to not go into such afoolish experiment. But, the next day, another neighbor happened in."Ah! I see you are going to have melons. My family would rather giveup anything else in the garden than musk-melons,—of the nutmegvariety. They are the most grateful things we have on the table."So there it was. There was no compromise: it was melons, or nomelons, and somebody offended in any case. I half resolved to plantthem a little late, so that they would, and they would n't. But Ihad the same difficulty about string-beans (which I detest), andsquash (which I tolerate), and parsnips, and the whole round of greenthings.

I have pretty much come to the conclusion that you have got to putyour foot down in gardening. If I had actually taken counsel of myfriends, I should not have had a thing growing in the garden to-daybut weeds. And besides, while you are waiting, Nature does not wait.Her mind is made up. She knows just what she will raise; and she hasan infinite variety of early and late. The most humiliating thing tome about a garden is the lesson it teaches of the inferiority of man.Nature is prompt, decided, inexhaustible. She thrusts up her plantswith a vigor and freedom that I admire; and the more worthless theplant, the more rapid and splendid its growth. She is at it earlyand late, and all night; never tiring, nor showing the least sign ofexhaustion.

"Eternal gardening is the price of liberty," is a motto that I shouldput over the gateway of my garden, if I had a gate. And yet it isnot wholly true; for there is no liberty in gardening. The man whoundertakes a garden is relentlessly pursued. He felicitates himselfthat, when he gets it once planted, he will have a season of rest andof enjoyment in the sprouting and growing of his seeds. It is agreen anticipation. He has planted a seed that will keep him awakenights; drive rest from his bones, and sleep from his pillow. Hardlyis the garden planted, when he must begin to hoe it. The weeds havesprung up all over it in a night. They shine and wave in redundantlife. The docks have almost gone to seed; and their roots go deeperthan conscience. Talk about the London Docks!—the roots of theseare like the sources of the Aryan race. And the weeds are not all.I awake in the morning (and a thriving garden will wake a person uptwo hours before he ought to be out of bed) and think of thetomato-plants,—the leaves like fine lace-work, owing to black bugsthat skip around, and can't be caught. Somebody ought to get upbefore the dew is off (why don't the dew stay on till after areasonable breakfast?) and sprinkle soot on the leaves. I wonder ifit is I. Soot is so much blacker than the bugs, that they aredisgusted, and go away. You can't get up too early, if you have agarden. You must be early due yourself, if you get ahead of thebugs. I think, that, on the whole, it would be best to sit up allnight, and sleep daytimes. Things appear to go on in the night inthe garden uncommonly. It would be less trouble to stay up than itis to get up so early.

I have been setting out some new raspberries, two sorts,—a silverand a gold color. How fine they will look on the table next year ina cut-glass dish, the cream being in a ditto pitcher! I set themfour and five feet apart. I set my strawberries pretty well apartalso. The reason is, to give room for the cows to run through whenthey break into the garden,—as they do sometimes. A cow needs abroader track than a locomotive; and she generally makes one. I amsometimes astonished, to see how big a space in, a flower-bed herfoot will cover. The raspberries are called Doolittle and GoldenCap. I don't like the name of the first variety, and, if they domuch, shall change it to Silver Top. You never can tell what a thingnamed Doolittle will do. The one in the Senate changed color, andgot sour. They ripen badly,—either mildew, or rot on the bush.They are apt to Johnsonize,—rot on the stem. I shall watch theDoolittles.

THIRD WEEK

I believe that I have found, if not original sin, at least vegetabletotal depravity in my garden; and it was there before I went into it.It is the bunch, or joint, or snakegrass,—whatever it is called. AsI do not know the names of all the weeds and plants, I have to do asAdam did in his garden,—name things as I find them. This grass hasa slender, beautiful stalk: and when you cut it down, or pull up along root of it, you fancy it is got rid of; but in a day or two itwill come up in the same spot in half a dozen vigorous blades.Cutting down and pulling up is what it thrives on. Exterminationrather helps it. If you follow a slender white root, it will befound to run under the ground until it meets another slender whiteroot; and you will soon unearth a network of them, with a knotsomewhere, sending out dozens of sharp-pointed, healthy shoots, everyjoint prepared to be an independent life and plant. The only way todeal with it is to take one part hoe and two parts fingers, andcarefully dig it out, not leaving a joint anywhere. It will take alittle time, say all summer, to dig out thoroughly a small patch; butif you once dig it out, and keep it out, you will have no furthertrouble.

I have said it was total depravity. Here it is. If you attempt topull up and root out any sin in you, which shows on the surface,—ifit does not show, you do not care for it,—you may have noticed howit runs into an interior network of sins, and an ever-sproutingbranch of them roots somewhere; and that you cannot pull out onewithout making a general internal disturbance, and rooting up yourwhole being. I suppose it is less trouble to quietly cut them off atthe top—say once a week, on Sunday, when you put on your religiousclothes and face so that no one will see them, and not try toeradicate the network within.

Remark.—This moral vegetable figure is at the service of anyclergyman who will have the manliness to come forward and help me ata day's hoeing on my potatoes. None but the orthodox need apply.

I, however, believe in the intellectual, if not the moral, qualitiesof vegetables, and especially weeds. There was a worthless vine that(or who) started up about midway between a grape-trellis and a row ofbean-poles, some three feet from each, but a little nearer thetrellis. When it came out of the ground, it looked around to seewhat it should do. The trellis was already occupied. The bean-polewas empty. There was evidently a little the best chance of light,air, and sole proprietorship on the pole. And the vine started forthe pole, and began to climb it with determination. Here was asdistinct an act of choice, of reason, as a boy exercises when he goesinto a forest, and, looking about, decides which tree he will climb.And, besides, how did the vine know enough to travel in exactly theright direction, three feet, to find what it wanted? This isintellect. The weeds, on the other hand, have hateful moralqualities. To cut down a weed is, therefore, to do a moral action.I feel as if I were destroying sin. My hoe becomes an instrument ofretributive justice. I am an apostle of Nature. This view of thematter lends a dignity to the art of hoeing which nothing else does,and lifts it into the region of ethics. Hoeing becomes, not apastime, but a duty. And you get to regard it so, as the days andthe weeds lengthen.

Observation.—Nevertheless, what a man needs in gardening is acast-iron back,—with a hinge in it. The hoe is an ingeniousinstrument, calculated to call out a great deal of strength at agreat disadvantage.

The striped bug has come, the saddest of the year. He is a moraldouble-ender, iron-clad at that. He is unpleasant in two ways. Heburrows in the ground so that you cannot find him, and he flies awayso that you cannot catch him. He is rather handsome, as bugs go, bututterly dastardly, in that he gnaws the stem of the plant close tothe ground, and ruins it without any apparent advantage to himself.I find him on the hills of cucumbers (perhaps it will be acholera-year, and we shall not want any), the squashes (small loss),and the melons (which never ripen). The best way to deal with thestriped bug is to sit down by the hills, and patiently watch for him.If you are spry, you can annoy him. This, however, takes time. Ittakes all day and part of the night. For he flieth in darkness, andwasteth at noonday. If you get up before the dew is off the plants,—it goes off very early,—you can sprinkle soot on the plant (soot ismy panacea: if I can get the disease of a plant reduced to thenecessity of soot, I am all right) and soot is unpleasant to the bug.But the best thing to do is to set a toad to catch the bugs. Thetoad at once establishes the most intimate relations with the bug.It is a pleasure to see such unity among the lower animals. Thedifficulty is to make the toad stay and watch the hill. If you knowyour toad, it is all right. If you do not, you must build a tightfence round the plants, which the toad cannot jump over. This,however, introduces a new element. I find that I have a zoologicalgarden on my hands. It is an unexpected result of my littleenterprise, which never aspired to the completeness of the Paris"Jardin des Plantes."

FOURTH WEEK

Orthodoxy is at a low ebb. Only two clergymen accepted my offer tocome and help hoe my potatoes for the privilege of using my vegetabletotal-depravity figure about the snake-grass, or quack-grass as somecall it; and those two did not bring hoes. There seems to be a lackof disposition to hoe among our educated clergy. I am bound to saythat these two, however, sat and watched my vigorous combats with theweeds, and talked most beautifully about the application of thesnake-grass figure. As, for instance, when a fault or sin showed onthe surface of a man, whether, if you dug down, you would find thatit ran back and into the original organic bunch of original sinwithin the man. The only other clergyman who came was from out oftown,—a half Universalist, who said he wouldn't give twenty centsfor my figure. He said that the snake-grass was not in my gardenoriginally, that it sneaked in under the sod, and that it could beentirely rooted out with industry and patience. I asked theUniversalist-inclined man to take my hoe and try it; but he said hehad n't time, and went away.

But, jubilate, I have got my garden all hoed the first time! I feelas if I had put down the rebellion. Only there are guerrillas lefthere and there, about the borders and in corners, unsubdued,—Forrestdocks, and Quantrell grass, and Beauregard pig-weeds. This firsthoeing is a gigantic task: it is your first trial of strength withthe never-sleeping forces of Nature. Several times, in its progress,I was tempted to do as Adam did, who abandoned his garden on accountof the weeds. (How much my mind seems to run upon Adam, as if therehad been only two really moral gardens,—Adam's and mine!) The onlydrawback to my rejoicing over the finishing of the first hoeing is,that the garden now wants hoeing the second time. I suppose, if mygarden were planted in a perfect circle, and I started round it witha hoe, I should never see an opportunity to rest. The fact is, thatgardening is the old fable of perpetual labor; and I, for one, cannever forgive Adam Sisyphus, or whoever it was, who let in the rootsof discord. I had pictured myself sitting at eve, with my family, inthe shade of twilight, contemplating a garden hoed. Alas! it is adream not to be realized in this world.

My mind has been turned to the subject of fruit and shade trees in agarden. There are those who say that trees shade the garden toomuch, and interfere with the growth of the vegetables. There may besomething in this: but when I go down the potato rows, the rays ofthe sun glancing upon my shining blade, the sweat pouring from myface, I should be grateful for shade. What is a garden for? Thepleasure of man. I should take much more pleasure in a shady garden.Am I to be sacrificed, broiled, roasted, for the sake of theincreased vigor of a few vegetables? The thing is perfectly absurd.If I were rich, I think I would have my garden covered with anawning, so that it would be comfortable to work in it. It might rollup and be removable, as the great awning of the Roman Coliseum was,—not like the Boston one, which went off in a high wind. Another verygood way to do, and probably not so expensive as the awning, would beto have four persons of foreign birth carry a sort of canopy over youas you hoed. And there might be a person at each end of the row withsome cool and refreshing drink. Agriculture is still in a verybarbarous stage. I hope to live yet to see the day when I can do mygardening, as tragedy is done, to slow and soothing music, andattended by some of the comforts I have named. These things come soforcibly into my mind sometimes as I work, that perhaps, when awandering breeze lifts my straw hat, or a bird lights on a nearcurrant-bush, and shakes out a full-throated summer song, I almostexpect to find the cooling drink and the hospitable entertainment atthe end of the row. But I never do. There is nothing to be done butto turn round, and hoe back to the other end.

Speaking of those yellow squash-bugs, I think I disheartened them bycovering the plants so deep with soot and wood-ashes that they couldnot find them; and I am in doubt if I shall ever see the plantsagain. But I have heard of another defense against the bugs. Put afine wire-screen over each hill, which will keep out the bugs andadmit the rain. I should say that these screens would not cost muchmore than the melons you would be likely to get from the vines if youbought them; but then think of the moral satisfaction of watching thebugs hovering over the screen, seeing, but unable to reach the tenderplants within. That is worth paying for.

I left my own garden yesterday, and went over to where Polly wasgetting the weeds out of one of her flower-beds. She was workingaway at the bed with a little hoe. Whether women ought to have theballot or not (and I have a decided opinion on that point, which Ishould here plainly give, did I not fear that it would injure myagricultural influence), 'I am compelled to say that this was ratherhelpless hoeing. It was patient, conscientious, even pathetichoeing; but it was neither effective nor finished. When completed,the bed looked somewhat as if a hen had scratched it: there was thattouching unevenness about it. I think no one could look at it andnot be affected. To be sure, Polly smoothed it off with a rake, andasked me if it was n't nice; and I said it was. It was not afavorable time for me to explain the difference between putteringhoeing, and the broad, free sweep of the instrument, which kills theweeds, spares the plants, and loosens the soil without leaving it inholes and hills. But, after all, as life is constituted, I thinkmore of Polly's honest and anxious care of her plants than of themost finished gardening in the world.

FIFTH WEEK

I left my garden for a week, just at the close of the dry spell. Aseason of rain immediately set in, and when I returned thetransformation was wonderful. In one week every vegetable had fairlyjumped forward. The tomatoes which I left slender plants, eaten ofbugs and debating whether they would go backward or forward, hadbecome stout and lusty, with thick stems and dark leaves, and some ofthem had blossomed. The corn waved like that which grows so rank outof the French-English mixture at Waterloo. The squashes—I will notspeak of the squashes. The most remarkable growth was the asparagus.There was not a spear above ground when I went away; and now it hadsprung up, and gone to seed, and there were stalks higher than myhead. I am entirely aware of the value of words, and of moralobligations. When I say that the asparagus had grown six feet inseven days, I expect and wish to be believed. I am a littleparticular about the statement; for, if there is any prize offeredfor asparagus at the next agricultural fair, I wish to compete,—speed to govern. What I claim is the fastest asparagus. As foreating purposes, I have seen better. A neighbor of mine, who lookedin at the growth of the bed, said, "Well, he'd be ——-": but I toldhim there was no use of affirming now; he might keep his oath till Iwanted it on the asparagus affidavit. In order to have this sort ofasparagus, you want to manure heavily in the early spring, fork itin, and top-dress (that sounds technical) with a thick layer ofchloride of sodium: if you cannot get that, common salt will do, andthe neighbors will never notice whether it is the orthodox Na. Cl.58-5, or not.

I scarcely dare trust myself to speak of the weeds. They grow as ifthe devil was in them. I know a lady, a member of the church, and avery good sort of woman, considering the subject condition of thatclass, who says that the weeds work on her to that extent, that, ingoing through her garden, she has the greatest difficulty in keepingthe ten commandments in anything like an unfractured condition. Iasked her which one, but she said, all of them: one felt likebreaking the whole lot. The sort of weed which I most hate (if I canbe said to hate anything which grows in my own garden) is the"pusley," a fat, ground-clinging, spreading, greasy thing, and themost propagatious (it is not my fault if the word is not in thedictionary) plant I know. I saw a Chinaman, who came over with areturned missionary, and pretended to be converted, boil a lot of itin a pot, stir in eggs, and mix and eat it with relish,—"Me likeehe." It will be a good thing to keep the Chinamen on when they cometo do our gardening. I only fear they will cultivate it at theexpense of the strawberries and melons. Who can say that otherweeds, which we despise, may not be the favorite food of some remotepeople or tribe? We ought to abate our conceit. It is possible thatwe destroy in our gardens that which is really of most value in someother place. Perhaps, in like manner, our faults and vices arevirtues in some remote planet. I cannot see, however, that thisthought is of the slightest value to us here, any more than weedsare.

There is another subject which is forced upon my notice. I likeneighbors, and I like chickens; but I do not think they ought to beunited near a garden. Neighbors' hens in your garden are anannoyance. Even if they did not scratch up the corn, and peck thestrawberries, and eat the tomatoes, it is not pleasant to see themstraddling about in their jerky, high-stepping, speculative manner,picking inquisitively here and there. It is of no use to tell theneighbor that his hens eat your tomatoes: it makes no impression onhim, for the tomatoes are not his. The best way is to casuallyremark to him that he has a fine lot of chickens, pretty well grown,and that you like spring chickens broiled. He will take them away atonce.

The neighbors' small children are also out of place in your garden,in strawberry and currant time. I hope I appreciate the value ofchildren. We should soon come to nothing without them, though theShakers have the best gardens in the world. Without them the commonschool would languish. But the problem is, what to do with them in agarden. For they are not good to eat, and there is a law againstmaking away with them. The law is not very well enforced, it istrue; for people do thin them out with constant dosing, paregoric,and soothing-syrups, and scanty clothing. But I, for one, feel thatit would not be right, aside from the law, to take the life, even ofthe smallest child, for the sake of a little fruit, more or less, inthe garden. I may be wrong; but these are my sentiments, and I amnot ashamed of them. When we come, as Bryant says in his "Iliad," toleave the circus of this life, and join that innumerable caravanwhich moves, it will be some satisfaction to us, that we have never,in the way of gardening, disposed of even the humblest childunnecessarily. My plan would be to put them into Sunday-schools morethoroughly, and to give the Sunday-schools an agricultural turn;teaching the children the sacredness of neighbors' vegetables. Ithink that our Sunday-schools do not sufficiently impress uponchildren the danger, from snakes and otherwise, of going into theneighbors' gardens.

SIXTH WEEK

Somebody has sent me a new sort of hoe, with the wish that I shouldspeak favorably of it, if I can consistently. I willingly do so, butwith the understanding that I am to be at liberty to speak just ascourteously of any other hoe which I may receive. If I understandreligious morals, this is the position of the religious press withregard to bitters and wringing-machines. In some cases, theresponsibility of such a recommendation is shifted upon the wife ofthe editor or clergy-man. Polly says she is entirely willing to makea certificate, accompanied with an affidavit, with regard to thishoe; but her habit of sitting about the garden walk, on an invertedflower-pot, while I hoe, some what destroys the practical value ofher testimony.

As to this hoe, I do not mind saying that it has changed my view ofthe desirableness and value of human life. It has, in fact, madelife a holiday to me. It is made on the principle that man is anupright, sensible, reasonable being, and not a groveling wretch. Itdoes away with the necessity of the hinge in the back. The handle isseven and a half feet long. There are two narrow blades, sharp onboth edges, which come together at an obtuse angle in front; and asyou walk along with this hoe before you, pushing and pulling with agentle motion, the weeds fall at every thrust and withdrawal, and theslaughter is immediate and widespread. When I got this hoe I wastroubled with sleepless mornings, pains in the back, kleptomania withregard to new weeders; when I went into my garden I was always sureto see something. In this disordered state of mind and body I gotthis hoe. The morning after a day of using it I slept perfectly andlate. I regained my respect for the eighth commandment. After twodoses of the hoe in the garden, the weeds entirely disappeared.Trying it a third morning, I was obliged to throw it over the fencein order to save from destruction the green things that ought to growin the garden. Of course, this is figurative language. What I meanis, that the fascination of using this hoe is such that you aresorely tempted to employ it upon your vegetables, after the weeds arelaid low, and must hastily withdraw it, to avoid unpleasant results.I make this explanation, because I intend to put nothing into theseagricultural papers that will not bear the strictest scientificinvestigation; nothing that the youngest child cannot understand andcry for; nothing that the oldest and wisest men will not need tostudy with care.

I need not add that the care of a garden with this hoe becomes themerest pastime. I would not be without one for a single night. Theonly danger is, that you may rather make an idol of the hoe, andsomewhat neglect your garden in explaining it, and fooling about withit. I almost think that, with one of these in the hands of anordinary day-laborer, you might see at night where he had beenworking.

Let us have peas. I have been a zealous advocate of the birds. Ihave rejoiced in their multiplication. I have endured their concertsat four o'clock in the morning without a murmur. Let them come, Isaid, and eat the worms, in order that we, later, may enjoy thefoliage and the fruits of the earth. We have a cat, a magnificentanimal, of the sex which votes (but not a pole-cat),—so large andpowerful that, if he were in the army, he would be called Long Tom.He is a cat of fine disposition, the most irreproachable morals Iever saw thrown away in a cat, and a splendid hunter. He spends hisnights, not in social dissipation, but in gathering in rats, mice,flying-squirrels, and also birds. When he first brought me a bird, Itold him that it was wrong, and tried to convince him, while he waseating it, that he was doing wrong; for he is a reasonable cat, andunderstands pretty much everything except the binomial theorem andthe time down the cycloidal arc. But with no effect. The killing ofbirds went on, to my great regret and shame.

The other day I went to my garden to get a mess of peas. I had seen,the day before, that they were just ready to pick. How I had linedthe ground, planted, hoed, bushed them! The bushes were very fine,—seven feet high, and of good wood. How I had delighted in thegrowing, the blowing, the podding! What a touching thought it wasthat they had all podded for me! When I went to pick them, I foundthe pods all split open, and the peas gone. The dear little birds,who are so fond of the strawberries, had eaten them all. Perhapsthere were left as many as I planted: I did not count them. I made arapid estimate of the cost of the seed, the interest of the ground,the price of labor, the value of the bushes, the anxiety of weeks ofwatchfulness. I looked about me on the face of Nature. The windblew from the south so soft and treacherous! A thrush sang in thewoods so deceitfully! All Nature seemed fair. But who was to giveme back my peas? The fowls of the air have peas; but what has man?

I went into the house. I called Calvin. (That is the name of ourcat, given him on account of his gravity, morality, and uprightness.We never familiarly call him John). I petted Calvin. I lavishedupon him an enthusiastic fondness. I told him that he had no fault;that the one action that I had called a vice was an heroic exhibitionof regard for my interests. I bade him go and do likewisecontinually. I now saw how much better instinct is than mereunguided reason. Calvin knew. If he had put his opinion intoEnglish (instead of his native catalogue), it would have been: "Youneed not teach your grandmother to suck eggs." It was only the roundof Nature. The worms eat a noxious something in the ground. Thebirds eat the worms. Calvin eats the birds. We eat—no, we do noteat Calvin. There the chain stops. When you ascend the scale ofbeing, and come to an animal that is, like ourselves, inedible, youhave arrived at a result where you can rest. Let us respect the cat.He completes an edible chain.

I have little heart to discuss methods of raising peas. It occurs tome that I can have an iron peabush, a sort of trellis, through whichI could discharge electricity at frequent intervals, and electrifythe birds to death when they alight: for they stand upon my beautifulbrush in order to pick out the peas. An apparatus of this kind, withan operator, would cost, however, about as much as the peas. Aneighbor suggests that I might put up a scarecrow near the vines,which would keep the birds away. I am doubtful about it: the birdsare too much accustomed to seeing a person in poor clothes in thegarden to care much for that. Another neighbor suggests that thebirds do not open the pods; that a sort of blast, apt to come afterrain, splits the pods, and the birds then eat the peas. It may beso. There seems to be complete unity of action between the blast andthe birds. But, good neighbors, kind friends, I desire that you willnot increase, by talk, a disappointment which you cannot assuage.

SEVENTH WEEK

A garden is an awful responsibility. You never know what you may beaiding to grow in it. I heard a sermon, not long ago, in which thepreacher said that the Christian, at the moment of his becoming one,was as perfect a Christian as he would be if he grew to be anarchangel; that is, that he would not change thereafter at all, butonly develop. I do not know whether this is good theology, or not; andI hesitate to support it by an illustration from my garden, especiallyas I do not want to run the risk of propagating error, and I do notcare to give away these theological comparisons to clergymen who makeme so little return in the way of labor. But I find, in dissecting apea-blossom, that hidden in the center of it is a perfect miniaturepea-pod, with the peas all in it,—as perfect a pea-pod as it will everbe, only it is as tiny as a chatelaine ornament. Maize and some otherthings show the same precocity. This confirmation of the theologictheory is startling, and sets me meditating upon the moralpossibilities of my garden. I may find in it yet the cosmic egg.

And, speaking of moral things, I am half determined to petition theEcumenical Council to issue a bull of excommunication against"pusley." Of all the forms which "error" has taken in this world,I think that is about the worst. In the Middle Ages the monks in St.Bernard's ascetic community at Clairvaux excommunicated a vineyardwhich a less rigid monk had planted near, so that it bore nothing.In 1120 a bishop of Laon excommunicated the caterpillars in hisdiocese; and, the following year, St. Bernard excommunicated theflies in the Monastery of Foigny; and in 1510 the ecclesiasticalcourt pronounced the dread sentence against the rats of Autun, Macon,and Lyons. These examples are sufficient precedents. It will bewell for the council, however, not to publish the bull either justbefore or just after a rain; for nothing can kill this pestilentheresy when the ground is wet.

It is the time of festivals. Polly says we ought to have one,—astrawberry-festival. She says they are perfectly delightful: it isso nice to get people together!—this hot weather. They create sucha good feeling! I myself am very fond of festivals. I always go,—when I can consistently. Besides the strawberries, there are icecreams and cake and lemonade, and that sort of thing: and one alwaysfeels so well the next day after such a diet! But as socialreunions, if there are good things to eat, nothing can be pleasanter;and they are very profitable, if you have a good object. I agreedthat we ought to have a festival; but I did not know what object todevote it to. We are not in need of an organ, nor of anypulpit-cushions. I do not know that they use pulpit-cushions now asmuch as they used to, when preachers had to have something soft topound, so that they would not hurt their fists. I suggested pockethandkerchiefs, and flannels for next winter. But Polly says that willnot do at all. You must have some charitable object,—something thatappeals to a vast sense of something; something that it will be rightto get up lotteries and that sort of thing for. I suggest a festivalfor the benefit of my garden; and this seems feasible. In order tomake everything pass off pleasantly, invited guests will bring or sendtheir own strawberries and cream, which I shall be happy to sell tothem at a slight advance. There are a great many improvements whichthe garden needs; among them a sounding-board, so that the neighbors'children can hear when I tell them to get a little farther off from thecurrant-bushes. I should also like a selection from the tencommandments, in big letters, posted up conspicuously, and a few traps,that will detain, but not maim, for the benefit of those who cannotread. But what is most important is, that the ladies should crochetnets to cover over the strawberries. A good-sized, well-managedfestival ought to produce nets enough to cover my entire beds; and Ican think of no other method of preserving the berries from the birdsnext year. I wonder how many strawberries it would need for a festivaland whether they would cost more than the nets.

I am more and more impressed, as the summer goes on, with theinequality of man's fight with Nature; especially in a civilizedstate. In savagery, it does not much matter; for one does not take asquare hold, and put out his strength, but rather accommodateshimself to the situation, and takes what he can get, without raisingany dust, or putting himself into everlasting opposition. But theminute he begins to clear a spot larger than he needs to sleep in fora night, and to try to have his own way in the least, Nature is atonce up, and vigilant, and contests him at every step with all heringenuity and unwearied vigor. This talk of subduing Nature ispretty much nonsense. I do not intend to surrender in the midst ofthe summer campaign, yet I cannot but think how much more peaceful myrelations would now be with the primal forces, if I had, let Naturemake the garden according to her own notion. (This is written withthe thermometer at ninety degrees, and the weeds starting up with afreshness and vigor, as if they had just thought of it for the firsttime, and had not been cut down and dragged out every other day sincethe snow went off.)

We have got down the forests, and exterminated savage beasts; butNature is no more subdued than before: she only changes her tactics,—uses smaller guns, so to speak. She reenforces herself with avariety of bugs, worms, and vermin, and weeds, unknown to the savagestate, in order to make war upon the things of our planting; andcalls in the fowls of the air, just as we think the battle is won, tosnatch away the booty. When one gets almost weary of the struggle,she is as fresh as at the beginning,—just, in fact, ready for thefray. I, for my part, begin to appreciate the value of frost andsnow; for they give the husbandman a little peace, and enable him,for a season, to contemplate his incessant foe subdued. I do notwonder that the tropical people, where Nature never goes to sleep,give it up, and sit in lazy acquiescence.

Here I have been working all the season to make a piece of lawn. Ithad to be graded and sowed and rolled; and I have been shaving itlike a barber. When it was soft, everything had a tendency to go onto it,—cows, and especially wandering hackmen. Hackmen (who are aproduct of civilization) know a lawn when they see it. They ratherhave a fancy for it, and always try to drive so as to cut the sharpborders of it, and leave the marks of their wheels in deep ruts ofcut-up, ruined turf. The other morning, I had just been running themower over the lawn, and stood regarding its smoothness, when Inoticed one, two, three puffs of fresh earth in it; and, hasteningthither, I found that the mole had arrived to complete the work ofthe hackmen. In a half-hour he had rooted up the ground like a pig.I found his run-ways. I waited for him with a spade. He did notappear; but, the next time I passed by, he had ridged the ground inall directions,—a smooth, beautiful animal, with fur like silk, ifyou could only catch him. He appears to enjoy the lawn as much asthe hackmen did. He does not care how smooth it is. He isconstantly mining, and ridging it up. I am not sure but he could becountermined. I have half a mind to put powder in here and there,and blow the whole thing into the air. Some folks set traps for themole; but my moles never seem to go twice in the same place. I amnot sure but it would bother them to sow the lawn with interlacingsnake-grass (the botanical name of which, somebody writes me, isdevil-grass: the first time I have heard that the Devil has abotanical name), which would worry them, if it is as difficult forthem to get through it as it is for me.

I do not speak of this mole in any tone of complaint. He is only apart of the untiring resources which Nature brings against the humblegardener. I desire to write nothing against him which I should wishto recall at the last,—nothing foreign to the spirit of thatbeautiful saying of the dying boy, "He had no copy-book, which,dying, he was sorry he had blotted."

My garden has been visited by a High Official Person. PresidentGr-nt was here just before the Fourth, getting his mind quiet forthat event by a few days of retirement, staying with a friend at thehead of our street; and I asked him if he wouldn't like to come downour way Sunday afternoon and take a plain, simple look at my garden,eat a little lemon ice-cream and jelly-cake, and drink a glass ofnative lager-beer. I thought of putting up over my gate, "Welcometo the Nation's Gardener;" but I hate nonsense, and did n't do it.I, however, hoed diligently on Saturday: what weeds I could n'tremove I buried, so that everything would look all right. Theborders of my drive were trimmed with scissors; and everything thatcould offend the Eye of the Great was hustled out of the way.

In relating this interview, it must be distinctly understood that Iam not responsible for anything that the President said; nor is he,either. He is not a great speaker; but whatever he says has anesoteric and an exoteric meaning; and some of his remarks about myvegetables went very deep. I said nothing to him whatever aboutpolitics, at which he seemed a good deal surprised: he said it wasthe first garden he had ever been in, with a man, when the talk wasnot of appointments. I told him that this was purely vegetable;after which he seemed more at his ease, and, in fact, delighted witheverything he saw. He was much interested in my strawberry-beds,asked what varieties I had, and requested me to send him some seed.He said the patent-office seed was as difficult to raise as anappropriation for the St. Domingo business. The playful bean seemedalso to please him; and he said he had never seen such impressivecorn and potatoes at this time of year; that it was to him anunexpected pleasure, and one of the choicest memories that he shouldtake away with him of his visit to New England.

N. B.—That corn and those potatoes which General Gr-nt looked at Iwill sell for seed, at five dollars an ear, and one dollar a potato.Office-seekers need not apply.

Knowing the President's great desire for peas, I kept him from thatpart of the garden where the vines grow. But they could not beconcealed. Those who say that the President is not a man easilymoved are knaves or fools. When he saw my pea-pods, ravaged by thebirds, he burst into tears. A man of war, he knows the value ofpeas. I told him they were an excellent sort, "The Champion ofEngland." As quick as a flash he said, "Why don't you call them 'TheReverdy Johnson'?"

It was a very clever bon-mot; but I changed the subject.

The sight of my squashes, with stalks as big as speaking-trumpets,restored the President to his usual spirits. He said the summersquash was the most ludicrous vegetable he knew. It was nearly allleaf and blow, with only a sickly, crook-necked fruit after a mightyfuss. It reminded him of the member of Congress from…; but Ihastened to change the subject.

As we walked along, the keen eye of the President rested upon somehandsome sprays of "pusley," which must have grown up since Saturdaynight. It was most fortunate; for it led his Excellency to speak ofthe Chinese problem. He said he had been struck with one, couplingof the Chinese and the "pusley" in one of my agricultural papers; andit had a significance more far-reaching than I had probably supposed.He had made the Chinese problem a special study. He said that I wasright in saying that "pusley" was the natural food of the Chinaman,and that where the "pusley" was, there would the Chinaman be also.For his part, he welcomed the Chinese emigration: we needed theChinaman in our gardens to eat the "pusley;" and he thought the wholeproblem solved by this simple consideration. To get rid of rats and"pusley," he said, was a necessity of our civilization. He did notcare so much about the shoe-business; he did not think that thelittle Chinese shoes that he had seen would be of service in thearmy: but the garden-interest was quite another affair. We want tomake a garden of our whole country: the hoe, in the hands of a mantruly great, he was pleased to say, was mightier than the pen. Hepresumed that General B-tl-r had never taken into consideration thegarden-question, or he would not assume the position he does withregard to the Chinese emigration. He would let the Chinese come,even if B-tl-r had to leave, I thought he was going to say, but Ichanged the subject.

During our entire garden interview (operatically speaking, thegarden-scene), the President was not smoking. I do not know how theimpression arose that he "uses tobacco in any form;" for I have seenhim several times, and he was not smoking. Indeed, I offered him aConnecticut six; but he wittily said that he did not like a weed in agarden,—a remark which I took to have a personal political bearing,and changed the subject.

The President was a good deal surprised at the method and fineappearance of my garden, and to learn that I had the sole care of it.He asked me if I pursued an original course, or whether I got myideas from writers on the subject. I told him that I had had no timeto read anything on the subject since I began to hoe, except"Lothair," from which I got my ideas of landscape gardening; and thatI had worked the garden entirely according to my own notions, exceptthat I had borne in mind his injunction, "to fight it out on thisline if"—The President stopped me abruptly, and said it wasunnecessary to repeat that remark: he thought he had heard it before.Indeed, he deeply regretted that he had ever made it. Sometimes, hesaid, after hearing it in speeches, and coming across it inresolutions, and reading it in newspapers, and having it droppedjocularly by facetious politicians, who were boring him for anoffice, about twenty-five times a day, say for a month, it would getto running through his head, like the "shoo-fly" song which B-tl-rsings in the House, until it did seem as if he should go distracted.He said, no man could stand that kind of sentence hammering on hisbrain for years.

The President was so much pleased with my management of the garden,that he offered me (at least, I so understood him) the position ofhead gardener at the White House, to have care of the exotics. Itold him that I thanked him, but that I did not desire any foreignappointment. I had resolved, when the administration came in, not totake an appointment; and I had kept my resolution. As to any homeoffice, I was poor, but honest; and, of course, it would be uselessfor me to take one. The President mused a moment, and then smiled,and said he would see what could be done for me. I did not changethe subject; but nothing further was said by General Gr-nt.

The President is a great talker (contrary to the general impression);but I think he appreciated his quiet hour in my garden. He said itcarried him back to his youth farther than anything he had seenlately. He looked forward with delight to the time when he couldagain have his private garden, grow his own lettuce and tomatoes, andnot have to get so much "sarce" from Congress.

The chair in which the President sat, while declining to take a glassof lager I have had destroyed, in order that no one may sit in it.It was the only way to save it, if I may so speak. It would havebeen impossible to keep it from use by any precautions. There arepeople who would have sat in it, if the seat had been set with ironspikes. Such is the adoration of Station.

NINTH WEEK

I am more and more impressed with the moral qualities of vegetables,and contemplate forming a science which shall rank with comparativeanatomy and comparative philology,—the science of comparativevegetable morality. We live in an age of protoplasm. And, iflife-matter is essentially the same in all forms of life, I purposeto begin early, and ascertain the nature of the plants for which I amresponsible. I will not associate with any vegetable which isdisreputable, or has not some quality that can contribute to my moralgrowth. I do not care to be seen much with the squashes or thedead-beets. Fortunately I can cut down any sorts I do not like withthe hoe, and, probably, commit no more sin in so doing than theChristians did in hewing down the Jews in the Middle Ages.

This matter of vegetable rank has not been at all studied as itshould be. Why do we respect some vegetables and despise others,when all of them come to an equal honor or ignominy on the table?The bean is a graceful, confiding, engaging vine; but you never canput beans into poetry, nor into the highest sort of prose. There isno dignity in the bean. Corn, which, in my garden, grows alongsidethe bean, and, so far as I can see, with no affectation ofsuperiority, is, however, the child of song. It waves in allliterature. But mix it with beans, and its high tone is gone.Succotash is vulgar. It is the bean in it. The bean is a vulgarvegetable, without culture, or any flavor of high society amongvegetables. Then there is the cool cucumber, like so many people,good for nothing when it is ripe and the wildness has gone out of it.How inferior in quality it is to the melon, which grows upon asimilar vine, is of a like watery consistency, but is not half sovaluable! The cucumber is a sort of low comedian in a company wherethe melon is a minor gentleman. I might also contrast the celerywith the potato. The associations are as opposite as the dining-roomof the duch*ess and the cabin of the peasant. I admire the potato,both in vine and blossom; but it is not aristocratic. I begandigging my potatoes, by the way, about the 4th of July; and I fancy Ihave discovered the right way to do it. I treat the potato just as Iwould a cow. I do not pull them up, and shake them out, and destroythem; but I dig carefully at the side of the hill, remove the fruitwhich is grown, leaving the vine undisturbed: and my theory is, thatit will go on bearing, and submitting to my exactions, until thefrost cuts it down. It is a game that one would not undertake with avegetable of tone.

The lettuce is to me a most interesting study. Lettuce is likeconversation: it must be fresh and crisp, so sparkling that youscarcely notice the bitter in it. Lettuce, like most talkers, is,however, apt to run rapidly to seed. Blessed is that sort whichcomes to a head, and so remains, like a few people I know; growingmore solid and satisfactory and tender at the same time, and whiterat the center, and crisp in their maturity. Lettuce, likeconversation, requires a good deal of oil to avoid friction, and keepthe company smooth; a pinch of attic salt; a dash of pepper; a quantityof mustard and vinegar, by all means, but so mixed that you will noticeno sharp contrasts; and a trifle of sugar. You can put anything, andthe more things the better, into salad, as into a conversation; buteverything depends upon the skill of mixing. I feel that I am in thebest society when I am with lettuce. It is in the select circle ofvegetables. The tomato appears well on the table; but you do not wantto ask its origin. It is a most agreeable parvenu. Of course, I havesaid nothing about the berries. They live in another and more idealregion; except, perhaps, the currant. Here we see, that, even amongberries, there are degrees of breeding. The currant is well enough,clear as truth, and exquisite in color; but I ask you to notice how farit is from the exclusive hauteur of the aristocratic strawberry, andthe native refinement of the quietly elegant raspberry.

I do not know that chemistry, searching for protoplasm, is able todiscover the tendency of vegetables. It can only be found out byoutward observation. I confess that I am suspicious of the bean, forinstance. There are signs in it of an unregulated life. I put upthe most attractive sort of poles for my Limas. They stand high andstraight, like church-spires, in my theological garden,—liftedup; and some of them have even budded, like Aaron's rod. Nochurch-steeple in a New England village was ever better fitted to drawto it the rising generation on Sunday, than those poles to lift up mybeans towards heaven. Some of them did run up the sticks seven feet,and then straggled off into the air in a wanton manner; but more thanhalf of them went gallivanting off to the neighboring grape-trellis,and wound their tendrils with the tendrils of the grape, with adisregard of the proprieties of life which is a satire upon humannature. And the grape is morally no better. I think the ancients, whowere not troubled with the recondite mystery of protoplasm, were rightin the mythic union of Bacchus and Venus.

Talk about the Darwinian theory of development, and the principle ofnatural selection! I should like to see a garden let to run inaccordance with it. If I had left my vegetables and weeds to a freefight, in which the strongest specimens only should come to maturity,and the weaker go to the wall, I can clearly see that I should havehad a pretty mess of it. It would have been a scene of passion andlicense and brutality. The "pusley" would have strangled thestrawberry; the upright corn, which has now ears to hear the guiltybeating of the hearts of the children who steal the raspberries,would have been dragged to the earth by the wandering bean; thesnake-grass would have left no place for the potatoes under ground;and the tomatoes would have been swamped by the lusty weeds. With afirm hand, I have had to make my own "natural selection." Nothingwill so well bear watching as a garden, except a family of childrennext door. Their power of selection beats mine. If they could readhalf as well as they can steal awhile away, I should put up a notice,"Children, beware! There is Protoplasm here." But I suppose it wouldhave no effect. I believe they would eat protoplasm as quick asanything else, ripe or green. I wonder if this is going to be acholera-year. Considerable cholera is the only thing that would letmy apples and pears ripen. Of course I do not care for the fruit;but I do not want to take the responsibility of letting so much"life-matter," full of crude and even wicked vegetable-humantendencies, pass into the composition of the neighbors' children,some of whom may be as immortal as snake-grass. There ought to be apublic meeting about this, and resolutions, and perhaps a clambake.At least, it ought to be put into the catechism, and put in strong.

TENTH WEEK

I think I have discovered the way to keep peas from the birds. Itried the scarecrow plan, in a way which I thought would outwit theshrewdest bird. The brain of the bird is not large; but it is allconcentrated on one object, and that is the attempt to elude thedevices of modern civilization which injure his chances of food. Iknew that, if I put up a complete stuffed man, the bird would detectthe imitation at once: the perfection of the thing would show himthat it was a trick. People always overdo the matter when theyattempt deception. I therefore hung some loose garments, of a brightcolor, upon a rake-head, and set them up among the vines. Thesupposition was, that the bird would think there was an effort totrap him, that there was a man behind, holding up these garments, andwould sing, as he kept at a distance, "You can't catch me with anysuch double device." The bird would know, or think he knew, that Iwould not hang up such a scare, in the expectation that it would passfor a man, and deceive a bird; and he would therefore look for adeeper plot. I expected to outwit the bird by a duplicity that wassimplicity itself I may have over-calculated the sagacity andreasoning power of the bird. At any rate, I did over-calculate theamount of peas I should gather.

But my game was only half played. In another part of the garden wereother peas, growing and blowing. To-these I took good care not toattract the attention of the bird by any scarecrow whatever! I leftthe old scarecrow conspicuously flaunting above the old vines; and bythis means I hope to keep the attention of the birds confined to thatside of the garden. I am convinced that this is the true use of ascarecrow: it is a lure, and not a warning. If you wish to save menfrom any particular vice, set up a tremendous cry of warning aboutsome other; and they will all give their special efforts to the oneto which attention is called. This profound truth is about the onlything I have yet realized out of my pea-vines.

However, the garden does begin to yield. I know of nothing thatmakes one feel more complacent, in these July days, than to have hisvegetables from his own garden. What an effect it has on themarket-man and the butcher! It is a kind of declaration ofindependence. The market-man shows me his peas and beets andtomatoes, and supposes he shall send me out some with the meat. "No,I thank you," I say carelessly; "I am raising my own this year."Whereas I have been wont to remark, "Your vegetables look a littlewilted this weather," I now say, "What a fine lot of vegetablesyou've got!" When a man is not going to buy, he can afford to begenerous. To raise his own vegetables makes a person feel, somehow,more liberal. I think the butcher is touched by the influence, andcuts off a better roast for me, The butcher is my friend when he seesthat I am not wholly dependent on him.

It is at home, however, that the effect is most marked, thoughsometimes in a way that I had not expected. I have never read of anyRoman supper that seemed to me equal to a dinner of my ownvegetables; when everything on the table is the product of my ownlabor, except the clams, which I have not been able to raise yet, andthe chickens, which have withdrawn from the garden just when theywere most attractive. It is strange what a taste you suddenly havefor things you never liked before. The squash has always been to mea dish of contempt; but I eat it now as if it were my best friend. Inever cared for the beet or the bean; but I fancy now that I couldeat them all, tops and all, so completely have they been transformedby the soil in which they grew. I think the squash is less squashy,and the beet has a deeper hue of rose, for my care of them.

I had begun to nurse a good deal of pride in presiding over a tablewhereon was the fruit of my honest industry. But woman!—John StuartMill is right when he says that we do not know anything about women.Six thousand years is as one day with them. I thought I hadsomething to do with those vegetables. But when I saw Polly seatedat her side of the table, presiding over the new and susceptiblevegetables, flanked by the squash and the beans, and smiling upon thegreen corn and the new potatoes, as cool as the cucumbers which laysliced in ice before her, and when she began to dispense the freshdishes, I saw at once that the day of my destiny was over. You wouldhave thought that she owned all the vegetables, and had raised themall from their earliest years. Such quiet, vegetable airs! Suchgracious appropriation! At length I said,—

"Polly, do you know who planted that squash, or those squashes?"

"James, I suppose."

"Well, yes, perhaps James did plant them, to a certain extent. Butwho hoed them?"

"We did."

"We did!" I said, in the most sarcastic manner.

And I suppose we put on the sackcloth and ashes, when the striped bugcame at four o'clock A.M., and we watched the tender leaves, andwatered night and morning the feeble plants. "I tell you, Polly,"said I, uncorking the Bordeaux raspberry vinegar, "there is not a peahere that does not represent a drop of moisture wrung from my brow,not a beet that does not stand for a back-ache, not a squash that hasnot caused me untold anxiety; and I did hope—but I will say nomore."

Observation.—In this sort of family discussion, "I will say nomore" is the most effective thing you can close up with.

I am not an alarmist. I hope I am as cool as anybody this hotsummer. But I am quite ready to say to Polly, or any other woman,"You can have the ballot; only leave me the vegetables, or, what ismore important, the consciousness of power in vegetables." I see howit is. Woman is now supreme in the house. She already stretches outher hand to grasp the garden. She will gradually control everything.Woman is one of the ablest and most cunning creatures who have evermingled in human affairs. I understand those women who say theydon't want the ballot. They purpose to hold the real power while wego through the mockery of making laws. They want the power withoutthe responsibility. (Suppose my squash had not come up, or my beans—as they threatened at one time—had gone the wrong way: where wouldI have been?) We are to be held to all the responsibilities. Womantakes the lead in all the departments, leaving us politics only. Andwhat is politics? Let me raise the vegetables of a nation, saysPolly, and I care not who makes its politics. Here I sat at thetable, armed with the ballot, but really powerless among my ownvegetables. While we are being amused by the ballot, woman isquietly taking things into her own hands.

ELEVENTH WEEK

Perhaps, after all, it is not what you get out of a garden, but whatyou put into it, that is the most remunerative. What is a man? Aquestion frequently asked, and never, so far as I know,satisfactorily answered. He commonly spends his seventy years, if somany are given him, in getting ready to enjoy himself. How manyhours, how many minutes, does one get of that pure content which ishappiness? I do not mean laziness, which is always discontent; butthat serene enjoyment, in which all the natural senses have easyplay, and the unnatural ones have a holiday. There is probablynothing that has such a tranquilizing effect, and leads into suchcontent as gardening. By gardening, I do not mean that insane desireto raise vegetables which some have; but the philosophical occupationof contact with the earth, and companionship with gently growingthings and patient processes; that exercise which soothes the spirit,and develops the deltoid muscles.

In half an hour I can hoe myself right away from this world, as wecommonly see it, into a large place, where there are no obstacles.What an occupation it is for thought! The mind broods like a hen oneggs. The trouble is, that you are not thinking about anything, butare really vegetating like the plants around you. I begin to knowwhat the joy of the grape-vine is in running up the trellis, which issimilar to that of the squirrel in running up a tree. We all havesomething in our nature that requires contact with the earth. In thesolitude of garden-labor, one gets into a sort of communion with thevegetable life, which makes the old mythology possible. Forinstance, I can believe that the dryads are plenty this summer: mygarden is like an ash-heap. Almost all the moisture it has had inweeks has been the sweat of honest industry.

The pleasure of gardening in these days, when the thermometer is atninety, is one that I fear I shall not be able to make intelligibleto my readers, many of whom do not appreciate the delight of soakingin the sunshine. I suppose that the sun, going through a man, as itwill on such a day, takes out of him rheumatism, consumption, andevery other disease, except sudden death—from sun-stroke. But,aside from this, there is an odor from the evergreens, the hedges,the various plants and vines, that is only expressed and set afloatat a high temperature, which is delicious; and, hot as it may be, alittle breeze will come at intervals, which can be heard in thetreetops, and which is an unobtrusive benediction. I hear a quail ortwo whistling in the ravine; and there is a good deal of fragmentaryconversation going on among the birds, even on the warmest days. Thecompanionship of Calvin, also, counts for a good deal. He usuallyattends me, unless I work too long in one place; sitting down on theturf, displaying the ermine of his breast, and watching my movementswith great intelligence. He has a feline and genuine love for thebeauties of Nature, and will establish himself where there is a goodview, and look on it for hours. He always accompanies us when we goto gather the vegetables, seeming to be desirous to know what we areto have for dinner. He is a connoisseur in the garden; being fond ofalmost all the vegetables, except the cucumber,—a dietetic hint toman. I believe it is also said that the pig will not eat tobacco.These are important facts. It is singular, however, that those whohold up the pigs as models to us never hold us up as models to thepigs.

I wish I knew as much about natural history and the habits of animalsas Calvin does. He is the closest observer I ever saw; and there arefew species of animals on the place that he has not analyzed. Ithink he has, to use a euphemism very applicable to him, got outsideof every one of them, except the toad. To the toad he is entirelyindifferent; but I presume he knows that the toad is the most usefulanimal in the garden. I think the Agricultural Society ought tooffer a prize for the finest toad. When Polly comes to sit in theshade near my strawberry-beds, to shell peas, Calvin is always lyingnear in apparent obliviousness; but not the slightest unusual soundcan be made in the bushes, that he is not alert, and prepared toinvestigate the cause of it. It is this habit of observation, socultivated, which has given him such a trained mind, and made him sophilosophical. It is within the capacity of even the humblest of usto attain this.

And, speaking of the philosophical temper, there is no class of menwhose society is more to be desired for this quality than that ofplumbers. They are the most agreeable men I know; and the boys inthe business begin to be agreeable very early. I suspect the secretof it is, that they are agreeable by the hour. In the driest days,my fountain became disabled: the pipe was stopped up. A couple ofplumbers, with the implements of their craft, came out to view thesituation. There was a good deal of difference of opinion aboutwhere the stoppage was. I found the plumbers perfectly willing tosit down and talk about it,—talk by the hour. Some of their guessesand remarks were exceedingly ingenious; and their generalobservations on other subjects were excellent in their way, and couldhardly have been better if they had been made by the job. The workdragged a little, as it is apt to do by the hour. The plumbers hadoccasion to make me several visits. Sometimes they would find, uponarrival, that they had forgotten some indispensable tool; and onewould go back to the shop, a mile and a half, after it; and hiscomrade would await his return with the most exemplary patience, andsit down and talk,—always by the hour. I do not know but it is ahabit to have something wanted at the shop. They seemed to me verygood workmen, and always willing to stop and talk about the job, oranything else, when I went near them. Nor had they any of thatimpetuous hurry that is said to be the bane of our Americancivilization. To their credit be it said, that I never observedanything of it in them. They can afford to wait. Two of them willsometimes wait nearly half a day while a comrade goes for a tool.They are patient and philosophical. It is a great pleasure to meetsuch men. One only wishes there was some work he could do for themby the hour. There ought to be reciprocity. I think they have verynearly solved the problem of Life: it is to work for other people,never for yourself, and get your pay by the hour. You then have noanxiety, and little work. If you do things by the job, you areperpetually driven: the hours are scourges. If you work by the hour,you gently sail on the stream of Time, which is always bearing you onto the haven of Pay, whether you make any effort, or not. Working bythe hour tends to make one moral. A plumber working by the job,trying to unscrew a rusty, refractory nut, in a cramped position,where the tongs continually slipped off, would swear; but I neverheard one of them swear, or exhibit the least impatience at such avexation, working by the hour. Nothing can move a man who is paid bythe hour. How sweet the flight of time seems to his calm mind!

TWELFTH WEEK

Mr. Horace Greeley, the introduction of whose name confers an honorupon this page (although I ought to say that it is used entirelywithout his consent), is my sole authority in agriculture. Inpolitics I do not dare to follow him; but in agriculture he isirresistible. When, therefore, I find him advising Western farmersnot to hill up their corn, I think that his advice must be political.You must hill up your corn. People always have hilled up their corn.It would take a constitutional amendment to change the practice, thathas pertained ever since maize was raised. "It will stand thedrought better," says Mr. Greeley, "if the ground is left level." Ihave corn in my garden, ten and twelve feet high, strong and lusty,standing the drought like a grenadier; and it is hilled. In advisingthis radical change, Mr. Greeley evidently has a political purpose.He might just as well say that you should not hill beans, wheneverybody knows that a "hill of beans" is one of the most expressivesymbols of disparagement. When I become too lazy to hill my corn, I,too, shall go into politics.

I am satisfied that it is useless to try to cultivate "pusley." I seta little of it one side, and gave it some extra care. It did notthrive as well as that which I was fighting. The fact is, there is aspirit of moral perversity in the plant, which makes it grow themore, the more it is interfered with. I am satisfied of that. Idoubt if any one has raised more "pusley" this year than I have; andmy warfare with it has been continual. Neither of us has slept much.If you combat it, it will grow, to use an expression that will beunderstood by many, like the devil. I have a neighbor, a goodChristian man, benevolent, and a person of good judgment. He plantednext to me an acre of turnips recently. A few days after, he went tolook at his crop; and he found the entire ground covered with a thickand luxurious carpet of "pusley," with a turnip-top worked in hereand there as an ornament. I have seldom seen so thrifty a field. Iadvised my neighbor next time to sow "pusley" and then he might get afew turnips. I wish there was more demand in our city markets for"pusley" as a salad. I can recommend it.

It does not take a great man to soon discover that, in raisinganything, the greater part of the plants goes into stalk and leaf,and the fruit is a most inconsiderable portion. I plant and hoe ahill of corn: it grows green and stout, and waves its broad leaveshigh in the air, and is months in perfecting itself, and then yieldsus not enough for a dinner. It grows because it delights to do so,—to take the juices out of my ground, to absorb my fertilizers, towax luxuriant, and disport itself in the summer air, and with verylittle thought of making any return to me. I might go all through mygarden and fruit trees with a similar result. I have heard of placeswhere there was very little land to the acre. It is universally truethat there is a great deal of vegetable show and fuss for the resultproduced. I do not complain of this. One cannot expect vegetablesto be better than men: and they make a great deal of ostentatioussplurge; and many of them come to no result at last. Usually, themore show of leaf and wood, the less fruit. This melancholyreflection is thrown in here in order to make dog-days seem cheerfulin comparison.

One of the minor pleasures of life is that of controlling vegetableactivity and aggressions with the pruning-knife. Vigorous and rapidgrowth is, however, a necessity to the sport. To prune feeble plantsand shrubs is like acting the part of dry-nurse to a sickly orphan.You must feel the blood of Nature bound under your hand, and get thethrill of its life in your nerves. To control and culture a strong,thrifty plant in this way is like steering a ship under full headway,or driving a locomotive with your hand on the lever, or pulling thereins over a fast horse when his blood and tail are up. I do notunderstand, by the way, the pleasure of the jockey in setting up thetail of the horse artificially. If I had a horse with a tail notable to sit up, I should feed the horse, and curry him into goodspirits, and let him set up his own tail. When I see a poor,spiritless horse going by with an artificially set-up tail, it isonly a signal of distress. I desire to be surrounded only byhealthy, vigorous plants and trees, which require constant cutting-inand management. Merely to cut away dead branches is like perpetualattendance at a funeral, and puts one in low spirits. I want to havea garden and orchard rise up and meet me every morning, with therequest to "lay on, Macduff." I respect old age; but an oldcurrant-bush, hoary with mossy bark, is a melancholy spectacle.

I suppose the time has come when I am expected to say something aboutfertilizers: all agriculturists do. When you plant, you think youcannot fertilize too much: when you get the bills for the manure, youthink you cannot fertilize too little. Of course you do not expectto get the value of the manure back in fruits and vegetables; butsomething is due to science,—to chemistry in particular. You musthave a knowledge of soils, must have your soil analyzed, and then gointo a course of experiments to find what it needs. It needsanalyzing,—that, I am clear about: everything needs that. You hadbetter have the soil analyzed before you buy: if there is "pusley"in it, let it alone. See if it is a soil that requires much hoeing,and how fine it will get if there is no rain for two months. Butwhen you come to fertilizing, if I understand the agriculturalauthorities, you open a pit that will ultimately swallow you up,—farm and all. It is the great subject of modern times, how tofertilize without ruinous expense; how, in short, not to starve theearth to death while we get our living out of it. Practically, thebusiness is hardly to the taste of a person of a poetic turn of mind.The details of fertilizing are not agreeable. Michael Angelo, whotried every art, and nearly every trade, never gave his mind tofertilizing. It is much pleasanter and easier to fertilize with apen, as the agricultural writers do, than with a fork. And thisleads me to say, that, in carrying on a garden yourself, you musthave a "consulting" gardener; that is, a man to do the heavy andunpleasant work. To such a man, I say, in language used byDemosthenes to the Athenians, and which is my advice to allgardeners, "Fertilize, fertilize, fertilize!"

THIRTEENTH WEEK

I find that gardening has unsurpassed advantages for the study ofnatural history; and some scientific facts have come under my ownobservation, which cannot fail to interest naturalists andun-naturalists in about the same degree. Much, for instance, hasbeen written about the toad, an animal without which no garden wouldbe complete. But little account has been made of his value: thebeauty of his eye alone has been dwelt on; and little has been saidof his mouth, and its important function as a fly and bug trap. Hishabits, and even his origin, have been misunderstood. Why, as anillustration, are toads so plenty after a thunder-shower? All mylife long, no one has been able to answer me that question. Why,after a heavy shower, and in the midst of it, do such multitudes oftoads, especially little ones, hop about on the gravel-walks? Formany years, I believed that they rained down; and I suppose manypeople think so still. They are so small, and they come in suchnumbers only in the shower, that the supposition is not a violentone. "Thick as toads after a shower," is one of our best proverbs.I asked an explanation 'of this of a thoughtful woman,—indeed, aleader in the great movement to have all the toads hop in anydirection, without any distinction of sex or religion. Her replywas, that the toads come out during the shower to get water. This,however, is not the fact. I have discovered that they come out notto get water. I deluged a dry flower-bed, the other night, withpailful after pailful of water. Instantly the toads came out oftheir holes in the dirt, by tens and twenties and fifties, to escapedeath by drowning. The big ones fled away in a ridiculous streak ofhopping; and the little ones sprang about in the wildest confusion.The toad is just like any other land animal: when his house is fullof water, he quits it. These facts, with the drawings of the waterand the toads, are at the service of the distinguished scientists ofAlbany in New York, who were so much impressed by the Cardiff Giant.

The domestic cow is another animal whose ways I have a chance tostudy, and also to obliterate in the garden. One of my neighbors hasa cow, but no land; and he seems desirous to pasture her on thesurface of the land of other people: a very reasonable desire. Theman proposed that he should be allowed to cut the grass from mygrounds for his cow. I knew the cow, having often had her in mygarden; knew her gait and the size of her feet, which struck me as alittle large for the size of the body. Having no cow myself, butacquaintance with my neighbor's, I told him that I thought it wouldbe fair for him to have the grass. He was, therefore, to keep thegrass nicely cut, and to keep his cow at home. I waited some timeafter the grass needed cutting; and, as my neighbor did not appear, Ihired it cut. No sooner was it done than he promptly appeared, andraked up most of it, and carried it away. He had evidently beenwaiting that opportunity. When the grass grew again, the neighbordid not appear with his scythe; but one morning I found the cowtethered on the sward, hitched near the clothes-horse, a shortdistance from the house. This seemed to be the man's idea of thebest way to cut the grass. I disliked to have the cow there, becauseI knew her inclination to pull up the stake, and transfer her fieldof mowing to the garden, but especially because of her voice. Shehas the most melancholy "moo" I ever heard. It is like the wail ofone uninfallible, excommunicated, and lost. It is a most distressingperpetual reminder of the brevity of life and the shortness of feed.It is unpleasant to the family. We sometimes hear it in the middleof the night, breaking the silence like a suggestion of comingcalamity. It is as bad as the howling of a dog at a funeral.

I told the man about it; but he seemed to think that he was notresponsible for the cow's voice. I then told him to take her away;and he did, at intervals, shifting her to different parts of thegrounds in my absence, so that the desolate voice would startle usfrom unexpected quarters. If I were to unhitch the cow, and turn herloose, I knew where she would go. If I were to lead her away, thequestion was, Where? for I did not fancy leading a cow about till Icould find somebody who was willing to pasture her. To this dilemmahad my excellent neighbor reduced me. But I found him, one Sundaymorning,—a day when it would not do to get angry, tying his cow atthe foot of the hill; the beast all the time going on in thatabominable voice. I told the man that I could not have the cow inthe grounds. He said, "All right, boss;" but he did not go away. Iasked him to clear out. The man, who is a French sympathizer fromthe Republic of Ireland, kept his temper perfectly. He said hewasn't doing anything, just feeding his cow a bit: he wouldn't makeme the least trouble in the world. I reminded him that he had beentold again and again not to come here; that he might have all thegrass, but he should not bring his cow upon the premises. Theimperturbable man assented to everything that I said, and kept onfeeding his cow. Before I got him to go to fresh scenes and pasturesnew, the Sabbath was almost broken; but it was saved by one thing: itis difficult to be emphatic when no one is emphatic on the otherside. The man and his cow have taught me a great lesson, which Ishall recall when I keep a cow. I can recommend this cow, if anybodywants one, as a steady boarder, whose keeping will cost the ownerlittle; but, if her milk is at all like her voice, those who drink itare on the straight road to lunacy.

I think I have said that we have a game-preserve. We keep quails, ortry to, in the thickly wooded, bushed, and brushed ravine. This birdis a great favorite with us, dead or alive, on account of itstasteful plumage, its tender flesh, its domestic virtues, and itspleasant piping. Besides, although I appreciate toads and cows, andall that sort of thing, I like to have a game-preserve more in theEnglish style. And we did. For in July, while the game-law was on,and the young quails were coming on, we were awakened one morning byfiring, —musketry-firing, close at hand. My first thought was, thatwar was declared; but, as I should never pay much attention to wardeclared at that time in the morning, I went to sleep again. But theoccurrence was repeated,—and not only early in the morning, but atnight. There was calling of dogs, breaking down of brush, and firingof guns. It is hardly pleasant to have guns fired in the direction ofthe house, at your own quails. The hunters could be sometimes seen,but never caught. Their best time was about sunrise; but, before onecould dress and get to the front, they would retire.

One morning, about four o'clock, I heard the battle renewed. Isprang up, but not in arms, and went to a window. Polly (likeanother 'blessed damozel') flew to another window,—

"The blessed damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of heaven,"

and reconnoitered from behind the blinds.

"The wonder was not yet quite gone
From that still look of hers,"

when an armed man and a legged dog appeared in the opening. I wasvigilantly watching him.

. . . . "And now
She spoke through the still weather."

"Are you afraid to speak to him?" asked Polly.

Not exactly,

. . . ."she spoke as when The stars sang in their spheres.

"Stung by this inquiry, I leaned out of the window till

"The bar I leaned on (was) warm,"

and cried,—

"Halloo, there! What are you doing?"

"Look out he don't shoot you," called out Polly from the otherwindow, suddenly going on another tack.

I explained that a sportsman would not be likely to shoot a gentlemanin his own house, with bird-shot, so long as quails were to be had.

"You have no business here: what are you after?" I repeated.

"Looking for a lost hen," said the man as he strode away.

The reply was so satisfactory and conclusive that I shut the blindsand went to bed.

But one evening I overhauled one of the poachers. Hearing his dog inthe thicket, I rushed through the brush, and came in sight of thehunter as he was retreating down the road. He came to a halt; and wehad some conversation in a high key. Of course I threatened toprosecute him. I believe that is the thing to do in such cases; buthow I was to do it, when I did not know his name or ancestry, andcouldn't see his face, never occurred to me. (I remember, now, thata farmer once proposed to prosecute me when I was fishing in atrout-brook on his farm, and asked my name for that purpose.) Hesaid he should smile to see me prosecute him.

"You can't do it: there ain't no notice up about trespassing."

This view of the common law impressed me; and I said,

"But these are private grounds."

"Private h—-!" was all his response.

You can't argue much with a man who has a gun in his hands, when youhave none. Besides, it might be a needle-gun, for aught I knew. Igave it up, and we separated.

There is this disadvantage about having a game preserve attached toyour garden: it makes life too lively.

FOURTEENTH WEEK

In these golden latter August days, Nature has come to a sereneequilibrium. Having flowered and fruited, she is enjoying herself.I can see how things are going: it is a down-hill business afterthis; but, for the time being, it is like swinging in a hammock,—such a delicious air, such a graceful repose! I take off my hat asI stroll into the garden and look about; and it does seem as ifNature had sounded a truce. I did n't ask for it. I went out with ahoe; but the serene sweetness disarms me. Thrice is he armed who hasa long-handled hoe, with a double blade. Yet to-day I am almostashamed to appear in such a belligerent fashion, with this terriblemitrailleuse of gardening.

The tomatoes are getting tired of ripening, and are beginning to gointo a worthless condition,—green. The cucumbers cumber theground,—great yellow, over-ripe objects, no more to be compared tothe crisp beauty of their youth than is the fat swine of the sty tothe clean little pig. The nutmeg-melons, having covered themselveswith delicate lace-work, are now ready to leave the vine. I knowthey are ripe if they come easily off the stem.

Moral Observations.—You can tell when people are ripe by theirwillingness to let go. Richness and ripeness are not exactly thesame. The rich are apt to hang to the stem with tenacity. I havenothing against the rich. If I were not virtuous, I should like tobe rich. But we cannot have everything, as the man said when he wasdown with small-pox and cholera, and the yellow fever came into theneighborhood.

Now, the grapes, soaked in this liquid gold, called air, begin toturn, mindful of the injunction, "to turn or burn." The clustersunder the leaves are getting quite purple, but look better than theytaste. I think there is no danger but they will be gathered as soonas they are ripe. One of the blessings of having an open garden is,that I do not have to watch my fruit: a dozen youngsters do that, andlet it waste no time after it matures. I wish it were possible togrow a variety of grape like the explosive bullets, that shouldexplode in the stomach: the vine would make such a nice border forthe garden,—a masked battery of grape. The pears, too, are gettingrusset and heavy; and here and there amid the shining leaves onegleams as ruddy as the cheek of the Nutbrown Maid. The FlemishBeauties come off readily from the stem, if I take them in my hand:they say all kinds of beauty come off by handling.

The garden is peace as much as if it were an empire. Even the man'scow lies down under the tree where the man has tied her, with such anair of contentment, that I have small desire to disturb her. She ischewing my cud as if it were hers. Well, eat on and chew on,melancholy brute. I have not the heart to tell the man to take youaway: and it would do no good if I had; he wouldn't do it. The manhas not a taking way. Munch on, ruminant creature.

The frost will soon come; the grass will be brown. I will becharitable while this blessed lull continues: for our benevolencesmust soon be turned to other and more distant objects,—theamelioration of the condition of the Jews, the education oftheological young men in the West, and the like.

I do not know that these appearances are deceitful; but Isufficiently know that this is a wicked world, to be glad that I havetaken it on shares. In fact, I could not pick the pears alone, notto speak of eating them. When I climb the trees, and throw down thedusky fruit, Polly catches it in her apron; nearly always, however,letting go when it drops, the fall is so sudden. The sun gets in herface; and, every time a pear comes down it is a surprise, like havinga tooth out, she says.

"If I could n't hold an apron better than that!"

But the sentence is not finished: it is useless to finish that sortof a sentence in this delicious weather. Besides, conversation isdangerous. As, for instance, towards evening I am preparing a bedfor a sowing of turnips,—not that I like turnips in the least; butthis is the season to sow them. Polly comes out, and extemporizesher usual seat to "consult me" about matters while I work. I wellknow that something is coming.

"This is a rotation of crops, is n't it?"

"Yes: I have rotated the gone-to-seed lettuce off, and expect torotate the turnips in; it is a political fashion."

"Is n't it a shame that the tomatoes are all getting ripe at once?What a lot of squashes! I wish we had an oyster-bed. Do you want meto help you any more than I am helping?"

"No, I thank you." (I wonder what all this is about?)

"Don't you think we could sell some strawberries next year?"

"By all means, sell anything. We shall no doubt get rich out of thisacre."

"Don't be foolish."

And now!

"Don't you think it would be nice to have a?"….

And Polly unfolds a small scheme of benevolence, which is not quiteenough to break me, and is really to be executed in an economicalmanner. "Would n't that be nice?"

"Oh, yes! And where is the money to come from?"

"I thought we had agreed to sell the strawberries."

"Certainly. But I think we would make more money if we sold theplants now."

"Well," said Polly, concluding the whole matter, "I am going to doit." And, having thus "consulted" me, Polly goes away; and I put inthe turnip-seeds quite thick, determined to raise enough to sell.But not even this mercenary thought can ruffle my mind as I rake offthe loamy bed. I notice, however, that the spring smell has gone outof the dirt. That went into the first crop.

In this peaceful unison with yielding nature, I was a little takenaback to find that a new enemy had turned up. The celery had justrubbed through the fiery scorching of the drought, and stood afaint chance to grow; when I noticed on the green leaves a biggreen-and-black worm, called, I believe, the celery-worm: but I don'tknow who called him; I am sure I did not. It was almost ludicrous thathe should turn up here, just at the end of the season, when I supposedthat my war with the living animals was over. Yet he was, no doubt,predestinated; for he went to work as cheerfully as if he had arrivedin June, when everything was fresh and vigorous. It beats me—Naturedoes. I doubt not, that, if I were to leave my garden now for a week,it would n't know me on my return. The patch I scratched over for theturnips, and left as clean as earth, is already full of ambitious"pusley," which grows with all the confidence of youth and the skill ofold age. It beats the serpent as an emblem of immortality. While allthe others of us in the garden rest and sit in comfort a moment, uponthe summit of the summer, it is as rampant and vicious as ever. Itaccepts no armistice.

FIFTEENTH WEEK

It is said that absence conquers all things, love included; but ithas a contrary effect on a garden. I was absent for two or threeweeks. I left my garden a paradise, as paradises go in thisprotoplastic world; and when I returned, the trail of the serpent wasover it all, so to speak. (This is in addition to the actual snakesin it, which are large enough to strangle children of average size.)I asked Polly if she had seen to the garden while I was away, and shesaid she had. I found that all the melons had been seen to, and theearly grapes and pears. The green worm had also seen to about halfthe celery; and a large flock of apparently perfectly domesticatedchickens were roaming over the ground, gossiping in the hot Septembersun, and picking up any odd trifle that might be left. On the whole,the garden could not have been better seen to; though it would take asharp eye to see the potato-vines amid the rampant grass and weeds.

The new strawberry-plants, for one thing, had taken advantage of myabsence. Every one of them had sent out as many scarlet runners asan Indian tribe has. Some of them had blossomed; and a few had goneso far as to bear ripe berries,—long, pear-shaped fruit, hanginglike the ear-pendants of an East Indian bride. I could not butadmire the persistence of these zealous plants, which seemeddetermined to propagate themselves both by seeds and roots, and makesure of immortality in some way. Even the Colfax variety was asambitious as the others. After having seen the declining letter ofMr. Colfax, I did not suppose that this vine would run any more, andintended to root it out. But one can never say what thesepoliticians mean; and I shall let this variety grow until after thenext election, at least; although I hear that the fruit is small, andrather sour. If there is any variety of strawberries that reallydeclines to run, and devotes itself to a private life offruit-bearing, I should like to get it. I may mention here, since weare on politics, that the Doolittle raspberries had sprawled all overthe strawberry-bed's: so true is it that politics makes strangebedfellows.

But another enemy had come into the strawberries, which, after allthat has been said in these papers, I am almost ashamed to mention.But does the preacher in the pulpit, Sunday after Sunday, year afteryear, shrink from speaking of sin? I refer, of course, to thegreatest enemy of mankind, "p-sl-y." The ground was carpeted withit. I should think that this was the tenth crop of the season; andit was as good as the first. I see no reason why our northern soilis not as prolific as that of the tropics, and will not produce asmany crops in the year. The mistake we make is in trying to forcethings that are not natural to it. I have no doubt that, if we turnour attention to "pusley," we can beat the world.

I had no idea, until recently, how generally this simple and thriftyplant is feared and hated. Far beyond what I had regarded as thebounds of civilization, it is held as one of the mysteries of afallen world; accompanying the home missionary on his wanderings, andpreceding the footsteps of the Tract Society. I was not long ago inthe Adirondacks. We had built a camp for the night, in the heart ofthe woods, high up on John's Brook and near the foot of Mount Marcy:I can see the lovely spot now. It was on the bank of the crystal,rocky stream, at the foot of high and slender falls, which pouredinto a broad amber basin. Out of this basin we had just taken troutenough for our supper, which had been killed, and roasted over thefire on sharp sticks, and eaten before they had an opportunity tofeel the chill of this deceitful world. We were lying under the hutof spruce-bark, on fragrant hemlock-boughs, talking, after supper.In front of us was a huge fire of birchlogs; and over it we could seethe top of the falls glistening in the moonlight; and the roar of thefalls, and the brawling of the stream near us, filled all the ancientwoods. It was a scene upon which one would think no thought of sincould enter. We were talking with old Phelps, the guide. Old Phelpsis at once guide, philosopher, and friend. He knows the woods andstreams and mountains, and their savage inhabitants, as well as weknow all our rich relations and what they are doing; and in lonelybear-hunts and sable-trappings he has thought out and solved most ofthe problems of life. As he stands in his wood-gear, he is asgrizzly as an old cedar-tree; and he speaks in a high falsetto voice,which would be invaluable to a boatswain in a storm at sea.

We had been talking of all subjects about which rational men areinterested,—bears, panthers, trapping, the habits of trout, thetariff, the internal revenue (to wit the injustice of laying such atax on tobacco, and none on dogs:—"There ain't no dog in the UnitedStates," says the guide, at the top of his voice, "that earns hisliving"), the Adventists, the Gorner Grat, Horace Greeley, religion,the propagation of seeds in the wilderness (as, for instance, wherewere the seeds lying for ages that spring up into certain plants andflowers as soon as a spot is cleared anywhere in the most remoteforest; and why does a growth of oak-trees always come up after agrowth of pine has been removed?)—in short, we had pretty nearlyreached a solution of many mysteries, when Phelps suddenly exclaimedwith uncommon energy,—

"Wall, there's one thing that beats me!"

"What's that?" we asked with undisguised curiosity.

"That's 'pusley'!" he replied, in the tone of a man who has come toone door in life which is hopelessly shut, and from which he retiresin despair.

"Where it comes from I don't know, nor what to do with it. It's inmy garden; and I can't get rid of it. It beats me."

About "pusley" the guide had no theory and no hope. A feeling of awecame over me, as we lay there at midnight, hushed by the sound of thestream and the rising wind in the spruce-tops. Then man can gonowhere that "pusley" will not attend him. Though he camp on theUpper Au Sable, or penetrate the forest where rolls the Allegash, andhear no sound save his own allegations, he will not escape it. Ithas entered the happy valley of Keene, although there is yet nochurch there, and only a feeble school part of the year. Sin travelsfaster than they that ride in chariots. I take my hoe, and begin;but I feel that I am warring against something whose roots take holdon H.

By the time a man gets to be eighty, he learns that he is compassedby limitations, and that there has been a natural boundary set to hisindividual powers. As he goes on in life, he begins to doubt hisability to destroy all evil and to reform all abuses, and to suspectthat there will be much left to do after he has done. I stepped intomy garden in the spring, not doubting that I should be easily masterof the weeds. I have simply learned that an institution which is atleast six thousand years old, and I believe six millions, is not tobe put down in one season.

I have been digging my potatoes, if anybody cares to know it. Iplanted them in what are called "Early Rose,"—the rows a littleless than three feet apart; but the vines came to an early close inthe drought. Digging potatoes is a pleasant, soothing occupation,but not poetical. It is good for the mind, unless they are too small(as many of mine are), when it begets a want of gratitude to thebountiful earth. What small potatoes we all are, compared with whatwe might be! We don't plow deep enough, any of us, for one thing. Ishall put in the plow next year, and give the tubers room enough. Ithink they felt the lack of it this year: many of them seemed ashamedto come out so small. There is great pleasure in turning out thebrown-jacketed fellows into the sunshine of a royal September day,and seeing them glisten as they lie thickly strewn on the warm soil.Life has few such moments. But then they must be picked up. Thepicking-up, in this world, is always the unpleasant part of it.

SIXTEENTH WEEK

I do not hold myself bound to answer the question, Does gardeningpay? It is so difficult to define what is meant by paying. There isa popular notion that, unless a thing pays, you had better let italone; and I may say that there is a public opinion that will not leta man or woman continue in the indulgence of a fancy that does notpay. And public opinion is stronger than the legislature, and nearlyas strong as the ten commandments: I therefore yield to popularclamor when I discuss the profit of my garden.

As I look at it, you might as well ask, Does a sunset pay? I knowthat a sunset is commonly looked on as a cheap entertainment; but itis really one of the most expensive. It is true that we can all havefront seats, and we do not exactly need to dress for it as we do forthe opera; but the conditions under which it is to be enjoyed arerather dear. Among them I should name a good suit of clothes,including some trifling ornament,—not including back hair for onesex, or the parting of it in the middle for the other. I should addalso a good dinner, well cooked and digestible; and the cost of afair education, extended, perhaps, through generations in whichsensibility and love of beauty grew. What I mean is, that if a manis hungry and naked, and half a savage, or with the love of beautyundeveloped in him, a sunset is thrown away on him: so that itappears that the conditions of the enjoyment of a sunset are ascostly as anything in our civilization.

Of course there is no such thing as absolute value in this world.You can only estimate what a thing is worth to you. Does gardeningin a city pay? You might as well ask if it pays to keep hens, or atrotting-horse, or to wear a gold ring, or to keep your lawn cut, oryour hair cut. It is as you like it. In a certain sense, it is asort of profanation to consider if my garden pays, or to set amoney-value upon my delight in it. I fear that you could not put it inmoney. Job had the right idea in his mind when he asked, "Is there anytaste in the white of an egg?" Suppose there is not! What! shall Iset a price upon the tender asparagus or the crisp lettuce, which madethe sweet spring a reality? Shall I turn into merchandise the redstrawberry, the pale green pea, the high-flavored raspberry, thesanguinary beet, that love-plant the tomato, and the corn which did notwaste its sweetness on the desert air, but, after flowing in a sweetrill through all our summer life, mingled at last with the engagingbean in a pool of succotash? Shall I compute in figures what dailyfreshness and health and delight the garden yields, let alone the largecrop of anticipation I gathered as soon as the first seeds got aboveground? I appeal to any gardening man of sound mind, if that whichpays him best in gardening is not that which he cannot show in histrial-balance. Yet I yield to public opinion, when I proceed to makesuch a balance; and I do it with the utmost confidence in figures.

I select as a representative vegetable, in order to estimate the costof gardening, the potato. In my statement, I shall not include theinterest on the value of the land. I throw in the land, because itwould otherwise have stood idle: the thing generally raised on cityland is taxes. I therefore make the following statement of the costand income of my potato-crop, a part of it estimated in connectionwith other garden labor. I have tried to make it so as to satisfythe income-tax collector:—

Plowing…………………………………$0.50
Seed……………………………………$1.50
Manure…………………………………. 8.00
Assistance in planting and digging, 3 days…. 6.75
Labor of self in planting, hoeing, digging,
picking up, 5 days at 17 cents……….. 0.85
_____
Total Cost…………….$17.60

Two thousand five hundred mealy potatoes, at 2 cents…………………………$50.00Small potatoes given to neighbor's pig……. .50

Total return…………..$50.50

Balance, profit in cellar……$32.90

Some of these items need explanation. I have charged nothing for myown time waiting for the potatoes to grow. My time in hoeing,fighting weeds, etc., is put in at five days: it may have been alittle more. Nor have I put in anything for cooling drinks whilehoeing. I leave this out from principle, because I always recommendwater to others. I had some difficulty in fixing the rate of my ownwages. It was the first time I had an opportunity of paying what Ithought labor was worth; and I determined to make a good thing of itfor once. I figured it right down to European prices,—seventeencents a day for unskilled labor. Of course, I boarded myself. Iought to say that I fixed the wages after the work was done, or Imight have been tempted to do as some masons did who worked for me atfour dollars a day. They lay in the shade and slept the sleep ofhonest toil full half the time, at least all the time I was away. Ihave reason to believe that when the wages of mechanics are raised toeight and ten dollars a day, the workmen will not come at all: theywill merely send their cards.

I do not see any possible fault in the above figures. I ought to saythat I deferred putting a value on the potatoes until I had footed upthe debit column. This is always the safest way to do. I hadtwenty-five bushels. I roughly estimated that there are one hundredgood ones to the bushel. Making my own market price, I asked twocents apiece for them. This I should have considered dirt cheap lastJune, when I was going down the rows with the hoe. If any one thinksthat two cents each is high, let him try to raise them.

Nature is "awful smart." I intend to be complimentary in saying so.She shows it in little things. I have mentioned my attempt to put ina few modest turnips, near the close of the season. I sowed theseeds, by the way, in the most liberal manner. Into three or fourshort rows I presume I put enough to sow an acre; and they all cameup,—came up as thick as grass, as crowded and useless as babies in aChinese village. Of course, they had to be thinned out; that is,pretty much all pulled up; and it took me a long time; for it takes aconscientious man some time to decide which are the best andhealthiest plants to spare. After all, I spared too many. That isthe great danger everywhere in this world (it may not be in thenext): things are too thick; we lose all in grasping for too much.The Scotch say, that no man ought to thin out his own turnips,because he will not sacrifice enough to leave room for the remainderto grow: he should get his neighbor, who does not care for theplants, to do it. But this is mere talk, and aside from the point:if there is anything I desire to avoid in these agricultural papers,it is digression. I did think that putting in these turnips so latein the season, when general activity has ceased, and in a remote partof the garden, they would pass unnoticed. But Nature never evenwinks, as I can see. The tender blades were scarcely out of theground when she sent a small black fly, which seemed to have beenborn and held in reserve for this purpose,—to cut the leaves. Theyspeedily made lace-work of the whole bed. Thus everything appears tohave its special enemy,—except, perhaps, p——y: nothing evertroubles that.

Did the Concord Grape ever come to more luscious perfection than thisyear? or yield so abundantly? The golden sunshine has passed intothem, and distended their purple skins almost to bursting. Suchheavy clusters! such bloom! such sweetness! such meat and drink intheir round globes! What a fine fellow Bacchus would have been, ifhe had only signed the pledge when he was a young man! I have takenoff clusters that were as compact and almost as large as the BlackHamburgs. It is slow work picking them. I do not see how thegatherers for the vintage ever get off enough. It takes so long todisentangle the bunches from the leaves and the interlacing vines andthe supporting tendrils; and then I like to hold up each bunch andlook at it in the sunlight, and get the fragrance and the bloom ofit, and show it to Polly, who is making herself useful, as taster andcompanion, at the foot of the ladder, before dropping it into thebasket. But we have other company. The robin, the most knowing andgreedy bird out of paradise (I trust he will always be kept out), hasdiscovered that the grape-crop is uncommonly good, and has come back,with his whole tribe and family, larger than it was in pea-time. Heknows the ripest bunches as well as anybody, and tries them all. Ifhe would take a whole bunch here and there, say half the number, andbe off with it, I should not so much care. But he will not. Hepecks away at all the bunches, and spoils as many as he can. It istime he went south.

There is no prettier sight, to my eye, than a gardener on a ladder inhis grape-arbor, in these golden days, selecting the heaviestclusters of grapes, and handing them down to one and another of agroup of neighbors and friends, who stand under the shade of theleaves, flecked with the sunlight, and cry, "How sweet!" "What niceones!" and the like,—remarks encouraging to the man on the ladder.It is great pleasure to see people eat grapes.

Moral Truth.—I have no doubt that grapes taste best in otherpeople's mouths. It is an old notion that it is easier to begenerous than to be stingy. I am convinced that the majority ofpeople would be generous from selfish motives, if they had theopportunity.

Philosophical Observation.—Nothing shows one who his friends arelike prosperity and ripe fruit. I had a good friend in the country,whom I almost never visited except in cherry-time. By your fruitsyou shall know them.

I like to go into the garden these warm latter days, and muse. Tomuse is to sit in the sun, and not think of anything. I am not surebut goodness comes out of people who bask in the sun, as it does outof a sweet apple roasted before the fire. The late September andOctober sun of this latitude is something like the sun of extremeLower Italy: you can stand a good deal of it, and apparently soak awinter supply into the system. If one only could take in his winterfuel in this way! The next great discovery will, very likely, be theconservation of sunlight. In the correlation of forces, I look tosee the day when the superfluous sunshine will be utilized; as, forinstance, that which has burned up my celery this year will beconverted into a force to work the garden.

This sitting in the sun amid the evidences of a ripe year is theeasiest part of gardening I have experienced. But what a combat hasgone on here! What vegetable passions have run the whole gamut ofambition, selfishness, greed of place, fruition, satiety, and nowrest here in the truce of exhaustion! What a battle-field, if onemay look upon it so! The corn has lost its ammunition, and stackedarms in a slovenly, militia sort of style. The ground vines aretorn, trampled, and withered; and the ungathered cucumbers, worthlessmelons, and golden squashes lie about like the spent bombs andexploded shells of a battle-field. So the cannon-balls lay on thesandy plain before Fort Fisher after the capture. So the greatgrassy meadow at Munich, any morning during the October Fest, isstrewn with empty beermugs. History constantly repeats itself.There is a large crop of moral reflections in my garden, whichanybody is at liberty to gather who passes this way.

I have tried to get in anything that offered temptation to sin.There would be no thieves if there was nothing to steal; and Isuppose, in the thieves' catechism, the provider is as bad as thethief; and, probably, I am to blame for leaving out a few winterpears, which some predatory boy carried off on Sunday. At first Iwas angry, and said I should like to have caught the urchin in theact; but, on second thought, I was glad I did not. The interviewcould not have been pleasant: I shouldn't have known what to do withhim. The chances are, that he would have escaped away with hispockets full, and jibed at me from a safe distance. And, if I hadgot my hands on him, I should have been still more embarrassed. If Ihad flogged him, he would have got over it a good deal sooner than Ishould. That sort of boy does not mind castigation any more than hedoes tearing his trousers in the briers. If I had treated him withkindness, and conciliated him with grapes, showing him the enormityof his offense, I suppose he would have come the next night, andtaken the remainder of the grapes. The truth is, that the publicmorality is lax on the subject of fruit. If anybody puts arsenic orgunpowder into his watermelons, he is universally denounced as astingy old murderer by the community. A great many people regardgrowing fruit as lawful prey, who would not think of breaking intoyour cellar to take it. I found a man once in my raspberry-bushes,early in the season, when we were waiting for a dishful to ripen.Upon inquiring what he was about, he said he was only eating some;and the operation seemed to be so natural and simple, that I dislikedto disturb him. And I am not very sure that one has a right to thewhole of an abundant crop of fruit until he has gathered it. Atleast, in a city garden, one might as well conform his theory to thepractice of the community.

As for children (and it sometimes looks as if the chief products ofmy garden were small boys and hens), it is admitted that they arebarbarians. There is no exception among them to this condition ofbarbarism. This is not to say that they are not attractive; for theyhave the virtues as well as the vices of a primitive people. It isheld by some naturalists that the child is only a zoophyte, with astomach, and feelers radiating from it in search of something to fillit. It is true that a child is always hungry all over: but he isalso curious all over; and his curiosity is excited about as early ashis hunger. He immediately begins to put out his moral feelers intothe unknown and the infinite to discover what sort of an existencethis is into which he has come. His imagination is quite as hungryas his stomach. And again and again it is stronger than his otherappetites. You can easily engage his imagination in a story whichwill make him forget his dinner. He is credulous and superstitious,and open to all wonder. In this, he is exactly like the savageraces. Both gorge themselves on the marvelous; and all the unknownis marvelous to them. I know the general impression is that childrenmust be governed through their stomachs. I think they can becontrolled quite as well through their curiosity; that being the morecraving and imperious of the two. I have seen children follow abouta person who told them stories, and interested them with his charmingtalk, as greedily as if his pockets had been full of bon-bons.

Perhaps this fact has no practical relation to gardening; but itoccurs to me that, if I should paper the outside of my high boardfence with the leaves of "The Arabian Nights," it would afford me agood deal of protection,—more, in fact, than spikes in the top,which tear trousers and encourage profanity, but do not save muchfruit. A spiked fence is a challenge to any boy of spirit. But ifthe fence were papered with fairy-tales, would he not stop to readthem until it was too late for him to climb into the garden? I don'tknow. Human nature is vicious. The boy might regard the picture ofthe garden of the Hesperides only as an advertisem*nt of what wasover the fence. I begin to find that the problem of raising fruit isnothing to that of getting it after it has matured. So long as thelaw, just in many respects, is in force against shooting birds andsmall boys, the gardener may sow in tears and reap in vain.

The power of a boy is, to me, something fearful. Consider what hecan do. You buy and set out a choice pear-tree; you enrich the earthfor it; you train and trim it, and vanquish the borer, and watch itsslow growth. At length it rewards your care by producing two orthree pears, which you cut up and divide in the family, declaring theflavor of the bit you eat to be something extraordinary. The nextyear, the little tree blossoms full, and sets well; and in the autumnhas on its slender, drooping limbs half a bushel of fruit, dailygrowing more delicious in the sun. You show it to your friends,reading to them the French name, which you can never remember, on thelabel; and you take an honest pride in the successful fruit of longcare. That night your pears shall be required of you by a boy!Along comes an irresponsible urchin, who has not been growing muchlonger than the tree, with not twenty-five cents worth of clothing onhim, and in five minutes takes off every pear, and retires into safeobscurity. In five minutes the remorseless boy has undone your workof years, and with the easy nonchalance, I doubt not, of any agent offate, in whose path nothing is sacred or safe.

And it is not of much consequence. The boy goes on his way,—toCongress, or to State Prison: in either place he will be accused ofstealing, perhaps wrongfully. You learn, in time, that it is betterto have had pears and lost them than not to have had pears at all.You come to know that the least (and rarest) part of the pleasure ofraising fruit is the vulgar eating it. You recall your delight inconversing with the nurseryman, and looking at his illustratedcatalogues, where all the pears are drawn perfect in form, and ofextra size, and at that exact moment between ripeness and decay whichit is so impossible to hit in practice. Fruit cannot be raised onthis earth to taste as you imagine those pears would taste. Foryears you have this pleasure, unalloyed by any disenchanting reality.How you watch the tender twigs in spring, and the freshly formingbark, hovering about the healthy growing tree with your pruning-knifemany a sunny morning! That is happiness. Then, if you know it, youare drinking the very wine of life; and when the sweet juices of theearth mount the limbs, and flow down the tender stem, ripening andreddening the pendent fruit, you feel that you somehow stand at thesource of things, and have no unimportant share in the processes ofNature. Enter at this moment boy the destroyer, whose office is thatof preserver as well; for, though he removes the fruit from yoursight, it remains in your memory immortally ripe and desirable. Thegardener needs all these consolations of a high philosophy.

EIGHTEENTH WEEK

Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything mighthave turned out so differently! If Ravaillac had not been imprisonedfor debt, he would not have stabbed Henry of Navarre. If William ofOrange had escaped assassination by Philip's emissaries; if Francehad followed the French Calvin, and embraced Protestant Calvinism, asit came very near doing towards the end of the sixteenth century; ifthe Continental ammunition had not given out at Bunker's Hill; ifBlucher had not "come up" at Waterloo,—the lesson is, that things donot come up unless they are planted. When you go behind thehistorical scenery, you find there is a rope and pulley to effectevery transformation which has astonished you. It was the rascalityof a minister and a contractor five years before that lost thebattle; and the cause of the defeat was worthless ammunition. Ishould like to know how many wars have been caused by fits ofindigestion, and how many more dynasties have been upset by the loveof woman than by the hate of man. It is only because we are illinformed that anything surprises us; and we are disappointed becausewe expect that for which we have not provided.

I had too vague expectations of what my garden would do of itself. Agarden ought to produce one everything,—just as a business ought tosupport a man, and a house ought to keep itself. We had a conventionlately to resolve that the house should keep itself; but it won't.There has been a lively time in our garden this summer; but it seemsto me there is very little to show for it. It has been a terriblecampaign; but where is the indemnity? Where are all "sass" andLorraine? It is true that we have lived on the country; but wedesire, besides, the fruits of the war. There are no onions, for onething. I am quite ashamed to take people into my garden, and havethem notice the absence of onions. It is very marked. In onion isstrength; and a garden without it lacks flavor. The onion in itssatin wrappings is among the most beautiful of vegetables; and it isthe only one that represents the essence of things. It can almost besaid to have a soul. You take off coat after coat, and the onion isstill there; and, when the last one is removed, who dare say that theonion itself is destroyed, though you can weep over its departedspirit? If there is any one thing on this fallen earth that theangels in heaven weep over—more than another, it is the onion.

I know that there is supposed to be a prejudice against the onion;but I think there is rather a cowardice in regard to it. I doubt notthat all men and women love the onion; but few confess their love.Affection for it is concealed. Good New-Englanders are as shy ofowning it as they are of talking about religion. Some people havedays on which they eat onions,—what you might call "retreats," ortheir "Thursdays." The act is in the nature of a religious ceremony,an Eleusinian mystery; not a breath of it must get abroad. On thatday they see no company; they deny the kiss of greeting to thedearest friend; they retire within themselves, and hold communionwith one of the most pungent and penetrating manifestations of themoral vegetable world. Happy is said to be the family which can eatonions together. They are, for the time being, separate from theworld, and have a harmony of aspiration. There is a hint here forthe reformers. Let them become apostles of the onion; let them eat,and preach it to their fellows, and circulate tracts of it in theform of seeds. In the onion is the hope of universal brotherhood.If all men will eat onions at all times, they will come into auniversal sympathy. Look at Italy. I hope I am not mistaken as tothe cause of her unity. It was the Reds who preached the gospelwhich made it possible. All the Reds of Europe, all the sworndevotees of the mystic Mary Ann, eat of the common vegetable. Theiroaths are strong with it. It is the food, also, of the common peopleof Italy. All the social atmosphere of that delicious land is ladenwith it. Its odor is a practical democracy. In the churches all arealike: there is one faith, one smell. The entrance of Victor Emanuelinto Rome is only the pompous proclamation of a unity which garlichad already accomplished; and yet we, who boast of our democracy, eatonions in secret.

I now see that I have left out many of the most moral elements.Neither onions, parsnips, carrots, nor cabbages are here. I havenever seen a garden in the autumn before, without the uncouth cabbagein it; but my garden gives the impression of a garden without a head.The cabbage is the rose of Holland. I admire the force by which itcompacts its crisp leaves into a solid head. The secret of it wouldbe priceless to the world. We should see less expansive foreheadswith nothing within. Even the largest cabbages are not always thebest. But I mention these things, not from any sympathy I have withthe vegetables named, but to show how hard it is to go contrary tothe expectations of society. Society expects every man to havecertain things in his garden. Not to raise cabbage is as if one hadno pew in church. Perhaps we shall come some day to free churchesand free gardens; when I can show my neighbor through my tiredgarden, at the end of the season, when skies are overcast, and brownleaves are swirling down, and not mind if he does raise his eyebrowswhen he observes, "Ah! I see you have none of this, and of that." Atpresent we want the moral courage to plant only what we need; tospend only what will bring us peace, regardless of what is going onover the fence. We are half ruined by conformity; but we should bewholly ruined without it; and I presume I shall make a garden nextyear that will be as popular as possible.

And this brings me to what I see may be a crisis in life. I begin tofeel the temptation of experiment. Agriculture, horticulture,floriculture,—these are vast fields, into which one may wander away,and never be seen more. It seemed to me a very simple thing, thisgardening; but it opens up astonishingly. It is like the infinitepossibilities in worsted-work. Polly sometimes says to me, "I wishyou would call at Bobbin's, and match that skein of worsted for me,when you are in town." Time was, I used to accept such a commissionwith alacrity and self-confidence. I went to Bobbin's, and asked oneof his young men, with easy indifference, to give me some of that.The young man, who is as handsome a young man as ever I looked at,and who appears to own the shop, and whose suave superciliousnesswould be worth everything to a cabinet minister who wanted to repelapplicants for place, says, "I have n't an ounce: I have sent toParis, and I expect it every day. I have a good deal of difficultyin getting that shade in my assortment." To think that he is incommunication with Paris, and perhaps with Persia! Respect for sucha being gives place to awe. I go to another shop, holding fast to myscarlet clew. There I am shown a heap of stuff, with more colors andshades than I had supposed existed in all the world. What a blaze ofdistraction! I have been told to get as near the shade as I could;and so I compare and contrast, till the whole thing seems to me aboutof one color. But I can settle my mind on nothing. The affairassumes a high degree of importance. I am satisfied with nothing butperfection. I don't know what may happen if the shade is notmatched. I go to another shop, and another, and another. At last apretty girl, who could make any customer believe that green is blue,matches the shade in a minute. I buy five cents worth. That was theorder. Women are the most economical persons that ever were. I havespent two hours in this five-cent business; but who shall say theywere wasted, when I take the stuff home, and Polly says it is aperfect match, and looks so pleased, and holds it up with the work,at arm's length, and turns her head one side, and then takes herneedle, and works it in? Working in, I can see, my own obligingnessand amiability with every stitch. Five cents is dirt cheap for sucha pleasure.

The things I may do in my garden multiply on my vision. Howfascinating have the catalogues of the nurserymen become! Can Iraise all those beautiful varieties, each one of which is preferableto the other? Shall I try all the kinds of grapes, and all the sortsof pears? I have already fifteen varieties of strawberries (vines);and I have no idea that I have hit the right one. Must I subscribeto all the magazines and weekly papers which offer premiums of thebest vines? Oh, that all the strawberries were rolled into one, thatI could inclose all its lusciousness in one bite! Oh for the goodold days when a strawberry was a strawberry, and there was noperplexity about it! There are more berries now than churches; andno one knows what to believe. I have seen gardens which were allexperiment, given over to every new thing, and which produced littleor nothing to the owners, except the pleasure of expectation. Peoplegrow pear-trees at great expense of time and money, which never yieldthem more than four pears to the tree. The fashions of ladies'bonnets are nothing to the fashions of nurserymen. He who attemptsto follow them has a business for life; but his life may be short.If I enter upon this wide field of horticultural experiment, I shallleave peace behind; and I may expect the ground to open, and swallowme and all my fortune. May Heaven keep me to the old roots and herbsof my forefathers! Perhaps in the world of modern reforms this isnot possible; but I intend now to cultivate only the standard things,and learn to talk knowingly of the rest. Of course, one must keep upa reputation. I have seen people greatly enjoy themselves, andelevate themselves in their own esteem, in a wise and critical talkabout all the choice wines, while they were sipping a decoction, theoriginal cost of which bore no relation to the price of grapes.

NINETEENTH WEEK

The closing scenes are not necessarily funereal. A garden should begot ready for winter as well as for summer. When one goes intowinter-quarters, he wants everything neat and trim. Expecting highwinds, we bring everything into close reef. Some men there are whonever shave (if they are so absurd as ever to shave), except whenthey go abroad, and who do not take care to wear polished boots inthe bosoms of their families. I like a man who shaves (next to onewho does n't shave) to satisfy his own conscience, and not fordisplay, and who dresses as neatly at home as he does anywhere. Sucha man will be likely to put his garden in complete order before thesnow comes, so that its last days shall not present a scene ofmelancholy ruin and decay.

I confess that, after such an exhausting campaign, I felt a greattemptation to retire, and call it a drawn engagement. But bettercounsels prevailed. I determined that the weeds should not sleep onthe field of battle. I routed them out, and leveled their works. Iam master of the situation. If I have made a desert, I at least havepeace; but it is not quite a desert. The strawberries, theraspberries, the celery, the turnips, wave green above the cleanearth, with no enemy in sight. In these golden October days no workis more fascinating than this getting ready for spring. The sun isno longer a burning enemy, but a friend, illuminating all the openspace, and warming the mellow soil. And the pruning and clearingaway of rubbish, and the fertilizing, go on with something of thehilarity of a wake, rather than the despondency of other funerals.When the wind begins to come out of the northwest of set purpose, andto sweep the ground with low and searching fierceness, very differentfrom the roistering, jolly bluster of early fall, I have put thestrawberries under their coverlet of leaves, pruned the grape-vinesand laid them under the soil, tied up the tender plants, given thefruit trees a good, solid meal about the roots; and so I turn away,writing Resurgam on the gatepost. And Calvin, aware that the summeris past and the harvest is ended, and that a mouse in the kitchen isworth two birds gone south, scampers away to the house with his tailin the air.

And yet I am not perfectly at rest in my mind. I know that this isonly a truce until the parties recover their exhausted energies. Allwinter long the forces of chemistry will be mustering under ground,repairing the losses, calling up the reserves, getting new strengthfrom my surface-fertilizing bounty, and making ready for the springcampaign. They will open it before I am ready: while the snow isscarcely melted, and the ground is not passable, they will begin tomove on my works; and the fight will commence. Yet how deceitfullyit will open to the music of birds and the soft enchantment of thespring mornings! I shall even be permitted to win a few skirmishes:the secret forces will even wait for me to plant and sow, and show myfull hand, before they come on in heavy and determined assault.There are already signs of an internecine fight with the devil-grass,which has intrenched itself in a considerable portion of mygarden-patch. It contests the ground inch by inch; and digging itout is very much such labor as eating a piece of choke-cherry piewith the stones all in. It is work, too, that I know by experience Ishall have to do alone. Every man must eradicate his owndevil-grass. The neighbors who have leisure to help you ingrape-picking time are all busy when devil-grass is most aggressive.My neighbors' visits are well timed: it is only their hens which haveseasons for their own.

I am told that abundant and rank weeds are signs of a rich soil; butI have noticed that a thin, poor soil grows little but weeds. I aminclined to think that the substratum is the same, and that the onlychoice in this world is what kind of weeds you will have. I am notmuch attracted by the gaunt, flavorless mullein, and the wiry thistleof upland country pastures, where the grass is always gray, as if theworld were already weary and sick of life. The awkward, uncouthwickedness of remote country-places, where culture has died out afterthe first crop, is about as disagreeable as the ranker and richervice of city life, forced by artificial heat and the juices of anoverfed civilization. There is no doubt that, on the whole, the richsoil is the best: the fruit of it has body and flavor. To whataffluence does a woman (to take an instance, thank Heaven, which iscommon) grow, with favoring circ*mstances, under the stimulus of therichest social and intellectual influences! I am aware that therehas been a good deal said in poetry about the fringed gentian and theharebell of rocky districts and waysides, and I know that it ispossible for maidens to bloom in very slight soil into a wild-woodgrace and beauty; yet, the world through, they lack that wealth ofcharms, that tropic affluence of both person and mind, which higherand more stimulating culture brings,—the passion as well as the soulglowing in the Cloth-of-Gold rose. Neither persons nor plants areever fully themselves until they are cultivated to their highest. I,for one, have no fear that society will be too much enriched. Theonly question is about keeping down the weeds; and I have learned byexperience, that we need new sorts of hoes, and more disposition touse them.

Moral Deduction.—The difference between soil and society isevident. We bury decay in the earth; we plant in it the perishing;we feed it with offensive refuse: but nothing grows out of it that isnot clean; it gives us back life and beauty for our rubbish. Societyreturns us what we give it.

Pretending to reflect upon these things, but in reality watching theblue-jays, who are pecking at the purple berries of the woodbine onthe south gable, I approach the house. Polly is picking up chestnutson the sward, regardless of the high wind which rattles them abouther head and upon the glass roof of her winter-garden. The garden, Isee, is filled with thrifty plants, which will make it always summerthere. The callas about the fountain will be in flower by Christmas:the plant appears to keep that holiday in her secret heart allsummer. I close the outer windows as we go along, and congratulatemyself that we are ready for winter. For the winter-garden I have noresponsibility: Polly has entire charge of it. I am only required tokeep it heated, and not too hot either; to smoke it often for thedeath of the bugs; to water it once a day; to move this and that intothe sun and out of the sun pretty constantly: but she does all thework. We never relinquish that theory.

As we pass around the house, I discover a boy in the ravine filling abag with chestnuts and hickorynuts. They are not plenty this year;and I suggest the propriety of leaving some for us. The boy is alittle slow to take the idea: but he has apparently found the pickingpoor, and exhausted it; for, as he turns away down the glen, he hailsme with,

"Mister, I say, can you tell me where I can find some walnuts?"

The coolness of this world grows upon me. It is time to go in andlight a wood-fire on the hearth.

NOTE.—The following brief Memoir of one of the characters inthis book is added by his friend, in the hope that the recordof an exemplary fife in an humble sphere may be of some serviceto the world.

HARTFORD, January, 1880.

CALVIN

A STUDY OF CHARACTER

Calvin is dead. His life, long to him, but short for the rest of us,was not marked by startling adventures, but his character was souncommon and his qualities were so worthy of imitation, that I havebeen asked by those who personally knew him to set down myrecollections of his career.

His origin and ancestry were shrouded in mystery; even his age was amatter of pure conjecture. Although he was of the Maltese race, Ihave reason to suppose that he was American by birth as he certainlywas in sympathy. Calvin was given to me eight years ago by Mrs.Stowe, but she knew nothing of his age or origin. He walked into herhouse one day out of the great unknown and became at once at home, asif he had been always a friend of the family. He appeared to haveartistic and literary tastes, and it was as if he had inquired at thedoor if that was the residence of the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"and, upon being assured that it was, bad decided to dwell there.This is, of course, fanciful, for his antecedents were whollyunknown, but in his time he could hardly have been in any householdwhere he would not have heard "Uncle Tom's Cabin" talked about. Whenhe came to Mrs. Stowe, he was as large as he ever was, andapparently as old as he ever became. Yet there was in him noappearance of age; he was in the happy maturity of all his powers,and you would rather have said that in that maturity he had found thesecret of perpetual youth. And it was as difficult to believe thathe would ever be aged as it was to imagine that he had ever been inimmature youth. There was in him a mysterious perpetuity.

After some years, when Mrs. Stowe made her winter home in Florida,Calvin came to live with us. From the first moment, he fell into theways of the house and assumed a recognized position in the family,—Isay recognized, because after he became known he was always inquiredfor by visitors, and in the letters to the other members of thefamily he always received a message. Although the least obtrusive ofbeings, his individuality always made itself felt.

His personal appearance had much to do with this, for he was of royalmould, and had an air of high breeding. He was large, but he hadnothing of the fat grossness of the celebrated Angora family; thoughpowerful, he was exquisitely proportioned, and as graceful in everymovement as a young leopard. When he stood up to open a door—heopened all the doors with old-fashioned latches—he was portentouslytall, and when stretched on the rug before the fire he seemed toolong for this world—as indeed he was. His coat was the finest andsoftest I have ever seen, a shade of quiet Maltese; and from histhroat downward, underneath, to the white tips of his feet, he worethe whitest and most delicate ermine; and no person was ever morefastidiously neat. In his finely formed head you saw something ofhis aristocratic character; the ears were small and cleanly cut,there was a tinge of pink in the nostrils, his face was handsome, andthe expression of his countenance exceedingly intelligent—I shouldcall it even a sweet expression, if the term were not inconsistentwith his look of alertness and sagacity.

It is difficult to convey a just idea of his gayety in connectionwith his dignity and gravity, which his name expressed. As we knownothing of his family, of course it will be understood that Calvinwas his Christian name. He had times of relaxation into utterplayfulness, delighting in a ball of yarn, catching sportively atstray ribbons when his mistress was at her toilet, and pursuing hisown tail, with hilarity, for lack of anything better. He could amusehimself by the hour, and he did not care for children; perhapssomething in his past was present to his memory. He had absolutelyno bad habits, and his disposition was perfect. I never saw himexactly angry, though I have seen his tail grow to an enormous sizewhen a strange cat appeared upon his lawn. He disliked cats,evidently regarding them as feline and treacherous, and he had noassociation with them. Occasionally there would be heard a nightconcert in the shrubbery. Calvin would ask to have the door opened,and then you would hear a rush and a "pestzt," and the concert wouldexplode, and Calvin would quietly come in and resume his seat on thehearth. There was no trace of anger in his manner, but he would n'thave any of that about the house. He had the rare virtue ofmagnanimity. Although he had fixed notions about his own rights, andextraordinary persistency in getting them, he never showed temper ata repulse; he simply and firmly persisted till he had what he wanted.His diet was one point; his idea was that of the scholars aboutdictionaries,—to "get the best." He knew as well as any one what wasin the house, and would refuse beef if turkey was to be had; and ifthere were oysters, he would wait over the turkey to see if theoysters would not be forthcoming. And yet he was not a grossgourmand; he would eat bread if he saw me eating it, and thought hewas not being imposed on. His habits of feeding, also, were refined;he never used a knife, and he would put up his hand and draw the forkdown to his mouth as gracefully as a grown person. Unless necessitycompelled, he would not eat in the kitchen, but insisted upon hismeals in the dining-room, and would wait patiently, unless a strangerwere present; and then he was sure to importune the visitor, hopingthat the latter was ignorant of the rule of the house, and would givehim something. They used to say that he preferred as his table-clothon the floor a certain well-known church journal; but this was saidby an Episcopalian. So far as I know, he had no religiousprejudices, except that he did not like the association withRomanists. He tolerated the servants, because they belonged to thehouse, and would sometimes linger by the kitchen stove; but themoment visitors came in he arose, opened the door, and marched intothe drawing-room. Yet he enjoyed the company of his equals, andnever withdrew, no matter how many callers—whom he recognized as ofhis society—might come into the drawing-room. Calvin was fond ofcompany, but he wanted to choose it; and I have no doubt that his wasan aristocratic fastidiousness rather than one of faith. It is sowith most people.

The intelligence of Calvin was something phenomenal, in his rank oflife. He established a method of communicating his wants, and evensome of his sentiments; and he could help himself in many things.There was a furnace register in a retired room, where he used to gowhen he wished to be alone, that he always opened when he desiredmore heat; but he never shut it, any more than he shut the door afterhimself. He could do almost everything but speak; and you woulddeclare sometimes that you could see a pathetic longing to do that inhis intelligent face. I have no desire to overdraw his qualities,but if there was one thing in him more noticeable than another, itwas his fondness for nature. He could content himself for hours at alow window, looking into the ravine and at the great trees, notingthe smallest stir there; he delighted, above all things, to accompanyme walking about the garden, hearing the birds, getting the smell ofthe fresh earth, and rejoicing in the sunshine. He followed me andgamboled like a dog, rolling over on the turf and exhibiting hisdelight in a hundred ways. If I worked, he sat and watched me, orlooked off over the bank, and kept his ear open to the twitter in thecherry-trees. When it stormed, he was sure to sit at the window,keenly watching the rain or the snow, glancing up and down at itsfalling; and a winter tempest always delighted him. I think he wasgenuinely fond of birds, but, so far as I know, he usually confinedhimself to one a day; he never killed, as some sportsmen do, for thesake of killing, but only as civilized people do,—from necessity.He was intimate with the flying-squirrels who dwell in thechestnut-trees,—too intimate, for almost every day in the summer hewould bring in one, until he nearly discouraged them. He was, indeed,a superb hunter, and would have been a devastating one, if his bump ofdestructiveness had not been offset by a bump of moderation. There wasvery little of the brutality of the lower animals about him; I don'tthink he enjoyed rats for themselves, but he knew his business, and forthe first few months of his residence with us he waged an awfulcampaign against the horde, and after that his simple presence wassufficient to deter them from coming on the premises. Mice amused him,but he usually considered them too small game to be taken seriously; Ihave seen him play for an hour with a mouse, and then let him go with aroyal condescension. In this whole, matter of "getting a living,"Calvin was a great contrast to the rapacity of the age in which helived.

I hesitate a little to speak of his capacity for friendship and theaffectionateness of his nature, for I know from his own reserve thathe would not care to have it much talked about. We understood eachother perfectly, but we never made any fuss about it; when I spokehis name and snapped my fingers, he came to me; when I returned homeat night, he was pretty sure to be waiting for me near the gate, andwould rise and saunter along the walk, as if his being there werepurely accidental,—so shy was he commonly of showing feeling; andwhen I opened the door, he never rushed in, like a cat, but loitered,and lounged, as if he had no intention of going in, but wouldcondescend to. And yet, the fact was, he knew dinner was ready, andhe was bound to be there. He kept the run of dinner-time. Ithappened sometimes, during our absence in the summer, that dinnerwould be early, and Calvin, walking about the grounds, missed it andcame in late. But he never made a mistake the second day. There wasone thing he never did,—he never rushed through an open doorway. Henever forgot his dignity. If he had asked to have the door opened,and was eager to go out, he always went deliberately; I can see himnow standing on the sill, looking about at the sky as if he wasthinking whether it were worth while to take an umbrella, until hewas near having his tail shut in.

His friendship was rather constant than demonstrative. When wereturned from an absence of nearly two years, Calvin welcomed us withevident pleasure, but showed his satisfaction rather by tranquilhappiness than by fuming about. He had the faculty of making us gladto get home. It was his constancy that was so attractive. He likedcompanionship, but he wouldn't be petted, or fussed over, or sit inany one's lap a moment; he always extricated himself from suchfamiliarity with dignity and with no show of temper. If there wasany petting to be done, however, he chose to do it. Often he wouldsit looking at me, and then, moved by a delicate affection, come andpull at my coat and sleeve until he could touch my face with hisnose, and then go away contented. He had a habit of coming to mystudy in the morning, sitting quietly by my side or on the table forhours, watching the pen run over the paper, occasionally swinging histail round for a blotter, and then going to sleep among the papers bythe inkstand. Or, more rarely, he would watch the writing from aperch on my shoulder. Writing always interested him, and, until heunderstood it, he wanted to hold the pen.

He always held himself in a kind of reserve with his friend, as if hehad said, "Let us respect our personality, and not make a 'mess' offriendship." He saw, with Emerson, the risk of degrading it totrivial conveniency. "Why insist on rash personal relations withyour friend?" "Leave this touching and clawing." Yet I would notgive an unfair notion of his aloofness, his fine sense of thesacredness of the me and the not-me. And, at the risk of not beingbelieved, I will relate an incident, which was often repeated.Calvin had the practice of passing a portion of the night in thecontemplation of its beauties, and would come into our chamber overthe roof of the conservatory through the open window, summer andwinter, and go to sleep on the foot of my bed. He would do thisalways exactly in this way; he never was content to stay in thechamber if we compelled him to go upstairs and through the door. Hehad the obstinacy of General Grant. But this is by the way. In themorning, he performed his toilet and went down to breakfast with therest of the family. Now, when the mistress was absent from home, andat no other time, Calvin would come in the morning, when the bellrang, to the head of the bed, put up his feet and look into my face,follow me about when I rose, "assist" at the dressing, and in manypurring ways show his fondness, as if he had plainly said, "I knowthat she has gone away, but I am here." Such was Calvin in raremoments.

He had his limitations. Whatever passion he had for nature, he hadno conception of art. There was sent to him once a fine and veryexpressive cat's head in bronze, by Fremiet. I placed it on thefloor. He regarded it intently, approached it cautiously andcrouchingly, touched it with his nose, perceived the fraud, turnedaway abruptly, and never would notice it afterward. On the whole,his life was not only a successful one, but a happy one. He neverhad but one fear, so far as I know: he had a mortal and a reasonableterror of plumbers. He would never stay in the house when they werehere. No coaxing could quiet him. Of course he did n't share ourfear about their charges, but he must have had some dreadfulexperience with them in that portion of his life which is unknown tous. A plumber was to him the devil, and I have no doubt that, in hisscheme, plumbers were foreordained to do him mischief.

In speaking of his worth, it has never occurred to me to estimateCalvin by the worldly standard. I know that it is customary now,when any one dies, to ask how much he was worth, and that no obituaryin the newspapers is considered complete without such an estimate.The plumbers in our house were one day overheard to say that, "Theysay that she says that he says that he wouldn't take a hundreddollars for him." It is unnecessary to say that I never made such aremark, and that, so far as Calvin was concerned, there was nopurchase in money.

As I look back upon it, Calvin's life seems to me a fortunate one,for it was natural and unforced. He ate when he was hungry, sleptwhen he was sleepy, and enjoyed existence to the very tips of histoes and the end of his expressive and slow-moving tail. Hedelighted to roam about the garden, and stroll among the trees, andto lie on the green grass and luxuriate in all the sweet influencesof summer. You could never accuse him of idleness, and yet he knewthe secret of repose. The poet who wrote so prettily of him that hislittle life was rounded with a sleep, understated his felicity; itwas rounded with a good many. His conscience never seemed tointerfere with his slumbers. In fact, he had good habits and acontented mind. I can see him now walk in at the study door, sitdown by my chair, bring his tail artistically about his feet, andlook up at me with unspeakable happiness in his handsome face. Ioften thought that he felt the dumb limitation which denied him thepower of language. But since he was denied speech, he scorned theinarticulate mouthings of the lower animals. The vulgar mewing andyowling of the cat species was beneath him; he sometimes uttered asort of articulate and well-bred ejacul*tion, when he wished to callattention to something that he considered remarkable, or to some wantof his, but he never went whining about. He would sit for hours at aclosed window, when he desired to enter, without a murmur, and whenit was opened, he never admitted that he had been impatient by"bolting" in. Though speech he had not, and the unpleasant kind ofutterance given to his race he would not use, he had a mighty powerof purr to express his measureless content with congenial society.There was in him a musical organ with stops of varied power andexpression, upon which I have no doubt he could have performedScarlatti's celebrated cat's-fugue.

Whether Calvin died of old age, or was carried off by one of thediseases incident to youth, it is impossible to say; for hisdeparture was as quiet as his advent was mysterious. I only knowthat he appeared to us in this world in his perfect stature andbeauty, and that after a time, like Lohengrin, he withdrew. In hisillness there was nothing more to be regretted than in all hisblameless life. I suppose there never was an illness that had moreof dignity, and sweetness and resignation in it. It came ongradually, in a kind of listlessness and want of appetite. Analarming symptom was his preference for the warmth of afurnace-register to the lively sparkle of the open woodfire.Whatever pain he suffered, he bore it in silence, and seemed onlyanxious not to obtrude his malady. We tempted him with thedelicacies of the season, but it soon became impossible for him toeat, and for two weeks he ate or drank scarcely anything. Sometimeshe made an effort to take something, but it was evident that he madethe effort to please us. The neighbors—and I am convinced that theadvice of neighbors is never good for anything—suggested catnip. Hewould n't even smell it. We had the attendance of an amateurpractitioner of medicine, whose real office was the cure of souls,but nothing touched his case. He took what was offered, but it waswith the air of one to whom the time for pellets was passed. He sator lay day after day almost motionless, never once making a displayof those vulgar convulsions or contortions of pain which are sodisagreeable to society. His favorite place was on the brightestspot of a Smyrna rug by the conservatory, where the sunlight fell andhe could hear the fountain play. If we went to him and exhibited ourinterest in his condition, he always purred in recognition of oursympathy. And when I spoke his name, he looked up with an expressionthat said, "I understand it, old fellow, but it's no use." He was toall who came to visit him a model of calmness and patience inaffliction.

I was absent from home at the last, but heard by daily postal-card ofhis failing condition; and never again saw him alive. One sunnymorning, he rose from his rug, went into the conservatory (he wasvery thin then), walked around it deliberately, looking at all theplants he knew, and then went to the bay-window in the dining-room,and stood a long time looking out upon the little field, now brownand sere, and toward the garden, where perhaps the happiest hours ofhis life had been spent. It was a last look. He turned and walkedaway, laid himself down upon the bright spot in the rug, and quietlydied.

It is not too much to say that a little shock went through theneighborhood when it was known that Calvin was dead, so marked washis individuality; and his friends, one after another, came in to seehim. There was no sentimental nonsense about his obsequies; it wasfelt that any parade would have been distasteful to him. John, whoacted as undertaker, prepared a candle-box for him and I believeassumed a professional decorum; but there may have been the usuallevity underneath, for I heard that he remarked in the kitchen thatit was the "driest wake he ever attended." Everybody, however, felta fondness for Calvin, and regarded him with a certain respect.Between him and Bertha there existed a great friendship, and sheapprehended his nature; she used to say that sometimes she was afraidof him, he looked at her so intelligently; she was never certain thathe was what he appeared to be.

When I returned, they had laid Calvin on a table in an upper chamberby an open window. It was February. He reposed in a candle-box,lined about the edge with evergreen, and at his head stood a littlewine-glass with flowers. He lay with his head tucked down in hisarms,—a favorite position of his before the fire,—as if asleep inthe comfort of his soft and exquisite fur. It was the involuntaryexclamation of those who saw him, "How natural he looks!" Asfor myself, I said nothing. John buried him under the twinhawthorn-trees,—one white and the other pink,—in a spot where Calvinwas fond of lying and listening to the hum of summer insects and thetwitter of birds.

Perhaps I have failed to make appear the individuality of characterthat was so evident to those who knew him. At any rate, I have setdown nothing concerning him, but the literal truth. He was always amystery. I did not know whence he came; I do not know whither he hasgone. I would not weave one spray of falsehood in the wreath I layupon his grave.

By Charles Dudley Warner

FIRST STUDY

I

The fire on the hearth has almost gone out in New England; the hearthhas gone out; the family has lost its center; age ceases to berespected; sex is only distinguished by a difference betweenmillinery bills and tailors' bills; there is no more toast-and-cider;the young are not allowed to eat mince-pies at ten o'clock at night;half a cheese is no longer set to toast before the fire; you scarcelyever see in front of the coals a row of roasting apples, which abright little girl, with many a dive and start, shielding her sunnyface from the fire with one hand, turns from time to time; scarce arethe gray-haired sires who strop their razors on the family Bible, anddoze in the chimney-corner. A good many things have gone out withthe fire on the hearth.

I do not mean to say that public and private morality have vanishedwith the hearth. A good degree of purity and considerable happinessare possible with grates and blowers; it is a day of trial, when weare all passing through a fiery furnace, and very likely we shall bepurified as we are dried up and wasted away. Of course the family isgone, as an institution, though there still are attempts to bring upa family round a "register." But you might just as well try to bringit up by hand, as without the rallying-point of a hearthstone. Arethere any homesteads nowadays? Do people hesitate to change housesany more than they do to change their clothes? People hire houses asthey would a masquerade costume, liking, sometimes, to appear for ayear in a little fictitious stone-front splendor above their means.Thus it happens that so many people live in houses that do not fitthem. I should almost as soon think of wearing another person'sclothes as his house; unless I could let it out and take it in untilit fitted, and somehow expressed my own character and taste. But wehave fallen into the days of conformity. It is no wonder that peopleconstantly go into their neighbors' houses by mistake, just as, inspite of the Maine law, they wear away each other's hats from anevening party. It has almost come to this, that you might as well beanybody else as yourself.

Am I mistaken in supposing that this is owing to the discontinuanceof big chimneys, with wide fireplaces in them? How can a person beattached to a house that has no center of attraction, no soul in it,in the visible form of a glowing fire, and a warm chimney, like theheart in the body? When you think of the old homestead, if you everdo, your thoughts go straight to the wide chimney and its burninglogs. No wonder that you are ready to move from one fireplacelesshouse into another. But you have something just as good, you say.Yes, I have heard of it. This age, which imitates everything, evento the virtues of our ancestors, has invented a fireplace, withartificial, iron, or composition logs in it, hacked and painted, inwhich gas is burned, so that it has the appearance of a wood-fire.This seems to me blasphemy. Do you think a cat would lie down beforeit? Can you poke it? If you can't poke it, it is a fraud. To pokea wood-fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in theworld. The crowning human virtue in a man is to let his wife pokethe fire. I do not know how any virtue whatever is possible over animitation gas-log. What a sense of insincerity the family must have,if they indulge in the hypocrisy of gathering about it. With thiscenter of untruthfulness, what must the life in the family be?Perhaps the father will be living at the rate of ten thousand a yearon a salary of four thousand; perhaps the mother, more beautiful andyounger than her beautified daughters, will rouge; perhaps the youngladies will make wax-work. A cynic might suggest as the motto ofmodern life this simple legend,—"just as good as the real." But I amnot a cynic, and I hope for the rekindling of wood-fires, and areturn of the beautiful home light from them. If a wood-fire is aluxury, it is cheaper than many in which we indulge without thought,and cheaper than the visits of a doctor, made necessary by the wantof ventilation of the house. Not that I have anything againstdoctors; I only wish, after they have been to see us in a way thatseems so friendly, they had nothing against us.

My fireplace, which is deep, and nearly three feet wide, has a broadhearthstone in front of it, where the live coals tumble down, and apair of gigantic brass andirons. The brasses are burnished, andshine cheerfully in the firelight, and on either side stand tallshovel and tongs, like sentries, mounted in brass. The tongs, likethe two-handed sword of Bruce, cannot be wielded by puny people. Weburn in it hickory wood, cut long. We like the smell of thisaromatic forest timber, and its clear flame. The birch is also asweet wood for the hearth, with a sort of spiritual flame and an eventemper,—no snappishness. Some prefer the elm, which holds fire sowell; and I have a neighbor who uses nothing but apple-tree wood,—asolid, family sort of wood, fragrant also, and full of delightfulsuggestions. But few people can afford to burn up their fruit trees.I should as soon think of lighting the fire with sweet-oil that comesin those graceful wicker-bound flasks from Naples, or with manuscriptsermons, which, however, do not burn well, be they never so dry, nothalf so well as printed editorials.

Few people know how to make a wood-fire, but everybody thinks he orshe does. You want, first, a large backlog, which does not rest onthe andirons. This will keep your fire forward, radiate heat allday, and late in the evening fall into a ruin of glowing coals, likethe last days of a good man, whose life is the richest and mostbeneficent at the close, when the flames of passion and the sap ofyouth are burned out, and there only remain the solid, brightelements of character. Then you want a forestick on the andirons;and upon these build the fire of lighter stuff. In this way you haveat once a cheerful blaze, and the fire gradually eats into the solidmass, sinking down with increasing fervor; coals drop below, anddelicate tongues of flame sport along the beautiful grain of theforestick. There are people who kindle a fire underneath. But theseare conceited people, who are wedded to their own way. I suppose anaccomplished incendiary always starts a fire in the attic, if he can.I am not an incendiary, but I hate bigotry. I don't call thoseincendiaries very good Christians who, when they set fire to themartyrs, touched off the fa*gots at the bottom, so as to make them goslow. Besides, knowledge works down easier than it does up.Education must proceed from the more enlightened down to the moreignorant strata. If you want better common schools, raise thestandard of the colleges, and so on. Build your fire on top. Letyour light shine. I have seen people build a fire under a balkyhorse; but he wouldn't go, he'd be a horse-martyr first. A firekindled under one never did him any good. Of course you can make afire on the hearth by kindling it underneath, but that does not makeit right. I want my hearthfire to be an emblem of the best things.

II

It must be confessed that a wood-fire needs as much tending as a pairof twins. To say nothing of fiery projectiles sent into the room,even by the best wood, from the explosion of gases confined in itscells, the brands are continually dropping down, and coals are beingscattered over the hearth. However much a careful housewife, whothinks more of neatness than enjoyment, may dislike this, it is oneof the chief delights of a wood-fire. I would as soon have anEnglishman without side-whiskers as a fire without a big backlog; andI would rather have no fire than one that required no tending,—oneof dead wood that could not sing again the imprisoned songs of theforest, or give out in brilliant scintillations the sunshine itabsorbed in its growth. Flame is an ethereal sprite, and the spiceof danger in it gives zest to the care of the hearth-fire. Nothingis so beautiful as springing, changing flame,—it was the last freakof the Gothic architecture men to represent the fronts of elaborateedifices of stone as on fire, by the kindling flamboyant devices. Afireplace is, besides, a private laboratory, where one can witnessthe most brilliant chemical experiments, minor conflagrations onlywanting the grandeur of cities on fire. It is a vulgar notion that afire is only for heat. A chief value of it is, however, to look at.It is a picture, framed between the jambs. You have nothing on yourwalls, by the best masters (the poor masters are not, however,represented), that is really so fascinating, so spiritual. Speakinglike an upholsterer, it furnishes the room. And it is never twicethe same. In this respect it is like the landscape-view through awindow, always seen in a new light, color, or condition. Thefireplace is a window into the most charming world I ever had aglimpse of.

Yet direct heat is an agreeable sensation. I am not scientificenough to despise it, and have no taste for a winter residence onMount Washington, where the thermometer cannot be kept comfortableeven by boiling. They say that they say in Boston that there is asatisfaction in being well dressed which religion cannot give. Thereis certainly a satisfaction in the direct radiance of a hickory firewhich is not to be found in the fieriest blasts of a furnace. Thehot air of a furnace is a sirocco; the heat of a wood-fire is onlyintense sunshine, like that bottled in Lacrimae Christi. Besidesthis, the eye is delighted, the sense of smell is regaled by thefragrant decomposition, and the ear is pleased with the hissing,crackling, and singing,—a liberation of so many out-door noises.Some people like the sound of bubbling in a boiling pot, or thefizzing of a frying-spider. But there is nothing gross in theanimated crackling of sticks of wood blazing on the earth, not evenif chestnuts are roasting in the ashes. All the senses areministered to, and the imagination is left as free as the leapingtongues of flame.

The attention which a wood-fire demands is one of its bestrecommendations. We value little that which costs us no trouble tomaintain. If we had to keep the sun kindled up and going by privatecorporate action, or act of Congress, and to be taxed for the supportof customs officers of solar heat, we should prize it more than wedo. Not that I should like to look upon the sun as a job, and havethe proper regulation of its temperature get into politics, where wealready have so much combustible stuff; but we take it quite too muchas a matter of course, and, having it free, do not reckon it amongthe reasons for gratitude. Many people shut it out of their housesas if it were an enemy, watch its descent upon the carpet as if itwere only a thief of color, and plant trees to shut it away from themouldering house. All the animals know better than this, as well asthe more simple races of men; the old women of the southern Italiancoasts sit all day in the sun and ply the distaff, as grateful as thesociable hens on the south side of a New England barn; the slowtortoise likes to take the sun upon his sloping back, soaking incolor that shall make him immortal when the imperishable part of himis cut up into shell ornaments. The capacity of a cat to absorbsunshine is only equaled by that of an Arab or an Ethiopian. Theyare not afraid of injuring their complexions.

White must be the color of civilization; it has so many naturaldisadvantages. But this is politics. I was about to say that,however it may be with sunshine, one is always grateful for hiswood-fire, because he does not maintain it without some cost.

Yet I cannot but confess to a difference between sunlight and thelight of a wood-fire. The sunshine is entirely untamed. Where itrages most freely it tends to evoke the brilliancy rather than theharmonious satisfactions of nature. The monstrous growths and theflaming colors of the tropics contrast with our more subduedloveliness of foliage and bloom. The birds of the middle regiondazzle with their contrasts of plumage, and their voices are forscreaming rather than singing. I presume the new experiments insound would project a macaw's voice in very tangled and inharmoniouslines of light. I suspect that the fiercest sunlight puts people, aswell as animals and vegetables, on extremes in all ways. A wood-fireon the hearth is a kindler of the domestic virtues. It brings incheerfulness, and a family center, and, besides, it is artistic.I should like to know if an artist could ever represent on canvas ahappy family gathered round a hole in the floor called a register.Given a fireplace, and a tolerable artist could almost create apleasant family round it. But what could he conjure out of aregister? If there was any virtue among our ancestors,—and theylabored under a great many disadvantages, and had few of the aidswhich we have to excellence of life,—I am convinced they drew itmostly from the fireside. If it was difficult to read the elevencommandments by the light of a pine-knot, it was not difficult to getthe sweet spirit of them from the countenance of the serene motherknitting in the chimney-corner.

III

When the fire is made, you want to sit in front of it and grow genialin its effulgence. I have never been upon a throne,—except inmoments of a traveler's curiosity, about as long as a South Americandictator remains on one,—but I have no idea that it compares, forpleasantness, with a seat before a wood-fire. A whole leisure daybefore you, a good novel in hand, and the backlog only just beginningto kindle, with uncounted hours of comfort in it, has life anythingmore delicious? For "novel" you can substitute "Calvin'sInstitutes," if you wish to be virtuous as well as happy. EvenCalvin would melt before a wood-fire. A great snowstorm, visible onthree sides of your wide-windowed room, loading the evergreens, blownin fine powder from the great chestnut-tops, piled up in everaccumulating masses, covering the paths, the shrubbery, the hedges,drifting and clinging in fantastic deposits, deepening your sense ofsecurity, and taking away the sin of idleness by making it anecessity, this is an excellent ground to your day by the fire.

To deliberately sit down in the morning to read a novel, to enjoyyourself, is this not, in New England (I am told they don't read muchin other parts of the country), the sin of sins? Have you any rightto read, especially novels, until you have exhausted the best part ofthe day in some employment that is called practical? Have you anyright to enjoy yourself at all until the fa*g-end of the day, when youare tired and incapable of enjoying yourself? I am aware that thisis the practice, if not the theory, of our society,—to postpone thedelights of social intercourse until after dark, and rather late atnight, when body and mind are both weary with the exertions ofbusiness, and when we can give to what is the most delightful andprofitable thing in life, social and intellectual society, only theweariness of dull brains and over-tired muscles. No wonder we takeour amusem*nts sadly, and that so many people find dinners heavy andparties stupid. Our economy leaves no place for amusem*nts; wemerely add them to the burden of a life already full. The world isstill a little off the track as to what is really useful.

I confess that the morning is a very good time to read a novel, oranything else which is good and requires a fresh mind; and I take itthat nothing is worth reading that does not require an alert mind.I suppose it is necessary that business should be transacted; thoughthe amount of business that does not contribute to anybody's comfortor improvement suggests the query whether it is not overdone. I knowthat unremitting attention to business is the price of success, butI don't know what success is. There is a man, whom we all know, whobuilt a house that cost a quarter of a million of dollars, andfurnished it for another like sum, who does not know anything moreabout architecture, or painting, or books, or history, than he caresfor the rights of those who have not so much money as he has. Iheard him once, in a foreign gallery, say to his wife, as they stoodin front of a famous picture by Rubens: "That is the Rape of theSardines!" What a cheerful world it would be if everybody was assuccessful as that man! While I am reading my book by the fire, andtaking an active part in important transactions that may be a gooddeal better than real, let me be thankful that a great many men areprofitably employed in offices and bureaus and country stores inkeeping up the gossip and endless exchange of opinions among mankind,so much of which is made to appear to the women at home as"business." I find that there is a sort of busy idleness among men inthis world that is not held in disrepute. When the time comes that Ihave to prove my right to vote, with women, I trust that it will beremembered in my favor that I made this admission. If it is true, asa witty conservative once said to me, that we never shall have peacein this country until we elect a colored woman president, I desire tobe rectus in curia early.

IV

The fireplace, as we said, is a window through which we look out uponother scenes. We like to read of the small, bare room, withcobwebbed ceiling and narrow window, in which the poor child ofgenius sits with his magical pen, the master of a realm of beauty andenchantment. I think the open fire does not kindle the imaginationso much as it awakens the memory; one sees the past in its crumblingembers and ashy grayness, rather than the future. People becomereminiscent and even sentimental in front of it. They used to becomesomething else in those good old days when it was thought best toheat the poker red hot before plunging it into the mugs of flip.This heating of the poker has been disapproved of late years, but Ido not know on what grounds; if one is to drink bitters and gins andthe like, such as I understand as good people as clergymen and womentake in private, and by advice, I do not know why one should not makethem palatable and heat them with his own poker. Cold whiskey out ofa bottle, taken as a prescription six times a day on the sly, is n'tmy idea of virtue any more than the social ancestral glass, sizzlingwickedly with the hot iron. Names are so confusing in this world;but things are apt to remain pretty much the same, whatever we callthem.

Perhaps as you look into the fireplace it widens and grows deep andcavernous. The back and the jambs are built up of great stones, notalways smoothly laid, with jutting ledges upon which ashes are apt tolie. The hearthstone is an enormous block of trap rock, with asurface not perfectly even, but a capital place to crack butternutson. Over the fire swings an iron crane, with a row of pot-hooks ofall lengths hanging from it. It swings out when the housewife wantsto hang on the tea-kettle, and it is strong enough to support a rowof pots, or a mammoth caldron kettle on occasion. What a jolly sightis this fireplace when the pots and kettles in a row are all boilingand bubbling over the flame, and a roasting spit is turning in front!It makes a person as hungry as one of Scott's novels. But thebrilliant sight is in the frosty morning, about daylight, when thefire is made. The coals are raked open, the split sticks are piledup in openwork criss-crossing, as high as the crane; and when theflame catches hold and roars up through the interstices, it is likean out-of-door bonfire. Wood enough is consumed in that morningsacrifice to cook the food of a Parisian family for a year. How itroars up the wide chimney, sending into the air the signal smoke andsparks which announce to the farming neighbors another day cheerfullybegun! The sleepiest boy in the world would get up in his redflannel nightgown to see such a fire lighted, even if he dropped tosleep again in his chair before the ruddy blaze. Then it is that thehouse, which has shrunk and creaked all night in the pinching cold ofwinter, begins to glow again and come to life. The thick frost meltslittle by little on the small window-panes, and it is seen that thegray dawn is breaking over the leagues of pallid snow. It is time toblow out the candle, which has lost all its cheerfulness in the lightof day. The morning romance is over; the family is astir; and memberafter member appears with the morning yawn, to stand before thecrackling, fierce conflagration. The daily round begins. The mosthateful employment ever invented for mortal man presents itself: the"chores" are to be done. The boy who expects every morning to openinto a new world finds that to-day is like yesterday, but he believesto-morrow will be different. And yet enough for him, for the day, isthe wading in the snowdrifts, or the sliding on the diamond-sparklingcrust. Happy, too, is he, when the storm rages, and the snowis piled high against the windows, if he can sit in the warmchimney-corner and read about Burgoyne, and General Fraser, and MissMcCrea, midwinter marches through the wilderness, surprises of wigwams,and the stirring ballad, say, of the Battle of the Kegs:—

"Come, gallants, attend and list a friend
Thrill forth harmonious ditty;
While I shall tell what late befell
At Philadelphia city."

I should like to know what heroism a boy in an old New Englandfarmhouse—rough-nursed by nature, and fed on the traditions of theold wars did not aspire to. "John," says the mother, "You'll burnyour head to a crisp in that heat." But John does not hear; he isstorming the Plains of Abraham just now. "Johnny, dear, bring in astick of wood." How can Johnny bring in wood when he is in thatdefile with Braddock, and the Indians are popping at him from behindevery tree? There is something about a boy that I like, after all.

The fire rests upon the broad hearth; the hearth rests upon a greatsubstruction of stone, and the substruction rests upon the cellar.What supports the cellar I never knew, but the cellar supports thefamily. The cellar is the foundation of domestic comfort. Into itsdark, cavernous recesses the child's imagination fearfully goes.Bogies guard the bins of choicest apples. I know not what comicalsprites sit astride the cider-barrels ranged along the walls. Thefeeble flicker of the tallow-candle does not at all dispel, butcreates, illusions, and magnifies all the rich possibilities of thisunderground treasure-house. When the cellar-door is opened, and theboy begins to descend into the thick darkness, it is always with aheart-beat as of one started upon some adventure. Who can forget thesmell that comes through the opened door;—a mingling of fresh earth,fruit exhaling delicious aroma, kitchen vegetables, the mouldy odorof barrels, a sort of ancestral air,—as if a door had been openedinto an old romance. Do you like it? Not much. But then I wouldnot exchange the remembrance of it for a good many odors and perfumesthat I do like.

It is time to punch the backlog and put on a new forestick.

SECOND STUDY

I

The log was white birch. The beautiful satin bark at once kindledinto a soft, pure, but brilliant flame, something like that ofnaphtha. There is no other wood flame so rich, and it leaps up in ajoyous, spiritual way, as if glad to burn for the sake of burning.Burning like a clear oil, it has none of the heaviness and fatness ofthe pine and the balsam. Woodsmen are at a loss to account for itsintense and yet chaste flame, since the bark has no oily appearance.The heat from it is fierce, and the light dazzling. It flares upeagerly like young love, and then dies away; the wood does not keepup the promise of the bark. The woodsmen, it is proper to say, havenot considered it in its relation to young love. In the remotesettlements the pine-knot is still the torch of courtship; it enduresto sit up by. The birch-bark has alliances with the world ofsentiment and of letters. The most poetical reputation of the NorthAmerican Indian floats in a canoe made of it; his picture-writing wasinscribed on it. It is the paper that nature furnishes for lovers inthe wilderness, who are enabled to convey a delicate sentiment by itsuse, which is expressed neither in their ideas nor chirography. Itis inadequate for legal parchment, but does very well for deeds oflove, which are not meant usually to give a perfect title. Withcare, it may be split into sheets as thin as the Chinese paper. Itis so beautiful to handle that it is a pity civilization cannot makemore use of it. But fancy articles manufactured from it are verymuch like all ornamental work made of nature's perishable seeds,leaves, cones, and dry twigs,—exquisite while the pretty fingers arefashioning it, but soon growing shabby and cheap to the eye. And yetthere is a pathos in "dried things," whether they are displayed asornaments in some secluded home, or hidden religiously in bureaudrawers where profane eyes cannot see how white ties are growingyellow and ink is fading from treasured letters, amid a faint anddiscouraging perfume of ancient rose-leaves.

The birch log holds out very well while it is green, but has notsubstance enough for a backlog when dry. Seasoning green timber ormen is always an experiment. A man may do very well in a simple, letus say, country or backwoods line of life, who would come to nothingin a more complicated civilization. City life is a severe trial.One man is struck with a dry-rot; another develops season-cracks;another shrinks and swells with every change of circ*mstance.Prosperity is said to be more trying than adversity, a theory whichmost people are willing to accept without trial; but few men standthe drying out of the natural sap of their greenness in theartificial heat of city life. This, be it noticed, is nothingagainst the drying and seasoning process; character must be put intothe crucible some time, and why not in this world? A man who cannotstand seasoning will not have a high market value in any part of theuniverse. It is creditable to the race, that so many men and womenbravely jump into the furnace of prosperity and expose themselves tothe drying influences of city life.

The first fire that is lighted on the hearth in the autumn seems tobring out the cold weather. Deceived by the placid appearance of thedying year, the softness of the sky, and the warm color of thefoliage, we have been shivering about for days without exactlycomprehending what was the matter. The open fire at once sets up astandard of comparison. We find that the advance guards of winterare besieging the house. The cold rushes in at every crack of doorand window, apparently signaled by the flame to invade the house andfill it with chilly drafts and sarcasms on what we call the temperatezone. It needs a roaring fire to beat back the enemy; a feeble oneis only an invitation to the most insulting demonstrations. Ourpious New England ancestors were philosophers in their way. It wasnot simply owing to grace that they sat for hours in their barnlikemeeting-houses during the winter Sundays, the thermometer manydegrees below freezing, with no fire, except the zeal in their ownhearts,—a congregation of red noses and bright eyes. It was nowonder that the minister in the pulpit warmed up to his subject,cried aloud, used hot words, spoke a good deal of the hot place andthe Person whose presence was a burning shame, hammered the desk asif he expected to drive his text through a two-inch plank, and heatedhimself by all allowable ecclesiastical gymnastics. A few of theirfollowers in our day seem to forget that our modern churches areheated by furnaces and supplied with gas. In the old days it wouldhave been thought unphilosophic as well as effeminate to warm themeeting-houses artificially. In one house I knew, at least, when itwas proposed to introduce a stove to take a little of the chill fromthe Sunday services, the deacons protested against the innovation.They said that the stove might benefit those who sat close to it, butit would drive all the cold air to the other parts of the church, andfreeze the people to death; it was cold enough now around the edges.Blessed days of ignorance and upright living! Sturdy men who servedGod by resolutely sitting out the icy hours of service, amid therattling of windows and the carousal of winter in the high, windsweptgalleries! Patient women, waiting in the chilly house forconsumption to pick out his victims, and replace the color of youthand the flush of devotion with the hectic of disease! At least, youdid not doze and droop in our over-heated edifices, and die ofvitiated air and disregard of the simplest conditions of organizedlife. It is fortunate that each generation does not comprehend itsown ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous.It is something also that each age has its choice of the death itwill die. Our generation is most ingenious. From our publicassembly-rooms and houses we have almost succeeded in excluding pureair. It took the race ages to build dwellings that would keep outrain; it has taken longer to build houses air-tight, but we are onthe eve of success. We are only foiled by the ill-fitting, insincerework of the builders, who build for a day, and charge for all time.

II

When the fire on the hearth has blazed up and then settled intosteady radiance, talk begins. There is no place like thechimney-corner for confidences; for picking up the clews of an oldfriendship; for taking note where one's self has drifted, bycomparing ideas and prejudices with the intimate friend of years ago,whose course in life has lain apart from yours. No stranger puzzlesyou so much as the once close friend, with whose thinking andassociates you have for years been unfamiliar. Life has come to meanthis and that to you; you have fallen into certain habits of thought;for you the world has progressed in this or that direction; ofcertain results you feel very sure; you have fallen into harmony withyour surroundings; you meet day after day people interested in thethings that interest you; you are not in the least opinionated, it issimply your good fortune to look upon the affairs of the world fromthe right point of view. When you last saw your friend,—less than ayear after you left college,—he was the most sensible and agreeableof men; he had no heterodox notions; he agreed with you; you couldeven tell what sort of a wife he would select, and if you could dothat, you held the key to his life.

Well, Herbert came to visit me the other day from the antipodes. Andhere he sits by the fireplace. I cannot think of any one I wouldrather see there, except perhaps Thackery; or, for entertainment,Boswell; or old, Pepys; or one of the people who was left out of theArk. They were talking one foggy London night at Hazlitt's aboutwhom they would most like to have seen, when Charles Lamb startledthe company by declaring that he would rather have seen JudasIscariot than any other person who had lived on the earth. Formyself, I would rather have seen Lamb himself once, than to havelived with Judas. Herbert, to my great delight, has not changed; Ishould know him anywhere,—the same serious, contemplative face, withlurking humor at the corners of the mouth,—the same cheery laugh andclear, distinct enunciation as of old. There is nothing so winningas a good voice. To see Herbert again, unchanged in all outwardessentials, is not only gratifying, but valuable as a testimony tonature's success in holding on to a personal identity, through theentire change of matter that has been constantly taking place for somany years. I know very well there is here no part of the Herbertwhose hand I had shaken at the Commencement parting; but it is anastonishing reproduction of him,—a material likeness; and now forthe spiritual.

Such a wide chance for divergence in the spiritual. It has been sucha busy world for twenty years. So many things have been torn up bythe roots again that were settled when we left college. There wereto be no more wars; democracy was democracy, and progress, thedifferentiation of the individual, was a mere question of clothes; ifyou want to be different, go to your tailor; nobody had demonstratedthat there is a man-soul and a woman-soul, and that each is inreality only a half-soul,—putting the race, so to speak, upon thehalf-shell. The social oyster being opened, there appears to be twoshells and only one oyster; who shall have it? So many new canons oftaste, of criticism, of morality have been set up; there has beensuch a resurrection of historical reputations for new judgment, andthere have been so many discoveries, geographical, archaeological,geological, biological, that the earth is not at all what it wassupposed to be; and our philosophers are much more anxious toascertain where we came from than whither we are going. In thiswhirl and turmoil of new ideas, nature, which has only the single endof maintaining the physical identity in the body, works onundisturbed, replacing particle for particle, and preserving thelikeness more skillfully than a mosaic artist in the Vatican; she hasnot even her materials sorted and labeled, as the Roman artist hashis thousands of bits of color; and man is all the while doing hisbest to confuse the process, by changing his climate, his diet, allhis surroundings, without the least care to remain himself. But themind?

It is more difficult to get acquainted with Herbert than with anentire stranger, for I have my prepossessions about him, and do notfind him in so many places where I expect to find him. He is full ofcriticism of the authors I admire; he thinks stupid or improper thebooks I most read; he is skeptical about the "movements" I aminterested in; he has formed very different opinions from mineconcerning a hundred men and women of the present day; we used to eatfrom one dish; we could n't now find anything in common in a dozen;his prejudices (as we call our opinions) are most extraordinary, andnot half so reasonable as my prejudices; there are a great manypersons and things that I am accustomed to denounce, uncontradictedby anybody, which he defends; his public opinion is not at all mypublic opinion. I am sorry for him. He appears to have fallen intoinfluences and among a set of people foreign to me. I find that hischurch has a different steeple on it from my church (which, to saythe truth, hasn't any). It is a pity that such a dear friend and aman of so much promise should have drifted off into such generalcontrariness. I see Herbert sitting here by the fire, with the oldlook in his face coming out more and more, but I do not recognize anyfeatures of his mind,—except perhaps his contrariness; yes, he wasalways a little contrary, I think. And finally he surprises me with,"Well, my friend, you seem to have drifted away from your old notionsand opinions. We used to agree when we were together, but Isometimes wondered where you would land; for, pardon me, you showedsigns of looking at things a little contrary."

I am silent for a good while. I am trying to think who I am. Therewas a person whom I thought I knew, very fond of Herbert, andagreeing with him in most things. Where has he gone? and, if he ishere, where is the Herbert that I knew?

If his intellectual and moral sympathies have all changed, I wonderif his physical tastes remain, like his appearance, the same. Therehas come over this country within the last generation, as everybodyknows, a great wave of condemnation of pie. It has taken thecharacter of a "movement!" though we have had no conventions aboutit, nor is any one, of any of the several sexes among us, running forpresident against it. It is safe almost anywhere to denounce pie,yet nearly everybody eats it on occasion. A great many people thinkit savors of a life abroad to speak with horror of pie, although theywere very likely the foremost of the Americans in Paris who used tospeak with more enthusiasm of the American pie at Madame Busque'sthan of the Venus of Milo. To talk against pie and still eat it issnobbish, of course; but snobbery, being an aspiring failing, issometimes the prophecy of better things. To affect dislike of pie issomething. We have no statistics on the subject, and cannot tellwhether it is gaining or losing in the country at large. Itsdisappearance in select circles is no test. The amount of writingagainst it is no more test of its desuetude, than the number ofreligious tracts distributed in a given district is a criterion ofits piety. We are apt to assume that certain regions aresubstantially free of it. Herbert and I, traveling north one summer,fancied that we could draw in New England a sort of diet line, likethe sweeping curves on the isothermal charts, which should show atleast the leading pie sections. Journeying towards the WhiteMountains, we concluded that a line passing through Bellows Falls,and bending a little south on either side, would mark northward theregion of perpetual pie. In this region pie is to be found at allhours and seasons, and at every meal. I am not sure, however, thatpie is not a matter of altitude rather than latitude, as I find thatall the hill and country towns of New England are full of thoseexcellent women, the very salt of the housekeeping earth, who wouldfeel ready to sink in mortification through their scoured kitchenfloors, if visitors should catch them without a pie in the house.The absence of pie would be more noticed than a scarcity of Bibleeven. Without it the housekeepers are as distracted as theboarding-house keeper, who declared that if it were not for cannedtomato, she should have nothing to fly to. Well, in all this greatagitation I find Herbert unmoved, a conservative, even to theunder-crust. I dare not ask him if he eats pie at breakfast. Thereare some tests that the dearest friendship may not apply.

"Will you smoke?" I ask.

"No, I have reformed."

"Yes, of course."

"The fact is, that when we consider the correlation of forces, theapparent sympathy of spirit manifestations with electric conditions,the almost revealed mysteries of what may be called the odic force,and the relation of all these phenomena to the nervous system in man,it is not safe to do anything to the nervous system that will—"

"Hang the nervous system! Herbert, we can agree in one thing: oldmemories, reveries, friendships, center about that:—is n't an openwood-fire good?"

"Yes," says Herbert, combatively, "if you don't sit before it toolong."

III

The best talk is that which escapes up the open chimney and cannot berepeated. The finest woods make the best fire and pass away with theleast residuum. I hope the next generation will not accept thereports of "interviews" as specimens of the conversations of theseyears of grace.

But do we talk as well as our fathers and mothers did? We hearwonderful stories of the bright generation that sat about the widefireplaces of New England. Good talk has so much short-hand that itcannot be reported,—the inflection, the change of voice, the shrug,cannot be caught on paper. The best of it is when the subjectunexpectedly goes cross-lots, by a flash of short-cut, to aconclusion so suddenly revealed that it has the effect of wit. Itneeds the highest culture and the finest breeding to prevent theconversation from running into mere persiflage on the one hand—itscommon fate—or monologue on the other. Our conversation is largelychaff. I am not sure but the former generation preached a good deal,but it had great practice in fireside talk, and must have talkedwell. There were narrators in those days who could charm a circleall the evening long with stories. When each day broughtcomparatively little new to read, there was leisure for talk, and therare book and the in-frequent magazine were thoroughly discussed.Families now are swamped by the printed matter that comes daily uponthe center-table. There must be a division of labor, one readingthis, and another that, to make any impression on it. The telegraphbrings the only common food, and works this daily miracle, that everymind in Christendom is excited by one topic simultaneously with everyother mind; it enables a concurrent mental action, a burst ofsympathy, or a universal prayer to be made, which must be, if we haveany faith in the immaterial left, one of the chief forces in modernlife. It is fit that an agent so subtle as electricity should be theminister of it.

When there is so much to read, there is little time for conversation;nor is there leisure for another pastime of the ancient firesides,called reading aloud. The listeners, who heard while they lookedinto the wide chimney-place, saw there pass in stately procession theevents and the grand persons of history, were kindled with thedelights of travel, touched by the romance of true love, or maderestless by tales of adventure;—the hearth became a sort of magicstone that could transport those who sat by it to the most distantplaces and times, as soon as the book was opened and the readerbegan, of a winter's night. Perhaps the Puritan reader read throughhis nose, and all the little Puritans made the most dreadful nasalinquiries as the entertainment went on. The prominent nose of theintellectual New-Englander is evidence of the constant linguisticexercise of the organ for generations. It grew by talking through.But I have no doubt that practice made good readers in those days.Good reading aloud is almost a lost accomplishment now. It is littlethought of in the schools. It is disused at home. It is rare tofind any one who can read, even from the newspaper, well. Reading isso universal, even with the uncultivated, that it is common to hearpeople mispronounce words that you did not suppose they had everseen. In reading to themselves they glide over these words, inreading aloud they stumble over them. Besides, our every-day booksand newspapers are so larded with French that the ordinary reader isobliged marcher a pas de loup,—for instance.

The newspaper is probably responsible for making current many wordswith which the general reader is familiar, but which he rises to inthe flow of conversation, and strikes at with a splash and anunsuccessful attempt at appropriation; the word, which he perfectlyknows, hooks him in the gills, and he cannot master it. Thenewspaper is thus widening the language in use, and vastly increasingthe number of words which enter into common talk. The Americans ofthe lowest intellectual class probably use more words to expresstheir ideas than the similar class of any other people; but thisprodigality is partially balanced by the parsimony of words in somehigher regions, in which a few phrases of current slang are made todo the whole duty of exchange of ideas; if that can be calledexchange of ideas when one intellect flashes forth to another theremark, concerning some report, that "you know how it is yourself,"and is met by the response of "that's what's the matter," and rejoinswith the perfectly conclusive "that's so." It requires a high degreeof culture to use slang with elegance and effect; and we are yet veryfar from the Greek attainment.

IV

The fireplace wants to be all aglow, the wind rising, the night heavyand black above, but light with sifting snow on the earth, abackground of inclemency for the illumined room with its picturedwalls, tables heaped with books, capacious easy-chairs and theiroccupants,—it needs, I say, to glow and throw its rays far throughthe crystal of the broad windows, in order that we may rightlyappreciate the relation of the wide-jambed chimney to domesticarchitecture in our climate. We fell to talking about it; and, as isusual when the conversation is professedly on one subject, wewandered all around it. The young lady staying with us was roastingchestnuts in the ashes, and the frequent explosions requiredconsiderable attention. The mistress, too, sat somewhat alert, readyto rise at any instant and minister to the fancied want of this orthat guest, forgetting the reposeful truth that people about afireside will not have any wants if they are not suggested. Theworst of them, if they desire anything, only want something hot, andthat later in the evening. And it is an open question whether youought to associate with people who want that.

I was saying that nothing had been so slow in its progress in theworld as domestic architecture. Temples, palaces, bridges,aqueducts, cathedrals, towers of marvelous delicacy and strength,grew to perfection while the common people lived in hovels, and therichest lodged in the most gloomy and contracted quarters. Thedwelling-house is a modern institution. It is a curious fact that ithas only improved with the social elevation of women. Men were nevermore brilliant in arms and letters than in the age of Elizabeth, andyet they had no homes. They made themselves thick-walled castles,with slits in the masonry for windows, for defense, and magnificentbanquet-halls for pleasure; the stone rooms into which they crawledfor the night were often little better than dog-kennels. ThePompeians had no comfortable night-quarters. The most singular thingto me, however, is that, especially interested as woman is in thehouse, she has never done anything for architecture. And yet womanis reputed to be an ingenious creature.

HERBERT. I doubt if woman has real ingenuity; she has greatadaptability. I don't say that she will do the same thing twicealike, like a Chinaman, but she is most cunning in suiting herself tocirc*mstances.

THE FIRE-TENDER. Oh, if you speak of constructive, creativeingenuity, perhaps not; but in the higher ranges of achievement—thatof accomplishing any purpose dear to her heart, for instance—heringenuity is simply incomprehensible to me.

HERBERT. Yes, if you mean doing things by indirection.

THE MISTRESS. When you men assume all the direction, what else isleft to us?

THE FIRE-TENDER. Did you ever see a woman refurnish a house?

THE YOUNG LADY STAYING WITH US. I never saw a man do it, unless hewas burned out of his rookery.

HERBERT. There is no comfort in new things.

THE FIRE-TENDER (not noticing the interruption). Having set her mindon a total revolution of the house, she buys one new thing, not tooobtrusive, nor much out of harmony with the old. The husbandscarcely notices it, least of all does he suspect the revolution,which she already has accomplished. Next, some article that doeslook a little shabby beside the new piece of furniture is sent to thegarret, and its place is supplied by something that will match incolor and effect. Even the man can see that it ought to match, andso the process goes on, it may be for years, it may be forever, untilnothing of the old is left, and the house is transformed as it waspredetermined in the woman's mind. I doubt if the man everunderstands how or when it was done; his wife certainly never saysanything about the refurnishing, but quietly goes on to newconquests.

THE MISTRESS. And is n't it better to buy little by little, enjoyingevery new object as you get it, and assimilating each article to yourhousehold life, and making the home a harmonious expression of yourown taste, rather than to order things in sets, and turn your house,for the time being, into a furniture ware-room?

THE FIRE-TENDER. Oh, I only spoke of the ingenuity of it.

THE YOUNG LADY. For my part, I never can get acquainted with morethan one piece of furniture at a time.

HERBERT. I suppose women are our superiors in artistic taste, and Ifancy that I can tell whether a house is furnished by a woman or aman; of course, I mean the few houses that appear to be the result ofindividual taste and refinement,—most of them look as if they hadbeen furnished on contract by the upholsterer.

THE MISTRESS. Woman's province in this world is putting things torights.

HERBERT. With a vengeance, sometimes. In the study, for example.My chief objection to woman is that she has no respect for thenewspaper, or the printed page, as such. She is Siva, the destroyer.I have noticed that a great part of a married man's time at home isspent in trying to find the things he has put on his study-table.

THE YOUNG LADY. Herbert speaks with the bitterness of a bachelorshut out of paradise. It is my experience that if women did notdestroy the rubbish that men bring into the house, it would becomeuninhabitable, and need to be burned down every five years.

THE FIRE-TENDER. I confess women do a great deal for the appearanceof things. When the mistress is absent, this room, althougheverything is here as it was before, does not look at all like thesame place; it is stiff, and seems to lack a soul. When she returns,I can see that her eye, even while greeting me, takes in thesituation at a glance. While she is talking of the journey, andbefore she has removed her traveling-hat, she turns this chair andmoves that, sets one piece of furniture at a different angle,rapidly, and apparently unconsciously, shifts a dozen littleknick-knacks and bits of color, and the room is transformed. Icouldn't do it in a week.

THE MISTRESS. That is the first time I ever knew a man admit hecouldn't do anything if he had time.

HERBERT. Yet with all their peculiar instinct for making a home,women make themselves very little felt in our domestic architecture.

THE MISTRESS. Men build most of the houses in what might be calledthe ready-made-clothing style, and we have to do the best we can withthem; and hard enough it is to make cheerful homes in most of them.You will see something different when the woman is constantlyconsulted in the plan of the house.

HERBERT. We might see more difference if women would give anyattention to architecture. Why are there no women architects?

THE FIRE-TENDER. Want of the ballot, doubtless. It seems to me thathere is a splendid opportunity for woman to come to the front.

THE YOUNG LADY. They have no desire to come to the front; they wouldrather manage things where they are.

THE FIRE-TENDER. If they would master the noble art, and put theirbrooding taste upon it, we might very likely compass something in ourdomestic architecture that we have not yet attained. The outside ofour houses needs attention as well as the inside. Most of them areas ugly as money can build.

THE YOUNG LADY. What vexes me most is, that women, married women,have so easily consented to give up open fires in their houses.

HERBERT. They dislike the dust and the bother. I think that womenrather like the confined furnace heat.

THE FIRE-TENDER. Nonsense; it is their angelic virtue of submission.
We wouldn't be hired to stay all-day in the houses we build.

THE YOUNG LADY. That has a very chivalrous sound, but I know therewill be no reformation until women rebel and demand everywhere theopen fire.

HERBERT. They are just now rebelling about something else; it seemsto me yours is a sort of counter-movement, a fire in the rear.

THE MISTRESS. I'll join that movement. The time has come when womanmust strike for her altars and her fires.

HERBERT. Hear, hear!

THE MISTRESS. Thank you, Herbert. I applauded you once, when youdeclaimed that years ago in the old Academy. I remember howeloquently you did it.

HERBERT. Yes, I was once a spouting idiot.

Just then the door-bell rang, and company came in. And the companybrought in a new atmosphere, as company always does, something of thedisturbance of out-doors, and a good deal of its healthy cheer. Thedirect news that the thermometer was approaching zero, with a hopefulprospect of going below it, increased to liveliness our satisfactionin the fire. When the cider was heated in the brown stone pitcher,there was difference of opinion whether there should be toast in it;some were for toast, because that was the old-fashioned way, andothers were against it, "because it does not taste good" in cider.Herbert said there, was very little respect left for our forefathers.

More wood was put on, and the flame danced in a hundred fantasticshapes. The snow had ceased to fall, and the moonlight lay insilvery patches among the trees in the ravine. The conversationbecame worldly.

THIRD STUDY

I

Herbert said, as we sat by the fire one night, that he wished he hadturned his attention to writing poetry like Tennyson's.

The remark was not whimsical, but satirical. Tennyson is a man oftalent, who happened to strike a lucky vein, which he has worked withcleverness. The adventurer with a pickaxe in Washoe may happen uponlike good fortune. The world is full of poetry as the earth is of"pay-dirt;" one only needs to know how to "strike" it. An able mancan make himself almost anything that he will. It is melancholy tothink how many epic poets have been lost in the tea-trade, how manydramatists (though the age of the drama has passed) have wasted theirgenius in great mercantile and mechanical enterprises. I know a manwho might have been the poet, the essayist, perhaps the critic, ofthis country, who chose to become a country judge, to sit day afterday upon a bench in an obscure corner of the world, listening towrangling lawyers and prevaricating witnesses, preferring to judgehis fellow-men rather than enlighten them.

It is fortunate for the vanity of the living and the reputation ofthe dead, that men get almost as much credit for what they do not asfor what they do. It was the opinion of many that Burns might haveexcelled as a statesman, or have been a great captain in war; and Mr.Carlyle says that if he had been sent to a university, and become atrained intellectual workman, it lay in him to have changed the wholecourse of British literature! A large undertaking, as so vigorousand dazzling a writer as Mr. Carlyle must know by this time, sinceBritish literature has swept by him in a resistless and wideningflood, mainly uncontaminated, and leaving his grotesque contrivanceswrecked on the shore with other curiosities of letters, and yet amongthe richest of all the treasures lying there.

It is a temptation to a temperate man to become a sot, to hear whattalent, what versatility, what genius, is almost always attributed toa moderately bright man who is habitually drunk. Such a mechanic,such a mathematician, such a poet he would be, if he were only sober;and then he is sure to be the most generous, magnanimous, friendlysoul, conscientiously honorable, if he were not so conscientiouslydrunk. I suppose it is now notorious that the most brilliant andpromising men have been lost to the world in this way. It issometimes almost painful to think what a surplus of talent and geniusthere would be in the world if the habit of intoxication shouldsuddenly cease; and what a slim chance there would be for theplodding people who have always had tolerably good habits. The fearis only mitigated by the observation that the reputation of a personfor great talent sometimes ceases with his reformation.

It is believed by some that the maidens who would make the best wivesnever marry, but remain free to bless the world with their impartialsweetness, and make it generally habitable. This is one of themysteries of Providence and New England life. It seems a pity, atfirst sight, that all those who become poor wives have thematrimonial chance, and that they are deprived of the reputation ofthose who would be good wives were they not set apart for the highand perpetual office of priestesses of society. There is no beautylike that which was spoiled by an accident, no accomplishments—andgraces are so to be envied as those that circ*mstances rudelyhindered the development of. All of which shows what a charitableand good-tempered world it is, notwithstanding its reputation forcynicism and detraction.

Nothing is more beautiful than the belief of the faithful wife thather husband has all the talents, and could, if he would, bedistinguished in any walk in life; and nothing will be morebeautiful—unless this is a very dry time for signs—than thehusband's belief that his wife is capable of taking charge of any ofthe affairs of this confused planet. There is no woman but thinksthat her husband, the green-grocer, could write poetry if he hadgiven his mind to it, or else she thinks small beer of poetry incomparison with an occupation or accomplishment purely vegetable. Itis touching to see the look of pride with which the wife turns to herhusband from any more brilliant personal presence or display of witthan his, in the perfect confidence that if the world knew what sheknows, there would be one more popular idol. How she magnifies hissmall wit, and dotes upon the self-satisfied look in his face as ifit were a sign of wisdom! What a councilor that man would make!What a warrior he would be! There are a great many corporals intheir retired homes who did more for the safety and success of ourarmies in critical moments, in the late war, than any of the"high-co*ck-a-lorum" commanders. Mrs. Corporal does not envy thereputation of General Sheridan; she knows very well who really wonFive Forks, for she has heard the story a hundred times, and willhear it a hundred times more with apparently unabated interest. Whata general her husband would have made; and how his talking talentwould shine in Congress!

HERBERT. Nonsense. There isn't a wife in the world who has nottaken the exact measure of her husband, weighed him and settled himin her own mind, and knows him as well as if she had ordered himafter designs and specifications of her own. That knowledge,however, she ordinarily keeps to herself, and she enters into aleague with her husband, which he was never admitted to the secretof, to impose upon the world. In nine out of ten cases he more thanhalf believes that he is what his wife tells him he is. At any rate,she manages him as easily as the keeper does the elephant, with onlya bamboo wand and a sharp spike in the end. Usually she flattershim, but she has the means of pricking clear through his hide onoccasion. It is the great secret of her power to have him think thatshe thoroughly believes in him.

THE YOUNG LADY STAYING WITH Us. And you call this hypocrisy? I haveheard authors, who thought themselves sly observers of women, call itso.

HERBERT. Nothing of the sort. It is the basis on which societyrests, the conventional agreement. If society is about to beoverturned, it is on this point. Women are beginning to tell menwhat they really think of them; and to insist that the same relationsof downright sincerity and independence that exist between men shallexist between women and men. Absolute truth between souls, withoutregard to sex, has always been the ideal life of the poets.

THE MISTRESS. Yes; but there was never a poet yet who would bear tohave his wife say exactly what she thought of his poetry, any morethan he would keep his temper if his wife beat him at chess; andthere is nothing that disgusts a man like getting beaten at chess bya woman.

HERBERT. Well, women know how to win by losing. I think that thereason why most women do not want to take the ballot and stand out inthe open for a free trial of power, is that they are reluctant tochange the certain domination of centuries, with weapons they areperfectly competent to handle, for an experiment. I think we shouldbe better off if women were more transparent, and men were not sosystematically puffed up by the subtle flattery which is used tocontrol them.

MANDEVILLE. Deliver me from transparency. When a woman takes thatguise, and begins to convince me that I can see through her like aray of light, I must run or be lost. Transparent women are the trulydangerous. There was one on ship-board [Mandeville likes to saythat; he has just returned from a little tour in Europe, and he quiteoften begins his remarks with "on the ship going over;" the YoungLady declares that he has a sort of roll in his chair, when he saysit, that makes her sea-sick] who was the most innocent, artless,guileless, natural bunch of lace and feathers you ever saw; she wasall candor and helplessness and dependence; she sang like anightingale, and talked like a nun. There never was such simplicity.There was n't a sounding-line on board that would have gone to thebottom of her soulful eyes. But she managed the captain and all theofficers, and controlled the ship as if she had been the helm. Allthe passengers were waiting on her, fetching this and that for hercomfort, inquiring of her health, talking about her genuineness, andexhibiting as much anxiety to get her ashore in safety, as if she hadbeen about to knight them all and give them a castle apiece when theycame to land.

THE MISTRESS. What harm? It shows what I have always said, that theservice of a noble woman is the most ennobling influence for men.

MANDEVILLE. If she is noble, and not a mere manager. I watched thiswoman to see if she would ever do anything for any one else. Shenever did.

THE FIRE-TENDER. Did you ever see her again? I presume Mandevillehas introduced her here for some purpose.

MANDEVILLE. No purpose. But we did see her on the Rhine; she wasthe most disgusted traveler, and seemed to be in very ill humor withher maid. I judged that her happiness depended upon establishingcontrolling relations with all about her. On this Rhine boat, to besure, there was reason for disgust. And that reminds me of a remarkthat was made.

THE YOUNG LADY. Oh!

MANDEVILLE. When we got aboard at Mayence we were conscious of adreadful odor somewhere; as it was a foggy morning, we could see nocause of it, but concluded it was from something on the wharf. Thefog lifted, and we got under way, but the odor traveled with us, andincreased. We went to every part of the vessel to avoid it, but invain. It occasionally reached us in great waves of disagreeableness.We had heard of the odors of the towns on the Rhine, but we had noidea that the entire stream was infected. It was intolerable.

The day was lovely, and the passengers stood about on deck holdingtheir noses and admiring the scenery. You might see a row of themleaning over the side, gazing up at some old ruin or ivied crag,entranced with the romance of the situation, and all holding theirnoses with thumb and finger. The sweet Rhine! By and by somebodydiscovered that the odor came from a pile of cheese on the forwarddeck, covered with a canvas; it seemed that the Rhinelanders are sofond of it that they take it with them when they travel. If thereshould ever be war between us and Germany, the borders of the Rhinewould need no other defense from American soldiers than a barricadeof this cheese. I went to the stern of the steamboat to tell a stoutAmerican traveler what was the origin of the odor he had been tryingto dodge all the morning. He looked more disgusted than before, whenhe heard that it was cheese; but his only reply was: "It must be amerciful God who can forgive a smell like that!"

II

The above is introduced here in order to illustrate the usual effectof an anecdote on conversation. Commonly it kills it. That talkmust be very well in hand, and under great headway, that an anecdotethrown in front of will not pitch off the track and wreck. And itmakes little difference what the anecdote is; a poor one depressesthe spirits, and casts a gloom over the company; a good one begetsothers, and the talkers go to telling stories; which is very goodentertainment in moderation, but is not to be mistaken for thatunwearying flow of argument, quaint remark, humorous color, andsprightly interchange of sentiments and opinions, calledconversation.

The reader will perceive that all hope is gone here of decidingwhether Herbert could have written Tennyson's poems, or whetherTennyson could have dug as much money out of the Heliogabalus Lode asHerbert did. The more one sees of life, I think the impressiondeepens that men, after all, play about the parts assigned them,according to their mental and moral gifts, which are limited andpreordained, and that their entrances and exits are governed by a lawno less certain because it is hidden. Perhaps nobody everaccomplishes all that he feels lies in him to do; but nearly everyone who tries his powers touches the walls of his being occasionally,and learns about how far to attempt to spring. There are noimpossibilities to youth and inexperience; but when a person hastried several times to reach high C and been coughed down, he isquite content to go down among the chorus. It is only the fools whokeep straining at high C all their lives.

Mandeville here began to say that that reminded him of something thathappened when he was on the—

But Herbert cut in with the observation that no matter what a man'ssingle and several capacities and talents might be, he is controlledby his own mysterious individuality, which is what metaphysicianscall the substance, all else being the mere accidents of the man.And this is the reason that we cannot with any certainty tell whatany person will do or amount to, for, while we know his talents andabilities, we do not know the resulting whole, which is he himself.THE FIRE-TENDER. So if you could take all the first-class qualitiesthat we admire in men and women, and put them together into onebeing, you wouldn't be sure of the result?

HERBERT. Certainly not. You would probably have a monster. Ittakes a cook of long experience, with the best materials, to make adish "taste good;" and the "taste good" is the indefinable essence,the resulting balance or harmony which makes man or woman agreeableor beautiful or effective in the world.

THE YOUNG LADY. That must be the reason why novelists fail solamentably in almost all cases in creating good characters. They putin real traits, talents, dispositions, but the result of thesynthesis is something that never was seen on earth before.

THE FIRE-TENDER. Oh, a good character in fiction is an inspiration.
We admit this in poetry. It is as true of such creations as Colonel
Newcome, and Ethel, and Beatrix Esmond. There is no patchwork about
them.

THE YOUNG LADY. Why was n't Thackeray ever inspired to create anoble woman?

THE FIRE-TENDER. That is the standing conundrum with all the women.They will not accept Ethel Newcome even. Perhaps we shall have toadmit that Thackeray was a writer for men.

HERBERT. Scott and the rest had drawn so many perfect women that
Thackeray thought it was time for a real one.

THE MISTRESS. That's ill-natured. Thackeray did, however, makeladies. If he had depicted, with his searching pen, any of us justas we are, I doubt if we should have liked it much.

MANDEVILLE. That's just it. Thackeray never pretended to makeideals, and if the best novel is an idealization of human nature,then he was not the best novelist. When I was crossing the Channel—

THE MISTRESS. Oh dear, if we are to go to sea again, Mandeville, Imove we have in the nuts and apples, and talk about our friends.

III

There is this advantage in getting back to a wood-fire on the hearth,that you return to a kind of simplicity; you can scarcely imagine anyone being stiffly conventional in front of it. It thaws outformality, and puts the company who sit around it into easy attitudesof mind and body,—lounging attitudes,—Herbert said.

And this brought up the subject of culture in America, especially asto manner. The backlog period having passed, we are beginning tohave in society people of the cultured manner, as it is called, orpolished bearing, in which the polish is the most noticeable thingabout the man. Not the courtliness, the easy simplicity of theold-school gentleman, in whose presence the milkmaid was as much ather ease as the countess, but something far finer than this. Theseare the people of unruffled demeanor, who never forget it for amoment, and never let you forget it. Their presence is a constantrebuke to society. They are never "jolly;" their laugh is neveranything more than a well-bred smile; they are never betrayed intoany enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a sign of inexperience, of ignorance,of want of culture. They never lose themselves in any cause; theynever heartily praise any man or woman or book; they are superior toall tides of feeling and all outbursts of passion. They are not evenshocked at vulgarity. They are simply indifferent. They are calm,visibly calm, painfully calm; and it is not the eternal, majesticcalmness of the Sphinx either, but a rigid, self-consciousrepression. You would like to put a bent pin in their chair whenthey are about calmly to sit down.

A sitting hen on her nest is calm, but hopeful; she has faith thather eggs are not china. These people appear to be sitting on chinaeggs. Perfect culture has refined all blood, warmth, flavor, out ofthem. We admire them without envy. They are too beautiful in theirmanners to be either prigs or snobs. They are at once our models andour despair. They are properly careful of themselves as models, forthey know that if they should break, society would become a scene ofmere animal confusion.

MANDEVILLE. I think that the best-bred people in the world are the
English.

THE YOUNG LADY. You mean at home.

MANDEVILLE. That's where I saw them. There is no nonsense about acultivated English man or woman. They express themselves sturdilyand naturally, and with no subservience to the opinions of others.There's a sort of hearty sincerity about them that I like. Ages ofculture on the island have gone deeper than the surface, and theyhave simpler and more natural manners than we. There is somethinggood in the full, round tones of their voices.

HERBERT. Did you ever get into a diligence with a growling
English-man who had n't secured the place he wanted?

[Mandeville once spent a week in London, riding about on the tops ofomnibuses.]

THE MISTRESS. Did you ever see an English exquisite at the San
Carlo, and hear him cry "Bwavo"?

MANDEVILLE. At any rate, he acted out his nature, and was n't afraidto.

THE FIRE-TENDER. I think Mandeville is right, for once. The men ofthe best culture in England, in the middle and higher social classes,are what you would call good fellows,—easy and simple in manner,enthusiastic on occasion, and decidedly not cultivated into thesmooth calmness of indifference which some Americans seem to regardas the sine qua non of good breeding. Their position is so assuredthat they do not need that lacquer of calmness of which we werespeaking.

THE YOUNG LADY. Which is different from the manner acquired by thosewho live a great deal in American hotels?

THE MISTRESS. Or the Washington manner?

HERBERT. The last two are the same.

THE FIRE-TENDER. Not exactly. You think you can always tell if aman has learned his society carriage of a dancing-master. Well, youcannot always tell by a person's manner whether he is a habitui ofhotels or of Washington. But these are distinct from the perfectpolish and politeness of indifferentism.

IV

Daylight disenchants. It draws one from the fireside, and dissipatesthe idle illusions of conversation, except under certain conditions.Let us say that the conditions are: a house in the country, with someforest trees near, and a few evergreens, which are Christmas-treesall winter long, fringed with snow, glistening with ice-pendants,cheerful by day and grotesque by night; a snow-storm beginning out ofa dark sky, falling in a soft profusion that fills all the air, itsdazzling whiteness making a light near at hand, which is quite lostin the distant darkling spaces.

If one begins to watch the swirling flakes and crystals, he soon getsan impression of infinity of resources that he can have from nothingelse so powerfully, except it be from Adirondack gnats. Nothingmakes one feel at home like a great snow-storm. Our intelligent catwill quit the fire and sit for hours in the low window, watching thefalling snow with a serious and contented air. His thoughts are hisown, but he is in accord with the subtlest agencies of Nature; onsuch a day he is charged with enough electricity to run a telegraphicbattery, if it could be utilized. The connection between thought andelectricity has not been exactly determined, but the cat is mentallyvery alert in certain conditions of the atmosphere. Feasting hiseyes on the beautiful out-doors does not prevent his attention to theslightest noise in the wainscot. And the snow-storm brings content,but not stupidity, to all the rest of the household.

I can see Mandeville now, rising from his armchair and swinging hislong arms as he strides to the window, and looks out and up, with,"Well, I declare!" Herbert is pretending to read Herbert Spencer'stract on the philosophy of style but he loses much time in looking atthe Young Lady, who is writing a letter, holding her portfolio in herlap,—one of her everlasting letters to one of her fifty everlastingfriends. She is one of the female patriots who save the post-officedepartment from being a disastrous loss to the treasury. Herbert isthinking of the great radical difference in the two sexes, whichlegislation will probably never change; that leads a woman always, towrite letters on her lap and a man on a table,—a distinction whichis commended to the notice of the anti-suffragists.

The Mistress, in a pretty little breakfast-cap, is moving about theroom with a feather-duster, whisking invisible dust from thepicture-frames, and talking with the Parson, who has just come in, andis thawing the snow from his boots on the hearth. The Parson says thethermometer is 15 deg., and going down; that there is a snowdrift acrossthe main church entrance three feet high, and that the house looks as ifit had gone into winter quarters, religion and all. There were only tenpersons at the conference meeting last night, and seven of those werewomen; he wonders how many weather-proof Christians there are in theparish, anyhow.

The Fire-Tender is in the adjoining library, pretending to write; butit is a poor day for ideas. He has written his wife's name abouteleven hundred times, and cannot get any farther. He hears theMistress tell the Parson that she believes he is trying to write alecture on the Celtic Influence in Literature. The Parson says thatit is a first-rate subject, if there were any such influence, andasks why he does n't take a shovel and make a path to the gate.Mandeville says that, by George! he himself should like no betterfun, but it wouldn't look well for a visitor to do it. TheFire-Tender, not to be disturbed by this sort of chaff, keeps onwriting his wife's name.

Then the Parson and the Mistress fall to talking about thesoup-relief, and about old Mrs. Grumples in Pig Alley, who had apresent of one of Stowe's Illustrated Self-Acting Bibles onChristmas, when she had n't coal enough in the house to heat hergruel; and about a family behind the church, a widow and six littlechildren and three dogs; and he did n't believe that any of them hadknown what it was to be warm in three weeks, and as to food, thewoman said, she could hardly beg cold victuals enough to keep thedogs alive.

The Mistress slipped out into the kitchen to fill a basket withprovisions and send it somewhere; and when the Fire-Tender brought ina new forestick, Mandeville, who always wants to talk, and had beensitting drumming his feet and drawing deep sighs, attacked him.

MANDEVILLE. Speaking about culture and manners, did you ever noticehow extremes meet, and that the savage bears himself very much likethe sort of cultured persons we were talking of last night?

THE FIRE-TENDER. In what respect?

MANDEVILLE. Well, you take the North American Indian. He is neverinterested in anything, never surprised at anything. He has bynature that calmness and indifference which your people of culturehave acquired. If he should go into literature as a critic, he wouldscalp and tomahawk with the same emotionless composure, and he woulddo nothing else.

THE FIRE-TENDER. Then you think the red man is a born gentleman ofthe highest breeding?

MANDEVILLE. I think he is calm.

THE FIRE-TENDER. How is it about the war-path and all that?

MANDEVILLE. Oh, these studiously calm and cultured people may havemalice underneath. It takes them to give the most effective "littledigs;" they know how to stick in the pine-splinters and set fire tothem.

HERBERT. But there is more in Mandeville's idea. You bring a redman into a picture-gallery, or a city full of fine architecture, orinto a drawing-room crowded with objects of art and beauty, and he isapparently insensible to them all. Now I have seen country people,—and by country people I don't mean people necessarily who live in thecountry, for everything is mixed in these days,—some of the bestpeople in the world, intelligent, honest, sincere, who acted as theIndian would.

THE MISTRESS. Herbert, if I did n't know you were cynical, I shouldsay you were snobbish.

HERBERT. Such people think it a point of breeding never to speak ofanything in your house, nor to appear to notice it, however beautifulit may be; even to slyly glance around strains their notion ofetiquette. They are like the countryman who confessed afterwardsthat he could hardly keep from laughing at one of Yankee Hill'sentertainments,

THE YOUNG LADY. Do you remember those English people at our house inFlushing last summer, who pleased us all so much with their apparentdelight in everything that was artistic or tasteful, who explored therooms and looked at everything, and were so interested? I supposethat Herbert's country relations, many of whom live in the city,would have thought it very ill-bred.

MANDEVILLE. It's just as I said. The English, the best of them,have become so civilized that they express themselves, in speech andaction, naturally, and are not afraid of their emotions.

THE PARSON. I wish Mandeville would travel more, or that he hadstayed at home. It's wonderful what a fit of Atlantic sea-sicknesswill do for a man's judgment and cultivation. He is prepared topronounce on art, manners, all kinds of culture. There is morenonsense talked about culture than about anything else.

HERBERT. The Parson reminds me of an American country minister Ionce met walking through the Vatican. You could n't impose upon himwith any rubbish; he tested everything by the standards of his nativeplace, and there was little that could bear the test. He had the slyair of a man who could not be deceived, and he went about with hismouth in a pucker of incredulity. There is nothing so placid asrustic conceit. There was something very enjoyable about his calmsuperiority to all the treasures of art.

MANDEVILLE. And the Parson reminds me of another American minister,a consul in an Italian city, who said he was going up to Rome to havea thorough talk with the Pope, and give him a piece of his mind.Ministers seem to think that is their business. They serve it insuch small pieces in order to make it go round.

THE PARSON. Mandeville is an infidel. Come, let's have some music;nothing else will keep him in good humor till lunch-time.

THE MISTRESS. What shall it be?

THE PARSON. Give us the larghetto from Beethoven's second symphony.

The Young Lady puts aside her portfolio. Herbert looks at the younglady. The Parson composes himself for critical purposes. Mandevillesettles himself in a chair and stretches his long legs nearly intothe fire, remarking that music takes the tangles out of him.

After the piece is finished, lunch is announced. It is stillsnowing.

FOURTH STUDY

It is difficult to explain the attraction which the uncanny and eventhe horrible have for most minds. I have seen a delicate woman halffascinated, but wholly disgusted, by one of the most unseemly ofreptiles, vulgarly known as the "blowing viper" of the Alleghanies.She would look at it, and turn away with irresistible shuddering andthe utmost loathing, and yet turn to look at it again and again, onlyto experience the same spasm of disgust. In spite of her aversion,she must have relished the sort of electric mental shock that thesight gave her.

I can no more account for the fascination for us of the stories ofghosts and "appearances," and those weird tales in which the dead arethe chief characters; nor tell why we should fall into converse aboutthem when the winter evenings are far spent, the embers are glazingover on the hearth, and the listener begins to hear the eerie noisesin the house. At such times one's dreams become of importance, andpeople like to tell them and dwell upon them, as if they were a linkbetween the known and unknown, and could give us a clew to thatghostly region which in certain states of the mind we feel to be morereal than that we see.

Recently, when we were, so to say, sitting around the borders of thesupernatural late at night, MANDEVILLE related a dream of his whichhe assured us was true in every particular, and it interested us somuch that we asked him to write it out. In doing so he has curtailedit, and to my mind shorn it of some of its more vivid and picturesquefeatures. He might have worked it up with more art, and given it afinish which the narration now lacks, but I think best to insert itin its simplicity. It seems to me that it may properly be called,

A NEW "VISION OF SIN"

In the winter of 1850 I was a member of one of the leading collegesof this country. I was in moderate circ*mstances pecuniarily,though I was perhaps better furnished with less fleeting riches thanmany others. I was an incessant and indiscriminate reader of books.For the solid sciences I had no particular fancy, but with mentalmodes and habits, and especially with the eccentric and fantastic inthe intellectual and spiritual operations, I was tolerably familiar.All the literature of the supernatural was as real to me as thelaboratory of the chemist, where I saw the continual struggle ofmaterial substances to evolve themselves into more volatile, lesspalpable and coarse forms. My imagination, naturally vivid,stimulated by such repasts, nearly mastered me. At times I couldscarcely tell where the material ceased and the immaterial began (ifI may so express it); so that once and again I walked, as it seemed,from the solid earth onward upon an impalpable plain, where I heardthe same voices, I think, that Joan of Arc heard call to her in thegarden at Domremy. She was inspired, however, while I only lackedexercise. I do not mean this in any literal sense; I only describe astate of mind. I was at this time of spare habit, and nervous,excitable temperament. I was ambitious, proud, and extremelysensitive. I cannot deny that I had seen something of the world, andhad contracted about the average bad habits of young men who have thesole care of themselves, and rather bungle the matter. It isnecessary to this relation to admit that I had seen a trifle more ofwhat is called life than a young man ought to see, but at this periodI was not only sick of my experience, but my habits were as correctas those of any Pharisee in our college, and we had some veryfavorable specimens of that ancient sect.

Nor can I deny that at this period of my life I was in a peculiarmental condition. I well remember an illustration of it. I satwriting late one night, copying a prize essay,—a merely manual task,leaving my thoughts free. It was in June, a sultry night, and aboutmidnight a wind arose, pouring in through the open windows, full ofmournful reminiscence, not of this, but of other summers,—the samewind that De Quincey heard at noonday in midsummer blowing throughthe room where he stood, a mere boy, by the side of his dead sister,—a wind centuries old. As I wrote on mechanically, I became consciousof a presence in the room, though I did not lift my eyes from thepaper on which I wrote. Gradually I came to know that mygrandmother—dead so long ago that I laughed at the idea—was in theroom. She stood beside her old-fashioned spinning-wheel, and quitenear me. She wore a plain muslin cap with a high puff in the crown,a short woolen gown, a white and blue checked apron, and shoes withheels. She did not regard me, but stood facing the wheel, with theleft hand near the spindle, holding lightly between the thumb andforefinger the white roll of wool which was being spun and twisted onit. In her right hand she held a small stick. I heard the sharpclick of this against the spokes of the wheel, then the hum of thewheel, the buzz of the spindles as the twisting yarn was teased bythe whirl of its point, then a step backwards, a pause, a stepforward and the running of the yarn upon the spindle, and again abackward step, the drawing out of the roll and the droning and hum ofthe wheel, most mournfully hopeless sound that ever fell on mortalear. Since childhood it has haunted me. All this time I wrote, andI could hear distinctly the scratching of the pen upon the paper.But she stood behind me (why I did not turn my head I never knew),pacing backward and forward by the spinning-wheel, just as I had ahundred times seen her in childhood in the old kitchen on drowsysummer afternoons. And I heard the step, the buzz and whirl of thespindle, and the monotonous and dreary hum of the mournful wheel.Whether her face was ashy pale and looked as if it might crumble atthe touch, and the border of her white cap trembled in the June windthat blew, I cannot say, for I tell you I did NOT see her. But Iknow she was there, spinning yarn that had been knit into hose yearsand years ago by our fireside. For I was in full possession of myfaculties, and never copied more neatly and legibly any manuscriptthan I did the one that night. And there the phantom (I use the wordout of deference to a public prejudice on this subject) mostpersistently remained until my task was finished, and, closing theportfolio, I abruptly rose. Did I see anything? That is a silly andignorant question. Could I see the wind which had now risenstronger, and drove a few cloud-scuds across the sky, filling thenight, somehow, with a longing that was not altogether born ofreminiscence?

In the winter following, in January, I made an effort to give up theuse of tobacco,—a habit in which I was confirmed, and of which Ihave nothing more to say than this: that I should attribute to italmost all the sin and misery in the world, did I not remember thatthe old Romans attained a very considerable state of corruptionwithout the assistance of the Virginia plant.

On the night of the third day of my abstinence, rendered more nervousand excitable than usual by the privation, I retired late, and laterstill I fell into an uneasy sleep, and thus into a dream, vivid,illuminated, more real than any event of my life. I was at home, andfell sick. The illness developed into a fever, and then a deliriumset in, not an intellectual blank, but a misty and most deliciouswandering in places of incomparable beauty. I learned subsequentlythat our regular physician was not certain to finish me, when aconsultation was called, which did the business. I have thesatisfaction of knowing that they were of the proper school. I laysick for three days.

On the morning of the fourth, at sunrise, I died. The sensation wasnot unpleasant. It was not a sudden shock. I passed out of my bodyas one would walk from the door of his house. There the body lay,—ablank, so far as I was concerned, and only interesting to me as I wasrather entertained with watching the respect paid to it. My friendsstood about the bedside, regarding me (as they seemed to suppose),while I, in a different part of the room, could hardly repress asmile at their mistake, solemnized as they were, and I too, for thatmatter, by my recent demise. A sensation (the word you see ismaterial and inappropriate) of etherealization and imponderabilitypervaded me, and I was not sorry to get rid of such a dull, slow massas I now perceived myself to be, lying there on the bed. When Ispeak of my death, let me be understood to say that there was nochange, except that I passed out of my body and floated to the top ofa bookcase in the corner of the room, from which I looked down. Fora moment I was interested to see my person from the outside, butthereafter I was quite indifferent to the body. I was now simplysoul. I seemed to be a globe, impalpable, transparent, about sixinches in diameter. I saw and heard everything as before. Ofcourse, matter was no obstacle to me, and I went easily and quicklywherever I willed to go. There was none of that tedious process ofcommunicating my wishes to the nerves, and from them to the muscles.I simply resolved to be at a particular place, and I was there. Itwas better than the telegraph.

It seemed to have been intimated to me at my death (birth I halfincline to call it) that I could remain on this earth for four weeksafter my decease, during which time I could amuse myself as I chose.

I chose, in the first place, to see myself decently buried, to stayby myself to the last, and attend my own funeral for once. As mostof those referred to in this true narrative are still living, I amforbidden to indulge in personalities, nor shall I dare to sayexactly how my death affected my friends, even the home circle.Whatever others did, I sat up with myself and kept awake. I saw the"pennies" used instead of the "quarters" which I should havepreferred. I saw myself "laid out," a phrase that has come to havesuch a slang meaning that I smile as I write it. When the body wasput into the coffin, I took my place on the lid.

I cannot recall all the details, and they are commonplace besides.The funeral took place at the church. We all rode thither incarriages, and I, not fancying my place in mine, rode on the outsidewith the undertaker, whom I found to be a good deal more jolly thanhe looked to be. The coffin was placed in front of the pulpit whenwe arrived. I took my station on the pulpit cushion, from whichelevation I had an admirable view of all the ceremonies, and couldhear the sermon. How distinctly I remember the services. I think Icould even at this distance write out the sermon. The tune sung wasof—the usual country selection,—Mount Vernon. I recall the text.I was rather flattered by the tribute paid to me, and my future wasspoken of gravely and as kindly as possible,—indeed, with remarkablecharity, considering that the minister was not aware of my presence.I used to beat him at chess, and I thought, even then, of the lastgame; for, however solemn the occasion might be to others, it was notso to me. With what interest I watched my kinsfolks, and neighborsas they filed past for the last look! I saw, and I remember, whopulled a long face for the occasion and who exhibited genuinesadness. I learned with the most dreadful certainty what peoplereally thought of me. It was a revelation never forgotten.

Several particular acquaintances of mine were talking on the steps aswe passed out.

"Well, old Starr's gone up. Sudden, was n't it? He was a first-ratefellow."

"Yes, queer about some things; but he had some mighty good streaks,"said another. And so they ran on.

Streaks! So that is the reputation one gets during twenty years oflife in this world. Streaks!

After the funeral I rode home with the family. It was pleasanterthan the ride down, though it seemed sad to my relations. They didnot mention me, however, and I may remark, that although I stayedabout home for a week, I never heard my name mentioned by any of thefamily. Arrived at home, the tea-kettle was put on and supper gotready. This seemed to lift the gloom a little, and under theinfluence of the tea they brightened up and gradually got morecheerful. They discussed the sermon and the singing, and the mistakeof the sexton in digging the grave in the wrong place, and the largecongregation. From the mantel-piece I watched the group. They hadwaffles for supper,—of which I had been exceedingly fond, but now Isaw them disappear without a sigh.

For the first day or two of my sojourn at home I was here and thereat all the neighbors, and heard a good deal about my life andcharacter, some of which was not very pleasant, but very wholesome,doubtless, for me to hear. At the expiration of a week thisamusem*nt ceased to be such for I ceased to be talked of. I realizedthe fact that I was dead and gone.

By an act of volition I found myself back at college. I floated intomy own room, which was empty. I went to the room of my two warmestfriends, whose friendship I was and am yet assured of. As usual,half a dozen of our set were lounging there. A game of whist wasjust commencing. I perched on a bust of Dante on the top of thebook-shelves, where I could see two of the hands and give a goodguess at a third. My particular friend Timmins was just shufflingthe cards.

"Be hanged if it is n't lonesome without old Starr. Did you cut? Ishould like to see him lounge in now with his pipe, and with feet onthe mantel-piece proceed to expound on the duplex functions of thesoul."

"There—misdeal," said his vis-a-vis. "Hope there's been no misdealfor old Starr."

"Spades, did you say?" the talk ran on, "never knew Starr wassickly."

"No more was he; stouter than you are, and as brave and plucky as hewas strong. By George, fellows,—how we do get cut down! Last termlittle Stubbs, and now one of the best fellows in the class."

"How suddenly he did pop off,—one for game, honors easy,—he wasgood for the Spouts' Medal this year, too."

"Remember the joke he played on Prof. A., freshman year?" askedanother.

"Remember he borrowed ten dollars of me about that time," said
Timmins's partner, gathering the cards for a new deal.

"Guess he is the only one who ever did," retorted some one.

And so the talk went on, mingled with whist-talk, reminiscent of me,not all exactly what I would have chosen to go into my biography, buton the whole kind and tender, after the fashion of the boys. Atleast I was in their thoughts, and I could see was a good dealregretted,—so I passed a very pleasant evening. Most of thosepresent were of my society, and wore crape on their badges, and allwore the usual crape on the left arm. I learned that the followingafternoon a eulogy would be delivered on me in the chapel.

The eulogy was delivered before members of our society and others,the next afternoon, in the chapel. I need not say that I waspresent. Indeed, I was perched on the desk within reach of thespeaker's hand. The apotheosis was pronounced by my most intimatefriend, Timmins, and I must say he did me ample justice. He neverwas accustomed to "draw it very mild" (to use a vulgarism which Idislike) when he had his head, and on this occasion he entered intothe matter with the zeal of a true friend, and a young man who neverexpected to have another occasion to sing a public "In Memoriam." Itmade my hair stand on end,—metaphorically, of course. From mychildhood I had been extremely precocious. There were anecdotes ofpreternatural brightness, picked up, Heaven knows where, of myeagerness to learn, of my adventurous, chivalrous young soul, and ofmy arduous struggles with chill penury, which was not able (as itappeared) to repress my rage, until I entered this institution, ofwhich I had been ornament, pride, cynosure, and fair promising budblasted while yet its fragrance was mingled with the dew of itsyouth. Once launched upon my college days, Timmins went on with allsails spread. I had, as it were, to hold on to the pulpit cushion.Latin, Greek, the old literatures, I was perfect master of; allhistory was merely a light repast to me; mathematics I glanced at,and it disappeared; in the clouds of modern philosophy I was wrappedbut not obscured; over the field of light literature I familiarlyroamed as the honey-bee over the wide fields of clover which blossomwhite in the Junes of this world! My life was pure, my characterspotless, my name was inscribed among the names of those deathlessfew who were not born to die!

It was a noble eulogy, and I felt before he finished, though I hadmisgivings at the beginning, that I deserved it all. The effect onthe audience was a little different. They said it was a "strong"oration, and I think Timmins got more credit by it than I did. Afterthe performance they stood about the chapel, talking in a subduedtone, and seemed to be a good deal impressed by what they had heard,or perhaps by thoughts of the departed. At least they all soon wentover to Austin's and called for beer. My particular friends calledfor it twice. Then they all lit pipes. The old grocery keeper wasgood enough to say that I was no fool, if I did go off owing him fourdollars. To the credit of human nature, let me here record that thefellows were touched by this remark reflecting upon my memory, andimmediately made up a purse and paid the bill,—that is, they toldthe old man to charge it over to them. College boys are rich incredit and the possibilities of life.

It is needless to dwell upon the days I passed at college during thisprobation. So far as I could see, everything went on as if I werethere, or had never been there. I could not even see the place whereI had dropped out of the ranks. Occasionally I heard my name, but Imust say that four weeks was quite long enough to stay in a worldthat had pretty much forgotten me. There is no great satisfaction inbeing dragged up to light now and then, like an old letter. The casewas somewhat different with the people with whom I had boarded. Theywere relations of mine, and I often saw them weep, and they talked ofme a good deal at twilight and Sunday nights, especially the youngestone, Carrie, who was handsomer than any one I knew, and not mucholder than I. I never used to imagine that she cared particularlyfor me, nor would she have done so, if I had lived, but death broughtwith it a sort of sentimental regret, which, with the help of adaguerreotype, she nursed into quite a little passion. I spent mostof my time there, for it was more congenial than the college.

But time hastened. The last sand of probation leaked out of theglass. One day, while Carrie played (for me, though she knew it not)one of Mendelssohn's "songs without words," I suddenly, yet gently,without self-effort or volition, moved from the house, floated in theair, rose higher, higher, by an easy, delicious, exultant, yetinconceivably rapid motion. The ecstasy of that triumphant flight!Groves, trees, houses, the landscape, dimmed, faded, fled awaybeneath me. Upward mounting, as on angels' wings, with no effort,till the earth hung beneath me a round black ball swinging, remote,in the universal ether. Upward mounting, till the earth, no longerbathed in the sun's rays, went out to my sight, disappeared in theblank. Constellations, before seen from afar, I sailed among.Stars, too remote for shining on earth, I neared, and found to beround globes flying through space with a velocity only equaled by myown. New worlds continually opened on my sight; newfields ofeverlasting space opened and closed behind me.

For days and days—it seemed a mortal forever—I mounted up the greatheavens, whose everlasting doors swung wide. How the worlds andsystems, stars, constellations, neared me, blazed and flashed insplendor, and fled away! At length,—was it not a thousand years?—Isaw before me, yet afar off, a wall, the rocky bourn of that countrywhence travelers come not back, a battlement wider than I couldguess, the height of which I could not see, the depth of which wasinfinite. As I approached, it shone with a splendor never yet beheldon earth. Its solid substance was built of jewels the rarest, andstones of priceless value. It seemed like one solid stone, and yetall the colors of the rainbow were contained in it. The ruby, thediamond, the emerald, the carbuncle, the topaz, the amethyst, thesapphire; of them the wall was built up in harmonious combination.So brilliant was it that all the space I floated in was full of thesplendor. So mild was it and so translucent, that I could look formiles into its clear depths.

Rapidly nearing this heavenly battlement, an immense niche wasdisclosed in its solid face. The floor was one large ruby. Itssloping sides were of pearl. Before I was aware I stood within thebrilliant recess. I say I stood there, for I was there bodily, in myhabit as I lived; how, I cannot explain. Was it the resurrection ofthe body? Before me rose, a thousand feet in height, a wonderfulgate of flashing diamond. Beside it sat a venerable man, with longwhite beard, a robe of light gray, ancient sandals, and a golden keyhanging by a cord from his waist. In the serene beauty of his noblefeatures I saw justice and mercy had met and were reconciled. Icannot describe the majesty of his bearing or the benignity of hisappearance. It is needless to say that I stood before St. Peter, whosits at the Celestial Gate.

I humbly approached, and begged admission. St. Peter arose, andregarded me kindly, yet inquiringly.

"What is your name?" asked he, "and from what place do you come?"

I answered, and, wishing to give a name well known, said I was fromWashington, United States. He looked doubtful, as if he had neverheard the name before.

"Give me," said he, "a full account of your whole life."

I felt instantaneously that there was no concealment possible; alldisguise fell away, and an unknown power forced me to speak absoluteand exact truth. I detailed the events of my life as well as Icould, and the good man was not a little affected by the recital ofmy early trials, poverty, and temptation. It did not seem a verygood life when spread out in that presence, and I trembled as Iproceeded; but I plead youth, inexperience, and bad examples.

"Have you been accustomed," he said, after a time, rather sadly, "tobreak the Sabbath?"

I told him frankly that I had been rather lax in that matter,especially at college. I often went to sleep in the chapel onSunday, when I was not reading some entertaining book. He then askedwho the preacher was, and when I told him, he remarked that I was notso much to blame as he had supposed.

"Have you," he went on, "ever stolen, or told any lie?"

I was able to say no, except admitting as to the first, usual college"conveyances," and as to the last, an occasional "blinder" to theprofessors. He was gracious enough to say that these could beoverlooked as incident to the occasion.

"Have you ever been dissipated, living riotously and keeping latehours?"

"Yes."

This also could be forgiven me as an incident of youth.

"Did you ever," he went on, "commit the crime of using intoxicatingdrinks as a beverage?"

I answered that I had never been a habitual drinker, that I had neverbeen what was called a "moderate drinker," that I had never gone to abar and drank alone; but that I had been accustomed, in company withother young men, on convivial occasions to taste the pleasures of theflowing bowl, sometimes to excess, but that I had also tasted thepains of it, and for months before my demise had refrained fromliquor altogether. The holy man looked grave, but, after reflection,said this might also be overlooked in a young man.

"What," continued he, in tones still more serious, "has been yourconduct with regard to the other sex?"

I fell upon my knees in a tremor of fear. I pulled from my bosom alittle book like the one Leperello exhibits in the opera of "DonGiovanni." There, I said, was a record of my flirtation andinconstancy. I waited long for the decision, but it came in mercy.

"Rise," he cried; "young men will be young men, I suppose. We shallforgive this also to your youth and penitence."

"Your examination is satisfactory, he informed me," after a pause;"you can now enter the abodes of the happy."

Joy leaped within me. We approached the gate. The key turned in thelock. The gate swung noiselessly on its hinges a little open. Outflashed upon me unknown splendors. What I saw in that momentarygleam I shall never whisper in mortal ears. I stood upon thethreshold, just about to enter.

"Stop! one moment," exclaimed St. Peter, laying his hand on myshoulder; "I have one more question to ask you."

I turned toward him.

"Young man, did you ever use tobacco?"

"I both smoked and chewed in my lifetime," I faltered, "but…"

"THEN TO HELL WITH YOU!" he shouted in a voice of thunder.

Instantly the gate closed without noise, and I was flung, hurled,from the battlement, down! down! down! Faster and faster I sank ina dizzy, sickening whirl into an unfathomable space of gloom. Thelight faded. Dampness and darkness were round about me. As before,for days and days I rose exultant in the light, so now forever I sankinto thickening darkness,—and yet not darkness, but a pale, ashylight more fearful.

In the dimness, I at length discovered a wall before me. It ran upand down and on either hand endlessly into the night. It was solid,black, terrible in its frowning massiveness.

Straightway I alighted at the gate,—a dismal crevice hewn into thedripping rock. The gate was wide open, and there sat-I knew him atonce; who does not?—the Arch Enemy of mankind. He co*cked his eye atme in an impudent, low, familiar manner that disgusted me. I sawthat I was not to be treated like a gentleman.

"Well, young man," said he, rising, with a queer grin on his face,"what are you sent here for?

"For using tobacco," I replied.

"Ho!" shouted he in a jolly manner, peculiar to devils, "that's whatmost of 'em are sent here for now."

Without more ado, he called four lesser imps, who ushered me within.What a dreadful plain lay before me! There was a vast city laid outin regular streets, but there were no houses. Along the streets wereplaces of torment and torture exceedingly ingenious and disagreeable.For miles and miles, it seemed, I followed my conductors throughthese horrors, Here was a deep vat of burning tar. Here were rows offiery ovens. I noticed several immense caldron kettles of boilingoil, upon the rims of which little devils sat, with pitchforks inhand, and poked down the helpless victims who floundered in theliquid. But I forbear to go into unseemly details. The whole sceneis as vivid in my mind as any earthly landscape.

After an hour's walk my tormentors halted before the mouth of anoven,—a furnace heated seven times, and now roaring with flames.They grasped me, one hold of each hand and foot. Standing before theblazing mouth, they, with a swing, and a "one, two, THREE…."

I again assure the reader that in this narrative I have set downnothing that was not actually dreamed, and much, very much of thiswonderful vision I have been obliged to omit.

Haec fabula docet: It is dangerous for a young man to leave off theuse of tobacco.

FIFTH STUDY

I

I wish I could fitly celebrate the joyousness of the New Englandwinter. Perhaps I could if I more thoroughly believed in it. Butskepticism comes in with the south wind. When that begins to blow,one feels the foundations of his belief breaking up. This is onlyanother way of saying that it is more difficult, if it be notimpossible, to freeze out orthodoxy, or any fixed notion, than it isto thaw it out; though it is a mere fancy to suppose that this is thereason why the martyrs, of all creeds, were burned at the stake.There is said to be a great relaxation in New England of the ancientstrictness in the direction of toleration of opinion, called by somea lowering of the standard, and by others a raising of the banner ofliberality; it might be an interesting inquiry how much this changeis due to another change,—the softening of the New England winterand the shifting of the Gulf Stream. It is the fashion nowadays torefer almost everything to physical causes, and this hint is agratuitous contribution to the science of metaphysical physics.

The hindrance to entering fully into the joyousness of a New Englandwinter, except far inland among the mountains, is the south wind. Itis a grateful wind, and has done more, I suspect, to demoralizesociety than any other. It is not necessary to remember that itfilled the silken sails of Cleopatra's galley. It blows over NewEngland every few days, and is in some portions of it the prevailingwind. That it brings the soft clouds, and sometimes continues longenough to almost deceive the expectant buds of the fruit trees, andto tempt the robin from the secluded evergreen copses, may benothing; but it takes the tone out of the mind, and engendersdiscontent, making one long for the tropics; it feeds the weakenedimagination on palm-leaves and the lotus. Before we know it webecome demoralized, and shrink from the tonic of the sudden change tosharp weather, as the steamed hydropathic patient does from theplunge. It is the insidious temptation that assails us when we arebraced up to profit by the invigorating rigor of winter.

Perhaps the influence of the four great winds on character is only afancied one; but it is evident on temperament, which is notaltogether a matter of temperature, although the good old deacon usedto say, in his humble, simple way, that his third wife was a verygood woman, but her "temperature was very different from that of theother two." The north wind is full of courage, and puts the staminaof endurance into a man, and it probably would into a woman too ifthere were a series of resolutions passed to that effect. The westwind is hopeful; it has promise and adventure in it, and is, exceptto Atlantic voyagers America-bound, the best wind that ever blew.The east wind is peevishness; it is mental rheumatism and grumbling,and curls one up in the chimney-corner like a cat. And if thechimney ever smokes, it smokes when the wind sits in that quarter.The south wind is full of longing and unrest, of effeminatesuggestions of luxurious ease, and perhaps we might say of modernpoetry,—at any rate, modern poetry needs a change of air. I am notsure but the south is the most powerful of the winds, because of itssweet persuasiveness. Nothing so stirs the blood in spring, when itcomes up out of the tropical latitude; it makes men "longen to gon onpilgrimages."

I did intend to insert here a little poem (as it is quite proper todo in an essay) on the south wind, composed by the Young Lady StayingWith Us, beginning,—

"Out of a drifting southern cloud
My soul heard the night-bird cry,"

but it never got any farther than this. The Young Lady said it wasexceedingly difficult to write the next two lines, because not onlyrhyme but meaning had to be procured. And this is true; anybody canwrite first lines, and that is probably the reason we have so manypoems which seem to have been begun in just this way, that is, with asouth-wind-longing without any thought in it, and it is veryfortunate when there is not wind enough to finish them. Thisemotional poem, if I may so call it, was begun after Herbert wentaway. I liked it, and thought it was what is called "suggestive;"although I did not understand it, especially what the night-bird was;and I am afraid I hurt the Young Lady's feelings by asking her if shemeant Herbert by the "night-bird,"—a very absurd suggestion abouttwo unsentimental people. She said, "Nonsense;" but she afterwardstold the Mistress that there were emotions that one could never putinto words without the danger of being ridiculous; a profound truth.And yet I should not like to say that there is not a tenderlonesomeness in love that can get comfort out of a night-bird in acloud, if there be such a thing. Analysis is the death of sentiment.

But to return to the winds. Certain people impress us as the windsdo. Mandeville never comes in that I do not feel a north-wind vigorand healthfulness in his cordial, sincere, hearty manner, and in hiswholesome way of looking at things. The Parson, you would say, wasthe east wind, and only his intimates know that his peevishness isonly a querulous humor. In the fair west wind I know the Mistressherself, full of hope, and always the first one to discover a bit ofblue in a cloudy sky. It would not be just to apply what I have saidof the south wind to any of our visitors, but it did blow a littlewhile Herbert was here.

II

In point of pure enjoyment, with an intellectual sparkle in it, Isuppose that no luxurious lounging on tropical isles set in tropicalseas compares with the positive happiness one may have before a greatwoodfire (not two sticks laid crossways in a grate), with a veritableNew England winter raging outside. In order to get the highestenjoyment, the faculties must be alert, and not be lulled into a mererecipient dullness. There are those who prefer a warm bath to abrisk walk in the inspiring air, where ten thousand keen influencesminister to the sense of beauty and run along the excited nerves.There are, for instance, a sharpness of horizon outline and adelicacy of color on distant hills which are wanting in summer, andwhich convey to one rightly organized the keenest delight, and arefinement of enjoyment that is scarcely sensuous, not at allsentimental, and almost passing the intellectual line into thespiritual.

I was speaking to Mandeville about this, and he said that I wasdrawing it altogether too fine; that he experienced sensations ofpleasure in being out in almost all weathers; that he rather liked tobreast a north wind, and that there was a certain inspiration insharp outlines and in a landscape in trim winter-quarters, withstripped trees, and, as it were, scudding through the season underbare poles; but that he must say that he preferred the weather inwhich he could sit on the fence by the wood-lot, with the spring sunon his back, and hear the stir of the leaves and the birds beginningtheir housekeeping.

A very pretty idea for Mandeville; and I fear he is getting to haveprivate thoughts about the Young Lady. Mandeville naturally likesthe robustness and sparkle of winter, and it has been a littlesuspicious to hear him express the hope that we shall have an earlyspring.

I wonder how many people there are in New England who know the gloryand inspiration of a winter walk just before sunset, and that, too,not only on days of clear sky, when the west is aflame with a rosycolor, which has no suggestion of languor or unsatisfied longing init, but on dull days, when the sullen clouds hang about the horizon,full of threats of storm and the terrors of the gathering night. Weare very busy with our own affairs, but there is always somethinggoing on out-doors worth looking at; and there is seldom an hourbefore sunset that has not some special attraction. And, besides, itputs one in the mood for the cheer and comfort of the open fire athome.

Probably if the people of New England could have a plebiscitum ontheir weather, they would vote against it, especially against winter.Almost no one speaks well of winter. And this suggests the idea thatmost people here were either born in the wrong place, or do not knowwhat is best for them. I doubt if these grumblers would be anybetter satisfied, or would turn out as well, in the tropics.Everybody knows our virtues,—at least if they believe half we tellthem,—and for delicate beauty, that rare plant, I should look amongthe girls of the New England hills as confidently as anywhere, and Ihave traveled as far south as New Jersey, and west of the GeneseeValley. Indeed, it would be easy to show that the parents of thepretty girls in the West emigrated from New England. And yet—suchis the mystery of Providence—no one would expect that one of thesweetest and most delicate flowers that blooms, the trailing.arbutus, would blossom in this inhospitable climate, and peep forthfrom the edge of a snowbank at that.

It seems unaccountable to a superficial observer that the thousandsof people who are dissatisfied with their climate do not seek a morecongenial one—or stop grumbling. The world is so small, and allparts of it are so accessible, it has so many varieties of climate,that one could surely suit himself by searching; and, then, is itworth while to waste our one short life in the midst of unpleasantsurroundings and in a constant friction with that which isdisagreeable? One would suppose that people set down on this littleglobe would seek places on it most agreeable to themselves. It mustbe that they are much more content with the climate and country uponwhich they happen, by the accident of their birth, than they pretendto be.

III

Home sympathies and charities are most active in the winter. Comingin from my late walk,—in fact driven in by a hurrying north windthat would brook no delay,—a wind that brought snow that did notseem to fall out of a bounteous sky, but to be blown from polarfields,—I find the Mistress returned from town, all in a glow ofphilanthropic excitement.

There has been a meeting of a woman's association for Amelioratingthe Condition of somebody here at home. Any one can belong to it bypaying a dollar, and for twenty dollars one can become a lifeAmeliorator,—a sort of life assurance. The Mistress, at themeeting, I believe, "seconded the motion" several times, and is oneof the Vice-Presidents; and this family honor makes me feel almost asif I were a president of something myself. These little distinctionsare among the sweetest things in life, and to see one's nameofficially printed stimulates his charity, and is almost assatisfactory as being the chairman of a committee or the mover of aresolution. It is, I think, fortunate, and not at all discreditable,that our little vanity, which is reckoned among our weaknesses, isthus made to contribute to the activity of our nobler powers.Whatever we may say, we all of us like distinction; and probablythere is no more subtle flattery than that conveyed in the whisper,"That's he," "That's she."

There used to be a society for ameliorating the condition of theJews; but they were found to be so much more adept than other peoplein ameliorating their own condition that I suppose it was given up.Mandeville says that to his knowledge there are a great many peoplewho get up ameliorating enterprises merely to be conspicuously busyin society, or to earn a little something in a good cause. They seemto think that the world owes them a living because they arephilanthropists. In this Mandeville does not speak with his usualcharity. It is evident that there are Jews, and some Gentiles, whosecondition needs ameliorating, and if very little is reallyaccomplished in the effort for them, it always remains true that thecharitable reap a benefit to themselves. It is one of the beautifulcompensations of this life that no one can sincerely try to helpanother without helping himself.

OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. Why is it that almost all philanthropistsand reformers are disagreeable?

I ought to explain who our next-door neighbor is. He is the personwho comes in without knocking, drops in in the most natural way, ashis wife does also, and not seldom in time to take the after-dinnercup of tea before the fire. Formal society begins as soon as youlock your doors, and only admit visitors through the media of bellsand servants. It is lucky for us that our next-door neighbor ishonest.

THE PARSON. Why do you class reformers and philanthropists together?Those usually called reformers are not philanthropists at all. Theyare agitators. Finding the world disagreeable to themselves, theywish to make it as unpleasant to others as possible.

MANDEVILLE. That's a noble view of your fellow-men.

OUR NEXT DOOR. Well, granting the distinction, why are both apt tobe unpleasant people to live with?

THE PARSON. As if the unpleasant people who won't mind their ownbusiness were confined to the classes you mention! Some of the bestpeople I know are philanthropists,—I mean the genuine ones, and notthe uneasy busybodies seeking notoriety as a means of living.

THE FIRE-TENDER. It is not altogether the not minding their ownbusiness. Nobody does that. The usual explanation is, that peoplewith one idea are tedious. But that is not all of it. For fewpersons have more than one idea,—ministers, doctors, lawyers,teachers, manufacturers, merchants,—they all think the world theylive in is the central one.

MANDEVILLE. And you might add authors. To them nearly all the lifeof the world is in letters, and I suppose they would be astonished ifthey knew how little the thoughts of the majority of people areoccupied with books, and with all that vast thought circulation whichis the vital current of the world to book-men. Newspapers havereached their present power by becoming unliterary, and reflectingall the interests of the world.

THE MISTRESS. I have noticed one thing, that the most popularpersons in society are those who take the world as it is, find theleast fault, and have no hobbies. They are always wanted to dinner.

THE YOUNG LADY. And the other kind always appear to me to want adinner.

THE FIRE-TENDER. It seems to me that the real reason why reformersand some philanthropists are unpopular is, that they disturb ourserenity and make us conscious of our own shortcomings. It is onlynow and then that a whole people get a spasm of reformatory fervor,of investigation and regeneration. At other times they rather hatethose who disturb their quiet.

OUR NEXT DOOR. Professional reformers and philanthropists areinsufferably conceited and intolerant.

THE MISTRESS. Everything depends upon the spirit in which a reformor a scheme of philanthropy is conducted.

MANDEVILLE. I attended a protracted convention of reformers of acertain evil, once, and had the pleasure of taking dinner with atableful of them. It was one of those country dinners accompaniedwith green tea. Every one disagreed with every one else, and youwould n't wonder at it, if you had seen them. They were people withwhom good food wouldn't agree. George Thompson was expected at theconvention, and I remember that there was almost a cordiality in thetalk about him, until one sallow brother casually mentioned thatGeorge took snuff,—when a chorus of deprecatory groans went up fromthe table. One long-faced maiden in spectacles, with purple ribbonsin her hair, who drank five cups of tea by my count, declared thatshe was perfectly disgusted, and did n't want to hear him speak. Inthe course of the meal the talk ran upon the discipline of children,and how to administer punishment. I was quite taken by the remark ofa thin, dyspeptic man who summed up the matter by growling out in aharsh, deep bass voice, "Punish 'em in love!" It sounded as if he hadsaid, "Shoot 'em on the spot!"

THE PARSON. I supposed you would say that he was a minister. Thereis another thing about those people. I think they are workingagainst the course of nature. Nature is entirely indifferent to anyreform. She perpetuates a fault as persistently as a virtue.There's a split in my thumb-nail that has been scrupulously continuedfor many years, not withstanding all my efforts to make the nailresume its old regularity. You see the same thing in trees whosebark is cut, and in melons that have had only one summer's intimacywith squashes. The bad traits in character are passed down fromgeneration to generation with as much care as the good ones. Nature,unaided, never reforms anything.

MANDEVILLE. Is that the essence of Calvinism?

THE PARSON. Calvinism has n't any essence, it's a fact.

MANDEVILLE. When I was a boy, I always associated Calvinism andcalomel together. I thought that homeopathy—similia, etc.—had doneaway with both of them.

OUR NEXT DOOR (rising). If you are going into theology, I'm off..

IV

I fear we are not getting on much with the joyousness of winter. Inorder to be exhilarating it must be real winter. I have noticed thatthe lower the thermometer sinks the more fiercely the north windrages, and the deeper the snow is, the higher rise the spirits of thecommunity. The activity of the "elements" has a great effect uponcountry folk especially; and it is a more wholesome excitement thanthat caused by a great conflagration. The abatement of a snow-stormthat grows to exceptional magnitude is regretted, for there is alwaysthe half-hope that this will be, since it has gone so far, thelargest fall of snow ever known in the region, burying out of sightthe great fall of 1808, the account of which is circ*mstantially andaggravatingly thrown in our way annually upon the least provocation.We all know how it reads: "Some said it began at daylight, othersthat it set in after sunrise; but all agree that by eight o'clockFriday morning it was snowing in heavy masses that darkened the air."

The morning after we settled the five—or is it seven?—points ofCalvinism, there began a very hopeful snow-storm, one of thosewide-sweeping, careering storms that may not much affect the city,but which strongly impress the country imagination with a sense ofthe personal qualities of the weather,—power, persistency,fierceness, and roaring exultation. Out-doors was terrible to thosewho looked out of windows, and heard the raging wind, and saw thecommotion in all the high tree-tops and the writhing of the lowevergreens, and could not summon resolution to go forth and breastand conquer the bluster. The sky was dark with snow, which was notpermitted to fall peacefully like a blessed mantle, as it sometimesdoes, but was blown and rent and tossed like the split canvas of aship in a gale. The world was taken possession of by the demons ofthe air, who had their will of it. There is a sort of fascination insuch a scene, equal to that of a tempest at sea, and without itsattendant haunting sense of peril; there is no fear that the housewill founder or dash against your neighbor's cottage, which is dimlyseen anchored across the field; at every thundering onset there is nofear that the cook's galley will upset, or the screw break loose andsmash through the side, and we are not in momently expectation of thetinkling of the little bell to "stop her." The snow rises indrifting waves, and the naked trees bend like strained masts; but solong as the window-blinds remain fast, and the chimney-tops do notgo, we preserve an equal mind. Nothing more serious can happen thanthe failure of the butcher's and the grocer's carts, unless, indeed,the little news-carrier should fail to board us with the world'sdaily bulletin, or our next-door neighbor should be deterred fromcoming to sit by the blazing, excited fire, and interchange thetrifling, harmless gossip of the day. The feeling of seclusion onsuch a day is sweet, but the true friend who does brave the storm andcome is welcomed with a sort of enthusiasm that his arrival inpleasant weather would never excite. The snow-bound in their Arctichulk are glad to see even a wandering Esquimau.

On such a day I recall the great snow-storms on the northern NewEngland hills, which lasted for a week with no cessation, with nosunrise or sunset, and no observation at noon; and the sky all thewhile dark with the driving snow, and the whole world full of thenoise of the rioting Boreal forces; until the roads were obliterated,the fences covered, and the snow was piled solidly above thefirst-story windows of the farmhouse on one side, and drifted beforethe front door so high that egress could only be had by tunneling thebank.

After such a battle and siege, when the wind fell and the sunstruggled out again, the pallid world lay subdued and tranquil, andthe scattered dwellings were not unlike wrecks stranded by thetempest and half buried in sand. But when the blue sky again bentover all, the wide expanse of snow sparkled like diamond-fields, andthe chimney signal-smokes could be seen, how beautiful was thepicture! Then began the stir abroad, and the efforts to open upcommunication through roads, or fields, or wherever paths could bebroken, and the ways to the meeting-house first of all. Then fromevery house and hamlet the men turned out with shovels, with thepatient, lumbering oxen yoked to the sleds, to break the roads,driving into the deepest drifts, shoveling and shouting as if thesevere labor were a holiday frolic, the courage and the hilarityrising with the difficulties encountered; and relief parties, meetingat length in the midst of the wide white desolation, hailed eachother as chance explorers in new lands, and made the wholecountry-side ring with the noise of their congratulations. There wasas much excitement and healthy stirring of the blood in it as in theFourth of July, and perhaps as much patriotism. The boy saw it indumb show from the distant, low farmhouse window, and wished he werea man. At night there were great stories of achievement told by thecavernous fireplace; great latitude was permitted in the estimationof the size of particular drifts, but never any agreement was reachedas to the "depth on a level." I have observed since that people arequite as apt to agree upon the marvelous and the exceptional as uponsimple facts.

V

By the firelight and the twilight, the Young Lady is finishing aletter to Herbert,—writing it, literally, on her knees, transformingthus the simple deed into an act of devotion. Mandeville says thatit is bad for her eyes, but the sight of it is worse for his eyes.He begins to doubt the wisdom of reliance upon that worn apothegmabout absence conquering love.

Memory has the singular characteristic of recalling in a friendabsent, as in a journey long past, only that which is agreeable.Mandeville begins to wish he were in New South Wales.

I did intend to insert here a letter of Herbert's to the Young Lady,—obtained, I need not say, honorably, as private letters which getinto print always are,—not to gratify a vulgar curiosity, butto show how the most unsentimental and cynical people are affected bythe master passion. But I cannot bring myself to do it. Even in theinterests of science one has no right to make an autopsy of twoloving hearts, especially when they are suffering under a late attackof the one agreeable epidemic.

All the world loves a lover, but it laughs at him none the less inhis extravagances. He loses his accustomed reticence; he hassomething of the martyr's willingness for publicity; he would evenlike to show the sincerity of his devotion by some piece of openheroism. Why should he conceal a discovery which has transformed theworld to him, a secret which explains all the mysteries of nature andhuman-ity? He is in that ecstasy of mind which prompts those whowere never orators before to rise in an experience-meeting and pourout a flood of feeling in the tritest language and the mostconventional terms. I am not sure that Herbert, while in this glow,would be ashamed of his letter in print, but this is one of the caseswhere chancery would step in and protect one from himself by his nextfriend. This is really a delicate matter, and perhaps it is brutalto allude to it at all.

In truth, the letter would hardly be interesting in print. Love hasa marvelous power of vivifying language and charging the simplestwords with the most tender meaning, of restoring to them the powerthey had when first coined. They are words of fire to those two whoknow their secret, but not to others. It is generally admitted thatthe best love-letters would not make very good literature."Dearest," begins Herbert, in a burst of originality, felicitouslyselecting a word whose exclusiveness shuts out all the world but one,and which is a whole letter, poem, confession, and creed in onebreath. What a weight of meaning it has to carry! There may bebeauty and wit and grace and naturalness and even the splendor offortune elsewhere, but there is one woman in the world whose sweetpresence would be compensation for the loss of all else. It is notto be reasoned about; he wants that one; it is her plume dancing downthe sunny street that sets his heart beating; he knows her form amonga thousand, and follows her; he longs to run after her carriage,which the cruel coachman whirls out of his sight. It is marvelous tohim that all the world does not want her too, and he is in a panicwhen he thinks of it. And what exquisite flattery is in that littleword addressed to her, and with what sweet and meek triumph sherepeats it to herself, with a feeling that is not altogether pity forthose who still stand and wait. To be chosen out of all theavailable world—it is almost as much bliss as it is to choose. "Allthat long, long stage-ride from Blim's to Portage I thought of youevery moment, and wondered what you were doing and how you werelooking just that moment, and I found the occupation so charming thatI was almost sorry when the journey was ended." Not much in that!But I have no doubt the Young Lady read it over and over, and dweltalso upon every moment, and found in it new proof of unshakenconstancy, and had in that and the like things in the letter a senseof the sweetest communion. There is nothing in this letter that weneed dwell on it, but I am convinced that the mail does not carry anyother letters so valuable as this sort.

I suppose that the appearance of Herbert in this new lightunconsciously gave tone a little to the evening's talk; not thatanybody mentioned him, but Mandeville was evidently generalizing fromthe qualities that make one person admired by another to those thatwin the love of mankind.

MANDEVILLE. There seems to be something in some persons that winsthem liking, special or general, independent almost of what they door say.

THE MISTRESS. Why, everybody is liked by some one.

MANDEVILLE. I'm not sure of that. There are those who arefriendless, and would be if they had endless acquaintances. But, totake the case away from ordinary examples, in which habit and athousand circ*mstances influence liking, what is it that determinesthe world upon a personal regard for authors whom it has never seen?

THE FIRE-TENDER. Probably it is the spirit shown in their writings.

THE MISTRESS. More likely it is a sort of tradition; I don't believethat the world has a feeling of personal regard for any author whowas not loved by those who knew him most intimately.

THE FIRE-TENDER. Which comes to the same thing. The qualities, thespirit, that got him the love of his acquaintances he put into hisbooks.

MANDEVILLE. That does n't seem to me sufficient. Shakespeare hasput everything into his plays and poems, swept the whole range ofhuman sympathies and passions, and at times is inspired by thesweetest spirit that ever man had.

THE YOUNG LADY. No one has better interpreted love.

MANDEVILLE. Yet I apprehend that no person living has any personalregard for Shakespeare, or that his personality affects many,—exceptthey stand in Stratford church and feel a sort of awe at the thoughtthat the bones of the greatest poet are so near them.

THE PARSON. I don't think the world cares personally for any mereman or woman dead for centuries.

MANDEVILLE. But there is a difference. I think there is stillrather a warm feeling for Socrates the man, independent of what hesaid, which is little known. Homer's works are certainly betterknown, but no one cares personally for Homer any more than for anyother shade.

OUR NEXT DOOR. Why not go back to Moses? We've got the eveningbefore us for digging up people.

MANDEVILLE. Moses is a very good illustration. No name of antiquityis better known, and yet I fancy he does not awaken the same kind ofpopular liking that Socrates does.

OUR NEXT DOOR. Fudge! You just get up in any lecture assembly and
propose three cheers for Socrates, and see where you'll be.
Mandeville ought to be a missionary, and read Robert Browning to the
Fijis.

THE FIRE-TENDER. How do you account for the alleged personal regardfor Socrates?

THE PARSON. Because the world called Christian is still more thanhalf heathen.

MANDEVILLE. He was a plain man; his sympathies were with the people;he had what is roughly known as "horse-sense," and he was homely.Franklin and Abraham Lincoln belong to his class. They were allphilosophers of the shrewd sort, and they all had humor. It wasfortunate for Lincoln that, with his other qualities, he was homely.That was the last touching recommendation to the popular heart.

THE MISTRESS. Do you remember that ugly brown-stone statue of St.Antonio by the bridge in Sorrento? He must have been a coarse saint,patron of pigs as he was, but I don't know any one anywhere, or thehomely stone image of one, so loved by the people.

OUR NEXT DOOR. Ugliness being trump, I wonder more people don't win.Mandeville, why don't you get up a "centenary" of Socrates, and putup his statue in the Central Park? It would make that one of Lincolnin Union Square look beautiful.

THE PARSON. Oh, you'll see that some day, when they have a museumthere illustrating the "Science of Religion."

THE FIRE-TENDER. Doubtless, to go back to what we were talking of,the world has a fondness for some authors, and thinks of them with anaffectionate and half-pitying familiarity; and it may be that thisgrows out of something in their lives quite as much as anything intheir writings. There seems to be more disposition of personalliking to Thackeray than to Dickens, now both are dead,—a resultthat would hardly have been predicted when the world was crying overLittle Nell, or agreeing to hate Becky Sharp.

THE YOUNG LADY. What was that you were telling about Charles Lamb,the other day, Mandeville? Is not the popular liking for himsomewhat independent of his writings?

MANDEVILLE. He is a striking example of an author who is loved.Very likely the remembrance of his tribulations has still somethingto do with the tenderness felt for him. He supported no dignity andpermitted a familiarity which indicated no self-appreciation of hisreal rank in the world of letters. I have heard that hisacquaintances familiarly called him "Charley."

OUR NEXT DOOR. It's a relief to know that! Do you happen to knowwhat Socrates was called?

MANDEVILLE. I have seen people who knew Lamb very well. One of themtold me, as illustrating his want of dignity, that as he was goinghome late one night through the nearly empty streets, he was met by aroystering party who were making a night of it from tavern to tavern.They fell upon Lamb, attracted by his odd figure and hesitatingmanner, and, hoisting him on their shoulders, carried him off,singing as they went. Lamb enjoyed the lark, and did not tell themwho he was. When they were tired of lugging him, they lifted him,with much effort and difficulty, to the top of a high wall, and lefthim there amid the broken bottles, utterly unable to get down. Lambremained there philosophically in the enjoyment of his noveladventure, until a passing watchman rescued him from his ridiculoussituation.

THE FIRE-TENDER. How did the story get out?

MANDEVILLE. Oh, Lamb told all about it next morning; and when askedafterwards why he did so, he replied that there was no fun in itunless he told it.

SIXTH STUDY

I

The King sat in the winter-house in the ninth month, and there was afire on the hearth burning before him . . . . When Jehudi hadread three or four leaves he cut it with the penknife.

That seems to be a pleasant and home-like picture from a not veryremote period,—less than twenty-five hundred years ago, and manycenturies after the fall of Troy. And that was not so very long ago,for Thebes, in the splendid streets of which Homer wandered and sangto the kings when Memphis, whose ruins are older than history, wasits younger rival, was twelve centuries old when Paris ran away withHelen.

I am sorry that the original—and you can usually do anything withthe "original"—does not bear me out in saying that it was a pleasantpicture. I should like to believe that Jehoiakiin—for that was thesingular name of the gentleman who sat by his hearthstone—had justreceived the Memphis "Palimpsest," fifteen days in advance of thedate of its publication, and that his secretary was reading to himthat monthly, and cutting its leaves as he read. I should like tohave seen it in that year when Thales was learning astronomy inMemphis, and Necho was organizing his campaign against Carchemish.If Jehoiakim took the "Attic Quarterly," he might have read itscomments on the banishment of the Alcmaeonida, and its gibes atSolon for his prohibitory laws, forbidding the sale of unguents,limiting the luxury of dress, and interfering with the sacred rightsof mourners to passionately bewail the dead in the Asiatic manner;the same number being enriched with contributions from two risingpoets,—a lyric of love by Sappho, and an ode sent by Anacreon fromTeos, with an editorial note explaining that the Maces was notresponsible for the sentiments of the poem.

But, in fact, the gentleman who sat before the backlog in hiswinter-house had other things to think of. For Nebuchadnezzar wascoming that way with the chariots and horses of Babylon and a greatcrowd of marauders; and the king had not even the poor choice whetherhe would be the vassal of the Chaldean or of the Egyptian. To us,this is only a ghostly show of monarchs and conquerors stalkingacross vast historic spaces. It was no doubt a vulgar enough sceneof war and plunder. The great captains of that age went about toharry each other's territories and spoil each other's cities verymuch as we do nowadays, and for similar reasons;—Napoleon the Greatin Moscow, Napoleon the Small in Italy, Kaiser William in Paris,Great Scott in Mexico! Men have not changed much.

—The Fire-Tender sat in his winter-garden in the third month; therewas a fire on the hearth burning before him. He cut the leaves of"Scribner's Monthly" with his penknife, and thought of Jehoiakim.

That seems as real as the other. In the garden, which is a room ofthe house, the tall callas, rooted in the ground, stand about thefountain; the sun, streaming through the glass, illumines themany-hued flowers. I wonder what Jehoiakim did with the mealy-bug onhis passion-vine, and if he had any way of removing the scale-bugfrom his African acacia? One would like to know, too, how he treatedthe red spider on the Le Marque rose. The record is silent. I donot doubt he had all these insects in his winter-garden, and theaphidae besides; and he could not smoke them out with tobacco, forthe world had not yet fallen into its second stage of the knowledgeof good and evil by eating the forbidden tobacco-plant.

I confess that this little picture of a fire on the hearth so manycenturies ago helps to make real and interesting to me that somewhatmisty past. No doubt the lotus and the acanthus from the Nile grewin that winter-house, and perhaps Jehoiakim attempted—the mostdifficult thing in the world the cultivation of the wild flowers fromLebanon. Perhaps Jehoiakim was interested also, as I am through thisancient fireplace,—which is a sort of domestic window into theancient world,—in the loves of Bernice and Abaces at the court ofthe Pharaohs. I see that it is the same thing as the sentiment—perhaps it is the shrinking which every soul that is a soul has,sooner or later, from isolation—which grew up between Herbert andthe Young Lady Staying With Us. Jeremiah used to come in to thatfireside very much as the Parson does to ours. The Parson, to besure, never prophesies, but he grumbles, and is the chorus in theplay that sings the everlasting ai ai of "I told you so!" Yet welike the Parson. He is the sprig of bitter herb that makes thepottage wholesome. I should rather, ten times over, dispense withthe flatterers and the smooth-sayers than the grumblers. But thegrumblers are of two sorts,—the healthful-toned and the whiners.There are makers of beer who substitute for the clean bitter of thehops some deleterious drug, and then seek to hide the fraud by somecloying sweet. There is nothing of this sickish drug in the Parson'stalk, nor was there in that of Jeremiah, I sometimes think there isscarcely enough of this wholesome tonic in modern society. TheParson says he never would give a child sugar-coated pills.Mandeville says he never would give them any. After all, you cannothelp liking Mandeville.

II

We were talking of this late news from Jerusalem. The Fire-Tenderwas saying that it is astonishing how much is telegraphed usfrom the East that is not half so interesting. He was at a lossphilosophically to account for the fact that the world is so eager toknow the news of yesterday which is unimportant, and so indifferentto that of the day before which is of some moment.

MANDEVILLE. I suspect that it arises from the want of imagination.People need to touch the facts, and nearness in time is contiguity.It would excite no interest to bulletin the last siege of Jerusalemin a village where the event was unknown, if the date was appended;and yet the account of it is incomparably more exciting than that ofthe siege of Metz.

OUR NEXT DOOR. The daily news is a necessity. I cannot get alongwithout my morning paper. The other morning I took it up, and wasabsorbed in the telegraphic columns for an hour nearly. I thoroughlyenjoyed the feeling of immediate contact with all the world ofyesterday, until I read among the minor items that Patrick Donahue,of the city of New York, died of a sunstroke. If he had frozen todeath, I should have enjoyed that; but to die of sunstroke inFebruary seemed inappropriate, and I turned to the date of the paper.When I found it was printed in July, I need not say that I lost allinterest in it, though why the trivialities and crimes and accidents,relating to people I never knew, were not as good six months afterdate as twelve hours, I cannot say.

THE FIRE-TENDER. You know that in Concord the latest news, except aremark or two by Thoreau or Emerson, is the Vedas. I believe theRig-Veda is read at the breakfast-table instead of the Bostonjournals.

THE PARSON. I know it is read afterward instead of the Bible.

MANDEVILLE. That is only because it is supposed to be older. I haveunderstood that the Bible is very well spoken of there, but it is notantiquated enough to be an authority.

OUR NEXT DOOR. There was a project on foot to put it into thecirculating library, but the title New in the second part wasconsidered objectionable.

HERBERT. Well, I have a good deal of sympathy with Concord as to thenews. We are fed on a daily diet of trivial events and gossip, ofthe unfruitful sayings of thoughtless men and women, until our mentaldigestion is seriously impaired; the day will come when no one willbe able to sit down to a thoughtful, well-wrought book and assimilateits contents.

THE MISTRESS. I doubt if a daily newspaper is a necessity, in thehigher sense of the word.

THE PARSON. Nobody supposes it is to women,—that is, if they cansee each other.

THE MISTRESS. Don't interrupt, unless you have something to say;though I should like to know how much gossip there is afloat that theminister does not know. The newspaper may be needed in society, buthow quickly it drops out of mind when one goes beyond the bounds ofwhat is called civilization. You remember when we were in the depthsof the woods last summer how difficult it was to get up any interestin the files of late papers that reached us, and how unreal all thestruggle and turmoil of the world seemed. We stood apart, and couldestimate things at their true value.

THE YOUNG LADY. Yes, that was real life. I never tired of theguide's stories; there was some interest in the intelligence that adeer had been down to eat the lily-pads at the foot of the lake thenight before; that a bear's track was seen on the trail we crossedthat day; even Mandeville's fish-stories had a certain air ofprobability; and how to roast a trout in the ashes and serve him hotand juicy and clean, and how to cook soup and prepare coffee and heatdish-water in one tin-pail, were vital problems.

THE PARSON. You would have had no such problems at home. Why willpeople go so far to put themselves to such inconvenience? I hate thewoods. Isolation breeds conceit; there are no people so conceited asthose who dwell in remote wildernesses and live mostly alone.

THE YOUNG LADY. For my part, I feel humble in the presence ofmountains, and in the vast stretches of the wilderness.

THE PARSON. I'll be bound a woman would feel just as nobody wouldexpect her to feel, under given circ*mstances.

MANDEVILLE. I think the reason why the newspaper and the world itcarries take no hold of us in the wilderness is that we become a kindof vegetable ourselves when we go there. I have often attempted toimprove my mind in the woods with good solid books. You might aswell offer a bunch of celery to an oyster. The mind goes to sleep:the senses and the instincts wake up. The best I can do when itrains, or the trout won't bite, is to read Dumas's novels. Theiringenuity will almost keep a man awake after supper, by thecamp-fire. And there is a kind of unity about them that I like; thehistory is as good as the morality.

OUR NEXT DOOR. I always wondered where Mandeville got his historicalfacts.

THE MISTRESS. Mandeville misrepresents himself in the woods. Iheard him one night repeat "The Vision of Sir Launfal"—(THEFIRE-TENDER. Which comes very near being our best poem.)—as we werecrossing the lake, and the guides became so absorbed in it that theyforgot to paddle, and sat listening with open mouths, as if it hadbeen a panther story.

THE PARSON. Mandeville likes to show off well enough. I heard thathe related to a woods' boy up there the whole of the Siege of Troy.The boy was very much interested, and said "there'd been a man upthere that spring from Troy, looking up timber." Mandeville alwayscarries the news when he goes into the country.

MANDEVILLE. I'm going to take the Parson's sermon on Jonah nextsummer; it's the nearest to anything like news we've had from hispulpit in ten years. But, seriously, the boy was very well informed.He'd heard of Albany; his father took in the "Weekly Tribune," and hehad a partial conception of Horace Greeley.

OUR NEXT DOOR. I never went so far out of the world in America yetthat the name of Horace Greeley did n't rise up before me. One ofthe first questions asked by any camp-fire is, "Did ye ever seeHorace?"

HERBERT. Which shows the power of the press again. But I have oftenremarked how little real conception of the moving world, as it is,people in remote regions get from the newspaper. It needs to be readin the midst of events. A chip cast ashore in a refluent eddy tellsno tale of the force and swiftness of the current.

OUR NEXT DOOR. I don't exactly get the drift of that last remark;but I rather like a remark that I can't understand; like thelandlady's indigestible bread, it stays by you.

HERBERT. I see that I must talk in words of one syllable. Thenewspaper has little effect upon the remote country mind, because theremote country mind is interested in a very limited number of things.Besides, as the Parson says, it is conceited. The most accomplishedscholar will be the butt of all the guides in the woods, because hecannot follow a trail that would puzzle a sable (saple the trapperscall it).

THE PARSON. It's enough to read the summer letters that people writeto the newspapers from the country and the woods. Isolated from theactivity of the world, they come to think that the little adventuresof their stupid days and nights are important. Talk about that beingreal life! Compare the letters such people write with the othercontents of the newspaper, and you will see which life is real.That's one reason I hate to have summer come, the country letters setin.

THE MISTRESS. I should like to see something the Parson does n'thate to have come.

MANDEVILLE. Except his quarter's salary; and the meeting of the
American Board.

THE FIRE-TENDER. I don't see that we are getting any nearer thesolution of the original question. The world is evidently interestedin events simply because they are recent.

OUR NEXT DOOR. I have a theory that a newspaper might be publishedat little cost, merely by reprinting the numbers of years before,only altering the dates; just as the Parson preaches over hissermons.

THE FIRE-TENDER. It's evident we must have a higher order ofnews-gatherers. It has come to this, that the newspaper furnishesthought-material for all the world, actually prescribes from day today the themes the world shall think on and talk about. Theoccupation of news-gathering becomes, therefore, the most important.When you think of it, it is astonishing that this department shouldnot be in the hands of the ablest men, accomplished scholars,philosophical observers, discriminating selectors of the news of theworld that is worth thinking over and talking about. The editorialcomments frequently are able enough, but is it worth while keeping anexpensive mill going to grind chaff? I sometimes wonder, as I openmy morning paper, if nothing did happen in the twenty-four hoursexcept crimes, accidents, defalcations, deaths of unknown loafers,robberies, monstrous births,—say about the level of police-courtnews.

OUR NEXT DOOR. I have even noticed that murders have deteriorated;they are not so high-toned and mysterious as they used to be.

THE FIRE-TENDER. It is true that the newspapers have improved vastlywithin the last decade.

HERBERT. I think, for one, that they are very much above the levelof the ordinary gossip of the country.

THE FIRE-TENDER. But I am tired of having the under-world stilloccupy so much room in the newspapers. The reporters are rather morealert for a dog-fight than a philological convention. It must bethat the good deeds of the world outnumber the bad in any given day;and what a good reflex action it would have on society if they couldbe more fully reported than the bad! I suppose the Parson would callthis the Enthusiasm of Humanity.

THE PARSON. You'll see how far you can lift yourself up by yourboot-straps.

HERBERT. I wonder what influence on the quality (I say nothing ofquantity) of news the coming of women into the reporter's andeditor's work will have.

OUR NEXT DOOR. There are the baby-shows; they make cheerful reading.

THE MISTRESS. All of them got up by speculating men, who impose uponthe vanity of weak women.

HERBERT. I think women reporters are more given to personal detailsand gossip than the men. When I read the Washington correspondence Iam proud of my country, to see how many Apollo Belvederes, Adonises,how much marble brow and piercing eye and hyacinthine locks, we havein the two houses of Congress.

THE YOUNG LADY. That's simply because women understand the personalweakness of men; they have a long score of personal flattery to payoff too.

MANDEVILLE. I think women will bring in elements of brightness,picturesqueness, and purity very much needed. Women have a power ofinvesting simple ordinary things with a charm; men are bunglingnarrators compared with them.

THE PARSON. The mistake they make is in trying to write, andespecially to "stump-speak," like men; next to an effeminate manthere is nothing so disagreeable as a mannish woman.

HERBERT. I heard one once address a legislative committee. Theknowing air, the familiar, jocular, smart manner, the nodding andwinking innuendoes, supposed to be those of a man "up to snuff," andau fait in political wiles, were inexpressibly comical. And yet theexhibition was pathetic, for it had the suggestive vulgarity of awoman in man's clothes. The imitation is always a dreary failure.

THE MISTRESS. Such women are the rare exceptions. I am ready todefend my sex; but I won't attempt to defend both sexes in one.

THE FIRE-TENDER. I have great hope that women will bring into thenewspaper an elevating influence; the common and sweet life ofsociety is much better fitted to entertain and instruct us than theexceptional and extravagant. I confess (saving the Mistress'spresence) that the evening talk over the dessert at dinner is muchmore entertaining and piquant than the morning paper, and often asimportant.

THE MISTRESS. I think the subject had better be changed.

MANDEVILLE. The person, not the subject. There is no entertainmentso full of quiet pleasure as the hearing a lady of cultivation andrefinement relate her day's experience in her daily rounds of calls,charitable visits, shopping, errands of relief and condolence. Theevening budget is better than the finance minister's.

OUR NEXT DOOR. That's even so. My wife will pick up more news insix hours than I can get in a week, and I'm fond of news.

MANDEVILLE. I don't mean gossip, by any means, or scandal. A womanof culture skims over that like a bird, never touching it with thetip of a wing. What she brings home is the freshness and brightnessof life. She touches everything so daintily, she hits off acharacter in a sentence, she gives the pith of a dialogue withouttediousness, she mimics without vulgarity; her narration sparkles,but it does n't sting. The picture of her day is full of vivacity,and it gives new value and freshness to common things. If we couldonly have on the stage such actresses as we have in the drawing-room!

THE FIRE-TENDER. We want something more of this grace,sprightliness, and harmless play of the finer life of society in thenewspaper.

OUR NEXT DOOR. I wonder Mandeville does n't marry, and become apermanent subscriber to his embodied idea of a newspaper.

THE YOUNG LADY. Perhaps he does not relish the idea of being unableto stop his subscription.

OUR NEXT DOOR. Parson, won't you please punch that fire, and give usmore blaze? we are getting into the darkness of socialism.

III

Herbert returned to us in March. The Young Lady was spending thewinter with us, and March, in spite of the calendar, turned out to bea winter month. It usually is in New England, and April too, forthat matter. And I cannot say it is unfortunate for us. There areso many topics to be turned over and settled at our fireside that awinter of ordinary length would make little impression on the list.The fireside is, after all, a sort of private court of chancery,where nothing ever does come to a final decision. The chief effectof talk on any subject is to strengthen one's own opinions, and, infact, one never knows exactly what he does believe until he is warmedinto conviction by the heat of attack and defence. A man left tohimself drifts about like a boat on a calm lake; it is only when thewind blows that the boat goes anywhere.

Herbert said he had been dipping into the recent novels written bywomen, here and there, with a view to noting the effect uponliterature of this sudden and rather overwhelming accession to it.There was a good deal of talk about it evening after evening, off andon, and I can only undertake to set down fragments of it.

HERBERT. I should say that the distinguishing feature of theliterature of this day is the prominence women have in itsproduction. They figure in most of the magazines, though very rarelyin the scholarly and critical reviews, and in thousands ofnewspapers; to them we are indebted for the oceans of Sunday-schoolbooks, and they write the majority of the novels, the serial stories,and they mainly pour out the watery flood of tales in the weeklypapers. Whether this is to result in more good than evil it isimpossible yet to say, and perhaps it would be unjust to say, untilthis generation has worked off its froth, and women settle down toartistic, conscientious labor in literature.

THE MISTRESS. You don't mean to say that George Eliot, and Mrs.Gaskell, and George Sand, and Mrs. Browning, before her marriage andsevere attack of spiritism, are less true to art than contemporarymen novelists and poets.

HERBERT. You name some exceptions that show the bright side of thepicture, not only for the present, but for the future. Perhapsgenius has no sex; but ordinary talent has. I refer to the greatbody of novels, which you would know by internal evidence werewritten by women. They are of two sorts: the domestic story,entirely unidealized, and as flavorless as water-gruel; and thespiced novel, generally immoral in tendency, in which the socialproblems are handled, unhappy marriages, affinity and passionalattraction, bigamy, and the violation of the seventh commandment.These subjects are treated in the rawest manner, without any settledethics, with little discrimination of eternal right and wrong, andwith very little sense of responsibility for what is set forth. Manyof these novels are merely the blind outbursts of a nature impatientof restraint and the conventionalities of society, and are as chaoticas the untrained minds that produce them.

MANDEVILLE. Don't you think these novels fairly represent a socialcondition of unrest and upheaval?

HERBERT. Very likely; and they help to create and spread abroad thediscontent they describe. Stories of bigamy (sometimes disguised bydivorce), of unhappy marriages, where the injured wife, through anentire volume, is on the brink of falling into the arms of a sneakinglover, until death kindly removes the obstacle, and the two souls,who were born for each other, but got separated in the cradle, meltand mingle into one in the last chapter, are not healthful readingfor maids or mothers.

THE MISTRESS. Or men.

THE FIRE-TENDER. The most disagreeable object to me in modernliterature is the man the women novelists have introduced as theleading character; the women who come in contact with him seem to befascinated by his disdainful mien, his giant strength, and his brutalmanner. He is broad across the shoulders, heavily moulded, yet aslithe as a cat; has an ugly scar across his right cheek; has been inthe four quarters of the globe; knows seventeen languages; had aharem in Turkey and a Fayaway in the Marquesas; can be as polished asBayard in the drawing-room, but is as gloomy as Conrad in thelibrary; has a terrible eye and a withering glance, but can beinstantly subdued by a woman's hand, if it is not his wife's; andthrough all his morose and vicious career has carried a heart as pureas a violet.

THE MISTRESS. Don't you think the Count of Monte Cristo is the elderbrother of Rochester?

THE FIRE-TENDER. One is a mere hero of romance; the other is meantfor a real man.

MANDEVILLE. I don't see that the men novel-writers are better thanthe women.

HERBERT. That's not the question; but what are women who write solarge a proportion of the current stories bringing into literature?Aside from the question of morals, and the absolutely demoralizingmanner of treating social questions, most of their stories are vapidand weak beyond expression, and are slovenly in composition, showingneither study, training, nor mental discipline.

THE MISTRESS. Considering that women have been shut out from thetraining of the universities, and have few opportunities for the wideobservation that men enjoy, isn't it pretty well that the foremostliving writers of fiction are women?

HERBERT. You can say that for the moment, since Thackeray andDickens have just died. But it does not affect the generalestimate. We are inundated with a flood of weak writing. Take theSunday-school literature, largely the product of women; it has n't asmuch character as a dried apple pie. I don't know what we are coming toif the presses keep on running.

OUR NEXT DOOR. We are living, we are dwelling, in a grand and awfultime; I'm glad I don't write novels.

THE PARSON. So am I.

OUR NEXT DOOR. I tried a Sunday-school book once; but I made thegood boy end in the poorhouse, and the bad boy go to Congress; andthe publisher said it wouldn't do, the public wouldn't stand thatsort of thing. Nobody but the good go to Congress.

THE MISTRESS. Herbert, what do you think women are good for?

OUR NEXT DOOR. That's a poser.

HERBERT. Well, I think they are in a tentative state as toliterature, and we cannot yet tell what they will do. Some of ourmost brilliant books of travel, correspondence, and writing on topicsin which their sympathies have warmly interested them, are by women.Some of them are also strong writers in the daily journals.

MANDEVILLE. I 'm not sure there's anything a woman cannot do as wellas a man, if she sets her heart on it.

THE PARSON. That's because she's no conscience.

CHORUS. O Parson!

THE PARSON. Well, it does n't trouble her, if she wants to doanything. She looks at the end, not the means. A woman, set onanything, will walk right through the moral crockery without wincing.She'd be a great deal more unscrupulous in politics than the averageman. Did you ever see a female lobbyist? Or a criminal? It is LadyMacbeth who does not falter. Don't raise your hands at me! Thesweetest angel or the coolest devil is a woman. I see in some of themodern novels we have been talking of the same unscrupulous daring, ablindness to moral distinctions, a constant exaltation of a passioninto a virtue, an entire disregard of the immutable laws on which thefamily and society rest. And you ask lawyers and trustees howscrupulous women are in business transactions!

THE FIRE-TENDER. Women are often ignorant of affairs, and, besides,they may have a notion often that a woman ought to be privileged morethan a man in business matters; but I tell you, as a rule, that ifmen would consult their wives, they would go a deal straighter inbusiness operations than they do go.

THE PARSON. We are all poor sinners. But I've another indictmentagainst the women writers. We get no good old-fashioned love-storiesfrom them. It's either a quarrel of discordant natures one apanther, and the other a polar bear—for courtship, until one of themis crippled by a railway accident; or a long wrangle of married lifebetween two unpleasant people, who can neither live comfortablytogether nor apart. I suppose, by what I see, that sweet wooing,with all its torturing and delightful uncertainty, still goes on inthe world; and I have no doubt that the majority of married peoplelive more happily than the unmarried. But it's easier to find a dodothan a new and good love-story.

MANDEVILLE. I suppose the old style of plot is exhausted.Everything in man and outside of him has been turned over so oftenthat I should think the novelists would cease simply from want ofmaterial.

THE PARSON. Plots are no more exhausted than men are. Every man isa new creation, and combinations are simply endless. Even if we didnot have new material in the daily change of society, and there wereonly a fixed number of incidents and characters in life, inventioncould not be exhausted on them. I amuse myself sometimes with mykaleidoscope, but I can never reproduce a figure. No, no. I cannotsay that you may not exhaust everything else: we may get all thesecrets of a nature into a book by and by, but the novel is immortal,for it deals with men.

The Parson's vehemence came very near carrying him into a sermon; andas nobody has the privilege of replying to his sermons, so none ofthe circle made any reply now.

Our Next Door mumbled something about his hair standing on end, tohear a minister defending the novel; but it did not interrupt thegeneral silence. Silence is unnoticed when people sit before a fire;it would be intolerable if they sat and looked at each other.

The wind had risen during the evening, and Mandeville remarked, asthey rose to go, that it had a spring sound in it, but it was as coldas winter. The Mistress said she heard a bird that morning singingin the sun a spring song, it was a winter bird, but it sang.

SEVENTH STUDY

We have been much interested in what is called the Gothic revival.We have spent I don't know how many evenings in looking overHerbert's plans for a cottage, and have been amused with his vainefforts to cover with Gothic roofs the vast number of large roomswhich the Young Lady draws in her sketch of a small house.

I have no doubt that the Gothic, which is capable of infinitemodification, so that every house built in that style may be asdifferent from every other house as one tree is from every other, canbe adapted to our modern uses, and will be, when artists catch itsspirit instead of merely copying its old forms. But just now we aretaking the Gothic very literally, as we took the Greek at one time,or as we should probably have taken the Saracenic, if the Moors hadnot been colored. Not even the cholera is so contagious in thiscountry as a style of architecture which we happen to catch; thecountry is just now broken out all over with the Mansard-roofepidemic.

And in secular architecture we do not study what is adapted to ourclimate any more than in ecclesiastic architecture we adopt thatwhich is suited to our religion.

We are building a great many costly churches here and there, weProtestants, and as the most of them are ill adapted to our forms ofworship, it may be necessary and best for us to change our religionin order to save our investments. I am aware that this would be agrave step, and we should not hasten to throw overboard Luther andthe right of private judgment without reflection. And yet, if it isnecessary to revive the ecclesiastical Gothic architecture, not inits spirit (that we nowhere do), but in the form which served anotherage and another faith, and if, as it appears, we have already a greatdeal of money invested in this reproduction, it may be more prudentto go forward than to go back. The question is, "Cannot one easierchange his creed than his pew?"

I occupy a seat in church which is an admirable one for reflection,but I cannot see or hear much that is going on in what we like tocall the apse. There is a splendid stone pillar, a clustered column,right in front of me, and I am as much protected from the minister asOld Put's troops were from the British, behind the stone wall atBunker's Hill. I can hear his voice occasionally wandering round inthe arches overhead, and I recognize the tone, because he is a friendof mine and an excellent man, but what he is saying I can very seldommake out. If there was any incense burning, I could smell it, andthat would be something. I rather like the smell of incense, and ithas its holy associations. But there is no smell in our church,except of bad air,—for there is no provision for ventilation in thesplendid and costly edifice. The reproduction of the old Gothic isso complete that the builders even seem to have brought over theancient air from one of the churches of the Middle Ages,—you woulddeclare it had n't been changed in two centuries.

I am expected to fix my attention during the service upon one man,who stands in the centre of the apse and has a sounding-board behindhim in order to throw his voice out of the sacred semicircular space(where the altar used to stand, but now the sounding-board takes theplace of the altar) and scatter it over the congregation at large,and send it echoing up in the groined roof I always like to hear aminister who is unfamiliar with the house, and who has a loud voice,try to fill the edifice. The more he roars and gives himself withvehemence to the effort, the more the building roars inindistinguishable noise and hubbub. By the time he has said (tosuppose a case), "The Lord is in his holy temple," and has passed onto say, "let all the earth keep silence," the building is repeating"The Lord is in his holy temple" from half a dozen different anglesand altitudes, rolling it and growling it, and is not keeping silenceat all. A man who understands it waits until the house has had itssay, and has digested one passage, before he launches another intothe vast, echoing spaces. I am expected, as I said, to fix my eyeand mind on the minister, the central point of the service. But thepillar hides him. Now if there were several ministers in the church,dressed in such gorgeous colors that I could see them at the distancefrom the apse at which my limited income compels me to sit, andcandles were burning, and censers were swinging, and the platform wasfull of the sacred bustle of a gorgeous ritual worship, and a bellrang to tell me the holy moments, I should not mind the pillar atall. I should sit there, like any other Goth, and enjoy it. But, asI have said, the pastor is a friend of mine, and I like to look athim on Sunday, and hear what he says, for he always says somethingworth hearing. I am on such terms with him, indeed we all are, thatit would be pleasant to have the service of a little more socialnature, and more human. When we put him away off in the apse, andset him up for a Goth, and then seat ourselves at a distance,scattered about among the pillars, the whole thing seems to me atrifle unnatural. Though I do not mean to say that the congregationsdo not "enjoy their religion" in their splendid edifices which costso much money and are really so beautiful.

A good many people have the idea, so it seems, that Gothicarchitecture and Christianity are essentially one and the same thing.Just as many regard it as an act of piety to work an altar cloth orto cushion a pulpit. It may be, and it may not be.

Our Gothic church is likely to prove to us a valuable religiousexperience, bringing out many of the Christian virtues. It may havehad its origin in pride, but it is all being overruled for our good.Of course I need n't explain that it is the thirteenth centuryecclesiastic Gothic that is epidemic in this country; and I think ithas attacked the Congregational and the other non-ritual churchesmore violently than any others. We have had it here in its mostbeautiful and dangerous forms. I believe we are pretty much all ofus supplied with a Gothic church now. Such has been the enthusiasmin this devout direction, that I should not be surprised to see ourrich private citizens putting up Gothic churches for their individualamusem*nt and sanctification. As the day will probably come whenevery man in Hartford will live in his own mammoth, five-storygranite insurance building, it may not be unreasonable to expect thatevery man will sport his own Gothic church. It is beginning to bediscovered that the Gothic sort of church edifice is fatal to theCongregational style of worship that has been prevalent here in NewEngland; but it will do nicely (as they say in Boston) for privatedevotion.

There isn't a finer or purer church than ours any where, inside andoutside Gothic to the last. The elevation of the nave gives it eventhat "high-shouldered" appearance which seemed more than anythingelse to impress Mr. Hawthorne in the cathedral at Amiens. I fancythat for genuine high-shoulderness we are not exceeded by any churchin the city. Our chapel in the rear is as Gothic as the rest of it,—a beautiful little edifice. The committee forgot to make any moreprovision for ventilating that than the church, and it takes a prettywell-seasoned Christian to stay in it long at a time. TheSunday-school is held there, and it is thought to be best to accustomthe children to bad air before they go into the church. The poor littledears shouldn't have the wickedness and impurity of this world breakon them too suddenly. If the stranger noticed any lack about ourchurch, it would be that of a spire. There is a place for one;indeed, it was begun, and then the builders seem to have stopped,with the notion that it would grow itself from such a good root. Itis a mistake however, to suppose that we do not know that the churchhas what the profane here call a "stump-tail" appearance. But theprofane are as ignorant of history as they are of true Gothic. Allthe Old World cathedrals were the work of centuries. That at Milanis scarcely finished yet; the unfinished spires of the Colognecathedral are one of the best-known features of it. I doubt if itwould be in the Gothic spirit to finish a church at once. We cantell cavilers that we shall have a spire at the proper time, and nota minute before. It may depend a little upon what the Baptists do,who are to build near us. I, for one, think we had better wait andsee how high the Baptist spire is before we run ours up. The churchis everything that could be desired inside. There is the nave, withits lofty and beautiful arched ceiling; there are the side aisles,and two elegant rows of stone pillars, stained so as to be a perfectimitation of stucco; there is the apse, with its stained glass andexquisite lines; and there is an organ-loft over the front entrance,with a rose window. Nothing was wanting, so far as we could see,except that we should adapt ourselves to the circ*mstances; and thatwe have been trying to do ever since. It may be well to relate howwe do it, for the benefit of other inchoate Goths.

It was found that if we put up the organ in the loft, it would hidethe beautiful rose window. Besides, we wanted congregationalsinging, and if we hired a choir, and hung it up there under the roof,like a cage of birds, we should not have congregational singing. Wetherefore left the organ-loft vacant, making no further use of itthan to satisfy our Gothic cravings. As for choir,—several of thesingers of the church volunteered to sit together in the frontside-seats, and as there was no place for an organ, they gallantlyrallied round a melodeon,—or perhaps it is a cabinet organ,—acharming instrument, and, as everybody knows, entirely in keepingwith the pillars, arches, and great spaces of a real Gothic edifice.It is the union of simplicity with grandeur, for which we have allbeen looking. I need not say to those who have ever heard amelodeon, that there is nothing like it. It is rare, even in thefinest churches on the Continent. And we had congregational singing.And it went very well indeed. One of the advantages of purecongregational singing, is that you can join in the singing whetheryou have a voice or not. The disadvantage is, that your neighbor cando the same. It is strange what an uncommonly poor lot of voicesthere is, even among good people. But we enjoy it. If you do notenjoy it, you can change your seat until you get among a good lot.

So far, everything went well. But it was next discovered that it wasdifficult to hear the minister, who had a very handsome little deskin the apse, somewhat distant from the bulk of the congregation;still, we could most of us see him on a clear day. The church wasadmirably built for echoes, and the centre of the house was veryfavorable to them. When you sat in the centre of the house, itsometimes seemed as if three or four ministers were speaking.

It is usually so in cathedrals; the Right Reverend So-and-So isassisted by the very Reverend Such-and-Such, and the good dealReverend Thus-and-Thus, and so on. But a good deal of the minister'svoice appeared to go up into the groined arches, and, as there was noone up there, some of his best things were lost. We also had anotion that some of it went into the cavernous organ-loft. It wouldhave been all right if there had been a choir there, for choirsusually need more preaching, and pay less heed to it, than any otherpart of the congregation. Well, we drew a sort of screen over theorgan-loft; but the result was not as marked as we had hoped. Wenext devised a sounding-board,—a sort of mammoth clamshell, paintedwhite,—and erected it behind the minister. It had a good effect onthe minister. It kept him up straight to his work. So long as hekept his head exactly in the focus, his voice went out and did notreturn to him; but if he moved either way, he was assailed by a Babelof clamoring echoes. There was no opportunity for him to splurgeabout from side to side of the pulpit, as some do. And if he raisedhis voice much, or attempted any extra flights, he was liable to bedrowned in a refluent sea of his own eloquence. And he could hearthe congregation as well as they could hear him. All the coughs,whispers, noises, were gathered in the wooden tympanum behind him,and poured into his ears.

But the sounding-board was an improvement, and we advanced to boldermeasures; having heard a little, we wanted to hear more. Besides,those who sat in front began to be discontented with the melodeon.There are depths in music which the melodeon, even when it is calleda cabinet organ, with a colored boy at the bellows, cannot sound.The melodeon was not, originally, designed for the Gothic worship.We determined to have an organ, and we speculated whether, byerecting it in the apse, we could not fill up that elegant portion ofthe church, and compel the preacher's voice to leave it, and go outover the pews. It would of course do something to efface the mainbeauty of a Gothic church; but something must be done, and we began aseries of experiments to test the probable effects of putting theorgan and choir behind the minister. We moved the desk to the veryfront of the platform, and erected behind it a high, square boardscreen, like a section of tight fence round the fair-grounds. Thisdid help matters. The minister spoke with more ease, and we couldhear him better. If the screen had been intended to stay there, weshould have agitated the subject of painting it. But this was onlyan experiment.

Our next move was to shove the screen back and mount the volunteersingers, melodeon and all, upon the platform,—some twenty of themcrowded together behind the minister. The effect was beautiful. Itseemed as if we had taken care to select the finest-looking people inthe congregation,—much to the injury of the congregation, of course,as seen from the platform. There are few congregations that canstand this sort of culling, though ours can endure it as well as any;yet it devolves upon those of us who remain the responsibility oflooking as well as we can.

The experiment was a success, so far as appearances went, but whenthe screen went back, the minister's voice went back with it. Wecould not hear him very well, though we could hear the choir as plainas day. We have thought of remedying this last defect by putting thehigh screen in front of the singers, and close to the minister, as itwas before. This would make the singers invisible,—"though lost tosight, to memory dear,"—what is sometimes called an "angel choir,"when the singers (and the melodeon) are concealed, with the mostsubdued and religious effect. It is often so in cathedrals.

This plan would have another advantage. The singers on the platform,all handsome and well dressed, distract our attention from theminister, and what he is saying. We cannot help looking at them,studying all the faces and all the dresses. If one of them sits upvery straight, he is a rebuke to us; if he "lops" over, we wonder whyhe does n't sit up; if his hair is white, we wonder whether it is ageor family peculiarity; if he yawns, we want to yawn; if he takes up ahymn-book, we wonder if he is uninterested in the sermon; we look atthe bonnets, and query if that is the latest spring style, or whetherwe are to look for another; if he shaves close, we wonder why hedoesn't let his beard grow; if he has long whiskers, we wonder why hedoes n't trim 'em; if she sighs, we feel sorry; if she smiles, wewould like to know what it is about. And, then, suppose any of thesingers should ever want to eat fennel, or peppermints, or Brown'stroches, and pass them round! Suppose the singers, more or less ofthem, should sneeze!

Suppose one or two of them, as the handsomest people sometimes will,should go to sleep! In short, the singers there take away all ourattention from the minister, and would do so if they were thehomeliest people in the world. We must try something else.

It is needless to explain that a Gothic religious life is not an idleone.

EIGHTH STUDY

I

Perhaps the clothes question is exhausted, philosophically. I cannotbut regret that the Poet of the Breakfast-Table, who appears to havean uncontrollable penchant for saying the things you would like tosay yourself, has alluded to the anachronism of "Sir Coeur de LionPlantagenet in the mutton-chop whiskers and the plain gray suit."

A great many scribblers have felt the disadvantage of writing afterMontaigne; and it is impossible to tell how much originality inothers Dr. Holmes has destroyed in this country. In whist there aresome men you always prefer to have on your left hand, and I take itthat this intuitive essayist, who is so alert to seize the fewremaining unappropriated ideas and analogies in the world, is one ofthem.

No doubt if the Plantagenets of this day were required to dress in asuit of chain-armor and wear iron pots on their heads, they would beas ridiculous as most tragedy actors on the stage. The pit whichrecognizes Snooks in his tin breastplate and helmet laughs at him,and Snooks himself feels like a sheep; and when the great tragediancomes on, shining in mail, dragging a two-handed sword, and mouthsthe grandiloquence which poets have put into the speech of heroes,the dress-circle requires all its good-breeding and its feigned loveof the traditionary drama not to titter.

If this sort of acting, which is supposed to have come down to usfrom the Elizabethan age, and which culminated in the school of theKeans, Kembles, and Siddonses, ever had any fidelity to life, it musthave been in a society as artificial as the prose of Sir PhilipSidney. That anybody ever believed in it is difficult to think,especially when we read what privileges the fine beaux and gallantsof the town took behind the scenes and on the stage in the goldendays of the drama. When a part of the audience sat on the stage, andgentlemen lounged or reeled across it in the midst of a play, tospeak to acquaintances in the audience, the illusion could not havebeen very strong.

Now and then a genius, like Rachel as Horatia, or Hackett asFalstaff, may actually seem to be the character assumed by virtue ofa transforming imagination, but I suppose the fact to be that gettinginto a costume, absurdly antiquated and remote from all the habitsand associations of the actor, largely accounts for the incongruityand ridiculousness of most of our modern acting. Whether what iscalled the "legitimate drama" ever was legitimate we do not know, butthe advocates of it appear to think that the theatre was some timecast in a mould, once for all, and is good for all times and peoples,like the propositions of Euclid. To our eyes the legitimate drama ofto-day is the one in which the day is reflected, both in costume andspeech, and which touches the affections, the passions, the humor, ofthe present time. The brilliant success of the few good plays thathave been written out of the rich life which we now live—the mostvaried, fruitful, and dramatically suggestive—ought to rid usforever of the buskin-fustian, except as a pantomimic or spectacularcuriosity.

We have no objection to Julius Caesar or Richard III. stalking aboutin impossible clothes, and stepping four feet at a stride, if theywant to, but let them not claim to be more "legitimate" than "Ours"or "Rip Van Winkle." There will probably be some orator for yearsand years to come, at every Fourth of July, who will go on asking,Where is Thebes? but he does not care anything about it, and he doesnot really expect an answer. I have sometimes wished I knew theexact site of Thebes, so that I could rise in the audience, and stopthat question, at any rate. It is legitimate, but it is tiresome.

If we went to the bottom of this subject, I think we should find thatthe putting upon actors clothes to which they are unaccustomed makesthem act and talk artificially, and often in a manner intolerable.

An actor who has not the habits or instincts of a gentleman cannot bemade to appear like one on the stage by dress; he only caricaturesand discredits what he tries to represent; and the unaccustomedclothes and situation make him much more unnatural and insufferablethan he would otherwise be. Dressed appropriately for parts forwhich he is fitted, he will act well enough, probably. What I meanis, that the clothes inappropriate to the man make the incongruity ofhim and his part more apparent. Vulgarity is never so conspicuous asin fine apparel, on or off the stage, and never so self-conscious.Shall we have, then, no refined characters on the stage? Yes; butlet them be taken by men and women of taste and refinement and let ushave done with this masquerading in false raiment, ancient andmodern, which makes nearly every stage a travesty of nature and thewhole theatre a painful pretension. We do not expect the moderntheatre to be a place of instruction (that business is now turnedover to the telegraphic operator, who is making a new language), butit may give amusem*nt instead of torture, and do a little insatirizing folly and kindling love of home and country by the way.

This is a sort of summary of what we all said, and no one inparticular is responsible for it; and in this it is like publicopinion. The Parson, however, whose only experience of the theatrewas the endurance of an oratorio once, was very cordial in hisdenunciation of the stage altogether.

MANDEVILLE. Yet, acting itself is delightful; nothing so entertainsus as mimicry, the personation of character. We enjoy it in private.I confess that I am always pleased with the Parson in the characterof grumbler. He would be an immense success on the stage. I don'tknow but the theatre will have to go back into the hands of thepriests, who once controlled it.

THE PARSON. Scoffer!

MANDEVILLE. I can imagine how enjoyable the stage might be, clearedof all its traditionary nonsense, stilted language, stilted behavior,all the rubbish of false sentiment, false dress, and the manners oftimes that were both artificial and immoral, and filled with livingcharacters, who speak the thought of to-day, with the wit and culturethat are current to-day. I've seen private theatricals, where allthe performers were persons of cultivation, that….

OUR NEXT DOOR. So have I. For something particularly cheerful,commend me to amateur theatricals. I have passed some melancholyhours at them.

MANDEVILLE. That's because the performers acted the worn stageplays, and attempted to do them in the manner they had seen on thestage. It is not always so.

THE FIRE-TENDER. I suppose Mandeville would say that acting has gotinto a mannerism which is well described as stagey, and is supposedto be natural to the stage; just as half the modern poets write in arecognized form of literary manufacture, without the least impulsefrom within, and not with the purpose of saying anything, but ofturning out a piece of literary work. That's the reason wehave so much poetry that impresses one like sets of faultlesscabinet-furniture made by machinery.

THE PARSON. But you need n't talk of nature or naturalness in actingor in anything. I tell you nature is poor stuff. It can't go alone.Amateur acting—they get it up at church sociables nowadays—is aptto be as near nature as a school-boy's declamation. Acting is theDevil's art.

THE MISTRESS. Do you object to such innocent amusem*nt?

MANDEVILLE. What the Parson objects to is, that he isn't amused.

THE PARSON. What's the use of objecting? It's the fashion of theday to amuse people into the kingdom of heaven.

HERBERT. The Parson has got us off the track. My notion about thestage is, that it keeps along pretty evenly with the rest of theworld; the stage is usually quite up to the level of the audience.Assumed dress on the stage, since you were speaking of that, makespeople no more constrained and self-conscious than it does off thestage.

THE MISTRESS. What sarcasm is coming now?

HERBERT. Well, you may laugh, but the world has n't got used to goodclothes yet. The majority do not wear them with ease. People whoonly put on their best on rare and stated occasions step into anartificial feeling.

OUR NEXT DOOR. I wonder if that's the reason the Parson finds it sodifficult to get hold of his congregation.

HERBERT. I don't know how else to account for the formality andvapidity of a set "party," where all the guests are clothed in amanner to which they are unaccustomed, dressed into a condition ofvivid self-consciousness. The same people, who know each otherperfectly well, will enjoy themselves together without restraint intheir ordinary apparel. But nothing can be more artificial than thebehavior of people together who rarely "dress up." It seemsimpossible to make the conversation as fine as the clothes, and so itdies in a kind of inane helplessness. Especially is this true in thecountry, where people have not obtained the mastery of their clothesthat those who live in the city have. It is really absurd, at thisstage of our civilization, that we should be so affected by such aninsignificant accident as dress. Perhaps Mandeville can tell uswhether this clothes panic prevails in the older societies.

THE PARSON. Don't. We've heard it; about its being one of theEnglishman's thirty-nine articles that he never shall sit down todinner without a dress-coat, and all that.

THE MISTRESS. I wish, for my part, that everybody who has time toeat a dinner would dress for that, the principal event of the day,and do respectful and leisurely justice to it.

THE YOUNG LADY. It has always seemed singular to me that men whowork so hard to build elegant houses, and have good dinners, shouldtake so little leisure to enjoy either.

MANDEVILLE. If the Parson will permit me, I should say that thechief clothes question abroad just now is, how to get any; and it isthe same with the dinners.

II

It is quite unnecessary to say that the talk about clothes ran intothe question of dress-reform, and ran out, of course. You cannotconverse on anything nowadays that you do not run into some reform.The Parson says that everybody is intent on reforming everything buthimself. We are all trying to associate ourselves to make everybodyelse behave as we do. Said—

OUR NEXT DOOR. Dress reform! As if people couldn't change theirclothes without concert of action. Resolved, that nobody should puton a clean collar oftener than his neighbor does. I'm sick of everysort of reform. I should like to retrograde awhile. Let a dyspepticascertain that he can eat porridge three times a day and live, andstraightway he insists that everybody ought to eat porridge andnothing else. I mean to get up a society every member of which shallbe pledged to do just as he pleases.

THE PARSON. That would be the most radical reform of the day. Thatwould be independence. If people dressed according to their means,acted according to their convictions, and avowed their opinions, itwould revolutionize society.

OUR NEXT DOOR. I should like to walk into your church some Sundayand see the changes under such conditions.

THE PARSON. It might give you a novel sensation to walk in at anytime. And I'm not sure but the church would suit your retrogradeideas. It's so Gothic that a Christian of the Middle Ages, if hewere alive, couldn't see or hear in it.

HERBERT. I don't know whether these reformers who carry the world ontheir shoulders in such serious fashion, especially the little fussyfellows, who are themselves the standard of the regeneration theyseek, are more ludicrous than pathetic.

THE FIRE-TENDER. Pathetic, by all means. But I don't know that theywould be pathetic if they were not ludicrous. There are those reformsingers who have been piping away so sweetly now for thirty years,with never any diminution of cheerful, patient enthusiasm; their hairgrowing longer and longer, their eyes brighter and brighter, andtheir faces, I do believe, sweeter and sweeter; singing always withthe same constancy for the slave, for the drunkard, for thesnufftaker, for the suffragist,—"There'sa-good-time-com-ing-boys(nothing offensive is intended by "boys," it is put in foreuphony, and sung pianissimo, not to offend the suffragists),it's-almost-here." And what a brightening up of their faces there is whenthey say, "it's-al-most-here," not doubting for a moment that "it's"coming tomorrow; and the accompanying melodeon also wails its wheezysuggestion that "it's-al-most-here," that "good-time" (delayed solong, waiting perhaps for the invention of the melodeon) when weshall all sing and all play that cheerful instrument, and all vote,and none shall smoke, or drink, or eat meat, "boys." I declare italmost makes me cry to hear them, so touching is their faith in themidst of a jeer-ing world.

HERBERT. I suspect that no one can be a genuine reformer and not beridiculous. I mean those who give themselves up to the unction ofthe reform.

THE MISTRESS. Does n't that depend upon whether the reform is largeor petty?

THE FIRE-TENDER. I should say rather that the reforms attracted tothem all the ridiculous people, who almost always manage to becomethe most conspicuous. I suppose that nobody dare write out all thatwas ludicrous in the great abolition movement. But it was not at allcomical to those most zealous in it; they never could see—more's thepity, for thereby they lose much—the humorous side of theirperformances, and that is why the pathos overcomes one's sense of theabsurdity of such people.

THE YOUNG LADY. It is lucky for the world that so many are willingto be absurd.

HERBERT. Well, I think that, in the main, the reformers manage tolook out for themselves tolerably well. I knew once a lean andfaithful agent of a great philanthropic scheme, who contrived tocollect every year for the cause just enough to support him at a goodhotel comfortably.

THE MISTRESS. That's identifying one's self with the cause.

MANDEVILLE. You remember the great free-soil convention at Buffalo,in 1848, when Van Buren was nominated. All the world of hope anddiscontent went there, with its projects of reform. There seemed tobe no doubt, among hundreds that attended it, that if they could geta resolution passed that bread should be buttered on both sides, itwould be so buttered. The platform provided for every want and everywoe.

THE FIRE-TENDER. I remember. If you could get the millennium bypolitical action, we should have had it then.

MANDEVILLE. We went there on the Erie Canal, the exciting andfashionable mode of travel in those days. I was a boy when we beganthe voyage. The boat was full of conventionists; all the talk was ofwhat must be done there. I got the impression that as that boat-loadwent so would go the convention; and I was not alone in that feeling.I can never be grateful enough for one little scrubby fanatic who wason board, who spent most of his time in drafting resolutions andreading them privately to the passengers. He was a veryenthusiastic, nervous, and somewhat dirty little man, who wore awoolen muffler about his throat, although it was summer; he hadnearly lost his voice, and could only speak in a hoarse, disagreeablewhisper, and he always carried a teacup about, containing some stickycompound which he stirred frequently with a spoon, and took, wheneverhe talked, in order to improve his voice. If he was separated fromhis cup for ten minutes, his whisper became inaudible. I greatlydelighted in him, for I never saw any one who had so much enjoymentof his own importance. He was fond of telling what he would do ifthe convention rejected such and such resolutions. He'd make it hotfor them. I did n't know but he'd make them take his mixture. Theconvention had got to take a stand on tobacco, for one thing. He'dheard Gid-dings took snuff; he'd see. When we at length reachedBuffalo he took his teacup and carpet-bag of resolutions and wentashore in a great hurry. I saw him once again in a cheap restaurant,whispering a resolution to another delegate, but he did n't appear inthe con-vention. I have often wondered what became of him.

OUR NEXT DOOR. Probably he's consul somewhere. They mostly are.

THE FIRE-TENDER. After all, it's the easiest thing in the world tosit and sneer at eccentricities. But what a dead and uninterestingworld it would be if we were all proper, and kept within the lines!Affairs would soon be reduced to mere machinery. There are moments,even days, when all interests and movements appear to be settled uponsome universal plan of equilibrium; but just then some restless andabsurd person is inspired to throw the machine out of gear. Theseindividual eccentricities seem to be the special providences in thegeneral human scheme.

HERBERT. They make it very hard work for the rest of us, who aredisposed to go along peaceably and smoothly.

MANDEVILLE. And stagnate. I 'm not sure but the natural conditionof this planet is war, and that when it is finally towed to itsanchorage—if the universe has any harbor for worlds out ofcommission—it will look like the Fighting Temeraire in Turner'spicture.

HERBERT. There is another thing I should like to understand: thetendency of people who take up one reform, perhaps a personalregeneration in regard to some bad habit, to run into a dozen otherisms, and get all at sea in several vague and pernicious theories andpractices.

MANDEVILLE. Herbert seems to think there is safety in a man's beinganchored, even if it is to a bad habit.

HERBERT. Thank you. But what is it in human nature that is apt tocarry a man who may take a step in personal reform into so manyextremes?

OUR NEXT DOOR. Probably it's human nature.

HERBERT. Why, for instance, should a reformed drunkard (one of thenoblest examples of victory over self) incline, as I have known thereformed to do, to spiritism, or a woman suffragist to "pantarchism"(whatever that is), and want to pull up all the roots of society, andexpect them to grow in the air, like orchids; or a Graham-breaddisciple become enamored of Communism?

MANDEVILLE. I know an excellent Conservative who would, I think,suit you; he says that he does not see how a man who indulges in thetheory and practice of total abstinence can be a consistent believerin the Christian religion.

HERBERT. Well, I can understand what he means: that a person isbound to hold himself in conditions of moderation and control, usingand not abusing the things of this world, practicing temperance, notretiring into a convent of artificial restrictions in order to escapethe full responsibility of self-control. And yet his theory wouldcertainly wreck most men and women. What does the Parson say?

THE PARSON. That the world is going crazy on the notion of individualability. Whenever a man attempts to reform himself, or anybody else,without the aid of the Christian religion, he is sure to go adrift,and is pretty certain to be blown about by absurd theories, andshipwrecked on some pernicious ism.

THE FIRE-TENDER. I think the discussion has touched bottom.

III

I never felt so much the value of a house with a backlog in it asduring the late spring; for its lateness was its main feature.Everybody was grumbling about it, as if it were something orderedfrom the tailor, and not ready on the day. Day after day it snowed,night after night it blew a gale from the northwest; the frost sunkdeeper and deeper into the ground; there was a popular longing forspring that was almost a prayer; the weather bureau was active;Easter was set a week earlier than the year before, but nothingseemed to do any good. The robins sat under the evergreens, andpiped in a disconsolate mood, and at last the bluejays came andscolded in the midst of the snow-storm, as they always do scold inany weather. The crocuses could n't be coaxed to come up, even witha pickaxe. I'm almost ashamed now to recall what we said of theweather only I think that people are no more accountable for whatthey say of the weather than for their remarks when their corns arestepped on.

We agreed, however, that, but for disappointed expectations and theprospect of late lettuce and peas, we were gaining by the fire asmuch as we were losing by the frost. And the Mistress fell tochanting the comforts of modern civilization.

THE FIRE-TENDER said he should like to know, by the way, if ourcivilization differed essentially from any other in anything but itscomforts.

HERBERT. We are no nearer religious unity.

THE PARSON. We have as much war as ever.

MANDEVILLE. There was never such a social turmoil.

THE YOUNG LADY. The artistic part of our nature does not appear tohave grown.

THE FIRE-TENDER. We are quarreling as to whether we are in factradically different from the brutes.

HERBERT. Scarcely two people think alike about the proper kind ofhuman government.

THE PARSON. Our poetry is made out of words, for the most part, andnot drawn from the living sources.

OUR NEXT DOOR. And Mr. Cumming is uncorking his seventh phial. Inever felt before what barbarians we are.

THE MISTRESS. Yet you won't deny that the life of the average man issafer and every way more comfortable than it was even a century ago.

THE FIRE-TENDER. But what I want to know is, whether what we callour civilization has done any thing more for mankind at large than toincrease the ease and pleasure of living? Science has multipliedwealth, and facilitated intercourse, and the result is refinement ofmanners and a diffusion of education and information. Are men andwomen essentially changed, however? I suppose the Parson would saywe have lost faith, for one thing.

MANDEVILLE. And superstition; and gained toleration.

HERBERT. The question is, whether toleration is anything butindifference.

THE PARSON. Everything is tolerated now but Christian orthodoxy.

THE FIRE-TENDER. It's easy enough to make a brilliant catalogue ofexternal achievements, but I take it that real progress ought to bein man himself. It is not a question of what a man enjoys, but whathe can produce. The best sculpture was executed two thousand yearsago. The best paintings are several centuries old. We study thefinest architecture in its ruins. The standards of poetry areShakespeare, Homer, Isaiah, and David. The latest of the arts,music, culminated in composition, though not in execution, a centuryago.

THE MISTRESS. Yet culture in music certainly distinguishes thecivilization of this age. It has taken eighteen hundred years forthe principles of the Christian religion to begin to be practicallyincorporated in government and in ordinary business, and it will takea long time for Beethoven to be popularly recognized; but there isgrowth toward him, and not away from him, and when the averageculture has reached his height, some other genius will still moreprofoundly and delicately express the highest thoughts.

HERBERT. I wish I could believe it. The spirit of this age isexpressed by the Calliope.

THE PARSON. Yes, it remained for us to add church-bells and cannonto the orchestra.

OUR NEXT DOOR. It's a melancholy thought to me that we can no longerexpress ourselves with the bass-drum; there used to be the whole ofthe Fourth of July in its patriotic throbs.

MANDEVILLE. We certainly have made great progress in one art,—thatof war.

THE YOUNG LADY. And in the humane alleviations of the miseries ofwar.

THE FIRE-TENDER. The most discouraging symptom to me in ourundoubted advance in the comforts and refinements of society is thefacility with which men slip back into barbarism, if the artificialand external accidents of their lives are changed. We have alwayskept a fringe of barbarism on our shifting western frontier; and Ithink there never was a worse society than that in California andNevada in their early days.

THE YOUNG LADY. That is because women were absent.

THE FIRE-TENDER. But women are not absent in London and New York,and they are conspicuous in the most exceptionable demonstrations ofsocial anarchy. Certainly they were not wanting in Paris. Yes,there was a city widely accepted as the summit of our materialcivilization. No city was so beautiful, so luxurious, so safe, sowell ordered for the comfort of living, and yet it needed only amonth or two to make it a kind of pandemonium of savagery. Itscitizens were the barbarians who destroyed its own monuments ofcivilization. I don't mean to say that there was no apology for whatwas done there in the deceit and fraud that preceded it, but I simplynotice how ready the tiger was to appear, and how little restraintall the material civilization was to the beast.

THE MISTRESS. I can't deny your instances, and yet I somehow feelthat pretty much all you have been saying is in effect untrue. Notone of you would be willing to change our civilization for any other.In your estimate you take no account, it seems to me, of the growthof charity.

MANDEVILLE. And you might add a recognition of the value of humanlife.

THE MISTRESS. I don't believe there was ever before diffusedeverywhere such an element of good-will, and never before were womenso much engaged in philanthropic work.

THE PARSON. It must be confessed that one of the best signs of thetimes is woman's charity for woman. That certainly never existed tothe same extent in any other civilization.

MANDEVILLE. And there is another thing that distinguishes us, or isbeginning to. That is, the notion that you can do something morewith a criminal than punish him; and that society has not done itsduty when it has built a sufficient number of schools for one class,or of decent jails for another.

HERBERT. It will be a long time before we get decent jails.

MANDEVILLE. But when we do they will begin to be places of educationand training as much as of punishment and disgrace. The public willprovide teachers in the prisons as it now does in the common schools.

THE FIRE-TENDER. The imperfections of our methods and means ofselecting those in the community who ought to be in prison are sogreat, that extra care in dealing with them becomes us. We arebeginning to learn that we cannot draw arbitrary lines withinfallible justice. Perhaps half those who are convicted of crimesare as capable of reformation as half those transgressors who are notconvicted, or who keep inside the statutory law.

HERBERT. Would you remove the odium of prison?

THE FIRE-TENDER. No; but I would have criminals believe, and societybelieve, that in going to prison a man or woman does not pass anabsolute line and go into a fixed state.

THE PARSON. That is, you would not have judgment and retributionbegin in this world.

OUR NEXT DOOR. Don't switch us off into theology. I hate to go upin a balloon, or see any one else go.

HERBERT. Don't you think there is too much leniency toward crime andcriminals, taking the place of justice, in these days?

THE FIRE-TENDER. There may be too much disposition to condone thecrimes of those who have been considered respectable.

OUR NEXT DOOR. That is, scarcely anybody wants to see his friendhung.

MANDEVILLE. I think a large part of the bitterness of the condemnedarises from a sense of the inequality with which justice isadministered. I am surprised, in visiting jails, to find so fewrespectable-looking convicts.

OUR NEXT DOOR. Nobody will go to jail nowadays who thinks anythingof himself.

THE FIRE-TENDER. When society seriously takes hold of thereformation of criminals (say with as much determination as it doesto carry an election) this false leniency will disappear; for itpartly springs from a feeling that punishment is unequal, and doesnot discriminate enough in individuals, and that society itself hasno right to turn a man over to the Devil, simply because he shows astrong leaning that way. A part of the scheme of those who work forthe reformation of criminals is to render punishment more certain,and to let its extent depend upon reformation. There is no reasonwhy a professional criminal, who won't change his trade for an honestone, should have intervals of freedom in his prison life in which heis let loose to prey upon society. Criminals ought to be discharged,like insane patients, when they are cured.

OUR NEXT DOOR. It's a wonder to me, what with our multitudes ofstatutes and hosts of detectives, that we are any of us out of jail.I never come away from a visit to a State-prison without a new spasmof fear and virtue. The faculties for getting into jail seem to beample. We want more organizations for keeping people out.

MANDEVILLE. That is the sort of enterprise the women are engaged in,the frustration of the criminal tendencies of those born in vice. Ibelieve women have it in their power to regenerate the world morally.

THE PARSON. It's time they began to undo the mischief of theirmother.

THE MISTRESS. The reason they have not made more progress is thatthey have usually confined their individual efforts to one man; theyare now organizing for a general campaign.

THE FIRE-TENDER. I'm not sure but here is where the ameliorations ofthe conditions of life, which are called the comforts of thiscivilization, come in, after all, and distinguish the age above allothers. They have enabled the finer powers of women to have play asthey could not in a ruder age. I should like to live a hundred yearsand see what they will do.

HERBERT. Not much but change the fashions, unless they submitthemselves to the same training and discipline that men do.

I have no doubt that Herbert had to apologize for this remarkafterwards in private, as men are quite willing to do in particularcases; it is only in general they are unjust. The talk drifted offinto general and particular depreciation of other times. Mandevilledescribed a picture, in which he appeared to have confidence, of afight between an Iguanodon and a Megalosaurus, where these hugeiron-clad brutes were represented chewing up different portions ofeach other's bodies in a forest of the lower cretaceous period. Sofar as he could learn, that sort of thing went on unchecked forhundreds of thousands of years, and was typical of the intercourse ofthe races of man till a comparatively recent period. There was alsothat gigantic swan, the Plesiosaurus; in fact, all the early bruteswere disgusting. He delighted to think that even the lower animalshad improved, both in appearance and disposition.

The conversation ended, therefore, in a very amicable manner, havingbeen taken to a ground that nobody knew anything about.

NINTH STUDY

I

Can you have a backlog in July? That depends upon circ*mstances.

In northern New England it is considered a sign of summer when thehousewives fill the fireplaces with branches of mountain laurel, and,later, with the feathery stalks of the asparagus. This is often,too, the timid expression of a tender feeling, under Puritanicrepression, which has not sufficient vent in the sweet-william andhollyhock at the front door. This is a yearning after beauty andornamentation which has no other means of gratifying itself.

In the most rigid circ*mstances, the graceful nature of woman thusdiscloses itself in these mute expressions of an undeveloped taste.You may never doubt what the common flowers growing along the pathwayto the front door mean to the maiden of many summers who tends them;—love and religion, and the weariness of an uneventful life. Thesacredness of the Sabbath, the hidden memory of an unrevealed andunrequited affection, the slow years of gathering and wastingsweetness, are in the smell of the pink and the sweet-clover. Thesesentimental plants breathe something of the longing of the maiden whosits in the Sunday evenings of summer on the lonesome frontdoorstone, singing the hymns of the saints, and perennial as themyrtle that grows thereby.

Yet not always in summer, even with the aid of unrequited love anddevotional feeling, is it safe to let the fire go out on the hearth,in our latitude. I remember when the last almost total eclipse ofthe sun happened in August, what a bone-piercing chill came over theworld. Perhaps the imagination had something to do with causing thechill from that temporary hiding of the sun to feel so much morepenetrating than that from the coming on of night, which shortlyfollowed. It was impossible not to experience a shudder as of theapproach of the Judgment Day, when the shadows were flung upon thegreen lawn, and we all stood in the wan light, looking unfamiliar toeach other. The birds in the trees felt the spell. We could infancy see those spectral camp-fires which men would build on theearth, if the sun should slow its fires down to about the brilliancyof the moon. It was a great relief to all of us to go into thehouse, and, before a blazing wood-fire, talk of the end of the world.

In New England it is scarcely ever safe to let the fire go out; it isbest to bank it, for it needs but the turn of a weather-vane at anyhour to sweep the Atlantic rains over us, or to bring down the chill ofHudson's Bay. There are days when the steam ship on the Atlantic glidescalmly along under a full canvas, but its central fires must always beready to make steam against head-winds and antagonistic waves. Even inour most smiling summer days one needs to have the materials of acheerful fire at hand. It is only by this readiness for a change thatone can preserve an equal mind. We are made provident and sagacious bythe fickleness of our climate. We should be another sort of people ifwe could have that serene, unclouded trust in nature which the Egyptianhas. The gravity and repose of the Eastern peoples is due to theunchanging aspect of the sky, and the deliberation and regularity ofthe great climatic processes. Our literature, politics, religion, showthe effect of unsettled weather. But they compare favorably with theEgyptian, for all that.

II

You cannot know, the Young Lady wrote, with what longing I look backto those winter days by the fire; though all the windows are open tothis May morning, and the brown thrush is singing in thechestnut-tree, and I see everywhere that first delicate flush ofspring, which seems too evanescent to be color even, and amounts tolittle more than a suffusion of the atmosphere. I doubt, indeed, if thespring is exactly what it used to be, or if, as we get on in years [noone ever speaks of "getting on in years" till she is virtually settledin life], its promises and suggestions do not seem empty in comparisonwith the sympathies and responses of human friendship, and thestimulation of society. Sometimes nothing is so tiresome as a perfectday in a perfect season.

I only imperfectly understand this. The Parson says that woman isalways most restless under the most favorable conditions, and thatthere is no state in which she is really happy except that of change.I suppose this is the truth taught in what has been called the "Mythof the Garden." Woman is perpetual revolution, and is that elementin the world which continually destroys and re-creates. She is theexperimenter and the suggester of new combinations. She has nobelief in any law of eternal fitness of things. She is never evencontent with any arrangement of her own house. The only reason theMistress could give, when she rearranged her apartment, for hanging apicture in what seemed the most inappropriate place, was that it hadnever been there before. Woman has no respect for tradition, andbecause a thing is as it is is sufficient reason for changing it.When she gets into law, as she has come into literature, we shallgain something in the destruction of all our vast and musty librariesof precedents, which now fetter our administration of individualjustice. It is Mandeville's opinion that women are not sosentimental as men, and are not so easily touched with the unspokenpoetry of nature; being less poetical, and having less imagination,they are more fitted for practical affairs, and would make lessfailures in business. I have noticed the almost selfish passion fortheir flowers which old gardeners have, and their reluctance to partwith a leaf or a blossom from their family. They love the flowersfor themselves. A woman raises flowers for their use. She isdestruct-ion in a conservatory. She wants the flowers for her lover,for the sick, for the poor, for the Lord on Easter day, for theornamentation of her house. She delights in the costly pleasure ofsacrificing them. She never sees a flower but she has an intense butprobably sinless desire to pick it.

It has been so from the first, though from the first she has beenthwarted by the accidental superior strength of man. Whatever shehas obtained has been by craft, and by the same coaxing which the sunuses to draw the blossoms out of the apple-trees. I am not surprisedto learn that she has become tired of indulgences, and wants some ofthe original rights. We are just beginning to find out the extent towhich she has been denied and subjected, and especially her conditionamong the primitive and barbarous races. I have never seen it in aplatform of grievances, but it is true that among the Fijians she isnot, unless a better civilization has wrought a change in her behalf,permitted to eat people, even her own sex, at the feasts of the men;the dainty enjoyed by the men being considered too good to be wastedon women. Is anything wanting to this picture of the degradation ofwoman? By a refinement of cruelty she receives no benefit whateverfrom the missionaries who are sent out by—what to her must seem anew name for Tantalus—the American Board.

I suppose the Young Lady expressed a nearly universal feeling in herregret at the breaking up of the winter-fireside company. Societyneeds a certain seclusion and the sense of security. Spring opensthe doors and the windows, and the noise and unrest of the world arelet in. Even a winter thaw begets a desire to travel, and summerbrings longings innumerable, and disturbs the most tranquil souls.Nature is, in fact, a suggester of uneasiness, a promoter ofpilgrimages and of excursions of the fancy which never come to anysatisfactory haven. The summer in these latitudes is a campaign ofsentiment and a season, for the most part, of restlessness anddiscontent. We grow now in hot-houses roses which, in form andcolor, are magnificent, and appear to be full of passion; yet onesimple June rose of the open air has for the Young Lady, I doubt not,more sentiment and suggestion of love than a conservatory full ofthem in January. And this suggestion, leavened as it is with theinconstancy of nature, stimulated by the promises which are so oftenlike the peach-blossom of the Judas-tree, unsatisfying by reason ofits vague possibilities, differs so essentially from the more limitedand attainable and home-like emotion born of quiet intercourse by thewinter fireside, that I do not wonder the Young Lady feels as if somespell had been broken by the transition of her life from in-doors toout-doors. Her secret, if secret she has, which I do not at allknow, is shared by the birds and the new leaves and the blossoms onthe fruit trees. If we lived elsewhere, in that zone where the poetspretend always to dwell, we might be content, perhaps I should saydrugged, by the sweet influences of an unchanging summer; but notliving elsewhere, we can understand why the Young Lady probably nowlooks forward to the hearthstone as the most assured center ofenduring attachment.

If it should ever become the sad duty of this biographer to write ofdisappointed love, I am sure he would not have any sensational storyto tell of the Young Lady. She is one of those women whoseunostentatious lives are the chief blessing of humanity; who, with asigh heard only by herself and no change in her sunny face, would putbehind her all the memories of winter evenings and the promises ofMay mornings, and give her life to some ministration of humankindness with an assiduity that would make her occupation appear likean election and a first choice. The disappointed man scowls, andhates his race, and threatens self-destruction, choosing oftener theflowing bowl than the dagger, and becoming a reeling nuisance in theworld. It would be much more manly in him to become the secretary ofa Dorcas society.

I suppose it is true that women work for others with less expectationof reward than men, and give themselves to labors of self-sacrificewith much less thought of self. At least, this is true unless womangoes into some public performance, where notoriety has itsattractions, and mounts some cause, to ride it man-fashion, when Ithink she becomes just as eager for applause and just as willing thatself-sacrifice should result in self-elevation as man. For her,usually, are not those unbought—presentations which are forced uponfiremen, philanthropists, legislators, railroad-men, and thesuperintendents of the moral instruction of the young. These arealmost always pleasing and unexpected tributes to worth and modesty,and must be received with satisfaction when the public servicerendered has not been with a view to procuring them. We should saythat one ought to be most liable to receive a "testimonial" who,being a superintendent of any sort, did not superintend with a viewto getting it. But "testimonials" have become so common that amodest man ought really to be afraid to do his simple duty, for fearhis motives will be misconstrued. Yet there are instances of veryworthy men who have had things publicly presented to them. It is theblessed age of gifts and the reward of private virtue. And thepresentations have become so frequent that we wish there were alittle more variety in them. There never was much sense in giving agallant fellow a big speaking-trumpet to carry home to aid him in hisintercourse with his family; and the festive ice-pitcher has become atoo universal sign of absolute devotion to the public interest. Thelack of one will soon be proof that a man is a knave. Thelegislative cane with the gold head, also, is getting to berecognized as the sign of the immaculate public servant, as theinscription on it testifies, and the steps of suspicion must ere-longdog him who does not carry one. The "testimonial" business is, intruth, a little demoralizing, almost as much so as the "donation;"and the demoralization has extended even to our language, so that aperfectly respectable man is often obliged to see himself "made therecipient of" this and that. It would be much better, iftestimonials must be, to give a man a barrel of flour or a keg ofoysters, and let him eat himself at once back into the ranks ofordinary men.

III

We may have a testimonial class in time, a sort of nobility here inAmerica, made so by popular gift, the members of which will all beable to show some stick or piece of plated ware or massive chain, "ofwhich they have been the recipients." In time it may be adistinction not to belong to it, and it may come to be thought moreblessed to give than to receive. For it must have been remarked thatit is not always to the cleverest and the most amiable and modest manthat the deputation comes with the inevitable ice-pitcher (and"salver to match"), which has in it the magic and subtle quality ofmaking the hour in which it is received the proudest of one's life.There has not been discovered any method of rewarding all thedeserving people and bringing their virtues into the prominence ofnotoriety. And, indeed, it would be an unreasonable world if therehad, for its chief charm and sweetness lie in the excellences in itwhich are reluctantly disclosed; one of the chief pleasures of livingis in the daily discovery of good traits, nobilities, and kindlinessboth in those we have long known and in the chance passenger whoseway happens for a day to lie with ours. The longer I live the more Iam impressed with the excess of human kindness over human hatred, andthe greater willingness to oblige than to disoblige that one meets atevery turn. The selfishness in politics, the jealousy in letters,the bickering in art, the bitterness in theology, are all as nothingcompared to the sweet charities, sacrifices, and deferences ofprivate life. The people are few whom to know intimately is todislike. Of course you want to hate somebody, if you can, just tokeep your powers of discrimination bright, and to save yourself frombecoming a mere mush of good-nature; but perhaps it is well to hatesome historical person who has been dead so long as to be indifferentto it. It is more comfortable to hate people we have never seen. Icannot but think that Judas Iscariot has been of great service to theworld as a sort of buffer for moral indignation which might have madea collision nearer home but for his utilized treachery. I used toknow a venerable and most amiable gentleman and scholar, whosehospitable house was always overrun with wayside ministers, agents,and philanthropists, who loved their fellow-men better than theyloved to work for their living; and he, I suspect, kept his moralbalance even by indulgence in violent but most distant dislikes.When I met him casually in the street, his first salutation waslikely to be such as this: "What a liar that Alison was! Don't youhate him?" And then would follow specifications of historicalinveracity enough to make one's blood run cold. When he was thusdischarged of his hatred by such a conductor, I presume he had not aspark left for those whose mission was partly to live upon him andother generous souls.

Mandeville and I were talking of the unknown people, one rainy nightby the fire, while the Mistress was fitfully and interjectionallyplaying with the piano-keys in an improvising mood. Mandeville has agood deal of sentiment about him, and without any effort talks sobeautifully sometimes that I constantly regret I cannot report hislanguage. He has, besides, that sympathy of presence—I believe itis called magnetism by those who regard the brain as only a sort ofgalvanic battery—which makes it a greater pleasure to see him think,if I may say so, than to hear some people talk.

It makes one homesick in this world to think that there are so manyrare people he can never know; and so many excellent people thatscarcely any one will know, in fact. One discovers a friend bychance, and cannot but feel regret that twenty or thirty years oflife maybe have been spent without the least knowledge of him. Whenhe is once known, through him opening is made into another littleworld, into a circle of culture and loving hearts and enthusiasm in adozen congenial pursuits, and prejudices perhaps. How instantly andeasily the bachelor doubles his world when he marries, and entersinto the unknown fellowship of the to him continually increasingcompany which is known in popular language as "all his wife'srelations."

Near at hand daily, no doubt, are those worth knowing intimately, ifone had the time and the opportunity. And when one travels he seeswhat a vast material there is for society and friendship, of which hecan never avail himself. Car-load after car-load of summer travelgoes by one at any railway-station, out of which he is sure he couldchoose a score of life-long friends, if the conductor would introducehim. There are faces of refinement, of quick wit, of sympathetickindness,—interesting people, traveled people, entertaining people,—as you would say in Boston, "nice people you would admire to know,"whom you constantly meet and pass without a sign of recognition, manyof whom are no doubt your long-lost brothers and sisters. You cansee that they also have their worlds and their interests, and theyprobably know a great many "nice" people. The matter of personalliking and attachment is a good deal due to the mere fortune ofassociation. More fast friendships and pleasant acquaintanceshipsare formed on the Atlantic steamships between those who would havebeen only indifferent acquaintances elsewhere, than one would thinkpossible on a voyage which naturally makes one as selfish as he isindifferent to his personal appearance. The Atlantic is the onlypower on earth I know that can make a woman indifferent to herpersonal appearance.

Mandeville remembers, and I think without detriment to himself, theglimpses he had in the White Mountains once of a young lady of whomhis utmost efforts could give him no further information than hername. Chance sight of her on a passing stage or amid a group on somemountain lookout was all he ever had, and he did not even knowcertainly whether she was the perfect beauty and the lovely characterhe thought her. He said he would have known her, however, at a greatdistance; there was to her form that command of which we hear so muchand which turns out to be nearly all command after the "ceremony;" orperhaps it was something in the glance of her eye or the turn of herhead, or very likely it was a sweet inherited reserve or hauteur thatcaptivated him, that filled his days with the expectation of seeingher, and made him hasten to the hotel-registers in the hope that hername was there recorded. Whatever it was, she interested him as oneof the people he would like to know; and it piqued him that there wasa life, rich in friendships, no doubt, in tastes, in manynoblenesses, one of thousands of such, that must be absolutelynothing to him,—nothing but a window into heaven momentarily openedand then closed. I have myself no idea that she was a countessincognito, or that she had descended from any greater heights thanthose where Mandeville saw her, but I have always regretted that shewent her way so mysteriously and left no glow, and that we shall wearout the remainder of our days without her society. I have looked forher name, but always in vain, among the attendants at therights-conventions, in the list of those good Americans presented atcourt, among those skeleton names that appear as the remains of beautyin the morning journals after a ball to the wandering prince, in thereports of railway collisions and steamboat explosions. No news comesof her. And so imperfect are our means of communication in this worldthat, for anything we know, she may have left it long ago by someprivate way.

IV

The lasting regret that we cannot know more of the bright, sincere,and genuine people of the world is increased by the fact that theyare all different from each other. Was it not Madame de Sevigne whosaid she had loved several different women for several differentqualities? Every real person—for there are persons as there arefruits that have no distinguishing flavor, mere gooseberries—has adistinct quality, and the finding it is always like the discovery ofa new island to the voyager. The physical world we shall exhaustsome day, having a written description of every foot of it to whichwe can turn; but we shall never get the different qualities of peopleinto a biographical dictionary, and the making acquaintance with ahuman being will never cease to be an exciting experiment. We cannoteven classify men so as to aid us much in our estimate of them. Theefforts in this direction are ingenious, but unsatisfactory. If Ihear that a man is lymphatic or nervous-sanguine, I cannot telltherefrom whether I shall like and trust him. He may produce aphrenological chart showing that his knobby head is the home of allthe virtues, and that the vicious tendencies are represented by holesin his cranium, and yet I cannot be sure that he will not be asdisagreeable as if phrenology had not been invented. I feelsometimes that phrenology is the refuge of mediocrity. Its chartsare almost as misleading concerning character as photographs. Andphotography may be described as the art which enables commonplacemediocrity to look like genius. The heavy-jowled man with shallowcerebrum has only to incline his head so that the lying instrumentcan select a favorable focus, to appear in the picture with the browof a sage and the chin of a poet. Of all the arts for ministering tohuman vanity the photographic is the most useful, but it is a pooraid in the revelation of character. You shall learn more of a man'sreal nature by seeing him walk once up the broad aisle of his churchto his pew on Sunday, than by studying his photograph for a month.

No, we do not get any certain standard of men by a chart of theirtemperaments; it will hardly answer to select a wife by the color ofher hair; though it be by nature as red as a cardinal's hat, she maybe no more constant than if it were dyed. The farmer who shuns allthe lymphatic beauties in his neighborhood, and selects to wife themost nervous-sanguine, may find that she is unwilling to get up inthe winter mornings and make the kitchen fire. Many a man, even inthis scientific age which professes to label us all, has been cruellydeceived in this way. Neither the blondes nor the brunettes actaccording to the advertisem*nt of their temperaments. The truthis that men refuse to come under the classifications of thepseudo-scientists, and all our new nomenclatures do not add much to ourknowledge. You know what to expect—if the comparison will be pardoned—of a horse with certain points; but you wouldn't dare go on a journeywith a man merely upon the strength of knowing that his temperament wasthe proper mixture of the sanguine and the phlegmatic. Science is notable to teach us concerning men as it teaches us of horses, though I amvery far from saying that there are not traits of nobleness and ofmeanness that run through families and can be calculated to appear inindividuals with absolute certainty; one family will be trusty andanother tricky through all its members for generations; noble strainsand ignoble strains are perpetuated. When we hear that she has elopedwith the stable-boy and married him, we are apt to remark, "Well, shewas a Bogardus." And when we read that she has gone on a mission andhas died, distinguishing herself by some extraordinary devotion to theheathen at Ujiji, we think it sufficient to say, "Yes, her mothermarried into the Smiths." But this knowledge comes of our experienceof special families, and stands us in stead no further.

If we cannot classify men scientifically and reduce them under a kindof botanical order, as if they had a calculable vegetabledevelopment, neither can we gain much knowledge of them bycomparison. It does not help me at all in my estimate of theircharacters to compare Mandeville with the Young Lady, or Our NextDoor with the Parson. The wise man does not permit himself to set upeven in his own mind any comparison of his friends. His friendshipis capable of going to extremes with many people, evoked as it is bymany qualities. When Mandeville goes into my garden in June I canusually find him in a particular bed of strawberries, but he does notspeak disrespectfully of the others. When Nature, says Mandeville,consents to put herself into any sort of strawberry, I have nocriticisms to make, I am only glad that I have been created into thesame world with such a delicious manifestation of the Divine favor.If I left Mandeville alone in the garden long enough, I have no doubthe would impartially make an end of the fruit of all the beds, forhis capacity in this direction is as all-embracing as it is in thematter of friendships. The Young Lady has also her favorite patch ofberries. And the Parson, I am sorry to say, prefers to have thempicked for him the elect of the garden—and served in an orthodoxmanner. The straw-berry has a sort of poetical precedence, and Ipresume that no fruit is jealous of it any more than any flower isjealous of the rose; but I remark the facility with which liking forit is transferred to the raspberry, and from the raspberry (not tomake a tedious enumeration) to the melon, and from the melon to thegrape, and the grape to the pear, and the pear to the apple. And wedo not mar our enjoyment of each by comparisons.

Of course it would be a dull world if we could not criticise ourfriends, but the most unprofitable and unsatisfactory criticism isthat by comparison. Criticism is not necessarily uncharitableness,but a wholesome exercise of our powers of analysis anddiscrimination. It is, however, a very idle exercise, leading to noresults when we set the qualities of one over against the qualitiesof another, and disparage by contrast and not by independentjudgment. And this method of procedure creates jealousies andheart-burnings innumerable.

Criticism by comparison is the refuge of incapables, and especiallyis this true in literature. It is a lazy way of disposing of a youngpoet to bluntly declare, without any sort of discrimination of hisdefects or his excellences, that he equals Tennyson, and that Scottnever wrote anything finer. What is the justice of damning ameritorious novelist by comparing him with Dickens, and smotheringhim with thoughtless and good-natured eulogy? The poet and thenovelist may be well enough, and probably have qualities and gifts oftheir own which are worth the critic's attention, if he has any timeto bestow on them; and it is certainly unjust to subject them to acomparison with somebody else, merely because the critic will nottake the trouble to ascertain what they are. If, indeed, the poetand novelist are mere imitators of a model and copyists of a style,they may be dismissed with such commendation as we bestow upon themachines who pass their lives in making bad copies of the pictures ofthe great painters. But the critics of whom we speak do not intenddepreciation, but eulogy, when they say that the author they have inhand has the wit of Sydney Smith and the brilliancy of Macaulay.Probably he is not like either of them, and may have a genuine thoughmodest virtue of his own; but these names will certainly kill him,and he will never be anybody in the popular estimation. The publicfinds out speedily that he is not Sydney Smith, and it resents theextravagant claim for him as if he were an impudent pretender. Howmany authors of fair ability to interest the world have we known inour own day who have been thus sky-rocketed into notoriety by thelazy indiscrimination of the critic-by-comparison, and then have sunkinto a popular contempt as undeserved! I never see a young aspirantinjudiciously compared to a great and resplendent name in literature,but I feel like saying, My poor fellow, your days are few and full oftrouble; you begin life handicapped, and you cannot possibly run acreditable race.

I think this sort of critical eulogy is more damaging even than thatwhich kills by a different assumption, and one which is equallycommon, namely, that the author has not done what he probably neverintended to do. It is well known that most of the trouble in lifecomes from our inability to compel other people to do what we thinkthey ought, and it is true in criticism that we are unwilling to takea book for what it is, and credit the author with that. When thesolemn critic, like a mastiff with a ladies' bonnet in his mouth,gets hold of a light piece of verse, or a graceful sketch whichcatches the humor of an hour for the entertainment of an hour, hetears it into a thousand shreds. It adds nothing to human knowledge,it solves none of the problems of life, it touches none of thequestions of social science, it is not a philosophical treatise, andit is not a dozen things that it might have been. The critic cannotforgive the author for this disrespect to him. This isn't a rose,says the critic, taking up a pansy and rending it; it is not at alllike a rose, and the author is either a pretentious idiot or anidiotic pretender. What business, indeed, has the author to send thecritic a bunch of sweet-peas, when he knows that a cabbage would bepreferred,—something not showy, but useful?

A good deal of this is what Mandeville said and I am not sure that itis devoid of personal feeling. He published, some years ago, alittle volume giving an account of a trip through the Great West, anda very entertaining book it was. But one of the heavy critics gothold of it, and made Mandeville appear, even to himself, heconfessed, like an ass, because there was nothing in the volume aboutgeology or mining prospects, and very little to instruct the studentof physical geography. With alternate sarcasm and ridicule, heliterally basted the author, till Mandeville said that he felt almostlike a depraved scoundrel, and thought he should be held up to lessexecration if he had committed a neat and scientific murder.

But I confess that I have a good deal of sympathy with the critics.Consider what these public tasters have to endure! None of us, Ifancy, would like to be compelled to read all that they read, or totake into our mouths, even with the privilege of speedily ejecting itwith a grimace, all that they sip. The critics of the vintage, whopursue their calling in the dark vaults and amid mouldy casks, givetheir opinion, for the most part, only upon wine, upon juice that hasmatured and ripened into development of quality. But what crude,unrestrained, unfermented—even raw and drugged liquor, must theliterary taster put to his unwilling lips day after day!

TENTH STUDY

I

It was my good fortune once to visit a man who remembered therebellion of 1745. Lest this confession should make me seem veryaged, I will add that the visit took place in 1851, and that the manwas then one hundred and thirteen years old. He was quite a ladbefore Dr. Johnson drank Mrs. Thrale's tea. That he was as old as hehad the credit of being, I have the evidence of my own senses (and Iam seldom mistaken in a person's age), of his own family, and his ownword; and it is incredible that so old a person, and one soapparently near the grave, would deceive about his age.

The testimony of the very aged is always to be received withoutquestion, as Alexander Hamilton once learned. He was trying aland-title with Aaron Burr, and two of the witnesses upon whom Burrrelied were venerable Dutchmen, who had, in their youth, carried thesurveying chains over the land in dispute, and who were now agedrespectively one hundred and four years and one hundred and sixyears. Hamilton gently attempted to undervalue their testimony, buthe was instantly put down by the Dutch justice, who suggested thatMr. Hamilton could not be aware of the age of the witnesses.

My old man (the expression seems familiar and inelegant) had indeedan exaggerated idea of his own age, and sometimes said that hesupposed he was going on four hundred, which was true enough, infact; but for the exact date, he referred to his youngest son,—afrisky and humorsome lad of eighty years, who had received us at thegate, and whom we had at first mistaken for the veteran, his father.But when we beheld the old man, we saw the difference between age andage. The latter had settled into a grizzliness and grimness whichbelong to a very aged and stunted but sturdy oak-tree, upon the barkof which the gray moss is thick and heavy. The old man appeared haleenough, he could walk about, his sight and hearing were not seriouslyimpaired, he ate with relish, and his teeth were so sound that hewould not need a dentist for at least another century; but the mosswas growing on him. His boy of eighty seemed a green sapling besidehim.

He remembered absolutely nothing that had taken place within thirtyyears, but otherwise his mind was perhaps as good as it ever was, forhe must always have been an ignoramus, and would never know anythingif he lived to be as old as he said he was going on to be. Why hewas interested in the rebellion of 1745 I could not discover, for heof course did not go over to Scotland to carry a pike in it, and heonly remembered to have heard it talked about as a great event in theIrish market-town near which he lived, and to which he had riddenwhen a boy. And he knew much more about the horse that drew him, andthe cart in which he rode, than he did about the rebellion of thePretender.

I hope I do not appear to speak harshly of this amiable old man, andif he is still living I wish him well, although his example was badin some respects. He had used tobacco for nearly a century, and thehabit has very likely been the death of him. If so, it is to beregretted. For it would have been interesting to watch the processof his gradual disintegration and return to the ground: the loss ofsense after sense, as decaying limbs fall from the oak; the failureof discrimination, of the power of choice, and finally of memoryitself; the peaceful wearing out and passing away of body and mindwithout disease, the natural running down of a man. The interestingfact about him at that time was that his bodily powers seemed insufficient vigor, but that the mind had not force enough to manifestit*elf through his organs. The complete battery was there, theappetite was there, the acid was eating the zinc; but the electriccurrent was too weak to flash from the brain. And yet he appeared sosound throughout, that it was difficult to say that his mind was notas good as it ever had been. He had stored in it very little to feedon, and any mind would get enfeebled by a century's rumination on ahearsay idea of the rebellion of '45.

It was possible with this man to fully test one's respect for age,which is in all civilized nations a duty. And I found that myfeelings were mixed about him. I discovered in him a conceit inregard to his long sojourn on this earth, as if it were somehow acredit to him. In the presence of his good opinion of himself, Icould but question the real value of his continued life, to himselfor to others. If he ever had any friends he had outlived them,except his boy; his wives—a century of them—were all dead; theworld had actually passed away for him. He hung on the tree like afrost-nipped apple, which the farmer has neglected to gather. Theworld always renews itself, and remains young. What relation had heto it?

I was delighted to find that this old man had never voted for GeorgeWashington. I do not know that he had ever heard of him. Washingtonmay be said to have played his part since his time. I am not surethat he perfectly remembered anything so recent as the AmericanRevolution. He was living quietly in Ireland during our French andIndian wars, and he did not emigrate to this country till long afterour revolutionary and our constitutional struggles were over. TheRebellion Of '45 was the great event of the world for him, and ofthat he knew nothing.

I intend no disrespect to this man,—a cheerful and pleasant enoughold person,—but he had evidently lived himself out of the world, ascompletely as people usually die out of it. His only remaining valuewas to the moralist, who might perchance make something out of him.I suppose if he had died young, he would have been regretted, and hisfriends would have lamented that he did not fill out his days in theworld, and would very likely have called him back, if tears andprayers could have done so. They can see now what his prolonged lifeamounted to, and how the world has closed up the gap he once filledwhile he still lives in it.

A great part of the unhappiness of this world consists in regret forthose who depart, as it seems to us, prematurely. We imagine that ifthey would return, the old conditions would be restored. But wouldit be so? If they, in any case, came back, would there be any placefor them? The world so quickly readjusts itself after any loss, thatthe return of the departed would nearly always throw it, even thecircle most interested, into confusion. Are the Enoch Ardens everwanted?

II

A popular notion akin to this, that the world would have any room forthe departed if they should now and then return, is the constantregret that people will not learn by the experience of others, thatone generation learns little from the preceding, and that youth neverwill adopt the experience of age. But if experience went foranything, we should all come to a standstill; for there is nothing sodiscouraging to effort. Disbelief in Ecclesiastes is the mainspringof action. In that lies the freshness and the interest of life, andit is the source of every endeavor.

If the boy believed that the accumulation of wealth and theacquisition of power were what the old man says they are, the worldwould very soon be stagnant. If he believed that his chances ofobtaining either were as poor as the majority of men find them to be,ambition would die within him. It is because he rejects theexperience of those who have preceded him, that the world is kept inthe topsy-turvy condition which we all rejoice in, and which we callprogress.

And yet I confess I have a soft place in my heart for that rarecharacter in our New England life who is content with the world as hefinds it, and who does not attempt to appropriate any more of it tohimself than he absolutely needs from day to day. He knows from thebeginning that the world could get on without him, and he has neverhad any anxiety to leave any result behind him, any legacy for theworld to quarrel over.

He is really an exotic in our New England climate and society, andhis life is perpetually misunderstood by his neighbors, because heshares none of their uneasiness about getting on in life. He is evencalled lazy, good-for-nothing, and "shiftless,"—the final stigmathat we put upon a person who has learned to wait without theexhausting process of laboring.

I made his acquaintance last summer in the country, and I have not ina long time been so well pleased with any of our species. He was aman past middle life, with a large family. He had always been fromboyhood of a contented and placid mind, slow in his movements, slowin his speech. I think he never cherished a hard feeling towardanybody, nor envied any one, least of all the rich and prosperousabout whom he liked to talk. Indeed, his talk was a good deal aboutwealth, especially about his cousin who had been down South and "gotfore-handed" within a few years. He was genuinely pleased at hisrelation's good luck, and pointed him out to me with some pride. Buthe had no envy of him, and he evinced no desire to imitate him. Iinferred from all his conversation about "piling it up" (of which hespoke with a gleam of enthusiasm in his eye), that there were momentswhen he would like to be rich himself; but it was evident that hewould never make the least effort to be so, and I doubt if he couldeven overcome that delicious inertia of mind and body calledlaziness, sufficiently to inherit.

Wealth seemed to have a far and peculiar fascination for him, and Isuspect he was a visionary in the midst of his poverty. Yet Isuppose he had—hardly the personal property which the law exemptsfrom execution. He had lived in a great many towns, moving from oneto another with his growing family, by easy stages, and was alwaysthe poorest man in the town, and lived on the most nigg*rdly of itsrocky and bramble-grown farms, the productiveness of which he reducedto zero in a couple of seasons by his careful neglect of culture.The fences of his hired domain always fell into ruins under him,perhaps because he sat on them so much, and the hovels he occupiedrotted down during his placid residence in them. He moved fromdesolation to desolation, but carried always with him the equal mindof a philosopher. Not even the occasional tart remarks of his wife,about their nomadic life and his serenity in the midst of discomfort,could ruffle his smooth spirit.

He was, in every respect, a most worthy man, truthful, honest,temperate, and, I need not say, frugal; and he had no bad habits,—perhaps he never had energy enough to acquire any. Nor did he lackthe knack of the Yankee race. He could make a shoe, or build ahouse, or doctor a cow; but it never seemed to him, in this briefexistence, worth while to do any of these things. He was anexcellent angler, but he rarely fished; partly because of theshortness of days, partly on account of the uncertainty of bites, butprincipally because the trout brooks were all arranged lengthwise andran over so much ground. But no man liked to look at a string oftrout better than he did, and he was willing to sit down in a sunnyplace and talk about trout-fishing half a day at a time, and he wouldtalk pleasantly and well too, though his wife might be continuallyinterrupting him by a call for firewood.

I should not do justice to his own idea of himself if I did not addthat he was most respectably connected, and that he had a justifiablethough feeble pride in his family. It helped his self-respect, whichno ignoble circ*mstances could destroy. He was, as must appear bythis time, a most intelligent man, and he was a well-informed man;that is to say, he read the weekly newspapers when he could get them,and he had the average country information about Beecher and Greeleyand the Prussian war ("Napoleon is gettin' on't, ain't he?"), andthe general prospect of the election campaigns. Indeed, he waswarmly, or rather luke-warmly, interested in politics. He liked totalk about the inflated currency, and it seemed plain to him that hiscondition would somehow be improved if we could get to a speciebasis. He was, in fact, a little troubled by the national debt; itseemed to press on him somehow, while his own never did. Heexhibited more animation over the affairs of the government than hedid over his own,—an evidence at once of his disinterestedness andhis patriotism. He had been an old abolitionist, and was strong onthe rights of free labor, though he did not care to exercise hisprivilege much. Of course he had the proper contempt for the poorwhites down South. I never saw a person with more correct notions onsuch a variety of subjects. He was perfectly willing that churches(being himself a member), and Sunday-schools, and missionaryenterprises should go on; in fact, I do not believe he ever opposedanything in his life. No one was more willing to vote town taxes androad-repairs and schoolhouses than he. If you could call himspirited at all, he was public-spirited.

And with all this he was never very well; he had, from boyhood,"enjoyed poor health." You would say he was not a man who would evercatch anything, not even an epidemic; but he was a person whomdiseases would be likely to overtake, even the slowest of slowfevers. And he was n't a man to shake off anything. And yetsickness seemed to trouble him no more than poverty. He was notdiscontented; he never grumbled. I am not sure but he relished a"spell of sickness" in haying-time.

An admirably balanced man, who accepts the world as it is, andevidently lives on the experience of others. I have never seen a manwith less envy, or more cheerfulness, or so contented with as littlereason for being so. The only drawback to his future is that restbeyond the grave will not be much change for him, and he has no worksto follow him.

III

This Yankee philosopher, who, without being a Brahmin, had, in anuncongenial atmosphere, reached the perfect condition of Nirvina,reminded us all of the ancient sages; and we queried whether a worldthat could produce such as he, and could, beside, lengthen a man'syears to one hundred and thirteen, could fairly be called an old andworn-out world, having long passed the stage of its primeval poetryand simplicity. Many an Eastern dervish has, I think, gotimmortality upon less laziness and resignation than this temporarysojourner in Massachusetts. It is a common notion that the world(meaning the people in it) has become tame and commonplace, lost itsprimeval freshness and epigrammatic point. Mandeville, in hisargumentative way, dissents from this entirely. He says that theworld is more complex, varied, and a thousand times as interesting asit was in what we call its youth, and that it is as fresh, asindividual and capable of producing odd and eccentric characters asever. He thought the creative vim had not in any degree abated, thatboth the types of men and of nations are as sharply stamped anddefined as ever they were.

Was there ever, he said, in the past, any figure more clearly cut andfreshly minted than the Yankee? Had the Old World anything to showmore positive and uncompromising in all the elements of characterthan the Englishman? And if the edges of these were being roundedoff, was there not developing in the extreme West a type of mendifferent from all preceding, which the world could not yet define?He believed that the production of original types was simplyinfinite.

Herbert urged that he must at least admit that there was a freshnessof legend and poetry in what we call the primeval peoples that iswanting now; the mythic period is gone, at any rate.

Mandeville could not say about the myths. We couldn't tell whatinterpretation succeeding ages would put upon our lives and historyand literature when they have become remote and shadowy. But we neednot go to antiquity for epigrammatic wisdom, or for characters asracy of the fresh earth as those handed down to us from the dawn ofhistory. He would put Benjamin Franklin against any of the sages ofthe mythic or the classic period. He would have been perfectly athome in ancient Athens, as Socrates would have been in modern Boston.There might have been more heroic characters at the siege of Troythan Abraham Lincoln, but there was not one more strongly markedindividually; not one his superior in what we call primeval craft andhumor. He was just the man, if he could not have dislodged Priam bya writ of ejectment, to have invented the wooden horse, and then tohave made Paris the hero of some ridiculous story that would have setall Asia in a roar.

Mandeville said further, that as to poetry, he did not know muchabout that, and there was not much he cared to read except parts ofShakespeare and Homer, and passages of Milton. But it did seem tohim that we had men nowadays, who could, if they would give theirminds to it, manufacture in quantity the same sort of epigrammaticsayings and legends that our scholars were digging out of the Orient.He did not know why Emerson in antique setting was not as good asSaadi. Take for instance, said Mandeville, such a legend as this,and how easy it would be to make others like it:

The son of an Emir had red hair, of which he was ashamed, and wishedto dye it. But his father said: "Nay, my son, rather behave in sucha manner that all fathers shall wish their sons had red hair."

This was too absurd. Mandeville had gone too far, except in theopinion of Our Next Door, who declared that an imitation was just asgood as an original, if you could not detect it. But Herbert saidthat the closer an imitation is to an original, the more unendurableit is. But nobody could tell exactly why.

The Fire-Tender said that we are imposed on by forms. The nuggets ofwisdom that are dug out of the Oriental and remote literatures wouldoften prove to be only commonplace if stripped of their quaintsetting. If you gave an Oriental twist to some of our modernthought, its value would be greatly enhanced for many people.

I have seen those, said the Mistress, who seem to prefer dried fruitto fresh; but I like the strawberry and the peach of each season, andfor me the last is always the best.

Even the Parson admitted that there were no signs of fatigue or decayin the creative energy of the world; and if it is a question ofPagans, he preferred Mandeville to Saadi.

ELEVENTH STUDY

It happened, or rather, to tell the truth, it was contrived,—for Ihave waited too long for things to turn up to have much faith in"happen," that we who have sat by this hearthstone before should allbe together on Christmas eve. There was a splendid backlog ofhickory just beginning to burn with a glow that promised to grow morefiery till long past midnight, which would have needed no apology ina loggers' camp,—not so much as the religion of which a lady (in acity which shall be nameless) said, "If you must have a religion,this one will do nicely."

There was not much conversation, as is apt to be the case when peoplecome together who have a great deal to say, and are intimate enoughto permit the freedom of silence. It was Mandeville who suggestedthat we read something, and the Young Lady, who was in a mood toenjoy her own thoughts, said, "Do." And finally it came about thatthe Fire Tender, without more resistance to the urging than wasbecoming, went to his library, and returned with a manuscript, fromwhich he read the story of

MY UNCLE IN INDIA

Not that it is my uncle, let me explain. It is Polly's uncle, as Ivery well know, from the many times she has thrown him up to me, andis liable so to do at any moment. Having small expectations myself,and having wedded Polly when they were smaller, I have come to feelthe full force, the crushing weight, of her lightest remark about "MyUncle in India." The words as I write them convey no idea of thetone in which they fall upon my ears. I think it is the only faultof that estimable woman, that she has an "uncle in India" and doesnot let him quietly remain there. I feel quite sure that if I had anuncle in Botany Bay, I should never, never throw him up to Polly inthe way mentioned. If there is any jar in our quiet life, he is thecause of it; all along of possible "expectations" on the one sidecalculated to overawe the other side not having expectations. Andyet I know that if her uncle in India were this night to roll abarrel of "India's golden sands," as I feel that he any moment maydo, into our sitting-room, at Polly's feet, that charming wife, whois more generous than the month of May, and who has no thought butfor my comfort in two worlds, would straightway make it over to me,to have and to hold, if I could lift it, forever and forever. Andthat makes it more inexplicable that she, being a woman, willcontinue to mention him in the way she does.

In a large and general way I regard uncles as not out of place inthis transitory state of existence. They stand for a great manypossible advantages. They are liable to "tip" you at school, theyare resources in vacation, they come grandly in play about theholidays, at which season mv heart always did warm towards them withlively expectations, which were often turned into golden solidities;and then there is always the prospect, sad to a sensitive mind, thatuncles are mortal, and, in their timely taking off, may prove asgenerous in the will as they were in the deed. And there is alwaysthis redeeming possibility in a nigg*rdly uncle. Still there must besomething wrong in the character of the uncle per se, or all historywould not agree that nepotism is such a dreadful thing.

But, to return from this unnecessary digression, I am reminded thatthe charioteer of the patient year has brought round the holidaytime. It has been a growing year, as most years are. It is verypleasant to see how the shrubs in our little patch of ground widenand thicken and bloom at the right time, and to know that the greattrees have added a laver to their trunks. To be sure, our garden,—which I planted under Polly's directions, with seeds that must havebeen patented, and I forgot to buy the right of, for they are mostlystill waiting the final resurrection,—gave evidence that it sharedin the misfortune of the Fall, and was never an Eden from which onewould have required to have been driven. It was the easiest gardento keep the neighbor's pigs and hens out of I ever saw. If itsincrease was small its temptations were smaller, and that is nolittle recommendation in this world of temptations. But, as ageneral thing, everything has grown, except our house. That littlecottage, over which Polly presides with grace enough to adorn apalace, is still small outside and smaller inside; and if it has anair of comfort and of neatness, and its rooms are cozy and sunny byday and cheerful by night, and it is bursting with books, and notunattractive with modest pictures on the walls, which we think dowell enough until my uncle—(but never mind my uncle, now),—and if,in the long winter evenings, when the largest lamp is lit, and thechestnuts glow in embers, and the kid turns on the spit, and thehouse-plants are green and flowering, and the ivy glistens in thefirelight, and Polly sits with that contented, far-away look in hereyes that I like to see, her fingers busy upon one of those cruelmysteries which have delighted the sex since Penelope, and I read inone of my fascinating law-books, or perhaps regale ourselves with ataste of Montaigne,—if all this is true, there are times when thecottage seems small; though I can never find that Polly thinks so,except when she sometimes says that she does not know where sheshould bestow her uncle in it, if he should suddenly come back fromIndia.

There it is, again. I sometimes think that my wife believes heruncle in India to be as large as two ordinary men; and if her ideasof him are any gauge of the reality, there is no place in the townlarge enough for him except the Town Hall. She probably expects himto come with his bungalow, and his sedan, and his palanquin, and hiselephants, and his retinue of servants, and his principalities, andhis powers, and his ha—(no, not that), and his chowchow, and his—Iscarcely know what besides.

Christmas eve was a shiny cold night, a creaking cold night, aplacid, calm, swingeing cold night.

Out-doors had gone into a general state of crystallization. Thesnow-fields were like the vast Arctic ice-fields that Kane looked on,and lay sparkling under the moonlight, crisp and Christmasy, and allthe crystals on the trees and bushes hung glistening, as if ready, ata breath of air, to break out into metallic ringing, like a millionsilver joy-bells. I mentioned the conceit to Polly, as we stood atthe window, and she said it reminded her of Jean Paul. She is awoman of most remarkable discernment.

Christmas is a great festival at our house in a small way. Among themany delightful customs we did not inherit from our Pilgrim Fathers,there is none so pleasant as that of giving presents at this season.It is the most exciting time of the year. No one is too rich toreceive something, and no one too poor to give a trifle. And in theact of giving and receiving these tokens of regard, all the world iskin for once, and brighter for this transient glow of generosity.Delightful custom! Hard is the lot of childhood that knows nothingof the visits of Kriss Kringle, or the stockings hung by the chimneyat night; and cheerless is any age that is not brightened by someChristmas gift, however humble. What a mystery of preparation thereis in the preceding days, what planning and plottings of surprises!Polly and I keep up the custom in our simple way, and great is theperplexity to express the greatest amount of affection with a limitedoutlay. For the excellence of a gift lies in its appropriatenessrather than in its value. As we stood by the window that night, wewondered what we should receive this year, and indulged in I know notwhat little hypocrisies and deceptions.

I wish, said Polly, "that my uncle in India would send me acamel's-hair shawl, or a string of pearls, each as big as the end ofmy thumb."

"Or a white cow, which would give golden milk, that would make butterworth seventy-five cents a pound," I added, as we drew the curtains,and turned to our chairs before the open fire.

It is our custom on every Christmas eve—as I believe I havesomewhere said, or if I have not, I say it again, as the member fromErin might remark—to read one of Dickens's Christmas stories. Andthis night, after punching the fire until it sent showers of sparksup the chimney, I read the opening chapter of "Mrs. Lirriper'sLodgings," in my best manner, and handed the book to Polly tocontinue; for I do not so much relish reading aloud the succeedingstories of Mr. Dickens's annual budget, since he wrote them, as mengo to war in these days, by substitute. And Polly read on, in hermelodious voice, which is almost as pleasant to me as theWasser-fluth of Schubert, which she often plays at twilight; and Ilooked into the fire, unconsciously constructing stories of my own outof the embers. And her voice still went on, in a sort of runningaccompaniment to my airy or fiery fancies.

"Sleep?" said Polly, stopping, with what seemed to me a sort ofcrash, in which all the castles tumbled into ashes.

"Not in the least," I answered brightly, "never heard anything moreagreeable." And the reading flowed on and on and on, and I lookedsteadily into the fire, the fire, fire, fi….

Suddenly the door opened, and into our cozy parlor walked the mostvenerable personage I ever laid eyes on, who saluted me with greatdignity. Summer seemed to have burst into the room, and I wasconscious of a puff of Oriental airs, and a delightful, languidtranquillity. I was not surprised that the figure before me was cladin full turban, baggy drawers, and a long loose robe, girt about themiddle with a rich shawl. Followed him a swart attendant, whohastened to spread a rug upon which my visitor sat down, with greatgravity, as I am informed they do in farthest Ind. The slave thenfilled the bowl of a long-stemmed chibouk, and, handing it to hismaster, retired behind him and began to fan him with the mostprodigious palm-leaf I ever saw. Soon the fumes of the delicatetobacco of Persia pervaded the room, like some costly aroma which youcannot buy, now the entertainment of the Arabian Nights isdiscontinued.

Looking through the window I saw, if I saw anything, a palanquin atour door, and attendant on it four dusky, half-naked bearers, who didnot seem to fancy the splendor of the night, for they jumped about onthe snow crust, and I could see them shiver and shake in the keenair. Oho! thought! this, then, is my uncle from India!

"Yes, it is," now spoke my visitor extraordinary, in a gruff, harshvoice.

"I think I have heard Polly speak of you," I rejoined, in an attemptto be civil, for I did n't like his face any better than I did hisvoice,—a red, fiery, irascible kind of face.

"Yes I've come over to O Lord,—quick, Jamsetzee, lift up that foot,—take care. There, Mr. Trimings, if that's your name, get me aglass of brandy, stiff."

I got him our little apothecary-labeled bottle and poured out enoughto preserve a whole can of peaches. My uncle took it down without awink, as if it had been water, and seemed relieved. It was a verypleasant uncle to have at our fireside on Christmas eve, I felt.

At a motion from my uncle, Jamsetzee handed me a parcel which I sawwas directed to Polly, which I untied, and lo! the most wonderfulcamel's-hair shawl that ever was, so fine that I immediately drew itthrough my finger-ring, and so large that I saw it would entirelycover our little room if I spread it out; a dingy red color, butsplendid in appearance from the little white hieroglyphic worked inone corner, which is always worn outside, to show that it cost nobodyknows how many thousands of dollars.

"A Christmas trifle for Polly. I have come home—as I was sayingwhen that confounded twinge took me—to settle down; and I intend tomake Polly my heir, and live at my ease and enjoy life. Move thatleg a little, Jamsetzee."

I meekly replied that I had no doubt Polly would be delighted to seeher dear uncle, and as for inheriting, if it came to that, I did n'tknow any one with a greater capacity for that than she.

"That depends," said the gruff old smoker, "how I like ye. Afortune, scraped up in forty years in Ingy, ain't to be thrown awayin a minute. But what a house this is to live in!"; theuncomfortable old relative went on, throwing a contemptuous glanceround the humble cottage. "Is this all of it?"

"In the winter it is all of it," I said, flushing up; "but in thesummer, when the doors and windows are open, it is as large asanybody's house. And," I went on, with some warmth, "it was largeenough just before you came in, and pleasant enough. And besides," Isaid, rising into indignation, "you can not get anything much betterin this city short of eight hundred dollars a year, payable firstdays of January, April, July, and October, in advance, and mysalary…."

"Hang your salary, and confound your impudence and your seven-by-ninehovel! Do you think you have anything to say about the use of mymoney, scraped up in forty years in Ingy? THINGS HAVE GOT TO BECHANGED!" he burst out, in a voice that rattled the glasses on thesideboard.

I should think they were. Even as I looked into the little fireplaceit enlarged, and there was an enormous grate, level with the floor,glowing with seacoal; and a magnificent mantel carved in oak, old andbrown; and over it hung a landscape, wide, deep, summer in theforeground with all the gorgeous coloring of the tropics, and beyondhills of blue and far mountains lying in rosy light. I held mybreath as I looked down the marvelous perspective. Looking round fora second, I caught a glimpse of a Hindoo at each window, who vanishedas if they had been whisked off by enchantment; and the close wallsthat shut us in fled away. Had cohesion and gravitation given out?Was it the "Great Consummation" of the year 18-? It was all like theswift transformation of a dream, and I pinched my arm to make surethat I was not the subject of some diablerie.

The little house was gone; but that I scarcely minded, for I hadsuddenly come into possession of my wife's castle in Spain. I sat ina spacious, lofty apartment, furnished with a princely magnificence.Rare pictures adorned the walls, statues looked down from deepniches, and over both the dark ivy of England ran and drooped ingraceful luxuriance. Upon the heavy tables were costly, illuminatedvolumes; luxurious chairs and ottomans invited to easy rest; and uponthe ceiling Aurora led forth all the flower-strewing daughters of thedawn in brilliant frescoes. Through the open doors my eyes wanderedinto magnificent apartment after apartment. There to the south,through folding-doors, was the splendid library, with groined roof,colored light streaming in through painted windows, high shelvesstowed with books, old armor hanging on the walls, great carved oakenchairs about a solid oaken table, and beyond a conservatory offlowers and plants with a fountain springing in the center, thesplashing of whose waters I could hear. Through the open windows Ilooked upon a lawn, green with close-shaven turf, set with ancienttrees, and variegated with parterres of summer plants in bloom. Itwas the month of June, and the smell of roses was in the air.

I might have thought it only a freak of my fancy, but there by thefireplace sat a stout, red-faced, puffy-looking man, in the ordinarydress of an English gentleman, whom I had no difficulty inrecognizing as my uncle from India.

"One wants a fire every day in the year in this confounded climate,"remarked that amiable old person, addressing no one in particular.

I had it on my lips to suggest that I trusted the day would come whenhe would have heat enough to satisfy him, in permanent supply. Iwish now that I had.

I think things had changed. For now into this apartment, full of themorning sunshine, came sweeping with the air of a countess born, anda maid of honor bred, and a queen in expectancy, my Polly, steppingwith that lofty grace which I always knew she possessed, but whichshe never had space to exhibit in our little cottage, dressed withthat elegance and richness that I should not have deemed possible tothe most Dutch duch*ess that ever lived, and, giving me a complacentnod of recognition, approached her uncle, and said in her smiling,cheery way, "How is the dear uncle this morning?" And, as she spoke,she actually bent down and kissed his horrid old cheek, red-hot withcurrie and brandy and all the biting pickles I can neither eat norname, kissed him, and I did not turn into stone.

"Comfortable as the weather will permit, my darling!"—and again Idid not turn into stone.

"Wouldn't uncle like to take a drive this charming morning?" Pollyasked.

Uncle finally grunted out his willingness, and Polly swept away againto prepare for the drive, taking no more notice of me than if I hadbeen a poor assistant office lawyer on a salary. And soon thecarriage was at the door, and my uncle, bundled up like a mummy, andthe charming Polly drove gayly away.

How pleasant it is to be married rich, I thought, as I arose andstrolled into the library, where everything was elegant and prim andneat, with no scraps of paper and piles of newspapers or evidences ofliterary slovenness on the table, and no books in attractivedisorder, and where I seemed to see the legend staring at me from allthe walls, "No smoking." So I uneasily lounged out of the house.And a magnificent house it was, a palace, rather, that seemed tofrown upon and bully insignificant me with its splendor, as I walkedaway from it towards town.

And why town? There was no use of doing anything at the dingyoffice. Eight hundred dollars a year! It wouldn't keep Polly ingloves, let alone dressing her for one of those fashionableentertainments to which we went night after night. And so, after aweary day with nothing in it, I went home to dinner, to find my unclequite chirruped up with his drive, and Polly regnant, sublimelyengrossed in her new world of splendor, a dazzling object ofadmiration to me, but attentive and even tender to thathypochondriacal, gouty old subject from India.

Yes, a magnificent dinner, with no end of servants, who seemed toknow that I couldn't have paid the wages of one of them, and plateand courses endless. I say, a miserable dinner, on the edge of whichseemed to sit by permission of somebody, like an invited poorrelation, who wishes he had sent a regret, and longing for some ofthose nice little dishes that Polly used to set before me withbeaming face, in the dear old days.

And after dinner, and proper attention to the comfort for the nightof our benefactor, there was the Blibgims's party. No long,confidential interviews, as heretofore, as to what she should wearand what I should wear, and whether it would do to wear it again.And Polly went in one coach, and I in another. No crowding into thehired hack, with all the delightful care about tumbling dresses, andgetting there in good order; and no coming home together to ourlittle cozy cottage, in a pleasant, excited state of "flutteration,"and sitting down to talk it all over, and "Was n't it nice?" and "DidI look as well as anybody?" and "Of course you did to me," and allthat nonsense. We lived in a grand way now, and had our separateestablishments and separate plans, and I used to think that a realseparation couldn't make matters much different. Not that Pollymeant to be any different, or was, at heart; but, you know, she wasso much absorbed in her new life of splendor, and perhaps I was alittle old-fashioned.

I don't wonder at it now, as I look back. There was an army ofdressmakers to see, and a world of shopping to do, and a houseful ofservants to manage, and all the afternoon for calls, and her dear,dear friend, with the artless manners and merry heart of a girl, andthe dignity and grace of a noble woman, the dear friend who lived inthe house of the Seven Gables, to consult about all manner ofimportant things. I could not, upon my honor, see that there was anyplace for me, and I went my own way, not that there was much comfortin it.

And then I would rather have had charge of a hospital ward than takecare of that uncle. Such coddling as he needed, such humoring ofwhims. And I am bound to say that Polly could n't have been moredutiful to him if he had been a Hindoo idol. She read to him andtalked to him, and sat by him with her embroidery, and was patientwith his crossness, and wearied herself, that I could see, with herdevoted ministrations.

I fancied sometimes she was tired of it, and longed for the oldhomely simplicity. I was. Nepotism had no charms for me. There wasnothing that I could get Polly that she had not. I could surpriseher with no little delicacies or trifles, delightedly bought withmoney saved for the purpose. There was no more coming home wearywith office work and being met at the door with that warm, lovingwelcome which the King of England could not buy. There was no longevening when we read alternately from some favorite book, or laid ourdeep housekeeping plans, rejoiced in a good bargain or made light ofa poor one, and were contented and merry with little. I recalledwith longing my little den, where in the midst of the literarydisorder I love, I wrote those stories for the "Antarctic" whichPolly, if nobody else, liked to read. There was no comfort for me inmy magnificent library. We were all rich and in splendor, and ouruncle had come from India. I wished, saving his soul, that the shipthat brought him over had foundered off Barnegat Light. It wouldalways have been a tender and regretful memory to both of us. Andhow sacred is the memory of such a loss!

Christmas? What delight could I have in long solicitude andingenious devices touching a gift for Polly within my means, andhitting the border line between her necessities and her extravagantfancy? A drove of white elephants would n't have been good enoughfor her now, if each one carried a castle on his back.

"—and so they were married, and in their snug cottage lived happyever after."—It was Polly's voice, as she closed the book.

"There, I don't believe you have heard a word of it," she said halfcomplainingly.

"Oh, yes, I have," I cried, starting up and giving the fire a jabwith the poker; "I heard every word of it, except a few at the closeI was thinking"—I stopped, and looked round.

"Why, Polly, where is the camel's-hair shawl?"

"Camel's-hair fiddlestick! Now I know you have been asleep for anhour."

And, sure enough, there was n't any camel's-hair shawl there, nor anyuncle, nor were there any Hindoos at our windows.

And then I told Polly all about it; how her uncle came back, and wewere rich and lived in a palace and had no end of money, but shedidn't seem to have time to love me in it all, and all the comfort ofthe little house was blown away as by the winter wind. And Pollyvowed, half in tears, that she hoped her uncle never would come back,and she wanted nothing that we had not, and she wouldn't exchange ourindependent comfort and snug house, no, not for anybody's mansion.And then and there we made it all up, in a manner too particular forme to mention; and I never, to this day, heard Polly allude to MyUncle in India.

And then, as the clock struck eleven, we each produced from the placewhere we had hidden them the modest Christmas gifts we had preparedfor each other, and what surprise there was! "Just the thing Ineeded." And, "It's perfectly lovely." And, "You should n't havedone it." And, then, a question I never will answer, "Ten? fifteen?five? twelve?" "My dear, it cost eight hundred dollars, for I haveput my whole year into it, and I wish it was a thousand timesbetter."

And so, when the great iron tongue of the city bell swept over thesnow the twelve strokes that announced Christmas day, if there wasanywhere a happier home than ours, I am glad of it!

By Charles Dudley Warner

CONTENTS:
HOW I KILLED A BEAR
LOST IN THE WOODS
A FIGHT WITH A TROUT
A-HUNTING OF THE DEER
A CHARACTER STUDY (Old Phelps)
CAMPING OUT
A WILDERNESS ROMANCE
WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE

HOW I KILLED A BEAR

So many conflicting accounts have appeared about my casual encounterwith an Adirondack bear last summer that in justice to the public, tomyself, and to the bear, it is necessary to make a plain statement ofthe facts. Besides, it is so seldom I have occasion to kill a bear,that the celebration of the exploit may be excused.

The encounter was unpremeditated on both sides. I was not huntingfor a bear, and I have no reason to suppose that a bear was lookingfor me. The fact is, that we were both out blackberrying, and met bychance, the usual way. There is among the Adirondack visitors alwaysa great deal of conversation about bears,—a general expression ofthe wish to see one in the woods, and much speculation as to how aperson would act if he or she chanced to meet one. But bears arescarce and timid, and appear only to a favored few.

It was a warm day in August, just the sort of day when an adventureof any kind seemed impossible. But it occurred to the housekeepersat our cottage—there were four of them—to send me to the clearing,on the mountain back of the house, to pick blackberries. It wasrather a series of small clearings, running up into the forest, muchovergrown with bushes and briers, and not unromantic. Cows pasturedthere, penetrating through the leafy passages from one opening toanother, and browsing among the bushes. I was kindly furnished witha six-quart pail, and told not to be gone long.

Not from any predatory instinct, but to save appearances, I took agun. It adds to the manly aspect of a person with a tin pail if healso carries a gun. It was possible I might start up a partridge;though how I was to hit him, if he started up instead of standingstill, puzzled me. Many people use a shotgun for partridges. Iprefer the rifle: it makes a clean job of death, and does notprematurely stuff the bird with globules of lead. The rifle was aSharps, carrying a ball cartridge (ten to the pound),—an excellentweapon belonging to a friend of mine, who had intended, for a goodmany years back, to kill a deer with it. He could hit a tree with it—if the wind did not blow, and the atmosphere was just right, andthe tree was not too far off—nearly every time. Of course, the treemust have some size. Needless to say that I was at that time nosportsman. Years ago I killed a robin under the most humiliatingcirc*mstances. The bird was in a low cherry-tree. I loaded a bigshotgun pretty full, crept up under the tree, rested the gun on thefence, with the muzzle more than ten feet from the bird, shut botheyes, and pulled the trigger. When I got up to see what hadhappened, the robin was scattered about under the tree in more than athousand pieces, no one of which was big enough to enable anaturalist to decide from it to what species it belonged. Thisdisgusted me with the life of a sportsman. I mention the incident toshow that, although I went blackberrying armed, there was not muchinequality between me and the bear.

In this blackberry-patch bears had been seen. The summer before, ourcolored cook, accompanied by a little girl of the vicinage, waspicking berries there one day, when a bear came out of the woods, andwalked towards them. The girl took to her heels, and escaped. AuntChloe was paralyzed with terror. Instead of attempting to run, shesat down on the ground where she was standing, and began to weep andscream, giving herself up for lost. The bear was bewildered by thisconduct. He approached and looked at her; he walked around andsurveyed her. Probably he had never seen a colored person before,and did not know whether she would agree with him: at any rate, afterwatching her a few moments, he turned about, and went into theforest. This is an authentic instance of the delicate considerationof a bear, and is much more remarkable than the forbearance towardsthe African slave of the well-known lion, because the bear had nothorn in his foot.

When I had climbed the hill,—I set up my rifle against a tree, andbegan picking berries, lured on from bush to bush by the black gleamof fruit (that always promises more in the distance than it realizeswhen you reach it); penetrating farther and farther, throughleaf-shaded cow-paths flecked with sunlight, into clearing afterclearing. I could hear on all sides the tinkle of bells, the crackingof sticks, and the stamping of cattle that were taking refuge in thethicket from the flies. Occasionally, as I broke through a covert, Iencountered a meek cow, who stared at me stupidly for a second, andthen shambled off into the brush. I became accustomed to this dumbsociety, and picked on in silence, attributing all the wood noises tothe cattle, thinking nothing of any real bear. In point of fact,however, I was thinking all the time of a nice romantic bear, and as Ipicked, was composing a story about a generous she-bear who had losther cub, and who seized a small girl in this very wood, carried hertenderly off to a cave, and brought her up on bear's milk and honey.When the girl got big enough to run away, moved by her inheritedinstincts, she escaped, and came into the valley to her father's house(this part of the story was to be worked out, so that the child wouldknow her father by some family resemblance, and have some language inwhich to address him), and told him where the bear lived. The fathertook his gun, and, guided by the unfeeling daughter, went into thewoods and shot the bear, who never made any resistance, and only, whendying, turned reproachful eyes upon her murderer. The moral of thetale was to be kindness to animals.

I was in the midst of this tale when I happened to look some rodsaway to the other edge of the clearing, and there was a bear! He wasstanding on his hind legs, and doing just what I was doing,—pickingblackberries. With one paw he bent down the bush, while with theother he clawed the berries into his mouth,—green ones and all. Tosay that I was astonished is inside the mark. I suddenly discoveredthat I didn't want to see a bear, after all. At about the samemoment the bear saw me, stopped eating berries, and regarded me witha glad surprise. It is all very well to imagine what you would dounder such circ*mstances. Probably you wouldn't do it: I didn't.The bear dropped down on his forefeet, and came slowly towards me.Climbing a tree was of no use, with so good a climber in the rear.If I started to run, I had no doubt the bear would give chase; andalthough a bear cannot run down hill as fast as he can run up hill,yet I felt that he could get over this rough, brush-tangled groundfaster than I could.

The bear was approaching. It suddenly occurred to me how I coulddivert his mind until I could fall back upon my military base. Mypail was nearly full of excellent berries, much better than the bearcould pick himself. I put the pail on the ground, and slowly backedaway from it, keeping my eye, as beast-tamers do, on the bear. Theruse succeeded.

The bear came up to the berries, and stopped. Not accustomed to eatout of a pail, he tipped it over, and nosed about in the fruit,"gorming" (if there is such a word) it down, mixed with leaves anddirt, like a pig. The bear is a worse feeder than the pig. Wheneverhe disturbs a maple-sugar camp in the spring, he always upsets thebuckets of syrup, and tramples round in the sticky sweets, wastingmore than he eats. The bear's manners are thoroughly disagreeable.

As soon as my enemy's head was down, I started and ran. Somewhat outof breath, and shaky, I reached my faithful rifle. It was not amoment too soon. I heard the bear crashing through the brush afterme. Enraged at my duplicity, he was now coming on with blood in hiseye. I felt that the time of one of us was probably short. Therapidity of thought at such moments of peril is well known. Ithought an octavo volume, had it illustrated and published, soldfifty thousand copies, and went to Europe on the proceeds, while thatbear was loping across the clearing. As I was co*cking the gun, Imade a hasty and unsatisfactory review of my whole life. I noted,that, even in such a compulsory review, it is almost impossible tothink of any good thing you have done. The sins come out uncommonlystrong. I recollected a newspaper subscription I had delayed payingyears and years ago, until both editor and newspaper were dead, andwhich now never could be paid to all eternity.

The bear was coming on.

I tried to remember what I had read about encounters with bears. Icouldn't recall an instance in which a man had run away from a bearin the woods and escaped, although I recalled plenty where the bearhad run from the man and got off. I tried to think what is the bestway to kill a bear with a gun, when you are not near enough to clubhim with the stock. My first thought was to fire at his head; toplant the ball between his eyes: but this is a dangerous experiment.The bear's brain is very small; and, unless you hit that, the beardoes not mind a bullet in his head; that is, not at the time. Iremembered that the instant death of the bear would follow a bulletplanted just back of his fore-leg, and sent into his heart. Thisspot is also difficult to reach, unless the bear stands off, sidetowards you, like a target. I finally determined to fire at himgenerally.

The bear was coming on.

The contest seemed to me very different from anything at Creedmoor.I had carefully read the reports of the shooting there; but it wasnot easy to apply the experience I had thus acquired. I hesitatedwhether I had better fire lying on my stomach or lying on my back,and resting the gun on my toes. But in neither position, Ireflected, could I see the bear until he was upon me. The range wastoo short; and the bear wouldn't wait for me to examine thethermometer, and note the direction of the wind. Trial of theCreedmoor method, therefore, had to be abandoned; and I bitterlyregretted that I had not read more accounts of offhand shooting.

For the bear was coming on.

I tried to fix my last thoughts upon my family. As my family issmall, this was not difficult. Dread of displeasing my wife, orhurting her feelings, was uppermost in my mind. What would be heranxiety as hour after hour passed on, and I did not return! Whatwould the rest of the household think as the afternoon passed, and noblackberries came! What would be my wife's mortification when thenews was brought that her husband had been eaten by a bear! I cannotimagine anything more ignominious than to have a husband eaten by abear. And this was not my only anxiety. The mind at such times isnot under control. With the gravest fears the most whimsical ideaswill occur. I looked beyond the mourning friends, and thought whatkind of an epitaph they would be compelled to put upon the stone.

Something like this:

HERE LIE THE REMAINS

OF
_______________

EATEN BY A BEAR
Aug. 20, 1877

It is a very unheroic and even disagreeable epitaph. That "eaten bya bear" is intolerable. It is grotesque. And then I thought what aninadequate language the English is for compact expression. It wouldnot answer to put upon the stone simply "eaten"; for that isindefinite, and requires explanation: it might mean eaten by acannibal. This difficulty could not occur in the German, where essensignifies the act of feeding by a man, and fressen by a beast. Howsimple the thing would be in German!

HIER LIEGT HOCHWOHLGEBOREN HERR _____ _______

GEFRESSEN
Aug. 20, 1877

That explains itself. The well-born one was eaten by a beast, andpresumably by a bear,—an animal that has a bad reputation since thedays of Elisha.

The bear was coming on; he had, in fact, come on. I judged that hecould see the whites of my eyes. All my subsequent reflections wereconfused. I raised the gun, covered the bear's breast with thesight, and let drive. Then I turned, and ran like a deer. I did nothear the bear pursuing. I looked back. The bear had stopped. Hewas lying down. I then remembered that the best thing to do afterhaving fired your gun is to reload it. I slipped in a charge,keeping my eyes on the bear. He never stirred. I walked backsuspiciously. There was a quiver in the hindlegs, but no othermotion. Still, he might be shamming: bears often sham. To makesure, I approached, and put a ball into his head. He didn't mind itnow: he minded nothing. Death had come to him with a mercifulsuddenness. He was calm in death. In order that he might remain so,I blew his brains out, and then started for home. I had killed abear!

Notwithstanding my excitement, I managed to saunter into the housewith an unconcerned air. There was a chorus of voices:

"Where are your blackberries?"
"Why were you gone so long?"
"Where's your pail?"

"I left the pail."

"Left the pail? What for?"

"A bear wanted it."

"Oh, nonsense!"

"Well, the last I saw of it, a bear had it."

"Oh, come! You didn't really see a bear?"

"Yes, but I did really see a real bear."

"Did he run?"

"Yes: he ran after me."

"I don't believe a word of it. What did you do?"

"Oh! nothing particular—except kill the bear."

Cries of "Gammon!" "Don't believe it!" "Where's the bear?"

"If you want to see the bear, you must go up into the woods. Icouldn't bring him down alone."

Having satisfied the household that something extraordinary hadoccurred, and excited the posthumous fear of some of them for myown safety, I went down into the valley to get help. The greatbear-hunter, who keeps one of the summer boarding-houses, received mystory with a smile of incredulity; and the incredulity spread to theother inhabitants and to the boarders as soon as the story was known.However, as I insisted in all soberness, and offered to lead them tothe bear, a party of forty or fifty people at last started off withme to bring the bear in. Nobody believed there was any bear in thecase; but everybody who could get a gun carried one; and we went intothe woods armed with guns, pistols, pitchforks, and sticks, againstall contingencies or surprises,—a crowd made up mostly of scoffersand jeerers.

But when I led the way to the fatal spot, and pointed out the bear,lying peacefully wrapped in his own skin, something like terrorseized the boarders, and genuine excitement the natives. It was ano-mistake bear, by George! and the hero of the fight well, I willnot insist upon that. But what a procession that was, carrying thebear home! and what a congregation, was speedily gathered in thevalley to see the bear! Our best preacher up there never drewanything like it on Sunday.

And I must say that my particular friends, who were sportsmen,behaved very well, on the whole. They didn't deny that it was abear, although they said it was small for a bear. Mr… Deane, whois equally good with a rifle and a rod, admitted that it was a veryfair shot. He is probably the best salmon fisher in the UnitedStates, and he is an equally good hunter. I suppose there is noperson in America who is more desirous to kill a moose than he. Buthe needlessly remarked, after he had examined the wound in the bear,that he had seen that kind of a shot made by a cow's horn.

This sort of talk affected me not. When I went to sleep that night,my last delicious thought was, "I've killed a bear!"

II

LOST IN THE WOODS

It ought to be said, by way of explanation, that my being lost in thewoods was not premeditated. Nothing could have been more informal.This apology can be necessary only to those who are familiar with theAdirondack literature. Any person not familiar with it would see theabsurdity of one going to the Northern Wilderness with the deliberatepurpose of writing about himself as a lost man. It may be true thata book about this wild tract would not be recognized as completewithout a lost-man story in it, since it is almost as easy for astranger to get lost in the Adirondacks as in Boston. I merelydesire to say that my unimportant adventure is not narrated in answerto the popular demand, and I do not wish to be held responsible forits variation from the typical character of such experiences.

We had been in camp a week, on the Upper Au Sable Lake. This is agem—emerald or turquoise as the light changes it—set in the virginforest. It is not a large body of water, is irregular in form, andabout a mile and a half in length; but in the sweep of its woodedshores, and the lovely contour of the lofty mountains that guard it,the lake is probably the most charming in America. Why the youngladies and gentlemen who camp there occasionally vex the days andnights with hooting, and singing sentimental songs, is a mystery evento the laughing loon.

I left my companions there one Saturday morning, to return to KeeneValley, intending to fish down the Au Sable River. The Upper Lakedischarges itself into the Lower by a brook which winds through amile and a half of swamp and woods. Out of the north end of theLower Lake, which is a huge sink in the mountains, and mirrors thesavage precipices, the Au Sable breaks its rocky barriers, and flowsthrough a wild gorge, several miles, to the valley below. Betweenthe Lower Lake and the settlements is an extensive forest, traversedby a cart-path, admirably constructed of loose stones, roots oftrees, decayed logs, slippery rocks, and mud. The gorge of the riverforms its western boundary. I followed this caricature of a road amile or more; then gave my luggage to the guide to carry home, andstruck off through the forest, by compass, to the river. I promisedmyself an exciting scramble down this little-frequented canyon, and acreel full of trout. There was no difficulty in finding the river,or in descending the steep precipice to its bed: getting into ascrape is usually the easiest part of it. The river is strewn withbowlders, big and little, through which the amber water rushes withan unceasing thunderous roar, now plunging down in white falls, thenswirling round in dark pools. The day, already past meridian, wasdelightful; at least, the blue strip of it I could see overhead.

Better pools and rapids for trout never were, I thought, as Iconcealed myself behind a bowlder, and made the first cast. There isnothing like the thrill of expectation over the first throw inunfamiliar waters. Fishing is like gambling, in that failure onlyexcites hope of a fortunate throw next time. There was no rise tothe "leader" on the first cast, nor on the twenty-first; and Icautiously worked my way down stream, throwing right and left. WhenI had gone half a mile, my opinion of the character of the pools wasunchanged: never were there such places for trout; but the trout wereout of their places. Perhaps they didn't care for the fly: sometrout seem to be so unsophisticated as to prefer the worm. Ireplaced the fly with a baited hook: the worm squirmed; the watersrushed and roared; a cloud sailed across the blue: no trout rose tothe lonesome opportunity. There is a certain companionship in thepresence of trout, especially when you can feel them flopping in yourfish basket; but it became evident that there were no trout in thiswilderness, and a sense of isolation for the first time came over me.There was no living thing near. The river had by this time entered adeeper gorge; walls of rocks rose perpendicularly on either side,—picturesque rocks, painted many colors by the oxide of iron. It wasnot possible to climb out of the gorge; it was impossible to find away by the side of the river; and getting down the bed, over thefalls, and through the flumes, was not easy, and consumed time.

Was that thunder? Very likely. But thunder showers are alwaysbrewing in these mountain fortresses, and it did not occur to me thatthere was anything personal in it. Very soon, however, the hole inthe sky closed in, and the rain dashed down. It seemed aprovidential time to eat my luncheon; and I took shelter under ascraggy pine that had rooted itself in the edge of the rocky slope.The shower soon passed, and I continued my journey, creeping over theslippery rocks, and continuing to show my confidence in theunresponsive trout. The way grew wilder and more grewsome. Thethunder began again, rolling along over the tops of the mountains,and reverberating in sharp concussions in the gorge: the lightningalso darted down into the darkening passage, and then the rain.Every enlightened being, even if he is in a fisherman's dress ofshirt and pantaloons, hates to get wet; and I ignominiously creptunder the edge of a sloping bowlder. It was all very well at first,until streams of water began to crawl along the face of the rock, andtrickle down the back of my neck. This was refined misery, unheroicand humiliating, as suffering always is when unaccompanied byresignation.

A longer time than I knew was consumed in this and repeated effortsto wait for the slackening and renewing storm to pass away. In theintervals of calm I still fished, and even descended to what asportsman considers incredible baseness: I put a "sinker" on my line.It is the practice of the country folk, whose only object is to getfish, to use a good deal of bait, sink the hook to the bottom of thepools, and wait the slow appetite of the summer trout. I tried thisalso. I might as well have fished in a pork barrel. It is true thatin one deep, black, round pool I lured a small trout from the bottom,and deposited him in the creel; but it was an accident. Though I satthere in the awful silence (the roar of water and thunder onlyemphasized the stillness) full half an hour, I was not encouraged byanother nibble. Hope, however, did not die: I always expected tofind the trout in the next flume; and so I toiled slowly on,unconscious of the passing time. At each turn of the stream Iexpected to see the end, and at each turn I saw a long, narrowstretch of rocks and foaming water. Climbing out of the ravine was,in most places, simply impossible; and I began to look with interestfor a slide, where bushes rooted in the scant earth would enable meto scale the precipice. I did not doubt that I was nearly throughthe gorge. I could at length see the huge form of the Giant of theValley, scarred with avalanches, at the end of the vista; and itseemed not far off. But it kept its distance, as only a mountaincan, while I stumbled and slid down the rocky way. The rain had nowset in with persistence, and suddenly I became aware that it wasgrowing dark; and I said to myself, "If you don't wish to spend thenight in this horrible chasm, you'd better escape speedily."Fortunately I reached a place where the face of the precipice wasbushgrown, and with considerable labor scrambled up it.

Having no doubt that I was within half a mile, perhaps within a fewrods, of the house above the entrance of the gorge, and that, in anyevent, I should fall into the cart-path in a few minutes, I struckboldly into the forest, congratulating myself on having escaped outof the river. So sure was I of my whereabouts that I did not notethe bend of the river, nor look at my compass. The one trout in mybasket was no burden, and I stepped lightly out.

The forest was of hard-wood, and open, except for a thick undergrowthof moose-bush. It was raining,—in fact, it had been raining, moreor less, for a month,—and the woods were soaked. This moose-bush ismost annoying stuff to travel through in a rain; for the broad leavesslap one in the face, and sop him with wet. The way grew everymoment more dingy. The heavy clouds above the thick foliage broughtnight on prematurely. It was decidedly premature to a near-sightedman, whose glasses the rain rendered useless: such a person ought tobe at home early. On leaving the river bank I had borne to the left,so as to be sure to strike either the clearing or the road, and notwander off into the measureless forest. I confidently pursued thiscourse, and went gayly on by the left flank. That I did not come toany opening or path only showed that I had slightly mistaken thedistance: I was going in the right direction.

I was so certain of this that I quickened my pace and got up withalacrity every time I tumbled down amid the slippery leaves andcatching roots, and hurried on. And I kept to the left. It evenoccurred to me that I was turning to the left so much that I mightcome back to the river again. It grew more dusky, and rained moreviolently; but there was nothing alarming in the situation, since Iknew exactly where I was. It was a little mortifying that I hadmiscalculated the distance: yet, so far was I from feeling anyuneasiness about this that I quickened my pace again, and, before Iknew it, was in a full run; that is, as full a run as a person canindulge in in the dusk, with so many trees in the way. Nonervousness, but simply a reasonable desire to get there. I desiredto look upon myself as the person "not lost, but gone before." Astime passed, and darkness fell, and no clearing or road appeared, Iran a little faster. It didn't seem possible that the people hadmoved, or the road been changed; and yet I was sure of my direction.I went on with an energy increased by the ridiculousness of thesituation, the danger that an experienced woodsman was in of gettinghome late for supper; the lateness of the meal being nothing to thegibes of the unlost. How long I kept this course, and how far I wenton, I do not know; but suddenly I stumbled against an ill-placedtree, and sat down on the soaked ground, a trifle out of breath. Itthen occurred to me that I had better verify my course by thecompass. There was scarcely light enough to distinguish the blackend of the needle. To my amazement, the compass, which was made nearGreenwich, was wrong. Allowing for the natural variation of theneedle, it was absurdly wrong. It made out that I was going southwhen I was going north. It intimated that, instead of turning to theleft, I had been making a circuit to the right. According to thecompass, the Lord only knew where I was.

The inclination of persons in the woods to travel in a circle isunexplained. I suppose it arises from the sympathy of the legs withthe brain. Most people reason in a circle: their minds go round andround, always in the same track. For the last half hour I had beensaying over a sentence that started itself: "I wonder where that roadis!" I had said it over till it had lost all meaning. I kept goinground on it; and yet I could not believe that my body had beentraveling in a circle. Not being able to recognize any tracks, Ihave no evidence that I had so traveled, except the general testimonyof lost men.

The compass annoyed me. I've known experienced guides utterlydiscredit it. It couldn't be that I was to turn about, and go theway I had come. Nevertheless, I said to myself, "You'd better keep acool head, my boy, or you are in for a night of it. Better listen toscience than to spunk." And I resolved to heed the impartial needle.I was a little weary of the rough tramping: but it was necessary tobe moving; for, with wet clothes and the night air, I was decidedlychilly. I turned towards the north, and slipped and stumbled along.A more uninviting forest to pass the night in I never saw.Every-thing was soaked. If I became exhausted, it would be necessaryto build a fire; and, as I walked on, I couldn't find a dry bit ofwood. Even if a little punk were discovered in a rotten log I had nohatchet to cut fuel. I thought it all over calmly. I had the usualthree matches in my pocket. I knew exactly what would happen if Itried to build a fire. The first match would prove to be wet. Thesecond match, when struck, would shine and smell, and fizz a little,and then go out. There would be only one match left. Death wouldensue if it failed. I should get close to the log, crawl under myhat, strike the match, see it catch, flicker, almost go out (thereader painfully excited by this time), blaze up, nearly expire, andfinally fire the punk,—thank God! And I said to myself, "The publicdon't want any more of this thing: it is played out. Either have abox of matches, or let the first one catch fire."

In this gloomy mood I plunged along. The prospect was cheerless; for,apart from the comfort that a fire would give, it is necessary, atnight, to keep off the wild beasts. I fancied I could hear the treadof the stealthy brutes following their prey. But there was one sourceof profound satisfaction,—the catamount had been killed. Mr. Colvin,the triangulating surveyor of the Adirondacks, killed him in his lastofficial report to the State. Whether he despatched him with atheodolite or a barometer does not matter: he is officially dead, andnone of the travelers can kill him any more. Yet he has served them agood turn.

I knew that catamount well. One night when we lay in the bogs of theSouth Beaver Meadow, under a canopy of mosquitoes, the serenemidnight was parted by a wild and humanlike cry from a neighboringmountain. "That's a cat," said the guide. I felt in a moment thatit was the voice of "modern cultchah." "Modern culture," says Mr.Joseph Cook in a most impressive period,—"modern culture is a childcrying in the wilderness, and with no voice but a cry." Thatdescribes the catamount exactly. The next day, when we ascended themountain, we came upon the traces of this brute,—a spot where he hadstood and cried in the night; and I confess that my hair rose withthe consciousness of his recent presence, as it is said to do when aspirit passes by.

Whatever consolation the absence of catamount in a dark, drenched,and howling wilderness can impart, that I experienced; but I thoughtwhat a satire upon my present condition was modern culture, with itsplain thinking and high living! It was impossible to get muchsatisfaction out of the real and the ideal,—the me and the not-me.At this time what impressed me most was the absurdity of my positionlooked at in the light of modern civilization and all my advantagesand acquirements. It seemed pitiful that society could do absolutelynothing for me. It was, in fact, humiliating to reflect that itwould now be profitable to exchange all my possessions for the woodsinstinct of the most unlettered guide. I began to doubt the value ofthe "culture" that blunts the natural instincts.

It began to be a question whether I could hold out to walk all night;for I must travel, or perish. And now I imagined that a spectre waswalking by my side. This was Famine. To be sure, I had onlyrecently eaten a hearty luncheon: but the pangs of hunger got hold onme when I thought that I should have no supper, no breakfast; and, asthe procession of unattainable meals stretched before me, I grewhungrier and hungrier. I could feel that I was becoming gaunt, andwasting away: already I seemed to be emaciated. It is astonishinghow speedily a jocund, well-conditioned human being can betransformed into a spectacle of poverty and want, Lose a man in theWoods, drench him, tear his pantaloons, get his imagination runningon his lost supper and the cheerful fireside that is expecting him,and he will become haggard in an hour. I am not dwelling upon thesethings to excite the reader's sympathy, but only to advise him, if hecontemplates an adventure of this kind, to provide himself withmatches, kindling wood, something more to eat than one raw trout, andnot to select a rainy night for it.

Nature is so pitiless, so unresponsive, to a person in trouble! Ihad read of the soothing companionship of the forest, the pleasure ofthe pathless woods. But I thought, as I stumbled along in the dismalactuality, that, if I ever got out of it, I would write a letter tothe newspapers, exposing the whole thing. There is an impassive,stolid brutality about the woods that has never been enough insistedon. I tried to keep my mind fixed upon the fact of man's superiorityto Nature; his ability to dominate and outwit her. My situation wasan amusing satire on this theory. I fancied that I could feel asneer in the woods at my detected conceit. There was somethingpersonal in it. The downpour of the rain and the slipperiness of theground were elements of discomfort; but there was, besides these, akind of terror in the very character of the forest itself. I thinkthis arose not more from its immensity than from the kind ofstolidity to which I have alluded. It seemed to me that it would bea sort of relief to kick the trees. I don't wonder that the bearsfall to, occasionally, and scratch the bark off the great pines andmaples, tearing it angrily away. One must have some vent to hisfeelings. It is a common experience of people lost in the woods tolose their heads; and even the woodsmen themselves are not free fromthis panic when some accident has thrown them out of their reckoning.Fright unsettles the judgment: the oppressive silence of the woods isa vacuum in which the mind goes astray. It's a hollow sham, thispantheism, I said; being "one with Nature" is all humbug: I shouldlike to see somebody. Man, to be sure, is of very little account,and soon gets beyond his depth; but the society of the least humanbeing is better than this gigantic indifference. The "rapture on thelonely shore" is agreeable only when you know you can at any momentgo home.

I had now given up all expectation of finding the road, and wassteering my way as well as I could northward towards the valley. Inmy haste I made slow progress. Probably the distance I traveled wasshort, and the time consumed not long; but I seemed to be adding mileto mile, and hour to hour. I had time to review the incidents of theRusso-Turkish war, and to forecast the entire Eastern question; Ioutlined the characters of all my companions left in camp, andsketched in a sort of comedy the sympathetic and disparagingobservations they would make on my adventure; I repeated somethinglike a thousand times, without contradiction, "What a fool you wereto leave the river!" I stopped twenty times, thinking I heard itsloud roar, always deceived by the wind in the tree-tops; I began toentertain serious doubts about the compass,—when suddenly I becameaware that I was no longer on level ground: I was descending a slope;I was actually in a ravine. In a moment more I was in a brook newlyformed by the rain. "Thank Heaven!" I cried: "this I shall follow,whatever conscience or the compass says." In this region, allstreams go, sooner or later, into the valley. This ravine, thisstream, no doubt, led to the river. I splashed and tumbled alongdown it in mud and water. Down hill we went together, the fallshowing that I must have wandered to high ground. When I guessedthat I must be close to the river, I suddenly stepped into mud up tomy ankles. It was the road,—running, of course, the wrong way, butstill the blessed road. It was a mere canal of liquid mud; but manhad made it, and it would take me home. I was at least three milesfrom the point I supposed I was near at sunset, and I had before me atoilsome walk of six or seven miles, most of the way in a ditch; butit is truth to say that I enjoyed every step of it. I was safe; Iknew where I was; and I could have walked till morning. The mind hadagain got the upper hand of the body, and began to plume itself onits superiority: it was even disposed to doubt whether it had been"lost" at all.

III

A FIGHT WITH A TROUT

Trout fishing in the Adirondacks would be a more attractive pastimethan it is but for the popular notion of its danger. The trout is aretiring and harmless animal, except when he is aroused and forcedinto a combat; and then his agility, fierceness, and vindictivenessbecome apparent. No one who has studied the excellent picturesrepresenting men in an open boat, exposed to the assaults of long,enraged trout flying at them through the open air with open mouth,ever ventures with his rod upon the lonely lakes of the forestwithout a certain terror, or ever reads of the exploits of daringfishermen without a feeling of admiration for their heroism. Most oftheir adventures are thrilling, and all of them are, in narration,more or less unjust to the trout: in fact, the object of them seemsto be to exhibit, at the expense of the trout, the shrewdness, theskill, and the muscular power of the sportsman. My own simple storyhas few of these recommendations.

We had built our bark camp one summer and were staying on one of thepopular lakes of the Saranac region. It would be a very prettyregion if it were not so flat, if the margins of the lakes had notbeen flooded by dams at the outlets, which have killed the trees, andleft a rim of ghastly deadwood like the swamps of the under-worldpictured by Dore's bizarre pencil,—and if the pianos at the hotelswere in tune. It would be an excellent sporting region also (forthere is water enough) if the fish commissioners would stock thewaters, and if previous hunters had not pulled all the hair and skinoff from the deers' tails. Formerly sportsmen had a habit ofcatching the deer by the tails, and of being dragged in merewantonness round and round the shores. It is well known that if youseize a deer by this "holt" the skin will slip off like the peel froma banana—This reprehensible practice was carried so far that thetraveler is now hourly pained by the sight of peeled-tail deermournfully sneaking about the wood.

We had been hearing, for weeks, of a small lake in the heart of thevirgin forest, some ten miles from our camp, which was alive withtrout, unsophisticated, hungry trout: the inlet to it was describedas stiff with them. In my imagination I saw them lying there inranks and rows, each a foot long, three tiers deep, a solid mass.The lake had never been visited except by stray sable hunters in thewinter, and was known as the Unknown Pond. I determined to exploreit, fully expecting, however, that it would prove to be a delusion,as such mysterious haunts of the trout usually are. Confiding mypurpose to Luke, we secretly made our preparations, and stole awayfrom the shanty one morning at daybreak. Each of us carried a boat,a pair of blankets, a sack of bread, pork, and maple-sugar; while Ihad my case of rods, creel, and book of flies, and Luke had an axeand the kitchen utensils. We think nothing of loads of this sort inthe woods.

Five miles through a tamarack swamp brought us to the inlet ofUnknown Pond, upon which we embarked our fleet, and paddled down itsvagrant waters. They were at first sluggish, winding among tristefir-trees, but gradually developed a strong current. At the end ofthree miles a loud roar ahead warned us that we were approachingrapids, falls, and cascades. We paused. The danger was unknown. Wehad our choice of shouldering our loads and making a detour throughthe woods, or of "shooting the rapids." Naturally we chose the moredangerous course. Shooting the rapids has often been described, andI will not repeat the description here. It is needless to say that Idrove my frail bark through the boiling rapids, over the successivewaterfalls, amid rocks and vicious eddies, and landed, half a milebelow with whitened hair and a boat half full of water; and that theguide was upset, and boat, contents, and man were strewn along theshore.

After this common experience we went quickly on our journey, and, acouple of hours before sundown, reached the lake. If I live to mydying day, I never shall forget its appearance. The lake is almostan exact circle, about a quarter of a mile in diameter. The forestabout it was untouched by axe, and unkilled by artificial flooding.The azure water had a perfect setting of evergreens, in which all theshades of the fir, the balsam, the pine, and the spruce wereperfectly blended; and at intervals on the shore in the emerald rimblazed the ruby of the cardinal flower. It was at once evident thatthe unruffled waters had never been vexed by the keel of a boat. Butwhat chiefly attracted my attention, and amused me, was the boilingof the water, the bubbling and breaking, as if the lake were a vastkettle, with a fire underneath. A tyro would have been astonished atthis common phenomenon; but sportsmen will at once understand me whenI say that the water boiled with the breaking trout. I studied thesurface for some time to see upon what sort of flies they werefeeding, in order to suit my cast to their appetites; but they seemedto be at play rather than feeding, leaping high in the air ingraceful curves, and tumbling about each other as we see them in theAdirondack pictures.

It is well known that no person who regards his reputation will everkill a trout with anything but a fly. It requires some training onthe part of the trout to take to this method. The uncultivated,unsophisticated trout in unfrequented waters prefers the bait; andthe rural people, whose sole object in going a-fishing appears to beto catch fish, indulge them in their primitive taste for the worm.No sportsman, however, will use anything but a fly, except he happensto be alone.

While Luke launched my boat and arranged his seat in the stern, Iprepared my rod and line. The rod is a bamboo, weighing sevenounces, which has to be spliced with a winding of silk thread everytime it is used. This is a tedious process; but, by fastening thejoints in this way, a uniform spring is secured in the rod. No onedevoted to high art would think of using a socket joint. My line wasforty yards of untwisted silk upon a multiplying reel. The "leader"(I am very particular about my leaders) had been made to order from adomestic animal with which I had been acquainted. The fishermanrequires as good a catgut as the violinist. The interior of thehouse cat, it is well known, is exceedingly sensitive; but it may notbe so well known that the reason why some cats leave the room indistress when a piano-forte is played is because the two instrumentsare not in the same key, and the vibrations of the chords of the oneare in discord with the catgut of the other. On six feet of thissuperior article I fixed three artificial flies,—a simple brownhackle, a gray body with scarlet wings, and one of my own invention,which I thought would be new to the most experienced fly-catcher.The trout-fly does not resemble any known species of insect. It is a"conventionalized" creation, as we say of ornamentation. The theoryis that, fly-fishing being a high art, the fly must not be a tameimitation of nature, but an artistic suggestion of it. It requiresan artist to construct one; and not every bungler can take a bit ofred flannel, a peaco*ck's feather, a flash of tinsel thread, a co*ck'splume, a section of a hen's wing, and fabricate a tiny object thatwill not look like any fly, but still will suggest the universalconventional fly.

I took my stand in the center of the tipsy boat; and Luke shoved off,and slowly paddled towards some lily-pads, while I began casting,unlimbering my tools, as it were. The fish had all disappeared.I got out, perhaps, fifty feet of line, with no response, andgradually increased it to one hundred. It is not difficult to learnto cast; but it is difficult to learn not to snap off the flies atevery throw. Of this, however, we will not speak. I continuedcasting for some moments, until I became satisfied that there hadbeen a miscalculation. Either the trout were too green to know whatI was at, or they were dissatisfied with my offers. I reeled in, andchanged the flies (that is, the fly that was not snapped off). Afterstudying the color of the sky, of the water, and of the foliage, andthe moderated light of the afternoon, I put on a series of beguilers,all of a subdued brilliancy, in harmony with the approach of evening.At the second cast, which was a short one, I saw a splash where theleader fell, and gave an excited jerk. The next instant I perceivedthe game, and did not need the unfeigned "dam" of Luke to convince methat I had snatched his felt hat from his head and deposited it amongthe lilies. Discouraged by this, we whirled about, and paddled overto the inlet, where a little ripple was visible in the tinted light.At the very first cast I saw that the hour had come. Three troutleaped into the air. The danger of this manoeuvre all fishermenunderstand. It is one of the commonest in the woods: three heavytrout taking hold at once, rushing in different directions, smash thetackle into flinders. I evaded this catch, and threw again. Irecall the moment. A hermit thrush, on the tip of a balsam, utteredhis long, liquid, evening note. Happening to look over my shoulder,I saw the peak of Marcy gleam rosy in the sky (I can't help it thatMarcy is fifty miles off, and cannot be seen from this region: theseincidental touches are always used). The hundred feet of silkswished through the air, and the tail-fly fell as lightly on thewater as a three-cent piece (which no slamming will give the weightof a ten) drops upon the contribution plate. Instantly there was arush, a swirl. I struck, and "Got him, by—-!" Never mind what Lukesaid I got him by. "Out on a fly!" continued that irreverent guide;but I told him to back water, and make for the center of the lake.The trout, as soon as he felt the prick of the hook, was off like ashot, and took out the whole of the line with a rapidity that made itsmoke. "Give him the butt!" shouted Luke. It is the usual remark insuch an emergency. I gave him the butt; and, recognizing the factand my spirit, the trout at once sank to the bottom, and sulked. Itis the most dangerous mood of a trout; for you cannot tell what hewill do next. We reeled up a little, and waited five minutes for himto reflect. A tightening of the line enraged him, and he soondeveloped his tactics. Coming to the surface, he made straight forthe boat faster than I could reel in, and evidently with hostileintentions. "Look out for him!" cried Luke as he came flying in theair. I evaded him by dropping flat in the bottom of the boat; and,when I picked my traps up, he was spinning across the lake as if hehad a new idea: but the line was still fast. He did not run far. Igave him the butt again; a thing he seemed to hate, even as a gift.In a moment the evil-minded fish, lashing the water in his rage, wascoming back again, making straight for the boat as before. Luke, whowas used to these encounters, having read of them in the writings oftravelers he had accompanied, raised his paddle in self-defense. Thetrout left the water about ten feet from the boat, and came directlyat me with fiery eyes, his speckled sides flashing like a meteor. Idodged as he whisked by with a vicious slap of his bifurcated tail,and nearly upset the boat. The line was of course slack, and thedanger was that he would entangle it about me, and carry away a leg.This was evidently his game; but I untangled it, and only lost abreast button or two by the swiftly-moving string. The trout plungedinto the water with a hissing sound, and went away again with all theline on the reel. More butt; more indignation on the part of thecaptive. The contest had now been going on for half an hour, and Iwas getting exhausted. We had been back and forth across the lake,and round and round the lake. What I feared was that the trout wouldstart up the inlet and wreck us in the bushes. But he had a newfancy, and began the execution of a manoeuvre which I had never readof. Instead of coming straight towards me, he took a large circle,swimming rapidly, and gradually contracting his orbit. I reeled in,and kept my eye on him. Round and round he went, narrowing hiscircle. I began to suspect the game; which was, to twist my headoff.—When he had reduced the radius of his circle to abouttwenty-five feet, he struck a tremendous pace through the water. Itwould be false modesty in a sportsman to say that I was not equal tothe occasion. Instead of turning round with him, as he expected, Istepped to the bow, braced myself, and let the boat swing. Round wentthe fish, and round we went like a top. I saw a line of Mount Marcysall round the horizon; the rosy tint in the west made a broad band ofpink along the sky above the tree-tops; the evening star was a perfectcircle of light, a hoop of gold in the heavens. We whirled andreeled, and reeled and whirled. I was willing to give the maliciousbeast butt and line, and all, if he would only go the other way for achange.

When I came to myself, Luke was gaffing the trout at the boat-side.After we had got him in and dressed him, he weighed three-quarters ofa pound. Fish always lose by being "got in and dressed." It is bestto weigh them while they are in the water. The only really large oneI ever caught got away with my leader when I first struck him. Heweighed ten pounds.

IV

A-HUNTING OF THE DEER

If civilization owes a debt of gratitude to the self-sacrificingsportsmen who have cleared the Adirondack regions of catamounts andsavage trout, what shall be said of the army which has so noblyrelieved them of the terror of the deer? The deer-slayers havesomewhat celebrated their exploits in print; but I think that justicehas never been done them.

The American deer in the wilderness, left to himself, leads acomparatively harmless but rather stupid life, with only suchexcitement as his own timid fancy raises. It was very seldom thatone of his tribe was eaten by the North American tiger. For a wildanimal he is very domestic, simple in his tastes, regular in hishabits, affectionate in his family. Unfortunately for his repose,his haunch is as tender as his heart. Of all wild creatures he isone of the most graceful in action, and he poses with the skill of anexperienced model. I have seen the goats on Mount Pentelicus scatterat the approach of a stranger, climb to the sharp points ofprojecting rocks, and attitudinize in the most self-conscious manner,striking at once those picturesque postures against the sky withwhich Oriental pictures have made us and them familiar. But thewhole proceeding was theatrical.

Greece is the home of art, and it is rare to find anything therenatural and unstudied. I presume that these goats have no nonsenseabout them when they are alone with the goatherds, any more than thegoatherds have, except when they come to pose in the studio; but thelong ages of culture, the presence always to the eye of the bestmodels and the forms of immortal beauty, the heroic friezes of theTemple of Theseus, the marble processions of sacrificial animals,have had a steady molding, educating influence equal to a society ofdecorative art upon the people and the animals who have dwelt in thisartistic atmosphere. The Attic goat has become an artificiallyartistic being; though of course he is not now what he was, as aposer, in the days of Polycletus. There is opportunity for a veryinstructive essay by Mr. E. A. Freeman on the decadence of the Atticgoat under the influence of the Ottoman Turk.

The American deer, in the free atmosphere of our country, and as yetuntouched by our decorative art, is without self-consciousness, andall his attitudes are free and unstudied. The favorite position ofthe deer—his fore-feet in the shallow margin of the lake, among thelily-pads, his antlers thrown back and his nose in the air at themoment he hears the stealthy breaking of a twig in the forest—isstill spirited and graceful, and wholly unaffected by the pictures ofhim which the artists have put upon canvas.

Wherever you go in the Northern forest you will find deer-paths. Soplainly marked and well-trodden are they that it is easy to mistakethem for trails made by hunters; but he who follows one of them issoon in difficulties. He may find himself climbing through cedarthickets an almost inaccessible cliff, or immersed in the intricaciesof a marsh. The "run," in one direction, will lead to water; but, inthe other, it climbs the highest hills, to which the deer retires,for safety and repose, in impenetrable thickets. The hunters, inwinter, find them congregated in "yards," where they can besurrounded and shot as easily as our troops shoot Comanche women andchildren in their winter villages. These little paths are full ofpitfalls among the roots and stones; and, nimble as the deer is, hesometimes breaks one of his slender legs in them. Yet he knows howto treat himself without a surgeon. I knew of a tame deer in asettlement in the edge of the forest who had the misfortune to breakher leg. She immediately disappeared with a delicacy rare in aninvalid, and was not seen for two weeks. Her friends had given herup, supposing that she had dragged herself away into the depths ofthe woods, and died of starvation, when one day she returned, curedof lameness, but thin as a virgin shadow. She had the sense to shunthe doctor; to lie down in some safe place, and patiently wait forher leg to heal. I have observed in many of the more refined animalsthis sort of shyness, and reluctance to give trouble, which exciteour admiration when noticed in mankind.

The deer is called a timid animal, and taunted with possessingcourage only when he is "at bay"; the stag will fight when he canno longer flee; and the doe will defend her young in the faceof murderous enemies. The deer gets little credit for thiseleventh-hour bravery. But I think that in any truly Christiancondition of society the deer would not be conspicuous for cowardice.I suppose that if the American girl, even as she is described inforeign romances, were pursued by bull-dogs, and fired at from behindfences every time she ventured outdoors, she would become timid, andreluctant to go abroad. When that golden era comes which the poetsthink is behind us, and the prophets declare is about to be ushered inby the opening of the "vials," and the killing of everybody who doesnot believe as those nations believe which have the most cannon; whenwe all live in real concord,—perhaps the gentle-hearted deer will berespected, and will find that men are not more savage to the weak thanare the cougars and panthers. If the little spotted fawn can think,it must seem to her a queer world in which the advent of innocence ishailed by the baying of fierce hounds and the "ping" of the rifle.

Hunting the deer in the Adirondacks is conducted in the most manlyfashion. There are several methods, and in none of them is a fairchance to the deer considered. A favorite method with the natives ispracticed in winter, and is called by them "still hunting." My ideaof still hunting is for one man to go alone into the forest, lookabout for a deer, put his wits fairly against the wits of thekeen-scented animal, and kill his deer, or get lost in the attempt.There seems to be a sort of fairness about this. It is privateassassination, tempered with a little uncertainty about finding yourman. The still hunting of the natives has all the romance and dangerattending the slaughter of sheep in an abattoir. As the snow getsdeep, many deer congregate in the depths of the forest, and keep aplace trodden down, which grows larger as they tramp down the snow insearch of food. In time this refuge becomes a sort of "yard,"surrounded by unbroken snow-banks. The hunters then make their wayto this retreat on snowshoes, and from the top of the banks pick offthe deer at leisure with their rifles, and haul them away to market,until the enclosure is pretty much emptied. This is one of thesurest methods of exterminating the deer; it is also one of the mostmerciful; and, being the plan adopted by our government forcivilizing the Indian, it ought to be popular. The only people whoobject to it are the summer sportsmen. They naturally want somepleasure out of the death of the deer.

Some of our best sportsmen, who desire to protract the pleasure ofslaying deer through as many seasons as possible, object to thepractice of the hunters, who make it their chief business toslaughter as many deer in a camping season as they can. Their ownrule, they say, is to kill a deer only when they need venison to eat.Their excuse is specious. What right have these sophists to putthemselves into a desert place, out of the reach of provisions, andthen ground a right to slay deer on their own improvidence? If it isnecessary for these people to have anything to eat, which I doubt, itis not necessary that they should have the luxury of venison.

One of the most picturesque methods of hunting the poor deer iscalled "floating." The person, with murder in his heart, chooses acloudy night, seats himself, rifle in hand, in a canoe, which isnoiselessly paddled by the guide, and explores the shore of the lakeor the dark inlet. In the bow of the boat is a light in a "jack,"the rays of which are shielded from the boat and its occupants. Adeer comes down to feed upon the lily-pads. The boat approaches him.He looks up, and stands a moment, terrified or fascinated by thebright flames. In that moment the sportsman is supposed to shoot thedeer. As an historical fact, his hand usually shakes so that hemisses the animal, or only wounds him; and the stag limps away to dieafter days of suffering. Usually, however, the hunters remain outall night, get stiff from cold and the cramped position in the boat,and, when they return in the morning to camp, cloud their futureexistence by the assertion that they "heard a big buck" moving alongthe shore, but the people in camp made so much noise that he wasfrightened off.

By all odds, the favorite and prevalent mode is hunting with dogs.The dogs do the hunting, the men the killing. The hounds are sentinto the forest to rouse the deer, and drive him from his cover.They climb the mountains, strike the trails, and go baying andyelping on the track of the poor beast. The deer have theirestablished runways, as I said; and, when they are disturbed in theirretreat, they are certain to attempt to escape by following one whichinvariably leads to some lake or stream. All that the hunter has todo is to seat himself by one of these runways, or sit in a boat onthe lake, and wait the coming of the pursued deer. The frightenedbeast, fleeing from the unreasoning brutality of the hounds, willoften seek the open country, with a mistaken confidence in thehumanity of man. To kill a deer when he suddenly passes one on arunway demands presence of mind and quickness of aim: to shoot himfrom the boat, after he has plunged panting into the lake, requiresthe rare ability to hit a moving object the size of a deer's head afew rods distant. Either exploit is sufficient to make a hero of acommon man. To paddle up to the swimming deer, and cut his throat,is a sure means of getting venison, and has its charms for some.Even women and doctors of divinity have enjoyed this exquisitepleasure. It cannot be denied that we are so constituted by a wiseCreator as to feel a delight in killing a wild animal which we do notexperience in killing a tame one.

The pleasurable excitement of a deer-hunt has never, I believe, beenregarded from the deer's point of view. I happen to be in aposition, by reason of a lucky Adirondack experience, to present itin that light. I am sorry if this introduction to my little storyhas seemed long to the reader: it is too late now to skip it; but hecan recoup himself by omitting the story.

Early on the morning of the 23d of August, 1877, a doe was feeding onBasin Mountain. The night had been warm and showery, and the morningopened in an undecided way. The wind was southerly: it is what thedeer call a dog-wind, having come to know quite well the meaning of"a southerly wind and a cloudy sky." The sole companion of the doewas her only child, a charming little fawn, whose brown coat was justbeginning to be mottled with the beautiful spots which make thisyoung creature as lovely as the gazelle. The buck, its father, hadbeen that night on a long tramp across the mountain to Clear Pond,and had not yet returned: he went ostensibly to feed on the succulentlily-pads there. "He feedeth among the lilies until the day breakand the shadows flee away, and he should be here by this hour; but hecometh not," she said, "leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon thehills." Clear Pond was too far off for the young mother to go withher fawn for a night's pleasure. It was a fashionable watering-placeat this season among the deer; and the doe may have remembered, notwithout uneasiness, the moonlight meetings of a frivolous societythere. But the buck did not come: he was very likely sleeping underone of the ledges on Tight Nippin. Was he alone? "I charge you, bythe roes and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not nor awake mylove till he please."

The doe was feeding, daintily cropping the tender leaves of the youngshoots, and turning from time to time to regard her offspring. Thefawn had taken his morning meal, and now lay curled up on a bed ofmoss, watching contentedly, with his large, soft brown eyes, everymovement of his mother. The great eyes followed her with an alertentreaty; and, if the mother stepped a pace or two farther away infeeding, the fawn made a half movement, as if to rise and follow her.You see, she was his sole dependence in all the world. But he wasquickly reassured when she turned her gaze on him; and if, in alarm,he uttered a plaintive cry, she bounded to him at once, and, withevery demonstration of affection, licked his mottled skin till itshone again.

It was a pretty picture,—maternal love on the one part, and happytrust on the other. The doe was a beauty, and would have been soconsidered anywhere, as graceful and winning a creature as the sunthat day shone on,—slender limbs, not too heavy flanks, round body,and aristocratic head, with small ears, and luminous, intelligent,affectionate eyes. How alert, supple, free, she was! What untaughtgrace in every movement! What a charming pose when she lifted herhead, and turned it to regard her child! You would have had acompanion picture if you had seen, as I saw that morning, a babykicking about among the dry pine-needles on a ledge above the AuSable, in the valley below, while its young mother sat near, with aneasel before her, touching in the color of a reluctant landscape,giving a quick look at the sky and the outline of the Twin Mountains,and bestowing every third glance upon the laughing boy,—art in itsinfancy.

The doe lifted her head a little with a quick motion, and turned herear to the south. Had she heard something? Probably it was only thesouth wind in the balsams. There was silence all about in theforest. If the doe had heard anything, it was one of the distantnoises of the world. There are in the woods occasional moanings,premonitions of change, which are inaudible to the dull ears of men,but which, I have no doubt, the forest-folk hear and understand. Ifthe doe's suspicions were excited for an instant, they were gone assoon. With an affectionate glance at her fawn, she continued pickingup her breakfast.

But suddenly she started, head erect, eyes dilated, a tremor in herlimbs. She took a step; she turned her head to the south; shelistened intently. There was a sound,—a distant, prolonged note,bell-toned, pervading the woods, shaking the air in smoothvibrations. It was repeated. The doe had no doubt now. She shooklike the sensitive mimosa when a footstep approaches. It was thebaying of a hound! It was far off,—at the foot of the mountain.Time enough to fly; time enough to put miles between her and thehound, before he should come upon her fresh trail; time enough toescape away through the dense forest, and hide in the recesses ofPanther Gorge; yes, time enough. But there was the fawn. The cry ofthe hound was repeated, more distinct this time. The motherinstinctively bounded away a few paces. The fawn started up with ananxious bleat: the doe turned; she came back; she couldn't leave it.She bent over it, and licked it, and seemed to say, "Come, my child:we are pursued: we must go." She walked away towards the west, andthe little thing skipped after her. It was slow going for theslender legs, over the fallen logs, and through the rasping bushes.The doe bounded in advance, and waited: the fawn scrambled after her,slipping and tumbling along, very groggy yet on its legs, and whininga good deal because its mother kept always moving away from it. Thefawn evidently did not hear the hound: the little innocent would evenhave looked sweetly at the dog, and tried to make friends with it, ifthe brute had been rushing upon him. By all the means at her commandthe doe urged her young one on; but it was slow work. She might havebeen a mile away while they were making a few rods. Whenever thefawn caught up, he was quite content to frisk about. He wanted morebreakfast, for one thing; and his mother wouldn't stand still. Shemoved on continually; and his weak legs were tangled in the roots ofthe narrow deer-path.

Shortly came a sound that threw the doe into a panic of terror,—ashort, sharp yelp, followed by a prolonged howl, caught up andreechoed by other bayings along the mountain-side. The doe knew whatthat meant. One hound had caught her trail, and the whole packresponded to the "view-halloo." The danger was certain now; it wasnear. She could not crawl on in this way: the dogs would soon beupon them. She turned again for flight: the fawn, scrambling afterher, tumbled over, and bleated piteously. The baying, emphasized nowby the yelp of certainty, came nearer. Flight with the fawn wasimpossible. The doe returned and stood by it, head erect, andnostrils distended. She stood perfectly still, but trembling.Perhaps she was thinking. The fawn took advantage of the situation,and began to draw his luncheon ration. The doe seemed to have madeup her mind. She let him finish. The fawn, having taken all hewanted, lay down contentedly, and the doe licked him for a moment.Then, with the swiftness of a bird, she dashed away, and in a momentwas lost in the forest. She went in the direction of the hounds.

According to all human calculations, she was going into the jaws ofdeath. So she was: all human calculations are selfish. She keptstraight on, hearing the baying every moment more distinctly. Shedescended the slope of the mountain until she reached the more openforest of hard-wood. It was freer going here, and the cry of thepack echoed more resoundingly in the great spaces. She was going dueeast, when (judging by the sound, the hounds were not far off, thoughthey were still hidden by a ridge) she turned short away to thenorth, and kept on at a good pace. In five minutes more she heardthe sharp, exultant yelp of discovery, and then the deep-mouthed howlof pursuit. The hounds had struck her trail where she turned, andthe fawn was safe.

The doe was in good running condition, the ground was not bad, andshe felt the exhilaration of the chase. For the moment, fear lefther, and she bounded on with the exaltation of triumph. For aquarter of an hour she went on at a slapping pace, clearing themoose-bushes with bound after bound, flying over the fallen logs,pausing neither for brook nor ravine. The baying of the hounds grewfainter behind her. But she struck a bad piece of going, a dead-woodslash. It was marvelous to see her skim over it, leaping among itsintricacies, and not breaking her slender legs. No other livinganimal could do it. But it was killing work. She began to pantfearfully; she lost ground. The baying of the hounds was nearer.She climbed the hard-wood hill at a slower gait; but, once on morelevel, free ground, her breath came back to her, and she stretchedaway with new courage, and maybe a sort of contempt of her heavypursuers.

After running at high speed perhaps half a mile farther, it occurredto her that it would be safe now to turn to the west, and, by a widecircuit, seek her fawn. But, at the moment, she heard a sound thatchilled her heart. It was the cry of a hound to the west of her.The crafty brute had made the circuit of the slash, and cut off herretreat. There was nothing to do but to keep on; and on she went,still to the north, with the noise of the pack behind her. In fiveminutes more she had passed into a hillside clearing. Cows and youngsteers were grazing there. She heard a tinkle of bells. Below her,down the mountain slope, were other clearings, broken by patches ofwoods. Fences intervened; and a mile or two down lay the valley, theshining Au Sable, and the peaceful farmhouses. That way also herhereditary enemies were. Not a merciful heart in all that lovelyvalley. She hesitated: it was only for an instant. She must crossthe Slidebrook Valley if possible, and gain the mountain opposite.She bounded on; she stopped. What was that? From the valley aheadcame the cry of a searching hound. All the devils were loose thismorning. Every way was closed but one, and that led straight downthe mountain to the cluster of houses. Conspicuous among them was aslender white wooden spire. The doe did not know that it was thespire of a Christian chapel. But perhaps she thought that human pitydwelt there, and would be more merciful than the teeth of the hounds.

"The hounds are baying on my track:
O white man! will you send me back?"

In a panic, frightened animals will always flee to human-kind fromthe danger of more savage foes. They always make a mistake in doingso. Perhaps the trait is the survival of an era of peace on earth;perhaps it is a prophecy of the golden age of the future. Thebusiness of this age is murder,—the slaughter of animals, theslaughter of fellow-men, by the wholesale. Hilarious poets who havenever fired a gun write hunting-songs,—Ti-ra-la: and good bishopswrite war-songs,—Ave the Czar!

The hunted doe went down the "open," clearing the fences splendidly,flying along the stony path. It was a beautiful sight. But considerwhat a shot it was! If the deer, now, could only have been caught INo doubt there were tenderhearted people in the valley who would havespared her life, shut her up in a stable, and petted her. Was thereone who would have let her go back to her waiting-fawn? It is thebusiness of civilization to tame or kill.

The doe went on. She left the sawmill on John's Brook to her right;she turned into a wood-path. As she approached Slide Brook, she sawa boy standing by a tree with a raised rifle. The dogs were not insight; but she could hear them coming down the hill. There was notime for hesitation. With a tremendous burst of speed she clearedthe stream, and, as she touched the bank, heard the "ping" of a riflebullet in the air above her. The cruel sound gave wings to the poorthing. In a moment more she was in the opening: she leaped into thetraveled road. Which way? Below her in the wood was a load of hay:a man and a boy, with pitchforks in their hands, were running towardsher. She turned south, and flew along the street. The town was up.Women and children ran to the doors and windows; men snatched theirrifles; shots were fired; at the big boarding-houses, the summerboarders, who never have anything to do, came out and cheered; acampstool was thrown from a veranda. Some young fellows shooting ata mark in the meadow saw the flying deer, and popped away at her; butthey were accustomed to a mark that stood still. It was all sosudden! There were twenty people who were just going to shoot her;when the doe leaped the road fence, and went away across a marshtoward the foothills. It was a fearful gauntlet to run. But nobodyexcept the deer considered it in that light. Everybody told what hewas just going to do; everybody who had seen the performance was akind of hero,—everybody except the deer. For days and days it wasthe subject of conversation; and the summer boarders kept their gunsat hand, expecting another deer would come to be shot at.

The doe went away to the foothills, going now slower, and evidentlyfatigued, if not frightened half to death. Nothing is so appallingto a recluse as half a mile of summer boarders. As the deer enteredthe thin woods, she saw a rabble of people start across the meadow inpursuit. By this time, the dogs, panting, and lolling out theirtongues, came swinging along, keeping the trail, like stupids, andconsequently losing ground when the deer doubled. But, when the doehad got into the timber, she heard the savage brutes howling acrossthe meadow. (It is well enough, perhaps, to say that nobody offeredto shoot the dogs.)

The courage of the panting fugitive was not gone: she was game to thetip of her high-bred ears. But the fearful pace at which she hadjust been going told on her. Her legs trembled, and her heart beatlike a trip-hammer. She slowed her speed perforce, but still fledindustriously up the right bank of the stream. When she had gone acouple of miles, and the dogs were evidently gaining again, shecrossed the broad, deep brook, climbed the steep left bank, and fledon in the direction of the Mount-Marcy trail. The fording of theriver threw the hounds off for a time. She knew, by their uncertainyelping up and down the opposite bank, that she had a little respite:she used it, however, to push on until the baying was faint in herears; and then she dropped, exhausted, upon the ground.

This rest, brief as it was, saved her life. Roused again by thebaying pack, she leaped forward with better speed, though withoutthat keen feeling of exhilarating flight that she had in the morning.It was still a race for life; but the odds were in her—favor, shethought. She did not appreciate the dogged persistence of thehounds, nor had any inspiration told her that the race is not to theswift.

She was a little confused in her mind where to go; but an instinctkept her course to the left, and consequently farther away from herfawn. Going now slower, and now faster, as the pursuit seemed moredistant or nearer, she kept to the southwest, crossed the streamagain, left Panther Gorge on her right, and ran on by Haystack andSkylight in the direction of the Upper Au Sable Pond. I do not knowher exact course through this maze of mountains, swamps, ravines, andfrightful wildernesses. I only know that the poor thing worked herway along painfully, with sinking heart and unsteady limbs, lyingdown "dead beat" at intervals, and then spurred on by the cry of theremorseless dogs, until, late in the afternoon, she staggered downthe shoulder of Bartlett, and stood upon the shore of the lake. Ifshe could put that piece of water between her and her pursuers, shewould be safe. Had she strength to swim it?

At her first step into the water she saw a sight that sent her backwith a bound. There was a boat mid-lake: two men were in it. Onewas rowing: the other had a gun in his hand. They were lookingtowards her: they had seen her. (She did not know that they hadheard the baying of hounds on the mountains, and had been lying inwait for her an hour.) What should she do? The hounds were drawingnear. No escape that way, even if she could still run. With only amoment's hesitation she plunged into the lake, and struck obliquelyacross. Her tired legs could not propel the tired body rapidly. Shesaw the boat headed for her. She turned toward the centre of thelake. The boat turned. She could hear the rattle of the oarlocks.It was gaining on her. Then there was a silence. Then there was asplash of the water just ahead of her, followed by a roar round thelake, the words "Confound it all!" and a rattle of the oars again.The doe saw the boat nearing her. She turned irresolutely to theshore whence she came: the dogs were lapping the water, and howlingthere. She turned again to the center of the lake.

The brave, pretty creature was quite exhausted now. In a momentmore, with a rush of water, the boat was on her, and the man at theoars had leaned over and caught her by the tail.

"Knock her on the head with that paddle!" he shouted to the gentlemanin the stern.

The gentleman was a gentleman, with a kind, smooth-shaven face, andmight have been a minister of some sort of everlasting gospel. Hetook the paddle in his hand. Just then the doe turned her head, andlooked at him with her great, appealing eyes.

"I can't do it! my soul, I can't do it!" and he dropped the paddle.
"Oh, let her go!"

"Let H. go!" was the only response of the guide as he slung the deerround, whipped out his hunting-knife, and made a pass that severedher jugular.

And the gentleman ate that night of the venison.

The buck returned about the middle of the afternoon. The fawn wasbleating piteously, hungry and lonesome. The buck was surprised. Helooked about in the forest. He took a circuit, and came back. Hisdoe was nowhere to be seen. He looked down at the fawn in a helplesssort of way. The fawn appealed for his supper. The buck had nothingwhatever to give his child,—nothing but his sympathy. If he saidanything, this is what he said: "I'm the head of this family; but,really, this is a novel case. I've nothing whatever for you. Idon't know what to do. I've the feelings of a father; but you can'tlive on them. Let us travel."

The buck walked away: the little one toddled after him. Theydisappeared in the forest.

V

A CHARACTER STUDY

There has been a lively inquiry after the primeval man. Wanted, aman who would satisfy the conditions of the miocene environment, andyet would be good enough for an ancestor. We are not particularabout our ancestors, if they are sufficiently remote; but we musthave something. Failing to apprehend the primeval man, science hassought the primitive man where he exists as a survival in presentsavage races. He is, at best, only a mushroom growth of the recentperiod (came in, probably, with the general raft of mammalian fauna);but he possesses yet some rudimentary traits that may be studied.

It is a good mental exercise to try to fix the mind on the primitiveman divested of all the attributes he has acquired in his struggleswith the other mammalian fauna. Fix the mind on an orange, theordinary occupation of the metaphysician: take from it (withouteating it) odor, color, weight, form, substance, and peel; then letthe mind still dwell on it as an orange. The experiment is perfectlysuccessful; only, at the end of it, you haven't any mind. Betterstill, consider the telephone: take away from it the metallic disk,and the magnetized iron, and the connecting wire, and then let themind run abroad on the telephone. The mind won't come back. I havetried by this sort of process to get a conception of the primitiveman. I let the mind roam away back over the vast geologic spaces,and sometimes fancy I see a dim image of him stalking across theterrace epoch of the quaternary period.

But this is an unsatisfying pleasure. The best results are obtainedby studying the primitive man as he is left here and there in ourera, a witness of what has been; and I find him most to my mind inthe Adirondack system of what geologists call the Champlain epoch. Isuppose the primitive man is one who owes more to nature than to theforces of civilization. What we seek in him are the primal andoriginal traits, unmixed with the sophistications of society, andunimpaired by the refinements of an artificial culture. He wouldretain the primitive instincts, which are cultivated out of theordinary, commonplace man. I should expect to find him, by reason ofan unrelinquished kinship, enjoying a special communion with nature,—admitted to its mysteries, understanding its moods, and able topredict its vagaries. He would be a kind of test to us of what wehave lost by our gregarious acquisitions. On the one hand, therewould be the sharpness of the senses, the keen instincts (which thefox and the beaver still possess), the ability to find one's way inthe pathless forest, to follow a trail, to circumvent the wilddenizens of the woods; and, on the other hand, there would be thephilosophy of life which the primitive man, with little external aid,would evolve from original observation and cogitation. It is ourgood fortune to know such a man; but it is difficult to present himto a scientific and caviling generation. He emigrated from somewhatlimited conditions in Vermont, at an early age, nearly half a centuryago, and sought freedom for his natural development backward in thewilds of the Adirondacks. Sometimes it is a love of adventure andfreedom that sends men out of the more civilized conditions into theless; sometimes it is a constitutional physical lassitude which leadsthem to prefer the rod to the hoe, the trap to the sickle, and thesociety of bears to town meetings and taxes. I think that OldMountain Phelps had merely the instincts of the primitive man, andnever any hostile civilizing intent as to the wilderness into whichhe plunged. Why should he want to slash away the forest and plow upthe ancient mould, when it is infinitely pleasanter to roam about inthe leafy solitudes, or sit upon a mossy log and listen to thechatter of birds and the stir of beasts? Are there not trout in thestreams, gum exuding from the spruce, sugar in the maples, honey inthe hollow trees, fur on the sables, warmth in hickory logs? Willnot a few days' planting and scratching in the "open" yield potatoesand rye? And, if there is steadier diet needed than venison andbear, is the pig an expensive animal? If Old Phelps bowed to theprejudice or fashion of his age (since we have come out of thetertiary state of things), and reared a family, built a frame housein a secluded nook by a cold spring, planted about it some appletrees and a rudimentary garden, and installed a group of flamingsunflowers by the door, I am convinced that it was a concession thatdid not touch his radical character; that is to say, it did notimpair his reluctance to split oven-wood.

He was a true citizen of the wilderness. Thoreau would have likedhim, as he liked Indians and woodchucks, and the smell of pineforests; and, if Old Phelps had seen Thoreau, he would probably havesaid to him, "Why on airth, Mr. Thoreau, don't you live accordin' toyour preachin'?" You might be misled by the shaggy suggestion of OldPhelps's given name—Orson—into the notion that he was a mightyhunter, with the fierce spirit of the Berserkers in his veins.Nothing could be farther from the truth. The hirsute and grislysound of Orson expresses only his entire affinity with the untamedand the natural, an uncouth but gentle passion for the freedom andwildness of the forest. Orson Phelps has only those unconventionaland humorous qualities of the bear which make the animal so belovedin literature; and one does not think of Old Phelps so much as alover of nature,—to use the sentimental slang of the period,—as apart of nature itself.

His appearance at the time when as a "guide" he began to come intopublic notice fostered this impression,—a sturdy figure with longbody and short legs, clad in a woolen shirt and butternut-coloredtrousers repaired to the point of picturesqueness, his headsurmounted by a limp, light-brown felt hat, frayed away at the top,so that his yellowish hair grew out of it like some nameless fern outof a pot. His tawny hair was long and tangled, matted now many yearspast the possibility of being entered by a comb.

His features were small and delicate, and set in the frame of areddish beard, the razor having mowed away a clearing about thesensitive mouth, which was not seldom wreathed with a childlike andcharming smile. Out of this hirsute environment looked the smallgray eyes, set near together; eyes keen to observe, and quick toexpress change of thought; eyes that made you believe instinct cangrow into philosophic judgment. His feet and hands were ofaristocratic smallness, although the latter were not worn away byablutions; in fact, they assisted his toilet to give you theimpression that here was a man who had just come out of the ground,—a real son of the soil, whose appearance was partially explained byhis humorous relation to-soap. "Soap is a thing," he said, "that Ihain't no kinder use for." His clothes seemed to have been put onhim once for all, like the bark of a tree, a long time ago. Theobservant stranger was sure to be puzzled by the contrast of thisrealistic and uncouth exterior with the internal fineness, amountingto refinement and culture, that shone through it all. What communionhad supplied the place of our artificial breeding to this man?

Perhaps his most characteristic attitude was sitting on a log, with ashort pipe in his mouth. If ever man was formed to sit on a log, itwas Old Phelps. He was essentially a contemplative person. Walkingon a country road, or anywhere in the "open," was irksome to him. Hehad a shambling, loose-jointed gait, not unlike that of the bear: hisshort legs bowed out, as if they had been more in the habit ofclimbing trees than of walking. On land, if we may use thatexpression, he was something like a sailor; but, once in the ruggedtrail or the unmarked route of his native forest, he was a differentperson, and few pedestrians could compete with him. The vulgarestimate of his contemporaries, that reckoned Old Phelps "lazy," wassimply a failure to comprehend the conditions of his being. It isthe unjustness of civilization that it sets up uniform and artificialstandards for all persons. The primitive man suffers by them much asthe contemplative philosopher does, when one happens to arrive inthis busy, fussy world.

If the appearance of Old Phelps attracts attention, his voice, whenfirst heard, invariably startles the listener. A small,high-pitched, half-querulous voice, it easily rises into the shrillestfalsetto; and it has a quality in it that makes it audible in all thetempests of the forest, or the roar of rapids, like the piping of aboatswain's whistle at sea in a gale. He has a way of letting itrise as his sentence goes on, or when he is opposed in argument, orwishes to mount above other voices in the conversation, until itdominates everything. Heard in the depths of the woods, quaveringaloft, it is felt to be as much a part of nature, an original force,as the northwest wind or the scream of the hen-hawk. When he ispottering about the camp-fire, trying to light his pipe with a twigheld in the flame, he is apt to begin some philosophical observationin a small, slow, stumbling voice, which seems about to end indefeat; when he puts on some unsuspected force, and the sentence endsin an insistent shriek. Horace Greeley had such a voice, and couldregulate it in the same manner. But Phelps's voice is not seldomplaintive, as if touched by the dreamy sadness of the woodsthemselves.

When Old Mountain Phelps was discovered, he was, as the reader hasalready guessed, not understood by his contemporaries. Hisneighbors, farmers in the secluded valley, had many of them grownthrifty and prosperous, cultivating the fertile meadows, andvigorously attacking the timbered mountains; while Phelps, with notmuch more faculty of acquiring property than the roaming deer, hadpursued the even tenor of the life in the forest on which he set out.They would have been surprised to be told that Old Phelps owned moreof what makes the value of the Adirondacks than all of them puttogether, but it was true. This woodsman, this trapper, this hunter,this fisherman, this sitter on a log, and philosopher, was the realproprietor of the region over which he was ready to guide thestranger. It is true that he had not a monopoly of its geography orits topography (though his knowledge was superior in these respects);there were other trappers, and more deadly hunters, and as intrepidguides: but Old Phelps was the discoverer of the beauties andsublimities of the mountains; and, when city strangers broke into theregion, he monopolized the appreciation of these delights and wondersof nature. I suppose that in all that country he alone had noticedthe sunsets, and observed the delightful processes of the seasons,taken pleasure in the woods for themselves, and climbed mountainssolely for the sake of the prospect. He alone understood what wasmeant by "scenery." In the eyes of his neighbors, who did not knowthat he was a poet and a philosopher, I dare say he appeared to be aslack provider, a rather shiftless trapper and fisherman; and hispassionate love of the forest and the mountains, if it was noticed,was accounted to him for idleness. When the appreciative touristarrived, Phelps was ready, as guide, to open to him all the wondersof his possessions; he, for the first time, found an outlet for hisenthusiasm, and a response to his own passion. It then became knownwhat manner of man this was who had grown up here in thecompanionship of forests, mountains, and wild animals; that thesescenes had highly developed in him the love of beauty, the aestheticsense, delicacy of appreciation, refinement of feeling; and that, inhis solitary wanderings and musings, the primitive man, self-taught,had evolved for himself a philosophy and a system of things. And itwas a sufficient system, so long as it was not disturbed by externalskepticism. When the outer world came to him, perhaps he had aboutas much to give to it as to receive from it; probably more, in hisown estimation; for there is no conceit like that of isolation.

Phelps loved his mountains. He was the discoverer of Marcy, andcaused the first trail to be cut to its summit, so that others couldenjoy the noble views from its round and rocky top. To him it was,in noble symmetry and beauty, the chief mountain of the globe.To stand on it gave him, as he said, "a feeling of heavenup-h'istedness." He heard with impatience that Mount Washington was athousand feet higher, and he had a childlike incredulity about thesurpassing sublimity of the Alps. Praise of any other elevation heseemed to consider a slight to Mount Marcy, and did not willingly hearit, any more than a lover hears the laudation of the beauty of anotherwoman than the one he loves. When he showed us scenery he loved, itmade him melancholy to have us speak of scenery elsewhere that wasfiner. And yet there was this delicacy about him, that he neverover-praised what he brought us to see, any more than one wouldover-praise a friend of whom he was fond. I remember that when forthe first time, after a toilsome journey through the forest, thesplendors of the Lower Au Sable Pond broke upon our vision,—thatlow-lying silver lake, imprisoned by the precipices which it reflectedin its bosom,—he made no outward response to our burst of admiration:only a quiet gleam of the eye showed the pleasure our appreciationgave him. As some one said, it was as if his friend had been admired—a friend about whom he was unwilling to say much himself, but wellpleased to have others praise.

Thus far, we have considered Old Phelps as simply the product of theAdirondacks; not so much a self-made man (as the doubtful phrase hasit) as a natural growth amid primal forces. But our study isinterrupted by another influence, which complicates the problem, butincreases its interest. No scientific observer, so far as we know,has ever been able to watch the development of the primitive man,played upon and fashioned by the hebdomadal iteration of "Greeley'sWeekly Tri-bune." Old Phelps educated by the woods is a fascinatingstudy; educated by the woods and the Tri-bune, he is a phenomenon.No one at this day can reasonably conceive exactly what thisnewspaper was to such a mountain valley as Keene. If it was not aProvidence, it was a Bible. It was no doubt owing to it thatDemocrats became as scarce as moose in the Adirondacks. But it isnot of its political aspect that I speak. I suppose that the mostcultivated and best informed portion of the earth's surface—theWestern Reserve of Ohio, as free from conceit as it is from asuspicion that it lacks anything owes its pre-eminence solely to thiscomprehensive journal. It received from it everything except acollegiate and a classical education,—things not to be desired,since they interfere with the self-manufacture of man. If Greek hadbeen in this curriculum, its best known dictum would have beentranslated, "Make thyself." This journal carried to the communitythat fed on it not only a complete education in all departments ofhuman practice and theorizing, but the more valuable and satisfyingassurance that there was nothing more to be gleaned in the universeworth the attention of man. This panoplied its readers incompleteness. Politics, literature, arts, sciences, universalbrotherhood and sisterhood, nothing was omitted; neither the poetryof Tennyson, nor the philosophy of Margaret Fuller; neither thevirtues of association, nor of unbolted wheat. The laws of politicaleconomy and trade were laid down as positively and clearly as thebest way to bake beans, and the saving truth that the millenniumwould come, and come only when every foot of the earth was subsoiled.

I do not say that Orson Phelps was the product of nature and theTri-bune: but he cannot be explained without considering these twofactors. To him Greeley was the Tri-bune, and the Tri-bune wasGreeley; and yet I think he conceived of Horace Greeley as somethinggreater than his newspaper, and perhaps capable of producing anotherjournal equal to it in another part of the universe. At any rate, socompletely did Phelps absorb this paper and this personality that hewas popularly known as "Greeley" in the region where he lived.Perhaps a fancied resemblance of the two men in the popular mind hadsomething to do with this transfer of name. There is no doubt thatHorace Greeley owed his vast influence in the country to his genius,nor much doubt that he owed his popularity in the rural districts toJames Gordon Bennett; that is, to the personality of the man whichthe ingenious Bennett impressed upon the country. That he despisedthe conventionalities of society, and was a sloven in his toilet, wasfirmly believed; and the belief endeared him to the hearts of thepeople. To them "the old white coat"—an antique garment ofunrenewed immortality—was as much a subject of idolatry as theredingote grise to the soldiers of the first Napoleon, who had seenit by the campfires on the Po and on the Borysthenes, and believedthat he would come again in it to lead them against the enemies ofFrance. The Greeley of the popular heart was clad as Bennett said hewas clad. It was in vain, even pathetically in vain, that hepublished in his newspaper the full bill of his fashionable tailor(the fact that it was receipted may have excited the animosity ofsome of his contemporaries) to show that he wore the best broadcloth,and that the folds of his trousers followed the city fashion offalling outside his boots. If this revelation was believed, it madeno sort of impression in the country. The rural readers were not tobe wheedled out of their cherished conception of the personalappearance of the philosopher of the Tri-bune.

That the Tri-bune taught Old Phelps to be more Phelps than he wouldhave been without it was part of the independence-teaching mission ofGreeley's paper. The subscribers were an army, in which every manwas a general. And I am not surprised to find Old Phelps latelyrising to the audacity of criticising his exemplar. In somerecently-published observations by Phelps upon the philosophy ofreading is laid down this definition: "If I understand the necessityor use of reading, it is to reproduce again what has been said orproclaimed before. Hence, letters, characters, &c., are arranged inall the perfection they possibly can be, to show how certain languagehas been spoken by the, original author. Now, to reproduce byreading, the reading should be so perfectly like the original that noone standing out of sight could tell the reading from the first timethe language was spoken."

This is illustrated by the highest authority at hand: I have heard asgood readers read, and as poor readers, as almost any one in thisregion. If I have not heard as many, I have had a chance to hearnearly the extreme in variety. Horace Greeley ought to have been agood reader. Certainly but few, if any, ever knew every word of theEnglish language at a glance more readily than he did, or knew themeaning of every mark of punctuation more clearly; but he could notread proper. 'But how do you know?' says one. From the fact I heardhim in the same lecture deliver or produce remarks in his ownparticular way, that, if they had been published properly in print, aproper reader would have reproduced them again the same way. In themidst of those remarks Mr. Greeley took up a paper, to reproduce byreading part of a speech that some one else had made; and his readingdid not sound much more like the man that first read or madethe speech than the clatter of a nail factory sounds like awell-delivered speech. Now, the fault was not because Mr. Greeley didnot know how to read as well as almost any man that ever lived, if notquite: but in his youth he learned to read wrong; and, as it is tentimes harder to unlearn anything than it is to learn it, he, likethousands of others, could never stop to unlearn it, but carried it onthrough his whole life.

Whether a reader would be thanked for reproducing one of HoraceGreeley's lectures as he delivered it is a question that cannotdetain us here; but the teaching that he ought to do so, I think,would please Mr. Greeley.

The first driblets of professional tourists and summer boarders whoarrived among the Adirondack Mountains a few years ago found OldPhelps the chief and best guide of the region. Those who were eagerto throw off the usages of civilization, and tramp and camp in thewilderness, could not but be well satisfied with the aboriginalappearance of this guide; and when he led off into the woods, axe inhand, and a huge canvas sack upon his shoulders, they seemed to befollowing the Wandering Jew. The contents—of this sack would havefurnished a modern industrial exhibition, provisions cooked and raw,blankets, maple-sugar, tinware, clothing, pork, Indian meal, flour,coffee, tea, &c. Phelps was the ideal guide: he knew every foot ofthe pathless forest; he knew all woodcraft, all the signs of theweather, or, what is the same thing, how to make a Delphic predictionabout it. He was fisherman and hunter, and had been the comrade ofsportsmen and explorers; and his enthusiasm for the beauty andsublimity of the region, and for its untamable wildness, amounted toa passion. He loved his profession; and yet it very soon appearedthat he exercised it with reluctance for those who had neitherideality, nor love for the woods. Their presence was a profanationamid the scenery he loved. To guide into his private and secrethaunts a party that had no appreciation of their loveliness disgustedhim. It was a waste of his time to conduct flippant young men andgiddy girls who made a noisy and irreverent lark of the expedition.And, for their part, they did not appreciate the benefit of beingaccompanied by a poet and a philosopher. They neither understood norvalued his special knowledge and his shrewd observations: they didn'teven like his shrill voice; his quaint talk bored them. It was truethat, at this period, Phelps had lost something of the activity ofhis youth; and the habit of contemplative sitting on a log andtalking increased with the infirmities induced by the hard life ofthe woodsman. Perhaps he would rather talk, either about thewoods-life or the various problems of existence, than cut wood, orbusy himself in the drudgery of the camp. His critics went so far asto say, "Old Phelps is a fraud." They would have said the same ofSocrates. Xantippe, who never appreciated the world in which Socrateslived, thought he was lazy. Probably Socrates could cook no betterthan Old Phelps, and no doubt went "gumming" about Athens with verylittle care of what was in the pot for dinner.

If the summer visitors measured Old Phelps, he also measured them byhis own standards. He used to write out what he called "short-faceddescriptions" of his comrades in the woods, which were never soflattering as true. It was curious to see how the various qualitieswhich are esteemed in society appeared in his eyes, looked at merelyin their relation to the limited world he knew, and judged by theiradaptation to the primitive life. It was a much subtler comparisonthan that of the ordinary guide, who rates his traveler by hisability to endure on a march, to carry a pack, use an oar, hit amark, or sing a song. Phelps brought his people to a test of theirnaturalness and sincerity, tried by contact with the verities of thewoods. If a person failed to appreciate the woods, Phelps had noopinion of him or his culture; and yet, although he was perfectlysatisfied with his own philosophy of life, worked out by closeobservation of nature and study of the Tri-bune, he was always eagerfor converse with superior minds, with those who had the advantage oftravel and much reading, and, above all, with those who had anyoriginal "speckerlation." Of all the society he was ever permittedto enjoy, I think he prized most that of Dr. Bushnell. The doctorenjoyed the quaint and first-hand observations of the old woodsman,and Phelps found new worlds open to him in the wide ranges of thedoctor's mind. They talked by the hour upon all sorts of themes, thegrowth of the tree, the habits of wild animals, the migration ofseeds, the succession of oak and pine, not to mention theology, andthe mysteries of the supernatural.

I recall the bearing of Old Phelps, when, several years ago, heconducted a party to the summit of Mount Marcy by the way he had"bushed out." This was his mountain, and he had a peculiar sense ofownership in it. In a way, it was holy ground; and he would ratherno one should go on it who did not feel its sanctity. Perhaps it wasa sense of some divine relation in it that made him always speak ofit as "Mercy." To him this ridiculously dubbed Mount Marcy wasalways "Mount Mercy." By a like effort to soften the personaloffensiveness of the nomenclature of this region, he invariably spokeof Dix's Peak, one of the southern peaks of the range, as "Dixie."It was some time since Phelps himself had visited his mountain; and,as he pushed on through the miles of forest, we noticed a kind ofeagerness in the old man, as of a lover going to a rendezvous. Alongthe foot of the mountain flows a clear trout stream, secluded andundisturbed in those awful solitudes, which is the "Mercy Brook" ofthe old woodsman. That day when he crossed it, in advance of hiscompany, he was heard to say in a low voice, as if greeting someobject of which he was shyly fond, "So, little brook, do I meet youonce more?" and when we were well up the mountain, and emerged fromthe last stunted fringe of vegetation upon the rock-bound slope, Isaw Old Phelps, who was still foremost, cast himself upon the ground,and heard him cry, with an enthusiasm that was intended for no mortalear, "I'm with you once again!" His great passion very rarely foundexpression in any such theatrical burst. The bare summit that daywas swept by a fierce, cold wind, and lost in an occasional chillingcloud. Some of the party, exhausted by the climb, and shivering inthe rude wind, wanted a fire kindled and a cup of tea made, andthought this the guide's business. Fire and tea were far enough fromhis thought. He had withdrawn himself quite apart, and wrapped in aragged blanket, still and silent as the rock he stood on, was gazingout upon the wilderness of peaks. The view from Marcy is peculiar.It is without softness or relief. The narrow valleys are only darkshadows; the lakes are bits of broken mirror. From horizon tohorizon there is a tumultuous sea of billows turned to stone. Youstand upon the highest billow; you command the situation; you havesurprised Nature in a high creative act; the mighty primal energy hasonly just become repose. This was a supreme hour to Old Phelps.Tea! I believe the boys succeeded in kindling a fire; but theenthusiastic stoic had no reason to complain of want of appreciationin the rest of the party. When we were descending, he told us, withmingled humor and scorn, of a party of ladies he once led to the topof the mountain on a still day, who began immediately to talk aboutthe fashions! As he related the scene, stopping and facing us in thetrail, his mild, far-in eyes came to the front, and his voice rosewith his language to a kind of scream.

"Why, there they were, right before the greatest view they ever saw,talkin' about the fashions!"

Impossible to convey the accent of contempt in which he pronouncedthe word "fashions," and then added, with a sort of regretfulbitterness, "I was a great mind to come down, and leave 'em there."

In common with the Greeks, Old Phelps personified the woods,mountains, and streams. They had not only personality, butdistinctions of sex. It was something beyond the characterization ofthe hunter, which appeared, for instance, when he related a fightwith a panther, in such expressions as, "Then Mr. Panther thought hewould see what he could do," etc. He was in "imaginative sympathy"with all wild things. The afternoon we descended Marcy, we went awayto the west, through the primeval forests, toward Avalanche andColden, and followed the course of the charming Opalescent. When wereached the leaping stream, Phelps exclaimed,

"Here's little Miss Opalescent!"

"Why don't you say Mr. Opalescent?" some one asked.

"Oh, she's too pretty!" And too pretty she was, with her foam-whiteand rainbow dress, and her downfalls, and fountainlike uprising. Abewitching young person we found her all that summer afternoon.

This sylph-like person had little in common with a monstrous ladywhose adventures in the wildernes Phelps was fond of relating. Shewas built some thing on the plan of the mountains, and her ambitionto explore was equal to her size. Phelps and the other guides oncesucceeded in raising her to the top of Marcy; but the feat of gettinga hogshead of molasses up there would have been easier. Inattempting to give us an idea of her magnitude that night, as we satin the forest camp, Phelps hesitated a moment, while he cast his eyearound the woods: "Waal, there ain't no tree!"

It is only by recalling fragmentary remarks and incidents that I canput the reader in possession of the peculiarities of my subject; andthis involves the wrenching of things out of their natural order andcontinuity, and introducing them abruptly, an abruptness illustratedby the remark of "Old Man Hoskins" (which Phelps liked to quote),when one day he suddenly slipped down a bank into a thicket, andseated himself in a wasps' nest: "I hain't no business here; but hereI be!"

The first time we went into camp on the Upper Au Sable Pond, whichhas been justly celebrated as the most prettily set sheet of water inthe region, we were disposed to build our shanty on the south side,so that we could have in full view the Gothics and that loveliest ofmountain contours. To our surprise, Old Phelps, whose sentimentalweakness for these mountains we knew, opposed this. His favoritecamping ground was on the north side,—a pretty site in itself, butwith no special view. In order to enjoy the lovely mountains, weshould be obliged to row out into the lake: we wanted them alwaysbefore our eyes,—at sunrise and sunset, and in the blaze of noon.With deliberate speech, as if weighing our arguments and disposing ofthem, he replied, "Waal, now, them Gothics ain't the kinder sceneryyou want ter hog down!"

It was on quiet Sundays in the woods, or in talks by the camp-fire,that Phelps came out as the philosopher, and commonly contributed thelight of his observations. Unfortunate marriages, and marriages ingeneral, were, on one occasion, the subject of discussion; and a gooddeal of darkness had been cast on it by various speakers; when Phelpssuddenly piped up, from a log where he had sat silent, almostinvisible, in the shadow and smoke, "Waal, now, when you've said allthere is to be said, marriage is mostly for discipline."

Discipline, certainly, the old man had, in one way or another; andyears of solitary communing in the forest had given him, perhaps, achildlike insight into spiritual concerns. Whether he had formulatedany creed or what faith he had, I never knew. Keene Valley had areputation of not ripening Christians any more successfully thanmaize, the season there being short; and on our first visit it wassaid to contain but one Bible Christian, though I think an accuratecensus disclosed three. Old Phelps, who sometimes made abruptremarks in trying situations, was not included in this census; but hewas the disciple of supernaturalism in a most charming form. I haveheard of his opening his inmost thoughts to a lady, one Sunday, aftera noble sermon of Robertson's had been read in the cathedralstillness of the forest. His experience was entirely first-hand, andrelated with unconsciousness that it was not common to all. Therewas nothing of the mystic or the sentimentalist, only a vividrealism, in that nearness of God of which he spoke,—"as nearsome-times as those trees,"—and of the holy voice, that, in a timeof inward struggle, had seemed to him to come from the depths of theforest, saying, "Poor soul, I am the way."

In later years there was a "revival" in Keene Valley, the result ofwhich was a number of young "converts," whom Phelps seemed to regardas a veteran might raw recruits, and to have his doubts what sort ofsoldiers they would make.

"Waal, Jimmy," he said to one of them, "you've kindled a pretty goodfire with light wood. That's what we do of a dark night in thewoods, you know but we do it just so as we can look around and findthe solid wood: so now put on your solid wood."

In the Sunday Bible classes of the period Phelps was a perpetualanxiety to the others, who followed closely the printed lessons, andbeheld with alarm his discursive efforts to get into freer air andlight. His remarks were the most refreshing part of the exercises,but were outside of the safe path into which the others thought itnecessary to win him from his "speckerlations." The class were oneday on the verses concerning "God's word" being "written on theheart," and were keeping close to the shore, under the guidance of"Barnes's Notes," when Old Phelps made a dive to the bottom, andremarked that he had "thought a good deal about the expression,'God's word written on the heart,' and had been asking himself howthat was to be done; and suddenly it occurred to him (having beenmuch interested lately in watching the work of a photographer) that,when a photograph is going to be taken, all that has to be done is toput the object in position, and the sun makes the picture; and so herather thought that all we had got to do was to put our hearts inplace, and God would do the writin'."

Phelps's theology, like his science, is first-hand. In the woods,one day, talk ran on the Trinity as being nowhere asserted as adoctrine in the Bible, and some one suggested that the attempt topack these great and fluent mysteries into one word must always bemore or less unsatisfactory. "Ye-es," droned Phelps: "I never couldsee much speckerlation in that expression the Trinity. Why, they'd agood deal better say Legion."

The sentiment of the man about nature, or his poetic sensibility, wasfrequently not to be distinguished from a natural religion, and wasalways tinged with the devoutness of Wordsworth's verse. Climbingslowly one day up the Balcony,—he was more than usually calm andslow,—he espied an exquisite fragile flower in the crevice of arock, in a very lonely spot.

"It seems as if," he said, or rather dreamed out, "it seems as if the
Creator had kept something just to look at himself."

To a lady whom he had taken to Chapel Pond (a retired but ratheruninteresting spot), and who expressed a little disappointment at itstameness, saying, of this "Why, Mr. Phelps, the principal charm ofthis place seems to be its loneliness,"

"Yes," he replied in gentle and lingering tones, and its nativeness.
"It lies here just where it was born."

Rest and quiet had infinite attractions for him. A secluded openingin the woods was a "calm spot." He told of seeing once, or ratherbeing in, a circular rainbow. He stood on Indian Head, overlookingthe Lower Lake, so that he saw the whole bow in the sky and the lake,and seemed to be in the midst of it; "only at one place there was anindentation in it, where it rested on the lake, just enough to keepit from rolling off." This "resting" of the sphere seemed to givehim great comfort.

One Indian-summer morning in October, some ladies found the old mansitting on his doorstep smoking a short pipe.

He gave no sign of recognition except a twinkle of the eye, beingevidently quite in harmony with the peaceful day. They stood there afull minute before he opened his mouth: then he did not rise, butslowly took his pipe from his mouth, and said in a dreamy way,pointing towards the brook,—

"Do you see that tree?" indicating a maple almost denuded of leaves,which lay like a yellow garment cast at its feet. "I've beenwatching that tree all the morning. There hain't been a breath ofwind: but for hours the leaves have been falling, falling, just asyou see them now; and at last it's pretty much bare." And after apause, pensively: "Waal, I suppose its hour had come."

This contemplative habit of Old Phelps is wholly unappreciated by hisneighbors; but it has been indulged in no inconsiderable part of hislife. Rising after a time, he said, "Now I want you to go with meand see my golden city I've talked so much about." He led the way toa hill-outlook, when suddenly, emerging from the forest, thespectators saw revealed the winding valley and its stream. He saidquietly, "There is my golden city." Far below, at their feet, theysaw that vast assemblage of birches and "popples," yellow as gold inthe brooding noonday, and slender spires rising out of the glowingmass. Without another word, Phelps sat a long time in silentcontent: it was to him, as Bunyan says, "a place desirous to be in."

Is this philosopher contented with what life has brought him?Speaking of money one day, when we had asked him if he should dodifferently if he had his life to live over again, he said, "Yes, butnot about money. To have had hours such as I have had in thesemountains, and with such men as Dr. Bushnell and Dr. Shaw and Mr.Twichell, and others I could name, is worth all the money the worldcould give." He read character very well, and took in accurately theboy nature. "Tom" (an irrepressible, rather overdone specimen),—"Tom's a nice kind of a boy; but he's got to come up against asnubbin'-post one of these days."—"Boys!" he once said: "you can'tgit boys to take any kinder notice of scenery. I never yet saw a boythat would look a second time at a sunset. Now, a girl will sometimes; but even then it's instantaneous,—comes an goes like thesunset. As for me," still speaking of scenery, "these mountainsabout here, that I see every day, are no more to me, in one sense,than a man's farm is to him. What mostly interests me now is when Isee some new freak or shape in the face of Nature."

In literature it may be said that Old Phelps prefers the best in thevery limited range that has been open to him. Tennyson is hisfavorite among poets an affinity explained by the fact that they areboth lotos-eaters. Speaking of a lecture-room talk of Mr. Beecher'swhich he had read, he said, "It filled my cup about as full as Icallerlate to have it: there was a good deal of truth in it, and somepoetry; waal, and a little spice, too. We've got to have the spice,you know." He admired, for different reasons, a lecture by Greeleythat he once heard, into which so much knowledge of various kinds wascrowded that he said he "made a reg'lar gobble of it." He was notwithout discrimination, which he exercised upon the local preachingwhen nothing better offered. Of one sermon he said, "The man beganway back at the creation, and just preached right along down; and hedidn't say nothing, after all. It just seemed to me as if he wastryin' to git up a kind of a fix-up."

Old Phelps used words sometimes like algebraic signs, and had a habitof making one do duty for a season together for all occasions."Speckerlation" and "callerlation" and "fix-up" are specimens ofwords that were prolific in expression. An unusual expression, or anunusual article, would be charactcrized as a "kind of a scientificl*terary git-up."

"What is the program for tomorrow?" I once asked him. "Waal, Icallerlate, if they rig up the callerlation they callerlate on, we'llgo to the Boreas." Starting out for a day's tramp in the woods, hewould ask whether we wanted to take a "reg'lar walk, or a randomscoot,"—the latter being a plunge into the pathless forest. When hewas on such an expedition, and became entangled in dense brush, andmaybe a network of "slash" and swamp, he was like an old wizard, ashe looked here and there, seeking a way, peering into the tangle, orwithdrawing from a thicket, and muttering to himself, "There ain't nospeckerlation there." And when the way became altogetherinscrutable,—"Waal, this is a reg'lar random scoot of a rigmarole."As some one remarked, "The dictionary in his hands is like clay inthe hands of the potter." "A petrifaction was a kind of a hard-woodchemical git-up."

There is no conceit, we are apt to say, like that born of isolationfrom the world, and there are no such conceited people as those whohave lived all their lives in the woods. Phelps was, however,unsophisticated in his until the advent of strangers into his life,who brought in literature and various other disturbing influences. Iam sorry to say that the effect has been to take off something of thebloom of his simplicity, and to elevate him into an oracle. Isuppose this is inevitable as soon as one goes into print; and Phelpshas gone into print in the local papers. He has been bitten with theliterary "git up." Justly regarding most of the Adirondackliterature as a "perfect fizzle," he has himself projected a work,and written much on the natural history of his region. Long ago hemade a large map of the mountain country; and, until recent surveys,it was the only one that could lay any claim to accuracy. Hishistory is no doubt original in form, and unconventional inexpression. Like most of the writers of the seventeenth century, andthe court ladies and gentlemen of the eighteenth century, he is anindependent speller. Writing of his work on the Adirondacks, hesays, "If I should ever live to get this wonderful thing written, Iexpect it will show one thing, if no more; and that is, that everything has an opposite. I expect to show in this that literature hasan opposite, if I do not show any thing els. We could not enjoy theblessings and happiness of riteousness if we did not know innicutywas in the world: in fact, there would be no riteousness withoutinnicuty." Writing also of his great enjoyment of being in thewoods, especially since he has had the society there of some peoplehe names, he adds, "And since I have Literature, Siance, and Art allspread about on the green moss of the mountain woods or the gravellbanks of a cristle stream, it seems like finding roses, honeysuckels,and violets on a crisp brown cliff in December. You know I don'tbelieve much in the religion of seramony; but any riteous thing thathas life and spirit in it is food for me." I must not neglect tomention an essay, continued in several numbers of his local paper, on"The Growth of the Tree," in which he demolishes the theory of Mr.Greeley, whom he calls "one of the best vegetable philosophers,"about "growth without seed." He treats of the office of sap: "Alltrees have some kind of sap and some kind of operation of sap flowingin their season," the dissemination of seeds, the processes ofgrowth, the power of healing wounds, the proportion of roots tobranches, &c. Speaking of the latter, he says, "I have thought itwould be one of the greatest curiosities on earth to see a thriftygrowing maple or elm, that had grown on a deep soil interval to betwo feet in diameter, to be raised clear into the air with every rootand fibre down to the minutest thread, all entirely cleared of soil,so that every particle could be seen in its natural position. Ithink it would astonish even the wise ones." From his instinctivesympathy with nature, he often credits vegetable organism with"instinctive judgment." "Observation teaches us that a tree isgiven powerful instincts, which would almost appear to amount tojudgment in some cases, to provide for its own wants andnecessities."

Here our study must cease. When the primitive man comes intoliterature, he is no longer primitive.

VI

CAMPING OUT

It seems to be agreed that civilization is kept up only by a constanteffort: Nature claims its own speedily when the effort is relaxed.If you clear a patch of fertile ground in the forest, uproot thestumps, and plant it, year after year, in potatoes and maize, you sayyou have subdued it. But, if you leave it for a season or two, akind of barbarism seems to steal out upon it from the circling woods;coarse grass and brambles cover it; bushes spring up in a wildtangle; the raspberry and the blackberry flower and fruit; and thehumorous bear feeds upon them. The last state of that ground isworse than the first.

Perhaps the cleared spot is called Ephesus. There is a splendid cityon the plain; there are temples and theatres on the hills; thecommerce of the world seeks its port; the luxury of the Orient flowsthrough its marble streets. You are there one day when the sea hasreceded: the plain is a pestilent marsh; the temples, the theatres,the lofty gates have sunken and crumbled, and the wild-brier runsover them; and, as you grow pensive in the most desolate place in theworld, a bandit lounges out of a tomb, and offers to relieve you ofall that which creates artificial distinctions in society. Thehigher the civilization has risen, the more abject is the desolationof barbarism that ensues. The most melancholy spot in theAdirondacks is not a tamarack-swamp, where the traveler wades in mossand mire, and the atmosphere is composed of equal active parts ofblack-flies, mosquitoes, and midges. It is the village of theAdirondack Iron-Works, where the streets of gaunt houses are fallingto pieces, tenantless; the factory-wheels have stopped; the furnacesare in ruins; the iron and wooden machinery is strewn about inhelpless detachment; and heaps of charcoal, ore, and slag proclaim anarrested industry. Beside this deserted village, even Calamity Pond,shallow, sedgy, with its ragged shores of stunted firs, and itsmelancholy shaft that marks the spot where the proprietor of theiron-works accidentally shot himself, is cheerful.

The instinct of barbarism that leads people periodically to throwaside the habits of civilization, and seek the freedom and discomfortof the woods, is explicable enough; but it is not so easy tounderstand why this passion should be strongest in those who are mostrefined, and most trained in intellectual and social fastidiousness.Philistinism and shoddy do not like the woods, unless it becomesfashionable to do so; and then, as speedily as possible, theyintroduce their artificial luxuries, and reduce the life in thewilderness to the vulgarity of a well-fed picnic. It is they whohave strewn the Adirondacks with paper collars and tin cans. Thereal enjoyment of camping and tramping in the woods lies in a returnto primitive conditions of lodging, dress, and food, in as total anescape as may be from the requirements of civilization. And itremains to be explained why this is enjoyed most by those who aremost highly civilized. It is wonderful to see how easily therestraints of society fall off. Of course it is not true thatcourtesy depends upon clothes with the best people; but, with others,behavior hangs almost entirely upon dress. Many good habits areeasily got rid of in the woods. Doubt sometimes seems to be feltwhether Sunday is a legal holiday there. It becomes a question ofcasuistry with a clergyman whether he may shoot at a mark on Sunday,if none of his congregation are present. He intends no harm: he onlygratifies a curiosity to see if he can hit the mark. Where shall hedraw the line? Doubtless he might throw a stone at a chipmunk, orshout at a loon. Might he fire at a mark with an air-gun that makesno noise? He will not fish or hunt on Sunday (although he is no morelikely to catch anything that day than on any other); but may he eattrout that the guide has caught on Sunday, if the guide swears hecaught them Saturday night? Is there such a thing as a vacation inreligion? How much of our virtue do we owe to inherited habits?

I am not at all sure whether this desire to camp outside ofcivilization is creditable to human nature, or otherwise. We hearsometimes that the Turk has been merely camping for four centuries inEurope. I suspect that many of us are, after all, really campingtemporarily in civilized conditions; and that going into thewilderness is an escape, longed for, into our natural and preferredstate. Consider what this "camping out" is, that is confessedly soagreeable to people most delicately reared. I have no desire toexaggerate its delights.

The Adirondack wilderness is essentially unbroken. A few bad roadsthat penetrate it, a few jolting wagons that traverse them, a fewbarn-like boarding-houses on the edge of the forest, where theboarders are soothed by patent coffee, and stimulated to unnaturalgayety by Japan tea, and experimented on by unique cookery, do littleto destroy the savage fascination of the region. In half an hour, atany point, one can put himself into solitude and every desirablediscomfort. The party that covets the experience of the camp comesdown to primitive conditions of dress and equipment. There areguides and porters to carry the blankets for beds, the rawprovisions, and the camp equipage; and the motley party of thetemporarily decivilized files into the woods, and begins, perhaps bya road, perhaps on a trail, its exhilarating and weary march. Theexhilaration arises partly from the casting aside of restraint,partly from the adventure of exploration; and the weariness, from theinterminable toil of bad walking, a heavy pack, and the grim monotonyof trees and bushes, that shut out all prospect, except an occasionalglimpse of the sky. Mountains are painfully climbed, streams forded,lonesome lakes paddled over, long and muddy "carries" traversed.Fancy this party the victim of political exile, banished by the law,and a more sorrowful march could not be imagined; but the voluntaryhardship becomes pleasure, and it is undeniable that the spirits ofthe party rise as the difficulties increase.

For this straggling and stumbling band the world is young again: ithas come to the beginning of things; it has cut loose from tradition,and is free to make a home anywhere: the movement has all the promiseof a revolution. All this virginal freshness invites the primitiveinstincts of play and disorder. The free range of the forestssuggests endless possibilities of exploration and possession.Perhaps we are treading where man since the creation never trodbefore; perhaps the waters of this bubbling spring, which we deepenby scraping out the decayed leaves and the black earth, have neverbeen tasted before, except by the wild denizens of these woods. Wecross the trails of lurking animals,—paths that heighten our senseof seclusion from the world. The hammering of the infrequentwoodpecker, the call of the lonely bird, the drumming of the solitarypartridge,—all these sounds do but emphasize the lonesomeness ofnature. The roar of the mountain brook, dashing over its bed ofpebbles, rising out of the ravine, and spreading, as it were, a mistof sound through all the forest (continuous beating waves that havethe rhythm of eternity in them), and the fitful movement of theair-tides through the balsams and firs and the giant pines,—how thesegrand symphonies shut out the little exasperations of our vexed life!It seems easy to begin life over again on the simplest terms.Probably it is not so much the desire of the congregation to escapefrom the preacher, or of the preacher to escape from himself, thatdrives sophisticated people into the wilderness, as it is theunconquered craving for primitive simplicity, the revolt against theeverlasting dress-parade of our civilization. From this monstrouspomposity even the artificial rusticity of a Petit Trianon is arelief. It was only human nature that the jaded Frenchman of theregency should run away to the New World, and live in a forest-hutwith an Indian squaw; although he found little satisfaction in hisact of heroism, unless it was talked about at Versailles.

When our trampers come, late in the afternoon, to the bank of alovely lake where they purpose to enter the primitive life,everything is waiting for them in virgin expectation. There is alittle promontory jutting into the lake, and sloping down to a sandybeach, on which the waters idly lapse, and shoals of red-fins andshiners come to greet the stranger; the forest is untouched by theaxe; the tender green sweeps the water's edge; ranks of slender firsare marshaled by the shore; clumps of white-birch stems shine insatin purity among the evergreens; the boles of giant spruces,maples, and oaks, lifting high their crowns of foliage, stretch awayin endless galleries and arcades; through the shifting leaves thesunshine falls upon the brown earth; overhead are fragments of bluesky; under the boughs and in chance openings appear the bluer lakeand the outline of the gracious mountains. The discoverers of thisparadise, which they have entered to destroy, note the babbling ofthe brook that flows close at hand; they hear the splash of theleaping fish; they listen to the sweet, metallic song of the eveningthrush, and the chatter of the red squirrel, who angrily challengestheir right to be there. But the moment of sentiment passes. Thisparty has come here to eat and to sleep, and not to encourage Naturein her poetic attitudinizing.

The spot for a shanty is selected. This side shall be its opening,towards the lake; and in front of it the fire, so that the smokeshall drift into the hut, and discourage the mosquitoes; yonder shallbe the cook's fire and the path to the spring. The whole colonybestir themselves in the foundation of a new home,—an enterprisethat has all the fascination, and none of the danger, of a veritablenew settlement in the wilderness. The axes of the guides resound inthe echoing spaces; great trunks fall with a crash; vistas are openedtowards the lake and the mountains. The spot for the shanty iscleared of underbrush; forked stakes are driven into the ground,cross-pieces are laid on them, and poles sloping back to the ground.In an incredible space of time there is the skeleton of a house,which is entirely open in front. The roof and sides must be covered.For this purpose the trunks of great spruces are skinned. Thewoodman rims the bark near the foot of the tree, and again six feetabove, and slashes it perpendicularly; then, with a blunt stick, hecrowds off this thick hide exactly as an ox is skinned. It needs buta few of these skins to cover the roof; and they make a perfectlywater-tight roof, except when it rains. Meantime busy hands havegathered boughs of the spruce and the feathery balsam, and shingledthe ground underneath the shanty for a bed. It is an aromatic bed:in theory it is elastic and consoling. Upon it are spread theblankets. The sleepers, of all sexes and ages, are to lie there in arow, their feet to the fire, and their heads under the edge of thesloping roof. Nothing could be better contrived. The fire is infront: it is not a fire, but a conflagration—a vast heap of greenlogs set on fire—of pitch, and split dead-wood, and cracklingbalsams, raging and roaring. By the time, twilight falls, the cookhas prepared supper. Everything has been cooked in a tin pail and askillet,—potatoes, tea, pork, mutton, slapjacks. You wonder howeverything could have been prepared in so few utensils. When youeat, the wonder ceases: everything might have been cooked in onepail. It is a noble meal; and nobly is it disposed of by theseamateur savages, sitting about upon logs and roots of trees. Neverwere there such potatoes, never beans that seemed to have more of thebean in them, never such curly pork, never trout with moreIndian-meal on them, never mutton more distinctly sheepy; and the tea,drunk out of a tin cup, with a lump of maple-sugar dissolved in it,—it is the sort of tea that takes hold, lifts the hair, and disposesthe drinker to anecdote and hilariousness. There is no deceptionabout it: it tastes of tannin and spruce and creosote. Everything, inshort, has the flavor of the wilderness and a free life. It isidyllic. And yet, with all our sentimentality, there is nothingfeeble about the cooking. The slapjacks are a solid job of work, madeto last, and not go to pieces in a person's stomach like a trivialbun: we might record on them, in cuneiform characters, our incipientcivilization; and future generations would doubtless turn them up asAcadian bricks. Good, robust victuals are what the primitive manwants.

Darkness falls suddenly. Outside the ring of light from ourconflagration the woods are black. There is a tremendous impressionof isolation and lonesomeness in our situation. We are the prisonersof the night. The woods never seemed so vast and mysterious. Thetrees are gigantic. There are noises that we do not understand,—mysterious winds passing overhead, and rambling in the greatgalleries, tree-trunks grinding against each other, undefinable stirsand uneasinesses. The shapes of those who pass into the dimness areoutlined in monstrous proportions. The spectres, seated about in theglare of the fire, talk about appearances and presentiments andreligion. The guides cheer the night with bear-fights, and catamountencounters, and frozen-to-death experiences, and simple tales ofgreat prolixity and no point, and jokes of primitive lucidity. Wehear catamounts, and the stealthy tread of things in the leaves, andthe hooting of owls, and, when the moon rises, the laughter of theloon. Everything is strange, spectral, fascinating.

By and by we get our positions in the shanty for the night, andarrange the row of sleepers. The shanty has become a smoke-house bythis time: waves of smoke roll into it from the fire. It is only bylying down, and getting the head well under the eaves, that one canbreathe. No one can find her "things"; nobody has a pillow. Atlength the row is laid out, with the solemn protestation of intentionto sleep. The wind, shifting, drives away the smoke.

Good-night is said a hundred times; positions are readjusted, morelast words, new shifting about, final remarks; it is all socomfortable and romantic; and then silence. Silence continues for aminute. The fire flashes up; all the row of heads is lifted upsimultaneously to watch it; showers of sparks sail aloft into theblue night; the vast vault of greenery is a fairy spectacle. How thesparks mount and twinkle and disappear like tropical fireflies, andall the leaves murmur, and clap their hands! Some of the sparks donot go out: we see them flaming in the sky when the flame of the firehas died down. Well, good-night, goodnight. More folding of thearms to sleep; more grumbling about the hardness of a hand-bag,or the insufficiency of a pocket-handkerchief, for a pillow.Good-night. Was that a remark?—something about a root, a stub inthe ground sticking into the back. "You couldn't lie along a hair?"—-"Well, no: here's another stub. It needs but a moment for theconversation to become general,—about roots under the shoulder,stubs in the back, a ridge on which it is impossible for the sleeperto balance, the non-elasticity of boughs, the hardness of the ground,the heat, the smoke, the chilly air. Subjects of remarks multiply.The whole camp is awake, and chattering like an aviary. The owl isalso awake; but the guides who are asleep outside make more noisethan the owls. Water is wanted, and is handed about in a dipper.Everybody is yawning; everybody is now determined to go to sleep ingood earnest. A last good-night. There is an appalling silence. Itis interrupted in the most natural way in the world. Somebody hasgot the start, and gone to sleep. He proclaims the fact. He seemsto have been brought up on the seashore, and to know how to make allthe deep-toned noises of the restless ocean. He is also like awar-horse; or, it is suggested, like a saw-horse. How malignantly hesnorts, and breaks off short, and at once begins again in anotherkey! One head is raised after another.

"Who is that?"

"Somebody punch him."

"Turn him over."

"Reason with him."

The sleeper is turned over. The turn was a mistake. He was before,it appears, on his most agreeable side. The camp rises inindignation. The sleeper sits up in bewilderment. Before he can gooff again, two or three others have preceded him. They are allalike. You never can judge what a person is when he is awake. Thereare here half a dozen disturbers of the peace who should be put insolitary confinement. At midnight, when a philosopher crawls out tosit on a log by the fire, and smoke a pipe, a duet in tenor andmezzo-soprano is going on in the shanty, with a chorus always comingin at the wrong time. Those who are not asleep want to know why thesmoker doesn't go to bed. He is requested to get some water, tothrow on another log, to see what time it is, to note whether itlooks like rain. A buzz of conversation arises. She is sure sheheard something behind the shanty. He says it is all nonsense."Perhaps, however, it might be a mouse."

"Mercy! Are there mice?"

"Plenty."

"Then that's what I heard nibbling by my head. I shan't sleep awink! Do they bite?"

"No, they nibble; scarcely ever take a full bite out."

"It's horrid!"

Towards morning it grows chilly; the guides have let the fire go out;the blankets will slip down. Anxiety begins to be expressed aboutthe dawn.

"What time does the sun rise?"

"Awful early. Did you sleep?

"Not a wink. And you?"

"In spots. I'm going to dig up this root as soon as it is lightenough."

"See that mist on the lake, and the light just coming on the Gothics!I'd no idea it was so cold: all the first part of the night I wasroasted."

"What were they talking about all night?"

When the party crawls out to the early breakfast, after it has washedits faces in the lake, it is disorganized, but cheerful. Nobodyadmits much sleep; but everybody is refreshed, and declares itdelightful. It is the fresh air all night that invigorates; or maybeit is the tea, or the slap-jacks. The guides have erected a table ofspruce bark, with benches at the sides; so that breakfast is taken inform. It is served on tin plates and oak chips. After breakfastbegins the day's work. It may be a mountain-climbing expedition, orrowing and angling in the lake, or fishing for trout in some streamtwo or three miles distant. Nobody can stir far from camp without aguide. Hammocks are swung, bowers are built novel-reading begins,worsted work appears, cards are shuffled and dealt. The day passesin absolute freedom from responsibility to one's self. At night whenthe expeditions return, the camp resumes its animation. Adventuresare recounted, every statement of the narrator being disputed andargued. Everybody has become an adept in woodcraft; but nobodycredits his neighbor with like instinct. Society getting resolvedinto its elements, confidence is gone.

Whilst the hilarious party are at supper, a drop or two of rainfalls. The head guide is appealed to. Is it going to rain? He saysit does rain. But will it be a rainy night? The guide goes down tothe lake, looks at the sky, and concludes that, if the wind shifts ap'int more, there is no telling what sort of weather we shall have.Meantime the drops patter thicker on the leaves overhead, and theleaves, in turn, pass the water down to the table; the sky darkens;the wind rises; there is a kind of shiver in the woods; and we scudaway into the shanty, taking the remains of our supper, and eating itas best we can. The rain increases. The fire sputters and fumes.All the trees are dripping, dripping, and the ground is wet. Wecannot step outdoors without getting a drenching. Like sheep, we arepenned in the little hut, where no one can stand erect. The rainswirls into the open front, and wets the bottom of the blankets. Thesmoke drives in. We curl up, and enjoy ourselves. The guides atlength conclude that it is going to be damp. The dismal situationsets us all into good spirits; and it is later than the night beforewhen we crawl under our blankets, sure this time of a sound sleep,lulled by the storm and the rain resounding on the bark roof. Howmuch better off we are than many a shelter-less wretch! We are assnug as dry herrings. At the moment, however, of dropping off tosleep, somebody unfortunately notes a drop of water on his face; thisis followed by another drop; in an instant a stream is established.He moves his head to a dry place. Scarcely has he done so, when hefeels a dampness in his back. Reaching his hand outside, he finds apuddle of water soaking through his blanket. By this time, somebodyinquires if it is possible that the roof leaks. One man has a streamof water under him; another says it is coming into his ear. The roofappears to be a discriminating sieve. Those who are dry see no needof such a fuss. The man in the corner spreads his umbrella, and theprotective measure is resented by his neighbor. In the darknessthere is recrimination. One of the guides, who is summoned, suggeststhat the rubber blankets be passed out, and spread over the roof.The inmates dislike the proposal, saying that a shower-bath is noworse than a tub-bath. The rain continues to soak down. The fire isonly half alive. The bedding is damp. Some sit up, if they can finda dry spot to sit on, and smoke. Heartless observations are made. Afew sleep. And the night wears on. The morning opens cheerless.The sky is still leaking, and so is the shanty. The guides bring ina half-cooked breakfast. The roof is patched up. There are revivingsigns of breaking away, delusive signs that create momentaryexhilaration. Even if the storm clears, the woods are soaked. Thereis no chance of stirring. The world is only ten feet square.

This life, without responsibility or clean clothes, may continue aslong as the reader desires. There are, those who would like to livein this free fashion forever, taking rain and sun as heaven pleases;and there are some souls so constituted that they cannot exist morethan three days without their worldly—baggage. Taking the partyaltogether, from one cause or another it is likely to strike campsooner than was intended. And the stricken camp is a melancholysight. The woods have been despoiled; the stumps are ugly; thebushes are scorched; the pine-leaf-strewn earth is trodden into mire;the landing looks like a cattle-ford; the ground is littered with allthe unsightly dibris of a hand-to-hand life; the dismantled shanty isa shabby object; the charred and blackened logs, where the fireblazed, suggest the extinction of family life. Man has wrought hisusual wrong upon Nature, and he can save his self-respect only bymoving to virgin forests.

And move to them he will, the next season, if not this. For he whohas once experienced the fascination of the woods-life never escapesits enticement: in the memory nothing remains but its charm.

VII

A WILDERNESS ROMANCE

At the south end of Keene Valley, in the Adirondacks, stands NoonMark, a shapely peak thirty-five hundred feet above the sea, which,with the aid of the sun, tells the Keene people when it is time toeat dinner. From its summit you look south into a vast wildernessbasin, a great stretch of forest little trodden, and out of whosebosom you can hear from the heights on a still day the loud murmur ofthe Boquet. This basin of unbroken green rises away to the south andsoutheast into the rocky heights of Dix's Peak and Nipple Top,—thelatter a local name which neither the mountain nor the fastidioustourist is able to shake off. Indeed, so long as the mountain keepsits present shape as seen from the southern lowlands, it cannot geton without this name.

These two mountains, which belong to the great system of which Marcyis the giant centre, and are in the neighborhood of five thousandfeet high, on the southern outposts of the great mountains, form thegate-posts of the pass into the south country. This opening betweenthem is called Hunter's Pass. It is the most elevated and one of thewildest of the mountain passes. Its summit is thirty-five hundredfeet high. In former years it is presumed the hunters occasionallyfollowed the game through; but latterly it is rare to find a guidewho has been that way, and the tin-can and paper-collar tourists havenot yet made it a runway. This seclusion is due not to any inherentdifficulty of travel, but to the fact that it lies a little out ofthe way.

We went through it last summer; making our way into the jaws from thefoot of the great slides on Dix, keeping along the ragged spurs ofthe mountain through the virgin forest. The pass is narrow, walledin on each side by precipices of granite, and blocked up withbowlders and fallen trees, and beset with pitfalls in the roadsingeniously covered with fair-seeming moss. When the climberoccasionally loses sight of a leg in one of these treacherous holes,and feels a cold sensation in his foot, he learns that he has dippedinto the sources of the Boquet, which emerges lower down into fallsand rapids, and, recruited by creeping tributaries, goes brawlingthrough the forest basin, and at last comes out an amiable andboat-bearing stream in the valley of Elizabeth Town. From the summitanother rivulet trickles away to the south, and finds its way througha frightful tamarack swamp, and through woods scarred by ruthlesslumbering, to Mud Pond, a quiet body of water, with a ghastly fringeof dead trees, upon which people of grand intentions and weakvocabulary are trying to fix the name of Elk Lake. The descent ofthe pass on that side is precipitous and exciting. The way is in thestream itself; and a considerable portion of the distance we swungourselves down the faces of considerable falls, and tumbled downcascades. The descent, however, was made easy by the fact that itrained, and every footstep was yielding and slippery. Why sanepeople, often church-members respectably connected, will subjectthemselves to this sort of treatment,—be wet to the skin, bruised bythe rocks, and flung about among the bushes and dead wood until themost necessary part of their apparel hangs in shreds,—is one of thedelightful mysteries of these woods. I suspect that every man is atheart a roving animal, and likes, at intervals, to revert to thecondition of the bear and the catamount.

There is no trail through Hunter's Pass, which, as I have intimated,is the least frequented portion of this wilderness. Yet we weresurprised to find a well-beaten path a considerable portion of theway and wherever a path is possible. It was not a mere deer'srunway: these are found everywhere in the mountains. It is troddenby other and larger animals, and is, no doubt, the highway of beasts.It bears marks of having been so for a long period, and probably aperiod long ago. Large animals are not common in these woods now,and you seldom meet anything fiercer than the timid deer and thegentle bear. But in days gone by, Hunter's Pass was the highway ofthe whole caravan of animals who were continually going backward; andforwards, in the aimless, roaming way that beasts have, between MudPond and the Boquet Basin. I think I can see now the procession ofthem between the heights of Dix and Nipple Top; the elk and the mooseshambling along, cropping the twigs; the heavy bear lounging by withhis exploring nose; the frightened deer trembling at every twig thatsnapped beneath his little hoofs, intent on the lily-pads of thepond; the raccoon and the hedgehog, sidling along; and thevelvet-footed panther, insouciant and conscienceless, scenting thepath with a curious glow in his eye, or crouching in an overhangingtree ready to drop into the procession at the right moment. Night andday, year after year, I see them going by, watched by the red fox andthe comfortably clad sable, and grinned at by the black cat,—theinnocent, the vicious, the timid and the savage, the shy and the bold,the chattering slanderer and the screaming prowler, the industriousand the peaceful, the tree-top critic and the crawling biter,—just asit is elsewhere. It makes me blush for my species when I think of it.This charming society is nearly extinct now: of the larger animalsthere only remain the bear, who minds his own business more thoroughlythan any person I know, and the deer, who would like to be friendlywith men, but whose winning face and gentle ways are no protectionfrom the savageness of man, and who is treated with the same unpityingdestruction as the snarling catamount. I have read in history thatthe amiable natives of Hispaniola fared no better at the hands of thebrutal Spaniards than the fierce and warlike Caribs. As society is atpresent constituted in Christian countries, I would rather for my ownsecurity be a cougar than a fawn.

There is not much of romantic interest in the Adirondacks. Out ofthe books of daring travelers, nothing. I do not know that the KeeneValley has any history. The mountains always stood here, and the AuSable, flowing now in shallows and now in rippling reaches over thesands and pebbles, has for ages filled the air with continuous andsoothing sounds. Before the Vermonters broke into it somethree-quarters of a century ago, and made meadows of its bottoms andsugar-camps of its fringing woods, I suppose the red Indian lived herein his usual discomfort, and was as restless as his successors, thesummer boarders. But the streams were full of trout then, and themoose and the elk left their broad tracks on the sands of the river.But of the Indian there is no trace. There is a mound in the valley,much like a Tel in the country of Bashan beyond the Jordan, that mayhave been built by some pre-historic race, and may contain treasureand the seated figure of a preserved chieftain on his slow wayto Paradise. What the gentle and accomplished race of theMound-Builders should want in this savage region where the frost killsthe early potatoes and stunts the scanty oats, I do not know. I haveseen no trace of them, except this Tel, and one other slight relic,which came to light last summer, and is not enough to found thehistory of a race upon.

Some workingmen, getting stone from the hillside on one of the littleplateaus, for a house-cellar, discovered, partly embedded, a piece ofpottery unique in this region. With the unerring instinct of workmenin regard to antiquities, they thrust a crowbar through it, and brokethe bowl into several pieces. The joint fragments, however, give usthe form of the dish. It is a bowl about nine inches high and eightinches across, made of red clay, baked but not glazed. The bottom isround, the top flares into four comers, and the rim is rudely butrather artistically ornamented with criss-cross scratches made whenthe clay was soft. The vessel is made of clay not found about here,and it is one that the Indians formerly living here could not form.Was it brought here by roving Indians who may have made an expeditionto the Ohio; was it passed from tribe to tribe; or did it belong to arace that occupied the country before the Indian, and who have lefttraces of their civilized skill in pottery scattered all over thecontinent?

If I could establish the fact that this jar was made by a prehistoricrace, we should then have four generations in this lovely valley:-theamiable Pre-Historic people (whose gentle descendants were probablykilled by the Spaniards in the West Indies); the Red Indians; theKeene Flaters (from Vermont); and the Summer Boarders, to say nothingof the various races of animals who have been unable to live heresince the advent of the Summer Boarders, the valley being notproductive enough to sustain both. This last incursion has been moredestructive to the noble serenity of the forest than all thepreceding.

But we are wandering from Hunter's Pass. The western walls of it areformed by the precipices of Nipple Top, not so striking nor so bareas the great slides of Dix which glisten in the sun like silver, butrough and repelling, and consequently alluring. I have a greatdesire to scale them. I have always had an unreasonable wish toexplore the rough summit of this crabbed hill, which is too brokenand jagged for pleasure and not high enough for glory. This desirewas stimulated by a legend related by our guide that night in the MudPond cabin. The guide had never been through the pass before;although he was familiar with the region, and had ascended Nipple Topin the winter in pursuit of the sable. The story he told doesn'tamount to much, none of the guides' stories do, faithfully reported,and I should not have believed it if I had not had a good deal ofleisure on my hands at the time, and been of a willing mind, and Imay say in rather of a starved condition as to any romance in thisregion.

The guide said then—and he mentioned it casually, in reply to ourinquiries about ascending the mountain—that there was a cave high upamong the precipices on the southeast side of Nipple Top. Hescarcely volunteered the information, and with seeming reluctancegave us any particulars about it. I always admire this art by whichthe accomplished story-teller lets his listener drag the reluctanttale of the marvelous from him, and makes you in a manner responsiblefor its improbability. If this is well managed, the listener isalways eager to believe a great deal more than the romancer seemswilling to tell, and always resents the assumed reservations anddoubts of the latter.

There were strange reports about this cave when the old guide was aboy, and even then its very existence had become legendary. Nobodyknew exactly where it was, but there was no doubt that it had beeninhabited. Hunters in the forests south of Dix had seen a light lateat night twinkling through the trees high up the mountain, and nowand then a ruddy glare as from the flaring-up of a furnace. Settlerswere few in the wilderness then, and all the inhabitants were wellknown. If the cave was inhabited, it must be by strangers, and bymen who had some secret purpose in seeking this seclusion and eludingobservation. If suspicious characters were seen about Port Henry, orif any such landed from the steamers on the shore of Lake Champlain,it was impossible to identify them with these invaders who were neverseen. Their not being seen did not, however, prevent the growth ofthe belief in their existence. Little indications and rumors, eachtrivial in itself, became a mass of testimony that could not bedisposed of because of its very indefiniteness, but which appealedstrongly to man's noblest faculty, his imagination, or credulity.

The cave existed; and it was inhabited by men who came and went onmysterious errands, and transacted their business by night. Whatthis band of adventurers or desperadoes lived on, how they conveyedtheir food through the trackless woods to their high eyrie, and whatcould induce men to seek such a retreat, were questions discussed,but never settled. They might be banditti; but there was nothing toplunder in these savage wilds, and, in fact, robberies and raidseither in the settlements of the hills or the distant lake shore wereunknown. In another age, these might have been hermits, holy men whohad retired from the world to feed the vanity of their godliness in aspot where they were subject neither to interruption nor comparison;they would have had a shrine in the cave, and an image of the BlessedVirgin, with a lamp always burning before it and sending out itsmellow light over the savage waste. A more probable notion was thatthey were romantic Frenchmen who had grow weary of vice andrefinement together,—possibly princes, expectants of the throne,Bourbon remainders, named Williams or otherwise, unhatched eggs, soto speak, of kings, who had withdrawn out of observation to wait forthe next turn-over in Paris. Frenchmen do such things. If they werenot Frenchmen, they might be honest-thieves or criminals, escapedfrom justice or from the friendly state-prison of New York. Thislast supposition was, however, more violent than the others, or seemsso to us in this day of grace. For what well-brought-up New Yorkcriminal would be so insane as to run away from his political friendsthe keepers, from the easily had companionship of his pals outside,and from the society of his criminal lawyer, and, in short, to puthimself into the depths of a wilderness out of which escape, whenescape was desired, is a good deal more difficult than it is out ofthe swarming jails of the Empire State? Besides, how foolish for aman, if he were a really hardened and professional criminal, havingestablished connections and a regular business, to run away from thegovernor's pardon, which might have difficulty in finding him in thecraggy bosom of Nipple Top!

This gang of men—there is some doubt whether they were accompaniedby women—gave little evidence in their appearance of being escapedcriminals or expectant kings. Their movements were mysterious butnot necessarily violent. If their occupation could have beendiscovered, that would have furnished a clew to their true character.But about this the strangers were as close as mice. If anythingcould betray them, it was the steady light from the cavern, and itsoccasional ruddy flashing. This gave rise to the opinion, which wasstrengthened by a good many indications equally conclusive, that thecave was the resort of a gang of coiners and counterfeiters. Herethey had their furnace, smelting-pots, and dies; here theymanufactured those spurious quarters and halves that theirconfidants, who were pardoned, were circulating, and which a fewhonest men were "nailing to the counter."

This prosaic explanation of a romantic situation satisfies all therequirements of the known facts, but the lively imagination at oncerejects it as unworthy of the subject. I think the guide put itforward in order to have it rejected. The fact is,—at least, it hasnever been disproved,—these strangers whose movements were veiledbelonged to that dark and mysterious race whose presence anywhere onthis continent is a nest-egg of romance or of terror. They wereSpaniards! You need not say buccaneers, you need not saygold-hunters, you need not say swarthy adventurers even: it is enoughto say Spaniards! There is no tale of mystery and fanaticism anddaring I would not believe if a Spaniard is the hero of it, and it isnot necessary either that he should have the high-sounding name ofBodadilla or Ojeda.

Nobody, I suppose, would doubt this story if the moose, quaffing deepdraughts of red wine from silver tankards, and then throwingthemselves back upon divans, and lazily puffing the fragrant Havana.After a day of toil, what more natural, and what more probable for aSpaniard?

Does the reader think these inferences not warranted by the facts?He does not know the facts. It is true that our guide had neverhimself personally visited the cave, but he has always intended tohunt it up. His information in regard to it comes from his father,who was a mighty hunter and trapper. In one of his expeditions overNipple Top he chanced upon the cave. The mouth was half concealed byundergrowth. He entered, not without some apprehension engendered bythe legends which make it famous. I think he showed some boldness inventuring into such a place alone. I confess that, before I went in,I should want to fire a Gatling gun into the mouth for a littlewhile, in order to rout out the bears which usually dwell there. Hewent in, however. The entrance was low; but the cave was spacious,not large, but big enough, with a level floor and a vaulted ceiling.It had long been deserted, but that it was once the residence ofhighly civilized beings there could be no doubt. The dead brands inthe centre were the remains of a fire that could not have beenkindled by wild beasts, and the bones scattered about had beenscientifically dissected and handled. There were also remnants offurniture and pieces of garments scattered about. At the fartherend, in a fissure of the rock, were stones regularly built up, therem Yins of a larger fire,—and what the hunter did not doubt was thesmelting furnace of the Spaniards. He poked about in the ashes, butfound no silver. That had all been carried away.

But what most provoked his wonder in this rude cave was a chair IThis was not such a seat as a woodman might knock up with an axe,with rough body and a seat of woven splits, but a manufactured chairof commerce, and a chair, too, of an unusual pattern and someelegance. This chair itself was a mute witness of luxury andmystery. The chair itself might have been accounted for, though Idon't know how; but upon the back of the chair hung, as if the ownerhad carelessly flung it there before going out an hour before, aman's waistcoat. This waistcoat seemed to him of foreign make andpeculiar style, but what endeared it to him was its row of metalbuttons. These buttons were of silver! I forget now whether he didnot say they were of silver coin, and that the coin was Spanish. ButI am not certain about this latter fact, and I wish to cast no air ofimprobability over my narrative. This rich vestment the huntercarried away with him. This was all the plunder his expeditionafforded. Yes: there was one other article, and, to my mind, moresignificant than the vest of the hidalgo. This was a short and stoutcrowbar of iron; not one of the long crowbars that farmers use to pryup stones, but a short handy one, such as you would use in diggingsilver-ore out of the cracks of rocks.

This was the guide's simple story. I asked him what became of thevest and the buttons, and the bar of iron. The old man wore the vestuntil he wore it out; and then he handed it over to the boys, andthey wore it in turn till they wore it out. The buttons were cutoff, and kept as curiosities. They were about the cabin, and thechildren had them to play with. The guide distinctly remembersplaying with them; one of them he kept for a long time, and he didn'tknow but he could find it now, but he guessed it had disappeared. Iregretted that he had not treasured this slender verification of aninteresting romance, but he said in those days he never paid muchattention to such things. Lately he has turned the subject over, andis sorry that his father wore out the vest and did not bring away thechair. It is his steady purpose to find the cave some time when hehas leisure, and capture the chair, if it has not tumbled to pieces.But about the crowbar? Oh I that is all right. The guide has thebar at his house in Keene Valley, and has always used it. I am happy to be able to confirm this story by saying that nextday I saw the crowbar, and had it in my hand. It is short and thick,and the most interesting kind of crowbar. This evidence is enoughfor me. I intend in the course of this vacation to search for thecave; and, if I find it, my readers shall know the truth about it, ifit destroys the only bit of romance connected with these mountains.

VIII

WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE

My readers were promised an account of Spaniard's Cave on Nipple-TopMountain in the Adirondacks, if such a cave exists, and could befound. There is none but negative evidence that this is a mere caveof the imagination, the void fancy of a vacant hour; but it is theduty of the historian to present the negative testimony of afruitless expedition in search of it, made last summer. I beg leaveto offer this in the simple language befitting all sincere exploitsof a geographical character.

The summit of Nipple-Top Mountain has been trodden by few white menof good character: it is in the heart of a hirsute wilderness; it isitself a rough and unsocial pile of granite nearly five thousand feethigh, bristling with a stunted and unpleasant growth of firs andbalsams, and there is no earthly reason why a person should go there.Therefore we went. In the party of three there was, of course, achaplain. The guide was Old Mountain Phelps, who had made the ascentonce before, but not from the northwest side, the direction fromwhich we approached it. The enthusiasm of this philosopher has grownwith his years, and outlived his endurance: we carried our ownknapsacks and supplies, therefore, and drew upon him for nothing butmoral reflections and a general knowledge of the wilderness. Ourfirst day's route was through the Gill-brook woods and up one of itsbranches to the head of Caribou Pass, which separates Nipple Top fromColvin.

It was about the first of September; no rain had fallen for severalweeks, and this heart of the forest was as dry as tinder; a lightedmatch dropped anywhere would start a conflagration. This dryness hasits advantages: the walking is improved; the long heat has expressedall the spicy odors of the cedars and balsams, and the woods arefilled with a soothing fragrance; the waters of the streams, thoughscant and clear, are cold as ice; the common forest chill is gonefrom the air. The afternoon was bright; there was a feeling ofexultation and adventure in stepping off into the open but pathlessforest; the great stems of deciduous trees were mottled with patchesof sunlight, which brought out upon the variegated barks and mossesof the old trunks a thousand shifting hues. There is nothing like aprimeval wood for color on a sunny day. The shades of green andbrown are infinite; the dull red of the hemlock bark glows in thesun, the russet of the changing moose-bush becomes brilliant; thereare silvery openings here and there; and everywhere the columns riseup to the canopy of tender green which supports the intense blue skyand holds up a part of it from falling through in fragments to thefloor of the forest. Decorators can learn here how Nature dares toput blue and green in juxtaposition: she has evidently the secret ofharmonizing all the colors.

The way, as we ascended, was not all through open woods; dense massesof firs were encountered, jagged spurs were to be crossed, and thegoing became at length so slow and toilsome that we took to the rockybed of a stream, where bowlders and flumes and cascades offered ussufficient variety. The deeper we penetrated, the greater the senseof savageness and solitude; in the silence of these hidden places oneseems to approach the beginning of things. We emerged from thedefile into an open basin, formed by the curved side of the mountain,and stood silent before a waterfall coming down out of the sky in thecentre of the curve. I do not know anything exactly like this fall,which some poetical explorer has named the Fairy-Ladder Falls. Itappears to have a height of something like a hundred and fifty feet,and the water falls obliquely across the face of the cliff from leftto right in short steps, which in the moonlight might seem like averitable ladder for fairies. Our impression of its height wasconfirmed by climbing the very steep slope at its side some three orfour hundred feet. At the top we found the stream flowing over abroad bed of rock, like a street in the wilderness, slanting up stilltowards the sky, and bordered by low firs and balsams, and bowlderscompletely covered with moss. It was above the world and open to thesky.

On account of the tindery condition of the woods we made our fire onthe natural pavement, and selected a smooth place for our bed near byon the flat rock, with a pool of limpid water at the foot. Thisgranite couch we covered with the dry and springy moss, which westripped off in heavy fleeces a foot thick from the bowlders. First,however, we fed upon the fruit that was offered us. Over these hillsof moss ran an exquisite vine with a tiny, ovate, green leaf, bearingsmall, delicate berries, oblong and white as wax, having a faintflavor of wintergreen and the slightest acid taste, the very essenceof the wilderness; fairy food, no doubt, and too refined for palatesaccustomed to coarser viands. There must exist somewhere sinlesswomen who could eat these berries without being reminded of the lostpurity and delicacy of the primeval senses. Every year I doubt notthis stainless berry ripens here, and is unplucked by any knight ofthe Holy Grail who is worthy to eat it, and keeps alive, in theprodigality of nature, the tradition of the unperverted conditions oftaste before the fall. We ate these berries, I am bound to say, witha sense of guilty enjoyment, as if they had been a sort of shew-breadof the wilderness, though I cannot answer for the chaplain, who is byvirtue of his office a little nearer to these mysteries of naturethan I. This plant belongs to the heath family, and is first cousinto the blueberry and cranberry. It is commonly called the creepingsnowberry, but I like better its official title of chiogenes,—thesnow-born.

Our mossy resting-place was named the Bridal Chamber Camp, in theenthusiasm of the hour, after darkness fell upon the woods and thestars came out. We were two thousand five hundred feet above thecommon world. We lay, as it were, on a shelf in the sky, with abasin of illimitable forests below us and dim mountain-passes-in thefar horizon.

And as we lay there courting sleep which the blinking stars refusedto shower down, our philosopher discoursed to us of the principle offire, which he holds, with the ancients, to be an independent elementthat comes and goes in a mysterious manner, as we see flame spring upand vanish, and is in some way vital and indestructible, and has amysterious relation to the source of all things. "That flame," hesays, "you have put out, but where has it gone?" We could not say,nor whether it is anything like the spirit of a man which is here fora little hour, and then vanishes away. Our own philosophy of thecorrelation of forces found no sort of favor at that elevation, andwe went to sleep leaving the principle of fire in the apostoliccategory of "any other creature."

At daylight we were astir; and, having pressed the principle of fireinto our service to make a pot of tea, we carefully extinguished itor sent it into another place, and addressed ourselves to the climbof some thing over two thousand feet. The arduous labor of scalingan Alpine peak has a compensating glory; but the dead lift of ourbodies up Nipple Top had no stimulus of this sort. It is simply hardwork, for which the strained muscles only get the approbation of theindividual conscience that drives them to the task. The pleasure ofsuch an ascent is difficult to explain on the spot, and I suspectconsists not so much in positive enjoyment as in the delight the mindexperiences in tyrannizing over the body. I do not object to theelevation of this mountain, nor to the uncommonly steep grade bywhich it attains it, but only to the other obstacles thrown in theway of the climber. All the slopes of Nipple Top are hirsute andjagged to the last degree. Granite ledges interpose; granitebowlders seem to have been dumped over the sides with no more attemptat arrangement than in a rip-rap wall; the slashes and windfalls of acentury present here and there an almost impenetrable chevalier desarbres; and the steep sides bristle with a mass of thick balsams,with dead, protruding spikes, as unyielding as iron stakes. Themountain has had its own way forever, and is as untamed as a wolf; orrather the elements, the frightful tempests, the frosts, the heavysnows, the coaxing sun, and the avalanches have had their way with ituntil its surface is in hopeless confusion. We made our way veryslowly; and it was ten o'clock before we reached what appeared to bethe summit, a ridge deeply covered with moss, low balsams, andblueberry-bushes.

I say, appeared to be; for we stood in thick fog or in the heart ofclouds which limited our dim view to a radius of twenty feet. It wasa warm and cheerful fog, stirred by little wind, but moving,shifting, and boiling as by its own volatile nature, rolling up blackfrom below and dancing in silvery splendor overhead As a fog it couldnot have been improved; as a medium for viewing the landscape it wasa failure and we lay down upon the Sybarite couch of moss, as in aRussian bath, to await revelations.

We waited two hours without change, except an occasional hopefullightness in the fog above, and at last the appearance for a momentof the spectral sun. Only for an instant was this luminous promisevouchsafed. But we watched in intense excitement. There it wasagain; and this time the fog was so thin overhead that we caughtsight of a patch of blue sky a yard square, across which the curtainwas instantly drawn. A little wind was stirring, and the fog boiledup from the valley caldrons thicker than ever. But the spell wasbroken. In a moment more Old Phelps was shouting, "The sun!" andbefore we could gain our feet there was a patch of sky overhead asbig as a farm. "See! quick!" The old man was dancing like alunatic. There was a rift in the vapor at our feet, down, down,three thousand feet into the forest abyss, and lo! lifting out of ityonder the tawny side of Dix,—the vision of a second, snatched awayin the rolling fog. The play had just begun. Before we could turn,there was the gorge of Caribou Pass, savage and dark, visible to thebottom. The opening shut as suddenly; and then, looking over theclouds, miles away we saw the peaceful farms of the Au Sable Valley,and in a moment more the plateau of North Elba and the sentinelmountains about the grave of John Brown. These glimpses were asfleeting as thought, and instantly we were again isolated in the seaof mist. The expectation of these sudden strokes of sublimity keptus exultingly on the alert; and yet it was a blow of surprise whenthe curtain was swiftly withdrawn on the west, and the long ridge ofColvin, seemingly within a stone's throw, heaved up like an islandout of the ocean, and was the next moment ingulfed. We waited longerfor Dix to show its shapely peak and its glistening sides of rockgashed by avalanches. The fantastic clouds, torn and streaming,hurried up from the south in haste as if to a witch's rendezvous,hiding and disclosing the great summit in their flight. The mistboiled up from the valley, whirled over the summit where we stood,and plunged again into the depths. Objects were forming anddisappearing, shifting and dancing, now in sun and now gone in fog,and in the elemental whirl we felt that we were "assisting" in anoriginal process of creation. The sun strove, and his very strivingcalled up new vapors; the wind rent away the clouds, and brought newmasses to surge about us; and the spectacle to right and left, aboveand below, changed with incredible swiftness. Such glory of abyssand summit, of color and form and transformation, is seldom grantedto mortal eyes. For an hour we watched it until our vast mountainwas revealed in all its bulk, its long spurs, its abysses and itssavagery, and the great basins of wilderness with their shininglakes, and the giant peaks of the region, were one by one disclosed,and hidden and again tranquil in the sunshine.

Where was the cave? There was ample surface in which to look for it.If we could have flitted about, like the hawks that came circlinground, over the steep slopes, the long spurs, the jagged precipices,I have no doubt we should have found it. But moving about on thismountain is not a holiday pastime; and we were chiefly anxious todiscover a practicable mode of descent into the great wildernessbasin on the south, which we must traverse that afternoon beforereaching the hospitable shanty on Mud Pond. It was enough for us tohave discovered the general whereabouts of the Spanish Cave, and weleft the fixing of its exact position to future explorers.

The spur we chose for our escape looked smooth in the distance; butwe found it bristling with obstructions, dead balsams set thicklytogether, slashes of fallen timber, and every manner of woody chaos;and when at length we swung and tumbled off the ledge to the generalslope, we exchanged only for more disagreeable going. The slope fora couple of thousand feet was steep enough; but it was formed ofgranite rocks all moss-covered, so that the footing could not bedetermined, and at short intervals we nearly went out of sight inholes under the treacherous carpeting. Add to this that stems ofgreat trees were laid longitudinally and transversely and criss-crossover and among the rocks, and the reader can see that a good deal ofwork needs to be done to make this a practicable highway for anythingbut a squirrel….

We had had no water since our daylight breakfast: our lunch on themountain had been moistened only by the fog. Our thirst began to bethat of Tantalus, because we could hear the water running deep downamong the rocks, but we could not come at it. The imagination drankthe living stream, and we realized anew what delusive food theimagination furnishes in an actual strait. A good deal of the crimeof this world, I am convinced, is the direct result of the unlicensedplay of the imagination in adverse circ*mstances. This reflectionhad nothing to do with our actual situation; for we added to ourimagination patience, and to our patience long-suffering, andprobably all the Christian virtues would have been developed in us ifthe descent had been long enough. Before we reached the bottom ofCaribou Pass, the water burst out from the rocks in a clear streamthat was as cold as ice. Shortly after, we struck the roaring brookthat issues from the Pass to the south. It is a stream full ofcharacter, not navigable even for trout in the upper part, but asuccession of falls, cascades, flumes, and pools that would delightan artist. It is not an easy bed for anything except water todescend; and before we reached the level reaches, where the streamflows with a murmurous noise through open woods, one of our partybegan to show signs of exhaustion.

This was Old Phelps, whose appetite had failed the day before,—hisimagination being in better working order than his stomach: he hadeaten little that day, and his legs became so groggy that he wasobliged to rest at short intervals. Here was a situation! Theafternoon was wearing away. We had six or seven miles of unknownwilderness to traverse, a portion of it swampy, in which a progressof more than a mile an hour is difficult, and the condition of theguide compelled even a slower march. What should we do in thatlonesome solitude if the guide became disabled? We couldn't carryhim out; could we find our own way out to get assistance? The guidehimself had never been there before; and although he knew the generaldirection of our point of egress, and was entirely adequate toextricate himself from any position in the woods, his knowledge wasof that occult sort possessed by woodsmen which it is impossible tocommunicate. Our object was to strike a trail that led from the AuSable Pond, the other side of the mountain-range, to an inlet on MudPond. We knew that if we traveled southwestward far enough we muststrike that trail, but how far? No one could tell. If we reachedthat trail, and found a boat at the inlet, there would be only a rowof a couple of miles to the house at the foot of the lake. If noboat was there, then we must circle the lake three or four milesfarther through a cedar-swamp, with no trail in particular. Theprospect was not pleasing. We were short of supplies, for we had notexpected to pass that night in the woods. The pleasure of theexcursion began to develop itself.

We stumbled on in the general direction marked out, through a forestthat began to seem endless as hour after hour passed, compelled as wewere to make long detours over the ridges of the foothills to avoidthe swamp, which sent out from the border of the lake long tonguesinto the firm ground. The guide became more ill at every step, andneeded frequent halts and long rests. Food he could not eat; andtea, water, and even brandy he rejected. Again and again the oldphilosopher, enfeebled by excessive exertion and illness, wouldcollapse in a heap on the ground, an almost comical picture ofdespair, while we stood and waited the waning of the day, and peeredforward in vain for any sign of an open country. At every brook weencountered, we suggested a halt for the night, while it was stilllight enough to select a camping-place, but the plucky old manwouldn't hear of it: the trail might be only a quarter of a mileahead, and we crawled on again at a snail's pace. His honor as aguide seemed to be at stake; and, besides, he confessed to a notionthat his end was near, and he didn't want to die like a dog in thewoods. And yet, if this was his last journey, it seemed not aninappropriate ending for the old woodsman to lie down and give up theghost in the midst of the untamed forest and the solemn silences hefelt most at home in. There is a popular theory, held by civilians,that a soldier likes to die in battle. I suppose it is as true thata woodsman would like to "pass in his chips,"—the figure seems to beinevitable, struck down by illness and exposure, in the forestsolitude, with heaven in sight and a tree-root for his pillow.

The guide seemed really to fear that, if we did not get out of thewoods that night, he would never go out; and, yielding to his doggedresolution, we kept on in search of the trail, although the gatheringof dusk over the ground warned us that we might easily cross thetrail without recognizing it. We were traveling by the light in theupper sky, and by the forms of the tree-stems, which every momentgrew dimmer. At last the end came. We had just felt our way overwhat seemed to be a little run of water, when the old man sunk down,remarking, "I might as well die here as anywhere," and was silent.

Suddenly night fell like a blanket on us. We could neither see theguide nor each other. We became at once conscious that miles ofnight on all sides shut us in. The sky was clouded over: therewasn't a gleam of light to show us where to step. Our first thoughtwas to build a fire, which would drive back the thick darkness intothe woods, and boil some water for our tea. But it was too dark touse the axe. We scraped together leaves and twigs to make a blaze,and, as this failed, such dead sticks as we could find by gropingabout. The fire was only a temporary affair, but it sufficed to boila can of water. The water we obtained by feeling about the stones ofthe little run for an opening big enough to dip our cup in. Thesupper to be prepared was fortunately simple. It consisted of adecoction of tea and other leaves which had got into the pail, and apart of a loaf of bread. A loaf of bread which has been carried in aknapsack for a couple of days, bruised and handled and hacked at witha hunting-knife, becomes an uninteresting object. But we ate of itwith thankfulness, washed it down with hot fluid, and bitterlythought of the morrow. Would our old friend survive the night?Would he be in any condition to travel in the morning? How were weto get out with him or without him?

The old man lay silent in the bushes out of sight, and desired onlyto be let alone. We tried to tempt him with the offer of a piece oftoast: it was no temptation. Tea we thought would revive him: herefused it. A drink of brandy would certainly quicken his life: hecouldn't touch it. We were at the end of our resources. He seemedto think that if he were at home, and could get a bit of fried bacon,or a piece of pie, he should be all right. We knew no more how todoctor him than if he had been a sick bear. He withdrew withinhimself, rolled himself up, so to speak, in his primitive habits, andwaited for the healing power of nature. Before our feeble firedisappeared, we smoothed a level place near it for Phelps to lie on,and got him over to it. But it didn't suit: it was too open. Infact, at the moment some drops of rain fell. Rain was quite outsideof our program for the night. But the guide had an instinct aboutit; and, while we were groping about some yards distant for a placewhere we could lie down, he crawled away into the darkness, andcurled himself up amid the roots of a gigantic pine, very much as abear would do, I suppose, with his back against the trunk, and therepassed the night comparatively dry and comfortable; but of this weknew nothing till morning, and had to trust to the assurance of avoice out of the darkness that he was all right.

Our own bed where we spread our blankets was excellent in onerespect,—there was no danger of tumbling out of it. At first therain pattered gently on the leaves overhead, and we congratulatedourselves on the snugness of our situation. There was somethingcheerful about this free life. We contrasted our condition with thatof tired invalids who were tossing on downy beds, and wooing sleep invain. Nothing was so wholesome and invigorating as this bivouac inthe forest. But, somehow, sleep did not come. The rain had ceasedto patter, and began to fall with a steady determination, a sort ofsoak, soak, all about us. In fact, it roared on the rubber blanket,and beat in our faces. The wind began to stir a little, and therewas a moaning on high. Not contented with dripping, the rain wasdriven into our faces. Another suspicious circ*mstance was noticed.Little rills of water got established along the sides under theblankets, cold, undeniable streams, that interfered with drowsiness.Pools of water settled on the bed; and the chaplain had a habit ofmoving suddenly, and letting a quart or two inside, and down my neck.It began to be evident that we and our bed were probably the wettestobjects in the woods. The rubber was an excellent catch-all. Therewas no trouble about ventilation, but we found that we hadestablished our quarters without any provision for drainage. Therewas not exactly a wild tempest abroad; but there was a degree ofliveliness in the thrashing limbs and the creaking of thetree-branches which rubbed against each other, and the pouring rainincreased in volume and power of penetration. Sleep was quite out ofthe question, with so much to distract our attention. In fine, ourmisery became so perfect that we both broke out into loud andsarcastic laughter over the absurdity of our situation. We hadsubjected ourselves to all this forlornness simply for pleasure.Whether Old Phelps was still in existence, we couldn't tell: we couldget no response from him. With daylight, if he continued ill andcould not move, our situation would be little improved. Our supplieswere gone, we lay in a pond, a deluge of water was pouring down onus. This was summer recreation. The whole thing was so excessivelyabsurd that we laughed again, louder than ever. We had plenty ofthis sort of amusem*nt. Suddenly through the night we heard a sortof reply that started us bolt upright. This was a prolonged squawk.It was like the voice of no beast or bird with which we werefamiliar. At first it was distant; but it rapidly approached,tearing through the night and apparently through the tree-tops, likethe harsh cry of a web-footed bird with a snarl in it; in fact, as Isaid, a squawk. It came close to us, and then turned, and as rapidlyas it came fled away through the forest, and we lost the unearthlynoise far up the mountain-slope.

"What was that, Phelps?" we cried out. But no response came; and wewondered if his spirit had been rent away, or if some evil genius hadsought it, and then, baffled by his serene and philosophic spirit,had shot off into the void in rage and disappointment.

The night had no other adventure. The moon at length coming upbehind the clouds lent a spectral aspect to the forest, and deceivedus for a time into the notion that day was at hand; but the rainnever ceased, and we lay wishful and waiting, with no item of solidmisery wanting that we could conceive.

Day was slow a-coming, and didn't amount to much when it came, soheavy were the clouds; but the rain slackened. We crawled out of ourwater-cure "pack," and sought the guide. To our infinite relief heannounced himself not only alive, but in a going condition. I lookedat my watch. It had stopped at five o'clock. I poured the water outof it, and shook it; but, not being constructed on the hydraulicprinciple, it refused to go. Some hours later we encountered ahuntsman, from whom I procured some gun-grease; with this I filledthe watch, and heated it in by the fire. This is a most effectualway of treating a delicate Genevan timepiece.

The light disclosed fully the suspected fact that our bed had beenmade in a slight depression: the under rubber blanket spread in thishad prevented the rain from soaking into the ground, and we had beenlying in what was in fact a well-contrived bathtub. While Old Phelpswas pulling himself together, and we were wringing some gallons ofwater out of our blankets, we questioned the old man about the"squawk," and what bird was possessed of such a voice. It was not abird at all, he said, but a cat, the black-cat of the woods, largerthan the domestic animal, and an ugly customer, who is fond of fish,and carries a pelt that is worth two or three dollars in the market.Occasionally he blunders into a sable-trap; and he is altogetherhateful in his ways, and has the most uncultivated voice that isheard in the woods. We shall remember him as one of the leastpleasant phantoms of that cheerful night when we lay in the storm,fearing any moment the advent to one of us of the grimmest messenger.

We rolled up and shouldered our wet belongings, and, before theshades had yet lifted from the saturated bushes, pursued our march.It was a relief to be again in motion, although our progress wasslow, and it was a question every rod whether the guide could go on.We had the day before us; but if we did not find a boat at the inleta day might not suffice, in the weak condition of the guide, toextricate us from our ridiculous position. There was nothing heroicin it; we had no object: it was merely, as it must appear by thistime, a pleasure excursion, and we might be lost or perish in itwithout reward and with little sympathy. We had something like ahour and a half of stumbling through the swamp when suddenly we stoodin the little trail! Slight as it was, it appeared to us a veryBroadway to Paradise if broad ways ever lead thither. Phelps hailedit and sank down in it like one reprieved from death. But the boat?Leaving him, we quickly ran a quarter of a mile down to the inlet.The boat was there. Our shout to the guide would have roused him outof a death-slumber. He came down the trail with the agility of anaged deer: never was so glad a sound in his ear, he said, as thatshout. It was in a very jubilant mood that we emptied the boat ofwater, pushed off, shipped the clumsy oars, and bent to the two-milerow through the black waters of the winding, desolate channel, andover the lake, whose dark waves were tossed a little in the morningbreeze. The trunks of dead trees stand about this lake, and all itsshores are ragged with ghastly drift-wood; but it was open tothe sky, and although the heavy clouds still obscured all themountain-ranges we had a sense of escape and freedom that almostmade the melancholy scene lovely.

How lightly past hardship sits upon us! All the misery of the nightvanished, as if it had not been, in the shelter of the log cabin atMud Pond, with dry clothes that fitted us as the skin of the bearfits him in the spring, a noble breakfast, a toasting fire,solicitude about our comfort, judicious sympathy with our suffering,and willingness to hear the now growing tale of our adventure. Thencame, in a day of absolute idleness, while the showers came and went,and the mountains appeared and disappeared in sun and storm, thatperfect physical enjoyment which consists in a feeling of strengthwithout any inclination to use it, and in a delicious languor whichis too enjoyable to be surrendered to sleep.

By Charles Dudley Warner

New England is the battle-ground of the seasons. It is La Vendee.To conquer it is only to begin the fight. When it is completelysubdued, what kind of weather have you? None whatever.

What is this New England? A country? No: a camp. It is alternatelyinvaded by the hyperborean legions and by the wilting sirens of thetropics. Icicles hang always on its northern heights; its seacoastsare fringed with mosquitoes. There is for a third of the year acontest between the icy air of the pole and the warm wind of thegulf. The result of this is a compromise: the compromise is calledThaw. It is the normal condition in New England. The New-Englanderis a person who is always just about to be warm and comfortable.This is the stuff of which heroes and martyrs are made. A personthoroughly heated or frozen is good for nothing. Look at the Bongos.Examine (on the map) the Dog-Rib nation. The New-Englander, byincessant activity, hopes to get warm. Edwards made his theology.Thank God, New England is not in Paris!

Hudson's Bay, Labrador, Grinnell's Land, a whole zone of ice andwalruses, make it unpleasant for New England. This icy cover, likethe lid of a pot, is always suspended over it: when it shuts down,that is winter. This would be intolerable, were it not for the GulfStream. The Gulf Stream is a benign, liquid force, flowing fromunder the ribs of the equator,—a white knight of the South going upto battle the giant of the North. The two meet in New England, andhave it out there.

This is the theory; but, in fact, the Gulf Stream is mostly adelusion as to New England. For Ireland it is quite another thing.Potatoes ripen in Ireland before they are planted in New England.That is the reason the Irish emigrate—they desire two crops the sameyear. The Gulf Stream gets shunted off from New England by theformation of the coast below: besides, it is too shallow to be of anyservice. Icebergs float down against its surface-current, and fillall the New-England air with the chill of death till June: after thatthe fogs drift down from Newfoundland. There never was such amockery as this Gulf Stream. It is like the English influence onFrance, on Europe. Pitt was an iceberg.

Still New England survives. To what purpose? I say, as an example:the politician says, to produce "Poor Boys." Bah! The poor boy isan anachronism in civilization. He is no longer poor, and he is nota boy. In Tartary they would hang him for sucking all the asses'milk that belongs to the children: in New England he has all thecream from the Public Cow. What can you expect in a country whereone knows not today what the weather will be tomorrow? Climate makesthe man. Suppose he, too, dwells on the Channel Islands, where hehas all climates, and is superior to all. Perhaps he will become theprophet, the seer, of his age, as he is its Poet. The New-Englanderis the man without a climate. Why is his country recognized? Youwon't find it on any map of Paris.

And yet Paris is the universe. Strange anomaly! The greater mustinclude the less; but how if the less leaks out? This sometimeshappens.

And yet there are phenomena in that country worth observing. One ofthem is the conduct of Nature from the 1st of March to the 1st ofJune, or, as some say, from the vernal equinox to the summersolstice. As Tourmalain remarked, "You'd better observe theunpleasant than to be blind." This was in 802. Tourmalain is dead;so is Gross Alain; so is little Pee-Wee: we shall all be dead beforethings get any better.

That is the law. Without revolution there is nothing. What isrevolution? It is turning society over, and putting the bestunderground for a fertilizer. Thus only will things grow. What hasthis to do with New England? In the language of that flash of sociallightning, Beranger, "May the Devil fly away with me if I can see!"

Let us speak of the period in the year in New England when winterappears to hesitate. Except in the calendar, the action is ironical;but it is still deceptive. The sun mounts high: it is above thehorizon twelve hours at a time. The snow gradually sneaks away inliquid repentance. One morning it is gone, except in shaded spotsand close by the fences. From about the trunks of the trees it haslong departed: the tree is a living thing, and its growth repels it.The fence is dead, driven into the earth in a rigid line by man: thefence, in short, is dogma: icy prejudice lingers near it.The snow has disappeared; but the landscape is a ghastly sight,—bleached, dead. The trees are stakes; the grass is of no color; andthe bare soil is not brown with a healthful brown; life has gone outof it. Take up a piece of turf: it is a clod, without warmth,inanimate. Pull it in pieces: there is no hope in it: it is a partof the past; it is the refuse of last year. This is the condition towhich winter has reduced the landscape. When the snow, which was apall, is removed, you see how ghastly it is. The face of the countryis sodden. It needs now only the south wind to sweep over it, fullof the damp breath of death; and that begins to blow. No prospectwould be more dreary.

And yet the south wind fills credulous man with joy. He opens thewindow. He goes out, and catches cold. He is stirred by themysterious coming of something. If there is sign of change nowhereelse, we detect it in the newspaper. In sheltered corners of thattruculent instrument for the diffusion of the prejudices of the fewamong the many begin to grow the violets of tender sentiment, theearly greens of yearning. The poet feels the sap of the new yearbefore the marsh-willow. He blossoms in advance of the catkins. Manis greater than Nature. The poet is greater than man: he is natureon two legs,—ambulatory.

At first there is no appearance of conflict. The winter garrisonseems to have withdrawn. The invading hosts of the South areentering without opposition. The hard ground softens; the sun lieswarm upon the southern bank, and water oozes from its base. If youexamine the buds of the lilac and the flowering shrubs, you cannotsay that they are swelling; but the varnish with which they werecoated in the fall to keep out the frost seems to be cracking. Ifthe sugar-maple is hacked, it will bleed,—the pure white blood ofNature.

At the close of a sunny day the western sky has a softened aspect:its color, we say, has warmth in it On such a day you may meet acaterpillar on the footpath, and turn out for him. The house-fly thawsout; a company of cheerful wasps take possession of a chamber-window.It is oppressive indoors at night, and the window is raised. A flock ofmillers, born out of time, flutter in. It is most unusual weather forthe season: it is so every year. The delusion is complete, when, on amild evening, the tree-toads open their brittle-brattle chorus on theedge of the pond. The citizen asks his neighbor, "Did you hear thefrogs last night?" That seems to open the new world. One thinks of hischildhood and its innocence, and of his first loves. It fills one withsentiment and a tender longing, this voice of the tree-toad. Man is astrange being. Deaf to the prayers of friends, to the sermons andwarnings of the church, to the calls of duty, to the pleadings of hisbetter nature, he is touched by the tree-toad. The signs of the springmultiply. The passer in the street in the evening sees the maid-servantleaning on the area-gate in sweet converse with some one leaning on theother side; or in the park, which is still too damp for anything buttrue affection, he sees her seated by the side of one who is able toprotect her from the policeman, and hears her sigh, "How sweet it is tobe with those we love to be with!"

All this is very well; but next morning the newspaper nips theseearly buds of sentiment. The telegraph announces, "Twenty feet ofsnow at Ogden, on the Pacific Road; winds blowing a gale at Omaha,and snow still falling; mercury frozen at Duluth; storm-signals atPort Huron."

Where now are your tree-toads, your young love, your early season?Before noon it rains, by three o'clock it hails; before night thebleak storm-cloud of the northwest envelops the sky; a gale israging, whirling about a tempest of snow. By morning the snow isdrifted in banks, and two feet deep on a level. Early in theseventeenth century, Drebbel of Holland invented the weather-glass.Before that, men had suffered without knowing the degree of theirsuffering. A century later, Romer hit upon the idea of using mercuryin a thermometer; and Fahrenheit constructed the instrument whichadds a new because distinct terror to the weather. Science names andregisters the ills of life; and yet it is a gain to know the namesand habits of our enemies. It is with some satisfaction in ourknowledge that we say the thermometer marks zero.

In fact, the wild beast called Winter, untamed, has returned, andtaken possession of New England. Nature, giving up her melting mood,has retired into dumbness and white stagnation. But we are wise. Wesay it is better to have it now than later. We have a conceit ofunderstanding things.

The sun is in alliance with the earth. Between the two the snow isuncomfortable. Compelled to go, it decides to go suddenly. Thefirst day there is slush with rain; the second day, mud with hail;the third day a flood with sunshine. The thermometer declares thatthe temperature is delightful. Man shivers and sneezes. Hisneighbor dies of some disease newly named by science; but he dies allthe same as if it hadn't been newly named. Science has notdiscovered any name that is not fatal.

This is called the breaking-up of winter.

Nature seems for some days to be in doubt, not exactly able to standstill, not daring to put forth anything tender. Man says that theworst is over. If he should live a thousand years, he would bedeceived every year. And this is called an age of skepticism. Mannever believed in so many things as now: he never believed so much inhimself. As to Nature, he knows her secrets: he can predict what shewill do. He communicates with the next world by means of an alphabetwhich he has invented. He talks with souls at the other end of thespirit-wire. To be sure, neither of them says anything; but theytalk. Is not that something? He suspends the law of gravitation asto his own body—he has learned how to evade it—as tyrants suspendthe legal writs of habeas corpus. When Gravitation asks for hisbody, she cannot have it. He says of himself, "I am infallible; I amsublime." He believes all these things. He is master of theelements. Shakespeare sends him a poem just made, and as good a poemas the man could write himself. And yet this man—he goes out ofdoors without his overcoat, catches cold, and is buried in threedays. "On the 21st of January," exclaimed Mercier, "all kings feltfor the backs of their necks." This might be said of all men in NewEngland in the spring. This is the season that all the poetscelebrate. Let us suppose that once, in Thessaly, there was a genialspring, and there was a poet who sang of it. All later poets havesung the same song. "Voila tout!" That is the root of poetry.

Another delusion. We hear toward evening, high in air, the "conk" ofthe wild-geese. Looking up, you see the black specks of thatadventurous triangle, winging along in rapid flight northward.Perhaps it takes a wide returning sweep, in doubt; but it disappearsin the north. There is no mistaking that sign. This unmusical"conk" is sweeter than the "kerchunk" of the bull-frog. Probablythese birds are not idiots, and probably they turned back south againafter spying out the nakedness of the land; but they have made theirsign. Next day there is a rumor that somebody has seen a bluebird.This rumor, unhappily for the bird (which will freeze to death), isconfirmed. In less than three days everybody has seen a bluebird;and favored people have heard a robin or rather the yellow-breastedthrush, misnamed a robin in America. This is no doubt true: forangle-worms have been seen on the surface of the ground; and,wherever there is anything to eat, the robin is promptly on hand.About this time you notice, in protected, sunny spots, that the grasshas a little color. But you say that it is the grass of last fall.It is very difficult to tell when the grass of last fall became thegrass of this spring. It looks "warmed over." The green is rusty.The lilac-buds have certainly swollen a little, and so have those ofthe soft maple. In the rain the grass does not brighten as you thinkit ought to, and it is only when the rain turns to snow that you seeany decided green color by contrast with the white. The snowgradually covers everything very quietly, however. Winter comes backwithout the least noise or bustle, tireless, malicious, implacable.Neither party in the fight now makes much fuss over it; and you mightthink that Nature had surrendered altogether, if you did not findabout this time, in the Woods, on the edge of a snow-bank, the modestblossoms of the trailing arbutus, shedding their delicious perfume.The bravest are always the tenderest, says the poet. The season, inits blind way, is trying to express itself.

And it is assisted. There is a cheerful chatter in the trees. Theblackbirds have come, and in numbers, households of them, villagesof them,—communes, rather. They do not believe in God, theseblack-birds. They think they can take care of themselves. We shall see.But they are well informed. They arrived just as the last snow-bankmelted. One cannot say now that there is not greenness in the grass;not in the wide fields, to be sure, but on lawns and banks slopingsouth. The dark-spotted leaves of the dog-tooth violet begin toshow. Even Fahrenheit's contrivance joins in the upward movement:the mercury has suddenly gone up from thirty degrees to sixty-fivedegrees. It is time for the ice-man. Ice has no sooner disappearedthan we desire it.

There is a smile, if one may say so, in the blue sky, and there is.softness in the south wind. The song-sparrow is singing in theapple-tree. Another bird-note is heard,—two long, musical whistles,liquid but metallic. A brown bird this one, darker than thesong-sparrow, and without the latter's light stripes, and smaller,yet bigger than the queer little chipping-bird. He wants a familiarname, this sweet singer, who appears to be a sort of sparrow. He issuch a contrast to the blue-jays, who have arrived in a passion, asusual, screaming and scolding, the elegant, spoiled beauties! Theywrangle from morning till night, these beautiful, high-temperedaristocrats.

Encouraged by the birds, by the bursting of the lilac-buds, by thepeeping-up of the crocuses, by tradition, by the sweet flutterings ofa double hope, another sign appears. This is the Easter bonnets,most delightful flowers of the year, emblems of innocence, hope,devotion. Alas that they have to be worn under umbrellas, so muchthought, freshness, feeling, tenderness have gone into them! And anortheast storm of rain, accompanied with hail, comes to crown allthese virtues with that of self-sacrifice. The frail hat is offeredup to the implacable season. In fact, Nature is not to beforestalled nor hurried in this way. Things cannot be pushed.Nature hesitates. The woman who does not hesitate in April is lost.The appearance of the bonnets is premature. The blackbirds see it.They assemble. For two days they hold a noisy convention, with highdebate, in the tree-tops. Something is going to happen.

Say, rather, the usual thing is about to occur. There is a windcalled Auster, another called Eurus, another called Septentrio,another Meridies, besides Aquilo, Vulturnus, Africus. There are theeight great winds of the classical dictionary,—arsenal of mysteryand terror and of the unknown,—besides the wind Euroaquilo of St.Luke. This is the wind that drives an apostle wishing to gain Creteupon the African Syrtis. If St. Luke had been tacking to get toHyannis, this wind would have forced him into Holmes's Hole. TheEuroaquilo is no respecter of persons.

These winds, and others unnamed and more terrible, circle about NewEngland. They form a ring about it: they lie in wait on its borders,but only to spring upon it and harry it. They follow each other incontracting circles, in whirlwinds, in maelstroms of the atmosphere:they meet and cross each other, all at a moment. This New England isset apart: it is the exercise-ground of the weather. Storms bredelsewhere come here full-grown: they come in couples, in quartets, inchoruses. If New England were not mostly rock, these winds wouldcarry it off; but they would bring it all back again, as happens withthe sandy portions. What sharp Eurus carries to Jersey, Africusbrings back. When the air is not full of snow, it is full of dust.This is called one of the compensations of Nature.

This is what happened after the convention of the blackbirds: Amoaning south wind brought rain; a southwest wind turned the rain tosnow; what is called a zephyr, out of the west, drifted the snow; anorth wind sent the mercury far below freezing. Salt added to snowincreases the evaporation and the cold. This was the office of thenortheast wind: it made the snow damp, and increased its bulk; butthen it rained a little, and froze, thawing at the same time. Theair was full of fog and snow and rain. And then the wind changed,went back round the circle, reversing everything, like dragging a catby its tail. The mercury approached zero. This was nothinguncommon. We know all these winds. We are familiar with thedifferent "forms of water."

All this was only the prologue, the overture. If one might bepermitted to speak scientifically, it was only the tuning of theinstruments. The opera was to come,—the Flying Dutchman of the air.

There is a wind called Euroclydon: it would be one of the Eumenides;only they are women. It is half-brother to the gigantic storm-windof the equinox. The Euroclydon is not a wind: it is a monster. Itsbreath is frost. It has snow in its hair. It is something terrible.It peddles rheumatism, and plants consumption.

The Euroclydon knew just the moment to strike into the discord of theweather in New England. From its lair about Point Desolation, fromthe glaciers of the Greenland continent, sweeping round the coast,leaving wrecks in its track, it marched right athwart the otherconflicting winds, churning them into a fury, and inaugurating chaos.It was the Marat of the elements. It was the revolution marchinginto the "dreaded wood of La Sandraie."

Let us sum it all up in one word: it was something for which there isno name.

Its track was destruction. On the sea it leaves wrecks. What doesit leave on land? Funerals. When it subsides, New England isprostrate. It has left its legacy: this legacy is coughs and patentmedicines. This is an epic; this is destiny. You think Providenceis expelled out of New England? Listen!

Two days after Euroclydon, I found in the woods the hepatica—earliest of wildwood flowers, evidently not intimidated by the wildwork of the armies trampling over New England—daring to hold up itstender blossom. One could not but admire the quiet pertinacity ofNature. She had been painting the grass under the snow. In spots itwas vivid green. There was a mild rain,—mild, but chilly. Theclouds gathered, and broke away in light, fleecy masses. There was asoftness on the hills. The birds suddenly were on every tree,glancing through the air, filling it with song, sometimes shakingraindrops from their wings. The cat brings in one in his mouth. Hethinks the season has begun, and the game-laws are off. He is fondof Nature, this cat, as we all are: he wants to possess it. At fouro'clock in the morning there is a grand dress-rehearsal of the birds.Not all the pieces of the orchestra have arrived; but there areenough. The grass-sparrow has come. This is certainly charming.The gardener comes to talk about seeds: he uncovers the straw-berriesand the grape-vines, salts the asparagus-bed, and plants the peas.You ask if he planted them with a shot-gun. In the shade there isstill frost in the ground. Nature, in fact, still hesitates; putsforth one hepatica at a time, and waits to see the result; pushes upthe grass slowly, perhaps draws it in at night.

This indecision we call Spring.

It becomes painful. It is like being on the rack for ninety days,expecting every day a reprieve. Men grow hardened to it, however.

This is the order with man,—hope, surprise, bewilderment, disgust,facetiousness. The people in New England finally become facetiousabout spring. This is the last stage: it is the most dangerous.When a man has come to make a jest of misfortune, he is lost. "Itbores me to die," said the journalist Carra to the headsman at thefoot of the guillotine: "I would like to have seen the continuation."One is also interested to see how spring is going to turn out.

A day of sun, of delusive bird-singing, sight of the mellow earth,—all these begin to beget confidence. The night, even, has been warm.But what is this in the morning journal, at breakfast?—"An area oflow pressure is moving from the Tortugas north." You shudder.

What is this Low Pressure itself,—it? It is something frightful,low, crouching, creeping, advancing; it is a foreboding; it ismisfortune by telegraph; it is the "'93" of the atmosphere.

This low pressure is a creation of Old Prob. What is that? OldProb. is the new deity of the Americans, greater than AEolus, moredespotic than Sans-Culotte. The wind is his servitor, the lightninghis messenger. He is a mystery made of six parts electricity, andone part "guess." This deity is worshiped by the Americans; his nameis on every man's lips first in the morning; he is the Frankensteinof modern science. Housed at Washington, his business is to directthe storms of the whole country upon New England, and to give noticein advance. This he does. Sometimes he sends the storm, and thengives notice. This is mere playfulness on his part: it is all one tohim. His great power is in the low pressure.

On the Bexar plains of Texas, among the hills of the Presidio, alongthe Rio Grande, low pressure is bred; it is nursed also in theAtchafalaya swamps of Louisiana; it moves by the way of Thibodeauxand Bonnet Carre. The southwest is a magazine of atmosphericdisasters. Low pressure may be no worse than the others: it isbetter known, and is most used to inspire terror. It can be summonedany time also from the everglades of Florida, from the morasses ofthe Okeechobee.

When the New-Englander sees this in his news paper, he knows what itmeans. He has twenty-four hours' warning; but what can he do?Nothing but watch its certain advance by telegraph. He suffers inanticipation. That is what Old Prob. has brought about, suffering byanticipation. This low pressure advances against the wind. The windis from the northeast. Nothing could be more unpleasant than anortheast wind? Wait till low pressure joins it. Together they makespring in New England. A northeast storm from the southwest!—thereis no bitterer satire than this. It lasts three days. After thatthe weather changes into something winter-like.

A solitary song-sparrow, without a note of joy, hops along the snowto the dining-room window, and, turning his little head aside, looksup. He is hungry and cold. Little Minnette, clasping her handsbehind her back, stands and looks at him, and says, "Po' birdie!"They appear to understand each other. The sparrow gets his crumb;but he knows too much to let Minnette get hold of him. Neither ofthese little things could take care of itself in a New-England springnot in the depths of it. This is what the father of Minnette,looking out of the window upon the wide waste of snow, and theevergreens bent to the ground with the weight of it, says, "It lookslike the depths of spring." To this has man come: to hisfacetiousness has succeeded sarcasm. It is the first of May.

Then follows a day of bright sun and blue sky. The birds open themorning with a lively chorus. In spite of Auster, Euroclydon, lowpressure, and the government bureau, things have gone forward. Bythe roadside, where the snow has just melted, the grass is of thecolor of emerald. The heart leaps to see it. On the lawn there aretwenty robins, lively, noisy, worm-seeking. Their yellow breastscontrast with the tender green of the newly-springing clover andherd's-grass. If they would only stand still, we might think thedandelions had blossomed. On an evergreen-bough, looking at them,sits a graceful bird, whose back is bluer than the sky. There is ared tint on the tips of the boughs of the hard maple. With Nature,color is life. See, already, green, yellow, blue, red! In a fewdays—is it not so?—through the green masses of the trees will flashthe orange of the oriole, the scarlet of the tanager; perhapstomorrow.

But, in fact, the next day opens a little sourly. It is almost clearoverhead: but the clouds thicken on the horizon; they look leaden;they threaten rain. It certainly will rain: the air feels like rain,or snow. By noon it begins to snow, and you hear the desolate cry ofthe phoebe-bird. It is a fine snow, gentle at first; but it soondrives in swerving lines, for the wind is from the southwest, fromthe west, from the northeast, from the zenith (one of the ordinarywinds of New England), from all points of the compass. The fine snowbecomes rain; it becomes large snow; it melts as it falls; it freezesas it falls. At last a storm sets in, and night shuts down upon thebleak scene.

During the night there is a change. It thunders and lightens.Toward morning there is a brilliant display of aurora borealis. Thisis a sign of colder weather.

The gardener is in despair; so is the sportsman. The trout take nopleasure in biting in such weather.

Paragraphs appear in the newspapers, copied from the paper of lastyear, saying that this is the most severe spring in thirty years.Every one, in fact, believes that it is, and also that next year thespring will be early. Man is the most gullible of creatures.

And with reason: he trusts his eyes, and not his instinct. Duringthis most sour weather of the year, the anemone blossoms; and, almostimmediately after, the fairy pencil, the spring beauty, the dog-toothviolet, and the true violet. In clouds and fog, and rain and snow,and all discouragement, Nature pushes on her forces with progressivehaste and rapidity. Before one is aware, all the lawns and meadowsare deeply green, the trees are opening their tender leaves. In aburst of sunshine the cherry-trees are white, the Judas-tree is pink,the hawthorns give a sweet smell. The air is full of sweetness; theworld, of color.

In the midst of a chilling northeast storm the ground is strewed withthe white-and-pink blossoms from the apple-trees. The next day themercury stands at eighty degrees. Summer has come.

There was no Spring.

The winter is over. You think so? Robespierre thought theRevolution was over in the beginning of his last Thermidor. He losthis head after that.

When the first buds are set, and the corn is up, and the cucumbershave four leaves, a malicious frost steals down from the north andkills them in a night.

That is the last effort of spring. The mercury then mounts to ninetydegrees. The season has been long, but, on the whole, successful.Many people survive it.

By Charles Dudley Warner

PREFACE

When I consented to prepare this volume for a series, which shoulddeal with the notables of American history with some familiarity anddisregard of historic gravity, I did not anticipate the seriousnessof the task. But investigation of the subject showed me that whileCaptain John Smith would lend himself easily enough to the purelyfacetious treatment, there were historic problems worthy of adifferent handling, and that if the life of Smith was to be written,an effort should be made to state the truth, and to disentangle thecareer of the adventurer from the fables and misrepresentations thathave clustered about it.

The extant biographies of Smith, and the portions of the history ofVirginia that relate to him, all follow his own narrative, and accepthis estimate of himself, and are little more than paraphrases of hisstory as told by himself. But within the last twenty years some newcontemporary evidence has come to light, and special scholars haveexpended much critical research upon different portions of hiscareer. The result of this modern investigation has been todiscredit much of the romance gathered about Smith and Pocahontas,and a good deal to reduce his heroic proportions. A vague report of—these scholarly studies has gone abroad, but no effort has been madeto tell the real story of Smith as a connected whole in the light ofthe new researches.

This volume is an effort to put in popular form the truth aboutSmith's adventures, and to estimate his exploits and character. Forthis purpose I have depended almost entirely upon originalcontemporary material, illumined as it now is by the labors ofspecial editors. I believe that I have read everything that isattributed to his pen, and have compared his own accounts with othercontemporary narratives, and I think I have omitted the perusal oflittle that could throw any light upon his life or character. Forthe early part of his career—before he came to Virginia—there isabsolutely no authority except Smith himself; but when he emergesfrom romance into history, he can be followed and checked bycontemporary evidence. If he was always and uniformly untrustworthyit would be less perplexing to follow him, but his liability to tellthe truth when vanity or prejudice does not interfere is annoying tothe careful student.

As far as possible I have endeavored to let the actors in these pagestell their own story, and I have quoted freely from Capt. Smithhimself, because it is as a writer that he is to be judged no lessthan as an actor. His development of the Pocahontas legend has beencarefully traced, and all the known facts about that Indian—orIndese, as some of the old chroniclers call the female NorthAmericans—have been consecutively set forth in separate chapters.The book is not a history of early Virginia, nor of the times ofSmith, but merely a study of his life and writings. If my estimateof the character of Smith is not that which his biographers haveentertained, and differs from his own candid opinion, I can onlyplead that contemporary evidence and a collation of his own storiesshow that he was mistaken. I am not aware that there has been beforeany systematic effort to collate his different accounts of hisexploits. If he had ever undertaken the task, he might havedisturbed that serene opinion of himself which marks him as a man whor*alized his own ideals.

The works used in this study are, first, the writings of Smith, whichare as follows:

"A True Relation," etc., London, 1608.

"A Map of Virginia, Description and Appendix," Oxford, 1612.

"A Description of New England," etc., London, 1616.

"New England's Trials," etc., London, 1620. Second edition,enlarged, 1622.

"The Generall Historie," etc., London, 1624. Reissued, with date oftitle-page altered, in 1626, 1627, and twice in 1632.

"An Accidence: or, The Pathway to Experience," etc., London, 1626.

"A Sea Grammar," etc., London, 1627. Also editions in 1653 and 1699.

"The True Travels," etc., London, 1630.

"Advertisem*nts for the Unexperienced Planters of New England," etc.,
London, 1631.

Other authorities are:

"The Historie of Travaile into Virginia," etc., by William Strachey,
Secretary of the colony 1609 to 1612. First printed for the Hakluyt
Society, London, 1849.

"Newport's Relatyon," 1607. Am. Ant. Soc., Vol. 4.

"Wingfield's Discourse," etc., 1607. Am. Ant. Soc., Vol. 4.

"Purchas his Pilgrimage," London, 1613.

"Purchas his Pilgrimes," London, 1625-6.

"Ralph Hamor's True Discourse," etc., London, 1615.

"Relation of Virginia," by Henry Spelman, 1609. First printed by J.
F. Hunnewell, London, 1872.

"History of the Virginia Company in London," by Edward D. Neill,
Albany, 1869.

"William Stith's History of Virginia," 1753, has been consulted forthe charters and letters-patent. The Pocahontas discussion has beenfollowed in many magazine papers. I am greatly indebted to thescholarly labors of Charles Deane, LL.D., the accomplished editor ofthe "True Relation," and other Virginia monographs. I wish also toacknowledge the courtesy of the librarians of the Astor, the Lenox,the New York Historical, Yale, and Cornell libraries, and of Dr. J.Hammond Trumbull, the custodian of the Brinley collection, and thekindness of Mr. S. L. M. Barlow of New York, who is ever ready togive students access to his rich "Americana."

C. D. W.
HARTFORD, June, 1881

BIRTH AND TRAINING

Fortunate is the hero who links his name romantically with that of awoman. A tender interest in his fame is assured. Still morefortunate is he if he is able to record his own achievements and giveto them that form and color and importance which they assume in hisown gallant consciousness. Captain John Smith, the first of anhonored name, had this double good fortune.

We are indebted to him for the glowing picture of a knight-errant ofthe sixteenth century, moving with the port of a swash-buckler acrossthe field of vision, wherever cities were to be taken and headscracked in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and, in the language of one ofhis laureates—

"To see bright honor sparkled all in gore."

But we are specially his debtor for adventures on our own continent,narrated with naivete and vigor by a pen as direct and clear-cuttingas the sword with which he shaved off the heads of the Turks, and forone of the few romances that illumine our early history.

Captain John Smith understood his good fortune in being the recorderof his own deeds, and he preceded Lord Beaconsfield (in "Endymion")in his appreciation of the value of the influence of women upon thecareer of a hero. In the dedication of his "General Historie" toFrances, duch*ess of Richmond, he says:

"I have deeply hazarded myself in doing and suffering, and why shouldI sticke to hazard my reputation in recording? He that acteth twoparts is the more borne withall if he come short, or fayle in one ofthem. Where shall we looke to finde a Julius Caesar whoseatchievments shine as cleare in his owne Commentaries, as they did inthe field? I confesse, my hand though able to wield a weapon amongthe Barbarous, yet well may tremble in handling a Pen among so manyjudicious; especially when I am so bold as to call so piercing and soglorious an Eye, as your Grace, to view these poore ragged lines.Yet my comfort is that heretofore honorable and vertuous Ladies, andcomparable but amongst themselves, have offered me rescue andprotection in my greatest dangers: even in forraine parts, I havefelt reliefe from that sex. The beauteous Lady Tragabigzanda, when Iwas a slave to the Turks, did all she could to secure me. When Iovercame the Bashaw of Nalbrits in Tartaria, the charitable LadyCallamata supplyed my necessities. In the utmost of my extremities,that blessed Pokahontas, the great King's daughter of Virginia, oftsaved my life. When I escaped the cruelties of Pirats and mostfurious stormes, a long time alone in a small Boat at Sea, and drivenashore in France, the good Lady Chanoyes bountifully assisted me."

It is stated in his "True Travels" that John Smith was born inWilloughby, in Lincolnshire. The year of his birth is not given, butit was probably in 1579, as it appears by the portrait prefixed tothat work that he was aged 37 years in 1616. We are able to add alsothat the rector of the Willoughby Rectory, Alford, finds in theregister an entry of the baptism of John, son of George Smith, underdate of Jan. 9, 1579. His biographers, following his account,represent him as of ancient lineage: "His father actually descendedfrom the ancient Smiths of Crudley in Lancashire, his mother from theRickands at great Heck in Yorkshire;" but the circ*mstances of hisboyhood would indicate that like many other men who have madethemselves a name, his origin was humble. If it had been otherwisehe would scarcely have been bound as an apprentice, nor had so muchdifficulty in his advancement. But the boy was born with a merrydisposition, and in his earliest years was impatient for adventure.The desire to rove was doubtless increased by the nature of hisnative shire, which offered every inducement to the lad of spirit toleave it.

Lincolnshire is the most uninteresting part of all England. It isfrequently water-logged till late in the summer: invisible a part ofthe year, when it emerges it is mostly a dreary flat. Willoughby isa considerable village in this shire, situated about three miles anda half southeastward from Alford. It stands just on the edge of thechalk hills whose drives gently slope down to the German Ocean, andthe scenery around offers an unvarying expanse of flats. All thevillages in this part of Lincolnshire exhibit the same character.The name ends in by, the Danish word for hamlet or small village, andwe can measure the progress of the Danish invasion of England by thenumber of towns which have the terminal by, distinguished from theSaxon thorpe, which generally ends the name of villages in Yorkshire.The population may be said to be Danish light-haired and blue-eyed.Such was John Smith. The sea was the natural element of hisneighbors, and John when a boy must have heard many stories of thesea and enticing adventures told by the sturdy mariners who wererecruited from the neighborhood of Willoughby, and whose oars hadoften cloven the Baltic Sea.

Willoughby boasts some antiquity. Its church is a spaciousstructure, with a nave, north and south aisles, and a chancel, and atower at the west end. In the floor is a stone with a Latininscription, in black letter, round the verge, to the memory of oneGilbert West, who died in 1404. The church is dedicated to St.Helen. In the village the Wesleyan Methodists also have a place ofworship. According to the parliamentary returns of 1825, the parishincluding the hamlet of Sloothby contained 108 houses and 514inhabitants. All the churches in Lincolnshire indicate the existenceof a much larger population who were in the habit of attendingservice than exists at present. Many of these now empty are of sizesufficient to accommodate the entire population of several villages.Such a one is Willoughby, which unites in its church the adjacentvillage of Sloothby.

The stories of the sailors and the contiguity of the salt water hadmore influence on the boy's mind than the free, schools of Alford andLouth which he attended, and when he was about thirteen he sold hisbooks and satchel and intended to run away to sea: but the death ofhis father stayed him. Both his parents being now dead, he was leftwith, he says, competent means; but his guardians regarding hisestate more than himself, gave him full liberty and no money, so thathe was forced to stay at home.

At the age of fifteen he was bound apprentice to Mr. Thomas S.Tendall of Lynn. The articles, however, did not bind him very fast,for as his master refused to send him to sea, John took leave of hismaster and did not see him again for eight years. These detailsexhibit in the boy the headstrong independence of the man.

At length he found means to attach himself to a young son of thegreat soldier, Lord Willoughby, who was going into France. Thenarrative is not clear, but it appears that upon reaching Orleans, ina month or so the services of John were found to be of no value, andhe was sent back to his friends, who on his return generously gavehim ten shillings (out of his own estate) to be rid of him. He isnext heard of enjoying his liberty at Paris and making theacquaintance of a Scotchman named David Hume, who used his purse—tenshillings went a long ways in those days—and in return gave himletters of commendation to prefer him to King James. But the boy hada disinclination to go where he was sent. Reaching Rouen, and beingnearly out of money, he dropped down the river to Havre de Grace, andbegan to learn to be a soldier.

Smith says not a word of the great war of the Leaguers and Henry IV.,nor on which side he fought, nor is it probable that he cared. Buthe was doubtless on the side of Henry, as Havre was at this time inpossession of that soldier. Our adventurer not only makes noreference to the great religious war, nor to the League, nor toHenry, but he does not tell who held Paris when he visited it.Apparently state affairs did not interest him. His reference to a"peace" helps us to fix the date of his first adventure in France.Henry published the Edict of Nantes at Paris, April 13, 1598, and onthe 2d of May following, concluded the treaty of France with PhilipII. at Vervins, which closed the Spanish pretensions in France. TheDuc de Mercoeur (of whom we shall hear later as Smith's "Duke ofMercury" in Hungary), Duke of Lorraine, was allied with the Guises inthe League, and had the design of holding Bretagne under Spanishprotection. However, fortune was against him and he submitted toHenry in February, 1598, with no good grace. Looking about for anopportunity to distinguish himself, he offered his services to theEmperor Rudolph to fight the Turks, and it is said led an army of hisFrench followers, numbering 15,000, in 1601, to Hungary, to raise thesiege of Coniza, which was beleaguered by Ibrahim Pasha with 60,000men.

Chance of fighting and pay failing in France by reason of the peace,he enrolled himself under the banner of one of the roving andfighting captains of the time, who sold their swords in the bestmarket, and went over into the Low Countries, where he hacked andhewed away at his fellow-men, all in the way of business, for threeor four years. At the end of that time he bethought himself that hehad not delivered his letters to Scotland. He embarked at Aucusanfor Leith, and seems to have been shipwrecked, and detained byillness in the "holy isle" in Northumberland, near Barwick. On hisrecovery he delivered his letters, and received kind treatment fromthe Scots; but as he had no money, which was needed to make his wayas a courtier, he returned to Willoughby.

The family of Smith is so "ancient" that the historians of the countyof Lincoln do not allude to it, and only devote a brief paragraph tothe great John himself. Willoughby must have been a dull place tohim after his adventures, but he says he was glutted with company,and retired into a woody pasture, surrounded by forests, a good waysfrom any town, and there built himself a pavilion of boughs—lesssubstantial than the cabin of Thoreau at Walden Pond—and there heheroically slept in his clothes, studied Machiavelli's "Art of War,"read "Marcus Aurelius," and exercised on his horse with lance andring. This solitary conduct got him the name of a hermit, whose foodwas thought to be more of venison than anything else, but in fact hismen kept him supplied with provisions. When John had indulged inthis ostentatious seclusion for a time, he allowed himself to bedrawn out of it by the charming discourse of a noble Italian namedTheodore Palaloga, who just then was Rider to Henry, Earl of Lincoln,and went to stay with him at Tattershall. This was an ancient town,with a castle, which belonged to the Earls of Lincoln, and wassituated on the River Bane, only fourteen miles from Boston, a namethat at once establishes a connection between Smith's native countyand our own country, for it is nearly as certain that St. Botolphfounded a monastery at Boston, Lincoln, in the year 654, as it isthat he founded a club afterwards in Boston, Massachusetts.

Whatever were the pleasures of Tattershall, they could not longcontent the restless Smith, who soon set out again for theNetherlands in search of adventures.

The life of Smith, as it is related by himself, reads like that of abelligerent tramp, but it was not uncommon in his day, nor is it inours, whenever America produces soldiers of fortune who are ready,for a compensation, to take up the quarrels of Egyptians or Chinese,or go wherever there is fighting and booty. Smith could now handlearms and ride a horse, and longed to go against the Turks, whoseanti-Christian contests filled his soul with lamentations; andbesides he was tired of seeing Christians slaughter each other. Likemost heroes, he had a vivid imagination that made him credulous, andin the Netherlands he fell into the toils of three French gallants,one of whom pretended to be a great lord, attended by his gentlemen,who persuaded him to accompany them to the "duch*ess of Mercury,"whose lord was then a general of Rodolphus of Hungary, whose favorthey could command. Embarking with these arrant cheats, the vesselreached the coast of Picardy, where his comrades contrived to takeashore their own baggage and Smith's trunk, containing his money andgoodly apparel, leaving him on board. When the captain, who was inthe plot, was enabled to land Smith the next day, the noble lords haddisappeared with the luggage, and Smith, who had only a single pieceof gold in his pocket, was obliged to sell his cloak to pay hispassage.

Thus stripped, he roamed about Normandy in a forlorn condition,occasionally entertained by honorable persons who had heard of hismisfortunes, and seeking always means of continuing his travels,wandering from port to port on the chance of embarking on aman-of-war. Once he was found in a forest near dead with grief andcold, and rescued by a rich farmer; shortly afterwards, in a grove inBrittany, he chanced upon one of the gallants who had robbed him, andthe two out swords and fell to cutting. Smith had the satisfaction ofwounding the rascal, and the inhabitants of a ruined tower near by,who witnessed the combat, were quite satisfied with the event.

Our hero then sought out the Earl of Ployer, who had been brought upin England during the French wars, by whom he was refurnished betterthan ever. After this streak of luck, he roamed about France,viewing the castles and strongholds, and at length embarked atMarseilles on a ship for Italy. Rough weather coming on, the vesselanchored under the lee of the little isle St. Mary, off Nice, inSavoy.

The passengers on board, among whom were many pilgrims bound forRome, regarded Smith as a Jonah, cursed him for a Huguenot, sworethat his nation were all pirates, railed against Queen Elizabeth, anddeclared that they never should have fair weather so long as he wason board. To end the dispute, they threw him into the sea. But Godgot him ashore on the little island, whose only inhabitants weregoats and a few kine. The next day a couple of trading vesselsanchored near, and he was taken off and so kindly used that hedecided to cast in his fortune with them. Smith's discourse of hisadventures so entertained the master of one of the vessels, who isdescribed as "this noble Britaine, his neighbor, Captaine la Roche,of Saint Malo," that the much-tossed wanderer was accepted as afriend. They sailed to the Gulf of Turin, to Alessandria, where theydischarged freight, then up to Scanderoon, and coasting for some timeamong the Grecian islands, evidently in search of more freight, theyat length came round to Cephalonia, and lay to for some days betwixtthe isle of Corfu and the Cape of Otranto. Here it presentlyappeared what sort of freight the noble Britaine, Captain la Roche,was looking for.

An argosy of Venice hove in sight, and Captaine la Roche desired tospeak to her. The reply was so "untoward" that a man was slain,whereupon the Britaine gave the argosy a broadside, and then hisstem, and then other broadsides. A lively fight ensued, in which theBritaine lost fifteen men, and the argosy twenty, and thensurrendered to save herself from sinking. The noble Britaine andJohn Smith then proceeded to rifle her. He says that "the Silkes,Velvets, Cloth of Gold, and Tissue, Pyasters, Chiqueenes, andSuitanies, which is gold and silver, they unloaded in four-and-twentyhours was wonderful, whereof having sufficient, and tired with toils,they cast her off with her company, with as much good merchandise aswould have freighted another Britaine, that was but two hundredTunnes, she four or five hundred." Smith's share of this booty wasmodest. When the ship returned he was set ashore at "the Road ofAntibo in Piamon," "with five hundred chiqueenes [sequins] and alittle box God sent him worth neere as much more." He alwaysdevoutly acknowledged his dependence upon divine Providence, and tookwillingly what God sent him.

II

FIGHTING IN HUNGARY

Smith being thus "refurnished," made the tour of Italy, satisfiedhimself with the rarities of Rome, where he saw Pope Clement theEighth and many cardinals creep up the holy stairs, and with the faircity of Naples and the kingdom's nobility; and passing through thenorth he came into Styria, to the Court of Archduke Ferdinand; and,introduced by an Englishman and an Irish Jesuit to the notice ofBaron Kisell, general of artillery, he obtained employment, and wentto Vienna with Colonel Voldo, Earl of Meldritch, with whose regimenthe was to serve.

He was now on the threshold of his long-desired campaign against theTurks. The arrival on the scene of this young man, who was scarcelyout of his teens, was a shadow of disaster to the Turks. They hadbeen carrying all before them. Rudolph II., Emperor of Germany, wasa weak and irresolute character, and no match for the enterprisingSultan, Mahomet III., who was then conducting the invasion of Europe.The Emperor's brother, the Archduke Mathias, who was to succeed him,and Ferdinand, Duke of Styria, also to become Emperor of Germany,were much abler men, and maintained a good front against the Moslemsin Lower Hungary, but the Turks all the time steadily advanced. Theyhad long occupied Buda (Pesth), and had been in possession of thestronghold of Alba Regalis for some sixty years. Before Smith'sadvent they had captured the important city of Caniza, and just as hereached the ground they had besieged the town of Olumpagh, with twothousand men. But the addition to the armies of Germany, France,Styria, and Hungary of John Smith, "this English gentleman," as hestyles himself, put a new face on the war, and proved the ruin of theTurkish cause. The Bashaw of Buda was soon to feel the effect ofthis re-enforcement.

Caniza is a town in Lower Hungary, north of the River Drave, and justwest of the Platen Sea, or Lake Balatin, as it is also called. Duenorth of Caniza a few miles, on a bend of the little River Raab(which empties into the Danube), and south of the town of Kerment,lay Smith's town of Olumpagh, which we are able to identify on a mapof the period as Olimacum or Oberlymback. In this strong town theTurks had shut up the garrison under command of Governor Ebersbraughtso closely that it was without intelligence or hope of succor.

In this strait, the ingenious John Smith, who was present in thereconnoitering army in the regiment of the Earl of Meldritch, came tothe aid of Baron Kisell, the general of artillery, with a plan ofcommunication with the besieged garrison. Fortunately Smith had madethe acquaintance of Lord Ebersbraught at Gratza, in Styria, and had(he says) communicated to him a system of signaling a message by theuse of torches. Smith seems to have elaborated this method ofsignals, and providentially explained it to Lord Ebersbraught, as ifhe had a presentiment of the latter's use of it. He divided thealphabet into two parts, from A to L and from M to Z. Letters wereindicated and words spelled by the means of torches: "The first part,from A to L, is signified by showing and holding one linke so oft asthere is letters from A to that letter you name; the other part, fromM to Z, is mentioned by two lights in like manner. The end of a wordis signifien by showing of three lights."

General Kisell, inflamed by this strange invention, which Smith madeplain to him, furnished him guides, who conducted him to a highmountain, seven miles distant from the town, where he flashed historches and got a reply from the governor. Smith signaled that theywould charge on the east of the town in the night, and at the alarumEbersbraught was to sally forth. General Kisell doubted that heshould be able to relieve the town by this means, as he had only tenthousand men; but Smith, whose fertile brain was now in full action,and who seems to have assumed charge of the campaign, hit upon astratagem for the diversion and confusion of the Turks.

On the side of the town opposite the proposed point of attack lay theplain of Hysnaburg (Eisnaburg on Ortelius's map). Smith fastened twoor three charred pieces of match to divers small lines of an hundredfathoms in length, armed with powder. Each line was tied to a stakeat each end. After dusk these lines were set up on the plain, andbeing fired at the instant the alarm was given, they seemed to theTurks like so many rows of musketeers. While the Turks thereforeprepared to repel a great army from that side, Kisell attacked withhis ten thousand men, Ebersbraught sallied out and fell upon theTurks in the trenches, all the enemy on that side were slain ordrowned, or put to flight. And while the Turks were busy routingSmith's sham musketeers, the Christians threw a couple of thousandtroops into the town. Whereupon the Turks broke up the siege andretired to Caniza. For this exploit General Kisell received greathonor at Kerment, and Smith was rewarded with the rank of captain,and the command of two hundred and fifty horsem*n. From this timeour hero must figure as Captain John Smith. The rank is not high,but he has made the title great, just as he has made the name of JohnSmith unique.

After this there were rumors of peace for these tormented countries;but the Turks, who did not yet appreciate the nature of this force,called John Smith, that had come into the world against them, did notintend peace, but went on levying soldiers and launching them intoHungary. To oppose these fresh invasions, Rudolph II., aided by theChristian princes, organized three armies: one led by the ArchdukeMathias and his lieutenant, Duke Mercury, to defend Low Hungary; thesecond led by Ferdinand, the Archduke of Styria, and the Duke ofMantua, his lieutenant, to regain Caniza; the third by Gonzago,Governor of High Hungary, to join with Georgio Busca, to make anabsolute conquest of Transylvania.

In pursuance of this plan, Duke Mercury, with an army of thirtythousand, whereof nearly ten thousand were French, besiegedStowell-Weisenberg, otherwise called Alba Regalis, a place so strongby art and nature that it was thought impregnable.

This stronghold, situated on the northeast of the Platen Sea, was,like Caniza and Oberlympack, one of the Turkish advanced posts, bymeans of which they pushed forward their operations from Buda on theDanube.

This noble friend of Smith, the Duke of Mercury, whom Haylyn stylesDuke Mercurio, seems to have puzzled the biographers of Smith. Infact, the name of "Mercury" has given a mythological air to Smith'snarration and aided to transfer it to the region of romance. He was,however, as we have seen, identical with a historical character ofsome importance, for the services he rendered to the Church of Rome,and a commander of some considerable skill. He is no other thanPhilip de Lorraine, Duc de Mercceur.'

[So far as I know, Dr. Edward Eggleston was the first to identifyhim. There is a sketch of him in the "Biographie Universelle," and alife with an account of his exploits in Hungary, entitled:Histoire de Duc Mercoeur, par Bruseles de Montplain Champs, Cologne,1689-97]

At the siege of Alba Regalis, the Turks gained several successes bynight sallies, and, as usual, it was not till Smith came to the frontwith one of his ingenious devices that the fortune of war changed.The Earl Meldritch, in whose regiment Smith served, having heard fromsome Christians who escaped from the town at what place there werethe greatest assemblies and throngs of people in the city, causedCaptain Smith to put in practice his "fiery dragons." Theseinstruments of destruction are carefully described: "Having preparedfortie or fiftie round-bellied earthen pots, and filled them withhand Gunpowder, then covered them with Pitch, mingled with Brimstoneand Turpentine, and quartering as many Musket-bullets, that hungtogether but only at the center of the division, stucke them round inthe mixture about the pots, and covered them againe with the samemixture, over that a strong sear-cloth, then over all a goodethicknesse of Towze-match, well tempered with oyle of Linseed,Campheer, and powder of Brimstone, these he fitly placed in slings,graduated so neere as they could to the places of these assemblies."

These missiles of Smith's invention were flung at midnight, when thealarum was given, and "it was a perfect sight to see the shortflaming course of their flight in the air, but presently after theirfall, the lamentable noise of the miserable slaughtered Turkes wasmost wonderful to heare."

While Smith was amusing the Turks in this manner, the Earl Roswormeplanned an attack on the opposite suburb, which was defended by amuddy lake, supposed to be impassable. Furnishing his men withbundles of sedge, which they threw before them as they advanced inthe dark night, the lake was made passable, the suburb surprised, andthe captured guns of the Turks were turned upon them in the city towhich they had retreated. The army of the Bashaw was cut to piecesand he himself captured.

The Earl of Meldritch, having occupied the town, repaired the wallsand the ruins of this famous city that had been in the possession ofthe Turks for some threescore years.

It is not our purpose to attempt to trace the meteoric course ofCaptain Smith in all his campaigns against the Turks, only toindicate the large part he took in these famous wars for thepossession of Eastern Europe. The siege of Alba Regalis must havebeen about the year 1601—Smith never troubles himself with anydates—and while it was undecided, Mahomet III.—this was the promptSultan who made his position secure by putting to death nineteen ofhis brothers upon his accession—raised sixty thousand troops for itsrelief or its recovery. The Duc de Mercoeur went out to meet thisarmy, and encountered it in the plains of Girke. In the firstskirmishes the Earl Meldritch was very nearly cut off, although hemade "his valour shine more bright than his armour, which seemed thenpainted with Turkish blood." Smith himself was sore wounded and hadhis horse slain under him. The campaign, at first favorable to theTurks, was inconclusive, and towards winter the Bashaw retired toBuda. The Duc de Mercoeur then divided his army. The Earl ofRosworme was sent to assist the Archduke Ferdinand, who was besiegingCaniza; the Earl of Meldritch, with six thousand men, was sent toassist Georgio Busca against the Transylvanians; and the Duc deMercoeur set out for France to raise new forces. On his way hereceived great honor at Vienna, and staying overnight at Nuremberg,he was royally entertained by the Archdukes Mathias and Maximilian.The next morning after the feast—how it chanced is not known—he wasfound dead His brother-inlaw died two days afterwards, and the heartsof both, with much sorrow, were carried into France.

We now come to the most important event in the life of Smith beforehe became an adventurer in Virginia, an event which shows Smith'sreadiness to put in practice the chivalry which had in the oldchronicles influenced his boyish imagination; and we approach it withthe satisfaction of knowing that it loses nothing in Smith'snarration.

It must be mentioned that Transylvania, which the Earl of Meldritch,accompanied by Captain Smith, set out to relieve, had long been in adisturbed condition, owing to internal dissensions, of which theTurks took advantage. Transylvania, in fact, was a Turkishdependence, and it gives us an idea of the far reach of the Mosleminfluence in Europe, that Stephen VI., vaivode of Transylvania, was,on the commendation of Sultan Armurath III., chosen King of Poland.

To go a little further back than the period of Smith's arrival, JohnII. of Transylvania was a champion of the Turk, and an enemy ofFerdinand and his successors. His successor, Stephen VI., surnamedBattori, or Bathor, was made vaivode by the Turks, and afterwards, aswe have said, King of Poland. He was succeeded in 1575 by hisbrother Christopher Battori, who was the first to drop the title ofvaivode and assume that of Prince of Transylvania. The son ofChristopher, Sigismund Battori, shook off the Turkish bondage,defeated many of their armies, slew some of their pashas, and gainedthe title of the Scanderbeg of the times in which he lived. Not ableto hold out, however, against so potent an adversary, he resigned hisestate to the Emperor Rudolph II., and received in exchange thedukedoms of Oppelon and Ratibor in Silesia, with an annual pension offifty thousand joachims. The pension not being well paid, Sigismundmade another resignation of his principality to his cousin AndrewBattori, who had the ill luck to be slain within the year by thevaivode of Valentia. Thereupon Rudolph, Emperor and King of Hungary,was acknowledged Prince of Transylvania. But the Transylvaniasoldiers did not take kindly to a foreign prince, and behaved sounsoldierly that Sigismund was called back. But he was unable tosettle himself in his dominions, and the second time he left hiscountry in the power of Rudolph and retired to Prague, where, in1615, he died unlamented.

It was during this last effort of Sigismund to regain his positionthat the Earl of Meldritch, accompanied by Smith, went toTransylvania, with the intention of assisting Georgio Busca, who wasthe commander of the Emperor's party. But finding Prince Sigismundin possession of the most territory and of the hearts of the people,the earl thought it best to assist the prince against the Turk,rather than Busca against the prince. Especially was he inclined tothat side by the offer of free liberty of booty for his worn andunpaid troops, of what they could get possession of from the Turks.

This last consideration no doubt persuaded the troops that Sigismundhad "so honest a cause." The earl was born in Transylvania, and theTurks were then in possession of his father's country. In thisdistracted state of the land, the frontiers had garrisons among themountains, some of which held for the emperor, some for the prince,and some for the Turk. The earl asked leave of the prince to make anattempt to regain his paternal estate. The prince, glad of such anally, made him camp-master of his army, and gave him leave to plunderthe Turks. Accordingly the earl began to make incursions of thefrontiers into what Smith calls the Land of Zarkam—among rockymountains, where were some Turks, some Tartars, but most Brandittoes,Renegadoes, and such like, which he forced into the Plains of Regall,where was a city of men and fortifications, strong in itself, and soenvironed with mountains that it had been impregnable in all thesewars.

It must be confessed that the historians and the map-makers did notalways attach the importance that Smith did to the battles in whichhe was conspicuous, and we do not find the Land of Zarkam or the cityof Regall in the contemporary chronicles or atlases. But the regionis sufficiently identified. On the River Maruch, or Morusus, was thetown of Alba Julia, or Weisenberg, the residence of the vaivode orPrince of Transylvania. South of this capital was the townMillenberg, and southwest of this was a very strong fortress,commanding a narrow pass leading into Transylvania out of Hungary,probably where the River Maruct: broke through the mountains. Weinfer that it was this pass that the earl captured by a stratagem,and carrying his army through it, began the siege of Regall in theplain. "The earth no sooner put on her green habit," says ourknight-errant, "than the earl overspread her with his troops."Regall occupied a strong fortress on a promontory and the Christiansencamped on the plain before it.

In the conduct of this campaign, we pass at once into the age ofchivalry, about which Smith had read so much. We cannot butrecognize that this is his opportunity. His idle boyhood had beensoaked in old romances, and he had set out in his youth to do whatequally dreamy but less venturesome devourers of old chronicles werecontent to read about. Everything arranged itself as Smith wouldhave had it. When the Christian army arrived, the Turks sallied outand gave it a lively welcome, which cost each side about fifteenhundred men. Meldritch had but eight thousand soldiers, but he wasre-enforced by the arrival of nine thousand more, with six-and-twentypieces of ordnance, under Lord Zachel Moyses, the general of thearmy, who took command of the whole.

After the first skirmish the Turks remained within their fortress,the guns of which commanded the plain, and the Christians spent amonth in intrenching themselves and mounting their guns.

The Turks, who taught Europe the art of civilized war, behaved allthis time in a courtly and chivalric manner, exchanging with thebesiegers wordy compliments until such time as the latter were readyto begin. The Turks derided the slow progress of the works, inquiredif their ordnance was in pawn, twitted them with growing fat for wantof exercise, and expressed the fear that the Christians should departwithout making an assault.

In order to make the time pass pleasantly, and exactly in accordancewith the tales of chivalry which Smith had read, the Turkish Bashawin the fortress sent out his challenge: "That to delight the ladies,who did long to see some courtlike pastime, the Lord Tubashaw diddefy any captaine that had the command of a company, who durst combatwith him for his head."

This handsome offer to swap heads was accepted; lots were cast forthe honor of meeting the lord, and, fortunately for us, the choicefell upon an ardent fighter of twenty-three years, named Captain JohnSmith. Nothing was wanting to give dignity to the spectacle. Trucewas made; the ramparts of this fortress-city in the mountains (whichwe cannot find on the map) were "all beset with faire Dames and menin Armes"; the Christians were drawn up in battle array; and upon thetheatre thus prepared the Turkish Bashaw, armed and mounted, enteredwith a flourish of hautboys; on his shoulders were fixed a pair ofgreat wings, compacted of eagles' feathers within a ridge of silverrichly garnished with gold and precious stones; before him was ajanissary bearing his lance, and a janissary walked at each sideleading his steed.

This gorgeous being Smith did not keep long waiting. Riding into thefield with a flourish of trumpets, and only a simple page to bear hislance, Smith favored the Bashaw with a courteous salute, tookposition, charged at the signal, and before the Bashaw could say"Jack Robinson," thrust his lance through the sight of his beaver,face, head and all, threw him dead to the ground, alighted, unbracedhis helmet, and cut off his head. The whole affair was over sosuddenly that as a pastime for ladies it must have beendisappointing. The Turks came out and took the headless trunk, andSmith, according to the terms of the challenge, appropriated the headand presented it to General Moyses.

This ceremonious but still hasty procedure excited the rage of oneGrualgo, the friend of the Bashaw, who sent a particular challenge toSmith to regain his friend's head or lose his own, together with hishorse and armor. Our hero varied the combat this time. The twocombatants shivered lances and then took to pistols; Smith received amark upon the "placard," but so wounded the Turk in his left arm thathe was unable to rule his horse. Smith then unhorsed him, cut offhis head, took possession of head, horse, and armor, but returned therich apparel and the body to his friends in the most gentlemanlymanner.

Captain Smith was perhaps too serious a knight to see the humor ofthese encounters, but he does not lack humor in describing them, andhe adopted easily the witty courtesies of the code he wasillustrating. After he had gathered two heads, and the siege stilldragged, he became in turn the challenger, in phrase as courteouslyand grimly facetious as was permissible, thus:

"To delude time, Smith, with so many incontradictible perswadingreasons, obtained leave that the Ladies might know he was not so muchenamored of their servants' heads, but if any Turke of their rankewould come to the place of combat to redeem them, should have alsohis, upon like conditions, if he could winne it."

This considerate invitation was accepted by a person whom Smith, withhis usual contempt for names, calls "Bonny Mulgro." It seemsdifficult to immortalize such an appellation, and it is a pity thatwe have not the real one of the third Turk whom Smith honored bykilling. But Bonny Mulgro, as we must call the worthiest foe thatSmith's prowess encountered, appeared upon the field. Smithunderstands working up a narration, and makes this combat long anddoubtful. The challenged party, who had the choice of weapons, hadmarked the destructiveness of his opponent's lance, and elected,therefore, to fight with pistols and battle-axes. The pistols provedharmless, and then the battle-axes came in play, whose piercing billsmade sometime the one, sometime the other, to have scarce sense tokeep their saddles. Smith received such a blow that he lost hisbattle-axe, whereat the Turks on the ramparts set up a great shout."The Turk prosecuted his advantage to the utmost of his power; yetthe other, what by the readiness of his horse, and his judgment anddexterity in such a business, beyond all men's expectations, by God'sassistance, not only avoided the Turke's violence, but having drawnhis Faulchion, pierced the Turke so under the Culets throrow backeand body, that although he alighted from his horse, he stood not longere he lost his head, as the rest had done."

There is nothing better than this in all the tales of chivalry, andJohn Smith's depreciation of his inability to equal Caesar indescribing his own exploits, in his dedicatory letter to the duch*essof Richmond, must be taken as an excess of modesty. We are preparedto hear that these beheadings gave such encouragement to the wholearmy that six thousand soldiers, with three led horses, each precededby a soldier bearing a Turk's head on a lance, turned out as a guardto Smith and conducted him to the pavilion of the general, to whom hepresented his trophies. General Moyses (occasionally Smith calls himMoses) took him in his arms and embraced him with much respect, andgave him a fair horse, richly furnished, a scimeter, and a belt worththree hundred ducats. And his colonel advanced him to the positionof sergeant-major of his regiment. If any detail was wanting toround out and reward this knightly performance in strict accord withthe old romances, it was supplied by the subsequent handsome conductof Prince Sigismund.

When the Christians had mounted their guns and made a couple ofbreaches in the walls of Regall, General Moyses ordered an attack onedark night "by the light that proceeded from the murdering musketsand peace-making cannon." The enemy were thus awaited, "whilst theirslothful governor lay in a castle on top of a high mountain, and likea valiant prince asketh what's the matter, when horrour and deathstood amazed at each other, to see who should prevail to make himvictorious." These descriptions show that Smith could handle the penas well as the battleaxe, and distinguish him from the more vulgarfighters of his time. The assault succeeded, but at great cost oflife. The Turks sent a flag of truce and desired a "composition,"but the earl, remembering the death of his father, continued tobatter the town and when he took it put all the men in arms to thesword, and then set their heads upon stakes along the walls, theTurks having ornamented the walls with Christian heads when theycaptured the fortress. Although the town afforded much pillage, theloss of so many troops so mixed the sour with the sweet that GeneralMoyses could only allay his grief by sacking three other towns,Veratis, Solmos, and Kapronka. Taking from these a couple ofthousand prisoners, mostly women and children, Earl Moyses marchednorth to Weisenberg (Alba Julia), and camped near the palace ofPrince Sigismund.

When Sigismund Battori came out to view his army he was madeacquainted with the signal services of Smith at "Olumpagh,Stowell-Weisenberg, and Regall," and rewarded him by conferring uponhim, according to the law of—arms, a shield of arms with "threeTurks' heads." This was granted by a letter-patent, in Latin, whichis dated at "Lipswick, in Misenland, December 9, 1603" It recites thatSmith was taken captive by the Turks in Wallachia November 18, 1602;that he escaped and rejoined his fellow-soldiers. This patent,therefore, was not given at Alba Julia, nor until Prince Sigismund hadfinally left his country, and when the Emperor was, in fact, thePrince of Transylvania. Sigismund styles himself, by the grace ofGod, Duke of Transylvania, etc. Appended to this patent, as publishedin Smith's "True Travels," is a certificate by William Segar, knightof the garter and principal king of arms of England, that he had seenthis patent and had recorded a copy of it in the office of the Heraldof Armes. This certificate is dated August 19, 1625, the year afterthe publication of the General Historie.

Smith says that Prince Sigismund also gave him his picture in gold,and granted him an annual pension of three hundred ducats. Thispromise of a pension was perhaps the most unsubstantial portion ofhis reward, for Sigismund himself became a pensioner shortly afterthe events last narrated.

The last mention of Sigismund by Smith is after his escape fromcaptivity in Tartaria, when this mirror of virtues had abdicated.Smith visited him at "Lipswicke in Misenland," and the Prince "gavehim his Passe, intimating the service he had done, and the honors hehad received, with fifteen hundred ducats of gold to repair hislosses." The "Passe" was doubtless the "Patent" before introduced,and we hear no word of the annual pension.

Affairs in Transylvania did not mend even after the capture ofRegall, and of the three Turks' heads, and the destruction of so manyvillages. This fruitful and strong country was the prey of faction,and became little better than a desert under the ravages of thecontending armies. The Emperor Rudolph at last determined to conquerthe country for himself, and sent Busca again with a large army.Sigismund finding himself poorly supported, treated again with theEmperor and agreed to retire to Silicia on a pension. But the EarlMoyses, seeing no prospect of regaining his patrimony, anddetermining not to be under subjection to the Germans, led his troopsagainst Busca, was defeated, and fled to join the Turks. Upon thisdesertion the Prince delivered up all he had to Busca and retired toPrague. Smith himself continued with the imperial party, in theregiment of Earl Meldritch. About this time the Sultan sent oneJeremy to be vaivode of Wallachia, whose tyranny caused the people torise against him, and he fled into Moldavia. Busca proclaimed LordRodoll vaivode in his stead. But Jeremy assembled an army of fortythousand Turks, Tartars, and Moldavians, and retired into Wallachia.Smith took active part in Rodoll's campaign to recover Wallachia, andnarrates the savage war that ensued. When the armies were encampednear each other at Raza and Argish, Rodoll cut off the heads ofparties he captured going to the Turkish camp, and threw them intothe enemy's trenches. Jeremy retorted by skinning alive theChristian parties he captured, hung their skins upon poles, and theircarcasses and heads on stakes by them. In the first battle Rodollwas successful and established himself in Wallachia, but Jeremyrallied and began ravaging the country. Earl Meldritch was sentagainst him, but the Turks' force was much superior, and theChristians were caught in a trap. In order to reach Rodoll, who wasat Rottenton, Meldritch with his small army was obliged to cut hisway through the solid body of the enemy. A device of Smith'sassisted him. He covered two or three hundred trunks—probably smallbranches of trees—with wild-fire. These fixed upon the heads oflances and set on fire when the troops charged in the night, soterrified the horses of the Turks that they fled in dismay.Meldritch was for a moment victorious, but when within three leaguesof Rottenton he was overpowered by forty thousand Turks, and the lastdesperate fight followed, in which nearly all the friends of thePrince were slain, and Smith himself was left for dead on the field.

On this bloody field over thirty thousand lay headless, armless,legless, all cut and mangled, who gave knowledge to the world howdear the Turk paid for his conquest of Transylvania and Wallachia—aconquest that might have been averted if the three Christian armieshad been joined against the "cruel devouring Turk." Among the slainwere many Englishmen, adventurers like the valiant Captain whom Smithnames, men who "left there their bodies in testimony of their minds."And there, "Smith among the slaughtered dead bodies, and many agasping soule with toils and wounds lay groaning among the rest, tillbeing found by the Pillagers he was able to live, and perceiving byhis armor and habit, his ransome might be better than his death, theyled him prisoner with many others." The captives were taken toAxopolis and all sold as slaves. Smith was bought by Bashaw Bogall,who forwarded him by way of Adrianople to Constantinople, to be aslave to his mistress. So chained by the necks in gangs of twentythey marched to the city of Constantine, where Smith was deliveredover to the mistress of the Bashaw, the young Charatza Tragabigzanda.

III

CAPTIVITY AND WANDERING

Our hero never stirs without encountering a romantic adventure.Noble ladies nearly always take pity on good-looking captains, andSmith was far from ill-favored. The charming Charatza delighted totalk with her slave, for she could speak Italian, and would feignherself too sick to go to the bath, or to accompany the other womenwhen they went to weep over the graves, as their custom is once aweek, in order to stay at home to hear from Smith how it was thatBogall took him prisoner, as the Bashaw had written her, and whetherSmith was a Bohemian lord conquered by the Bashaw's own hand, whoseransom could adorn her with the glory of her lover's conquests.Great must have been her disgust with Bogall when she heard that hehad not captured this handsome prisoner, but had bought him in theslave-market at Axopolis. Her compassion for her slave increased,and the hero thought he saw in her eyes a tender interest. But shehad no use for such a slave, and fearing her mother would sell him,she sent him to her brother, the Tymor Bashaw of Nalbrits in thecountry of Cambria, a province of Tartaria (wherever that may be).If all had gone on as Smith believed the kind lady intended, he mighthave been a great Bashaw and a mighty man in the Ottoman Empire, andwe might never have heard of Pocahontas. In sending him to herbrother, it was her intention, for she told him so, that he shouldonly sojourn in Nalbrits long enough to learn the language, and whatit was to be a Turk, till time made her master of herself. Smithhimself does not dissent from this plan to metamorphose him into aTurk and the husband of the beautiful Charatza Tragabigzanda. He hadno doubt that he was commended to the kindest treatment by herbrother; but Tymor "diverted all this to the worst of cruelty."Within an hour of his arrival, he was stripped naked, his head andface shaved as smooth as his hand, a ring of iron, with a long stakebowed like a sickle, riveted to his neck, and he was scantily clad ingoat's skin. There were many other slaves, but Smith being the last,was treated like a dog, and made the slave of slaves.

The geographer is not able to follow Captain Smith to Nalbrits.Perhaps Smith himself would have been puzzled to make a map of hisown career after he left Varna and passed the Black Sea and camethrough the straits of Niger into the Sea Disbacca, by some calledthe Lake Moetis, and then sailed some days up the River Bruapo toCambria, and two days more to Nalbrits, where the Tyrnor resided.

Smith wrote his travels in London nearly thirty years after, and itis difficult to say how much is the result of his own observation andhow much he appropriated from preceding romances. The Cambrians mayhave been the Cossacks, but his description of their habits and alsothose of the "Crym-Tartars" belongs to the marvels of Mandeville andother wide-eyed travelers. Smith fared very badly with the Tymor.The Tymor and his friends ate pillaw; they esteemed "samboyses" and"musselbits" "great dainties, and yet," exclaims Smith, "but roundpies, full of all sorts of flesh they can get, chopped with varietyof herbs." Their best drink was "coffa" and sherbet, which is onlyhoney and water. The common victual of the others was the entrailsof horses and "ulgries" (goats?) cut up and boiled in a caldron with"cuskus," a preparation made from grain. This was served in greatbowls set in the ground, and when the other prisoners had raked itthoroughly with their foul fists the remainder was given to theChristians. The same dish of entrails used to be served not manyyears ago in Upper Egypt as a royal dish to entertain a distinguishedguest.

It might entertain but it would too long detain us to repeat Smith'sinformation, probably all secondhand, about this barbarous region.We must confine ourselves to the fortunes of our hero. All his hopeof deliverance from thraldom was in the love of Tragabigzanda, whomhe firmly believed was ignorant of his bad usage. But she made nosign. Providence at length opened a way for his escape. He wasemployed in thrashing in a field more than a league from the Tymor'shome. The Bashaw used to come to visit his slave there, and beat,spurn, and revile him. One day Smith, unable to control himselfunder these insults, rushed upon the Tymor, and beat out his brainswith a thrashing bat—"for they had no flails," he explains—put onthe dead man's clothes, hid the body in the straw, filled a knapsackwith corn, mounted his horse and rode away into the unknown desert,where he wandered many days before he found a way out. If we maybelieve Smith this wilderness was more civilized in one respect thansome parts of our own land, for on all the crossings of the roadswere guide-boards. After traveling sixteen days on the road thatleads to Muscova, Smith reached a Muscovite garrison on the RiverDon. The governor knocked off the iron from his neck and used him sokindly that he thought himself now risen from the dead. With hisusual good fortune there was a lady to take interest in him—"thegood Lady Callamata largely supplied all his wants."

After Smith had his purse filled by Sigismund he made a thorough tourof Europe, and passed into Spain, where being satisfied, as he says,with Europe and Asia, and understanding that there were wars inBarbary, this restless adventurer passed on into Morocco with severalcomrades on a French man-of-war. His observations on and tales aboutNorth Africa are so evidently taken from the books of other travelersthat they add little to our knowledge of his career. For some reasonhe found no fighting going on worth his while. But good fortuneattended his return. He sailed in a man-of-war with Captain Merham.They made a few unimportant captures, and at length fell in with twoSpanish men-of-war, which gave Smith the sort of entertainment hemost coveted. A sort of running fight, sometimes at close quarters,and with many boardings and repulses, lasted for a couple of days andnights, when having battered each other thoroughly and lost many men,the pirates of both nations separated and went cruising, no doubt,for more profitable game. Our wanderer returned to his native land,seasoned and disciplined for the part he was to play in the NewWorld. As Smith had traveled all over Europe and sojourned inMorocco, besides sailing the high seas, since he visited PrinceSigismund in December, 1603, it was probably in the year 1605 that hereached England. He had arrived at the manly age of twenty-sixyears, and was ready to play a man's part in the wonderful drama ofdiscovery and adventure upon which the Britons were then engaged.

IV

FIRST ATTEMPTS IN VIRGINIA

John Smith has not chosen to tell us anything of his life during theinterim—perhaps not more than a year and a half—between his returnfrom Morocco and his setting sail for Virginia. Nor do hiscontemporaries throw any light upon this period of his life.

One would like to know whether he went down to Willoughby and had areckoning with his guardians; whether he found any relations orfriends of his boyhood; whether any portion of his estate remained ofthat "competent means" which he says he inherited, but which does notseem to have been available in his career. From the time when he setout for France in his fifteenth year, with the exception of a shortsojourn in Willoughby seven or eight years after, he lived by hiswits and by the strong hand. His purse was now and then replenishedby a lucky windfall, which enabled him to extend his travels and seekmore adventures. This is the impression that his own story makesupon the reader in a narrative that is characterized by theboastfulness and exaggeration of the times, and not fuller of themarvelous than most others of that period.

The London to which Smith returned was the London of Shakespeare. Weshould be thankful for one glimpse of him in this interesting town.Did he frequent the theatre? Did he perhaps see Shakespeare himselfat the Globe? Did he loaf in the coffee-houses, and spin the finethread of his adventures to the idlers and gallants who resorted tothem? If he dropped in at any theatre of an afternoon he was quitelikely to hear some allusion to Virginia, for the plays of the hourwere full of chaff, not always of the choicest, about the attractionsof the Virgin-land, whose gold was as plentiful as copper in England;where the prisoners were fettered in gold, and the dripping-pans weremade of it; and where—an unheard-of thing—you might become analderman without having been a scavenger.

Was Smith an indulger in that new medicine for all ills, tobacco?Alas! we know nothing of his habits or his company. He was a man ofpiety according to his lights, and it is probable that he may havehad the then rising prejudice against theatres. After his returnfrom Virginia he and his exploits were the subject of many a stageplay and spectacle, but whether his vanity was more flattered by thismark of notoriety than his piety was offended we do not know. Thereis certainly no sort of evidence that he engaged in the commondissipation of the town, nor gave himself up to those pleasures whicha man rescued from the hardships of captivity in Tartaria might beexpected to seek. Mr. Stith says that it was the testimony of hisfellow soldiers and adventurers that "they never knew a soldier,before him, so free from those military vices of wine, tobacco,debts, dice, and oathes."

But of one thing we may be certain: he was seeking adventureaccording to his nature, and eager for any heroic employment; and itgoes without saying that he entered into the great excitement of theday—adventure in America. Elizabeth was dead. James had just cometo the throne, and Raleigh, to whom Elizabeth had granted anextensive patent of Virginia, was in the Tower. The attempts to makeany permanent lodgment in the countries of Virginia had failed. Butat the date of Smith's advent Captain Bartholomew Gosnold hadreturned from a voyage undertaken in 1602 under the patronage of theEarl of Southampton, and announced that he had discovered a directpassage westward to the new continent, all the former voyagers havinggone by the way of the West Indies. The effect of this announcementin London, accompanied as it was with Gosnold's report of thefruitfulness of the coast of New England which he explored, wassomething like that made upon New York by the discovery of gold inCalifornia in 1849. The route by the West Indies, with its incidentsof disease and delay, was now replaced by the direct course opened byGosnold, and the London Exchange, which has always been quick toscent any profit in trade, shared the excitement of the distinguishedsoldiers and sailors who were ready to embrace any chance ofadventure that offered.

It is said that Captain Gosnold spent several years in vain, afterhis return, in soliciting his friends and acquaintances to join himin settling this fertile land he had explored; and that at length heprevailed upon Captain John Smith, Mr. Edward Maria Wingfield, theRev. Mr. Robert Hunt, and others, to join him. This is the firstappearance of the name of Captain John Smith in connection withVirginia. Probably his life in London had been as idle asunprofitable, and his purse needed replenishing. Here was a way opento the most honorable, exciting, and profitable employment. That itsmere profit would have attracted him we do not believe; but itsdanger, uncertainty, and chance of distinction would irresistiblyappeal to him. The distinct object of the projectors was toestablish a colony in Virginia. This proved too great an undertakingfor private persons. After many vain projects the scheme wascommended to several of the nobility, gentry, and merchants, who cameinto it heartily, and the memorable expedition of 1606 was organized.

The patent under which this colonization was undertaken was obtainedfrom King James by the solicitation of Richard Hakluyt and others.Smith's name does not appear in it, nor does that of Gosnold nor ofCaptain Newport. Richard Hakluyt, then clerk prebendary ofWestminster, had from the first taken great interest in the project.He was chaplain of the English colony in Paris when Sir Francis Drakewas fitting out his expedition to America, and was eager to furtherit. By his diligent study he became the best English geographer ofhis time; he was the historiographer of the East India Company, andthe best informed man in England concerning the races, climates, andproductions of all parts of the globe. It was at Hakluyt'ssuggestion that two vessels were sent out from Plymouth in 1603 toverify Gosnold's report of his new short route. A furtherverification of the feasibility of this route was made by CaptainGeorge Weymouth, who was sent out in 1605 by the Earl of Southampton.

The letters-patent of King James, dated April 10, 1606, licensed theplanting of two colonies in the territories of America commonlycalled Virginia. The corporators named in the first colony were SirThos. Gates, Sir George Somers, knights, and Richard Hakluyt andEdward Maria Wingfield, adventurers, of the city of London. Theywere permitted to settle anywhere in territory between the 34th and41st degrees of latitude.

The corporators named in the second colony were Thomas Hankam,Raleigh Gilbert, William Parker, and George Popham, representingBristol, Exeter, and Plymouth, and the west counties, who wereauthorized to make a settlement anywhere between the 38th and 48thdegrees of latitude.

The—letters commended and generously accepted this noble work ofcolonization, "which may, by the Providence of Almighty God,hereafter tend to the glory of his Divine Majesty, in propagating ofChristian religion to such people as yet live in darkness andmiserable ignorance of all true knowledge and worship of God, and mayin time bring the infidels and savages living in those parts to humancivility and to a settled and quiet government." The conversion ofthe Indians was as prominent an object in all these early adventures,English or Spanish, as the relief of the Christians has been in allthe Russian campaigns against the Turks in our day.

Before following the fortunes of this Virginia colony of 1606, towhich John Smith was attached, it is necessary to glance briefly atthe previous attempt to make settlements in this portion of America.

Although the English had a claim upon America, based upon thediscovery of Newfoundland and of the coast of the continent from the38th to the 68th north parallel by Sebastian Cabot in 1497, they tookno further advantage of it than to send out a few fishing vessels,until Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a noted and skillful seaman, took outletters-patent for discovery, bearing date the 11th of January, 1578.Gilbert was the half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh and thirteen yearshis senior. The brothers were associated in the enterprise of 1579,which had for its main object the possession of Newfoundland. It iscommonly said, and in this the biographical dictionaries follow oneanother, that Raleigh accompanied his brother on this voyage of 1579and went with him to Newfoundland. The fact is that Gilbert did notreach Newfoundland on that voyage, and it is open to doubt if Raleighstarted with him. In April, 1579, when Gilbert took active stepsunder the charter of 1578, diplomatic difficulties arose, growing outof Elizabeth's policy with the Spaniards, and when Gilbert's shipswere ready to sail he was stopped by an order from the council.Little is known of this unsuccessful attempt of Gilbert's. He did,after many delays, put to sea, and one of his contemporaries, JohnHooker, the antiquarian, says that Raleigh was one of the assuredfriends that accompanied him. But he was shortly after driven back,probably from an encounter with the Spaniards, and returned with theloss of a tall ship.

Raleigh had no sooner made good his footing at the court of Elizabeththan he joined Sir Humphrey in a new adventure. But the Queenperemptorily retained Raleigh at court, to prevent his incurring therisks of any "dangerous sea-fights." To prevent Gilbert fromembarking on this new voyage seems to have been the device of thecouncil rather than the Queen, for she assured Gilbert of her goodwishes, and desired him, on his departure, to give his picture toRaleigh for her, and she contributed to the large sums raised to meetexpenses "an anchor guarded by a lady," which the sailor was to wearat his breast. Raleigh risked L 2,000 in the venture, and equipped aship which bore his name, but which had ill luck. An infectiousfever broke out among the crew, and the "Ark Raleigh" returned toPlymouth. Sir Humphrey wrote to his brother admiral, Sir GeorgePeckham, indignantly of this desertion, the reason for which he didnot know, and then proceeded on his voyage with his four remainingships. This was on the 11th of January, 1583. The expedition was sofar successful that Gilbert took formal possession of Newfoundlandfor the Queen. But a fatality attended his further explorations: thegallant admiral went down at sea in a storm off our coast, with hiscrew, heroic and full of Christian faith to the last, uttering, it isreported, this courageous consolation to his comrades at the lastmoment: "Be of good heart, my friends. We are as near to heaven bysea as by land."

In September, 1583, a surviving ship brought news of the disaster toFalmouth. Raleigh was not discouraged. Within six months of thisloss he had on foot another enterprise. His brother's patent hadexpired. On the 25th of March, 1584, he obtained from Elizabeth anew charter with larger powers, incorporating himself, AdrianGilbert, brother of Sir Humphrey, and John Davys, under the title of"The College of the Fellowship for the Discovery of the NorthwestPassage." But Raleigh's object was colonization. Within a few daysafter his charter was issued he despatched two captains, PhilipAmadas and Arthur Barlow, who in July of that year took possession ofthe island of Roanoke.

The name of Sir Walter Raleigh is intimately associated with Carolinaand Virginia, and it is the popular impression that he personallyassisted in the discovery of the one and the settlement of the other.But there is no more foundation for the belief that he ever visitedthe territory of Virginia, of which he was styled governor, than thathe accompanied Sir Humphrey Gilbert to Newfoundland. An allusion byWilliam Strachey, in his "Historie of Travaile into Virginia,"hastily read, may have misled some writers. He speaks of anexpedition southward, "to some parts of Chawonock and the Mangoangs,to search them there left by Sir Walter Raleigh." But his furthersketch of the various prior expeditions shows that he meant to speakof settlers left by Sir Ralph Lane and other agents of Raleigh incolonization. Sir Walter Raleigh never saw any portion of the coastof the United States.

In 1592 he planned an attack upon the Spanish possessions of Panama,but his plans were frustrated. His only personal expedition to theNew World was that to Guana in 1595.

The expedition of Captain Amadas and Captain Barlow is described byCaptain Smith in his compilation called the "General Historie," andby Mr. Strachey. They set sail April 27, 1584, from the Thames. Onthe 2d of July they fell with the coast of Florida in shoal water,"where they felt a most delicate sweet smell," but saw no land.Presently land appeared, which they took to be the continent, andcoasted along to the northward a hundred and thirty miles beforefinding a harbor. Entering the first opening, they landed on whatproved to be the Island of Roanoke. The landing-place was sandy andlow, but so productive of grapes or vines overrunning everything,that the very surge of the sea sometimes overflowed them. Thetallest and reddest cedars in the world grew there, with pines,cypresses, and other trees, and in the woods plenty of deer, conies,and fowls in incredible abundance.

After a few days the natives came off in boats to visit them, properpeople and civil in their behavior, bringing with them the King'sbrother, Granganameo (Quangimino, says Strachey). The name of theKing was Winginia, and of the country Wingandacoa. The name of thisKing might have suggested that of Virginia as the title of the newpossession, but for the superior claim of the Virgin Queen.Granganameo was a friendly savage who liked to trade. The firstthing he took a fancy was a pewter dish, and he made a hole throughit and hung it about his neck for a breastplate. The liberalChristians sold it to him for the low price of twenty deer-skins,worth twenty crowns, and they also let him have a copper kettle forfifty skins. They drove a lively traffic with the savages for muchof such "truck," and the chief came on board and ate and drankmerrily with the strangers. His wife and children, short of staturebut well-formed and bashful, also paid them a visit. She wore a longcoat of leather, with a piece of leather about her loins, around herforehead a band of white coral, and from her ears bracelets of pearlsof the bigness of great peas hung down to her middle. The otherwomen wore pendants of copper, as did the children, five or six in anear. The boats of these savages were hollowed trunks of trees.Nothing could exceed the kindness and trustfulness the Indiansexhibited towards their visitors. They kept them supplied with gameand fruits, and when a party made an expedition inland to theresidence of Granganameo, his wife (her husband being absent) camerunning to the river to welcome them; took them to her house and setthem before a great fire; took off their clothes and washed them;removed the stockings of some and washed their feet in warm water;set plenty of victual, venison and fish and fruits, before them, andtook pains to see all things well ordered for their comfort. "Morelove they could not express to entertain us." It is noted that thesesavages drank wine while the grape lasted. The visitors returned allthis kindness with suspicion.

They insisted upon retiring to their boats at night instead oflodging in the house, and the good woman, much grieved at theirjealousy, sent down to them their half-cooked supper, pots and all,and mats to cover them from the rain in the night, and caused severalof her men and thirty women to sit all night on the shore overagainst them. "A more kind, loving people cannot be," say thevoyagers.

In September the expedition returned to England, taking specimens ofthe wealth of the country, and some of the pearls as big as peas, andtwo natives, Wanchese and Manteo. The "lord proprietary" obtainedthe Queen's permission to name the new lands "Virginia," in herhonor, and he had a new seal of his arms cut, with the legend,Propria insignia Walteri Ralegh, militis, Domini et GubernatorisVirginia.

The enticing reports brought back of the fertility of this land, andthe amiability of its pearl-decked inhabitants, determined Raleigh atonce to establish a colony there, in the hope of the ultimatesalvation of the "poor seduced infidell" who wore the pearls. Afleet of seven vessels, with one hundred householders, and manythings necessary to begin a new state, departed from Plymouth inApril, 1585. Sir Richard Grenville had command of the expedition,and Mr. Ralph Lane was made governor of the colony, with PhilipAmadas for his deputy. Among the distinguished men who accompaniedthem were Thomas Hariot, the mathematician, and Thomas Cavendish, thenaval discoverer. The expedition encountered as many fatalities asthose that befell Sir Humphrey Gilbert; and Sir Richard was destinedalso to an early and memorable death. But the new colony sufferedmore from its own imprudence and want of harmony than from naturalcauses.

In August, Grenville left Ralph Lane in charge of the colony andreturned to England, capturing a Spanish ship on the way. Thecolonists pushed discoveries in various directions, but soon foundthemselves involved in quarrels with the Indians, whose conduct wasless friendly than formerly, a change partly due to the greed of thewhites. In June, when Lane was in fear of a conspiracy which he haddiscovered against the life of the colony, and it was short ofsupplies, Sir Francis Drake appeared off Roanoke, returning homewardwith his fleet from the sacking of St. Domingo, Carthagena, and St.Augustine. Lane, without waiting for succor from England, persuadedDrake to take him and all the colony back home. Meantime Raleigh,knowing that the colony would probably need aid, was preparing afleet of three well appointed ships to accompany Sir RichardGrenville, and an "advice ship," plentifully freighted, to send inadvance to give intelligence of his coming. Great was Grenville'schagrin, when he reached Hatorask, to find that the advice boat hadarrived, and finding no colony, had departed again for England.However, he established fifteen men ("fifty," says the "GeneralHistorie") on the island, provisioned for two years, and thenreturned home.

[Sir Richard Grenville in 1591 was vice-admiral of a fleet, undercommand of Lord Thomas Howard, at the Azores, sent against a SpanishPlate-fleet. Six English vessels were suddenly opposed by a Spanishconvoy of 53 ships of war. Left behind his comrades, in embarkingfrom an island, opposed by five galleons, he maintained a terriblefight for fifteen hours, his vessel all cut to pieces, and his mennearly all slain. He died uttering aloud these words: "Here dies SirRichard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, for that I haveended my life as a true soldier ought to do, fighting for hiscountry, queen, religion, and honor."]

Mr. Ralph Lane's colony was splendidly fitted out, much betterfurnished than the one that Newport, Wingfield, and Gosnold conductedto the River James in 1607; but it needed a man at the head of it.If the governor had possessed Smith's pluck, he would have held ontill the arrival of Grenville.

Lane did not distinguish himself in the conduct of this governorship,but he nevertheless gained immortality. For he is credited withfirst bringing into England that valuable medicinal weeds calledtobacco, which Sir Walter Raleigh made fashionable, not in itscapacity to drive "rheums" out of the body, but as a soother, whenburned in the bowl of a pipe and drawn through the stem in smoke, ofthe melancholy spirit.

The honor of introducing tobacco at this date is so large that it hasbeen shared by three persons—Sir Francis Drake, who brought Mr. Lanehome; Mr. Lane, who carried the precious result of his sojourn inAmerica; and Sir Walter Raleigh, who commended it to the use of theladies of Queen Elizabeth's court.

But this was by no means its first appearance in Europe. It wasalready known in Spain, in France, and in Italy, and no doubt hadbegun to make its way in the Orient. In the early part of thecentury the Spaniards had discovered its virtues. It is stated byJohn Neander, in his "Tobaco Logia," published in Leyden in 1626,that Tobaco took its name from a province in Yucatan, conquered byFernando Cortez in 1519. The name Nicotiana he derives from D.Johanne Nicotino Nemansensi, of the council of Francis II., who firstintroduced the plant into France. At the date of this volume (1626)tobacco was in general use all over Europe and in the East. Picturesare given of the Persian water pipes, and descriptions of the mode ofpreparing it for use. There are reports and traditions of a veryancient use of tobacco in Persia and in China, as well as in India,but we are convinced that the substance supposed to be tobacco, andto be referred to as such by many writers, and described as"intoxicating," was really India hemp, or some plant very differentfrom the tobacco of the New World. At any rate there is evidencethat in the Turkish Empire as late as 1616 tobacco was still somewhata novelty, and the smoking of it was regarded as vile, and a habitonly of the low. The late Hekekian Bey, foreign minister of oldMahomet Ali, possessed an ancient Turkish MS which related anoccurrence at Smyrna about the year 1610, namely, the punishment ofsome sailors for the use of tobacco, which showed that it was anovelty and accounted a low vice at that time. The testimony of thetrustworthy George Sandys, an English traveler into Turkey, Egypt,and Syria in 1610 (afterwards, 1621, treasurer of the colony inVirginia), is to the same effect as given in his "Relation,"published in London in 1621. In his minute description of the peopleand manners of Constantinople, after speaking of opium, which makesthe Turks "giddy-headed" and "turbulent dreamers," he says: "Butperhaps for the self-same cause they delight in Tobacco: which theytake through reedes that have joyned with them great heads of wood tocontaine it, I doubt not but lately taught them as brought them bythe English; and were it not sometimes lookt into (for Morat Bassa[Murad III.?] not long since commanded a pipe to be thrust throughthe nose of a Turke, and to be led in derision through the Citie), noquestion but it would prove a principal commodity. Nevertheless theywill take it in corners; and are so ignorant therein, that that whichin England is not saleable, doth passe here among them for mostexcellent."

Mr. Stith ("History of Virginia," 1746) gives Raleigh credit for theintroduction of the pipe into good society, but he cautiously says,"We are not informed whether the queen made use of it herself: but itis certain she gave great countenance to it as a vegetable ofsingular strength and power, which might therefore prove of benefitto mankind, and advantage to the nation." Mr. Thomas Hariot, in hisobservations on the colony at Roanoke, says that the natives esteemedtheir tobacco, of which plenty was found, their "chief physicke."

It should be noted, as against the claim of Lane, that Stowe in his"Annales" (1615) says: "Tobacco was first brought and made known inEngland by Sir John Hawkins, about the year 1565, but not used byEnglishmen in many years after, though at this time commonly used bymost men and many women." In a side-note to the edition of 1631 weread: "Sir Walter Raleigh was the first that brought tobacco in use,when all men wondered what it meant." It was first commended for itsmedicinal virtues. Harrison's "Chronologie," under date of 1573,says: "In these daies the taking in of the smoke of the Indian herbecalled 'Tabaco' by an instrument formed like a little ladell, wherebyit passeth from the mouth into the hed and stomach, is gretlietaken-up and used in England, against Rewmes and some other diseasesingendred in the longes and inward partes, and not without effect."But Barnaby Rich, in "The Honestie of this Age," 1614, disagrees withHarrison about its benefit: "They say it is good for a cold, for apose, for rewmes, for aches, for dropsies, and for all manner ofdiseases proceeding of moyst humours; but I cannot see but that thosethat do take it fastest are as much (or more) subject to all theseinfirmities (yea, and to the poxe itself) as those that have nothingat all to do with it." He learns that 7,000 shops in London live bythe trade of tobacco-selling, and calculates that there is paid forit L 399,375 a year, "all spent in smoake." Every base groom musthave his pipe with his pot of ale; it "is vendible in every taverne,inne, and ale-house; and as for apothecaries shops, grosers shops,chandlers shops, they are (almost) never without company that, frommorning till night, are still taking of tobacco." Numbers of housesand shops had no other trade to live by. The wrath of King James wasprobably never cooled against tobacco, but the expression of it wassomewhat tempered when he perceived what a source of revenue itbecame.

The savages of North America gave early evidence of the possession ofimaginative minds, of rare power of invention, and of an amiabledesire to make satisfactory replies to the inquiries of theirvisitors. They generally told their questioners what they wanted toknow, if they could ascertain what sort of information would pleasethem. If they had known the taste of the sixteenth century for themarvelous they could not have responded more fitly to suit it. Theyfilled Mr. Lane and Mr. Hariot full of tales of a wonderful coppermine on the River Maratock (Roanoke), where the metal was dipped outof the stream in great bowls. The colonists had great hopes of thisriver, which Mr: Hariot thought flowed out of the Gulf of Mexico, orvery near the South Sea. The Indians also conveyed to the mind ofthis sagacious observer the notion that they had a very respectablydeveloped religion; that they believed in one chief god who existedfrom all eternity, and who made many gods of less degree; that formankind a woman was first created, who by one of the gods broughtforth children; that they believed in the immortality of the soul,and that for good works a soul will be conveyed to bliss in thetabernacles of the gods, and for bad deeds to pokogusso, a great pitin the furthest part of the world, where the sun sets, and where theyburn continually. The Indians knew this because two men lately deadhad revived and come back to tell them of the other world. Thesestories, and many others of like kind, the Indians told ofthemselves, and they further pleased Mr. Hariot by kissing his Bibleand rubbing it all over their bodies, notwithstanding he told themthere was no virtue in the material book itself, only in itsdoctrines. We must do Mr. Hariot the justice to say, however, thathe had some little suspicion of the "subtiltie" of the weroances(chiefs) and the priests.

Raleigh was not easily discouraged; he was determined to plant hiscolony, and to send relief to the handful of men that Grenville hadleft on Roanoke Island. In May, 1587, he sent out three ships and ahundred and fifty householders, under command of Mr. John White, whowas appointed Governor of the colony, with twelve assistants as aCouncil, who were incorporated under the name of "The Governor andAssistants of the City of Ralegh in Virginia," with instructions tochange their settlement to Chesapeake Bay. The expedition foundthere no one of the colony (whether it was fifty or fifteen thewriters disagree), nothing but the bones of one man where theplantation had been; the houses were unhurt, but overgrown withweeds, and the fort was defaced. Captain Stafford, with twenty men,went to Croatan to seek the lost colonists. He heard that the fiftyhad been set upon by three hundred Indians, and, after a sharpskirmish and the loss of one man, had taken boats and gone to a smallisland near Hatorask, and afterwards had departed no one knewwhither.

Mr. White sent a band to take revenge upon the Indians who weresuspected of their murder through treachery, which was guided byMateo, the friendly Indian, who had returned with the expedition fromEngland. By a mistake they attacked a friendly tribe. In August ofthis year Mateo was Christianized, and baptized under the title ofLord of Roanoke and Dassomonpeake, as a reward for his fidelity. Thesame month Elinor, the daughter of the Govemor, the wife of AnaniasDare, gave birth to a daughter, the first white child born in thispart of the continent, who was named Virginia.

Before long a dispute arose between the Governor and his Council asto the proper person to return to England for supplies. Whitehimself was finally prevailed upon to go, and he departed, leavingabout a hundred settlers on one of the islands of Hatorask to form aplantation.

The Spanish invasion and the Armada distracted the attention ofEurope about this time, and the hope of plunder from Spanish vesselswas more attractive than the colonization of America. It was notuntil 1590 that Raleigh was able to despatch vessels to the relief ofthe Hatorask colony, and then it was too late. White did, indeed,start out from Biddeford in April, 1588, with two vessels, but thetemptation to chase prizes was too strong for him, and he went on acruise of his own, and left the colony to its destruction.

In March, 1589-90, Mr. White was again sent out, with three ships,from Plymouth, and reached the coast in August. Sailing by Croatanthey went to Hatorask, where they descried a smoke in the place theyhad left the colony in 1587. Going ashore next day, they found noman, nor sign that any had been there lately. Preparing to go toRoanoke next day, a boat was upset and Captain Spicer and six of thecrew were drowned. This accident so discouraged the sailors thatthey could hardly be persuaded to enter on the search for the colony.At last two boats, with nineteen men, set out for Hatorask, andlanded at that part of Roanoke where the colony had been left. WhenWhite left the colony three years before, the men had talked of goingfifty miles into the mainland, and had agreed to leave some sign oftheir departure. The searchers found not a man of the colony; theirhouses were taken down, and a strong palisade had been built. Allabout were relics of goods that had been buried and dug up again andscattered, and on a post was carved the name "CROATAN." This signal,which was accompanied by no sign of distress, gave White hope that heshould find his comrades at Croatan. But one mischance or anotherhappening, his provisions being short, the expedition decided to rundown to the West Indies and "refresh" (chiefly with a little Spanishplunder), and return in the spring and seek their countrymen; butinstead they sailed for England and never went to Croatan. The menof the abandoned colonies were never again heard of. Years after, in1602, Raleigh bought a bark and sent it, under the charge of SamuelMace, a mariner who had been twice to Virginia, to go in search ofthe survivors of White's colony. Mace spent a month lounging aboutthe Hatorask coast and trading with the natives, but did not land onCroatan, or at any place where the lost colony might be expected tobe found; but having taken on board some sassafras, which at thattime brought a good price in England, and some other barks which weresupposed to be valuable, he basely shirked the errand on which he washired to go, and took himself and his spicy woods home.

The "Lost Colony" of White is one of the romances of the New World.Governor White no doubt had the feelings of a parent, but he did notallow them to interfere with his more public duties to go in searchof Spanish prizes. If the lost colony had gone to Croatan, it wasprobable that Ananias Dare and his wife, the Governor's daughter, andthe little Virginia Dare, were with them. But White, as we haveseen, had such confidence in Providence that he left his dearrelatives to its care, and made no attempt to visit Croatan.

Stith says that Raleigh sent five several times to search for thelost, but the searchers returned with only idle reports and frivolousallegations. Tradition, however, has been busy with the fate ofthese deserted colonists. One of the unsupported conjectures is thatthe colonists amalgamated with the tribe of Hatteras Indians, andIndian tradition and the physical characteristics of the tribe aresaid to confirm this idea. But the sporadic birth of children withwhite skins (albinos) among black or copper-colored races that havehad no intercourse with white people, and the occurrence of lighthair and blue eyes among the native races of America and of NewGuinea, are facts so well attested that no theory of amalgamation canbe sustained by such rare physical manifestations. According toCaptain John Smith, who wrote of Captain Newport's explorations in1608, there were no tidings of the waifs, for, says Smith, Newportreturned "without a lump of gold, a certainty of the South Sea, orone of the lost company sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh."

In his voyage of discovery up the Chickahominy, Smith seem; to haveinquired about this lost colony of King Paspahegh, for he says, "whathe knew of the dominions he spared not to acquaint me with, as ofcertaine men cloathed at a place called Ocanahonan, cloathcd likeme."

[Among these Hatteras Indians Captain Amadas, in 1584, saw childrenwith chestnut-colored hair.]

We come somewhat nearer to this matter in the "Historie of Travaileinto Virginia Britannia," published from the manuscript by theHakluyt Society in 1849, in which it is intimated that seven of thesedeserted colonists were afterwards rescued. Strachey is a first-rateauthority for what he saw. He arrived in Virginia in 1610 andremained there two years, as secretary of the colony, and was a manof importance. His "Historie" was probably written between 1612 and1616. In the first portion of it, which is descriptive of theterritory of Virginia, is this important passage: "At Peccarecamekand Ochanahoen, by the relation of Machumps, the people have housesbuilt with stone walls, and one story above another, so taught themby those English who escaped the slaughter of Roanoke. At what timethis our colony, under the conduct of Captain Newport, landed withinthe Chesapeake Bay, where the people breed up tame turkies abouttheir houses, and take apes in the mountains, and where, at Ritanoe,the Weroance Eyanaco, preserved seven of the English alive—four men,two boys, and one young maid (who escaped [that is from Roanoke] andfled up the river of Chanoke), to beat his copper, of which he hathcertain mines at the said Ritanoe, as also at Pamawauk are said to bestore of salt stones."

This, it will be observed, is on the testimony of Machumps. Thispleasing story is not mentioned in Captain Newport's "Discoveries"(May, 1607). Machumps, who was the brother of Winganuske, one of themany wives of Powhatan, had been in England. He was evidently alively Indian. Strachey had heard him repeat the "Indian grace," asort of incantation before meat, at the table of Sir Thomas Dale. Ifhe did not differ from his red brothers he had a powerfulimagination, and was ready to please the whites with any sort of amarvelous tale. Newport himself does not appear to have seen any ofthe "apes taken in the mountains." If this story is to be acceptedas true we have to think of Virginia Dare as growing up to be a womanof twenty years, perhaps as other white maidens have been, Indianizedand the wife of a native. But the story rests only upon a romancingIndian. It is possible that Strachey knew more of the matter than herelates, for in his history he speaks again of those betrayed people,"of whose end you shall hereafter read in this decade." But thepossessed information is lost, for it is not found in the remainderof this "decade" of his writing, which is imperfect. Anotherreference in Strachey is more obscure than the first. He is speakingof the merciful intention of King James towards the Virginia savages,and that he does not intend to root out the natives as the Spaniardsdid in Hispaniola, but by degrees to change their barbarous nature,and inform them of the true God and the way to Salvation, and thathis Majesty will even spare Powhatan himself. But, he says, it isthe intention to make "the common people likewise to understand, howthat his Majesty has been acquainted that the men, women, andchildren of the first plantation of Roanoke were by practice ofPowhatan (he himself persuaded thereunto by his priests) miserablyslaughtered, without any offense given him either by the firstplanted (who twenty and odd years had peaceably lived intermixed withthose savages, and were out of his territory) or by those who are nowcome to inhabit some parts of his distant lands," etc.

Strachey of course means the second plantation and not the first,which, according to the weight of authority, consisted of onlyfifteen men and no women.

In George Percy's Discourse concerning Captain Newport's explorationof the River James in 1607 (printed in Purchas's "Pilgrims") isthis sentence: "At Port Cotage, in our voyage up the river, we saw asavage boy, about the age of ten years, which had a head of hair of aperfect yellow, and reasonably white skin, which is a miracle amongstall savages." Mr. Neill, in his "History of the Virginia Company,"says that this boy "was no doubt the offspring of the colonists leftat Roanoke by White, of whom four men, two boys, and one young maidhad been preserved from slaughter by an Indian Chief." Under thecirc*mstances, "no doubt" is a very strong expression for a historianto use.

This belief in the sometime survival of the Roanoke colonists, andtheir amalgamation with the Indians, lingered long in colonialgossip. Lawson, in his History, published in London in 1718,mentions a tradition among the Hatteras Indians, "that several oftheir ancestors were white people and could talk from a book; thetruth of which is confirmed by gray eyes being among these Indiansand no others."

But the myth of Virginia Dare stands no chance beside that of
Pocahontas.

V

FIRST PLANTING OF THE COLONY

The way was now prepared for the advent of Captain John Smith inVirginia. It is true that we cannot give him his own title of itsdiscoverer, but the plantation had been practically abandoned, allthe colonies had ended in disaster, all the governors and captainshad lacked the gift of perseverance or had been early drawn intoother adventures, wholly disposed, in the language of Captain JohnWhite, "to seek after purchase and spoils," and but for the energyand persistence of Captain Smith the expedition of 1606 might havehad no better fate. It needed a man of tenacious will to hold acolony together in one spot long enough to give it root. CaptainSmith was that man, and if we find him glorying in his exploits, andrepeating upon single big Indians the personal prowess thatdistinguished him in Transylvania and in the mythical Nalbrits, wehave only to transfer our sympathy from the Turks to theSasquesahanocks if the sense of his heroism becomes oppressive.

Upon the return of Samuel Mace, mariner, who was sent out in 1602 tosearch for White's lost colony, all Raleigh's interest in theVirginia colony had, by his attainder, escheated to the crown. Buthe never gave up his faith in Virginia: neither the failure of nineseveral expeditions nor twelve years imprisonment shook it. On theeve of his fall he had written, "I shall yet live to see it anEnglish nation:" and he lived to see his prediction come true.

The first or Virginian colony, chartered with the Plymouth colony inApril, 1606, was at last organized by the appointment of Sir ThomasSmith, the 'Chief of Raleigh's assignees, a wealthy London merchant,who had been ambassador to Persia, and was then, or shortly after,governor of the East India Company, treasurer and president of themeetings of the council in London; and by the assignment of thetransportation of the colony to Captain Christopher Newport, amariner of experience in voyages to the West Indies and in plunderingthe Spaniards, who had the power to appoint different captains andmariners, and the sole charge of the voyage. No local councilorswere named for Virginia, but to Captain Newport, Captain BartholomewGosnold, and Captain John Ratcliffe were delivered sealedinstructions, to be opened within twenty-four hours after theirarrival in Virginia, wherein would be found the names of the personsdesignated for the Council.

This colony, which was accompanied by the prayers and hopes ofLondon, left the Thames December 19, 1606, in three vessels—theSusan Constant, one hundred tons, Captain Newport, with seventy-onepersons; the God-Speed, forty tons, Captain Gosnold, with fifty-twopersons; and a pinnace of twenty tons, the Discovery, CaptainRatcliffe, with twenty persons. The Mercure Francais, Paris, 1619,says some of the passengers were women and children, but there isno other mention of women. Of the persons embarked, one hundred andfive were planters, the rest crews. Among the planters were EdwardMaria Wingfield, Captain John Smith, Captain John Martin, CaptainGabriel Archer, Captain George Kendall, Mr. Robert Hunt, preacher,and Mr. George Percie, brother of the Earl of Northumberland,subsequently governor for a brief period, and one of the writers fromwhom Purchas compiled. Most of the planters were shipped asgentlemen, but there were four carpenters, twelve laborers, ablacksmith, a sailor, a barber, a bricklayer, a mason, a tailor, adrummer, and a chirurgeon.

The composition of the colony shows a serious purpose of settlement,since the trades were mostly represented, but there were too manygentlemen to make it a working colony. And, indeed, the gentlemen,like the promoters of the enterprise in London, were probably moresolicitous of discovering a passage to the South Sea, as the way toincrease riches, than of making a state. They were instructed toexplore every navigable river they might find, and to follow the mainbranches, which would probably lead them in one direction to the EastIndies or South Sea, and in the other to the Northwest Passage. Andthey were forcibly reminded that the way to prosper was to be of onemind, for their own and their country's good.

This last advice did not last the expedition out of sight of land.They sailed from Blackwell, December 19, 1606, but were kept sixweeks on the coast of England by contrary winds. A crew of saintscabined in those little caravels and tossed about on that coast forsix weeks would scarcely keep in good humor. Besides, the positionof the captains and leaders was not yet defined. Factious quarrelsbroke out immediately, and the expedition would likely have broken upbut for the wise conduct and pious exhortations of Mr. Robert Hunt,the preacher. This faithful man was so ill and weak that it wasthought he could not recover, yet notwithstanding the stormy weather,the factions on board, and although his home was almost in sight,only twelve miles across the Downs, he refused to quit the ship. Hewas unmoved, says Smith, either by the weather or by "the scandalousimputations (of some few little better than atheists, of the greatestrank amongst us)." With "the water of his patience" and "his godlyexhortations" he quenched the flames of envy and dissension.

They took the old route by the West Indies. George Percy notes thaton the 12th of February they saw a blazing star, and presently astorm. They watered at the Canaries, traded with savages at SanDomingo, and spent three weeks refreshing themselves among theislands. The quarrels revived before they reached the Canaries, andthere Captain Smith was seized and put in close confinement forthirteen weeks.

We get little light from contemporary writers on this quarrel. Smithdoes not mention the arrest in his "True Relation," but in his"General Historie," writing of the time when they had been six weeksin Virginia, he says: "Now Captain Smith who all this time from theirdeparture from the Canaries was restrained as a prisoner upon thescandalous suggestion of some of the chiefs (envying his repute) whofancied he intended to usurp the government, murder the Council, andmake himself King, that his confedcrates were dispersed in all threeships, and that divers of his confederates that revealed it, wouldaffirm it, for this he was committed a prisoner; thirteen weeks heremained thus suspected, and by that time they should return theypretended out of their commiserations, to refer him to the Council inEngland to receive a check, rather than by particulating his designsmake him so odious to the world, as to touch his life, or utterlyoverthrow his reputation. But he so much scorned their charity andpublically defied the uttermost of their cruelty, he wisely preventedtheir policies, though he could not suppress their envies, yet sowell he demeaned himself in this business, as all the company did seehis innocency, and his adversaries' malice, and those suborned toaccuse him accused his accusers of subornation; many untruths werealleged against him; but being apparently disproved, begot a generalhatred in the hearts of the company against such unjust Commanders,that the President was adjudged to give him L 200, so that all he hadwas seized upon, in part of satisfaction, which Smith presentlyreturned to the store for the general use of the colony."—

Neither in Newport's "Relatyon" nor in Mr. Wingfield's "Discourse" isthe arrest mentioned, nor does Strachey speak of it.

About 1629, Smith, in writing a description of the Isle of Mevis(Nevis) in his "Travels and Adventures," says: "In this little [isle]of Mevis, more than twenty years agone, I have remained a good timetogether, to wod and water—and refresh my men." It ischaracteristic of Smith's vivid imagination, in regard to his ownexploits, that he should speak of an expedition in which he had nocommand, and was even a prisoner, in this style: "I remained," and"my men." He goes on: "Such factions here we had as commonly attendsuch voyages, and a pair of gallows was made, but Captaine Smith, forwhom they were intended, could not be persuaded to use them; but notany one of the inventors but their lives by justice fell into hispower, to determine of at his pleasure, whom with much mercy hefavored, that most basely and unjustly would have betrayed him." Andit is true that Smith, although a great romancer, was oftenmagnanimous, as vain men are apt to be.

King James's elaborate lack of good sense had sent the expedition tosea with the names of the Council sealed up in a box, not to beopened till it reached its destination. Consequently there was norecognized authority. Smith was a young man of about twenty-eight,vain and no doubt somewhat "bumptious," and it is easy to believethat Wingfield and the others who felt his superior force andrealized his experience, honestly suspected him of designs againstthe expedition. He was the ablest man on board, and no doubt wasaware of it. That he was not only a born commander of men, but hadthe interest of the colony at heart, time was to show.

The voyagers disported themselves among the luxuries of the WestIndies. At Guadaloupe they found a bath so hot that they boiledtheir pork in it as well as over the fire. At the Island of Monacathey took from the bushes with their hands near two hogsheads full ofbirds in three or four hours. These, it is useless to say, wereprobably not the "barnacle geese" which the nautical travelers usedto find, and picture growing upon bushes and dropping from the eggs,when they were ripe, full-fledged into the water. The beasts werefearless of men. Wild birds and natives had to learn the whitesbefore they feared them.

"In Mevis, Mona, and the Virgin Isles," says the "General Historie,""we spent some time, where with a lothsome beast like a crocodile,called a gwayn [guana], tortoises, pellicans, parrots, and fishes, wefeasted daily."

Thence they made sail-in search of Virginia, but the mariners losttheir reckoning for three days and made no land; the crews werediscomfited, and Captain Ratcliffe, of the pinnace, wanted to up helmand return to England. But a violent storm, which obliged them "tohull all night," drove them to the port desired. On the 26th ofApril they saw a bit of land none of them had ever seen before.This, the first land they descried, they named Cape Henry, in honorof the Prince of Wales; as the opposite cape was called Cape Charles,for the Duke of York, afterwards Charles I. Within these capes theyfound one of the most pleasant places in the world, majesticnavigable rivers, beautiful mountains, hills, and plains, and afruitful and delightsome land.

Mr. George Percy was ravished at the sight of the fair meadows andgoodly tall trees. As much to his taste were the large and delicateoysters, which the natives roasted, and in which were found manypearls. The ground was covered with fine and beautiful strawberries,four times bigger than those in England.

Masters Wingfield, Newport, and Gosnold., with thirty men, wentashore on Cape Henry, where they were suddenly set upon by savages,who came creeping upon all-fours over the hills, like bears, withtheir bows in their hands; Captain Archer was hurt in both hands, anda sailor dangerously wounded in two places on his body. It was a badomen.

The night of their arrival they anchored at Point Comfort, nowFortress Monroe; the box was opened and the orders read, whichconstituted Edward Maria Wingfield, Bartholomew Gosnold, John Smith,Christopher Newport, John Ratcliffe, John Martin, and George Kendallthe Council, with power to choose a President for a year. Until the13th of May they were slowly exploring the River Powhatan, now theJames, seeking a place for the settlement. They selected a peninsulaon the north side of the river, forty miles from its mouth, wherethere was good anchorage, and which could be readily fortified. Thissettlement was Jamestown. The Council was then sworn in, and Mr.Wingfield selected President. Smith being under arrest was not swornin of the Council, and an oration was made setting forth the reasonfor his exclusion.

When they had pitched upon a site for the fort, every man set towork, some to build the fort, others to pitch the tents, fell treesand make clapboards to reload the ships, others to make gardens andnets. The fort was in the form of a triangle with a half-moon ateach corner, intended to mount four or five guns.

President Wingfield appears to have taken soldierly precautions, butSmith was not at all pleased with him from the first. He says "thePresident's overweening jealousy would admit of no exercise at arms,or fortifications but the boughs of trees cast together in the formof a half-moon by the extraordinary pains and diligence of CaptainKendall." He also says there was contention between CaptainWingfield and Captain Gosnold about the site of the city.

The landing was made at Jamestown on the 14th of May, according toPercy. Previous to that considerable explorations were made. On the18th of April they launched a shallop, which they built the daybefore, and "discovered up the bay." They discovered a river on thesouth side running into the mainland, on the banks of which were goodstores of mussels and oysters, goodly trees, flowers of all colors,and strawberries. Returning to their ships and finding the watershallow, they rowed over to a point of land, where they found fromsix to twelve fathoms of water, which put them in good comfort,therefore they named that part of the land Cape Comfort. On the 29ththey set up a cross on Chesapeake Bay, on Cape Henry, and the nextday coasted to the Indian town of Kecoughton, now Hampton, where theywere kindly entertained. When they first came to land the savagesmade a doleful noise, laying their paws to the ground and scratchingthe earth with their nails. This ceremony, which was taken to be akind of idolatry, ended, mats were brought from the houses, whereonthe guests were seated, and given to eat bread made of maize, andtobacco to smoke. The savages also entertained them with dancing andsinging and antic tricks and grimaces. They were naked except acovering of skins about the loins, and many were painted in black andred, with artificial knots of lovely colors, beautiful and pleasingto the eye. The 4th of May they were entertained by the chief ofPaspika, who favored them with a long oration, making a foul noiseand vehement in action, the purport of which they did not catch. Thesavages were full of hospitality. The next day the weroance, orchief, of Rapahanna sent a messenger to invite them to his seat. Hismajesty received them in as modest a proud fashion as if he had beena prince of a civil government. His body was painted in crimson andhis face in blue, and he wore a chain of beads about his neck and inhis ears bracelets of pearls and a bird's claw. The 8th of May theywent up the river to the country Apomatica, where the nativesreceived them in hostile array, the chief, with bow and arrows in onehand, and a pipe of tobacco in the other, offering them war or peace.

These savages were as stout and able as any heathen or Christians inthe world. Mr. Percy said they bore their years well. He saw amongthe Pamunkeys a savage reported to be 160, years old, whose eyes weresunk in his head, his teeth gone his hair all gray, and quite a bigbeard, white as snow; he was a lusty savage, and could travel as fastas anybody.

The Indians soon began to be troublesome in their visits to theplantations, skulking about all night, hanging around the fort byday, bringing sometimes presents of deer, but given to theft of smallarticles, and showing jealousy of the occupation. They murmured,says Percy, at our planting in their country. But worse than thedisposition of the savages was the petty quarreling in the colonyitself.

In obedience to the orders to explore for the South Sea, on the 22dof May, Newport, Percy, Smith, Archer, and twenty others were sent inthe shallop to explore the Powhatan, or James River.

Passing by divers small habitations, and through a land abounding intrees, flowers, and small fruits, a river full of fish, and ofsturgeon such as the world beside has none, they came on the 24th,having passed the town of Powhatan, to the head of the river, theFalls, where they set up the cross and proclaimed King James ofEngland.

Smith says in his "General Historie" they reached Powhatan on the26th. But Captain Newport's "Relatyon" agrees with Percy's, andwith, Smith's "True Relation." Captain Newport, says Percy,permitted no one to visit Powhatan except himself.

Captain Newport's narration of the exploration of the James isinteresting, being the first account we have of this historic river.At the junction of the Appomattox and the James, at a place he callsWynauk, the natives welcomed them with rejoicing and entertained themwith dances. The Kingdom of Wynauk was full of pearl-mussels. Theking of this tribe was at war with the King of Paspahegh. Sixteenmiles above this point, at an inlet, perhaps Turkey Point, they weremet by eight savages in a canoe, one of whom was intelligent enoughto lay out the whole course of the river, from Chesapeake Bay to itssource, with a pen and paper which they showed him how to use. TheseIndians kept them company for some time, meeting them here and therewith presents of strawberries, mulberries, bread, and fish, for whichthey received pins, needles, and beads. They spent one night atPoore Cottage (the Port Cotage of Percy, where he saw the white boy),probably now Haxall. Five miles above they went ashore near the nowfamous Dutch Gap, where King Arahatic gave them a roasted deer, andcaused his women to bake cakes for them. This king gave Newport hiscrown, which was of deer's hair dyed red. He was a subject of thegreat King Powhatan. While they sat making merry with the savages,feasting and taking tobacco and seeing the dances, Powhatan himselfappeared and was received with great show of honor, all rising fromtheir seats except King Arahatic, and shouting loudly. To Powhatanample presents were made of penny-knives, shears, and toys, and heinvited them to visit him at one of his seats called Powhatan, whichwas within a mile of the Falls, where now stands the city ofRichmond. All along the shore the inhabitants stood in clusters,offering food to the strangers. The habitation of Powhatan wassituated on a high hill by the water side, with a meadow at its footwhere was grown wheat, beans, tobacco, peas, pompions, flax, andhemp.

Powhatan served the whites with the best he had, and best of all witha friendly welcome and with interesting discourse of the country.They made a league of friendship. The next day he gave them six menas guides to the falls above, and they left with him one man as ahostage.

On Sunday, the 24th of May, having returned to Powhatan's seat, theymade a feast for him of pork, cooked with peas, and the Captain andKing ate familiarly together; "he eat very freshly of our meats,dranck of our beere, aquavite, and sack." Under the influence ofthis sack and aquavite the King was very communicative about theinterior of the country, and promised to guide them to the mines ofiron and copper; but the wary chief seems to have thought better ofit when he got sober, and put them off with the difficulties anddangers of the way.

On one of the islets below the Falls, Captain Newport set up a crosswith the inscription "Jacobus, Rex, 1607," and his own name beneath,and James was proclaimed King with a great shout. Powhatan wasdispleased with their importunity to go further up the river, anddeparted with all the Indians, except the friendly Navirans, who hadaccompanied them from Arahatic. Navirans greatly admired the cross,but Newport hit upon an explanation of its meaning that should dispelthe suspicions of Powhatan. He told him that the two arms of thecross signified King Powhatan and himself, the fastening of it in themiddle was their united league, and the shout was the reverence hedid to Powhatan. This explanation being made to Powhatan greatlycontented him, and he came on board and gave them the kindestfarewell when they dropped down the river. At Arahatic they foundthe King had provided victuals for them, but, says Newport, "the Kingtold us that he was very sick and not able to sit up long with us."The inability of the noble red man to sit up was no doubt due to toomuch Christian sack and aquavite, for on "Monday he came to the waterside, and we went ashore with him again. He told us that our hotdrinks, he thought, caused him grief, but that he was well again, andwe were very welcome."

It seems, therefore, that to Captain Newport, who was a good sailorin his day, and has left his name in Virginia in Newport News, mustbe given the distinction of first planting the cross in Virginia,with a lie, and watering it, with aquavite.

They dropped down the river to a place called Mulberry Shade, wherethe King killed a deer and prepared for them another feast, at whichthey had rolls and cakes made of wheat. "This the women make and arevery cleanly about it. We had parched meal, excellent good, sodd[cooked] beans, which eat as sweet as filbert kernels, in a manner,strawberries; and mulberries were shaken off the tree, dropping onour heads as we sat. He made ready a land turtle, which we ate; andshowed that he was heartily rejoiced in our company." Such was theamiable disposition of the natives before they discovered the purposeof the whites to dispossess them of their territory. That night theystayed at a place called "Kynd Woman's Care," where the peopleoffered them abundant victual and craved nothing in return.

Next day they went ashore at a place Newport calls Queen Apumatuc'sBower. This Queen, who owed allegiance to Powhatan, had much landunder cultivation, and dwelt in state on a pretty hill. This ancientrepresentative of woman's rights in Virginia did honor to her sex.She came to meet the strangers in a show as majestical as that ofPowhatan himself: "She had an usher before her, who brought her tothe matt prepared under a faire mulberry-tree; where she sat down byherself, with a stayed countenance. She would permitt none to standor sitt neare her. She is a fatt, lustie, manly woman. She had muchcopper about her neck, a coronet of copper upon her hed. She hadlong, black haire, which hanged loose down her back to her myddle;which only part was covered with a deare's skyn, and ells all naked.She had her women attending her, adorned much like herself (exceptthey wanted the copper). Here we had our accustomed eates, tobacco,and welcome. Our Captaine presented her with guyfts liberally,whereupon shee cheered somewhat her countenance, and requested him toshoote off a piece; whereat (we noted) she showed not near the likefeare as Arahatic, though he be a goodly man."

The company was received with the same hospitality by King Pamunkey,whose land was believed to be rich in copper and pearls. The copperwas so flexible that Captain Newport bent a piece of it the thicknessof his finger as if it had been lead. The natives were unwilling topart with it. The King had about his neck a string of pearls as bigas peas, which would have been worth three or four hundred pounds, ifthe pearls had been taken from the mussels as they should have been.

Arriving on their route at Weanock, some twenty miles above the fort,they were minded to visit Paspahegh and another chief Jamestown layin the territory of Paspahegh—but suspicious signs among the nativesmade them apprehend trouble at the fort, and they hastened thither tofind their suspicions verified. The day before, May 26th, the colonyhad been attacked by two hundred Indians (four hundred, Smith says),who were only beaten off when they had nearly entered the fort, bythe use of the artillery. The Indians made a valiant fight for anhour; eleven white men were wounded, of whom one died afterwards, anda boy was killed on the pinnace. This loss was concealed from theIndians, who for some time seem to have believed that the whitescould not be hurt. Four of the Council were hurt in this fight, andPresident Wingfield, who showed himself a valiant gentleman, had ashot through his beard. They killed eleven of the Indians, but theircomrades lugged them away on their backs and buried them in the woodswith a great noise. For several days alarms and attacks continued,and four or five men were cruelly wounded, and one gentleman, Mr.Eustace Cloville, died from the effects of five arrows in his body.

Upon this hostility, says Smith, the President was contented the fortshould be palisaded, and the ordnance mounted, and the men armed andexercised. The fortification went on, but the attacks continued, andit was unsafe for any to venture beyond the fort.

Dissatisfaction arose evidently with President Wingfield'smanagement. Captain Newport says: "There being among the gentlemenand all the company a murmur and grudge against certain proceedingsand inconvenient courses [Newport] put up a petition to the Councilfor reformation." The Council heeded this petition, and urged toamity by Captain Newport, the company vowed faithful love to eachother and obedience to the superiors. On the 10th of June, CaptainSmith was sworn of the Council. In his "General Historie," notpublished till 1624, he says: "Many were the mischiefs that dailysprung from their ignorant (yet ambitious) spirits; but the gooddoctrine and exhortation of our preacher Mr. Hunt, reconciled themand caused Captain Smith to be admitted to the Council." The nextday they all partook of the holy communion.

In order to understand this quarrel, which was not by any meansappeased by this truce, and to determine Captain Smith'sresponsibility for it, it is necessary to examine all the witnesses.Smith is unrestrained in his expression of his contempt forWingfield. But in the diary of Wingfield we find no accusationagainst Smith at this date. Wingfield says that Captain Newportbefore he departed asked him how he thought himself settled in thegovernment, and that he replied "that no disturbance could endangerhim or the colony, but it must be wrought either by Captain Gosnoldor Mr. Archer, for the one was strong with friends and followers andcould if he would; and the other was troubled with an ambitiousspirit and would if he could."

The writer of Newport's "Relatyon" describes the Virginia savages asa very strong and lusty race, and swift warriors. "Their skin istawny; not so borne, but with dyeing and painting themselves, inwhich they delight greatly." That the Indians were born white was,as we shall see hereafter, a common belief among the first settlersin Virginia and New England. Percy notes a distinction between maidsand married women: "The maids shave close the fore part and sides oftheir heads, and leave it long behind, where it is tied up and hangsdown to the hips. The married women wear their hair all of a length,but tied behind as that of maids is. And the women scratch on theirbodies and limbs, with a sharp iron, pictures of fowls, fish, andbeasts, and rub into the 'drawings' lively colors which dry into theflesh and are permanent." The "Relatyon" says the people are wittyand ingenious and allows them many good qualities, but makes thisexception: "The people steal anything comes near them; yea, are sopracticed in this art, that looking in our face, they would withtheir foot, between their toes, convey a chisel, knife, percer, orany indifferent light thing, which having once conveyed, they hold itan injury to take the same from them. They are naturally given totreachery; howbeit we could not find it in our travel up the river,but rather a most kind and loving people."

VI

QUARRELS AND HARDSHIPS

On Sunday, June 21st, they took the communion lovingly together.That evening Captain Newport gave a farewell supper on board hisvessel. The 22d he sailed in the Susan Constant for England,carrying specimens of the woods and minerals, and made the shortpassage of five weeks. Dudley Carleton, in a letter to JohnChamberlain dated Aug. 18, 1607, writes "that Captain Newport hasarrived without gold or silver, and that the adventurers, cumbered bythe presence of the natives, have fortified themselves at a placecalled Jamestown." The colony left numbered one hundred and four.

The good harmony of the colony did not last. There were otherreasons why the settlement was unprosperous. The supply of wholesomeprovisions was inadequate. The situation of the town near theChickahominy swamps was not conducive to health, and althoughPowhatan had sent to make peace with them, and they also made aleague of amity with the chiefs Paspahegh and Tapahanagh, theyevidently had little freedom of movement beyond sight of their guns.Percy says they were very bare and scant of victuals, and in wars anddangers with the savages.

Smith says in his "True Relation," which was written on the spot, andis much less embittered than his "General Historie," that they werein good health and content when Newport departed, but this did notlong continue, for President Wingfield and Captain Gosnold, with themost of the Council, were so discontented with each other thatnothing was done with discretion, and no business transacted withwisdom. This he charges upon the "hard-dealing of the President,"the rest of the Council being diversely affected through hisaudacious command. "Captain Martin, though honest, was weak andsick; Smith was in disgrace through the malice of others; and Godsent famine and sickness, so that the living were scarce able to burythe dead. Our want of sufficient good food, and continual watching,four or five each night, at three bulwarks, being the chief cause;only of sturgeon we had great store, whereon we would so greedilysurfeit, as it cost many their lives; the sack, Aquavite, and otherpreservations of our health being kept in the President's hands, forhis own diet and his few associates."

In his "General Historie," written many years later, Smith enlargesthis indictment with some touches of humor characteristic of him. Hesays:

"Being thus left to our fortunes, it fortuned that within ten daysscarce ten amongst us could either go, or well stand, such extremeweakness and sicknes oppressed us. And thereat none need marvaile ifthey consider the cause and reason, which was this: whilst the shipsstayed, our allowance was somewhat bettered, by a daily proportion ofBisket, which the sailors would pilfer to sell, give, or exchangewith us for money, Saxefras, furres, or love. But when theydeparted, there remained neither taverne, beere-house, nor place ofreliefe, but the common Kettell. Had we beene as free from allsinnes as gluttony, and drunkennesse, we might have been canonizedfor Saints. But our President would never have been admitted, foringrissing to his private, Oatmeale, Sacke, Oyle, Aquavitz, Beef,Egges, or what not, but the Kettell: that indeed he allowed equallyto be distributed, and that was half a pint of wheat, and as muchbarley boyled with water for a man a day, and this being fryed sometwenty-six weeks in the ship's hold, contained as many wormes asgraines; so that we might truly call it rather so much bran thancorrne, our drinke was water, our lodgings Castles in the ayre; withthis lodging and dyet, our extreme toile in bearing and plantingPallisadoes, so strained and bruised us, and our continual labour inthe extremitie of the heat had so weakened us, as were causesufficient to have made us miserable in our native countrey, or anyother place in the world."

Affairs grew worse. The sufferings of this colony in the summerequaled that of the Pilgrims at Plymouth in the winter and spring.Before September forty-one were buried, says Wingfield; fifty, saysSmith in one statement, and forty-six in another; Percy gives a listof twenty-four who died in August and September. Late in AugustWingfield said, "Sickness had not now left us seven able men in ourtown." "As yet," writes Smith in September, "we had no houses tocover us, our tents were rotten, and our cabins worse than nought."

Percy gives a doleful picture of the wretchedness of the colony: "Ourmen were destroyed with cruel sickness, as swellings, fluxes,burning-fevers, and by wars, and some departed suddenly, but for themost part they died of mere famine…. We watched every three nights,lying on the cold bare ground what weather soever came, worked allthe next day, which brought our men to be most feeble wretches, ourfood was but a small can of barley, sod in water to five men a day,our drink but cold water taken out of the river, which was at theflood very salt, at a low tide full of shrimp and filth, which wasthe destruction of many of our men. Thus we lived for the space offive months in this miserable distress, but having five able men toman our bulwarks upon any occasion. If it had not pleased God to puta terror in the savage hearts, we had all perished by those wild andcruel Pagans, being in that weak state as we were: our men night andday groaning in every corner of the fort, most pitiful to hear. Ifthere were any conscience in men, it would make their hearts to bleedto hear the pitiful murmurings and outcries of our sick men, withoutrelief, every night and day, for the space of six weeks: somedeparting out of the world; many times three or four in a night; inthe morning their bodies trailed out of their cabins, like dogs, tobe buried. In this sort did I see the mortality of divers of ourpeople."

A severe loss to the colony was the death on the 22d of August ofCaptain Bartholomew Gosnold, one of the Council, a brave andadventurous mariner, and, says Wingfield, a "worthy and religiousgentleman." He was honorably buried, "having all the ordnance in thefort shot off with many volleys of small shot." If the Indians hadknown that those volleys signified the mortality of their comrades,the colony would no doubt have been cut off entirely. It is amelancholy picture, this disheartened and half-famished band of menquarreling among themselves; the occupation of the half-dozen ablemen was nursing the sick and digging graves. We anticipate here bysaying, on the authority of a contemporary manuscript in the StatePaper office, that when Captain Newport arrived with the first supplyin January, 1608, "he found the colony consisting of no more thanforty persons; of those, ten only able men."

After the death of Gosnold, Captain Kendall was deposed from theCouncil and put in prison for sowing discord between the Presidentand Council, says Wingfield; for heinous matters which were provedagainst him, says Percy; for "divers reasons," says Smith, whosympathized with his dislike of Wingfield. The colony was in verylow estate at this time, and was only saved from famine by theprovidential good-will of the Indians, who brought them corn halfripe, and presently meat and fruit in abundance.

On the 7th of September the chief Paspahegh gave a token of peace byreturning a white boy who had run away from camp, and other runawayswere returned by other chiefs, who reported that they had been wellused in their absence. By these returns Mr. Wingfield was convincedthat the Indians were not cannibals, as Smith believed.

On the 10th of September Mr. Wingfield was deposed from thepresidency and the Council, and Captain John Ratcliffe was electedPresident. Concerning the deposition there has been much dispute;but the accounts of it by Captain Smith and his friends, so longaccepted as the truth, must be modified by Mr. Wingfield's "Discourseof Virginia," more recently come to light, which is, in a sense, adefense of his conduct.

In his "True Relation" Captain Smith is content to say that "CaptainWingfield, having ordered the affairs in such sort that he was hatedof them all, in which respect he was with one accord deposed from thepresidency."

In the "General Historie" the charges against him, which we havealready quoted, are extended, and a new one is added, that is, apurpose of deserting the colony in the pinnace: "the rest seeing thePresident's projects to escape these miseries in our pinnace byflight (who all this time had neither felt want nor sickness), somoved our dead spirits we deposed him."

In the scarcity of food and the deplorable sickness and death, it wasinevitable that extreme dissatisfaction should be felt with theresponsible head. Wingfield was accused of keeping the best of thesupplies to himself. The commonalty may have believed this. Smithhimself must have known that the supplies were limited, but have beenwilling to take advantage of this charge to depose the President, whowas clearly in many ways incompetent for his trying position. Itappears by Mr. Wingfield's statement that the supply left with thecolony was very scant, a store that would only last thirteen weeksand a half, and prudence in the distribution of it, in theuncertainty of Newport's return, was a necessity. Whether Wingfieldused the delicacies himself is a question which cannot be settled.In his defense, in all we read of him, except that written by Smithand his friends, he seems to be a temperate and just man, littlequalified to control the bold spirits about him.

As early as July, "in his sickness time, the President did easilyfortell his own deposing from his command," so much did he differfrom the Council in the management of the colony. Under date ofSeptember 7th he says that the Council demanded a larger allowancefor themselves and for some of the sick, their favorites, which hedeclined to give without their warrants as councilors. CaptainMartin of the Council was till then ignorant that only store forthirteen and a half weeks was in the hands of the Cape Merchant, ortreasurer, who was at that time Mr. Thomas Studley. Upon arepresentation to the Council of the lowness of the stores, and thelength of time that must elapse before the harvest of grain, theydeclined to enlarge the allowance, and even ordered that every mealof fish or flesh should excuse the allowance of porridge. Mr.Wingfield goes on to say: "Nor was the common store of oyle, vinegar,sack, and aquavite all spent, saving two gallons of each: the sackreserved for the Communion table, the rest for such extremities asmight fall upon us, which the President had only made known toCaptain Gosnold; of which course he liked well. The vessels wear,therefore, boonged upp. When Mr. Gosnold was dead, the President didacquaint the rest of the Council with the said remnant; but, Lord,how they then longed for to supp up that little remnant: for they hadnow emptied all their own bottles, and all other that they couldsmell out."

Shortly after this the Council again importuned the President forsome better allowance for themselves and for the sick. He protestedhis impartiality, showed them that if the portions were distributedaccording to their request the colony would soon starve; he stilloffered to deliver what they pleased on their warrants, but would nothimself take the responsibility of distributing all the stores, andwhen he divined the reason of their impatience he besought them tobestow the presidency among themselves, and he would be content toobey as a private. Meantime the Indians were bringing in supplies ofcorn and meat, the men were so improved in health that thirty wereable to work, and provision for three weeks' bread was laid up.

Nevertheless, says Mr. Wingfield, the Council had fully plotted todepose him. Of the original seven there remained, besides Mr.Wingfield, only three in the Council. Newport was in England,Gosnold was dead, and Kendall deposed. Mr. Wingfield charged thatthe three—Ratcliffe, Smith, and Martin—forsook the instructions ofhis Majesty, and set up a Triumvirate. At any rate, Wingfield wasforcibly deposed from the Council on the 10th of September. If theobject had been merely to depose him, there was an easier way, forWingfield was ready to resign. But it appears, by subsequentproceedings, that they wished to fasten upon him the charge ofembezzlement, the responsibility of the sufferings of the colony, andto mulct him in fines. He was arrested, and confined on the pinnace.Mr. Ratcliffe was made President.

On the 11th of September Mr. Wingfield was brought before the Councilsitting as a court, and heard the charges against him. They were, asMr. Wingfield says, mostly frivolous trifles. According to hisreport they were these:

First, Mister President [Radcliffe] said that I had denied him apenny whitle, a chicken, a spoonful of beer, and served him with foulcorn; and with that pulled some grain out of a bag, showing it to thecompany.

Then starts up Mr. Smith and said that I had told him plainly how helied; and that I said, though we were equal here, yet if we were inEngland, he [I] would think scorn his man should be my companion.

Mr. Martin followed with: "He reported that I do slack the servicein the colony, and do nothing but tend my pot, spit, and oven; but hehath starved my son, and denied him a spoonful of beer. I havefriends in England shall be revenged on him, if ever he come inLondon."

Voluminous charges were read against Mr. Wingfield by Mr. Archer, whohad been made by the Council, Recorder of Virginia, the author,according to Wingfield, of three several mutinies, as "alwayshatching of some mutiny in my time."

Mr. Percy sent him word in his prison that witnesses were hired totestify against him by bribes of cakes and by threats. If Mr. Percy,who was a volunteer in this expedition, and a man of high character,did send this information, it shows that he sympathized with him, andthis is an important piece of testimony to his good character.

Wingfield saw no way of escape from the malice of his accusers, whosepurpose he suspected was to fine him fivefold for all the supplieswhose disposition he could not account for in writing: but he wasfinally allowed to appeal to the King for mercy, and recommitted tothe pinnace. In regard to the charge of embezzlement, Mr. Wingfieldadmitted that it was impossible to render a full account: he had nobill of items from the Cape Merchant when he received the stores, hehad used the stores for trade and gifts with the Indians; CaptainNewport had done the same in his expedition, without giving anymemorandum. Yet he averred that he never expended the value of thesepenny whittles [small pocket-knives] to his private use.

There was a mutinous and riotous spirit on shore, and the Councilprofessed to think Wingfield's life was in danger. He says: "In allthese disorders was Mr. Archer a ringleader." Meantime the Indianscontinued to bring in supplies, and the Council traded up and downthe river for corn, and for this energy Mr. Wingfield gives credit to"Mr. Smith especially," "which relieved the colony well." To thereport that was brought him that he was charged with starving thecolony, he replies with some natural heat and a little show ofpetulance, that may be taken as an evidence of weakness, as well asof sincerity, and exhibiting the undignified nature of all thissquabbling:

"I did alwaises give every man his allowance faithfully, both ofcorne, oyle, aquivite, etc., as was by the counsell proportioned:neyther was it bettered after my tyme, untill, towards th' end ofMarch, a bisket was allowed to every working man for his breakfast,by means of the provision brought us by Captn. Newport: as willappeare hereafter. It is further said, I did much banquit andryot. I never had but one squirrel roasted; whereof I gave partto Mr. Ratcliffe then sick: yet was that squirrel given me. I didnever heate a flesh pott but when the comon pott was so usedlikewise. Yet how often Mr. President's and the Counsellors' spittshave night and daye bene endaungered to break their backes-so, ladenwith swanns, geese, ducks, etc.! how many times their flesh pottshave swelled, many hungrie eies did behold, to their great longing:and what great theeves and theeving thear hath been in the comonstoare since my tyme, I doubt not but is already made knowne to hisMajesty's Councell for Virginia."

Poor Wingfield was not left at ease in his confinement. On the 17thhe was brought ashore to answer the charge of Jehu [John?] Robinsonthat he had with Robinson and others intended to run away with thepinnace to Newfoundland; and the charge by Mr. Smith that he hadaccused Smith of intending mutiny. To the first accuser the juryawarded one hundred pounds, and to the other two hundred poundsdamages, for slander. "Seeing their law so speedy and cheap," Mr.Wingfield thought he would try to recover a copper kettle he had lentMr. Crofts, worth half its weight in gold. But Crofts swore thatWingfield had given it to him, and he lost his kettle: "I told Mr.President I had not known the like law, and prayed they would be moresparing of law till we had more witt or wealthe." Another day theyobtained from Wingfield the key to his coffers, and took all hisaccounts, note-books, and "owne proper goods," which he could neverrecover. Thus was I made good prize on all sides.

During one of Smith's absences on the river President Ratcliffe didbeat James Read, the blacksmith. Wingfield says the Council werecontinually beating the men for their own pleasure. Read struckback.

For this he was condemned to be hanged; but "before he turned of thelather," he desired to speak privately with the President, andthereupon accused Mr. Kendall—who had been released from the pinnacewhen Wingfield was sent aboard—of mutiny. Read escaped. Kendallwas convicted of mutiny and shot to death. In arrest of judgment heobjected that the President had no authority to pronounce judgmentbecause his name was Sicklemore and not Ratcliffe. This was true,and Mr. Martin pronounced the sentence. In his "True Relation,"Smith agrees with this statement of the death of Kendall, and saysthat he was tried by a jury. It illustrates the general looseness ofthe "General Historie," written and compiled many years afterwards,that this transaction there appears as follows: "Wingfield andKendall being in disgrace, seeing all things at random in the absenceof Smith, the company's dislike of their President's weakness, andtheir small love to Martin's never-mending sickness, strengthenedthemselves with the sailors and other confederates to regain theirpower, control, and authority, or at least such meanes aboard thepinnace (being fitted to sail as Smith had appointed for trade) toalter her course and to goe for England. Smith unexpectedlyreturning had the plot discovered to him, much trouble he had toprevent it, till with store of sakre and musket-shot he forced themto stay or sink in the river, which action cost the life of CaptainKendall."

In a following sentence he says: "The President [Ratcliffe] andCaptain Archer not long after intended also to have abandoned thecountry, which project also was curbed and suppressed by Smith."Smith was always suppressing attempts at flight, according to his ownstory, unconfirmed by any other writers. He had before accusedPresident Wingfield of a design to escape in the pinnace.

Communications were evidently exchanged with Mr. Wingfield on thepinnace, and the President was evidently ill at ease about him. Oneday he was summoned ashore, but declined to go, and requested aninterview with ten gentlemen. To those who came off to him he saidthat he had determined to go to England to make known the weakness ofthe colony, that he could not live under the laws and usurpations ofthe Triumvirate; however, if the President and Mr. Archer would go,he was willing to stay and take his fortune with the colony, or hewould contribute one hundred pounds towards taking the colony home."They did like none of my proffers, but made divers shott at uss inthe pynnasse." Thereupon he went ashore and had a conference.

On the 10th of December Captain Smith departed on his famousexpedition up the Chickahominy, during which the alleged Pocahontasepisode occurred. Mr. Wingfield's condensed account of this journeyand captivity we shall refer to hereafter. In Smith's absencePresident Ratcliffe, contrary to his oath, swore Mr. Archer one ofthe Council; and Archer was no sooner settled in authority than hesought to take Smith's life. The enmity of this man must be regardedas a long credit mark to Smith. Archer had him indicted upon achapter in Leviticus (they all wore a garb of piety) for the death oftwo men who were killed by the Indians on his expedition. "He hadhad his trials the same daie of his retourne," says Wingfield, "and Ibelieve his hanging the same, or the next daie, so speedy is our lawthere. But it pleased God to send Captain Newport unto us the sameevening, to our unspeakable comfort; whose arrivall saved Mr. Smyth'sleif and mine, because he took me out of the pynnasse, and gave meleave to lyve in the towne. Also by his comyng was prevented aparliament, which the newe counsailor, Mr. Recorder, intended thearto summon."

Captain Newport's arrival was indeed opportune. He was the only oneof the Council whose character and authority seem to have beengenerally respected, the only one who could restore any sort ofharmony and curb the factious humors of the other leaders. Smithshould have all credit for his energy in procuring supplies, for hissagacity in dealing with the Indians, for better sense than most ofthe other colonists exhibited, and for more fidelity to the objectsof the plantation than most of them; but where ability to rule isclaimed for him, at this juncture we can but contrast the deferenceshown by all to Newport with the want of it given to Smith.Newport's presence at once quelled all the uneasy spirits.

Newport's arrival, says Wingfield, "saved Mr Smith's life and mine."Smith's account of the episode is substantially the same. In his"True Relation" he says on his return to the fort "each man withtruest signs of joy they could express welcomed me, except Mr.Archer, and some two or three of his, who was then in my absencesworn councilor, though not with the consent of Captain Martin; greatblame and imputation was laid upon me by them for the loss of our twomen which the Indians slew: insomuch that they purposed to depose me,but in the midst of my miseries, it pleased God to send CaptainNewport, who arriving there the same night, so tripled our joy, asfor a while those plots against me were deferred, though with muchmalice against me, which Captain Newport in short time did plainlysee." In his "Map of Virginia," the Oxford tract of 1612, Smith doesnot allude to this; but in the "General Historie" it had assumed adifferent aspect in his mind, for at the time of writing that he wasthe irresistible hero, and remembered himself as always nearlyomnipotent in Virginia. Therefore, instead of expressions ofgratitude to Newport we read this: "Now in Jamestown they were all incombustion, the strongest preparing once more to run away with thepinnace; which with the hazard of his life, with Sakre, falcon andmusket shot, Smith forced now the third time to stay or sink. Someno better than they should be, had plotted to put him to death by theLevitical law, for the lives of Robinson and Emry, pretending thatthe fault was his, that led them to their ends; but he quickly tooksuch order with such Lawyers, that he laid them by the heels till hesent some of them prisoners to England."

Clearly Captain Smith had no authority to send anybody prisoner toEngland. When Newport returned, April 10th, Wingfield and Archerwent with him. Wingfield no doubt desired to return. Archer was soinsolent, seditious, and libelous that he only escaped the halter bythe interposition of Newport. The colony was willing to spare boththese men, and probably Newport it was who decided they should go.As one of the Council, Smith would undoubtedly favor their going. Hesays in the "General Historie": "We not having any use ofparliaments, plaises, petitions, admirals, recorders, interpreters,chronologers, courts of plea, or justices of peace, sent MasterWingfield and Captain Archer home with him, that had engrossed allthose titles, to seek some better place of employment." Mr.Wingfield never returned. Captain Archer returned in 1609, with theexpedition of Gates and Somers, as master of one of the ships.

Newport had arrived with the first supply on the 8th of January,1608. The day before, according to Wingfield, a fire occurred whichdestroyed nearly all the town, with the clothing and provisions.According to Smith, who is probably correct in this, the fire did notoccur till five or six days after the arrival of the ship. The dateis uncertain, and some doubt is also thrown upon the date of thearrival of the ship. It was on the day of Smith's return fromcaptivity: and that captivity lasted about four weeks if the returnwas January 8th, for he started on the expedition December 10th.Smith subsequently speaks of his captivity lasting six or sevenweeks.

In his "General Historie" Smith says the fire happened after thereturn of the expedition of Newport, Smith, and Scrivener to thePamunkey: "Good Master Hunt, our Preacher, lost all his library, andall he had but the clothes on his back; yet none ever heard himrepine at his loss." This excellent and devoted man is the only oneof these first pioneers of whom everybody speaks well, and hedeserved all affection and respect.

One of the first labors of Newport was to erect a suitable church.
Services had been held under many disadvantages, which Smith depicts
in his "Advertisem*nts for Unexperienced Planters," published in
London in 1631:

"When I first went to Virginia, I well remember, we did hang anawning (which is an old saile) to three or foure trees to shadow usfrom the Sunne, our walls were rales of wood, our seats unhewedtrees, till we cut plankes, our Pulpit a bar of wood nailed to twoneighboring trees, in foule weather we shifted into an old rottentent, for we had few better, and this came by the way of adventurefor me; this was our Church, till we built a homely thing like abarne, set upon Cratchets, covered with rafts, sedge and earth, sowas also the walls: the best of our houses of the like curiosity, butthe most part farre much worse workmanship, that could neither welldefend wind nor raine, yet we had daily Common Prayer morning andevening, every day two Sermons, and every three moneths the holyCommunion, till our Minister died, [Robert Hunt] but our Prayersdaily, with an Homily on Sundaies."

It is due to Mr. Wingfield, who is about to disappear from Virginia,that something more in his defense against the charges of Smith andthe others should be given. It is not possible now to say how thesuspicion of his religious soundness arose, but there seems to havebeen a notion that he had papal tendencies. His grandfather, SirRichard Wingfield, was buried in Toledo, Spain. His father, ThomasMaria Wingfield, was christened by Queen Mary and Cardinal Pole.These facts perhaps gave rise to the suspicion. He answers them withsome dignity and simplicity, and with a little querulousness:

"It is noised that I combyned with the Spanniards to the distruccionof the Collony; that I ame an atheist, because I carryed not a Biblewith me, and because I did forbid the preacher to preache; that Iaffected a kingdome; that I did hide of the comon provision in theground.

"I confesse I have alwayes admyred any noble vertue and prowesse, aswell in the Spanniards (as in other nations): but naturally I havealwayes distrusted and disliked their neighborhoode. I sorted manybookes in my house, to be sent up to me at my goeing to Virginia;amongst them a Bible. They were sent up in a trunk to London, withdivers fruite, conserves, and preserves, which I did sett in Mr.Crofts his house in Ratcliff. In my beeing at Virginia, I didunderstand my trunk was thear broken up, much lost, my sweetmeateseaten at his table, some of my bookes which I missed to be seene inhis hands: and whether amongst them my Bible was so ymbeasiled ormislayed by my servants, and not sent me, I knowe not as yet.

"Two or three Sunday mornings, the Indians gave us allarums at ourtowne. By that tymes they weare answered, the place about us welldiscovered, and our devyne service ended, the daie was farr spent.The preacher did aske me if it were my pleasure to have a sermon: heesaid hee was prepared for it. I made answere, that our men wereweary and hungry, and that he did see the time of the daie farr past(for at other tymes bee never made such question, but, the servicefinished he began his sermon); and that, if it pleased him, wee wouldspare him till some other tyme. I never failed to take such noatesby wrighting out of his doctrine as my capacity could comprehend,unless some raynie day hindred my endeavor. My mynde never swelledwith such ympossible mountebank humors as could make me affect anyother kingdome than the kingdom of heaven.

"As truly as God liveth, I gave an ould man, then the keeper of theprivate store, 2 glasses with sallet oyle which I brought with me outof England for my private stoare, and willed him to bury it in theground, for that I feared the great heate would spoile it.Whatsoever was more, I did never consent unto or know of it, and astruly was it protested unto me, that all the remaynder beforemencioned of the oyle, wyne, &c., which the President receyved of mewhen I was deposed they themselves poored into their owne bellyes.

"To the President's and Counsell's objections I saie that I doe knowecurtesey and civility became a governor. No penny whittle was askedme, but a knife, whereof I have none to spare The Indyans had longbefore stoallen my knife. Of chickins I never did eat but one, andthat in my sicknes. Mr. Ratcliff had before that time tasted Of 4 or5. I had by my owne huswiferie bred above 37, and the most part ofthem my owne poultrye; of all which, at my comyng awaie, I did notsee three living. I never denyed him (or any other) beare, when Ihad it. The corne was of the same which we all lived upon.

"Mr. Smyth, in the time of our hungar, had spread a rumor in theCollony, that I did feast myself and my servants out of the comonstoare, with entent (as I gathered) to have stirred the discontentedcompany against me. I told him privately, in Mr. Gosnold's tent,that indeede I had caused half a pint of pease to be sodden with apeese of pork, of my own provision, for a poore old man, which in asicknes (whereof he died) he much desired; and said, that if out ofhis malice he had given it out otherwise, that hee did tell a leye.It was proved to his face, that he begged in Ireland like a rogue,without a lycence. To such I would not my nam should be acompanyon."

The explanation about the Bible as a part of his baggage is a littlefar-fetched, and it is evident that that book was not his dailycompanion. Whether John Smith habitually carried one about with himwe are not informed. The whole passage quoted gives us a curiouspicture of the mind and of the habits of the time. This allusion toJohn Smith's begging is the only reference we can find to his havingbeen in Ireland. If he was there it must have been in that interimin his own narrative between his return from Morocco and his going toVirginia. He was likely enough to seek adventure there, as thehangers-on of the court in Raleigh's day occasionally did, andperhaps nothing occurred during his visit there that he cared tocelebrate. If he went to Ireland he probably got in straits there,for that was his usual luck.

Whatever is the truth about Mr. Wingfield's inefficiency andembezzlement of corn meal, Communion sack, and penny whittles, hisenemies had no respect for each other or concord among themselves.It is Wingfield's testimony that Ratcliffe said he would not havebeen deposed if he had visited Ratcliffe during his sickness. Smithsaid that Wingfield would not have been deposed except for Archer;that the charges against him were frivolous. Yet, says Wingfield, "Ido believe him the first and only practiser in these practices," andhe attributed Smith's hostility to the fact that "his name wasmentioned in the intended and confessed mutiny by Galthrop." Nootherreference is made to this mutiny. Galthrop was one of those who diedin the previous August.

One of the best re-enforcements of the first supply was MatthewScrivener, who was appointed one of the Council. He was a sensibleman, and he and Smith worked together in harmony for some time. Theywere intent upon building up the colony. Everybody else in the campwas crazy about the prospect of gold: there was, says Smith, "notalk, no hope, no work, but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, loadgold, such a bruit of gold that one mad fellow desired to be buriedin the sands, lest they should by their art make gold of his bones."He charges that Newport delayed his return to England on account ofthis gold fever, in order to load his vessel (which remained fourteenweeks when it might have sailed in fourteen days) with gold-dust.Captain Martin seconded Newport in this; Smith protested against it;he thought Newport was no refiner, and it did torment him "to see allnecessary business neglected, to fraught such a drunken ship with somuch gilded durt." This was the famous load of gold that proved tobe iron pyrites.

In speaking of the exploration of the James River as far as the Fallsby Newport, Smith, and Percy, we have followed the statements ofPercy and the writer of Newport's discovery that they saw the greatPowhatan. There is much doubt of this. Smith in his "True Relation"does not say so; in his voyage up the Chickahominy he seems to haveseen Powhatan for the first time; and Wingfield speaks of Powhatan,on Smith's return from that voyage, as one "of whom before we had noknowledge." It is conjectured that the one seen at Powhatan's seatnear the Falls was a son of the "Emperor." It was partly theexaggeration of the times to magnify discoveries, and partly Englishlove of high titles, that attributed such titles as princes,emperors, and kings to the half-naked barbarians and petty chiefs ofVirginia.

In all the accounts of the colony at this period, no mention is madeof women, and it is not probable that any went over with the firstcolonists. The character of the men was not high. Many of them were"gentlemen" adventurers, turbulent spirits, who would not work, whowere much better fitted for piratical maraudings than the labor offounding a state. The historian must agree with the impressionconveyed by Smith, that it was poor material out of which to make acolony.

VII

SMITH TO THE FRONT

It is now time to turn to Smith's personal adventures among theIndians during this period. Almost our only authority is Smithhimself, or such presumed writings of his companions as he edited orrewrote. Strachey and others testify to his energy in procuringsupplies for the colony, and his success in dealing with the Indians,and it seems likely that the colony would have famished but for hisexertions. Whatever suspicion attaches to Smith's relation of hisown exploits, it must never be forgotten that he was a man ofextraordinary executive ability, and had many good qualities tooffset his vanity and impatience of restraint.

After the departure of Wingfield, Captain Smith was constrained toact as Cape Merchant; the leaders were sick or discontented, the restwere in despair, and would rather starve and rot than do anything fortheir own relief, and the Indian trade was decreasing. Under thesecirc*mstances, Smith says in his "True Relation," "I was sent to themouth of the river, to Kegquoughtan [now Hampton], an Indian Towne,to trade for corn, and try the river for fish." The Indians,thinking them near famished, tantalized them with offers of littlebits of bread in exchange for a hatchet or a piece of copper, andSmith offered trifles in return. The next day the Indians wereanxious to trade. Smith sent men up to their town, a display offorce was made by firing four guns, and the Indians kindly traded,giving fish, oysters, bread, and deer. The town contained eighteenhouses, and heaps of grain. Smith obtained fifteen bushels of it,and on his homeward way he met two canoes with Indians, whom heaccompanied to their villages on the south side of the river, and gotfrom them fifteen bushels more.

This incident is expanded in the "General Historie." After the lapseof fifteen years Smith is able to remember more details, and toconceive himself as the one efficient man who had charge ofeverything outside the fort, and to represent his dealings with theIndians in a much more heroic and summary manner. He was not sent onthe expedition, but went of his own motion. The account opens inthis way: "The new President [Ratcliffe] and Martin, being littlebeloved, of weake judgement in dangers, and loose industrie in peace,committed the management of all things abroad to Captain Smith; whoby his own example, good words, and fair promises, set some to mow,others to binde thatch, some to builde houses, others to thatch them,himselfe always bearing the greatest taske for his own share, so thatin short time he provided most of them with lodgings, neglecting anyfor himselfe. This done, seeing the Salvage superfluities beginne todecrease (with some of his workmen) shipped himself in the Shallop tosearch the country for trade."

In this narration, when the Indians trifled with Smith he fired avolley at them, ran his boat ashore, and pursued them fleeing towardstheir village, where were great heaps of corn that he could withdifficulty restrain his soldiers [six or seven] from taking. TheIndians then assaulted them with a hideous noise: "Sixty or seventyof them, some black, some red, some white, some particoloured, camein a square order, singing and dancing out of the woods, with theirOkee (which is an Idol made of skinnes, stuffed with mosse, andpainted and hung with chains and copper) borne before them; and inthis manner being well armed with clubs, targets, bowes and arrowes,they charged the English that so kindly received them with theirmuskets loaden with pistol shot, that down fell their God, and diverslay sprawling on the ground; the rest fled againe to the woods, andere long sent men of their Quiyoughkasoucks [conjurors] to offerpeace and redeeme the Okee." Good feeling was restored, and thesavages brought the English "venison, turkies, wild fowl, bread allthat they had, singing and dancing in sign of friendship till theydeparted." This fantastical account is much more readable than theformer bare narration.

The supplies which Smith brought gave great comfort to the despairingcolony, which was by this time reasonably fitted with houses. But itwas not long before they again ran short of food. In his firstnarrative Smith says there were some motions made for the Presidentand Captain Arthur to go over to England and procure a supply, but itwas with much ado concluded that the pinnace and the barge should goup the river to Powhatan to trade for corn, and the lot fell to Smithto command the expedition. In his "General Historie" a littledifferent complexion is put upon this. On his return, Smith says, hesuppressed an attempt to run away with the pinnace to England. Herepresents that what food "he carefully provided the rest carelesslyspent," and there is probably much truth in his charges that thesettlers were idle and improvident. He says also that they were incontinual broils at this time. It is in the fall of 1607, justbefore his famous voyage up the Chickahominy, on which he departedDecember 10th—that he writes: "The President and Captain Arthurintended not long after to have abandoned the country, which projectwas curbed and suppressed by Smith. The Spaniard never more greedilydesired gold than he victual, nor his soldiers more to abandon thecountry than he to keep it. But finding plenty of corn in the riverof Chickahomania, where hundreds of salvages in divers places stoodwith baskets expecting his coming, and now the winter approaching,the rivers became covered with swans, geese, ducks, and cranes, thatwe daily feasted with good bread, Virginia peas, pumpions, andputchamins, fish, fowls, and divers sorts of wild beasts as fat as wecould eat them, so that none of our Tuftaffaty humorists desired togo to England."

While the Chickahominy expedition was preparing, Smith made a voyageto Popohanock or Quiyoughcohanock, as it is called on his map, a townon the south side of the river, above Jamestown. Here the women andchildren fled from their homes and the natives refused to trade.They had plenty of corn, but Smith says he had no commission to spoilthem. On his return he called at Paspahegh, a town on the north sideof the James, and on the map placed higher than Popohanock, butevidently nearer to Jamestown, as he visited it on his return. Heobtained ten bushels of corn of the churlish and treacherous natives,who closely watched and dogged the expedition.

Everything was now ready for the journey to Powhatan. Smith had thebarge and eight men for trading and discovery, and the pinnace was tofollow to take the supplies at convenient landings. On the 9th ofNovember he set out in the barge to explore the Chickahominy, whichis described as emptying into the James at Paspahegh, eight milesabove the fort. The pinnace was to ascend the river twenty miles toPoint Weanock, and to await Smith there. All the month of NovemberSmith toiled up and down the Chickahominy, discovering and visitingmany villages, finding the natives kindly disposed and eager totrade, and possessing abundance of corn. Notwithstanding thisabundance, many were still mutinous. At this time occurred thePresident's quarrel with the blacksmith, who, for assaulting thePresident, was condemned to death, and released on disclosing aconspiracy of which Captain Kendall was principal; and the latter wasexecuted in his place. Smith returned from a third voyage to theChickahominy with more supplies, only to find the matter of sendingthe pinnace to England still debated.

This project, by the help of Captain Martin, he again quieted and atlast set forward on his famous voyage into the country of Powhatanand Pocahontas.

VIII

THE FAMOUS CHICKAHOMINY VOYAGE

We now enter upon the most interesting episode in the life of thegallant captain, more thrilling and not less romantic than thecaptivity in Turkey and the tale of the faithful love of the fairyoung mistress Charatza Tragabigzanda.

Although the conduct of the lovely Charatza in despatching Smith toher cruel brother in Nalbrits, where he led the life of a dog, wasnever explained, he never lost faith in her. His loyalty to womenwas equal to his admiration of them, and it was bestowed withoutregard to race or complexion. Nor is there any evidence that thedusky Pocahontas, who is about to appear, displaced in his heart theimage of the too partial Tragabigzanda. In regard to women, as tohis own exploits, seen in the light of memory, Smith possessed acreative imagination. He did not create Pocahontas, as perhaps hemay have created the beautiful mistress of Bashaw Bogall, but heinvested her with a romantic interest which forms a lovely halo abouthis own memory.

As this voyage up the Chickahominy is more fruitful in itsconsequences than Jason's voyage to Colchis; as it exhibits theenergy, daring, invention, and various accomplishments of CaptainSmith, as warrior, negotiator, poet, and narrator; as it describesSmith's first and only captivity among the Indians; and as it wasduring this absence of four weeks from Jamestown, if ever, thatPocahontas interposed to prevent the beating out of Smith's brainswith a club, I shall insert the account of it in full, both Smith'sown varying relations of it, and such contemporary notices of it asnow come to light. It is necessary here to present several accounts,just as they stand, and in the order in which they were written, thatthe reader may see for himself how the story of Pocahontas grew toits final proportions. The real life of Pocahontas will form thesubject of another chapter.

The first of these accounts is taken from "The True Relation,"written by Captain John Smith, composed in Virginia, the earliestpublished work relating to the James River Colony. It covers aperiod of a little more than thirteen months, from the arrival atCape Henry on April 26, 1607, to the return of Captain Nelson in thePhoenix, June 2, 1608. The manuscript was probably taken home byCaptain Nelson, and it was published in London in 1608. Whether itwas intended for publication is doubtful; but at that time all newsof the venture in Virginia was eagerly sought, and a narrative ofthis importance would naturally speedily get into print.

In the several copies of it extant there are variations in thetitlepage, which was changed while the edition was being printed.In some the name of Thomas Watson is given as the author, in others"A Gentleman of the Colony," and an apology appears signed "T. H.,"for the want of knowledge or inadvertence of attributing it to anyone except Captain Smith.

There is no doubt that Smith was its author. He was still inVirginia when it was printed, and the printers made sad work of partsof his manuscript. The question has been raised, in view of theentire omission of the name of Pocahontas in connection with thisvoyage and captivity, whether the manuscript was not cut by those whopublished it. The reason given for excision is that the promoters ofthe Virginia scheme were anxious that nothing should appear todiscourage capitalists, or to deter emigrants, and that this story ofthe hostility and cruelty of Powhatan, only averted by the tendermercy of his daughter, would have an unfortunate effect. The answerto this is that the hostility was exhibited by the captivity and theintimation that Smith was being fatted to be eaten, and this waspermitted to stand. It is wholly improbable that an incident soromantic, so appealing to the imagination, in an age whenwonder-tales were eagerly welcomed, and which exhibited such tenderpity in the breast of a savage maiden, and such paternal clemency in asavage chief, would have been omitted. It was calculated to lend alively interest to the narration, and would be invaluable as anadvertisem*nt of the adventure.

[For a full bibliographical discussion of this point the reader isreferred to the reprint of "The True Relation," by Charles Deane,Esq., Boston, 1864, the preface and notes to which are a masterpieceof critical analysis.]

That some portions of "The True Relation" were omitted is possible.There is internal evidence of this in the abrupt manner in which itopens, and in the absence of allusions to the discords during thevoyage and on the arrival. Captain Smith was not the man to passover such questions in silence, as his subsequent caustic letter senthome to the Governor and Council of Virginia shows. And it isprobable enough that the London promoters would cut out from the"Relation" complaints and evidence of the seditions and helplessstate of the colony. The narration of the captivity is consistent asit stands, and wholly inconsistent with the Pocahontas episode.

We extract from the narrative after Smith's departure from Apocant,the highest town inhabited, between thirty and forty miles up theriver, and below Orapaks, one of Powhatan's seats, which also appearson his map. He writes:

"Ten miles higher I discovered with the barge; in the midway a greattree hindered my passage, which I cut in two: heere the river becamenarrower, 8, 9 or 10 foote at a high water, and 6 or 7 at a lowe: thestream exceeding swift, and the bottom hard channell, the ground mostpart a low plaine, sandy soyle, this occasioned me to suppose itmight issue from some lake or some broad ford, for it could not befar to the head, but rather then I would endanger the barge, yet tohave beene able to resolve this doubt, and to discharge theimputating malicious tungs, that halfe suspected I durst not for solong delaying, some of the company, as desirous as myself, weresolved to hier a canow, and returne with the barge to Apocant,there to leave the barge secure, and put ourselves upon theadventure: the country onely a vast and wilde wilderness, and butonly that Towne: within three or foure mile we hired a canow, and 2Indians to row us ye next day a fowling: having made such provisionfor the barge as was needfull, I left her there to ride, withexpresse charge not any to go ashore til my returne. Though somewise men may condemn this too bould attempt of too much indiscretion,yet if they well consider the friendship of the Indians, inconducting me, the desolatenes of the country, the probabilitie ofsome lacke, and the malicious judges of my actions at home, as alsoto have some matters of worth to incourage our adventurers inengland, might well have caused any honest minde to have done thelike, as wel for his own discharge as for the publike good: having 2Indians for my guide and 2 of our own company, I set forward, leaving7 in the barge; having discovered 20 miles further in this desart,the river stil kept his depth and bredth, but much more combred withtrees; here we went ashore (being some 12 miles higher than ye bargehad bene) to refresh our selves, during the boyling of our vituals:one of the Indians I tooke with me, to see the nature of the soile,and to cross the boughts of the river, the other Indian I left withM. Robbinson and Thomas Emry, with their matches light and order todischarge a peece, for my retreat at the first sight of any Indian,but within a quarter of an houre I heard a loud cry, and a hollowingof Indians, but no warning peece, supposing them surprised, and thatthe Indians had betraid us, presently I seazed him and bound his armefast to my hand in a garter, with my pistoll ready bent to berevenged on him: he advised me to fly and seemed ignorant of what wasdone, but as we went discoursing, I was struck with an arrow on theright thigh, but without harme: upon this occasion I espied 2 Indiansdrawing their bowes, which I prevented in discharging a frenchpistoll: by that I had charged again 3 or 4 more did the 'like, forthe first fell downe and fled: at my discharge they did the like, myhinde I made my barricade, who offered not to strive, 20 or 30arrowes were shot at me but short, 3 or 4 times I had discharged mypistoll ere the king of Pamauck called Opeckakenough with 200 men,environed me, each drawing their bowe, which done they laid them uponthe ground, yet without shot, my hinde treated betwixt them and me ofconditions of peace, he discovered me to be the captaine, my requestwas to retire to ye boate, they demanded my armes, the rest theysaide were slaine, onely me they would reserve: the Indian importunedme not to shoot. In retiring being in the midst of a low quagmire,and minding them more than my steps, I stept fast into the quagmire,and also the Indian in drawing me forth: thus surprised, I resolvedto trie their mercies, my armes I caste from me, till which nonedurst approch me: being ceazed on me, they drew me out and led me tothe King, I presented him with a compasse diall, describing by mybest meanes the use thereof, whereat he so amazedly admired, as hesuffered me to proceed in a discourse of the roundnes of the earth,the course of the sunne, moone, starres and plannets, with kindespeeches and bread he requited me, conducting me where the canow layand John Robinson slaine, with 20 or 30 arrowes in him. Emry I sawnot, I perceived by the abundance of fires all over the woods, ateach place I expected when they would execute me, yet they used mewith what kindnes they could: approaching their Towne which waswithin 6 miles where I was taken, onely made as arbors and coveredwith mats, which they remove as occasion requires: all the women andchildren, being advertised of this accident came forth to meet, theKing well guarded with 20 bow men 5 flanck and rear and each flanckbefore him a sword and a peece, and after him the like, then abowman, then I on each hand a boweman, the rest in file in the reare,which reare led forth amongst the trees in a bishion, eache his boweand a handfull of arrowes, a quiver at his back grimly painted: oneache flanck a sargeant, the one running alwaiss towards the frontthe other towards the reare, each a true pace and in exceeding goodorder, this being a good time continued, they caste themselves in aring with a daunce, and so eache man departed to his lodging, thecaptain conducting me to his lodging, a quarter of Venison and someten pound of bread I had for supper, what I left was reserved for me,and sent with me to my lodging: each morning three women presented methree great platters of fine bread, more venison than ten men coulddevour I had, my gowne, points and garters, my compas and a tabletthey gave me again, though 8 ordinarily guarded me, I wanted not whatthey could devise to content me: and still our longer acquaintanceincreased our better affection: much they threatened to assault ourforte as they were solicited by the King of Paspahegh, who shewed atour fort great signs of sorrow for this mischance: the King tookgreat delight in understanding the manner of our ships and saylingthe seas, the earth and skies and of our God: what he knew of thedominions he spared not to acquaint me with, as of certaine mencloathed at a place called Ocanahonun, cloathed like me, the courseof our river, and that within 4 or 5 daies journey of the falles, wasa great turning of salt water: I desired he would send a messenger toPaspahegh, with a letter I would write, by which they shouldunderstand, how kindly they used me, and that I was well, lest theyshould revenge my death; this he granted and sent three men, in suchweather, as in reason were unpossible, by any naked to be indured:their cruell mindes towards the fort I had deverted, in describingthe ordinance and the mines in the fields, as also the revengeCaptain Newport would take of them at his returne, their intent, Iincerted the fort, the people of Ocanahomm and the back sea, thisreport they after found divers Indians that confirmed: the next dayafter my letter, came a salvage to my lodging, with his sword to haveslaine me, but being by my guard intercepted, with a bowe and arrowhe offred to have effected his purpose: the cause I knew not, tillthe King understanding thereof came and told me of a man a dyingwounded with my pistoll: he tould me also of another I had slayne,yet the most concealed they had any hurte: this was the father of himI had slayne, whose fury to prevent, the King presently conducted meto another kingdome, upon the top of the next northerly river, calledYoughtanan, having feasted me, he further led me to another branch ofthe river called Mattapament, to two other hunting townes they ledme, and to each of these Countries, a house of the great Emperor ofPewhakan, whom as yet I supposed to be at the Fals, to him I toldehim I must goe, and so returne to Paspahegh, after this foure or fivedayes march we returned to Rasawrack, the first towne they brought metoo, where binding the mats in bundles, they marched two dayesjourney and crossed the River of Youghtanan, where it was as broad asThames: so conducting me too a place called Menapacute in Pamunke,where ye King inhabited; the next day another King of that nationcalled Kekataugh, having received some kindness of me at the Fort,kindly invited me to feast at his house, the people from all placesflocked to see me, each shewing to content me. By this the greatKing hath foure or five houses, each containing fourscore or anhundred foote in length, pleasantly seated upon an high sandy hill,from whence you may see westerly a goodly low country, the riverbefore the which his crooked course causeth many great Marshes ofexceeding good ground. An hundred houses, and many large plaines arehere together inhabited, more abundance of fish and fowle, and apleasanter seat cannot be imagined: the King with fortie bowmen toguard me, intreated me to discharge my Pistoll, which they therepresented me with a mark at six score to strike therewith but tospoil the practice I broke the co*cke, whereat they were muchdiscontented though a chaunce supposed. From hence this kind Kingconducted me to a place called Topahanocke, a kingdome upon anotherriver northward; the cause of this was, that the yeare before, ashippe had beene in the River of Pamunke, who having been kindlyentertained by Powhatan their Emperour, they returned thence, anddiscovered the River of Topahanocke, where being received with likekindnesse, yet he slue the King, and tooke of his people, and theysupposed I were bee, but the people reported him a great man that wasCaptaine, and using mee kindly, the next day we departed. This Riverof Topahanock, seemeth in breadth not much lesse than that we dwellupon. At the mouth of the River is a Countrey called Cuttata women,upwards is Marraugh tacum Tapohanock, Apparnatuck, and Nantaugstacum, at Topmanahocks, the head issuing from many Mountains, thenext night I lodged at a hunting town of Powhatam's, and the next dayarrived at Waranacomoco upon the river of Parnauncke, where the greatking is resident: by the way we passed by the top of another littleriver, which is betwixt the two called Payankatank. The most of thiscountry though Desert, yet exceeding fertil, good timber, most hilsand in dales, in each valley a cristall spring.

"Arriving at Weramacomoco, their Emperour, proudly lying upon aBedstead a foote high upon tenne or twelve Mattes, richly hung withmanie Chaynes of great Pearles about his necke, and covered with agreat covering of Rahaughc*ms: At heade sat a woman, at his feeteanother, on each side sitting upon a Matte upon the ground wereraunged his chiefe men on each side the fire, tenne in a ranke andbehinde them as many yong women, each a great Chaine of white Beadesover their shoulders: their heades painted in redde and with such agrave and Majeslicall countenance, as drove me into admiration to seesuch state in a naked Salvage, bee kindlv welcomed me with goodwordes, and great Platters of sundrie victuals, asiuring mee hisfriendship and my libertie within foure dayes, bee much delighted inOpechan Conough's relation of what I had described to him, and oftexamined me upon the same. Hee asked me the cause of our comming, Itolde him being in fight with the Spaniards our enemie, being overpowred, neare put to retreat, and by extreme weather put to thisshore, where landing at Chesipiack, the people shot us, but atKequoughtan they kindly used us, wee by signes demaunded fresh water,they described us up the River was all fresh water, at Paspahegh,also they kindly used us, our Pinnasse being leake wee were inforcedto stay to mend her, till Captain Newport my father came to conductus away. He demaunded why we went further with our Boate, I toldehim, in that I would have occasion to talke of the backe Sea, that onthe other side the maine, where was salt water, my father had achilde slaine, which we supposed Monocan his enemie, whose death weintended to revenge. After good deliberation, hee began to describeme the countreys beyond the Falles, with many of the rest, confirmingwhat not only Opechancanoyes, and an Indian which had been prisonerto Pewhatan had before tolde mee, but some called it five days, somesixe, some eight, where the sayde water dashed amongst many stonesand rocks, each storme which caused oft tymes the heade of the Riverto bee brackish: Anchanachuck he described to bee the people that hadslaine my brother, whose death hee would revenge. Hee described alsoupon the same Sea, a mighty nation called Pocoughtronack, a fiercenation that did eate men and warred with the people of Moyaoncer, andPataromerke, Nations upon the toppe of the heade of the Bay, underhis territories, where the yeare before they had slain an hundred, hesignified their crownes were shaven, long haire in the necke, tied ona knot, Swords like Pollaxes.

"Beyond them he described people with short Coates, and Sleeves tothe Elbowes, that passed that way in Shippes like ours. ManyKingdomes hee described mee to the heade of the Bay, which seemed tobee a mightie River, issuing from mightie mountaines, betwixt the twoseas; the people clothed at Ocamahowan. He also confirmed, and theSoutherly Countries also, as the rest, that reported us to be withina day and a halfe of Mangoge, two dayes of Chawwonock, 6 fromRoonock, to the South part of the backe sea: he described a countriecalled Anone, where they have abundance of Brasse, and houses walledas ours. I requited his discourse, seeing what pride he had in hisgreat and spacious Dominions, seeing that all hee knewe were underhis Territories.

"In describing to him the territories of Europe which was subject toour great King whose subject I was, the innumerable multitude of hisships, I gave him to understand the noyse of Trumpets and terriblemanner of fighting were under Captain Newport my father, whom Iintituled the Meworames which they call King of all the waters, athis greatnesse bee admired and not a little feared; he desired mee toforsake Paspahegh, and to live with him upon his River, a countriecalled Capa Howasicke; he promised to give me corne, venison, or whatI wanted to feede us, Hatchets and Copper wee should make him, andnone should disturbe us. This request I promised to performe: andthus having with all the kindnes hee could devise, sought to contentme, he sent me home with 4 men, one that usually carried my Gonne andKnapsacke after me, two other loded with bread, and one to accompanieme."

The next extract in regard to this voyage is from PresidentWingfield's "Discourse of Virginia," which appears partly in the formof a diary, but was probably drawn up or at least finished shortlyafter Wingfield's return to London in May, 1608. He was in Jamestownwhen Smith returned from his captivity, and would be likely to alludeto the romantic story of Pocahontas if Smith had told it on hisescape. We quote:

"Decem.—The 10th of December, Mr. Smyth went up the ryver of theChechohomynies to trade for corne; he was desirous to see the headeof that river; and, when it was not passible with the shallop, hehired a cannow and an Indian to carry him up further. The river thehigher grew worse and worse. Then hee went on shoare with his guide,and left Robinson and Emmery, and twoe of our Men, in the cannow;which were presently slayne by the Indians, Pamaonke's men, and heehimself taken prysoner, and, by the means of his guide, his lief wassaved; and Pamaonche, haveing him prisoner, carryed him to hisneybors wyroances, to see if any of them knew him for one of thosewhich had bene, some two or three eeres before us, in a river amongstthem Northward, and taken awaie some Indians from them by force. Atlast he brought him to the great Powaton (of whome before wee had noknowledg), who sent him home to our towne the 8th of January."

The next contemporary document to which we have occasion to refer isSmith's Letter to the Treasurer and Council of Virginia in England,written in Virginia after the arrival of Newport there in September,1608, and probably sent home by him near the close of that year. Inthis there is no occasion for a reference to Powhatan or hisdaughter, but he says in it: "I have sent you this Mappe of the Bayand Rivers, with an annexed Relation of the Countryes and Nationsthat inhabit them as you may see at large." This is doubtless the"Map of Virginia," with a description of the country, published sometwo or three years after Smith's return to England, at Oxford, 1612.It is a description of the country and people, and contains littlenarrative. But with this was published, as an appendix, an accountof the proceedings of the Virginia colonists from 1606 to 1612, takenout of the writings of Thomas Studley and several others who had beenresidents in Virginia. These several discourses were carefullyedited by William Symonds, a doctor of divinity and a man of learningand repute, evidently at the request of Smith. To the end of thevolume Dr. Symonds appends a note addressed to Smith, saying:"I return you the fruit of my labors, as Mr. Cranshaw requested me,which I bestowed in reading the discourses and hearing the relationsof such as have walked and observed the land of Virginia with you."These narratives by Smith's companions, which he made a part of hisOxford book, and which passed under his eye and had his approval, areuniformly not only friendly to him, but eulogistic of him, andprobably omit no incident known to the writers which would do himhonor or add interest to him as a knight of romance. Nor does itseem probable that Smith himself would have omitted to mention thedramatic scene of the prevented execution if it had occurred to him.If there had been a reason in the minds of others in 1608 why itshould not appear in the "True Relation," that reason did not existfor Smith at this time, when the discords and discouragements of thecolony were fully known. And by this time the young girl Pocahontashad become well known to the colonists at Jamestown. The account ofthis Chickahominy voyage given in this volume, published in 1612, issigned by Thomas Studley, and is as follows:

"The next voyage he proceeded so farre that with much labour bycutting of trees in sunder he made his passage, but when his Bargecould passe no farther, he left her in a broad bay out of danger ofshot, commanding none should go ashore till his returne; himselfewith 2 English and two Salvages went up higher in a Canowe, but hewas not long absent, but his men went ashore, whose want ofgovernment gave both occasion and opportunity to the Salvages tosurprise one George Casson, and much failed not to have cut of theboat and all the rest. Smith little dreaming of that accident, beinggot to the marshes at the river's head, 20 miles in the desert, hadhis 2 men slaine (as is supposed) sleeping by the Canowe, whilsthimselfe by fowling sought them victual, who finding he was beset by200 Salvages, 2 of them he slew, stil defending himselfe with the aidof a Salvage his guid (whome bee bound to his arme and used as hisbuckler), till at last slipping into a bogmire they tooke himprisoner: when this news came to the fort much was their sorrow forhis losse, fewe expecting what ensued. A month those Barbarians kepthim prisoner, many strange triumphs and conjurations they made ofhim, yet he so demeaned himselfe amongst them, as he not onlydiverted them from surprising the Fort, but procured his own liberty,and got himselfe and his company such estimation amongst them, thatthose Salvages admired him as a demi-God. So returning safe to theFort, once more staied the pinnas her flight for England, which tilhis returne could not set saile, so extreme was the weather and sogreat the frost."

The first allusion to the salvation of Captain Smith by Pocahontasoccurs in a letter or "little booke" which he wrote to Queen Anne in1616, about the time of the arrival in England of the IndianPrincess, who was then called the Lady Rebecca, and was wife of JohnRolfe, by whom she had a son, who accompanied them. Pocahontas hadby this time become a person of some importance. Her friendship hadbeen of substantial service to the colony. Smith had acknowledgedthis in his "True Relation," where he referred to her as the"nonpareil" of Virginia. He was kind-hearted and naturallymagnanimous, and would take some pains to do the Indian convert afavor, even to the invention of an incident that would make herattractive. To be sure, he was vain as well as inventive, and herewas an opportunity to attract the attention of his sovereign andincrease his own importance by connecting his name with hers in aromantic manner. Still, we believe that the main motive thatdictated this epistle was kindness to Pocahontas. The sentence thatrefers to her heroic act is this: "After some six weeks [he wasabsent only four weeks] fatting amongst those Salvage Countries, atthe minute of my execution she hazarded the beating out of her ownbraines to save mine, and not only that, but so prevailed with herfather [of whom he says, in a previous paragraph, "I received fromthis great Salvage exceeding great courtesie"], that I was safelyconducted to Jamestown."

This guarded allusion to the rescue stood for all known account ofit, except a brief reference to it in his "New England's Trials" of1622, until the appearance of Smith's "General Historie" in London,1624. In the first edition of "New England's Trials," 1620, there isno reference to it. In the enlarged edition of 1622, Smith gives anew version to his capture, as resulting from "the folly of them thatfled," and says: "God made Pocahontas, the King's daughter the meansto deliver me."

The "General Historie" was compiled—as was the custom in making upsuch books at the time from a great variety of sources. Such partsof it as are not written by Smith—and these constitute aconsiderable portion of the history—bear marks here and there of histouch. It begins with his description of Virginia, which appeared inthe Oxford tract of 1612; following this are the several narrativesby his comrades, which formed the appendix of that tract. The onethat concerns us here is that already quoted, signed Thomas Studley.It is reproduced here as "written by Thomas Studley, the first CapeMerchant in Virginia, Robert Fenton, Edward Harrington, and I. S."[John Smith]. It is, however, considerably extended, and into it isinterjected a detailed account of the captivity and the story of thestones, the clubs, and the saved brains.

It is worthy of special note that the "True Relation" is notincorporated in the "General Historie." This is the more remarkablebecause it was an original statement, written when the occurrences itdescribes were fresh, and is much more in detail regarding manythings that happened during the period it covered than the narrativesthat Smith uses in the "General Historie." It was his habit to useover and over again his own publications. Was this discarded becauseit contradicted the Pocahontas story—because that story could not befitted into it as it could be into the Studley relation?

It should be added, also, that Purchas printed an abstract of the
Oxford tract in his "Pilgrimage," in 1613, from material furnished
him by Smith. The Oxford tract was also republished by Purchas in
his "Pilgrimes," extended by new matter in manuscript supplied by
Smith. The "Pilgrimes" did not appear till 1625, a year after the
"General Historie," but was in preparation long before. The
Pocahontas legend appears in the "Pilgrimes," but not in the earlier
"Pilgrimage."

We have before had occasion to remark that Smith's memory had thepeculiarity of growing stronger and more minute in details thefurther he was removed in point of time from any event he describes.The revamped narrative is worth quoting in full for other reasons.It exhibits Smith's skill as a writer and his capacity for risinginto poetic moods. This is the story from the "General Historie":

"The next voyage hee proceeded so farre that with much labour bycutting of trees in sunder he made his passage, but when his Bargecould pass no farther, he left her in a broad bay out of danger ofshot, commanding none should goe ashore till his return: himselfewith two English and two Salvages went up higher in a Canowe, but hewas not long absent, but his men went ashore, whose want ofgovernment, gave both occasion and opportunity to the Salvages tosurprise one George Cassen, whom they slew, and much failed not tohave cut of the boat and all the rest. Smith little dreaming of thataccident, being got to the marshes at the river's head, twentie mylesin the desert, had his two men slaine (as is supposed) sleeping bythe Canowe, whilst himselfe by fowling sought them victuall, whofinding he was beset with 200 Salvages, two of them hee slew, stilldefending himself with the ayd of a Salvage his guide, whom he boundto his arme with his garters, and used him as a buckler, yet he wasshot in his thigh a little, and had many arrowes stucke in hiscloathes but no great hurt, till at last they tooke him prisoner.When this newes came to Jamestowne, much was their sorrow for hislosse, fewe expecting what ensued. Sixe or seven weekes thoseBarbarians kept him prisoner, many strange triumphes and conjurationsthey made of him, yet hee so demeaned himselfe amongst them, as henot onely diverted them from surprising the Fort, but procured hisowne libertie, and got himself and his company such estimationamongst them, that those Salvages admired him more than their owneQuiyouckosucks. The manner how they used and delivered him, is asfolloweth.

"The Salvages having drawne from George Cassen whether Captaine Smithwas gone, prosecuting that opportunity they followed him with 300bowmen, conducted by the King of Pamaunkee, who in divisionssearching the turnings of the river, found Robinson and Entry by thefireside, those they shot full of arrowes and slew. Then finding theCaptaine as is said, that used the Salvage that was his guide as hisshield (three of them being slaine and divers others so gauld) allthe rest would not come neere him. Thinking thus to have returned tohis boat, regarding them, as he marched, more then his way, slippedup to the middle in an oasie creeke and his Salvage with him, yetdurst they not come to him till being neere dead with cold, he threwaway his armes. Then according to their composition they drew himforth and led him to the fire, where his men were slaine. Diligentlythey chafed his benumbed limbs. He demanding for their Captaine,they shewed him Opechankanough, King of Pamaunkee, to whom he gave around Ivory double compass Dyall. Much they marvailed at the playingof the Fly and Needle, which they could see so plainly, and yet nottouch it, because of the glass that covered them. But when hedemonstrated by that Globe-like Jewell, the roundnesse of the earthand skies, the spheare of the Sunne, Moone, and Starres, and how theSunne did chase the night round about the world continually: thegreatnesse of the Land and Sea, the diversitie of Nations, varietieof Complexions, and how we were to them Antipodes, and many othersuch like matters, they all stood as amazed with admiration.Notwithstanding within an houre after they tyed him to a tree, and asmany as could stand about him prepared to shoot him, but the Kingholding up the Compass in his hand, they all laid downe their Bowesand Arrowes, and in a triumphant manner led him to Orapaks, where hewas after their manner kindly feasted and well used.

"Their order in conducting him was thus: Drawing themselves all infyle, the King in the middest had all their Peeces and Swords bornebefore him. Captaine Smith was led after him by three greatSalvages, holding him fast by each arme: and on each side six went infyle with their arrowes nocked. But arriving at the Towne (which wasbut onely thirtie or fortie hunting houses made of Mats, which theyremove as they please, as we our tents) all the women and childrenstaring to behold him, the souldiers first all in file performe theforme of a Bissom so well as could be: and on each flanke, officersas Serieants to see them keepe their orders. A good time theycontinued this exercise, and then cast themselves in a ring, dauncingin such severall Postures, and singing and yelling out such hellishnotes and screeches: being strangely painted, every one his quiver ofarrowes, and at his backe a club: on his arme a Fox or an Ottersskinne, or some such matter for his vambrace: their heads andshoulders painted red, with oyle and Pocones mingled together, whichScarlet like colour made an exceeding handsome shew, his Bow in hishand, and the skinne of a Bird with her wings abroad dryed, tyed onhis head, a peece of copper, a white shell, a long feather, with asmall rattle growing at the tayles of their snaks tyed to it, or somesuch like toy. All this time Smith and the King stood in the middestguarded, as before is said, and after three dances they all departed.Smith they conducted to a long house, where thirtie or fortie tallfellowes did guard him, and ere long more bread and venison werebrought him then would have served twentie men. I thinke hisstomacke at that time was not very good; what he left they put inbaskets and tyed over his head. About midnight they set the meatagain before him, all this time not one of them would eat a bit withhim, till the next morning they brought him as much more, and thendid they eate all the old, and reserved the new as they had done theother, which made him think they would fat him to eat him. Yet inthis desperate estate to defend him from the cold, one Maocassaterbrought him his gowne, in requitall of some beads and toyes Smith hadgiven him at his first arrival in Firginia.

"Two days a man would have slaine him (but that the guard preventedit) for the death of his sonne, to whom they conducted him to recoverthe poore man then breathing his last. Smith told them that at Jamestowne he had a water would doe it if they would let him fetch it, butthey would not permit that: but made all the preparations they couldto assault James towne, craving his advice, and for recompence heshould have life, libertie, land, and women. In part of a Tablebooke he writ his mind to them at the Fort, what was intended, howthey should follow that direction to affright the messengers, andwithout fayle send him such things as he writ for. And an Inventorywith them. The difficultie and danger he told the Salvaves, of theMines, great gunnes, and other Engins, exceedingly affrighted them,yet according to his request they went to James towne in as bitterweather as could be of frost and snow, and within three days returnedwith an answer.

"But when they came to James towne, seeing men sally out as he hadtold them they would, they fled: yet in the night they came again tothe same place where he had told them they should receive an answer,and such things as he had promised them, which they foundaccordingly, and with which they returned with no small expedition,to the wonder of them all that heard it, that he could either divineor the paper could speake. Then they led him to the Youthtanunds,the Mattapanients, the Payankatanks, the Nantaughtacunds andOnawmanients, upon the rivers of Rapahanock and Patawomek, over allthose rivers and backe againe by divers other severall Nations, tothe King's habitation at Pamaunkee, where they entertained him withmost strange and fearefull conjurations;

'As if neare led to hell,
Amongst the Devils to dwell.'

"Not long after, early in a morning, a great fire was made in a longhouse, and a mat spread on the one side as on the other; on the onethey caused him to sit, and all the guard went out of the house, andpresently came skipping in a great grim fellow, all painted over withcoale mingled with oyle; and many Snakes and Wesels skins stuffedwith mosse, and all their tayles tyed together, so as they met on thecrowne of his head in a tassell; and round about the tassell was aCoronet of feathers, the skins hanging round about his head, backe,and shoulders, and in a manner covered his face; with a hellish voyceand a rattle in his hand. With most strange gestures and passions hebegan his invocation, and environed the fire with a circle of meale;which done three more such like devils came rushing in with the likeantique tricks, painted halfe blacke, halfe red: but all their eyeswere painted white, and some red stroakes like Mutchato's along theircheekes: round about him those fiends daunced a pretty while, andthen came in three more as ugly as the rest; with red eyes andstroakes over their blacke faces, at last they all sat downe rightagainst him; three of them on the one hand of the chiefe Priest, andthree on the other. Then all with their rattles began a song, whichended, the chiefe Priest layd downe five wheat cornes: then strayninghis arms and hands with such violence that he sweat, and his veynesswelled, he began a short Oration: at the conclusion they all gave ashort groane; and then layd downe three graines more. After thatbegan their song againe, and then another Oration, ever laying downso many cornes as before, til they had twice incirculed the fire;that done they tooke a bunch of little stickes prepared for thatpurpose, continuing still their devotion, and at the end of everysong and Oration they layd downe a sticke betwixt the divisions ofCorne. Til night, neither he nor they did either eate or drinke, andthen they feasted merrily, and with the best provisions they couldmake. Three dayes they used this Ceremony: the meaning whereof theytold him was to know if he intended them well or no. The circle ofmeale signified their Country, the circles of corne the bounds of theSea, and the stickes his Country. They imagined the world to be flatand round, like a trencher, and they in the middest. After this theybrought him a bagge of gunpowder, which they carefully preserved tillthe next spring, to plant as they did their corne, because they wouldbe acquainted with the nature of that seede. Opitchapam, the King'sbrother, invited him to his house, where with many platters of bread,foule, and wild beasts, as did environ him, he bid him wellcome: butnot any of them would eate a bit with him, but put up all theremainder in Baskets. At his returne to Opechancanoughs, all theKing's women and their children flocked about him for their parts, asa due by Custome, to be merry with such fragments.

"But his waking mind in hydeous dreames did oft see wondrous shapes
Of bodies strange, and huge in growth, and of stupendious makes."

"At last they brought him to Meronocomoco, where was Powhatan theirEmperor. Here more than two hundred of those grim Courtiers stoodwondering at him, as he had beene a monster, till Powhatan and histrayne had put themselves in their greatest braveries. Before a fireupon a seat like a bedstead, he sat covered with a great robe, madeof Rarowcun skinnes and all the tayles hanging by. On either handdid sit a young wench of sixteen or eighteen years, and along on eachside the house, two rowes of men, and behind them as many women, withall their heads and shoulders painted red; many of their headsbedecked with the white downe of Birds; but everyone with something:and a great chayne of white beads about their necks. At his entrancebefore the King, all the people gave a great shout. The Queene ofAppamatuck was appointed to bring him water to wash his hands, andanother brought him a bunch of feathers, instead of a Towell to drythem: having feasted him after their best barbarous manner theycould. A long consultation was held, but the conclusion was twogreat stones were brought before Powhatan; then as many as could laydhands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, andbeing ready with their clubs, to beate out his braines. Pocahontas,the King's dearest daughter, when no entreaty could prevaile, got hishead in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death:whereat the Emperour was contented he should live to make himhatchets, and her bells, beads, and copper: for they thought him aswell of all occupations as themselves. For the King himselfe willmake his owne robes, shooes, bowes, arrowes, pots, plant, hunt, ordoe any thing so well as the rest.

'They say he bore a pleasant shew,
But sure his heart was sad
For who can pleasant be, and rest,
That lives in feare and dread.
And having life suspected, doth
If still suspected lead.'

"Two days after, Powhatan having disguised himselfe in the mostfearfullest manner he could, caused Capt. Smith to be brought forthto a great house in the woods and there upon a mat by the fire to beleft alone. Not long after from behinde a mat that divided thehouse, was made the most dolefullest noyse he ever heard: thenPowhatan more like a devill than a man with some two hundred more asblacke as himseffe, came unto him and told him now they were friends,and presently he should goe to James town, to send him two greatgunnes, and a gryndstone, for which he would give him the country ofCapahowojick, and for ever esteeme him as his sonn Nantaquoud. So toJames towne with 12 guides Powhatan sent him. That night theyquartered in the woods, he still expecting (as he had done all thislong time of his imprisonment) every houre to be put to one death orother; for all their feasting. But almightie God (by his divineprovidence) had mollified the hearts of those sterne Barbarians withcompassion. The next morning betimes they came to the Fort, whereSmith having used the salvages with what kindnesse he could, heshewed Rawhunt, Powhatan's trusty servant, two demiculverings and amillstone to carry Powhatan; they found them somewhat too heavie; butwhen they did see him discharge them, being loaded with stones, amongthe boughs of a great tree loaded with Isickles, the yce and branchescame so tumbling downe, that the poore Salvages ran away halfe deadwith feare. But at last we regained some conference with them andgave them such toys: and sent to Powhatan, his women, and childrensuch presents, and gave them in generall full content. Now in JamesTowne they were all in combustion, the strongest preparing once moreto run away with the Pinnace; which with the hazard of his life, withSakre falcon and musketshot, Smith forced now the third time to stayor sinke. Some no better then they should be had plotted with thePresident, the next day to have put him to death by the Leviticalllaw, for the lives of Robinson and Emry, pretending the fault was histhat had led them to their ends; but he quickly tooke such order withsuch Lawyers, that he layed them by the heeles till he sent some ofthem prisoners for England. Now ever once in four or five dayes,Pocahontas with her attendants, brought him so much provision, thatsaved many of their lives, that els for all this had starved withhunger.

'Thus from numbe death our good God sent reliefe,
The sweete asswager of all other griefe.'

"His relation of the plenty he had scene, especially at Werawocomoco,and of the state and bountie of Powhatan (which till that time wasunknowne), so revived their dead spirits (especially the love ofPocahontas) as all men's feare was abandoned."

We should like to think original, in the above, the fine passage, inwhich Smith, by means of a simple compass dial, demonstrated theroundness of the earth, and skies, the sphere of the sun, moon, andstars, and how the sun did chase the night round about the worldcontinually; the greatness of the land and sea, the diversity ofnations, variety of complexions, and how we were to them antipodes,so that the Indians stood amazed with admiration.

Captain Smith up to his middle in a Chickahominy swamp, discoursingon these high themes to a Pamunkey Indian, of whose language Smithwas wholly ignorant, and who did not understand a word of English, ismuch more heroic, considering the adverse circ*mstances, and appealsmore to the imagination, than the long-haired Iopas singing the songof Atlas, at the banquet given to AEneas, where Trojans and Tyriansdrained the flowing bumpers while Dido drank long draughts of love.Did Smith, when he was in the neighborhood of Carthage pick up somesuch literal translations of the song of Atlas' as this:

"He sang the wandering moon, and the labors of the Sun;
From whence the race of men and flocks; whence rain and lightning;
Of Arcturus, the rainy Hyades, and the twin Triones;
Why the winter suns hasten so much to touch themselves in the ocean,
And what delay retards the slow nights."

The scene of the rescue only occupies seven lines and the readerfeels that, after all, Smith has not done full justice to it. Wecannot, therefore, better conclude this romantic episode than byquoting the description of it given with an elaboration of languagethat must be, pleasing to the shade of Smith, by John Burke in hisHistory of Virginia:

"Two large stones were brought in, and placed at the feet of theemperor; and on them was laid the head of the prisoner; next a largeclub was brought in, with which Powhatan, for whom, out of respect,was reserved this honor, prepared to crush the head of his captive.The assembly looked on with sensations of awe, probably not unmixedwith pity for the fate of an enemy whose bravery had commanded theiradmiration, and in whose misfortunes their hatred was possiblyforgotten.

"The fatal club was uplifted: the breasts of the company alreadyby anticipation felt the dreadful crash, which was to bereave thewretched victim of life: when the young and beautiful Pocahontas, thebeloved daughter of the emperor, with a shriek of terrorand agony threw herself on the body of Smith; Her hair was loose, andher eyes streaming with tears, while her whole manner bespoke thedeep distress and agony of her bosom. She cast a beseechinglook at her furious and astonished father, deprecating his wrath, andimploring his pity and the life of his prisoner, with all theeloquence of mute but impassioned sorrow.

"The remainder of this scene is honorable to Powhatan. It willremain a lasting monument, that tho' different principles of action,and the influence of custom, have given to the manners and opinionsof this people an appearance neither amiable nor virtuous, they stillretain the noblest property of human character, the touch of pity andthe feeling of humanity.

"The club of the emperor was still uplifted; but pity had touched hisbosom, and his eye was every moment losing its fierceness; he lookedaround to collect his fortitude, or perhaps to find an excuse for hisweakness in the faces of his attendants. But every eye was suffusedwith the sweetly contagious softness. The generous savage no longerhesitated. The compassion of the rude state is neither ostentatiousnor dilating: nor does it insult its object by the exaction ofimpossible conditions. Powhatan lifted his grateful and delighteddaughter, and the captive, scarcely yet assured of safety, from theearth…."

"The character of this interesting woman, as it stands in theconcurrent accounts of all our historians, is not, it is withconfidence affirmed, surpassed by any in the whole range of history;and for those qualities more especially which do honor to our nature—an humane and feeling heart, an ardor and unshaken constancy in herattachments—she stands almost without a rival.

"At the first appearance of the Europeans her young heart wasimpressed with admiration of the persons and manners of thestrangers; but it is not during their prosperity that she displaysher attachment. She is not influenced by awe of their greatness, orfear of their resentment, in the assistance she affords them. It wasduring their severest distresses, when their most celebrated chiefwas a captive in their hands, and was dragged through the country asa spectacle for the sport and derision of their people, that sheplaces herself between him and destruction.

"The spectacle of Pocahontas in an attitude of entreaty, with herhair loose, and her eyes streaming with tears, supplicating with herenraged father for the life of Captain Smith when he was about tocrush the head of his prostrate victim with a club, is a situationequal to the genius of Raphael. And when the royal savage directshis ferocious glance for a moment from his victim to reprove hisweeping daughter, when softened by her distress his eye loses itsfierceness, and he gives his captive to her tears, the painter willdiscover a new occasion for exercising his talents."

The painters have availed themselves of this opportunity. In onepicture Smith is represented stiffly extended on the greensward (ofthe woods), his head resting on a stone, appropriately clothed in adresscoat, knee-breeches, and silk stockings; while Powhatan and theother savages stand ready for murder, in full-dress parade costume;and Pocahontas, a full-grown woman, with long, disheveled hair, inthe sentimental dress and attitude of a Letitia E. Landon of theperiod, is about to cast herself upon the imperiled and well-dressedCaptain.

Must we, then, give up the legend altogether, on account of theexaggerations that have grown up about it, our suspicion of thecreative memory of Smith, and the lack of all contemporary allusionto it? It is a pity to destroy any pleasing story of the past, andespecially to discharge our hard struggle for a foothold on thiscontinent of the few elements of romance. If we can find no evidenceof its truth that stands the test of fair criticism, we may at leastbelieve that it had some slight basis on which to rest. It is not atall improbable that Pocahontas, who was at that time a precociousmaid of perhaps twelve or thirteen years of age (although Smithmentions her as a child of ten years old when she came to the campafter his release), was touched with compassion for the captive, anddid influence her father to treat him kindly.

IX

SMITH'S WAY WITH THE INDIANS

As we are not endeavoring to write the early history of Virginia, butonly to trace Smith's share in it, we proceed with his exploits afterthe arrival of the first supply, consisting of near a hundred men, intwo ships, one commanded by Captain Newport and the other by CaptainFrancis Nelson. The latter, when in sight of Cape Henry, was drivenby a storm back to the West Indies, and did not arrive at James Riverwith his vessel, the Phoenix, till after the departure of Newport forEngland with his load of "golddust," and Master Wingfield and CaptainArthur.

In his "True Relation," Smith gives some account of his explorationof the Pamunkey River, which he sometimes calls the "Youghtamand,"upon which, where the water is salt, is the town of Werowocomoco. Itcan serve no purpose in elucidating the character of our hero toattempt to identify all the places he visited.

It was at Werowocomoco that Smith observed certain conjurations ofthe medicine men, which he supposed had reference to his fate. Fromten o'clock in the morning till six at night, seven of the savages,with rattles in their hands, sang and danced about the fire, layingdown grains of corn in circles, and with vehement actions, castingcakes of deer suet, deer, and tobacco into the fire, howling withoutceasing. One of them was "disfigured with a great skin, his headhung around with little skins of weasels and other vermin, with acrownlet of feathers on his head, painted as ugly as the devil." Sofat they fed him that he much doubted they intended to sacrifice himto the Quiyoughquosicke, which is a superior power they worship: amore uglier thing cannot be described. These savages buried theirdead with great sorrow and weeping, and they acknowledge noresurrection. Tobacco they offer to the water to secure a goodpassage in foul weather. The descent of the crown is to the firstheirs of the king's sisters, "for the kings have as many women asthey will, the subjects two, and most but one."

After Smith's return, as we have read, he was saved from a plot totake his life by the timely arrival of Captain Newport. Somewhereabout this time the great fire occurred. Smith was now one of theCouncil; Martin and Matthew Scrivener, just named, were alsocouncilors. Ratcliffe was still President. The savages, owing totheir acquaintance with and confidence in Captain Smith, sent inabundance of provision. Powhatan sent once or twice a week "deer,bread, raugroughcuns (probably not to be confounded with therahaughcuns [raccoons] spoken of before, but probably 'rawcomens,'mentioned in the Description of Virginia), half for Smith, and halffor his father, Captain Newport." Smith had, in his intercourse withthe natives, extolled the greatness of Newport, so that theyconceived him to be the chief and all the rest his children, andregarded him as an oracle, if not a god.

Powhatan and the rest had, therefore, a great desire to see thismighty person. Smith says that the President and Council greatlyenvied his reputation with the Indians, and wrought upon them tobelieve, by giving in trade four times as much as the price set bySmith, that their authority exceeded his as much as their bounty.

We must give Smith the credit of being usually intent upon thebuilding up of the colony, and establishing permanent and livablerelations with the Indians, while many of his companions in authorityseemed to regard the adventure as a temporary occurrence, out ofwhich they would make what personal profit they could. Thenew-comers on a vessel always demoralized the trade with the Indians,by paying extravagant prices. Smith's relations with Captain Newportwere peculiar. While he magnified him to the Indians as the greatpower, he does not conceal his own opinion of his ostentation andwant of shrewdness. Smith's attitude was that of a priest who putsup for the worship of the vulgar an idol, which he knows is only aclay image stuffed with straw.

In the great joy of the colony at the arrival of the first supply,leave was given to sailors to trade with the Indians, and thenew-comers soon so raised prices that it needed a pound of copper tobuy a quantity of provisions that before had been obtained for anounce. Newport sent great presents to Powhatan, and, in response tothe wish of the "Emperor," prepared to visit him. "A great coylethere was to set him forward," says Smith. Mr. Scrivener and CaptainSmith, and a guard of thirty or forty, accompanied him. On thisexpedition they found the mouth of the Pamaunck (now York) River.Arriving at Werowocomoco, Newport, fearing treachery, sent Smith withtwenty men to land and make a preliminary visit. When they cameashore they found a network of creeks which were crossed by very shakybridges, constructed of crotched sticks and poles, which had so muchthe appearance of traps that Smith would not cross them until many ofthe Indians had preceded him, while he kept others with him ashostages. Three hundred savages conducted him to Powhatan, whor*ceived him in great state. Before his house were ranged forty orfifty great platters of fine bread. Entering his house, "with loudetunes they made all signs of great joy." In the first accountPowhatan is represented as surrounded by his principal women and chiefmen, "as upon a throne at the upper end of the house, with suchmajesty as I cannot express, nor yet have often seen, either in Paganor Christian." In the later account he is "sitting upon his bed ofmats, his pillow of leather embroidered (after their rude manner withpearls and white beads), his attire a fair robe of skins as large asan Irish mantel; at his head and feet a handsome young woman; on eachside of his house sat twenty of his concubines, their heads andshoulders painted red, with a great chain of white beads about each oftheir necks. Before those sat his chiefest men in like order in hisarbor-like house." This is the scene that figures in the oldcopper-plate engravings. The Emperor welcomed Smith with a kindcountenance, caused him to sit beside him, and with pretty discoursethey renewed their old acquaintance. Smith presented him with a suitof red cloth, a white greyhound, and a hat. The Queen of Apamatuc, acomely young savage, brought him water, a turkeyco*ck, and bread toeat. Powhatan professed great content with Smith, but desired to seehis father, Captain Newport. He inquired also with a merrycountenance after the piece of ordnance that Smith had promised tosend him, and Smith, with equal jocularity, replied that he hadoffered the men four demi-culverins, which they found too heavy tocarry. This night they quartered with Powhatan, and were liberallyfeasted, and entertained with singing, dancing, and orations.

The next day Captain Newport came ashore. The two monarchs exchangedpresents. Newport gave Powhatan a white boy thirteen years old,named Thomas Savage. This boy remained with the Indians and servedthe colony many years as an interpreter. Powhatan gave Newport inreturn a bag of beans and an Indian named Namontack for his servant.Three or four days they remained, feasting, dancing, and trading withthe Indians.

In trade the wily savage was more than a match for Newport. Heaffected great dignity; it was unworthy such great werowances todicker; it was not agreeable to his greatness in a peddling manner totrade for trifles; let the great Newport lay down his commodities alltogether, and Powhatan would take what he wished, and recompense himwith a proper return. Smith, who knew the Indians and theirostentation, told Newport that the intention was to cheat him, buthis interference was resented. The result justified Smith'ssuspicion. Newport received but four bushels of corn when he shouldhave had twenty hogsheads. Smith then tried his hand at a trade.With a few blue beads, which he represented as of a rare substance,the color of the skies, and worn by the greatest kings in the world,he so inflamed the desire of Powhatan that he was half mad to possesssuch strange jewels, and gave for them 200 to 300 bushels of corn,"and yet," says Smith, "parted good friends."

At this time Powhatan, knowing that they desired to invade or exploreMonacan, the country above the Falls, proposed an expedition, withmen and boats, and "this faire tale had almost made Captain Newportundertake by this means to discover the South Sea," a project whichthe adventurers had always in mind. On this expedition theysojourned also with the King of Pamaunke.

Captain Newport returned to England on the 10th of April. Mr.Scrivener and Captain Smith were now in fact the sustainers of thecolony. They made short expeditions of exploration. Powhatan andother chiefs still professed friendship and sent presents, but theIndians grew more and more offensive, lurking about and stealing allthey could lay hands on. Several of them were caught and confined inthe fort, and, guarded, were conducted to the morning and eveningprayers. By threats and slight torture, the captives were made toconfess the hostile intentions of Powhatan and the other chiefs,which was to steal their weapons and then overpower the colony.Rigorous measures were needed to keep the Indians in check, but thecommand from England not to offend the savages was so strict thatSmith dared not chastise them as they deserved. The history of thecolony all this spring of 1608 is one of labor and discontent, ofconstant annoyance from the Indians, and expectations of attacks. Onthe 20th of April, while they were hewing trees and setting corn, analarm was given which sent them all to their arms. Fright was turnedinto joy by the sight of the Phoenix, with Captain Nelson and hiscompany, who had been for three months detained in the West Indies,and given up for lost.

Being thus re-enforced, Smith and Scrivener desired to explore thecountry above the Falls, and got ready an expedition. But this,Martin, who was only intent upon loading the return ship with "hisphantastical gold," opposed, and Nelson did not think he hadauthority to allow it, unless they would bind themselves to pay thehire of the ships. The project was therefore abandoned. The Indianscontinued their depredations. Messages daily passed between the fortand the Indians, and treachery was always expected. About this timethe boy Thomas Savage was returned, with his chest and clothing.

The colony had now several of the Indians detained in the fort. Atthis point in the "True Relation" occurs the first mention ofPocahontas. Smith says: "Powhatan, understanding we detained certainSalvages, sent his daughter, a child of tenne years old, which notonly for feature, countenance, and proportion much exceeded any ofhis people, but for wit and spirit, the only nonpareil of hiscountry." She was accompanied by his trusty messenger Rawhunt, acrafty and deformed savage, who assured Smith how much Powhatan lovedand respected him and, that he should not doubt his kindness, had senthis child, whom he most esteemed, to see him, and a deer, and breadbesides for a present; "desiring us that the boy might come again,which he loved exceedingly, his little daughter he had taught thislesson also: not taking notice at all of the Indians that had beenprisoners three days, till that morning that she saw their fathersand friends come quietly and in good terms to entreat their liberty."

Opechancanough (the King of "Pamauk") also sent asking the release oftwo that were his friends; and others, apparently with confidence inthe whites, came begging for the release of the prisoners. "In theafternoon they being gone, we guarded them [the prisoners] as beforeto the church, and after prayer gave them to Pocahuntas, the King'sdaughter, in regard to her father's kindness in sending her: afterhaving well fed them, as all the time of their imprisonment, we gavethem their bows, arrows, or what else they had, and with much contentsent them packing; Pocahuntas, also, we requited with such trifles ascontented her, to tell that we had used the Paspaheyans very kindlyin so releasing them."

This account would show that Pocahontas was a child of uncommondignity and self-control for her age. In his letter to Queen Anne,written in 1616, he speaks of her as aged twelve or thirteen at thetime of his captivity, several months before this visit to the fort.

The colonists still had reasons to fear ambuscades from the savageslurking about in the woods. One day a Paspahean came with aglittering mineral stone, and said he could show them great abundanceof it. Smith went to look for this mine, but was led about hitherand thither in the woods till he lost his patience and was convincedthat the Indian was fooling him, when he gave him twenty lashes witha rope, handed him his bows and arrows, told him to shoot if hedared, and let him go. Smith had a prompt way with the Indians. Healways traded "squarely" with them, kept his promises, and neverhesitated to attack or punish them when they deserved it. Theyfeared and respected him.

The colony was now in fair condition, in good health, and contented;and it was believed, though the belief was not well founded, thatthey would have lasting peace with the Indians. Captain Nelson'sship, the Phoenix, was freighted with cedar wood, and was despatchedfor England June 8, 1608. Captain Martin, "always sickly andunserviceable, and desirous to enjoy the credit of his supposed artof finding the gold mine," took passage. Captain Nelson probablycarried Smith's "True Relation."

X

DISCOVERY OF THE CHESAPEAKE

On the same, day that Nelson sailed for England, Smith set out toexplore the Chesapeake, accompanying the Phoenix as far as CapeHenry, in a barge of about three tons. With him went Dr. WalterRussell, six gentlemen, and seven soldiers. The narrative of thevoyage is signed by Dr. Russell, Thomas Momford, gentleman, and AnasTodkill, soldier. Master Scrivener remained at the fort, where hispresence was needed to keep in check the prodigal waste of the storesupon his parasites by President Ratcliffe.

The expedition crossed the bay at "Smith's Isles," named after theCaptain, touched at Cape Charles, and coasted along the easternshore. Two stout savages hailed them from Cape Charles, and directedthem to Accomack, whose king proved to be the most comely and civilsavage they had yet encountered.

He told them of a strange accident that had happened. The parents oftwo children who had died were moved by some phantasy to revisittheir dead carcasses, "whose benumbed bodies reflected to the eyes ofthe beholders such delightful countenances as though they hadregained their vital spirits." This miracle drew a great part of theKing's people to behold them, nearly all of whom died shortlyafterward. These people spoke the language of Powhatan. Smithexplored the bays, isles, and islets, searching for harbors andplaces of habitation. He was a born explorer and geographer, as hisremarkable map of Virginia sufficiently testifies. The company wasmuch tossed about in the rough waves of the bay, and had greatdifficulty in procuring drinking-water. They entered theWighcocomoco, on the east side, where the natives first threatenedand then received them with songs, dancing, and mirth. A point onthe mainland where they found a pond of fresh water they named "PoyntPloyer in honer of the most honorable house of Monsay, in Britaine,that in an extreme extremitie once relieved our Captain." Thisreference to the Earl of Ployer, who was kind to Smith in his youth,is only an instance of the care with which he edited these narrativesof his own exploits, which were nominally written by his companions.

The explorers were now assailed with violent storms, and at last tookrefuge for two days on some uninhabited islands, which by reason ofthe ill weather and the hurly-burly of thunder, lightning, wind, andrain, they called "Limbo." Repairing their torn sails with theirshirts, they sailed for the mainland on the east, and ran into ariver called Cuskarawook (perhaps the present Annomessie), where theinhabitants received them with showers of arrows, ascending the treesand shooting at them. The next day a crowd came dancing to theshore, making friendly signs, but Smith, suspecting villainy,discharged his muskets into them. Landing toward evening, theexplorers found many baskets and much blood, but no savages. Thefollowing day, savages to the number, the account wildly says, of twoor three thousand, came to visit them, and were very friendly. Thesetribes Smith calls the Sarapinagh, Nause, Arseek, and Nantaquak, andsays they are the best merchants of that coast. They told him of agreat nation, called the Massawomeks, of whom he set out in search,passing by the Limbo, and coasting the west side of Chesapeake Bay.The people on the east side he describes as of small stature.

They anchored at night at a place called Richard's Cliffs, north ofthe Pawtuxet, and from thence went on till they reached the firstriver navigable for ships, which they named the Bolus, and which byits position on Smith's map may be the Severn or the Patapsco.

The men now, having been kept at the oars ten days, tossed about bystorms, and with nothing to eat but bread rotten from the wet,supposed that the Captain would turn about and go home. But hereminded them how the company of Ralph Lane, in like circ*mstances,importuned him to proceed with the discovery of Moratico, allegingthat they had yet a dog that boiled with sassafrks leaves wouldrichly feed them. He could not think of returning yet, for they werescarce able to say where they had been, nor had yet heard of whatthey were sent to seek. He exhorted them to abandon their childishfear of being lost in these unknown, large waters, but he assuredthem that return he would not, till he had seen the Massawomeks andfound the Patowomek.

On the 16th of June they discovered the River Patowomek (Potomac),seven miles broad at the mouth, up which they sailed thirty milesbefore they encountered any inhabitants. Four savages at lengthappeared and conducted them up a creek where were three or fourthousand in ambush, "so strangely painted, grimed, and disguised,shouting, yelling, and crying as so many spirits from hell could nothave showed more terrible." But the discharge of the firearms andthe echo in the forest so appeased their fury that they threw downtheir bows, exchanged hostages, and kindly used the strangers. TheIndians told him that Powhatan had commanded them to betray them, andthe serious charge is added that Powhatan, "so directed from thediscontents at Jamestown because our Captain did cause them to stayin their country against their wills." This reveals the suspicionand thoroughly bad feeling existing among the colonists.

The expedition went up the river to a village called Patowomek, andthence rowed up a little River Quiyough (Acquia Creek?) in search ofa mountain of antimony, which they found. The savages put thisantimony up in little bags and sold it all over the country to painttheir bodies and faces, which made them look like Blackamoors dustedover with silver. Some bags of this they carried away, and alsocollected a good amount of furs of otters, bears, martens, and minks.Fish were abundant, "lying so thick with their heads above water, asfor want of nets (our barge driving among them) we attempted to catchthem with a frying-pan; but we found it a bad instrument to catchfish with; neither better fish, more plenty, nor more variety forsmall fish, had any of us ever seen in any place, so swimming in thewater, but they are not to be caught with frying-pans."

In all his encounters and quarrels with the treacherous savages Smithlost not a man; it was his habit when he encountered a body of themto demand their bows, arrows, swords, and furs, and a child or two ashostages.

Having finished his discovery he returned. Passing the mouth of theRappahannock, by some called the Tappahannock, where in shoal waterwere many fish lurking in the weeds, Smith had his first experienceof the Stingray. It chanced that the Captain took one of these fishfrom his sword, "not knowing her condition, being much the fashion ofa Thornbeck, but a long tayle like a riding rodde whereon the middestis a most poysonne sting of two or three inches long, bearded like asaw on each side, which she struck into the wrist of his arme nearean inch and a half." The arm and shoulder swelled so much, and thetorment was so great, that "we all with much sorrow concluded hisfunerale, and prepared his grave in an island by, as himselfdirected." But it "pleased God by a precious oyle Dr. Russellapplied to it that his tormenting paine was so assuged that he ate ofthat fish to his supper."

Setting sail for Jamestown, and arriving at Kecoughtan, the sight ofthe furs and other plunder, and of Captain Smith wounded, led theIndians to think that he had been at war with the Massawomeks; whichopinion Smith encouraged. They reached Jamestown July 21st, in finespirits, to find the colony in a mutinous condition, the lastarrivals all sick, and the others on the point of revengingthemselves on the silly President, who had brought them all to miseryby his riotous consumption of the stores, and by forcing them to workon an unnecessary pleasure-house for himself in the woods. They weresomewhat appeased by the good news of the discovery, and in thebelief that their bay stretched into the South Sea; and submitted oncondition that Ratclifte should be deposed and Captain Smith takeupon himself the government, "as by course it did belong." Heconsented, but substituted Mr. Scrivener, his dear friend, in thepresidency, distributed the provisions, appointed honest men toassist Mr. Scrivener, and set out on the 24th, with twelve men, tofinish his discovery.

He passed by the Patowomek River and hasted to the River Bolus, whichhe had before visited. In the bay they fell in with seven or eightcanoes full of the renowned Massawomeks, with whom they had a fight,but at length these savages became friendly and gave them bows,arrows, and skins. They were at war with the Tockwoghes. Proceedingup the River Tockwogh, the latter Indians received them withfriendship, because they had the weapons which they supposed had beencaptured in a fight with the Massawomeks. These Indians hadhatchets, knives, pieces of iron and brass, they reported came fromthe Susquesahanocks, a mighty people, the enemies of the Massawomeks,living at the head of the bay. As Smith in his barge could notascend to them, he sent an interpreter to request a visit from them.In three or four days sixty of these giant-like people came down withpresents of venison, tobacco-pipes three feet in length, baskets,targets, and bows and arrows. Some further notice is necessary ofthis first appearance of the Susquehannocks, who became afterwards sowell known, by reason of their great stature and their friendliness.Portraits of these noble savages appeared in De Bry's voyages, whichwere used in Smith's map, and also by Strachey. These beautifulcopperplate engravings spread through Europe most exaggerated ideasof the American savages.

"Our order," says Smith, "was daily to have prayers, with a psalm, atwhich solemnity the poor savages wondered." When it was over theSusquesahanocks, in a fervent manner, held up their hands to the sun,and then embracing the Captain, adored him in like manner. With afurious manner and "a hellish voyce" they began an oration of theirloves, covered him with their painted bear-skins, hung a chain ofwhite beads about his neck, and hailed his creation as their governorand protector, promising aid and victuals if he would stay and helpthem fight the Massawomeks. Much they told him of the Atquanachuks,who live on the Ocean Sea, the Massawomeks and other people living ona great water beyond the mountain (which Smith understood to be somegreat lake or the river of Canada), and that they received theirhatchets and other commodities from the French. They moumed greatlyat Smith's departure. Of Powhatan they knew nothing but the name.

Strachey, who probably enlarges from Smith his account of thesame people, whom he calls Sasquesahanougs, says they werewell-proportioned giants, but of an honest and simple disposition.Their language well beseemed their proportions, "sounding from them asit were a great voice in a vault or cave, as an ecco." The picture ofone of these chiefs is given in De Bry, and described by Strachey,"the calf of whose leg was three-quarters of a yard about, and all therest of his limbs so answerable to the same proportions that he seemedthe goodliest man they ever saw."

It would not entertain the reader to follow Smith in all the smalladventures of the exploration, during which he says he went about3,000 miles (three thousand miles in three or four weeks in arowboat is nothing in Smith's memory), "with such watery diet in thesegreat waters and barbarous countries." Much hardship he endured,alternately skirmishing and feasting with the Indians; many were thetribes he struck an alliance with, and many valuable details he addedto the geographical knowledge of the region. In all this explorationSmith showed himself skillful as he was vigorous and adventurous.

He returned to James River September 7th. Many had died, some weresick, Ratcliffe, the late President, was a prisoner for mutiny,Master Scrivener had diligently gathered the harvest, but much of theprovisions had been spoiled by rain. Thus the summer was consumed,and nothing had been accomplished except Smith's discovery.

XI

SMITH'S PRESIDENCY AND PROWESS

On the 10th of September, by the election of the Council and therequest of the company, Captain Smith received the letters-patent,and became President. He stopped the building of Ratcliffe's"palace," repaired the church and the storehouse, got ready thebuildings for the supply expected from England, reduced the fort to a"five square form," set and trained the watch and exercised thecompany every Saturday on a plain called Smithfield, to the amazementof the on-looking Indians.

Captain Newport arrived with a new supply of seventy persons. Amongthem were Captain Francis West, brother to Lord Delaware, CaptainPeter Winne, and Captain Peter Waldo, appointed on the Council, eightDutchmen and Poles, and Mistress Forest and Anne Burrows her maid,the first white women in the colony.

Smith did not relish the arrival of Captain Newport nor theinstructions under which he returned. He came back commanded todiscover the country of Monacan (above the Falls) and to perform theceremony of coronation on the Emperor Powhatan.

How Newport got this private commission when he had returned toEngland without a lump of gold, nor any certainty of the South Sea,or one of the lost company sent out by Raleigh; and why he brought a"fine peeced barge" which must be carried over unknown mountainsbefore it reached the South Sea, he could not understand. "As forthe coronation of Powhatan and his presents of basin and ewer, bed,bedding, clothes, and such costly novelties, they had been muchbetter well spared than so ill spent, for we had his favor and betterfor a plain piece of copper, till this stately kind of solicitingmade him so much overvalue himself that he respected us as much asnothing at all." Smith evidently understood the situation muchbetter than the promoters in England; and we can quite excuse him inhis rage over the foolishness and greed of most of his companions.There was little nonsense about Smith in action, though he need notturn his hand on any man of that age as a boaster.

To send out Poles and Dutchmen to make pitch, tar, and glass wouldhave been well enough if the colony had been firmly established andsupplied with necessaries; and they might have sent two hundredcolonists instead of seventy, if they had ordered them to go to workcollecting provisions of the Indians for the winter, instead ofattempting this strange discovery of the South Sea, and wasting theirtime on a more strange coronation. "Now was there no way," asksSmith, "to make us miserable," but by direction from England toperform this discovery and coronation, "to take that time, spend whatvictuals we had, tire and starve our men, having no means to carryvictuals, ammunition, the hurt or the sick, but on their own backs?"

Smith seems to have protested against all this nonsense, but thoughhe was governor, the Council overruled him. Captain Newport decidedto take one hundred and twenty men, fearing to go with a less numberand journey to Werowocomoco to crown Powhatan. In order to save timeSmith offered to take a message to Powhatan, and induce him to cometo Jamestown and receive the honor and the presents. Accompanied byonly four men he crossed by land to Werowocomoco, passed thePamaunkee (York) River in a canoe, and sent for Powhatan, who wasthirty miles off. Meantime Pocahontas, who by his own account was amere child, and her women entertained Smith in the following manner:

"In a fayre plaine they made a fire, before which, sitting upon amat, suddenly amongst the woods was heard such a hydeous noise andshreeking that the English betook themselves to their armes, andseized upon two or three old men, by them supposing Powhatan with allhis power was come to surprise them. But presently Pocahontas came,willing him to kill her if any hurt were intended, and the beholders,which were men, women and children, satisfied the Captaine that therewas no such matter. Then presently they were presented with thisanticke: Thirty young women came naked out of the woods, only coveredbehind and before with a few greene leaves, their bodies all painted,some of one color, some of another, but all differing; their leaderhad a fayre payre of Bucks hornes on her head, and an Otters skinneat her girdle, and another at her arme, a quiver of arrows at herbacke, a bow and arrows in her hand; the next had in her hand asword, another a club, another a pot-sticke: all horned alike; therest every one with their several devises. These fiends with mosthellish shouts and cries, rushing from among the trees, castthemselves in a ring about the fire, singing and dancing with mostexcellent ill-varietie, oft falling into their infernal passions, andsolemnly again to sing and dance; having spent nearly an hour in thisMascarado, as they entered, in like manner they departed.

"Having reaccommodated themselves, they solemnly invited him to theirlodgings, where he was no sooner within the house, but all theseNymphs more tormented him than ever, with crowding, pressing, andhanging about him, most tediously crying, 'Love you not me? Love younot me?' This salutation ended, the feast was set, consisting of allthe Salvage dainties they could devise: some attending, otherssinging and dancing about them: which mirth being ended, with firebrands instead of torches they conducted him to his lodging."

The next day Powhatan arrived. Smith delivered up the IndianNamontuck, who had just returned from a voyage to England—whither itwas suspected the Emperor wished him to go to spy out the weakness ofthe English tribe—and repeated Father Newport's request thatPowhatan would come to Jamestown to receive the presents and join inan expedition against his enemies, the Monacans.

Powhatan's reply was worthy of his imperial highness, and has beencopied ever since in the speeches of the lords of the soil to thepale faces: "If your king has sent me present, I also am a king, andthis is my land: eight days I will stay to receive them. Your fatheris to come to me, not I to him, nor yet to your fort, neither will Ibite at such a bait; as for the Monacans, I can revenge my owninjuries."

This was the lofty potentate whom Smith, by his way of management,could have tickled out of his senses with a glass bead, and who wouldinfinitely have preferred a big shining copper kettle to themisplaced honor intended to be thrust upon him, but the offer ofwhich puffed him up beyond the reach of negotiation. Smith returnedwith his message. Newport despatched the presents round by water ahundred miles, and the Captains, with fifty soldiers, went over landto Werowocomoco, where occurred the ridiculous ceremony of thecoronation, which Smith describes with much humor. "The next day,"he says, "was appointed for the coronation. Then the presents werebrought him, his bason and ewer, bed and furniture set up, hisscarlet cloke and apparel, with much adoe put on him, being persuadedby Namontuck they would not hurt him. But a foule trouble there wasto make him kneel to receive his Crown; he not knowing the majestynor wearing of a Crown, nor bending of the knee, endured so manypersuasions, examples and instructions as tyred them all. At last bybearing hard on his shoulders, he a little stooped, and three havingthe crown in their hands put it on his head, when by the warning of apistoll the boats were prepared with such a volley of shot that theking start up in a horrible feare, till he saw all was well. Thenremembering himself to congratulate their kindness he gave his oldshoes and his mantell to Captain Newport!"

The Monacan expedition the King discouraged, and refused to furnishfor it either guides or men. Besides his old shoes, the crownedmonarch charitably gave Newport a little heap of corn, only seven oreight bushels, and with this little result the absurd expeditionreturned to Jamestown.

Shortly after Captain Newport with a chosen company of one hundredand twenty men (leaving eighty with President Smith in the fort) andaccompanied by Captain Waldo, Lieutenant Percy, Captain Winne, Mr.West, and Mr. Scrivener, who was eager for adventure, set off for thediscovery of Monacan. The expedition, as Smith predicted, wasfruitless: the Indians deceived them and refused to trade, and thecompany got back to Jamestown, half of them sick, all grumbling, andworn out with toil, famine, and discontent.

Smith at once set the whole colony to work, some to make glass, tar,pitch, and soap-ashes, and others he conducted five miles down theriver to learn to fell trees and make clapboards. In this companywere a couple of gallants, lately come over, Gabriel Beadle and JohnRussell, proper gentlemen, but unused to hardships, whom Smith hasimmortalized by his novel cure of their profanity. They took gaylyto the rough life, and entered into the attack on the forest sopleasantly that in a week they were masters of chopping: "making ittheir delight to hear the trees thunder as they fell, but the axes sooften blistered their tender fingers that many times every third blowhad a loud othe to drown the echo; for remedie of which sinne thePresident devised how to have every man's othes numbered, and atnight for every othe to have a Canne of water powred downe hissleeve, with which every offender was so washed (himself and all),that a man would scarce hear an othe in a weake." In the clearing ofour country since, this excellent plan has fallen into desuetude, forwant of any pious Captain Smith in the logging camps.

These gentlemen, says Smith, did not spend their time in wood-logginglike hirelings, but entered into it with such spirit that thirty ofthem would accomplish more than a hundred of the sort that had to bedriven to work; yet, he sagaciously adds, "twenty good workmen hadbeen better than them all."

Returning to the fort, Smith, as usual, found the time consumed andno provisions got, and Newport's ship lying idle at a great charge.With Percy he set out on an expedition for corn to the Chickahominy,which the insolent Indians, knowing their want, would not supply.Perceiving that it was Powhatan's policy to starve them (as if it wasthe business of the Indians to support all the European vagabonds andadventurers who came to dispossess them of their country), Smith gaveout that he came not so much for corn as to revenge his imprisonmentand the death of his men murdered by the Indians, and proceeded tomake war. This high-handed treatment made the savages sue for peace,and furnish, although they complained of want themselves, owing to abad harvest, a hundred bushels of corn.

This supply contented the company, who feared nothing so much asstarving, and yet, says Smith, so envied him that they would ratherhazard starving than have him get reputation by his vigorous conduct.There is no contemporary account of that period except this whichSmith indited. He says that Newport and Ratcliffe conspired not onlyto depose him but to keep him out of the fort; since being Presidentthey could not control his movements, but that their horns were muchtoo short to effect it.

At this time in the "old Taverne," as Smith calls the fort, everybodywho had money or goods made all he could by trade; soldiers, sailors,and savages were agreed to barter, and there was more care tomaintain their damnable and private trade than to provide the thingsnecessary for the colony. In a few weeks the whites had barteredaway nearly all the axes, chisels, hoes, and picks, and what powder,shot, and pikeheads they could steal, in exchange for furs, baskets,young beasts and such like commodities. Though the supply of furswas scanty in Virginia, one master confessed he had got in one voyageby this private trade what he sold in England for thirty pounds."These are the Saint-seeming Worthies of Virginia," indignantlyexclaims the President, "that have, notwithstanding all this, meate,drinke, and wages." But now they began to get weary of the country,their trade being prevented. "The loss, scorn, and misery was thepoor officers, gentlemen and careless governors, who were bought andsold." The adventurers were cheated, and all their actionsoverthrown by false information and unwise directions.

Master Scrivener was sent with the barges and pinnace toWerowocomoco, where by the aid of Namontuck he procured a littlecorn, though the savages were more ready to fight than to trade. Atlength Newport's ship was loaded with clapboards, pitch, tar, glass,frankincense (?) and soapashes, and despatched to England. About twohundred men were left in the colony. With Newport, Smith sent hisfamous letter to the Treasurer and Council in England. It is so gooda specimen of Smith's ability with the pen, reveals so well hissagacity and knowledge of what a colony needed, and exposes soclearly the ill-management of the London promoters, and the conditionof the colony, that we copy it entire. It appears by this letterthat Smith's "Map of Virginia," and his description of the countryand its people, which were not published till 1612, were sent by thisopportunity. Captain Newport sailed for England late in the autumnof 1608. The letter reads:

RIGHT HONORABLE, ETC.:

I received your letter wherein you write that our minds are so setupon faction, and idle conceits in dividing the country without yourconsents, and that we feed you but with ifs and ands, hopes and somefew proofes; as if we would keepe the mystery of the businesse toourselves: and that we must expressly follow your instructions sentby Captain Newport: the charge of whose voyage amounts to neare twothousand pounds, the which if we cannot defray by the ships returnewe are likely to remain as banished men. To these particulars Ihumbly intreat your pardons if I offend you with my rude answer.

For our factions, unless you would have me run away and leave thecountry, I cannot prevent them; because I do make many stay thatwould else fly away whither. For the Idle letter sent to my Lord ofSalisbury, by the President and his confederates, for dividing thecountry, &c., what it was I know not, for you saw no hand of mine toit; nor ever dream't I of any such matter. That we feed you withhopes, &c. Though I be no scholar, I am past a schoolboy; and Idesire but to know what either you and these here doe know, but thatI have learned to tell you by the continuall hazard of my life. Ihave not concealed from you anything I know; but I feare some causeyou to believe much more than is true.

Expressly to follow your directions by Captain Newport, though theybe performed, I was directly against it; but according to ourcommission, I was content to be overouled by the major part of theCouncill, I feare to the hazard of us all; which now is generallyconfessed when it is too late. Onely Captaine Winne and CaptaineWalclo I have sworne of the Councill, and crowned Powhattan accordingto your instructions.

For the charge of the voyage of two or three thousand pounds we havenot received the value of one hundred pounds, and for the quarteredboat to be borne by the souldiers over the falls. Newport had 120 ofthe best men he could chuse. If he had burnt her to ashes, one mighthave carried her in a bag, but as she is, five hundred cannot to anavigable place above the falls. And for him at that time to find inthe South Sea a mine of gold; or any of them sent by Sir WalterRaleigh; at our consultation I told them was as likely as the rest.But during this great discovery of thirtie miles (which might as wellhave been done by one man, and much more, for the value of a pound ofcopper at a seasonable tyme), they had the pinnace and all the boatswith them but one that remained with me to serve the fort. In theirabsence I followed the new begun works of Pitch and Tarre, Glasse,Sope-ashes, Clapboord, whereof some small quantities we have sentyou. But if you rightly consider what an infinite toyle it is inRussia and Swethland, where the woods are proper for naught els, andthough there be the helpe both of man and beast in those ancientcommonwealths, which many an hundred years have used it, yetthousands of those poor people can scarce get necessaries to live,but from hand to mouth, and though your factors there can buy as muchin a week as will fraught you a ship, or as much as you please, youmust not expect from us any such matter, which are but as many ofignorant, miserable soules, that are scarce able to get wherewith tolive, and defend ourselves against the inconstant Salvages: findingbut here and there a tree fit for the purpose, and want all thingselse the Russians have. For the Coronation of Powhattan, by whoseadvice you sent him such presents, I know not; but this give me leaveto tell you, I feare they will be the confusion of us all ere weheare from you again. At your ships arrivall, the Salvages harvestwas newly gathered, and we going to buy it, our owne not being halvesufficient for so great a number. As for the two ships loading ofcorne Newport promised to provide us from Powhattan, he brought usbut fourteen bushels; and from the Monacans nothing, but the most ofthe men sicke and neare famished. From your ship we had notprovision in victuals worth twenty pound, and we are more than twohundred to live upon this, the one halfe sicke, the other littlebetter. For the saylers (I confesse), they daily make good cheare,but our dyet is a little meale and water, and not sufficient of that.Though there be fish in the Sea, fowles in the ayre, and beasts inthe woods, their bounds are so large, they so wilde, and we so weakeand ignorant, we cannot much trouble them. Captaine Newport we muchsuspect to be the Author of these inventions. Now that you shouldknow, I have made you as great a discovery as he, for less chargethan he spendeth you every meale; I had sent you this mappe of theCountries and Nations that inhabit them, as you may see at large.Also two barrels of stones, and such as I take to be good. Iron oreat the least; so divided, as by their notes you may see in whatplaces I found them. The souldiers say many of your officersmaintaine their families out of that you sent us, and that Newporthath an hundred pounds a year for carrying newes. For every masteryou have yet sent can find the way as well as he, so that an hundredpounds might be spared, which is more than we have all, that helps topay him wages. Cap. Ratliffe is now called Sicklemore, a poorecounterfeited Imposture. I have sent you him home least the Companyshould cut his throat. What he is, now every one can tell you: if heand Archer returne againe, they are sufficient to keep us always infactions. When you send againe I entreat you rather send but thirtycarpenters, husbandmen, gardiners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons,and diggers up of trees roots, well provided, then a thousand of suchas we have; for except wee be able both to lodge them, and feed them,the most will consume with want of necessaries before they can bemade good for anything. Thus if you please to consider this account,and the unnecessary wages to Captaine Newport, or his ships so longlingering and staying here (for notwithstanding his boasting to leaveus victuals for 12 months, though we had 89 by this discovery lameand sicke, and but a pinte of corne a day for a man, we wereconstrained to give him three hogsheads of that to victuall himhomeward), or yet to send into Germany or Poleland for glassem*n andthe rest, till we be able to sustaine ourselves, and releeve themwhen they come. It were better to give five hundred pound a ton forthose grosse Commodities in Denmarke, then send for them hither, tillmore necessary things be provided. For in over-toyling our weake andunskilfull bodies, to satisfy this desire of present profit, we canscarce ever recover ourselves from one supply to another. And Ihumbly intreat you hereafter, let us have what we should receive, andnot stand to the Saylers courtesie to leave us what they please, elsyou may charge us what you will, but we not you with anything. Theseare the causes that have kept us in Virginia from laying such afoundation that ere this might have given much better content andsatisfaction, but as yet you must not look for any profitablereturning. So I humbly rest.

After the departure of Newport, Smith, with his accustomedresolution, set to work to gather supplies for the winter. Corn hadto be extorted from the Indians by force. In one expedition toNansemond, when the Indians refused to trade, Smith fired upon them,and then landed and burned one of their houses; whereupon theysubmitted and loaded his three boats with corn. The ground wascovered with ice and snow, and the nights were bitterly cold. Thedevice for sleeping warm in the open air was to sweep the snow awayfrom the ground and build a fire; the fire was then raked off fromthe heated earth and a mat spread, upon which the whites lay warm,sheltered by a mat hung up on the windward side, until the ground gotcold, when they builded a fire on another place. Many a cold winternight did the explorers endure this hardship, yet grew fat and lustyunder it.

About this time was solemnized the marriage of John Laydon and AnneBurrows, the first in Virginia. Anne was the maid of MistressForrest, who had just come out to grow up with the country, and Johnwas a laborer who came with the first colony in 1607. This wasactually the "First Family of Virginia," about which so much has beeneloquently said.

Provisions were still wanting. Mr. Scrivener and Mr. Percy returnedfrom an expedition with nothing. Smith proposed to surprisePowhatan, and seize his store of corn, but he says he was hindered inthis project by Captain Winne and Mr. Scrivener (who had heretoforebeen considered one of Smith's friends), whom he now suspected ofplotting his ruin in England.

Powhatan on his part sent word to Smith to visit him, to send him mento build a house, give him a grindstone, fifty swords, some big guns,a co*ck and a hen, much copper and beads, in return for which hewould load his ship with corn. Without any confidence in the craftysavage, Smith humored him by sending several workmen, including fourDutchmen, to build him a house. Meantime with two barges and thepinnace and forty-six men, including Lieutenant Percy, Captain Wirt,and Captain William Phittiplace, on the 29th of December he set outon a journey to the Pamaunky, or York, River.

The first night was spent at "Warraskogack," the king of whichwarned Smith that while Powhatan would receive him kindly he was onlyseeking an opportunity to cut their throats and seize their arms.Christmas was kept with extreme winds, rain, frost and snow among thesavages at Kecoughton, where before roaring fires they made merrywith plenty of oysters, fish, flesh, wild fowls and good bread. ThePresident and two others went gunning for birds, and brought down onehundred and forty-eight fowls with three shots.

Ascending the river, on the 12th of January they reachedWerowocomoco. The river was frozen half a mile from the shore, andwhen the barge could not come to land by reason of the ice and muddyshallows, they effected a landing by wading. Powhatan at theirrequest sent them venison, turkeys, and bread; the next day hefeasted them, and then inquired when they were going, ignoring hisinvitation to them to come. Hereupon followed a long game of fencebetween Powhatan and Captain Smith, each trying to overreach theother, and each indulging profusely in lies and pledges. Eachprofessed the utmost love for the other.

Smith upbraided him with neglect of his promise to supply them withcorn, and told him, in reply to his demand for weapons, that he hadno arms to spare. Powhatan asked him, if he came on a peacefulerrand, to lay aside his weapons, for he had heard that the Englishcame not so much for trade as to invade his people and possess hiscountry, and the people did not dare to bring in their corn while theEnglish were around.

Powhatan seemed indifferent about the building. The Dutchmen who hadcome to build Powhatan a house liked the Indian plenty better thanthe risk of starvation with the colony, revealed to Powhatan thepoverty of the whites, and plotted to betray them, of which plotSmith was not certain till six months later. Powhatan discoursedeloquently on the advantage of peace over war: "I have seen the deathof all my people thrice," he said, "and not any one living of thosethree generations but myself; I know the difference of peace and warbetter than any in my country. But I am now old and ere long mustdie." He wanted to leave his brothers and sisters in peace. Heheard that Smith came to destroy his country. He asked him what goodit would do to destroy them that provided his food, to drive theminto the woods where they must feed on roots and acorns; "and be sohunted by you that I can neither rest, eat nor sleep, but my tiredmen must watch, and if a twig but break every one crieth, therecometh Captain Smith!" They might live in peace, and trade, if Smithwould only lay aside his arms. Smith, in return, boasted of hispower to get provisions, and said that he had only been restrainedfrom violence by his love for Powhatan; that the Indians came armedto Jamestown, and it was the habit of the whites to wear their arms.Powhatan then contrasted the liberality of Newport, and told Smiththat while he had used him more kindly than any other chief, he hadreceived from him (Smith) the least kindness of any.

Believing that the palaver was only to get an opportunity to cut histhroat, Smith got the savages to break the ice in order to bring upthe barge and load it with corn, and gave orders for his soldiers toland and surprise Powhatan; meantime, to allay his suspicions,telling him the lie that next day he would lay aside his arms andtrust Powhatan's promises. But Powhatan was not to be caught withsuch chaff. Leaving two or three women to talk with the Captain hesecretly fled away with his women, children, and luggage. When Smithperceived this treachery he fired into the "naked devils" who were insight. The next day Powhatan sent to excuse his flight, andpresented him a bracelet and chain of pearl and vowed eternalfriendship.

With matchlocks lighted, Smith forced the Indians to load the boats;but as they were aground, and could not be got off till high water,he was compelled to spend the night on shore. Powhatan and thetreacherous Dutchmen are represented as plotting to kill Smith thatnight. Provisions were to be brought him with professions offriendship, and Smith was to be attacked while at supper. TheIndians, with all the merry sports they could devise, spent the timetill night, and then returned to Powhatan.

The plot was frustrated in the providence of God by a strange means."For Pocahuntas his dearest jewele and daughter in that dark nightcame through the irksome woods, and told our Captaine good cheershould be sent us by and by; but Powhatan and all the power he couldmake would after come and kill us all, if they that brought it couldnot kill us with our own weapons when we were at supper. Thereforeif we would live she wished us presently to be gone. Such things asshe delighted in he would have given her; but with the tears rollingdown her cheeks she said she durst not to be seen to have any; for ifPowhatan should know it, she were but dead, and so she ran away byherself as she came."

[This instance of female devotion is exactly paralleled inD'Albertis's "New Guinea." Abia, a pretty Biota girl of seventeen,made her way to his solitary habitation at the peril of her life, toinform him that the men of Rapa would shortly bring him insects andother presents, in order to get near him without suspicion, and thenkill him. He tried to reward the brave girl by hanging a gold chainabout her neck, but she refused it, saying it would betray her. Hecould only reward her with a fervent kiss, upon which she fled.Smith omits that part of the incident.]

In less than an hour ten burly fellows arrived with great platters ofvictuals, and begged Smith to put out the matches (the smoke of whichmade them sick) and sit down and eat. Smith, on his guard, compelledthem to taste each dish, and then sent them back to Powhatan. Allnight the whites watched, but though the savages lurked about, noattack was made. Leaving the four Dutchmen to build Powhatan'shouse, and an Englishman to shoot game for him, Smith next eveningdeparted for Pamaunky.

No sooner had he gone than two of the Dutchmen made their wayoverland to Jamestown, and, pretending Smith had sent them, procuredarms, tools, and clothing. They induced also half a dozen sailors,"expert thieves," to accompany them to live with Powhatan; andaltogether they stole, besides powder and shot, fifty swords, eightpieces, eight pistols, and three hundred hatchets. Edward Boyntonand Richard Savage, who had been left with Powhatan, seeing thetreachery, endeavored to escape, but were apprehended by the Indians.

At Pamaunky there was the same sort of palaver with Opechancanough,the king, to whom Smith the year before had expounded the mysteriesof history, geography, and astronomy. After much fencing in talk,Smith, with fifteen companions, went up to the King's house, wherepresently he found himself betrayed and surrounded by seven hundredarmed savages, seeking his life. His company being dismayed, Smithrestored their courage by a speech, and then, boldly charging theKing with intent to murder him, he challenged him to a single combaton an island in the river, each to use his own arms, but Smith to beas naked as the King. The King still professed friendship, and laida great present at the door, about which the Indians lay in ambush tokill Smith. But this hero, according to his own account, took promptmeasures. He marched out to the King where he stood guarded by fiftyof his chiefs, seized him by his long hair in the midst of his men,and pointing a pistol at his breast led, him trembling and near deadwith fear amongst all his people. The King gave up his arms, and thesavages, astonished that any man dare treat their king thus, threwdown their bows. Smith, still holding the King by the hair, madethem a bold address, offering peace or war. They chose peace.

In the picture of this remarkable scene in the "General Historie,"the savage is represented as gigantic in stature, big enough to crushthe little Smith in an instant if he had but chosen. Having giventhe savages the choice to load his ship with corn or to load ithimself with their dead carcasses, the Indians so thronged in withtheir commodities that Smith was tired of receiving them, and leavinghis comrades to trade, he lay down to rest. When he was asleep theIndians, armed some with clubs, and some with old English swords,entered into the house. Smith awoke in time, seized his arms, andothers coming to his rescue, they cleared the house.

While enduring these perils, sad news was brought from Jamestown.Mr. Scrivener, who had letters from England (writes Smith) urging himto make himself Caesar or nothing, declined in his affection forSmith, and began to exercise extra authority. Against the advice ofthe others, he needs must make a journey to the Isle of Hogs, takingwith him in the boat Captain Waldo, Anthony Gosnoll (or Gosnold,believed to be a relative of Captain Bartholomew Gosnold), and eightothers. The boat was overwhelmed in a storm, and sunk, no one knowshow or where. The savages were the first to discover the bodies ofthe lost. News of this disaster was brought to Captain Smith (whodid not disturb the rest by making it known) by Richard Wiffin, whoencountered great dangers on the way. Lodging overnight atPowhatan's, he saw great preparations for war, and found himself inperil. Pocahontas hid him for a time, and by her means, andextraordinary bribes, in three days' travel he reached Smith.

Powhatan, according to Smith, threatened death to his followers ifthey did not kill Smith. At one time swarms of natives, unarmed,came bringing great supplies of provisions; this was to put Smith offhis guard, surround him with hundreds of savages, and slay him by anambush. But he also laid in ambush and got the better of the craftyfoe with a superior craft. They sent him poisoned food, which madehis company sick, but was fatal to no one. Smith apologizes fortemporizing with the Indians at this time, by explaining that hispurpose was to surprise Powhatan and his store of provisions. Butwhen they stealthily stole up to the seat of that crafty chief, theyfound that those "damned Dutchmen" had caused Powhatan to abandon hisnew house at Werowocomoco, and to carry away all his corn andprovisions.

The reward of this wearisome winter campaign was two hundred weightof deer-suet and four hundred and seventy-nine bushels of corn forthe general store. They had not to show such murdering anddestroying as the Spaniards in their "relations," nor heaps and minesof gold and silver; the land of Virginia was barbarous andill-planted, and without precious jewels, but no Spanish relationcould show, with such scant means, so much country explored, so manynatives reduced to obedience, with so little bloodshed.

XII

TRIALS OF THE SETTLEMENT

Without entering at all into the consideration of the character ofthe early settlers of Virginia and of Massachusetts, one contrastforces itself upon the mind as we read the narratives of thedifferent plantations. In Massachusetts there was from the beginninga steady purpose to make a permanent settlement and colony, andnearly all those who came over worked, with more or less friction,with this end before them. The attempt in Virginia partook more ofthe character of a temporary adventure. In Massachusetts from thebeginning a commonwealth was in view. In Virginia, although theLondon promoters desired a colony to be fixed that would beprofitable to themselves, and many of the adventurers, Captain Smithamong them, desired a permanent planting, a great majority of thosewho went thither had only in mind the advantages of trade, theexcitement of a free and licentious life, and the adventure ofsomething new and startling. It was long before the movers in itgave up the notion of discovering precious metals or a short way tothe South Sea. The troubles the primitive colony endured resultedquite as much from its own instability of purpose, recklessness, andinsubordination as from the hostility of the Indians. The majorityspent their time in idleness, quarreling, and plotting mutiny.

The ships departed for England in December, 1608. When Smithreturned from his expedition for food in the winter of 1609, he foundthat all the provision except what he had gathered was so rotted fromthe rain, and eaten by rats and worms, that the hogs would scarcelyeat it. Yet this had been the diet of the soldiers, who had consumedthe victuals and accomplished nothing except to let the savages havethe most of the tools and a good part of the arms.

Taking stock of what he brought in, Smith found food enough to lasttill the next harvest, and at once organized the company into bandsof ten or fifteen, and compelled them to go to work. Six hours a daywere devoted to labor, and the remainder to rest and merry exercises.Even with this liberal allowance of pastime a great part of thecolony still sulked. Smith made them a short address, exhibiting hispower in the letters-patent, and assuring them that he would enforcediscipline and punish the idle and froward; telling them that thosethat did not work should not eat, and that the labor of forty orfifty industrious men should not be consumed to maintain a hundredand fifty idle loiterers. He made a public table of good and badconduct; but even with this inducement the worst had to be driven towork by punishment or the fear of it.

The Dutchmen with Powhatan continued to make trouble, andconfederates in the camp supplied them with powder and shot, swordsand tools. Powhatan kept the whites who were with him to instructthe Indians in the art of war. They expected other whites to jointhem, and those not coming, they sent Francis, their companion,disguised as an Indian, to find out the cause. He came to the Glasshouse in the woods a mile from Jamestown, which was the rendezvousfor all their villainy. Here they laid an ambush of forty men forSmith, who hearing of the Dutchman, went thither to apprehend him.The rascal had gone, and Smith, sending twenty soldiers to follow andcapture him, started alone from the Glass house to return to thefort. And now occurred another of those personal adventures whichmade Smith famous by his own narration.

On his way he encountered the King of Paspahegh, "a most strong,stout savage," who, seeing that Smith had only his falchion,attempted to shoot him. Smith grappled him; the savage prevented hisdrawing his blade, and bore him into the river to drown him. Longthey struggled in the water, when the President got the savage by thethroat and nearly strangled him, and drawing his weapon, was about tocut off his head, when the King begged his life so pitifully, thatSmith led him prisoner to the fort and put him in chains.

In the pictures of this achievement, the savage is represented asabout twice the size and stature of Smith; another illustration thatthis heroic soul was never contented to take one of his size.

The Dutchman was captured, who, notwithstanding his excuses that hehad escaped from Powhatan and did not intend to return, but was onlywalking in the woods to gather walnuts, on the testimony of Paspaheghof his treachery, was also "laid by the heels." Smith now proposedto Paspahegh to spare his life if he would induce Powhatan to sendback the renegade Dutchmen. The messengers for this purpose reportedthat the Dutchmen, though not detained by Powhatan, would not come,and the Indians said they could not bring them on their backs fiftymiles through the woods. Daily the King's wives, children, andpeople came to visit him, and brought presents to procure peace andhis release. While this was going on, the King, though fettered,escaped. A pursuit only resulted in a vain fight with the Indians.Smith then made prisoners of two Indians who seemed to be hangingaround the camp, Kemps and Tussore, "the two most exact villains inall the country," who would betray their own king and kindred for apiece of copper, and sent them with a force of soldiers, under Percy,against Paspahegh. The expedition burned his house, but did notcapture the fugitive. Smith then went against them himself, killedsix or seven, burned their houses, and took their boats and fishingwires. Thereupon the savages sued for peace, and an amnesty wasestablished that lasted as long as Smith remained in the country.

Another incident occurred about this time which greatly raisedSmith's credit in all that country. The Chicahomanians, who alwayswere friendly traders, were great thieves. One of them stole aPistol, and two proper young fellows, brothers, known to be hisconfederates, were apprehended. One of them was put in the dungeonand the other sent to recover the pistol within twelve hours, indefault of which his brother would be hanged. The President, pityingthe wretched savage in the dungeon, sent him some victuals andcharcoal for a fire. "Ere midnight his brother returned with thepistol, but the poor savage in the dungeon was so smothered with thesmoke he had made, and so piteously burnt, that we found him dead.The other most lamentably bewailed his death, and broke forth in suchbitter agonies, that the President, to quiet him, told him that ifhereafter they would not steal, he would make him alive again; but he(Smith) little thought he could be recovered." Nevertheless, by aliberal use of aqua vitae and vinegar the Indian was brought again tolife, but "so drunk and affrighted that he seemed lunatic, the whichas much tormented and grieved the other as before to see him dead."Upon further promise of good behavior Smith promised to bring theIndian out of this malady also, and so laid him by a fire to sleep.In the morning the savage had recovered his perfect senses, hiswounds were dressed, and the brothers with presents of copper weresent away well contented. This was spread among the savages for amiracle, that Smith could make a man alive that was dead. Henarrates a second incident which served to give the Indians awholesome fear of the whites: "Another ingenious savage of Powhatanhaving gotten a great bag of powder and the back of an armour atWerowocomoco, amongst a many of his companions, to show hisextraordinary skill, he did dry it on the back as he had seen thesoldiers at Jamestown. But he dried it so long, they peeping over itto see his skill, it took fire, and blew him to death, and one or twomore, and the rest so scorched they had little pleasure any more tomeddle with gunpowder."

"These and many other such pretty incidents," says Smith, "so amazedand affrighted Powhatan and his people that from all parts theydesired peace;" stolen articles were returned, thieves sent toJamestown for punishment, and the whole country became as free forthe whites as for the Indians.

And now ensued, in the spring of 1609, a prosperous period of threemonths, the longest season of quiet the colony had enjoyed, but onlya respite from greater disasters. The friendship of the Indians andthe temporary subordination of the settlers we must attribute toSmith's vigor, shrewdness, and spirit of industry. It was mucheasier to manage the Indian's than the idle and vicious men thatcomposed the majority of the settlement.

In these three months they manufactured three or four lasts (fourteenbarrels in a last) of tar, pitch, and soap-ashes, produced somespecimens of glass, dug a well of excellent sweet water in the fort,which they had wanted for two years, built twenty houses, repairedthe church, planted thirty or forty acres of ground, and erected ablock-house on the neck of the island, where a garrison was stationedto trade with the savages and permit neither whites nor Indians topass except on the President's order. Even the domestic animalspartook the industrious spirit: "of three sowes in eighteen monthsincreased 60 and od Pigs; and neare 500 chickings brought upthemselves without having any meat given them." The hogs weretransferred to Hog Isle, where another block house was built andgarrisoned, and the garrison were permitted to take "exercise" incutting down trees and making clapboards and wainscot. They werebuilding a fort on high ground, intended for an easily defendedretreat, when a woful discovery put an end to their thriving plans.

Upon examination of the corn stored in casks, it was foundhalf-rotten, and the rest consumed by rats, which had bred in thousandsfrom the few which came over in the ships. The colony was now at itswits end, for there was nothing to eat except the wild products ofthe country. In this prospect of famine, the two Indians, Kemps andTussore, who had been kept fettered while showing the whites how toplant the fields, were turned loose; but they were unwilling todepart from such congenial company. The savages in the neighborhoodshowed their love by bringing to camp, for sixteen days, each day atleast a hundred squirrels, turkeys, deer, and other wild beasts. Butwithout corn, the work of fortifying and building had to beabandoned, and the settlers dispersed to provide victuals. A partyof sixty or eighty men under Ensign Laxon were sent down the river tolive on oysters; some twenty went with Lieutenant Percy to tryfishing at Point Comfort, where for six weeks not a net was cast,owing to the sickness of Percy, who had been burnt with gunpowder;and another party, going to the Falls with Master West, found nothingto eat but a few acorns.

Up to this time the whole colony was fed by the labors of thirty orforty men: there was more sturgeon than could be devoured by dog andman; it was dried, pounded, and mixed with caviare, sorrel, and otherherbs, to make bread; bread was also made of the "Tockwhogh" root,and with the fish and these wild fruits they lived very well. Butthere were one hundred and fifty of the colony who would ratherstarve or eat each other than help gather food. These "distracted,gluttonous loiterers" would have sold anything they had—tools, arms,and their houses—for anything the savages would bring them to eat.Hearing that there was a basket of corn at Powhatan's, fifty milesaway, they would have exchanged all their property for it. Tosatisfy their factious humors, Smith succeeded in getting half of it:"they would have sold their souls," he says, for the other half,though not sufficient to last them a week.

The clamors became so loud that Smith punished the ringleader, oneDyer, a crafty fellow, and his ancient maligner, and then made one ofhis conciliatory addresses. Having shown them how impossible it wasto get corn, and reminded them of his own exertions, and that he hadalways shared with them anything he had, he told them that he shouldstand their nonsense no longer; he should force the idle to work, andpunish them if they railed; if any attempted to escape toNewfoundland in the pinnace they would arrive at the gallows; thesick should not starve; every man able must work, and every man whodid not gather as much in a day as he did should be put out of thefort as a drone.

Such was the effect of this speech that of the two hundred only sevendied in this pinching time, except those who were drowned; no mandied of want. Captain Winne and Master Leigh had died before thisfamine occurred. Many of the men were billeted among the savages,who used them well, and stood in such awe of the power at the fortthat they dared not wrong the whites out of a pin. The Indianscaught Smith's humor, and some of the men who ran away to seek Kempsand Tussore were mocked and ridiculed, and had applied to them—Smith's law of "who cannot work must not eat;" they were almoststarved and beaten nearly to death. After amusing himself with them,Kemps returned the fugitives, whom Smith punished until they werecontent to labor at home, rather than adventure to live idly amongthe savages, "of whom," says our shrewd chronicler, "there was morehope to make better christians and good subjects than the one half ofthem that counterfeited themselves both." The Indians were in suchsubjection that any who were punished at the fort would beg thePresident not to tell their chief, for they would be again punishedat home and sent back for another round.

We hear now of the last efforts to find traces of the lost colony ofSir Walter Raleigh. Master Sicklemore returned from the Chawwonoke(Chowan River) with no tidings of them; and Master Powell, and AnasTodkill who had been conducted to the Mangoags, in the regions southof the James, could learn nothing but that they were all dead. Theking of this country was a very proper, devout, and friendly man; heacknowledged that our God exceeded his as much as our guns did hisbows and arrows, and asked the President to pray his God for him, forall the gods of the Mangoags were angry.

The Dutchmen and one Bentley, another fugitive, who were withPowhatan, continued to plot against the colony, and the Presidentemployed a Swiss, named William Volday, to go and regain them withpromises of pardon. Volday turned out to be a hypocrite, and agreater rascal than the others. Many of the discontented in the fortwere brought into the scheme, which was, with Powhatan's aid, tosurprise and destroy Jamestown. News of this getting about in thefort, there was a demand that the President should cut off theseDutchmen. Percy and Cuderington, two gentlemen, volunteered to doit; but Smith sent instead Master Wiffin and Jeffrey Abbot, to go andstab them or shoot them. But the Dutchmen were too shrewd to becaught, and Powhatan sent a conciliatory message that he did notdetain the Dutchmen, nor hinder the slaying of them.

While this plot was simmering, and Smith was surrounded by treacheryinside the fort and outside, and the savages were being taught thatKing James would kill Smith because he had used the Indians sounkindly, Captain Argall and Master Thomas Sedan arrived out in awell-furnished vessel, sent by Master Cornelius to trade and fish forsturgeon. The wine and other good provision of the ship were soopportune to the necessities of the colony that the President seizedthem. Argall lost his voyage; his ship was revictualed and sent backto England, but one may be sure that this event was so represented asto increase the fostered dissatisfaction with Smith in London. Forone reason or another, most of the persons who returned had probablycarried a bad report of him. Argall brought to Jamestown from Londona report of great complaints of him for his dealings with the savagesand not returning ships freighted with the products of the country.Misrepresented in London, and unsupported and conspired against inVirginia, Smith felt his fall near at hand. On the face of it he wasthe victim of envy and the rascality of incompetent and bad men; butwhatever his capacity for dealing with savages, it must be confessedthat he lacked something which conciliates success with one's ownpeople. A new commission was about to be issued, and a great supplywas in preparation under Lord De La Ware.

XIII

SMITH'S LAST DAYS IN VIRGINIA

The London company were profoundly dissatisfied with the results ofthe Virginia colony. The South Sea was not discovered, no gold hadturned up, there were no valuable products from the new land, and thepromoters received no profits on their ventures. With theirexpectations, it is not to be wondered at that they were stillfurther annoyed by the quarreling amongst the colonists themselves,and wished to begin over again.

A new charter, dated May 23, 1609, with enlarged powers, was got fromKing James. Hundreds of corporators were named, and even thousandswere included in the various London trades and guilds that werejoined in the enterprise. Among the names we find that of CaptainJohn Smith. But he was out of the Council, nor was he given then orever afterward any place or employment in Virginia, or in themanagement of its affairs. The grant included all the American coasttwo hundred miles north and two hundred miles south of Point Comfort,and all the territory from the coast up into the land throughout fromsea to sea, west and northwest. A leading object of the projectstill being (as we have seen it was with Smith's precious crew atJamestown) the conversion and reduction of the natives to the truereligion, no one was permitted in the colony who had not taken theoath of supremacy.

Under this charter the Council gave a commission to Sir Thomas West,
Lord Delaware, Captain-General of Virginia; Sir Thomas Gates,
Lieutenant-General; Sir George Somers, Admiral; Captain Newport,
Vice-Admiral; Sir Thomas Dale, High Marshal; Sir Frederick Wainman,
General of the Horse, and many other officers for life.

With so many wealthy corporators money flowed into the treasury, anda great expedition was readily fitted out. Towards the end of May,1609, there sailed from England nine ships and five hundred people,under the command of Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, and CaptainNewport. Each of these commanders had a commission, and the one whoarrived first was to call in the old commission; as they could notagree, they all sailed in one ship, the Sea Venture.

This brave expedition was involved in a contest with a hurricane; onevessel was sunk, and the Sea Venture, with the three commanders, onehundred and fifty men, the new commissioners, bills of lading, allsorts of instructions, and much provision, was wrecked on theBermudas. With this company was William Strachey, of whom we shallhear more hereafter. Seven vessels reached Jamestown, and brought,among other annoyances, Smith's old enemy, Captain Ratcliffe, aliasSicklemore, in command of a ship. Among the company were alsoCaptains Martin, Archer, Wood, Webbe, Moore, King, Davis, and severalgentlemen of good means, and a crowd of the riff-raff of London.Some of these Captains whom Smith had sent home, now returned withnew pretensions, and had on the voyage prejudiced the company againsthim. When the fleet was first espied, the President thought it wasSpaniards, and prepared to defend himself, the Indians promptlycoming to his assistance.

This hurricane tossed about another expedition still more famous,that of Henry Hudson, who had sailed from England on his third voyagetoward Nova Zembla March 25th, and in July and August was beatingdown the Atlantic coast. On the 18th of August he entered the Capesof Virginia, and sailed a little way up the Bay. He knew he was atthe mouth of the James River, "where our Englishmen are," as he says.The next day a gale from the northeast made him fear being drivenaground in the shallows, and he put to sea. The storm continued forseveral days. On the 21st "a sea broke over the fore-course andsplit it;" and that night something more ominous occurred: "thatnight [the chronicle records] our cat ran crying from one side of theship to the other, looking overboard, which made us to wonder, but wesaw nothing." On the 26th they were again off the bank of Virginia,and in the very bay and in sight of the islands they had seen on the18th. It appeared to Hudson "a great bay with rivers," but tooshallow to explore without a small boat. After lingering till the29th, without any suggestion of ascending the James, he sailednorthward and made the lucky stroke of river exploration whichimmortalized him.

It seems strange that he did not search for the English colony, butthe adventurers of that day were independent actors, and did not careto share with each other the glories of discovery.

The first of the scattered fleet of Gates and Somers came in on the11th, and the rest straggled along during the three or four daysfollowing. It was a narrow chance that Hudson missed them all, andone may imagine that the fate of the Virginia colony and of the NewYork settlement would have been different if the explorer of theHudson had gone up the James.

No sooner had the newcomers landed than trouble began. They wouldhave deposed Smith on report of the new commission, but they couldshow no warrant. Smith professed himself willing to retire toEngland, but, seeing the new commission did not arrive, held on tohis authority, and began to enforce it to save the whole colony fromanarchy. He depicts the situation in a paragraph: "To a thousandmischiefs these lewd Captains led this lewd company, wherein weremany unruly gallants, packed thither by their friends to escape illdestinies, and those would dispose and determine of the government,sometimes to one, the next day to another; today the old commissionmust rule, tomorrow the new, the next day neither; in fine, theywould rule all or ruin all; yet in charity we must endure them thusto destroy us, or by correcting their follies, have brought theworld's censure upon us to be guilty of their blouds. Happie had webeene had they never arrived, and we forever abandoned, as we wereleft to our fortunes; for on earth for their number was never moreconfusion or misery than their factions occasioned." In this companycame a boy, named Henry Spelman, whose subsequent career possessesconsiderable interest.

The President proceeded with his usual vigor: he "laid by the heels"the chief mischief-makers till he should get leisure to punish them;sent Mr. West with one hundred and twenty good men to the Falls tomake a settlement; and despatched Martin with near as many and theirproportion of provisions to Nansemond, on the river of that nameemptying into the James, obliquely opposite Point Comfort.

Lieutenant Percy was sick and had leave to depart for England when hechose. The President's year being about expired, in accordance withthe charter, he resigned, and Captain Martin was elected President.But knowing his inability, he, after holding it three hours, resignedit to Smith, and went down to Nansemond. The tribe used him kindly,but he was so frightened with their noisy demonstration of mirth thathe surprised and captured the poor naked King with his houses, andbegan fortifying his position, showing so much fear that the savageswere emboldened to attack him, kill some of his men, release theirKing, and carry off a thousand bushels of corn which had beenpurchased, Martin not offering to intercept them. The frightenedCaptain sent to Smith for aid, who despatched to him thirty goodshot. Martin, too chicken-hearted to use them, came back with themto Jamestown, leaving his company to their fortunes. In thisadventure the President commends the courage of one George Forrest,who, with seventeen arrows sticking into him and one shot throughhim, lived six or seven days.

Meantime Smith, going up to the Falls to look after Captain West, metthat hero on his way to Jamestown. He turned him back, and foundthat he had planted his colony on an unfavorable flat, subject notonly to the overflowing of the river, but to more intolerableinconveniences. To place him more advantageously the President sentto Powhatan, offering to buy the place called Powhatan, promising todefend him against the Monacans, to pay him in copper, and make ageneral alliance of trade and friendship.

But "those furies," as Smith calls West and his associates, refusedto move to Powhatan or to accept these conditions. They contemnedhis authority, expecting all the time the new commission, and,regarding all the Monacans' country as full of gold, determined thatno one should interfere with them in the possession of it. Smith,however, was not intimidated from landing and attempting to quelltheir mutiny. In his "General Historie" it is written "I doe morethan wonder to think how onely with five men he either durst or wouldadventure as he did (knowing how greedy they were of his bloud) tocome amongst them." He landed and ordered the arrest of the chiefdisturbers, but the crowd hustled him off. He seized one of theirboats and escaped to the ship which contained the provision.Fortunately the sailors were friendly and saved his life, and aconsiderable number of the better sort, seeing the malice ofRatcliffe and Archer, took Smith's part.

Out of the occurrences at this new settlement grew many of thecharges which were preferred against Smith. According to the"General Historie" the company of Ratcliffe and Archer was adisorderly rabble, constantly tormenting the Indians, stealing theircorn, robbing their gardens, beating them, and breaking into theirhouses and taking them prisoners. The Indians daily complained tothe President that these "protectors" he had given them were worseenemies than the Monacans, and desired his pardon if they defendedthemselves, since he could not punish their tormentors. They evenproposed to fight for him against them. Smith says that afterspending nine days in trying to restrain them, and showing them howthey deceived themselves with "great guilded hopes of the South SeaMines," he abandoned them to their folly and set sail for Jamestown.

No sooner was he under way than the savages attacked the fort, slewmany of the whites who were outside, rescued their friends who wereprisoners, and thoroughly terrified the garrison. Smith's shiphappening to go aground half a league below, they sent off to him,and were glad to submit on any terms to his mercy. He "put by theheels" six or seven of the chief offenders, and transferred thecolony to Powhatan, where were a fort capable of defense against allthe savages in Virginia, dry houses for lodging, and two hundredacres of ground ready to be planted. This place, so strong anddelightful in situation, they called Non-such. The savages appearedand exchanged captives, and all became friends again.

At this moment, unfortunately, Captain West returned. All thevictuals and munitions having been put ashore, the old factiousprojects were revived. The soft-hearted West was made to believethat the rebellion had been solely on his account. Smith, seeingthem bent on their own way, took the row-boat for Jamestown. Thecolony abandoned the pleasant Non-such and returned to the open airat West's Fort. On his way down, Smith met with the accident thatsuddenly terminated his career in Virginia.

While he was sleeping in his boat his powder-bag was accidentallyfired; the explosion tore the flesh from his body and thighs, nine orten inches square, in the most frightful manner. To quench thetormenting fire, frying him in his clothes, he leaped into the deepriver, where, ere they could recover him, he was nearly drowned. Inthis pitiable condition, without either surgeon or surgery, he was togo nearly a hundred miles.

It is now time for the appearance upon the scene of the boy HenrySpelman, with his brief narration, which touches this period ofSmith's life. Henry Spelman was the third son of the distinguishedantiquarian, Sir Henry Spelman, of Coughan, Norfolk, who was marriedin 1581. It is reasonably conjectured that he could not have beenover twenty-one when in May, 1609, he joined the company going toVirginia. Henry was evidently a scapegrace, whose friends werewilling to be rid of him. Such being his character, it is more thanprobable that he was shipped bound as an apprentice, and of coursewith the conditions of apprenticeship in like expeditions of thatperiod—to be sold or bound out at the end of the voyage to pay forhis passage. He remained for several years in Virginia, living mostof the time among the Indians, and a sort of indifferent go betweenof the savages and the settlers. According to his own story it wason October 20, 1609, that he was taken up the river to Powhatan byCaptain Smith, and it was in April, 1613, that he was rescued fromhis easy-setting captivity on the Potomac by Captain Argall. Duringhis sojourn in Virginia, or more probably shortly after his return toEngland, he wrote a brief and bungling narration of his experiencesin the colony, and a description of Indian life. The MS. was notprinted in his time, but mislaid or forgotten. By a strange seriesof chances it turned up in our day, and was identified and preparedfor the press in 1861. Before the proof was read, the type wasaccidentally broken up and the MS. again mislaid. Lost sight of forseveral years, it was recovered and a small number of copies of itwere printed at London in 1872, edited by Mr. James F. Hunnewell.

Spelman's narration would be very important if we could trust it. Heappeared to have set down what he saw, and his story has a certainsimplicity that gains for it some credit. But he was a reckless boy,unaccustomed to weigh evidence, and quite likely to write as factsthe rumors that he heard. He took very readily to the ways of Indianlife. Some years after, Spelman returned to Virginia with the titleof Captain, and in 1617 we find this reference to him in the "GeneralHistorie": "Here, as at many other times, we are beholden to Capt.Henry Spilman, an interpreter, a gentleman that lived long time inthis country, and sometimes a prisoner among the Salvages, and donemuch good service though but badly rewarded." Smith would probablynot have left this on record had he been aware of the contents of theMS. that Spelman had left for after-times.

Spelman begins his Relation, from which I shall quote substantially,without following the spelling or noting all the interlineations,with the reason for his emigration, which was, "being in displeasureof my friends, and desirous to see other countries." After a briefaccount of the voyage and the joyful arrival at Jamestown, theRelation continues:

"Having here unloaded our goods and bestowed some senight orfortnight in viewing the country, I was carried by Capt. Smith, ourPresident, to the Falls, to the little Powhatan, where, unknown tome, he sold me to him for a town called Powhatan; and, leaving mewith him, the little Powhatan, he made known to Capt. West how he hadbought a town for them to dwell in. Whereupon Capt. West, growingangry because he had bestowed cost to begin a town in another place,Capt. Smith desiring that Capt. West would come and settle himselfthere, but Capt. West, having bestowed cost to begin a town inanother place, misliked it, and unkindness thereupon arising betweenthem, Capt. Smith at that time replied little, but afterward combinedwith Powhatan to kill Capt. West, which plot took but small effect,for in the meantime Capt. Smith was apprehended and sent aboard forEngland."

That this roving boy was "thrown in" as a makeweight in the trade forthe town is not impossible; but that Smith combined with Powhatan tokill Captain West is doubtless West's perversion of the offer of theIndians to fight on Smith's side against him.

According to Spelman's Relation, he stayed only seven or eight dayswith the little Powhatan, when he got leave to go to Jamestown, beingdesirous to see the English and to fetch the small articles thatbelonged to him. The Indian King agreed to wait for him at thatplace, but he stayed too long, and on his return the little Powhatanhad departed, and Spelman went back to Jamestown. Shortly after, thegreat Powhatan sent Thomas Savage with a present of venison toPresident Percy. Savage was loath to return alone, and Spelman wasappointed to go with him, which he did willingly, as victuals werescarce in camp. He carried some copper and a hatchet, which hepresented to Powhatan, and that Emperor treated him and his comradevery kindly, seating them at his own mess-table. After some threeweeks of this life, Powhatan sent this guileless youth down to decoythe English into his hands, promising to freight a ship with corn ifthey would visit him. Spelman took the message and brought back theEnglish reply, whereupon Powhatan laid the plot which resulted in thekilling of Captain Ratcliffe and thirty-eight men, only two of hiscompany escaping to Jamestown. Spelman gives two versions of thisincident. During the massacre Spelman says that Powhatan sent himand Savage to a town some sixteen miles away. Smith's "GeneralHistorie" says that on this occasion "Pocahuntas saved a boy namedHenry Spilman that lived many years afterward, by her means, amongthe Patawomekes." Spelman says not a word about Pocahuntas. On thecontrary, he describes the visit of the King of the Patawomekes toPowhatan; says that the King took a fancy to him; that he and DutchSamuel, fearing for their lives, escaped from Powhatan's town; werepursued; that Samuel was killed, and that Spelman, after dodgingabout in the forest, found his way to the Potomac, where he livedwith this good King Patomecke at a place called Pasptanzie for morethan a year. Here he seems to have passed his time agreeably, foralthough he had occasional fights with the squaws of Patomecke, theKing was always his friend, and so much was he attached to the boythat he would not give him up to Captain Argall without some copperin exchange.

When Smith returned wounded to Jamestown, he was physically in nocondition to face the situation. With no medical attendance, hisdeath was not improbable. He had no strength to enforce disciplinenor organize expeditions for supplies; besides, he was acting under acommission whose virtue had expired, and the mutinous spiritsrebelled against his authority. Ratcliffe, Archer, and the otherswho were awaiting trial conspired against him, and Smith says hewould have been murdered in his bed if the murderer's heart had notfailed him when he went to fire his pistol at the defenseless sickman. However, Smith was forced to yield to circ*mstances. No soonerhad he given out that he would depart for England than they persuadedMr. Percy to stay and act as President, and all eyes were turned inexpectation of favor upon the new commanders. Smith being thusdivested of authority, the most of the colony turned against him;many preferred charges, and began to collect testimony. "The shipswere detained three weeks to get up proofs of his ill-conduct"—"timeand charges," says Smith, dryly, "that might much better have beenspent."

It must have enraged the doughty Captain, lying thus helpless, to seehis enemies triumph, the most factious of the disturbers in thecolony in charge of affairs, and become his accusers. Even at thisdistance we can read the account with little patience, and shouldhave none at all if the account were not edited by Smith himself.His revenge was in his good fortune in setting his own story afloatin the current of history. The first narrative of these events,published by Smith in his Oxford tract of 1612, was considerablyremodeled and changed in his "General Historie" of 1624. As we havesaid before, he had a progressive memory, and his opponents ought tobe thankful that the pungent Captain did not live to work the storyover a third time.

It is no doubt true, however, that but for the accident to our hero,he would have continued to rule till the arrival of Gates and Somerswith the new commissions; as he himself says, "but had that unhappyblast not happened, he would quickly have qualified the heat of thosehumors and factions, had the ships but once left them and us to ourfortunes; and have made that provision from among the salvages, as weneither feared Spaniard, Salvage, nor famine: nor would have leftVirginia nor our lawful authority, but at as dear a price as we hadbought it, and paid for it."

He doubtless would have fought it out against all comers; and whoshall say that he does not merit the glowing eulogy on himself whichhe inserts in his General History? "What shall I say but this, weleft him, that in all his proceedings made justice his first guide,and experience his second, ever hating baseness, sloth, pride, andindignity, more than any dangers; that upon no danger would send themwhere he would not lead them himself; that would never see us wantwhat he either had or could by any means get us; that would ratherwant than borrow; or starve than not pay; that loved action more thanwords, and hated falsehood and covetousness worse than death; whoseadventures were our lives, and whose loss our deaths."

A handsomer thing never was said of another man than Smith could sayof himself, but he believed it, as also did many of his comrades, wemust suppose. He suffered detraction enough, but he suffered alsoabundant eulogy both in verse and prose. Among his eulogists, ofcourse, is not the factious Captain Ratcliffe. In the EnglishColonial State papers, edited by Mr. Noel Sainsbury, is a note, datedJamestown, October 4, 1609, from Captain "John Radclyffe comenlycalled," to the Earl of Salisbury, which contains this remark uponSmith's departure after the arrival of the last supply: "They heardthat all the Council were dead but Capt. [John] Smith, President, whor*igned sole Governor, and is now sent home to answer somemisdemeanor."

Captain Archer also regards this matter in a different light fromthat in which Smith represents it. In a letter from Jamestown,written in August, he says:

"In as much as the President [Smith], to strengthen his authority,accorded with the variances and gave not any due respect to manyworthy gentlemen that were in our ships, wherefore they generally,with my consent, chose Master West, my Lord De La Ware's brother,their Governor or President de bene esse, in the absence of SirThomas Gates, or if he be miscarried by sea, then to continue till weheard news from our counsell in England. This choice of him theymade not to disturb the old President during his term, but as hisauthority expired, then to take upon him the sole government, withsuch assistants of the captains or discreet persons as the colonyafforded.

"Perhaps you shall have it blamed as a mutinie by such as retaine oldmalice, but Master West, Master Piercie, and all the respectedgentlemen of worth in Virginia, can and will testify otherwise upontheir oaths. For the King's patent we ratified, but refused to begoverned by the President—that is, after his time was expired andonly subjected ourselves to Master West, whom we labor to have nextPresident."

It is clear from this statement that the attempt was made tosupersede Smith even before his time expired, and without anyauthority (since the new commissions were still with Gates and Somersin Bermuda), for the reason that Smith did not pay proper respect tothe newly arrived "gentlemen." Smith was no doubt dictatorial andoffensive, and from his point of view he was the only man whounderstood Virginia, and knew how successfully to conduct the affairsof the colony. If this assumption were true it would be none theless disagreeable to the new-comers.

At the time of Smith's deposition the colony was in prosperouscondition. The "General Historie" says that he left them "withthree ships, seven boats, commodities ready to trade, the harvestnewly gathered, ten weeks' provision in store, four hundred ninetyand odd persons, twenty-four pieces of ordnance, three hundredmuskets, snaphances and fire-locks, shot, powder, and matchsufficient, curats, pikes, swords, and morrios, more than men; theSalvages, their language and habitations well known to a hundredwell-trained and expert soldiers; nets for fishing; tools of allkinds to work; apparel to supply our wants; six mules and a horse;five or six hundred swine; as many hens and chickens; some goats;some sheep; what was brought or bred there remained." Jamestown wasalso strongly palisaded and contained some fifty or sixty houses;besides there were five or six other forts and plantations, "not sosumptuous as our succerers expected, they were better than theyprovided any for us."

These expectations might well be disappointed if they were foundedupon the pictures of forts and fortifications in Virginia and in theSomers Islands, which appeared in De Bry and in the "GeneralHistorie," where they appear as massive stone structures with all thefinish and elegance of the European military science of the day.

Notwithstanding these ample provisions for the colony, Smith hadsmall expectation that it would thrive without him. "They regardingnothing," he says, "but from hand to mouth, did consume what we had,took care for nothing but to perfect some colorable complaint againstCaptain Smith."

Nor was the composition of the colony such as to beget high hopes ofit. There was but one carpenter, and three others that desired tolearn, two blacksmiths, ten sailors; those called laborers were forthe most part footmen, brought over to wait upon the adventurers, whodid not know what a day's work was—all the real laborers were theDutchmen and Poles and some dozen others. "For all the rest werepoor gentlemen, tradesmen, serving men, libertines, and such like,ten times more fit to spoil a commonwealth than either begin one orhelp to maintain one. For when neither the fear of God, nor the law,nor shame, nor displeasure of their friends could rule them here,there is small hope ever to bring one in twenty of them to be goodthere." Some of them proved more industrious than was expected;"but ten good workmen would have done more substantial work in a daythan ten of them in a week."

The disreputable character of the majority of these colonists isabundantly proved by other contemporary testimony. In the letter ofthe Governor and Council of Virginia to the London Company, datedJamestown, July 7, 1610, signed by Lord De La Ware, Thomas Gates,George Percy, Ferd. Wenman, and William Strachey, and probablycomposed by Strachey, after speaking of the bountiful capacity of thecountry, the writer exclaims: "Only let me truly acknowledge thereare not one hundred or two of deboisht hands, dropt forth by yearafter year, with penury and leysure, ill provided for before theycome, and worse governed when they are here, men of such distemperedbodies and infected minds, whom no examples daily before their eyes,either of goodness or punishment, can deterr from their habituallimpieties, or terrifie from a shameful death, that must be thecarpenters and workmen in this so glorious a building."

The chapter in the "General Historie" relating to Smith's last daysin Virginia was transferred from the narrative in the appendix toSmith's "Map of Virginia," Oxford, 1612, but much changed in thetransfer. In the "General Historie" Smith says very little about thenature of the charges against him. In the original narrative signedby Richard Pots and edited by Smith, there are more details of thecharges. One omitted passage is this: "Now all those Smith hadeither whipped or punished, or in any way disgraced, had free powerand liberty to say or sweare anything, and from a whole armful oftheir examinations this was concluded."

Another omitted passage relates to the charge, to which reference ismade in the "General Historie," that Smith proposed to marryPocahontas:

"Some propheticall spirit calculated he had the salvages in suchsubjection, he would have made himself a king by marrying Pocahuntas,Powhatan's daughter. It is true she was the very nonpareilof his kingdom, and at most not past thirteen or fourteen years ofa*ge. Very oft she came to our fort with what she could get forCapt. Smith, that ever loved and used all the country well, but herespecially he ever much respected, and she so well requited it, thatwhen her father intended to have surprised him, she by stealth inthe dark night came through the wild woods and told him of it.But her marriage could in no way have entitled him by any rightto the kingdom, nor was it ever suspected he had such a thought, ormore regarded her or any of them than in honest reason and discretionhe might. If he would he might have married her, or havedone what he listed. For there were none that could have hinderedhis determination."

It is fair, in passing, to remark that the above allusion to thenight visit of Pocahontas to Smith in this tract of 1612 helps toconfirm the story, which does not appear in the previous narration ofSmith's encounter with Powhatan at Werowocomoco in the same tract,but is celebrated in the "General Historie." It is also hintedplainly enough that Smith might have taken the girl to wife, Indianfashion.

XIV

THE COLONY WITHOUT SMITH

It was necessary to follow for a time the fortune of the Virginiacolony after the departure of Captain Smith. Of its disasters andspeedy decline there is no more doubt than there is of the opinion ofSmith that these were owing to his absence. The savages, we read inhis narration, no sooner knew he was gone than they all revolted andspoiled and murdered all they encountered.

The day before Captain Smith sailed, Captain Davis arrived in a smallpinnace with sixteen men. These, with a company from the fort underCaptain Ratcliffe, were sent down to Point Comfort. Captain West andCaptain Martin, having lost their boats and half their men among thesavages at the Falls, returned to Jamestown. The colony now livedupon what Smith had provided, "and now they had presidents with alltheir appurtenances." President Percy was so sick he could neither gonor stand. Provisions getting short, West and Ratcliffe went abroadto trade, and Ratcliffe and twenty-eight of his men were slain by anambush of Powhatan's, as before related in the narrative of HenrySpelman. Powhatan cut off their boats, and refused to trade, so thatCaptain West set sail for England. What ensued cannot be morevividly told than in the "General Historie":

"Now we all found the losse of Capt. Smith, yea his greatestmaligners could now curse his losse; as for corne provision andcontribution from the salvages, we had nothing but mortall wounds,with clubs and arrowes; as for our hogs, hens, goats, sheep, horse,or what lived, our commanders, officers and salvages daily consumedthem, some small proportions sometimes we tasted, till all wasdevoured; then swords, arms, pieces or anything was traded with thesalvages, whose cruell fingers were so oft imbrued in our blouds,that what by their crueltie, our Governor's indiscretion, and thelosse of our ships, of five hundred within six months after Capt.Smith's departure, there remained not past sixty men, women andchildren, most miserable and poore creatures; and those werepreserved for the most part, by roots, herbes, acorns, walnuts,berries, now and then a little fish; they that had starch in theseextremities made no small use of it, yea, even the very skinnes ofour horses. Nay, so great was our famine, that a salvage we slew andburied, the poorer sort took him up again and eat him, and so diddivers one another boyled, and stewed with roots and herbs. And oneamongst the rest did kill his wife, poudered her and had eaten partof her before it was knowne, for which he was executed, as he welldeserved; now whether she was better roasted, boyled, or carbonaded,I know not, but of such a dish as powdered wife I never heard of.This was that time, which still to this day we called the starvingtime; it were too vile to say and scarce to be believed what weendured; but the occasion was our owne, for want of providence,industrie and government, and not the barreness and defect of thecountry as is generally supposed."

This playful allusion to powdered wife, and speculation as to how shewas best cooked, is the first instance we have been able to find ofwhat is called "American humor," and Captain Smith has the honor ofbeing the first of the "American humorists" who have handled subjectsof this kind with such pleasing gayety.

It is to be noticed that this horrible story of cannibalism andwife-eating appears in Smith's "General Historie" of 1624, without aword of contradiction or explanation, although the company as early as1610 had taken pains to get at the facts, and Smith must have seentheir "Declaration," which supposes the story was started by enemiesof the colony. Some reported they saw it, some that Captain Smithsaid so, and some that one Beadle, the lieutenant of Captain Davis,did relate it. In "A True Declaration of the State of the Colonie inVirginia," published by the advice and direction of the Council ofVirginia, London, 1610, we read:

"But to clear all doubt, Sir Thomas Yates thus relateth the tragedie:

"There was one of the company who mortally hated his wife, andtherefore secretly killed her, then cut her in pieces and hid her indivers parts of his house: when the woman was missing, the mansuspected, his house searched, and parts of her mangled body werediscovered, to excuse himself he said that his wife died, that he hidher to satisfie his hunger, and that he fed daily upon her. Uponthis his house was again searched, when they found a good quantitieof meale, oatmeale, beanes and pease. Hee therefore was arraigned,confessed the murder, and was burned for his horrible villainy."

This same "True Declaration," which singularly enough does notmention the name of Captain Smith, who was so prominent an actor inVirginia during the period to which it relates, confirms all thatSmith said as to the character of the colonists, especially the newsupply which landed in the eight vessels with Ratcliffe and Archer."Every man overvalueing his own strength would be a commander; everyman underprizing another's value, denied to be commanded." They werenegligent and improvident. "Every man sharked for his presentbootie, but was altogether careless of succeeding penurie." Toidleness and faction was joined treason. About thirty "unhallowedcreatures," in the winter of 1610, some five months before thearrival of Captain Gates, seized upon the ship Swallow, which hadbeen prepared to trade with the Indians, and having obtained cornconspired together and made a league to become pirates, dreaming ofmountains of gold and happy robberies. By this desertion theyweakened the colony, which waited for their return with theprovisions, and they made implacable enemies of the Indians by theirviolence. "These are that scum of men," which, after roving the seasand failing in their piracy, joined themselves to other pirates theyfound on the sea, or returned to England, bound by a mutual oath todiscredit the land, and swore they were drawn away by famine. "Theseare they that roared at the tragicall historie of the man eating uphis dead wife in Virginia"—"scandalous reports of a viperousgeneration."

If further evidence were wanting, we have it in "The New Life ofVirginia," published by authority of the Council, London, 1612. Thisis the second part of the "Nova Britannia," published in London,1609. Both are prefaced by an epistle to Sir Thomas Smith, one ofthe Council and treasurer, signed "R. I." Neither document containsany allusion to Captain John Smith, or the part he played inVirginia. The "New Life of Virginia," after speaking of the tempestwhich drove Sir Thomas Gates on Bermuda, and the landing of the eightships at Jamestown, says: "By which means the body of the plantationwas now augmented with such numbers of irregular persons that it soonbecame as so many members without a head, who as they were bad andevil affected for the most part before they went hence; so now beinglanded and wanting restraint, they displayed their condition in allkinds of looseness, those chief and wisest guides among them (whereofthere were not many) did nothing but bitterly contend who should befirst to command the rest, the common sort, as is ever seen in suchcases grew factious and disordered out of measure, in so much as thepoor colony seemed (like the Colledge of English fugitives in Rome)as a hostile camp within itself; in which distemper that envious manstept in, sowing plentiful tares in the hearts of all, which grew tosuch speedy confusion, that in few months ambition, sloth andidleness had devoured the fruit of former labours, planting andsowing were clean given over, the houses decayed, the church fell toruin, the store was spent, the cattle consumed, our people starved,and the Indians by wrongs and injuries made our enemies…. As forthose wicked Impes that put themselves a shipboard, not knowingotherwise how to live in England; or those ungratious sons that dailyvexed their fathers hearts at home, and were therefore thrust uponthe voyage, which either writing thence, or being returned back tocover their own leudnes, do fill mens ears with false reports oftheir miserable and perilous life in Virginia, let the imputation ofmisery be to their idleness, and the blood that was spilt upon theirown heads that caused it."

Sir Thomas Gates affirmed that after his first coming there he hadseen some of them eat their fish raw rather than go a stone's cast tofetch wood and dress it.

The colony was in such extremity in May, 1610, that it would havebeen extinct in ten days but for the arrival of Sir Thomas Gates andSir George Somers and Captain Newport from the Bermudas. Thesegallant gentlemen, with one hundred and fifty souls, had been wreckedon the Bermudas in the Sea Venture in the preceding July. Theterrors of the hurricane which dispersed the fleet, and thisshipwreck, were much dwelt upon by the writers of the time, and theBermudas became a sort of enchanted islands, or realms of theimagination. For three nights, and three days that were as black asthe nights, the water logged Sea Venture was scarcely kept afloat bybailing. We have a vivid picture of the stanch Somers sitting uponthe poop of the ship, where he sat three days and three nightstogether, without much meat and little or no sleep, conning the shipto keep her as upright as he could, until he happily descried land.The ship went ashore and was wedged into the rocks so fast that itheld together till all were got ashore, and a good part of the goodsand provisions, and the tackling and iron of the ship necessary forthe building and furnishing of a new ship.

This good fortune and the subsequent prosperous life on the islandand final deliverance was due to the noble Somers, or Sommers, afterwhom the Bermudas were long called "Sommers Isles," which wasgradually corrupted into "The Summer Isles." These islands ofBermuda had ever been accounted an enchanted pile of rocks and adesert inhabitation for devils, which the navigator and marineravoided as Scylla and Charybdis, or the devil himself. But thisshipwrecked company found it the most delightful country in theworld, the climate was enchanting, delicious fruits abounded, thewaters swarmed with fish, some of them big enough to nearly drag thefishers into the sea, while whales could be heard spouting and nosingabout the rocks at night; birds fat and tame and willing to be eatencovered all the bushes, and such droves of wild hogs covered theisland that the slaughter of them for months seemed not to diminishtheir number. The friendly disposition of the birds seemed most toimpress the writer of the "True Declaration of Virginia." Heremembers how the ravens fed Elias in the brook Cedron; "so Godprovided for our disconsolate people in the midst of the sea byfoules; but with an admirable difference; unto Elias the ravensbrought meat, unto our men the foules brought (themselves) for meate:for when they whistled, or made any strange noyse, the foules wouldcome and sit on their shoulders, they would suffer themselves to betaken and weighed by our men, who would make choice of the fairestand fattest and let flie the leane and lightest, an accident [thechronicler exclaims], I take it [and everybody will take it], thatcannot be paralleled by any Historie, except when God sent abundanceof Quayles to feed his Israel in the barren wilderness."

The rescued voyagers built themselves comfortable houses on theisland, and dwelt there nine months in good health and plentifullyfed. Sunday was carefully observed, with sermons by Mr. Buck, thechaplain, an Oxford man, who was assisted in the services by StephenHopkins, one of the Puritans who were in the company. A marriage wascelebrated between Thomas Powell, the cook of Sir George Somers, andElizabeth Persons, the servant of Mrs. Horlow. Two children werealso born, a boy who was christened Bermudas and a girl Bermuda. Thegirl was the child of Mr. John Rolfe and wife, the Rolfe who wasshortly afterward to become famous by another marriage. In orderthat nothing should be wanting to the ordinary course of a civilizedcommunity, a murder was committed. In the company were two Indians,Machumps and Namontack, whose acquaintance we have before made,returning from England, whither they had been sent by Captain Smith.Falling out about something, Machumps slew Namontack, and having madea hole to bury him, because it was too short he cut off his legs andlaid them by him. This proceeding Machumps concealed till he was inVirginia.

Somers and Gates were busy building two cedar ships, the Deliverer,of eighty tons, and a pinnace called the Patience. When these werecompleted, the whole company, except two scamps who remained behindand had adventures enough for a three-volume novel, embarked, and onthe 16th of May sailed for Jamestown, where they arrived on the 23dor 24th, and found the colony in the pitiable condition beforedescribed. A few famished settlers watched their coming. The churchbell was rung in the shaky edifice, and the emaciated colonistsassembled and heard the "zealous and sorrowful prayer" of ChaplainBuck. The commission of Sir Thomas Gates was read, and Mr. Percyretired from the governorship.

The town was empty and unfurnished, and seemed like the ruin of someancient fortification rather than the habitation of living men. Thepalisades were down; the ports open; the gates unhinged; the churchruined and unfrequented; the houses empty, torn to pieces or burnt;the people not able to step into the woods to gather fire-wood; andthe Indians killing as fast without as famine and pestilence within.William Strachey was among the new-comers, and this is the story thathe despatched as Lord Delaware's report to England in July. Ontaking stock of provisions there was found only scant rations forsixteen days, and Gates and Somers determined to abandon theplantation, and, taking all on board their own ships, to make theirway to Newfoundland, in the hope of falling in with English vessels.Accordingly, on the 7th of June they got on board and dropped downthe James.

Meantime the news of the disasters to the colony, and the supposedloss of the Sea Venture, had created a great excitement in London,and a panic and stoppage of subscriptions in the company. LordDelaware, a man of the highest reputation for courage and principle,determined to go himself, as Captain-General, to Virginia, in thehope of saving the fortunes of the colony. With three ships and onehundred and fifty persons, mostly artificers, he embarked on the 1stof April, 1610, and reached the Chesapeake Bay on the 5th of June,just in time to meet the forlorn company of Gates and Somers puttingout to sea.

They turned back and ascended to Jamestown, when landing on Sunday,the 10th, after a sermon by Mr. Buck, the commission of Lord Delawarewas read, and Gates turned over his authority to the new Governor.He swore in as Council, Sir Thomas Gates, Lieutenant-General; SirGeorge Somers, Admiral; Captain George Percy; Sir Ferdinando Wenman,Marshal; Captain Christopher Newport, and William Strachey, Esq.,Secretary and Recorder.

On the 19th of June the brave old sailor, Sir George Somers,volunteered to return to the Bermudas in his pinnace to procure hogsand other supplies for the colony. He was accompanied by CaptainArgall in the ship Discovery. After a rough voyage this noble oldknight reached the Bermudas. But his strength was not equal to thememorable courage of his mind. At a place called Saint George hedied, and his men, confounded at the death of him who was the life ofthem all, embalmed his body and set sail for England. CaptainArgall, after parting with his consort, without reaching theBermudas, and much beating about the coast, was compelled to returnto Jamestown.

Captain Gates was sent to England with despatches and to procure moresettlers and more supplies. Lord Delaware remained with the colonyless than a year; his health failing, he went in pursuit of it, inMarch, 1611, to the West Indies. In June of that year Gates sailedagain, with six vessels, three hundred men, one hundred cows, besidesother cattle, and provisions of all sorts. With him went his wife,who died on the passage, and his daughters. His expedition reachedthe James in August. The colony now numbered seven hundred persons.Gates seated himself at Hampton, a "delicate and necessary site for acity."

Percy commanded at Jamestown, and Sir Thomas Dale went up the riverto lay the foundations of Henrico.

We have no occasion to follow further the fortunes of the Virginiacolony, except to relate the story of Pocahontas under her differentnames of Amonate, Matoaka, Mrs. Rolfe, and Lady Rebecca.

NEW ENGLAND ADVENTURES

Captain John Smith returned to England in the autumn of 1609, woundedin body and loaded with accusations of misconduct, concocted by hisfactious companions in Virginia. There is no record that thesecharges were ever considered by the London Company. Indeed, wecannot find that the company in those days ever took any action onthe charges made against any of its servants in Virginia. Men camehome in disgrace and appeared to receive neither vindication norcondemnation. Some sunk into private life, and others more pushingand brazen, like Ratcliffe, the enemy of Smith, got employment againafter a time. The affairs of the company seem to have been conductedwith little order or justice.

Whatever may have been the justice of the charges against Smith, hehad evidently forfeited the good opinion of the company as adesirable man to employ. They might esteem his energy and profit byhis advice and experience, but they did not want his services. Andin time he came to be considered an enemy of the company.

Unfortunately for biographical purposes, Smith's life is pretty mucha blank from 1609 to 1614. When he ceases to write about himself hepasses out of sight. There are scarcely any contemporary allusionsto his existence at this time. We may assume, however, from ourknowledge of his restlessness, ambition, and love of adventure, thathe was not idle. We may assume that he besieged the company with hisplans for the proper conduct of the settlement of Virginia; that hetalked at large in all companies of his discoveries, his exploits,which grew by the relating, and of the prospective greatness of thenew Britain beyond the Atlantic. That he wearied the Council by hisimportunity and his acquaintances by his hobby, we can also surmise.No doubt also he was considered a fanatic by those who failed tocomprehend the greatness of his schemes, and to realize, as he did,the importance of securing the new empire to the English before itwas occupied by the Spanish and the French. His conceit, hisboasting, and his overbearing manner, which no doubt was one of thecauses why he was unable to act in harmony with the other adventurersof that day, all told against him. He was that most uncomfortableperson, a man conscious of his own importance, and out of favor andout of money.

Yet Smith had friends, and followers, and men who believed in him.This is shown by the remarkable eulogies in verse from many pens,which he prefixes to the various editions of his many works. Theyseem to have been written after reading the manuscripts, and preparedto accompany the printed volumes and tracts. They all allude to theenvy and detraction to which he was subject, and which must haveamounted to a storm of abuse and perhaps ridicule; and they all taxthe English vocabulary to extol Smith, his deeds, and his works. Inputting forward these tributes of admiration and affection, as wellas in his constant allusion to the ill requital of his services, wesee a man fighting for his reputation, and conscious of the necessityof doing so. He is ever turning back, in whatever he writes, torehearse his exploits and to defend his motives.

The London to which Smith returned was the London of Shakespeare'sday; a city dirty, with ill-paved streets unlighted at night, nosidewalks, foul gutters, wooden houses, gable ends to the street, setthickly with small windows from which slops and refuse were at anymoment of the day or night liable to be emptied upon the heads of thepassers by; petty little shops in which were beginning to bedisplayed the silks and luxuries of the continent; a city crowded andgrowing rapidly, subject to pestilences and liable to sweepingconflagrations. The Thames had no bridges, and hundreds of boatsplied between London side and Southwark, where were most of thetheatres, the bull-baitings, the bear-fighting, the public gardens,the residences of the hussies, and other amusem*nts that Bankside,the resort of all classes bent on pleasure, furnished high or low.At no time before or since was there such fantastical fashion indress, both in cut and gay colors, nor more sumptuousness in costumeor luxury in display among the upper classes, and such squalor in lowlife. The press teemed with tracts and pamphlets, written inlanguage "as plain as a pikestaff," against the immoralities of thetheatres, those "seminaries of vice," and calling down the judgmentof God upon the cost and the monstrosities of the dress of both menand women; while the town roared on its way, warned by sermons, andinstructed in its chosen path by such plays and masques as BenJonson's "Pleasure reconciled to Virtue."

The town swarmed with idlers, and with gallants who wantedadvancement but were unwilling to adventure their ease to obtain it.There was much lounging in apothecaries' shops to smoke tobacco,gossip, and hear the news. We may be sure that Smith found manyauditors for his adventures and his complaints. There was a gooddeal of interest in the New World, but mainly still as a place wheregold and other wealth might be got without much labor, and as apossible short cut to the South Sea and Cathay. The vast number ofLondoners whose names appear in the second Virginia charter shows thereadiness of traders to seek profit in adventure. The stir for widerfreedom in religion and government increased with the activity ofexploration and colonization, and one reason why James finallyannulled the Virginia, charter was because he regarded the meetingsof the London Company as opportunities of sedition.

Smith is altogether silent about his existence at this time. We donot hear of him till 1612, when his "Map of Virginia" with hisdescription of the country was published at Oxford. The map had beenpublished before: it was sent home with at least a portion of thedescription of Virginia. In an appendix appeared (as has been said)a series of narrations of Smith's exploits, covering the rime he wasin Virginia, written by his companions, edited by his friend Dr.Symonds, and carefully overlooked by himself.

Failing to obtain employment by the Virginia company, Smith turnedhis attention to New England, but neither did the Plymouth companyavail themselves of his service. At last in 1614 he persuaded someLondon merchants to fit him out for a private trading adventure tothe coast of New England. Accordingly with two ships, at the chargeof Captain Marmaduke Roydon, Captain George Langam, Mr. John Buley,and William Skelton, merchants, he sailed from the Downs on the 3d ofMarch, 1614, and in the latter part of April "chanced to arrive inNew England, a part of America at the Isle of Monahiggan in 43 1/2 ofNortherly latitude." This was within the territory appropriated tothe second (the Plymouth) colony by the patent of 1606, which gaveleave of settlement between the 38th and 44th parallels.

Smith's connection with New England is very slight, and mainly thatof an author, one who labored for many years to excite interest in itby his writings. He named several points, and made a map of suchportion of the coast as he saw, which was changed from time to timeby other observations. He had a remarkable eye for topography, as isespecially evident by his map of Virginia. This New England coast isroughly indicated in Venazzani's Plot Of 1524, and better onMercator's of a few years later, and in Ortelius's "Theatrum OrbisTerarum" of 1570; but in Smith's map we have for the first time afair approach to the real contour.

Of Smith's English predecessors on this coast there is no room hereto speak. Gosnold had described Elizabeth's Isles, explorations andsettlements had been made on the coast of Maine by Popham andWeymouth, but Smith claims the credit of not only drawing the firstfair map of the coast, but of giving the name "New England" to whathad passed under the general names of Virginia, Canada, Norumbaga,etc.

Smith published his description of New England June 18, 1616, and itis in that we must follow his career. It is dedicated to the "high,hopeful Charles, Prince of Great Britain," and is prefaced by anaddress to the King's Council for all the plantations, and another toall the adventurers into New England. The addresses, as usual, callattention to his own merits. "Little honey [he writes] hath thathive, where there are more drones than bees; and miserable is thatland where more are idle than are well employed. If the endeavors ofthese vermin be acceptable, I hope mine may be excusable: though Iconfess it were more proper for me to be doing what I say thanwriting what I know. Had I returned rich I could not have erred; nowhaving only such food as came to my net, I must be taxed. But, Iwould my taxers were as ready to adventure their purses as I, purse,life, and all I have; or as diligent to permit the charge, as I knowthey are vigilant to reap the fruits of my labors." The value of thefisheries he had demonstrated by his catch; and he says, looking, asusual, to large results, "but because I speak so much of fishing, ifany mistake me for such a devote fisher, as I dream of nought else,they mistake me. I know a ring of gold from a grain of barley as wellas a goldsmith; and nothing is there to be had which fishing dothhinder, but further us to obtain."

John Smith first appears on the New England coast as a whale fisher.The only reference to his being in America in Josselyn's"Chronological Observations of America" is under the wrong year,1608: "Capt. John Smith fished now for whales at Monhiggen." Hesays: "Our plot there was to take whales, and made tryall of a Myneof gold and copper;" these failing they were to get fish and furs.Of gold there had been little expectation, and (he goes on) "we foundthis whale fishing a costly conclusion; we saw many, and spent muchtime in chasing them; but could not kill any; they being a kind ofJubartes, and not the whale that yeeldes finnes and oyle as weexpected." They then turned their attention to smaller fish, butowing to their late arrival and "long lingering about the whale"—chasing a whale that they could not kill because it was not the rightkind—the best season for fishing was passed. Nevertheless, theysecured some 40,000 cod—the figure is naturally raised to 60,000when Smith retells the story fifteen years afterwards.

But our hero was a born explorer, and could not be content with notexamining the strange coast upon which he found himself. Leaving hissailors to catch cod, he took eight or nine men in a small boat, andcruised along the coast, trading wherever he could for furs, of whichhe obtained above a thousand beaver skins; but his chance to tradewas limited by the French settlements in the east, by the presence ofone of Popham's ships opposite Monhegan, on the main, and by a coupleof French vessels to the westward. Having examined the coast fromPenobscot to Cape Cod, and gathered a profitable harvest from thesea, Smith returned in his vessel, reaching the Downs within sixmonths after his departure. This was his whole experience in NewEngland, which ever afterwards he regarded as particularly hisdiscovery, and spoke of as one of his children, Virginia being theother.

With the other vessel Smith had trouble. He accuses its master,Thomas Hunt, of attempting to rob him of his plots and observations,and to leave him "alone on a desolate isle, to the fury of famine,And all other extremities." After Smith's departure the rascallyHunt decoyed twenty-seven unsuspecting savages on board his ship andcarried them off to Spain, where he sold them as slaves. Hunt soldhis furs at a great profit. Smith's cargo also paid well: in hisletter to Lord Bacon in 1618 he says that with forty-five men he hadcleared L 1,500 in less than three months on a cargo of dried fishand beaver skins—a pound at that date had five times the purchasingpower of a pound now.

The explorer first landed on Monhegan, a small island in sight ofwhich in the war of 1812 occurred the lively little seafight of theAmerican Wasp and the British Frolic, in which the Wasp was thevictor, but directly after, with her prize, fell into the hands of anEnglish seventy-four.

He made certainly a most remarkable voyage in his open boat. BetweenPenobscot and Cape Cod (which he called Cape James) he says he sawforty several habitations, and sounded about twenty-five excellentharbors. Although Smith accepted the geographical notion of histime, and thought that Florida adjoined India, he declared thatVirginia was not an island, but part of a great continent, and hecomprehended something of the vastness of the country he was coastingalong, "dominions which stretch themselves into the main, God dothknow how many thousand miles, of which one could no more guess theextent and products than a stranger sailing betwixt England andFrance could tell what was in Spain, Italy, Germany, Bohemia,Hungary, and the rest." And he had the prophetic vision, which hemore than once refers to, of one of the greatest empires of the worldthat would one day arise here. Contrary to the opinion thatprevailed then and for years after, he declared also that New Englandwas not an island.

Smith describes with considerable particularity the coast, giving thenames of the Indian tribes, and cataloguing the native productions,vegetable and animal. He bestows his favorite names liberally uponpoints and islands—few of which were accepted. Cape Ann he calledfrom his charming Turkish benefactor, "Cape Tragabigzanda"; the threeislands in front of it, the "Three Turks' Heads"; and the Isles ofShoals he simply describes: "Smyth's Isles are a heape together, noneneare them, against Acconimticus." Cape Cod, which appears upon allthe maps before Smith's visit as "Sandy" cape, he says "is only aheadland of high hills of sand, overgrown with shrubbie pines, hurts[whorts, whortleberries] and such trash; but an excellent harbor forall weathers. This Cape is made by the maine Sea on the one side,and a great bay on the other in the form of a sickle."

A large portion of this treatise on New England is devoted to anargument to induce the English to found a permanent colony there, ofwhich Smith shows that he would be the proper leader. The mainstaple for the present would be fish, and he shows how Holland hasbecome powerful by her fisheries and the training of hardy sailors.The fishery would support a colony until it had obtained a goodfoothold, and control of these fisheries would bring more profit toEngland than any other occupation. There are other reasons than gainthat should induce in England the large ambition of founding a greatstate, reasons of religion and humanity, erecting towns, peoplingcountries, informing the ignorant, reforming things unjust, teachingvirtue, finding employment for the idle, and giving to the mothercountry a kingdom to attend her. But he does not expect the Englishto indulge in such noble ambitions unless he can show a profit inthem.

"I have not [he says] been so ill bred but I have tasted of plentyand pleasure, as well as want and misery; nor doth a necessity yet,nor occasion of discontent, force me to these endeavors; nor am Iignorant that small thank I shall have for my pains; or that manywould have the world imagine them to be of great judgment, that canbut blemish these my designs, by their witty objections anddetractions; yet (I hope) my reasons and my deeds will so prevailwith some, that I shall not want employment in these affairs to makethe most blind see his own senselessness and incredulity; hoping thatgain will make them affect that which religion, charity and thecommon good cannot…. For I am not so simple to think that ever anyother motive than wealth will ever erect there a Commonwealth; ordraw company from their ease and humours at home, to stay in NewEngland to effect any purpose."

But lest the toils of the new settlement should affright his readers,our author draws an idyllic picture of the simple pleasures whichnature and liberty afford here freely, but which cost so dearly inEngland. Those who seek vain pleasure in England take more pains toenjoy it than they would spend in New England to gain wealth, and yethave not half such sweet content. What pleasure can be more, heexclaims, when men are tired of planting vines and fruits andordering gardens, orchards and building to their mind, than "torecreate themselves before their owne doore, in their owne boatesupon the Sea, where man, woman and child, with a small hooke andline, by angling, may take divers sorts of excellent fish at theirpleasures? And is it not pretty sport, to pull up two pence, sixpence, and twelve pence as fast as you can hale and veere a line?…And what sport doth yield more pleasing content, and less hurt orcharge than angling with a hooke, and crossing the sweet ayre fromIsle to Isle, over the silent streams of a calme Sea? wherein themost curious may finde pleasure, profit and content."

Smith made a most attractive picture of the fertility of the soil andthe fruitfulness of the country. Nothing was too trivial to bementioned. "There are certain red berries called Alkermes which isworth ten shillings a pound, but of these hath been sold for thirtyor forty shillings the pound, may yearly be gathered a goodquantity." John Josselyn, who was much of the time in New Englandfrom 1638 to 1671 and saw more marvels there than anybody else everimagined, says, "I have sought for this berry he speaks of, as a manshould for a needle in a bottle of hay, but could never light uponit; unless that kind of Solomon's seal called by the Englishtreacle-berry should be it."

Towards the last of August, 1614, Smith was back at Plymouth. He hadnow a project of a colony which he imparted to his friend SirFerdinand Gorges. It is difficult from Smith's various accounts tosay exactly what happened to him next. It would appear that hedeclined to go with an expedition of four ship which the Virginiacompany despatched in 1615, and incurred their ill-will by refusing,but he considered himself attached to the western or Plymouthcompany. Still he experienced many delays from them: they promisedfour ships to be ready at Plymouth; on his arrival "he found no suchmatter," and at last he embarked in a private expedition, to found acolony at the expense of Gorges, Dr. Sutliffe, Bishop o Exeter, and afew gentlemen in London. In January 1615, he sailed from Plymouthwith a ship Of 20 tons, and another of 50. His intention was, afterthe fishing was over, to remain in New England with only fifteen menand begin a colony.

These hopes were frustrated. When only one hundred and twentyleagues out all the masts of his vessels were carried away in astorm, and it was only by diligent pumping that he was able to keephis craft afloat and put back to Plymouth. Thence on the 24th ofJune he made another start in a vessel of sixty tons with thirty men.But ill-luck still attended him. He had a queer adventure withpirates. Lest the envious world should not believe his own story,Smith had Baker, his steward, and several of his crew examined beforea magistrate at Plymouth, December 8, 1615, who support his story bytheir testimony up to a certain point.

It appears that he was chased two days by one Fry, an English pirate,in a greatly superior vessel, heavily armed and manned. By reason ofthe foul weather the pirate could not board Smith, and his master,mate, and pilot, Chambers, Minter, and Digby, importuned him tosurrender, and that he should send a boat to the pirate, as Fry hadno boat. This singular proposal Smith accepted on condition Frywould not take anything that would cripple his voyage, or send moremen aboard (Smith furnishing the boat) than he allowed. Bakerconfessed that the quartermaster and Chambers received gold of thepirates, for what purpose it does not appear. They came on board,but Smith would not come out of his cabin to entertain them,"although a great many of them had been his sailors, and for his lovewould have wafted us to the Isle of Flowers."

Having got rid of the pirate Fry by this singular manner of receivinggold from him, Smith's vessel was next chased by two French piratesat Fayal. Chambers, Minter, and Digby again desired Smith to yield,but he threatened to blow up his ship if they did not stand to thedefense; and so they got clear of the French pirates. But more wereto come.

At "Flowers" they were chased by four French men-of-war. AgainChambers, Minter, and Digby importuned Smith to yield, and upon theconsideration that he could speak French, and that they wereProtestants of Rochelle and had the King's commission to takeSpaniards, Portuguese, and pirates, Smith, with some of his company,went on board one of the French ships. The next day the Frenchplundered Smith's vessel and distributed his crew among their ships,and for a week employed his boat in chasing all the ships that camein sight. At the end of this bout they surrendered her again to hercrew, with victuals but no weapons. Smith exhorted his officers toproceed on their voyage for fish, either to New England orNewfoundland. This the officers declined to do at first, but thesoldiers on board compelled them, and thereupon Captain Smith busiedhimself in collecting from the French fleet and sending on board hisbark various commodities that belonged to her—powder, match, books,instruments, his sword and dagger, bedding, aquavite, his commission,apparel, and many other things. These articles Chambers and theothers divided among themselves, leaving Smith, who was still onboard the Frenchman, only his waistcoat and breeches. The next day,the weather being foul, they ran so near the Frenchman as to endangertheir yards, and Chambers called to Captain Smith to come aboard orhe would leave him. Smith ordered him to send a boat; Chambersreplied that his boat was split, which was a lie, and told him tocome off in the Frenchman's boat. Smith said he could not commandthat, and so they parted. The English bark returned to Plymouth, andSmith was left on board the French man-of-war.

Smith himself says that Chambers had persuaded the French admiralthat if Smith was let to go on his boat he would revenge himself onthe French fisheries on the Banks.

For over two months, according to his narration, Smith was kept onboard the Frenchman, cruising about for prizes, "to manage theirfight against the Spaniards, and be in a prison when they took anyEnglish." One of their prizes was a sugar caraval from Brazil;another was a West Indian worth two hundred thousand crowns, whichhad on board fourteen coffers of wedges of silver, eight thousandroyals of eight, and six coffers of the King of Spain's treasure,besides the pillage and rich coffers of many rich passengers. TheFrench captain, breaking his promise to put Smith ashore at Fayal, atlength sent him towards France on the sugar caravel. When near thecoast, in a night of terrible storm, Smith seized a boat and escaped.It was a tempest that wrecked all the vessels on the coast, and fortwelve hours Smith was drifting about in his open boat, in momentaryexpectation of sinking, until he was cast upon the oozy isle of"Charowne," where the fowlers picked him up half dead with water,cold, and hunger, and he got to Rochelle, where he made complaint tothe Judge of Admiralty. Here he learned that the rich prize had beenwrecked in the storm and the captain and half the crew drowned. Butfrom the wreck of this great prize thirty-six thousand crowns' worthof jewels came ashore. For his share in this Smith put in his claimwith the English ambassador at Bordeaux. The Captain was hospitablytreated by the Frenchmen. He met there his old friend MasterCrampton, and he says: "I was more beholden to the Frenchmen thatescaped drowning in the man-of-war, Madam Chanoyes of Rotchell, andthe lawyers of Burdeaux, than all the rest of my countrymen I met inFrance." While he was waiting there to get justice, he saw the"arrival of the King's great marriage brought from Spain." This isall his reference to the arrival of Anne of Austria, eldest daughterof Philip III., who had been betrothed to Louis XIII. in 1612, one ofthe double Spanish marriages which made such a commotion in France.

Leaving his business in France unsettled (forever), Smith returned toPlymouth, to find his reputation covered with infamy and his clothes,books, and arms divided among the mutineers of his boat. Thechiefest of these he "laid by the heels," as usual, and the othersconfessed and told the singular tale we have outlined. It needs nocomment, except that Smith had a facility for unlucky adventuresunequaled among the uneasy spirits of his age. Yet he was as buoyantas a cork, and emerged from every disaster with more enthusiasm forhimself and for new ventures. Among the many glowing tributes tohimself in verse that Smith prints with this description is onesigned by a soldier, Edw. Robinson, which begins:

"Oft thou hast led, when I brought up the Rere,
In bloody wars where thousands have been slaine."

This common soldier, who cannot help breaking out in poetry when hethinks of Smith, is made to say that Smith was his captain "in thefierce wars of Transylvania," and he apostrophizes him:

"Thou that to passe the worlds foure parts dost deeme
No more, than ewere to goe to bed or drinke,
And all thou yet hast done thou dost esteeme
As nothing.

"For mee: I not commend but much admire
Thy England yet unknown to passers by-her,
For it will praise itselfe in spight of me:
Thou, it, it, thou, to all posteritie."

XVI

NEW ENGLAND'S TRIALS

Smith was not cast down by his reverses. No sooner had he laid hislatest betrayers by the heels than he set himself resolutely toobtain money and means for establishing a colony in New England, andto this project and the cultivation in England of interest in NewEngland he devoted the rest of his life.

His Map and Description of New England was published in 1616, and hebecame a colporteur of this, beseeching everywhere a hearing for hisnoble scheme. It might have been in 1617, while Pocahontas was aboutto sail for Virginia, or perhaps after her death, that he was againin Plymouth, provided with three good ships, but windbound for threemonths, so that the season being past, his design was frustrated, andhis vessels, without him, made a fishing expedition to Newfoundland.

It must have been in the summer of this year that he was at Plymouthwith divers of his personal friends, and only a hundred pounds amongthem all. He had acquainted the nobility with his projects, and wasafraid to see the Prince Royal before he had accomplished anything,"but their great promises were nothing but air to prepare the voyageagainst the next year." He spent that summer in the west of England,visiting "Bristol, Exeter, Bastable? Bodman, Perin, Foy, Milborow,Saltash, Dartmouth, Absom, Pattnesse, and the most of the gentry inCornwall and Devonshire, giving them books and maps," and incitingthem to help his enterprise.

So well did he succeed, he says, that they promised him twenty sailof ships to go with him the next year, and to pay him for his painsand former losses. The western commissioners, in behalf of thecompany, contracted with him, under indented articles, "to be admiralof that country during my life, and in the renewing of theletters-patent so to be nominated"; half the profits of the enterpriseto be theirs, and half to go to Smith and his companions.

Nothing seems to have come out of this promising induction except thetitle of "Admiral of New England," which Smith straightway assumedand wore all his life, styling himself on the title-page ofeverything he printed, "Sometime Governor of Virginia and Admiral ofNew England." As the generous Captain had before this time assumedthis title, the failure of the contract could not much annoy him. Hehad about as good right to take the sounding name of Admiral asmerchants of the west of England had to propose to give it to him.

The years wore away, and Smith was beseeching aid, republishing hisworks, which grew into new forms with each issue, and no doubt makinghimself a bore wherever he was known. The first edition of "NewEngland's Trials"—by which he meant the various trials and attemptsto settle New England was published in 1620. It was to some extent arepetition of his "Description" of 1616. In it he made no referenceto Pocahontas. But in the edition of 1622, which is dedicated toCharles, Prince of Wales, and considerably enlarged, he drops intothis remark about his experience at Jamestown: "It Is true in ourgreatest extremitie they shot me, slue three of my men, and by thefolly of them that fled tooke me prisoner; yet God made Pocahontasthe king's daughter the meanes to deliver me: and thereby taught meto know their treacheries to preserve the rest. [This is evidentlyan allusion to the warning Pocahontas gave him at Werowocomoco.] Itwas also my chance in single combat to take the king of Paspaheghprisoner, and by keeping him, forced his subjects to work in chainstill I made all the country pay contribution having little elsewhereon to live."

This was written after he had heard of the horrible massacre of 1622at Jamestown, and he cannot resist the temptation to draw a contrastbetween the present and his own management. He explains that theIndians did not kill the English because they were Christians, but toget their weapons and commodities. How different it was when he wasin Virginia. "I kept that country with but 38, and had not to eatbut what we had from the savages. When I had ten men able to goabroad, our commonwealth was very strong: with such a number I rangedthat unknown country 14 weeks: I had but 18 to subdue them all."This is better than Sir John Falstaff. But he goes on: "When I firstwent to those desperate designes it cost me many a forgotten pound tohire men to go, and procrastination caused more run away than went.""Twise in that time I was President." [It will be remembered thatabout the close of his first year he gave up the command, for form'ssake, to Capt. Martin, for three hours, and then took it again.] "Torange this country of New England in like manner, I had but eight, asis said, and amongst their bruite conditions I met many of theirsilly encounters, and without any hurt, God be thanked." The valiantCaptain had come by this time to regard himself as the inventor anddiscoverer of Virginia and New England, which were explored andsettled at the cost of his private pocket, and which he is notashamed to say cannot fare well in his absence. Smith, with all hisgood opinion of himself, could not have imagined how delicious hischaracter would be to readers in after-times. As he goes on he warmsup: "Thus you may see plainly the yearly success from New England byVirginia, which hath been so costly to this kingdom and so dear tome.

"By that acquaintance I have with them I may call them my children [hespent between two and three months on the New England coast] for theyhave been my wife, my hawks, my hounds, my cards, my dice, and totalmy best content, as indifferent to my heart as my left hand to myright…. Were there not one Englishman remaining I would yet beginagain as I did at the first; not that I have any secret encouragementfor any I protest, more than lamentable experiences; for all theirdiscoveries I can yet hear of are but pigs of my sowe: nor morestrange to me than to hear one tell me he hath gone from Billingateand discovered Greenwich!"

As to the charge that he was unfortunate, which we should think mighthave become current from the Captain's own narratives, he tells hismaligners that if they had spent their time as he had done, theywould rather believe in God than in their own calculations, andperadventure might have had to give as bad an account of theiractions. It is strange they should tax him before they have triedwhat he tried in Asia, Europe, and America, where he never needed toimportune for a reward, nor ever could learn to beg: "These sixteenyears I have spared neither pains nor money, according to my ability,first to procure his majesty's letters patent, and a Company here tobe the means to raise a company to go with me to Virginia [this isthe expedition of 1606 in which he was without command] as is said:which beginning here and there cost me near five years work, and morethan 500 pounds of my own estate, besides all the dangers, miseriesand encumbrances I endured gratis, where I stayed till I left 500better provided than ever I was: from which blessed Virgin (ere Ireturned) sprung the fortunate habitation of Somer Isles." "Ere Ireturned" is in Smith's best vein. The casual reader would certainlyconclude that the Somers Isles were somehow due to the providence ofJohn Smith, when in fact he never even heard that Gates and Smithwere shipwrecked there till he had returned to England, sent homefrom Virginia. Neill says that Smith ventured L 9 in the Virginiacompany! But he does not say where he got the money.

New England, he affirms, hath been nearly as chargeable to him andhis friends: he never got a shilling but it cost him a pound. Andnow, when New England is prosperous and a certainty, "what think youI undertook when nothing was known, but that there was a vast land."These are some of the considerations by which he urges the company tofit out an expedition for him: "thus betwixt the spur of desire andthe bridle of reason I am near ridden to death in a ring of despair;the reins are in your hands, therefore I entreat you to ease me."

The Admiral of New England, who since he enjoyed the title had hadneither ship, nor sailor, nor rod of land, nor cubic yard of saltwater under his command, was not successful in his several "Trials."And in the hodge-podge compilation from himself and others, which hehad put together shortly after,—the "General Historie," hepathetically exclaims: "Now all these proofs and this relation, I nowcalled New England's Trials. I caused two or three thousand of themto be printed, one thousand with a great many maps both of Virginiaand New England, I presented to thirty of the chief companies inLondon at their Halls, desiring either generally or particularly(them that would) to imbrace it and by the use of a stock of fivethousand pounds to ease them of the superfluity of most of theircompanies that had but strength and health to labor; near a year Ispent to understand their resolutions, which was to me a greater toiland torment, than to have been in New England about my business butwith bread and water, and what I could get by my labor; but inconclusion, seeing nothing would be effected I was contented as wellwith this loss of time and change as all the rest."

In his "Advertisem*nts" he says that at his own labor, cost, and losshe had "divulged more than seven thousand books and maps," in orderto influence the companies, merchants and gentlemen to make aplantation, but "all availed no more than to hew Rocks withOister-shels."

His suggestions about colonizing were always sensible. But we canimagine the group of merchants in Cheapside gradually dissolving asSmith hove in sight with his maps and demonstrations.

In 1618, Smith addressed a letter directly to Lord Bacon, to whichthere seems to have been no answer. The body of it was acondensation of what he had repeatedly written about New England, andthe advantage to England of occupying the fisheries. "This nineteenyears," he writes, "I have encountered no few dangers to learn whathere I write in these few leaves:… their fruits I am certain maybring both wealth and honor for a crown and a kingdom to hismajesty's posterity." With 5,000, pounds he will undertake toestablish a colony, and he asks of his Majesty a pinnace to lodge hismen and defend the coast for a few months, until the colony getssettled. Notwithstanding his disappointments and losses, he is stillpatriotic, and offers his experience to his country: "Should Ipresent it to the Biskayners, French and Hollanders, they have mademe large offers. But nature doth bind me thus to beg at home, whomstrangers have pleased to create a commander abroad…. Though I canpromise no mines of gold, the Hollanders are an example of myproject, whose endeavors by fishing cannot be suppressed by all theKing of Spain's golden powers. Worth is more than wealth, andindustrious subjects are more to a kingdom than gold. And this is socertain a course to get both as I think was never propounded to anystate for so small a charge, seeing I can prove it, both by example,reason and experience."

Smith's maxims were excellent, his notions of settling New Englandwere sound and sensible, and if writing could have put him in commandof New England, there would have been no room for the Puritans. Headdressed letter after letter to the companies of Virginia andPlymouth, giving them distinctly to understand that they were losingtime by not availing themselves of his services and his project.After the Virginia massacre, he offered to undertake to drive thesavages out of their country with a hundred soldiers and thirtysailors. He heard that most of the company liked exceedingly wellthe notion, but no reply came to his overture.

He laments the imbecility in the conduct of the new plantations. Atfirst, he says, it was feared the Spaniards would invade theplantations or the English Papists dissolve them: but neither thecouncils of Spain nor the Papists could have desired a better courseto ruin the plantations than have been pursued; "It seems God isangry to see Virginia in hands so strange where nothing but murderand indiscretion contends for the victory."

In his letters to the company and to the King's commissions for thereformation of Virginia, Smith invariably reproduces his ownexploits, until we can imagine every person in London, who couldread, was sick of the story. He reminds them of his unrequitedservices: "in neither of those two countries have I one foot of land,nor the very house I builded, nor the ground I digged with my ownhands, nor ever any content or satisfaction at all, and though I seeordinarily those two countries shared before me by them that neitherhave them nor knows them, but by my descriptions…. For the booksand maps I have made, I will thank him that will show me so much forso little recompense, and bear with their errors till I have donebetter. For the materials in them I cannot deny, but am ready toaffirm them both there and here, upon such ground as I havepropounded, which is to have but fifteen hundred men to subdue againthe Salvages, fortify the country, discover that yet unknown, andboth defend and feed their colony."

There is no record that these various petitions and letters of advicewere received by the companies, but Smith prints them in his History,and gives also seven questions propounded to him by thecommissioners, with his replies; in which he clearly states thecause of the disasters in the colonies, and proposes wise andstatesman-like remedies. He insists upon industry and good conduct:"to rectify a commonwealth with debauched people is impossible, andno wise man would throw himself into such society, that intendshonestly, and knows what he understands, for there is no country topillage, as the Romans found; all you expect from thence must be bylabour."

Smith was no friend to tobacco, and although he favored theproduction to a certain limit as a means of profit, it is interestingto note his true prophecy that it would ultimately be a demoralizingproduct. He often proposes the restriction of its cultivation, andspeaks with contempt of "our men rooting in the ground about tobaccolike swine." The colony would have been much better off "had theynot so much doated on their tobacco, on whose furnish foundationthere is small stability."

So long as he lived, Smith kept himself informed of the progress ofadventure and settlement in the New World, reading all relations andeagerly questioning all voyagers, and transferring their accounts tohis own History, which became a confused patchwork of other men'sexploits and his own reminiscences and reflections. He alwaysregards the new plantations as somehow his own, and made in the lightof his advice; and their mischances are usually due to the neglect ofhis counsel. He relates in this volume the story of the Pilgrims in1620 and the years following, and of the settlement of the SomersIsles, making himself appear as a kind of Providence over the NewWorld.

Out of his various and repetitious writings might be compiled quite ahand-book of maxims and wise saws. Yet all had in steady view onepurpose—to excite interest in his favorite projects, to shame thelaggards of England out of their idleness, and to give himselfhonorable employment and authority in the building up of a newempire. "Who can desire," he exclaims, "more content that hath smallmeans, or but only his merit to advance his fortunes, than to treadand plant that ground he hath purchased by the hazard of his life; ifhe have but the taste of virtue and magnanimity, what to such a mindcan be more pleasant than planting and building a foundation for hisposterity, got from the rude earth by God's blessing and his ownindustry without prejudice to any; if he have any grace of faith orzeal in Religion, what can be more healthful to any or more agreeableto God than to convert those poor salvages to know Christ andhumanity, whose labours and discretion will triply requite any chargeand pain."

"Then who would live at home idly," he exhorts his countrymen, "orthink in himself any worth to live, only to eat, drink and sleep, andso die; or by consuming that carelessly his friends got worthily, orby using that miserably that maintained virtue honestly, or for beingdescended nobly, or pine with the vain vaunt of great kindred inpenury, or to maintain a silly show of bravery, toil out thy heart,soul and time basely; by shifts, tricks, cards and dice, or byrelating news of other men's actions, sharke here and there for adinner or supper, deceive thy friends by fair promises anddissimulations, in borrowing when thou never meanest to pay, offendthe laws, surfeit with excess, burden thy country, abuse thyself,despair in want, and then cozen thy kindred, yea, even thy ownbrother, and wish thy parent's death (I will not say damnation), tohave their estates, though thou seest what honors and rewards theworld yet hath for them that will seek them and worthily deservethem."

"I would be sorry to offend, or that any should mistake my honestmeaning: for I wish good to all, hurt to none; but rich men for themost part are grown to that dotage through their pride in theirwealth, as though there were no accident could end it or their life."

"And what hellish care do such take to make it their own misery andtheir countrie's spoil, especially when there is such need of theiremployment, drawing by all manner of inventions from the Prince andhis honest subjects, even the vital spirits of their powers andestates; as if their bags or brags were so powerful a defense, themalicious could not assault them, when they are the only bait tocause us not only to be assaulted, but betrayed and smothered in ourown security ere we will prevent it."

And he adds this good advice to those who maintain their children inwantonness till they grow to be the masters: "Let this lamentableexample [the ruin of Constantinople] remember you that are rich(seeing there are such great thieves in the world to rob you) notgrudge to lend some proportion to breed them that have little, yetwilling to learn how to defend you, for it is too late when the deedis done."

No motive of action did Smith omit in his importunity, for "Religionabove all things should move us, especially the clergy, if we arereligious." "Honor might move the gentry, the valiant andindustrious, and the hope and assurance of wealth all, if we werethat we would seem and be accounted; or be we so far inferior toother nations, or our spirits so far dejected from our ancientpredecessors, or our minds so upon spoil, piracy and such villainy,as to serve the Portugall, Spaniard, Dutch, French or Turke (as tothe cost of Europe too many do), rather than our own God, our king,our country, and ourselves; excusing our idleness and our basecomplaints by want of employment, when here is such choice of allsorts, and for all degrees, in the planting and discovering theseNorth parts of America."

It was all in vain so far as Smith's fortunes were concerned. Theplanting and subjection of New England went on, and Smith had no partin it except to describe it. The Brownists, the Anabaptists, thePapists, the Puritans, the Separatists, and "such factiousHumorists," were taking possession of the land that Smith claimed tohave "discovered," and in which he had no foothold. Failing to getemployment anywhere, he petitioned the Virginia Company for a rewardout of the treasury in London or the profits in Virginia.

At one of the hot discussions in 1623 preceding the dissolution ofthe Virginia Company by the revocation of their charter, Smith waspresent, and said that he hoped for his time spent in Virginia heshould receive that year a good quantity of tobacco. The charter wasrevoked in 1624 after many violent scenes, and King James was glad tobe rid of what he called "a seminary for a seditious parliament."The company had made use of lotteries to raise funds, and upon theirdisuse, in 1621, Smith proposed to the company to compile for itsbenefit a general history. This he did, but it does not appear thatthe company took any action on his proposal. At one time he had beennamed, with three others, as a fit person for secretary, on theremoval of Mr. Pory, but as only three could be balloted for, hisname was left out. He was, however, commended as entirely competent.

After the dissolution of the companies, and the granting of newletters-patent to a company of some twenty noblemen, there seems tohave been a project for dividing up the country by lot. Smith says:"All this they divided in twenty parts, for which they cast lots, butno lot for me but Smith's Isles, which are a many of barren rocks,the most overgrown with shrubs, and sharp whins, you can hardly passthem; without either grass or wood, but three or four short shrubbyold cedars."

The plan was not carried out, and Smith never became lord of eventhese barren rocks, the Isles of Shoals. That he visited them whenhe sailed along the coast is probable, though he never speaks ofdoing so. In the Virginia waters he had left a cluster of islandsbearing his name also.

In the Captain's "True Travels," published in 1630, is a summary ofthe condition of colonization in New England from Smith's voyagethence till the settlement of Plymouth in 1620, which makes anappropriate close to our review of this period:

"When I first went to the North part of Virginia, where the WesterlyColony had been planted, it had dissolved itself within a year, andthere was not one Christian in all the land. I was set forth at thesole charge of four merchants of London; the Country being thenreputed by your westerlings a most rocky, barren, desolate desart;but the good return I brought from thence, with the maps andrelations of the Country, which I made so manifest, some of them didbelieve me, and they were well embraced, both by the Londoners, andWesterlings, for whom I had promised to undertake it, thinking tohave joyned them all together, but that might well have been a workfor Hercules. Betwixt them long there was much contention: theLondoners indeed went bravely forward: but in three or four years Iand my friends consumed many hundred pounds amongst the Plimothians,who only fed me but with delays, promises, and excuses, but noperformance of anything to any purpose. In the interim, manyparticular ships went thither, and finding my relations true, andthat I had not taken that I brought home from the French men, as hadbeen reported: yet further for my pains to discredit me, and mycalling it New England, they obscured it, and shadowed it, with thetitle of Canada, till at my humble suit, it pleased our most RoyalKing Charles, whom God long keep, bless and preserve, then Prince ofWales, to confirm it with my map and book, by the title of NewEngland; the gain thence returning did make the fame thereof soincrease that thirty, forty or fifty sail went yearly only to tradeand fish; but nothing would be done for a plantation, till about somehundred of your Brownists of England, Amsterdam and Leyden went toNew Plimouth, whose humorous ignorances, caused them for more than ayear, to endure a wonderful deal of misery, with an infinitepatience; saying my books and maps were much better cheap to teachthem than myself: many others have used the like good husbandry thathave payed soundly in trying their self-willed conclusions; but thosein time doing well, diverse others have in small handfulls undertakento go there, to be several Lords and Kings of themselves, but mostvanished to nothing."

WRITINGS-LATER YEARS

If Smith had not been an author, his exploits would have occupied asmall space in the literature of his times. But by his unweariednarrations he impressed his image in gigantic features on our plasticcontinent. If he had been silent, he would have had something lessthan justice; as it is, he has been permitted to greatly exaggeratehis relations to the New World. It is only by noting the comparativesilence of his contemporaries and by winnowing his own statementsthat we can appreciate his true position.

For twenty years he was a voluminous writer, working off hissuperfluous energy in setting forth his adventures in new forms.Most of his writings are repetitions and recastings of the oldmaterial, with such reflections as occur to him from time to time.He seldom writes a book, or a tract, without beginning it or workinginto it a resume of his life. The only exception to this is his "SeaGrammar." In 1626 he published "An Accidence or the Pathway toExperience, necessary to all Young Seamen," and in 1627 "A SeaGrammar, with the plain Exposition of Smith's Accidence for YoungSeamen, enlarged." This is a technical work, and strictly confinedto the building, rigging, and managing of a ship. He was alsoengaged at the time of his death upon a "History of the Sea," whichnever saw the light. He was evidently fond of the sea, and we maysay the title of Admiral came naturally to him, since he used it inthe title-page to his "Description of New England," published in1616, although it was not till 1617 that the commissioners atPlymouth agreed to bestow upon him the title of "Admiral of thatcountry."

In 1630 he published "The True Travels, Adventures and Observationsof Captain John Smith, in Europe, Asia, Affrica and America, from1593 to 1629. Together with a Continuation of his General History ofVirginia, Summer Isles, New England, and their proceedings since 1624to this present 1629: as also of the new Plantations of the greatRiver of the Amazons, the Isles of St. Christopher, Mevis andBarbadoes in the West Indies." In the dedication to William, Earl ofPembroke, and Robert, Earl of Lindsay, he says it was written at therequest of Sir Robert Cotton, the learned antiquarian, and he themore willingly satisfies this noble desire because, as he says, "theyhave acted my fatal tragedies on the stage, and racked my relationsat their pleasure. To prevent, therefore, all future misprisions, Ihave compiled this true discourse. Envy hath taxed me to have writtoo much, and done too little; but that such should know how little,I esteem them, I have writ this more for the satisfaction of myfriends, and all generous and well-disposed readers: To speak only ofmyself were intolerable ingratitude: because, having had manyco-partners with me, I cannot make a Monument for myself, and leavethem unburied in the fields, whose lives begot me the title ofSoldier, for as they were companions with me in my dangers, so shallthey be partakers with me in this Tombe." In the same dedication hespoke of his "Sea Grammar" caused to be printed by his worthy friendSir Samuel Saltonstall.

This volume, like all others Smith published, is accompanied by agreat number of swollen panegyrics in verse, showing that the writershad been favored with the perusal of the volume before it waspublished. Valor, piety, virtue, learning, wit, are by them ascribedto the "great Smith," who is easily the wonder and paragon of his.age. All of them are stuffed with the affected conceits fashionableat the time. One of the most pedantic of these was addressed to himby Samuel Purchas when the "General Historie" was written.

The portrait of Smith which occupies a corner in the Map of Virginiahas in the oval the date, "AEta 37, A. 1616," and round the rim theinscription: "Portraictuer of Captaine John Smith, Admirall of NewEngland," and under it these lines engraved:

"These are the Lines that show thy face: but those
That show thy Grace and Glory brighter bee:
Thy Faire Discoveries and Fowle-Overthrowes
Of Salvages, much Civilized by thee
Best shew thy Spirit; and to it Glory Wyn;
So, thou art Brasse without, but Golde within,
If so, in Brasse (too soft smiths Acts to beare)
I fix thy Fame to make Brasse steele outweare.

"Thine as thou art Virtues
"JOHN DAVIES, Heref."

In this engraving Smith is clad in armor, with a high starchedcollar, and full beard and mustache formally cut. His right handrests on his hip, and his left grasps the handle of his sword. Theface is open and pleasing and full of decision.

This "true discourse" contains the wild romance with which thisvolume opens, and is pieced out with recapitulations of his formerwritings and exploits, compilations from others' relations, andgeneral comments. We have given from it the story of his early life,because there is absolutely no other account of that part of hiscareer. We may assume that up to his going to Virginia he did lead alife of reckless adventure and hardship, often in want of a decentsuit of clothes and of "regular meals." That he took some part inthe wars in Hungary is probable, notwithstanding his romancingnarrative, and he may have been captured by the Turks. But hisaccount of the wars there, and of the political complications, wesuspect are cribbed from the old chronicles, probably from theItalian, while his vague descriptions of the lands and people inTurkey and "Tartaria" are evidently taken from the narratives ofother travelers. It seems to me that the whole of his story of hisoriental captivity lacks the note of personal experience. If it werenot for the "patent" of Sigismund (which is only produced andcertified twenty years after it is dated), the whole Transylvanialegend would appear entirely apocryphal.

The "True Travels" close with a discourse upon the bad life,qualities, and conditions of pirates. The most ancient of these wasone Collis, "who most refreshed himself upon the coast of Wales, andClinton and Pursser, his companions, who grew famous till QueenElizabeth of blessed memory hanged them at Wapping. The misery of aPirate (although many are as sufficient seamen as any) yet in regardof his superfluity, you shall find it such, that any wise man wouldrather live amongst wild beasts, than them; therefore let allunadvised persons take heed how they entertain that quality; and Icould wish merchants, gentlemen, and all setters-forth of ships notto be sparing of a competent pay, nor true payment; for neithersoldiers nor seamen can live without means; but necessity will forcethem to steal, and when they are once entered into that trade theyare hardly reclaimed."

Smith complains that the play-writers had appropriated hisadventures, but does not say that his own character had been put uponthe stage. In Ben Jonson's "Staple of News," played in 1625, thereis a reference to Pocahontas in the dialogue that occurs betweenPick-lock and Pennyboy Canter:

Pick.—A tavern's unfit too for a princess.

P. Cant.—No, I have known a Princess and a great one, Come forthof a tavern.

Pick.—Not go in Sir, though.

A Cant.—She must go in, if she came forth. The blessed Pocahontas,as the historian calls her, And great King's daughter of Virginia,Hath been in womb of tavern.

The last work of our author was published in 1631, the year of hisdeath. Its full title very well describes the contents:"Advertisem*nts for the Unexperienced Planters of New England, oranywhere. Or, the Pathway to Experience to erect a Plantation. Withthe yearly proceedings of this country in fishing and planting sincethe year 1614 to the year 1630, and their present estate. Also, howto prevent the greatest inconvenience by their proceedings inVirginia, and other plantations by approved examples. With thecountries armes, a description of the coast, harbours, habitations,landmarks, latitude and longitude: with the map allowed by our RoyallKing Charles."

Smith had become a trifle cynical in regard to the newsmongers of theday, and quaintly remarks in his address to the reader: "Apelles bythe proportion of a foot could make the whole proportion of a man:were he now living, he might go to school, for now thousands can byopinion proportion kingdoms, cities and lordships that never durstadventure to see them. Malignancy I expect from these, have lived 10or 12 years in those actions, and return as wise as they went,claiming time and experience for their tutor that can neither shiftSun nor moon, nor say their compass, yet will tell you of more thanall the world betwixt the Exchange, Paul's and Westminster…. andtell as well what all England is by seeing but Mitford Haven as whatApelles was by the picture of his great toe."

This is one of Smith's most characteristic productions. Its materialis ill-arranged, and much of it is obscurely written; it runsbackward and forward along his life, refers constantly to his formerworks and repeats them, complains of the want of appreciation of hisservices, and makes himself the centre of all the colonizing exploitsof the age. Yet it is interspersed with strokes of humor andobservations full of good sense.

It opens with the airy remark: "The wars in Europe, Asia and Africa,taught me how to subdue the wild savages in Virginia and NewEngland." He never did subdue the wild savages in New England, andhe never was in any war in Africa, nor in Asia, unless we call hispiratical cruising in the Mediterranean "wars in Asia."

As a Church of England man, Smith is not well pleased with theoccupation of New England by the Puritans, Brownists, and such"factious humorists" as settled at New Plymouth, although heacknowledges the wonderful patience with which, in their ignoranceand willfulness, they have endured losses and extremities; but hehopes better things of the gentlemen who went in 1629 to supplyEndicott at Salem, and were followed the next year by Winthrop. Allthese adventurers have, he says, made use of his "aged endeavors."It seems presumptuous in them to try to get on with his maps anddescriptions and without him. They probably had never heard, exceptin the title-pages of his works, that he was "Admiral of NewEngland."

Even as late as this time many supposed New England to be an island,but Smith again asserts, what he had always maintained—that it was apart of the continent. The expedition of Winthrop was scattered by astorm, and reached Salem with the loss of threescore dead and manysick, to find as many of the colony dead, and all disconsolate. Ofthe discouraged among them who returned to England Smith says: "Somecould not endure the name of a bishop, others not the sight of across or surplice, others by no means the book of common prayer.This absolute crew, only of the Elect, holding all (but such asthemselves) reprobates and castaways, now made more haste to returnto Babel, as they termed England, than stay to enjoy the land theycalled Canaan." Somewhat they must say to excuse themselves.Therefore, "some say they could see no timbers of ten foot diameter,some the country is all wood; others they drained all the springs andponds dry, yet like to famish for want of fresh water; some of thedanger of the ratell-snake." To compel all the Indians to furnishthem corn without using them cruelly they say is impossible. Yetthis "impossible," Smith says, he accomplished in Virginia, andoffers to undertake in New England, with one hundred and fifty men,to get corn, fortify the country, and "discover them more land thanthey all yet know."

This homily ends—and it is the last published sentence of the "great
Smith"—with this good advice to the New England colonists:

"Lastly, remember as faction, pride, and security produces nothingbut confusion, misery and dissolution; so the contraries wellpractised will in short time make you happy, and the most admiredpeople of all our plantations for your time in the world.

"John Smith writ this with his owne hand."

The extent to which Smith retouched his narrations, as they grew inhis imagination, in his many reproductions of them, has been referredto, and illustrated by previous quotations. An amusing instance ofhis care and ingenuity is furnished by the interpolation ofPocahontas into his stories after 1623. In his "General Historie" of1624 he adopts, for the account of his career in Virginia, thenarratives in the Oxford tract of 1612, which he had supervised. Wehave seen how he interpolated the wonderful story of his rescue bythe Indian child. Some of his other insertions of her name, to bringall the narrative up to that level, are curious. The followingpassages from the "Oxford Tract" contain in italics the wordsinserted when they were transferred to the "General Historie":

"So revived their dead spirits (especially the love of Pocahuntas) asall anxious fears were abandoned."

"Part always they brought him as presents from their king, or
Pocahuntas."

In the account of the "masques" of girls to entertain Smith at
Werowocomoco we read:

"But presently Pocahuntas came, wishing him to kill her if any hurtwere intended, and the beholders, which were women and children,satisfied the Captain there was no such matter."

In the account of Wyffin's bringing the news of Scrivener's drowning,when Wyffin was lodged a night with Powhatan, we read:

"He did assure himself some mischief was intended. Pocahontas hidhim for a time, and sent them who pursued him the clean contrary wayto seek him; but by her means and extraordinary bribes and muchtrouble in three days' travel, at length he found us in the middestof these turmoyles."

The affecting story of the visit and warning from Pocahontas in thenight, when she appeared with "tears running down her cheeks," is notin the first narration in the Oxford Tract, but is inserted in thenarrative in the "General Historie." Indeed, the first account wouldby its terms exclude the later one. It is all contained in these fewlines:

"But our barge being left by the ebb, caused us to staie till themidnight tide carried us safe aboord, having spent that half nightwith such mirth as though we never had suspected or intendedanything, we left the Dutchmen to build, Brinton to kill foule forPowhatan (as by his messengers he importunately desired), and leftdirections with our men to give Powhatan all the content they could,that we might enjoy his company on our return from Pamaunke."

It should be added, however, that there is an allusion to somewarning by Pocahontas in the last chapter of the "Oxford Tract." Butthe full story of the night visit and the streaming tears as we havegiven it seems without doubt to have been elaborated from very slightmaterials. And the subsequent insertion of the name of Pocahontas—of which we have given examples above—into old accounts that had noallusion to her, adds new and strong presumptions to the belief thatSmith invented what is known as the Pocahontas legend.

As a mere literary criticism on Smith's writings, it would appearthat he had a habit of transferring to his own career notableincidents and adventures of which he had read, and this is somewhatdamaging to an estimate of his originality. His wonderful system oftelegraphy by means of torches, which he says he put in practice atthe siege of Olympack, and which he describes as if it were his owninvention, he had doubtless read in Polybius, and it seemed a goodthing to introduce into his narrative.

He was (it must also be noted) the second white man whose life wassaved by an Indian princess in America, who subsequently warned herfavorite of a plot to kill him. In 1528 Pamphilo de Narvaes landedat Tampa Bay, Florida, and made a disastrous expedition into theinterior. Among the Spaniards who were missing as a result of thisexcursion was a soldier named Juan Ortiz. When De Soto marched intothe same country in 1539 he encountered this soldier, who had beenheld in captivity by the Indians and had learned their language. Thestory that Ortiz told was this: He was taken prisoner by the chiefUcita, bound hand and foot, and stretched upon a scaffold to beroasted, when, just as the flames were seizing him, a daughter of thechief interposed in his behalf, and upon her prayers Ucita spared thelife of the prisoner. Three years afterward, when there was dangerthat Ortiz would be sacrificed to appease the devil, the princesscame to him, warned him of his danger, and led him secretly and alonein the night to the camp of a chieftain who protected him.

This narrative was in print before Smith wrote, and as he was fond ofsuch adventures he may have read it. The incidents are curiouslyparallel. And all the comment needed upon it is that Smith seems tohave been peculiarly subject to such coincidences.

Our author's selection of a coat of arms, the distinguishing featureof which was "three Turks' heads," showed little more originality.It was a common device before his day: on many coats of arms of theMiddle Ages and later appear "three Saracens' heads," or "threeMoors' heads"—probably most of them had their origin in theCrusades. Smith's patent to use this charge, which he produced fromSigismund, was dated 1603, but the certificate appended to it by theGarter King at Arms, certifying that it was recorded in the registerand office of the heralds, is dated 1625. Whether Smith used itbefore this latter date we are not told. We do not know why he hadnot as good right to assume it as anybody.

[Burke's "Encyclopedia of Heraldry" gives it as granted to Capt.John Smith, of the Smiths of Cruffley, Co. Lancaster, in 1629, anddescribes it: "Vert, a chev. gu. betw. three Turks' heads coupedppr. turbaned or. Crest-an Ostrich or, holding in the mouth ahorseshoe or."]

XVIII

DEATH AND CHARACTER

Hardship and disappointment made our hero prematurely old, but couldnot conquer his indomitable spirit. The disastrous voyage of June,1615, when he fell into the hands of the French, is spoken of by theCouncil for New England in 1622 as "the ruin of that poor gentleman,Captain Smith, who was detained prisoner by them, and forced tosuffer many extremities before he got free of his troubles;" but hedid not know that he was ruined, and did not for a moment relax hisefforts to promote colonization and obtain a command, nor relinquishhis superintendence of the Western Continent.

His last days were evidently passed in a struggle for existence,which was not so bitter to him as it might have been to another man,for he was sustained by ever-elating "great expectations." That hewas pinched for means of living, there is no doubt. In 1623 heissued a prospectus of his "General Historie," in which he said:"These observations are all I have for the expenses of a thousandpounds and the loss of eighteen years' time, besides all the travels,dangers, miseries and incumbrances for my countries good, I haveendured gratis: ….this is composed in less than eighty sheets,besides the three maps, which will stand me near in a hundred pounds,which sum I cannot disburse: nor shall the stationers have the copyfor nothing. I therefore, humbly entreat your Honour, either toadventure, or give me what you please towards the impression, and Iwill be both accountable and thankful."

He had come before he was fifty to regard himself as an old man, andto speak of his "aged endeavors." Where and how he lived in hislater years, and with what surroundings and under what circ*mstanceshe died, there is no record. That he had no settled home, and was inmean lodgings at the last, may be reasonably inferred. There is amanuscript note on the fly-leaf of one of the original editions of"The Map of Virginia…." (Oxford, 1612), in ancient chirography,but which from its reference to Fuller could not have been writtenuntil more than thirty years after Smith's death. It says: "When hewas old he lived in London poor but kept up his spirits with thecommemoration of his former actions and bravery. He was buried inSt. Sepulcher's Church, as Fuller tells us, who has given us a lineof his Ranting Epitaph."

That seems to have been the tradition of the man, buoyantlysupporting himself in the commemoration of his own achievements. Tothe end his industrious and hopeful spirit sustained him, and in thelast year of his life he was toiling on another compilation, andpromised his readers a variety of actions and memorable observationswhich they shall "find with admiration in my History of the Sea, ifGod be pleased I live to finish it."

He died on the 21 St of June, 1631, and the same day made his lastwill, to which he appended his mark, as he seems to have been toofeeble to write his name. In this he describes himself as "CaptainJohn Smith of the parish of St. Sepulcher's London Esquior." Hecommends his soul "into the hands of Almighty God, my maker, hopingthrough the merits of Christ Jesus my Redeemer to receive fullremission of all my sins and to inherit a place in the everlastingkingdom"; his body he commits to the earth whence it came; and "ofsuch worldly goods whereof it hath pleased God in his mercy to makeme an unworthy receiver," he bequeathes: first, to Thomas Packer,Esq., one of his Majesty's clerks of the Privy Seal, "all myhouses, lands, tenantements and hereditaments whatsoever, situatelying and being in the parishes of Louthe and Great Carleton, in thecounty of Lincoln together with my coat of armes"; and charges him topay certain legacies not exceeding the sum of eighty pounds, out ofwhich he reserves to himself twenty pounds to be disposed of as hechooses in his lifetime. The sum of twenty pounds is to be disbursedabout the funeral. To his most worthy friend, Sir Samuel SaltonstallKnight, he gives five pounds; to Morris Treadway, five pounds; to hissister Smith, the widow of his brother, ten pounds; to his cousinSteven Smith, and his sister, six pounds thirteen shillings andfourpence between them; to Thomas Packer, Joane, his wife, andEleanor, his daughter, ten pounds among them; to "Mr. Reynolds, thelay Mr of the Goldsmiths Hall, the sum of forty shillings"; toThomas, the son of said Thomas Packer, "my trunk standing in mychamber at Sir Samuel Saltonstall's house in St. Sepulcher's parish,together with my best suit of apparel of a tawny color viz. hose,doublet jirkin and cloak," "also, my trunk bound with iron barsstanding in the house of Richard Hinde in Lambeth, together—withhalf the books therein"; the other half of the books to Mr. JohnTredeskin and Richard Hinde. His much honored friend, Sir SamuelSaltonstall, and Thomas Packer, were joint executors, and the willwas acknowledged in the presence "of Willmu Keble Snr civitas,London, William Packer, Elizabeth Sewster, Marmaduke Walker, hismark, witness."

We have no idea that Thomas Packer got rich out of the houses, landsand tenements in the county of Lincoln. The will is that of a poorman, and reference to his trunks standing about in the houses of hisfriends, and to his chamber in the house of Sir Samuel Saltonstall,may be taken as proof that he had no independent and permanentabiding-place.

It is supposed that he was buried in St. Sepulcher's Church. Thenegative evidence of this is his residence in the parish at the timeof his death, and the more positive, a record in Stow's "Survey ofLondon," 1633, which we copy in full:

This Table is on the south side of the Quire in Saint Sepulchers,with this Inscription:

To the living Memory of his deceased Friend, Captaine John Smith, whodeparted this mortall life on the 21 day of June, 1631, with hisArmes, and this Motto,

Accordamus, vincere est vivere.

Here lies one conquer'd that hath conquer'd Kings,
Subdu'd large Territories, and done things
Which to the World impossible would seeme,
But that the truth is held in more esteeme,
Shall I report His former service done
In honour of his God and Christendome:
How that he did divide from Pagans three,
Their heads and Lives, types of his chivalry:
For which great service in that Climate done,
Brave Sigismundus (King of Hungarion)
Did give him as a Coat of Armes to weare,
Those conquer'd heads got by his Sword and Speare?
Or shall I tell of his adventures since,
Done in Firginia, that large Continence:
I-low that he subdu'd Kings unto his yoke,
And made those heathen flie, as wind doth smoke:
And made their Land, being of so large a Station,
A hab;tation for our Christian Nation:
Where God is glorifi'd, their wants suppli'd,
Which else for necessaries might have di'd?
But what avails his Conquest now he lyes
Inter'd in earth a prey for Wormes & Flies?

O may his soule in sweet Mizium sleepe,
Untill the Keeper that all soules doth keepe,
Returne to judgement and that after thence,
With Angels he may have his recompence.
Captaine John Smith, sometime Governour of Firginia, and
Admirall of New England.

This remarkable epitaph is such an autobiographical record as Smithmight have written himself. That it was engraved upon a tablet andset up in this church rests entirely upon the authority of Stow. Thepresent pilgrim to the old church will find no memorial that Smithwas buried there, and will encounter besides incredulity of thetradition that he ever rested there.

The old church of St. Sepulcher's, formerly at the confluence of SnowHill and the Old Bailey, now lifts its head far above the pompousviaduct which spans the valley along which the Fleet Ditch onceflowed. All the registers of burial in the church were destroyed bythe great fire of 1666, which burnt down the edifice from floor toroof, leaving only the walls and tower standing. Mr. Charles Deane,whose lively interest in Smith led him recently to pay a visit to St.Sepulcher's, speaks of it as the church "under the pavement of whichthe remains of our hero were buried; but he was not able to see thestone placed over those remains, as the floor of the church at thattime was covered with a carpet…. The epitaph to his memory,however, it is understood, cannot now be deciphered upon thetablet,"—which he supposes to be the one in Stow.

The existing tablet is a slab of bluish-black marble, which formerlywas in the chancel. That it in no way relates to Captain Smith anear examination of it shows. This slab has an escutcheon whichindicates three heads, which a lively imagination may conceive to bethose of Moors, on a line in the upper left corner on the husband'sside of a shield, which is divided by a perpendicular line. As Smithhad no wife, this could not have been his cognizance. Nor are thesehis arms, which were three Turks' heads borne over and beneath achevron. The cognizance of "Moors' heads," as we have said, was notsingular in the Middle Ages, and there existed recently in this verychurch another tomb which bore a Moor's head as a family badge. Theinscription itself is in a style of lettering unlike that used in thetime of James I., and the letters are believed not to belong to anearlier period than that of the Georges. This bluish-black stone hasbeen recently gazed at by many pilgrims from this side of the ocean,with something of the feeling with which the Moslems regard the Kaabaat Mecca. This veneration is misplaced, for upon the stone aredistinctly visible these words:

"Departed this life September….
….sixty-six ….years….
….months …."

As John Smith died in June, 1631, in his fifty-second year, thisstone is clearly not in his honor: and if his dust rests in thischurch, the fire of 1666 made it probably a labor of wasted love tolook hereabouts for any monument of him.

A few years ago some American antiquarians desired to place somemonument to the "Admiral of New England" in this church, and amemorial window, commemorating the "Baptism of Pocahontas," wassuggested. We have been told, however, that a custom of St.Sepulcher's requires a handsome bonus to the rector for any memorialset up in the church which the kindly incumbent had no power to setaside (in his own case) for a foreign gift and act of internationalcourtesy of this sort; and the project was abandoned.

Nearly every trace of this insatiable explorer of the earth hasdisappeared from it except in his own writings. The only monument tohis memory existing is a shabby little marble shaft erected on thesoutherly summit of Star Island, one of the Isles of Shoals. By akind of irony of fortune, which Smith would have grimly appreciated,the only stone to perpetuate his fame stands upon a little heap ofrocks in the sea; upon which it is only an inference that he ever setfoot, and we can almost hear him say again, looking round upon thisroomy earth, so much of which he possessed in his mind, "No lot forme but Smith's Isles, which are an array of barren rocks, the mostovergrowne with shrubs and sharpe whins you can hardly passe them:without either grasse or wood but three or foure short shrubby oldcedars."

Nearly all of Smith's biographers and the historians of Virginiahave, with great respect, woven his romances about his career intotheir narratives, imparting to their paraphrases of his story such anelevation as his own opinion of himself seemed to demand. Ofcontemporary estimate of him there is little to quote except thepanegyrics in verse he has preserved for us, and the inference fromhis own writings that he was the object of calumny and detraction.Enemies he had in plenty, but there are no records left of theiropinion of his character. The nearest biographical notice of him inpoint of time is found in the "History of the Worthies of England,"by Thomas Fuller, D.D., London, 1662.

Old Fuller's schoolmaster was Master Arthur Smith, a kinsman of John,who told him that John was born in Lincolnshire, and it is probablethat Fuller received from his teacher some impression about theadventurer.

Of his "strange performances" in Hungary, Fuller says: "The scenewhereof is laid at such a distance that they are cheaper creditedthan confuted."

"From the Turks in Europe he passed to the pagans in America, wheretowards the latter end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth [it was in thereign of James] such his perils, preservations, dangers,deliverances, they seem to most men above belief, to some beyondtruth. Yet have we two witnesses to attest them, the prose and thepictures, both in his own book; and it soundeth much to thediminution of his deeds that he alone is the herald to publish andproclaim them."

"Surely such reports from strangers carry the greater reputation.However, moderate men must allow Captain Smith to have been veryinstrumental in settling the plantation in Virginia, whereof he wasgovernor, as also Admiral of New England."

"He led his old age in London, where his having a prince's mindimprisoned in a poor man's purse, rendered him to the contempt ofsuch as were not ingenuous. Yet he efforted his spirits with theremembrance and relation of what formerly he had been, and what hehad done."

Of the "ranting epitaph," quoted above, Fuller says: "Theorthography, poetry, history and divinity in this epitaph are muchalike."

Without taking Captain John Smith at his own estimate of himself, hewas a peculiar character even for the times in which he lived. Heshared with his contemporaries the restless spirit of roving andadventure which resulted from the invention of the mariner's compassand the discovery of the New World; but he was neither so sordid norso rapacious as many of them, for his boyhood reading of romances hadevidently fired him with the conceits of the past chivalric period.This imported into his conduct something inflated and somethingelevated. And, besides, with all his enormous conceit, he had astratum of practical good sense, a shrewd wit, and the salt of humor.

If Shakespeare had known him, as he might have done, he would havehad a character ready to his hand that would have added one of themost amusing and interesting portraits to his gallery. He faintlysuggests a moral Falstaff, if we can imagine a Falstaff withoutvices. As a narrator he has the swagger of a Captain Dalghetty, buthis actions are marked by honesty and sincerity. He appears to havehad none of the small vices of the gallants of his time. Hischivalric attitude toward certain ladies who appear in hisadventures, must have been sufficiently amusing to his associates.There is about his virtue a certain antique flavor which must haveseemed strange to the adventurers and court hangers-on in London.Not improbably his assumptions were offensive to the ungodly, and hisingenuous boastings made him the object of amusem*nt to the skeptics.Their ridicule would naturally appear to him to arise from envy. Weread between the lines of his own eulogies of himself, that there wasa widespread skepticism about his greatness and his achievements,which he attributed to jealousy. Perhaps his obtrusive virtues madehim enemies, and his rectitude was a standing offense to hisassociates.

It is certain he got on well with scarcely anybody with whom he wasthrown in his enterprises. He was of common origin, and alwayscarried with him the need of assertion in an insecure position. Heappears to us always self-conscious and ill at ease with gentlemenborn. The captains of his own station resented his assumptions ofsuperiority, and while he did not try to win them by an affectationof comradeship, he probably repelled those of better breeding by aswaggering manner. No doubt his want of advancement was partly dueto want of influence, which better birth would have given him; butthe plain truth is that he had a talent for making himselfdisagreeable to his associates. Unfortunately he never engaged inany enterprise with any one on earth who was so capable of conductingit as himself, and this fact he always made plain to his comrades.Skill he had in managing savages, but with his equals among whites helacked tact, and knew not the secret of having his own way withoutseeming to have it. He was insubordinate, impatient of any authorityover him, and unwilling to submit to discipline he did not himselfimpose.

Yet it must be said that he was less self-seeking than those who werewith him in Virginia, making glory his aim rather than gain always;that he had a superior conception of what a colony should be, and howit should establish itself, and that his judgment of what was bestwas nearly always vindicated by the event. He was not the founder ofthe Virginia colony, its final success was not due to him, but it wasowing almost entirely to his pluck and energy that it held on andmaintained an existence during the two years and a half that he waswith it at Jamestown. And to effect this mere holding on, with thevagabond crew that composed most of the colony, and with theextravagant and unintelligent expectations of the London Company, wasa feat showing decided ability. He had the qualities fitting him tobe an explorer and the leader of an expedition. He does not appearto have had the character necessary to impress his authority on acommunity. He was quarrelsome, irascible, and quick to fancy thathis full value was not admitted. He shines most upon such smallexpeditions as the exploration of the Chesapeake; then his energy,self-confidence, shrewdness, inventiveness, had free play, and hispluck and perseverance are recognized as of the true heroicsubstance.

Smith, as we have seen, estimated at their full insignificance suchflummeries as the coronation of Powhatan, and the foolishness oftaxing the energies of the colony to explore the country for gold andchase the phantom of the South Sea. In his discernment and in hisconceptions of what is now called "political economy" he was inadvance of his age. He was an advocate of "free trade" before theterm was invented. In his advice given to the New England plantationin his "Advertisem*nts" he says:

"Now as his Majesty has made you custome-free for seven yeares, havea care that all your countrymen shall come to trade with you, be nottroubled with pilotage, boyage, ancorage, wharfa*ge, custome, or anysuch tricks as hath been lately used in most of our plantations,where they would be Kings before their folly; to the discouragementof many, and a scorne to them of understanding, for Dutch, French,Biskin, or any will as yet use freely the Coast without controule,and why not English as well as they? Therefore use all commers withthat respect, courtesie, and liberty is fitting, which will in ashort time much increase your trade and shipping to fetch it fromyou, for as yet it were not good to adventure any more abroad withfactors till you bee better provided; now there is nothing moreenricheth a Common-wealth than much trade, nor no meanes better toincrease than small custome, as Holland, Genua, Ligorne, as diversother places can well tell you, and doth most beggar those placeswhere they take most custome, as Turkie, the Archipelegan Iles,Cicilia, the Spanish ports, but that their officers will connive toenrich themselves, though undo the state."

It may perhaps be admitted that he knew better than the London or thePlymouth company what ought to be done in the New World, but it isabsurd to suppose that his success or his ability forfeited him theconfidence of both companies, and shut him out of employment. Thesimple truth seems to be that his arrogance and conceit andimportunity made him unpopular, and that his proverbial ill luck wasset off against his ability.

Although he was fully charged with the piety of his age, and kept inmind his humble dependence on divine grace when he was plunderingVenetian argosies or lying to the Indians, or fighting anywheresimply for excitement or booty, and was always as devout as a modernSicilian or Greek robber; he had a humorous appreciation of the valueof the religions current in his day. He saw through the hypocrisy ofthe London Company, "making religion their color, when all their aimwas nothing but present profit." There was great talk aboutChristianizing the Indians; but the colonists in Virginia taught themchiefly the corruptions of civilized life, and those who weredespatched to England soon became debauched by London vices. "Muchthey blamed us [he writes] for not converting the Salvages, whenthose they sent us were little better, if not worse, nor did they allconvert any of those we sent them to England for that purpose."

Captain John Smith died unmarried, nor is there any record that heever had wife or children. This disposes of the claim of subsequentJohn Smiths to be descended from him. He was the last of that race;the others are imitations. He was wedded to glory. That he was notinsensible to the charms of female beauty, and to the heavenly pityin their hearts, which is their chief grace, his writings abundantlyevince; but to taste the pleasures of dangerous adventure, to learnwar and to pick up his living with his sword, and to fight whereverpiety showed recompense would follow, was the passion of his youth,while his manhood was given to the arduous ambition of enlarging thedomains of England and enrolling his name among those heroes who makean ineffaceable impression upon their age. There was no time in hislife when he had leisure to marry, or when it would have beenconsistent with his schemes to have tied himself to a home.

As a writer he was wholly untrained, but with all his introversionsand obscurities he is the most readable chronicler of his time, themost amusing and as untrustworthy as any. He is influenced by hisprejudices, though not so much by them as by his imagination andvanity. He had a habit of accurate observation, as his maps show,and this trait gives to his statements and descriptions, when his ownreputation is not concerned, a value beyond that of those of mostcontemporary travelers. And there is another thing to be said abouthis writings. They are uncommonly clean for his day. Only here andthere is coarseness encountered. In an age when nastiness waswritten as well as spoken, and when most travelers felt called uponto satisfy a curiosity for prurient observations, Smith preserved atone quite remarkable for general purity.

Captain Smith is in some respects a very good type of the restlessadventurers of his age; but he had a little more pseudo-chivalry atone end of his life, and a little more piety at the other, than therest. There is a decidedly heroic element in his courage, hardihood,and enthusiasm, softened to the modern observer's comprehension bythe humorous contrast between his achievements and his estimate ofthem. Between his actual deeds as he relates them, and his noblesentiments, there is also sometimes a contrast pleasing to theworldly mind. He is just one of those characters who would be moreagreeable on the stage than in private life. His extraordinaryconceit would be entertaining if one did not see too much of him.Although he was such a romancer that we can accept few of hisunsupported statements about himself, there was, nevertheless, acertain verity in his character which showed something more thanloyalty to his own fortune; he could be faithful to an ambition forthe public good. Those who knew him best must have found in him verylikable qualities, and acknowledged the generosities of his nature,while they were amused at his humorous spleen and his seriouscontemplation of his own greatness. There is a kind of simplicity inhis self-appreciation that wins one, and it is impossible for thecandid student of his career not to feel kindly towards the "sometimeGovernor of Virginia and Admiral of New England."

By Charles Dudley Warner

The simple story of the life of Pocahontas is sufficiently romanticwithout the embellishments which have been wrought on it either bythe vanity of Captain Smith or the natural pride of the descendantsof this dusky princess who have been ennobled by the smallest rivuletof her red blood.

That she was a child of remarkable intelligence, and that she earlyshowed a tender regard for the whites and rendered them willing andunwilling service, is the concurrent evidence of all contemporarytestimony. That as a child she was well-favored, sprightly, andprepossessing above all her copper-colored companions, we canbelieve, and that as a woman her manners were attractive. If theportrait taken of her in London—the best engraving of which is bySimon de Passe—in 1616, when she is said to have been twenty-oneyears old, does her justice, she had marked Indian features.

The first mention of her is in "The True Relation," written byCaptain Smith in Virginia in 1608. In this narrative, as our readershave seen, she is not referred to until after Smith's return from thecaptivity in which Powhatan used him "with all the kindness he coulddevise." Her name first appears, toward the close of the relation,in the following sentence:

"Powhatan understanding we detained certain salvages, sent hisdaughter, a child of tenne yeares old, which not only for feature,countenance, and proportion, much exceedeth any of the rest of hispeople, but for wit and spirit the only nonpareil of his country:this hee sent by his most trusty messenger, called Rawhunt, as muchexceeding in deformitie of person, but of a subtill wit and craftyunderstanding, he with a long circ*mstance told mee how well Powhatanloved and respected mee, and in that I should not doubt any way ofhis kindness, he had sent his child, which he most esteemed, to seemee, a Deere, and bread, besides for a present: desiring mee that theBoy [Thomas Savage, the boy given by Newport to Powhatan] might comeagain, which he loved exceedingly, his little Daughter he had taughtthis lesson also: not taking notice at all of the Indians that hadbeen prisoners three daies, till that morning that she saw theirfathers and friends come quietly, and in good termes to entreatetheir libertie.

"In the afternoon they [the friends of the prisoners] being gone, weguarded them [the prisoners] as before to the church, and afterprayer, gave them to Pocahuntas the King's Daughter, in regard of herfather's kindness in sending her: after having well fed them, as allthe time of their imprisonment, we gave them their bows, arrowes, orwhat else they had, and with much content, sent them packing:Pocahuntas, also we requited with such trifles as contented her, totel that we had used the Paspaheyans very kindly in so releasingthem."

The next allusion to her is in the fourth chapter of the narrativeswhich are appended to the "Map of Virginia," etc. This was senthome by Smith, with a description of Virginia, in the late autumn of1608. It was published at Oxford in 1612, from two to three yearsafter Smith's return to England. The appendix contains thenarratives of several of Smith's companions in Virginia, edited byDr. Symonds and overlooked by Smith. In one of these is a briefreference to the above-quoted incident.

This Oxford tract, it is scarcely necessary to repeat, contains noreference to the saving of Smith's life by Pocahontas from the clubsof Powhatan.

The next published mention of Pocahontas, in point of time, is inChapter X. and the last of the appendix to the "Map of Virginia,"and is Smith's denial, already quoted, of his intention to marryPocahontas. In this passage he speaks of her as "at most not past 13or 14 years of age." If she was thirteen or fourteen in 1609, whenSmith left Virginia, she must have been more than ten when he wrotehis "True Relation," composed in the winter of 1608, which in allprobability was carried to England by Captain Nelson, who leftJamestown June 2d.

The next contemporary authority to be consulted in regard toPocahontas is William Strachey, who, as we have seen, went with theexpedition of Gates and Somers, was shipwrecked on the Bermudas, andreached Jamestown May 23 or 24, 1610, and was made Secretary andRecorder of the colony under Lord Delaware. Of the origin and lifeof Strachey, who was a person of importance in Virginia, little isknown. The better impression is that he was the William Strachey ofSaffron Walden, who was married in 1588 and was living in 1620, andthat it was his grandson of the same name who was subsequentlyconnected with the Virginia colony. He was, judged by his writings,a man of considerable education, a good deal of a pedant, and sharedthe credulity and fondness for embellishment of the writers of histime. His connection with Lord Delaware, and his part in framing thecode of laws in Virginia, which may be inferred from the fact that hefirst published them, show that he was a trusted and capable man.

William Strachey left behind him a manuscript entitled "The Historieof Travaile into Virginia Britanica, &c., gathered and observed aswell by those who went first thither, as collected by WilliamStrachey, gent., three years thither, employed as Secretaire ofState." How long he remained in Virginia is uncertain, but it couldnot have been "three years," though he may have been continuedSecretary for that period, for he was in London in 1612, in whichyear he published there the laws of Virginia which had beenestablished by Sir Thomas Gates May 24, 1610, approved by LordDelaware June 10, 1610, and enlarged by Sir Thomas Dale June 22,1611.

The "Travaile" was first published by the Hakluyt Society in 1849.When and where it was written, and whether it was all composed at onetime, are matters much in dispute. The first book, descriptive ofVirginia and its people, is complete; the second book, a narration ofdiscoveries in America, is unfinished. Only the first book concernsus. That Strachey made notes in Virginia may be assumed, but thebook was no doubt written after his return to England.

[This code of laws, with its penalty of whipping and death for whatare held now to be venial offenses, gives it a high place among theBlack Codes. One clause will suffice:

"Every man and woman duly twice a day upon the first towling of theBell shall upon the working daies repaire unto the church, to heardivine service upon pain of losing his or her allowance for the firstomission, for the second to be whipt, and for the third to becondemned to the Gallies for six months. Likewise no man or womanshall dare to violate the Sabbath by any gaming, publique or private,abroad or at home, but duly sanctifie and observe the same, bothhimselfe and his familie, by preparing themselves at home withprivate prayer, that they may be the better fitted for the publique,according to the commandments of God, and the orders of our church,as also every man and woman shall repaire in the morning to thedivine service, and sermons preached upon the Sabbath day, and in theafternoon to divine service, and Catechism upon paine for the firstfault to lose their provision, and allowance for the whole weekfollowing, for the second to lose the said allowance and also to bewhipt, and for the third to suffer death."]

Was it written before or after the publication of Smith's "Map andDescription" at Oxford in 1612? The question is important, becauseSmith's "Description" and Strachey's "Travaile" are page after pageliterally the same. One was taken from the other. Commonly at thattime manuscripts seem to have been passed around and much read beforethey were published. Purchas acknowledges that he had unpublishedmanuscripts of Smith when he compiled his narrative. Did Smith seeStrachey's manuscript before he published his Oxford tract, or didStrachey enlarge his own notes from Smith's description? It has beenusually assumed that Strachey cribbed from Smith withoutacknowledgment. If it were a question to be settled by the internalevidence of the two accounts, I should incline to think that Smithcondensed his description from Strachey, but the dates incline thebalance in Smith's favor.

Strachey in his "Travaile" refers sometimes to Smith, and always withrespect. It will be noted that Smith's "Map" was engraved andpublished before the "Description" in the Oxford tract. Purchas hadit, for he says, in writing of Virginia for his "Pilgrimage" (whichwas published in 1613):

"Concerning-the latter [Virginia], Capt. John Smith, partly by wordof mouth, partly by his mappe thereof in print, and more fully by aManuscript which he courteously communicated to mee, hath acquaintedme with that whereof himselfe with great perill and paine, had beenthe discoverer." Strachey in his "Travaile" alludes to it, and paysa tribute to Smith in the following: "Their severall habitations aremore plainly described by the annexed mappe, set forth by Capt.Smith, of whose paines taken herein I leave to the censure of thereader to judge. Sure I am there will not return from thence inhast, any one who hath been more industrious, or who hath had (Capt.Geo. Percie excepted) greater experience amongst them, howevermisconstruction may traduce here at home, where is not easily seenthe mixed sufferances, both of body and mynd, which is there daylie,and with no few hazards and hearty griefes undergon."

There are two copies of the Strachey manuscript. The one used by theHakluyt Society is dedicated to Sir Francis Bacon, with the title of"Lord High Chancellor," and Bacon had not that title conferred on himtill after 1618. But the copy among the Ashmolean manuscripts atOxford is dedicated to Sir Allen Apsley, with the title of "Purveyorto His Majestie's Navie Royall"; and as Sir Allen was made"Lieutenant of the Tower" in 1616, it is believed that the manuscriptmust have been written before that date, since the author would nothave omitted the more important of the two titles in his dedication.

Strachey's prefatory letter to the Council, prefixed to his "Laws"(1612), is dated "From my lodging in the Black Friars. At your bestpleasures, either to return unto the colony, or pray for the successof it heere." In his letter he speaks of his experience in theBermudas and Virginia: "The full storie of both in due time [I] shallconsecrate unto your view…. Howbit since many impediments, as yetmust detaine such my observations in the shadow of darknesse, untillI shall be able to deliver them perfect unto your judgments," etc.

This is not, as has been assumed, a statement that the observationswere not written then, only that they were not "perfect"; in fact,they were detained in the "shadow of darknesse" till the year 1849.Our own inference is, from all the circ*mstances, that Strachey beganhis manuscript in Virginia or shortly after his return, and added toit and corrected it from time to time up to 1616.

We are now in a position to consider Strachey's allusions to
Pocahontas. The first occurs in his description of the apparel of
Indian women:

"The better sort of women cover themselves (for the most part) allover with skin mantells, finely drest, shagged and fringed at theskyrt, carved and coloured with some pretty work, or the proportionof beasts, fowle, tortayses, or other such like imagry, as shall bestplease or expresse the fancy of the wearer; their younger women goenot shadowed amongst their owne companie, until they be nigh eleavenor twelve returnes of the leafe old (for soe they accompt and bringabout the yeare, calling the fall of the leaf tagnitock); nor arethev much ashamed thereof, and therefore would the before rememberedPocahontas, a well featured, but wanton yong girle, Powhatan'sdaughter, sometymes resorting to our fort, of the age then of elevenor twelve yeares, get the boyes forth with her into the markettplace, and make them wheele, falling on their hands, turning up theirheeles upwards, whome she would followe and wheele so herself, nakedas she was, all the fort over; but being once twelve yeares, they puton a kind of semecinctum lethern apron (as do our artificers orhandycrafts men) before their bellies, and are very shamefac't to beseene bare. We have seene some use mantells made both of Turkeyfeathers, and other fowle, so prettily wrought and woven withthreeds, that nothing could be discerned but the feathers, which wereexceedingly warme and very handsome."

Strachey did not see Pocahontas. She did not resort to the campafter the departure of Smith in September, 1609, until she waskidnapped by Governor Dale in April, 1613. He repeats what he heardof her. The time mentioned by him of her resorting to the fort, "ofthe age then of eleven or twelve yeares," must have been the timereferred to by Smith when he might have married her, namely, in1608-9, when he calls her "not past 13 or 14 years of age." Thedescription of her as a "yong girle" tumbling about the fort, "nakedas she was," would seem to preclude the idea that she was married atthat time.

The use of the word "wanton" is not necessarily disparaging, for"wanton" in that age was frequently synonymous with "playful" and"sportive"; but it is singular that she should be spoken of as "wellfeatured, but wanton." Strachey, however, gives in another placewhat is no doubt the real significance of the Indian name"Pocahontas." He says:

"Both men, women, and children have their severall names; at firstaccording to the severall humor of their parents; and for the menchildren, at first, when they are young, their mothers give them aname, calling them by some affectionate title, or perhaps observingtheir promising inclination give it accordingly; and so the greatKing Powhatan called a young daughter of his, whom he loved well,Pocahontas, which may signify a little wanton; howbeyt she wasrightly called Amonata at more ripe years."

The Indian girls married very young. The polygamous Powhatan had alarge number of wives, but of all his women, his favorites were adozen "for the most part very young women," the names of whomStrachey obtained from one Kemps, an Indian a good deal about camp,whom Smith certifies was a great villain. Strachey gives a list ofthe names of twelve of them, at the head of which is Winganuske.This list was no doubt written down by the author in Virginia, and itis followed by a sentence, quoted below, giving also the number ofPowhatan's children. The "great darling" in this list wasWinganuske, a sister of Machumps, who, according to Smith, murderedhis comrade in the Bermudas. Strachey writes:

"He [Powhatan] was reported by the said Kemps, as also by the IndianMachumps, who was sometyme in England, and comes to and fro amongstus as he dares, and as Powhatan gives him leave, for it is nototherwise safe for him, no more than it was for one Amarice, who hadhis braynes knockt out for selling but a baskett of corne, and lyingin the English fort two or three days without Powhatan's leave; I saythey often reported unto us that Powhatan had then lyving twentysonnes and ten daughters, besyde a young one by Winganuske, Machumpshis sister, and a great darling of the King's; and besides, youngePocohunta, a daughter of his, using sometyme to our fort in tymespast, nowe married to a private Captaine, called Kocoum, some twoyears since."

This passage is a great puzzle. Does Strachey intend to say thatPocahontas was married to an Iniaan named Kocoum? She might havebeen during the time after Smith's departure in 1609, and herkidnapping in 1613, when she was of marriageable age. We shall seehereafter that Powhatan, in 1614, said he had sold another favoritedaughter of his, whom Sir Thomas Dale desired, and who was not twelveyears of age, to be wife to a great chief. The term "privateCaptain" might perhaps be applied to an Indian chief. Smith, in his"General Historie," says the Indians have "but few occasions to useany officers more than one commander, which commonly they callWerowance, or Caucorouse, which is Captaine." It is probably notpossible, with the best intentions, to twist Kocoum into Caucorouse,or to suppose that Strachey intended to say that a private captainwas called in Indian a Kocoum. Werowance and Caucorouse are notsynonymous terms. Werowance means "chief," and Caucorouse means"talker" or "orator," and is the original of our word "caucus."

Either Strachey was uninformed, or Pocahontas was married to anIndian—a not violent presumption considering her age and the factthat war between Powhatan and the whites for some time had cut offintercourse between them—or Strachey referred to her marriage withRolfe, whom he calls by mistake Kocoum. If this is to be accepted,then this paragraph must have been written in England in 1616, andhave referred to the marriage to Rolfe it "some two years since," in1614.

That Pocahontas was a gentle-hearted and pleasing girl, and, throughher acquaintance with Smith, friendly to the whites, there is nodoubt; that she was not different in her habits and mode of life fromother Indian girls, before the time of her kidnapping, there is everyreason to suppose. It was the English who magnified the imperialismof her father, and exaggerated her own station as Princess. Shecertainly put on no airs of royalty when she was "cart-wheeling"about the fort. Nor does this detract anything from the nativedignity of the mature, and converted, and partially civilized woman.

We should expect there would be the discrepancies which have beennoticed in the estimates of her age. Powhatan is not said to havekept a private secretary to register births in his family. IfPocahontas gave her age correctly, as it appears upon her Londonportrait in 1616, aged twenty-one, she must have been eighteen yearsof age when she was captured in 1613 This would make her about twelveat the time of Smith's captivity in 1607-8. There is certainly roomfor difference of opinion as to whether so precocious a woman, as herintelligent apprehension of affairs shows her to have been, shouldhave remained unmarried till the age of eighteen. In marrying atleast as early as that she would have followed the custom of hertribe. It is possible that her intercourse with the whites hadraised her above such an alliance as would be offered her at thecourt of Werowocomoco.

We are without any record of the life of Pocahontas for some years.The occasional mentions of her name in the "General Historie" are soevidently interpolated at a late date, that they do not aid us. Whenand where she took the name of Matoaka, which appears upon her Londonportrait, we are not told, nor when she was called Amonata, asStrachey says she was "at more ripe yeares." How she was occupiedfrom the departure of Smith to her abduction, we can only guess. Tofollow her authentic history we must take up the account of CaptainArgall and of Ralph Hamor, Jr., secretary of the colony underGovernor Dale.

Captain Argall, who seems to have been as bold as he was unscrupulousin the execution of any plan intrusted to him, arrived in Virginia inSeptember, 1612, and early in the spring of 1613 he was sent on anexpedition up the Patowomek to trade for corn and to effect a capturethat would bring Powhatan to terms. The Emperor, from being afriend, had become the most implacable enemy of the English. CaptainArgall says: "I was told by certain Indians, my friends, that thegreat Powhatan's daughter Pokahuntis was with the great KingPotowomek, whither I presently repaired, resolved to possess myselfof her by any stratagem that I could use, for the ransoming of somany Englishmen as were prisoners with Powhatan, as also to get sucharmes and tooles as he and other Indians had got by murther andstealing some others of our nation, with some quantity of corn forthe colonies relief."

By the aid of Japazeus, King of Pasptancy, an old acquaintance andfriend of Argall's, and the connivance of the King of Potowomek,Pocahontas was enticed on board Argall's ship and secured. Word wassent to Powhatan of the capture and the terms on which his daughterwould be released; namely, the return of the white men he held inslavery, the tools and arms he had gotten and stolen, and a greatquantity of corn. Powhatan, "much grieved," replied that if Argallwould use his daughter well, and bring the ship into his river andrelease her, he would accede to all his demands. Therefore, on the13th of April, Argall repaired to Governor Gates at Jamestown, anddelivered his prisoner, and a few days after the King sent home someof the white captives, three pieces, one broad-axe, a long whip-saw,and a canoe of corn. Pocahontas, however, was kept at Jamestown.

Why Pocahontas had left Werowocomoco and gone to stay with Patowomekwe can only conjecture. It is possible that Powhatan suspected herfriendliness to the whites, and was weary of her importunity, and itmay be that she wanted to escape the sight of continual fighting,ambushes, and murders. More likely she was only making a commonfriendly visit, though Hamor says she went to trade at an Indianfair.

The story of her capture is enlarged and more minutely related by
Ralph Hamor, Jr., who was one of the colony shipwrecked on the
Bermudas in 1609, and returned to England in 1614, where he published
(London, 1615) "A True Discourse of Virginia, and the Success of the
Affairs there till the 18th of June, 1614." Hamor was the son of a
merchant tailor in London who was a member of the Virginia company.
Hamor writes:

"It chanced Powhatan's delight and darling, his daughter Pocahuntas(whose fame has even been spread in England by the title ofNonparella of Firginia) in her princely progresse if I may so termeit, tooke some pleasure (in the absence of Captaine Argall) to beamong her friends at Pataomecke (as it seemeth by the relation Ihad), implored thither as shopkeeper to a Fare, to exchange some ofher father's commodities for theirs, where residing some three monthsor longer, it fortuned upon occasion either of promise or profit,Captaine Argall to arrive there, whom Pocahuntas, desirous to renewher familiaritie with the English, and delighting to see them asunknown, fearefull perhaps to be surprised, would gladly visit as shedid, of whom no sooner had Captaine Argall intelligence, but he deltwith an old friend Iapazeus, how and by what meanes he might procureher caption, assuring him that now or never, was the time to pleasurehim, if he intended indeede that love which he had made professionof, that in ransome of hir he might redeeme some of our English menand armes, now in the possession of her father, promising to use herwithall faire and gentle entreaty; Iapazeus well assured that hisbrother, as he promised, would use her courteously, promised his bestendeavors and service to accomplish his desire, and thus wrought it,making his wife an instrument (which sex have ever been most powerfulin beguiling inticements) to effect his plot which hee had thus laid,he agreed that himself, his wife and Pocahuntas, would accompanie hisbrother to the water side, whither come, his wife should faine agreat and longing desire to goe aboorde, and see the shippe, whichbeing there three or four times before she had never seene, andshould be earnest with her husband to permit her—he seemed angrywith her, making as he pretended so unnecessary request, especiallybeing without the company of women, which denial she taking unkindly,must faine to weepe (as who knows not that women can command teares)whereupon her husband seeming to pitty those counterfeit teares, gaveher leave to goe aboord, so that it would pleese Pocahuntas toaccompany her; now was the greatest labour to win her, guilty perhapsof her father's wrongs, though not knowne as she supposed, to goewith her, yet by her earnest persuasions, she assented: so forthwithaboord they went, the best cheere that could be made was seasonablyprovided, to supper they went, merry on all hands, especiallyIapazeus and his wife, who to expres their joy would ere be treadingupon Captaine Argall's foot, as who should say tis don, she is yourown. Supper ended Pocahuntas was lodged in the gunner's roome, butIapazeus and his wife desired to have some conference with theirbrother, which was onely to acquaint him by what stratagem they hadbetraied his prisoner as I have already related: after whichdiscourse to sleepe they went, Pocahuntas nothing mistrusting thispolicy, who nevertheless being most possessed with feere, and desireof returne, was first up, and hastened Iapazeus to be gon. Capt.Argall having secretly well rewarded him, with a small Copper kittle,and some other les valuable toies so highly by him esteemed, thatdoubtlesse he would have betraied his own father for them, permittedboth him and his wife to returne, but told him that for diversconsiderations, as for that his father had then eigh [8] of ourEnglishe men, many swords, peeces, and other tooles, which he hid atseverall times by trecherous murdering our men, taken from them whichthough of no use to him, he would not redeliver, he would reservePocahuntas, whereat she began to be exceeding pensive, anddiscontented, yet ignorant of the dealing of Japazeus who in outwardappearance was no les discontented that he should be the meanes ofher captivity, much adoe there was to pursuade her to be patient,which with extraordinary curteous usage, by little and little waswrought in her, and so to Jamestowne she was brought."

Smith, who condenses this account in his "General Historie,"expresses his contempt of this Indian treachery by saying: "The oldJew and his wife began to howle and crie as fast as Pocahuntas." Itwill be noted that the account of the visit (apparently alone) ofPocahontas and her capture is strong evidence that she was not atthis time married to "Kocoum" or anybody else.

Word was despatched to Powhatan of his daughter's duress, with ademand made for the restitution of goods; but although this savage isrepresented as dearly loving Pocahontas, his "delight and darling,"it was, according to Hamor, three months before they heard anythingfrom him. His anxiety about his daughter could not have beenintense. He retained a part of his plunder, and a message was sentto him that Pocahontas would be kept till he restored all the arms.

This answer pleased Powhatan so little that they heard nothing fromhim till the following March. Then Sir Thomas Dale and CaptainArgall, with several vessels and one hundred and fifty men, went upto Powhatan's chief seat, taking his daughter with them, offering theIndians a chance to fight for her or to take her in peace onsurrender of the stolen goods. The Indians received this withbravado and flights of arrows, reminding them of the fate of CaptainRatcliffe. The whites landed, killed some Indians, burnt fortyhouses, pillaged the village, and went on up the river and came toanchor in front of Matchcot, the Emperor's chief town. Here wereassembled four hundred armed men, with bows and arrows, who daredthem to come ashore. Ashore they went, and a palaver was held. TheIndians wanted a day to consult their King, after which they wouldfight, if nothing but blood would satisfy the whites.

Two of Powhatan's sons who were present expressed a desire to seetheir sister, who had been taken on shore. When they had sight ofher, and saw how well she was cared for, they greatly rejoiced andpromised to persuade their father to redeem her and conclude alasting peace. The two brothers were taken on board ship, and MasterJohn Rolfe and Master Sparkes were sent to negotiate with the King.Powhatan did not show himself, but his brother Apachamo, hissuccessor, promised to use his best efforts to bring about a peace,and the expedition returned to Jamestown.

"Long before this time," Hamor relates, "a gentleman of approvedbehaviour and honest carriage, Master John Rolfe, had been in lovewith Pocahuntas and she with him, which thing at the instant that wewere in parlee with them, myselfe made known to Sir Thomas Dale, by aletter from him [Rolfe] whereby he entreated his advice andfurtherance to his love, if so it seemed fit to him for the good ofthe Plantation, and Pocahuntas herself acquainted her brethrentherewith." Governor Dale approved this, and consequently waswilling to retire without other conditions. "The bruite of thispretended marriage [Hamor continues] came soon to Powhatan'sknowledge, a thing acceptable to him, as appeared by his suddenconsent thereunto, who some ten daies after sent an old uncle ofhirs, named Opachisco, to give her as his deputy in the church, andtwo of his sonnes to see the mariage solemnized which was accordinglydone about the fifth of April [1614], and ever since we have hadfriendly commerce and trade, not only with Powhatan himself, but alsowith his subjects round about us; so as now I see no reason why thecollonie should not thrive a pace."

This marriage was justly celebrated as the means and beginning of afirm peace which long continued, so that Pocahontas was againentitled to the grateful remembrance of the Virginia settlers.Already, in 1612, a plan had been mooted in Virginia of marrying theEnglish with the natives, and of obtaining the recognition ofPowhatan and those allied to him as members of a fifth kingdom, withcertain privileges. Cunega, the Spanish ambassador at London, onSeptember 22, 1612, writes: "Although some suppose the plantation todecrease, he is credibly informed that there is a determination tomarry some of the people that go over to Virginia; forty or fifty arealready so married, and English women intermingle and are receivedkindly by the natives. A zealous minister hath been wounded forreprehending it."

Mr. John Rolfe was a man of industry, and apparently devoted to thewelfare of the colony. He probably brought with him in 1610 hiswife, who gave birth to his daughter Bermuda, born on the SomersIslands at the time of the shipwreck. We find no notice of herdeath. Hamor gives him the distinction of being the first in thecolony to try, in 1612, the planting and raising of tobacco. "No man[he adds] hath labored to his power, by good example there and worthyencouragement into England by his letters, than he hath done, witnesshis marriage with Powhatan's daughter, one of rude education, mannersbarbarous and cursed generation, meerely for the good and honor ofthe plantation: and least any man should conceive that some sinisterrespects allured him hereunto, I have made bold, contrary to hisknowledge, in the end of my treatise to insert the true coppie of hisletter written to Sir Thomas Dale."

The letter is a long, labored, and curious document, and comes nearerto a theological treatise than any love-letter we have on record. Itreeks with unction. Why Rolfe did not speak to Dale, whom he sawevery day, instead of inflicting upon him this painful document, inwhich the flutterings of a too susceptible widower's heart are hiddenunder a great resolve of self-sacrifice, is not plain.

The letter protests in a tedious preamble that the writer is movedentirely by the Spirit of God, and continues:

"Let therefore this my well advised protestation, which here I makebetween God and my own conscience, be a sufficient witness, at thedreadful day of judgment (when the secrets of all men's hearts shallbe opened) to condemne me herein, if my chiefest interest and purposebe not to strive with all my power of body and mind, in theundertaking of so weighty a matter, no way led (so far forth as man'sweakness may permit) with the unbridled desire of carnall affection;but for the good of this plantation, for the honour of our countrie,for the glory of God, for my owne salvation, and for the convertingto the true knowledge of God and Jesus Christ, an unbelievingcreature, namely Pokahuntas. To whom my heartie and best thoughtsare, and have a long time bin so entangled, and inthralled in sointricate a laborinth, that I was even awearied to unwinde myselfthereout."

Master Rolfe goes on to describe the mighty war in his meditations onthis subject, in which he had set before his eyes the frailty ofmankind and his proneness to evil and wicked thoughts. He is awareof God's displeasure against the sons of Levi and Israel for marryingstrange wives, and this has caused him to look about warily and withgood circ*mspection "into the grounds and principall agitations whichshould thus provoke me to be in love with one, whose education hathbin rude, her manners barbarous, her generation accursed, and sodiscrepant in all nurtriture from myselfe, that oftentimes with feareand trembling, I have ended my private controversie with this: surelythese are wicked instigations, fetched by him who seeketh anddelighteth in man's distruction; and so with fervent prayers to beever preserved from such diabolical assaults (as I looke those to be)I have taken some rest."

The good man was desperately in love and wanted to marry the Indian,and consequently he got no peace; and still being tormented with herimage, whether she was absent or present, he set out to produce aningenious reason (to show the world) for marrying her. He continues:

"Thus when I thought I had obtained my peace and quietnesse, beholdeanother, but more gracious tentation hath made breaches into myholiest and strongest meditations; with which I have been put to anew triall, in a straighter manner than the former; for besides theweary passions and sufferings which I have dailey, hourely, yea andin my sleepe indured, even awaking me to astonishment, taxing me withremissnesse, and carelessnesse, refusing and neglecting to performthe duteie of a good Christian, pulling me by the eare, and crying:Why dost thou not indeavor to make her a Christian? And these havehappened to my greater wonder, even when she hath been furthestseperated from me, which in common reason (were it not an undoubtedwork of God) might breede forgetfulnesse of a far more worthiecreature."

He accurately describes the symptoms and appears to understand theremedy, but he is after a large-sized motive:

"Besides, I say the holy Spirit of God hath often demanded of me, whyI was created? If not for transitory pleasures and worldly vanities,but to labour in the Lord's vineyard, there to sow and plant, tonourish and increase the fruites thereof, daily adding with the goodhusband in the gospell, somewhat to the tallent, that in the ends thefruites may be reaped, to the comfort of the labourer in this life,and his salvation in the world to come…. Likewise, adding hereuntoher great appearance of love to me, her desire to be taught andinstructed in the knowledge of God, her capablenesse ofunderstanding, her aptness and willingness to receive anie goodimpression, and also the spirituall, besides her owne incitementsstirring me up hereunto."

The "incitements" gave him courage, so that he exclaims: "Shall I beof so untoward a disposition, as to refuse to lead the blind into theright way? Shall I be so unnatural, as not to give bread to thehungrie, or uncharitable, as not to cover the naked?"

It wasn't to be thought of, such wickedness; and so Master Rolfescrewed up his courage to marry the glorious Princess, from whomthousands of people were afterwards so anxious to be descended. Buthe made the sacrifice for the glory of the country, the benefit ofthe plantation, and the conversion of the unregenerate, and other andlower motive he vigorously repels: "Now, if the vulgar sort, whosquare all men's actions by the base rule of their own filthinesse,shall tax or taunt mee in this my godly labour: let them know it isnot hungry appetite, to gorge myselfe with incontinency; sure (if Iwould and were so sensually inclined) I might satisfy such desire,though not without a seared conscience, yet with Christians morepleasing to the eie, and less fearefull in the offense unlawfullycommitted. Nor am I in so desperate an estate, that I regard notwhat becometh of me; nor am I out of hope but one day to see mycountry, nor so void of friends, nor mean in birth, but there toobtain a mach to my great con'tent…. But shall it please God thusto dispose of me (which I earnestly desire to fulfill my ends beforeset down) I will heartily accept of it as a godly taxe appointed me,and I will never cease (God assisting me) untill I have accomplished,and brought to perfection so holy a worke, in which I will daily prayGod to bless me, to mine and her eternal happiness."

It is to be hoped that if sanctimonious John wrote any love-lettersto Amonata they had less cant in them than this. But it was pleasingto Sir Thomas Dale, who was a man to appreciate the high motives ofMr. Rolfe. In a letter which he despatched from Jamestown, June 18,1614, to a reverend friend in London, he describes the expeditionwhen Pocahontas was carried up the river, and adds the informationthat when she went on shore, "she would not talk to any of them,scarcely to them of the best sort, and to them only, that if herfather had loved her, he would not value her less than old swords,pieces, or axes; wherefore she would still dwell with the Englishmenwho loved her."

"Powhatan's daughter [the letter continues] I caused to be carefullyinstructed in Christian Religion, who after she had made some goodprogress therein, renounced publically her countrey idolatry, openlyconfessed her Christian faith, was, as she desired, baptized, and issince married to an English Gentleman of good understanding (as byhis letter unto me, containing the reasons for his marriage of heryou may perceive), an other knot to bind this peace the stronger.Her father and friends gave approbation to it, and her uncle gave herto him in the church; she lives civilly and lovingly with him, and Itrust will increase in goodness, as the knowledge of God increasethin her. She will goe into England with me, and were it but thegayning of this one soule, I will think my time, toile, and presentstay well spent."

Hamor also appends to his narration a short letter, of the same datewith the above, from the minister Alexander Whittaker, thegenuineness of which is questioned. In speaking of the good deeds ofSir Thomas Dale it says: "But that which is best, one Pocahuntas orMatoa, the daughter of Powhatan, is married to an honest and discreetEnglish Gentleman—Master Rolfe, and that after she had openlyrenounced her countrey Idolatry, and confessed the faith of JesusChrist, and was baptized, which thing Sir Thomas Dale had laboured along time to ground her in." If, as this proclaims, she was marriedafter her conversion, then Rolfe's tender conscience must have givenhim another twist for wedding her, when the reason for marrying her(her conversion) had ceased with her baptism. His marriage,according to this, was a pure work of supererogation. It took placeabout the 5th of April, 1614. It is not known who performed theceremony.

How Pocahontas passed her time in Jamestown during the period of herdetention, we are not told. Conjectures are made that she was aninmate of the house of Sir Thomas Dale, or of that of the Rev. Mr.Whittaker, both of whom labored zealously to enlighten her mind onreligious subjects. She must also have been learning English andcivilized ways, for it is sure that she spoke our language very wellwhen she went to London. Mr. John Rolfe was also laboring for herconversion, and we may suppose that with all these ministrations,mingled with her love of Mr. Rolfe, which that ingenious widower haddiscovered, and her desire to convert him into a husband, she was notan unwilling captive. Whatever may have been her barbarousinstincts, we have the testimony of Governor Dale that she lived"civilly and lovingly" with her husband.

XVI

STORY OF POCAHONTAS, CONTINUED

Sir Thomas Dale was on the whole the most efficient and discreetGovernor the colony had had. One element of his success was no doubtthe change in the charter of 1609. By the first charter everythinghad been held in common by the company, and there had been nodivision of property or allotment of land among the colonists. Underthe new regime land was held in severalty, and the spur of individualinterest began at once to improve the condition of the settlement.The character of the colonists was also gradually improving. Theyhad not been of a sort to fulfill the earnest desire of the Londonpromoter's to spread vital piety in the New World. A zealous defenseof Virginia and Maryland, against "scandalous imputation," entitled"Leah and Rachel; or, The Two Fruitful Sisters," by Mr. John Hammond,London, 1656, considers the charges that Virginia "is an unhealthyplace, a nest of rogues, abandoned women, dissolut and rookerypersons; a place of intolerable labour, bad usage and hard diet"; andadmits that "at the first settling, and for many years after, itdeserved most of these aspersions, nor were they then aspersions buttruths…. There were jails supplied, youth seduced, infamous womendrilled in, the provision all brought out of England, and thatembezzled by the Trustees."

Governor Dale was a soldier; entering the army in the Netherlands asa private he had risen to high position, and received knighthood in1606. Shortly after he was with Sir Thomas Gates in South Holland.The States General in 1611 granted him three years' term of absencein Virginia. Upon his arrival he began to put in force that systemof industry and frugality he had observed in Holland. He had all theimperiousness of a soldier, and in an altercation with CaptainNewport, occasioned by some injurious remarks the latter made aboutSir Thomas Smith, the treasurer, he pulled his beard and threatenedto hang him. Active operations for settling new plantations were atonce begun, and Dale wrote to Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury, for 2,000good colonists to be sent out, for the three hundred that came were"so profane, so riotous, so full of mutiny, that not many areChristians but in name, their bodies so diseased and crazed that notsixty of them may be employed." He served afterwards with credit inHolland, was made commander of the East Indian fleet in 1618, had anaval engagement with the Dutch near Bantam in 1619, and died in 1620from the effects of the climate. He was twice married, and hissecond wife, Lady Fanny, the cousin of his first wife, survived himand received a patent for a Virginia plantation.

Governor Dale kept steadily in view the conversion of the Indians toChristianity, and the success of John Rolfe with Matoaka inspired himwith a desire to convert another daughter of Powhatan, of whoseexquisite perfections he had heard. He therefore despatched RalphHamor, with the English boy, Thomas Savage, as interpreter, on amission to the court of Powhatan, "upon a message unto him, which wasto deale with him, if by any means I might procure a daughter of his,who (Pocahuntas being already in our possession) is generallyreported to be his delight and darling, and surely he esteemed her ashis owne Soule, for surer pledge of peace." This visit Hamor relateswith great naivete.

At his town of Matchcot, near the head of York River, Powhatanhimself received his visitors when they landed, with greatcordiality, expressing much pleasure at seeing again the boy who hadbeen presented to him by Captain Newport, and whom he had not seensince he gave him leave to go and see his friends at Jamestown fouryears before; he also inquired anxiously after Namontack, whom he hadsent to King James's land to see him and his country and reportthereon, and then led the way to his house, where he sat down on hisbedstead side. "On each hand of him was placed a comely andpersonable young woman, which they called his Queenes, the howsewithin round about beset with them, the outside guarded with ahundred bowmen."

The first thing offered was a pipe of tobacco, which Powhatan "firstdrank," and then passed to Hamor, who "drank" what he pleased andthen returned it. The Emperor then inquired how his brother SirThomas Dale fared, "and after that of his daughter's welfare, hermarriage, his unknown son, and how they liked, lived and lovedtogether." Hamor replied "that his brother was very well, and hisdaughter so well content that she would not change her life to returnand live with him, whereat he laughed heartily, and said he was veryglad of it."

Powhatan then desired to know the cause of his unexpected coming, andMr. Hamor said his message was private, to be delivered to himwithout the presence of any except one of his councilors, and one ofthe guides, who already knew it.

Therefore the house was cleared of all except the two Queens, who maynever sequester themselves, and Mr. Hamor began his palaver. Firstthere was a message of love and inviolable peace, the production ofpresents of coffee, beads, combs, fish-hooks, and knives, and thepromise of a grindstone when it pleased the Emperor to send for it.Hamor then proceeded:

"The bruite of the exquesite perfection of your youngest daughter,being famous through all your territories, hath come to the hearingof your brother, Sir Thomas Dale, who for this purpose hath addressedme hither, to intreate you by that brotherly friendship you makeprofession of, to permit her (with me) to returne unto him, partlyfor the desire which himselfe hath, and partly for the desire hersister hath to see her of whom, if fame hath not been prodigall, aslike enough it hath not, your brother (by your favour) would gladlymake his nearest companion, wife and bed fellow [many times he wouldhave interrupted my speech, which I entreated him to heare out, andthen if he pleased to returne me answer], and the reason hereof is,because being now friendly and firmly united together, and made onepeople [as he supposeth and believes] in the bond of love, he wouldmake a natural union between us, principally because himself hathtaken resolution to dwel in your country so long as he liveth, andwould not only therefore have the firmest assurance hee may, ofperpetuall friendship from you, but also hereby binde himselfethereunto."

Powhatan replied with dignity that he gladly accepted the salute oflove and peace, which he and his subjects would exactly maintain.But as to the other matter he said: "My daughter, whom my brotherdesireth, I sold within these three days to be wife to a greatWeroance for two bushels of Roanoke [a small kind of beads made ofoyster shells], and it is true she is already gone with him, threedays' journey from me."

Hamor persisted that this marriage need not stand in the way; "thatif he pleased herein to gratify his Brother he might, restoring theRoanoke without the imputation of injustice, take home his daughteragain, the rather because she was not full twelve years old, andtherefore not marriageable; assuring him besides the bond of peace,so much the firmer, he should have treble the price of his daughterin beads, copper, hatchets, and many other things more useful forhim."

The reply of the noble old savage to this infamous demand ought tohave brought a blush to the cheeks of those who made it. He said heloved his daughter as dearly as his life; he had many children, buthe delighted in none so much as in her; he could not live if he didnot see her often, as he would not if she were living with thewhites, and he was determined not to put himself in their hands. Hedesired no other assurance of friendship than his brother had givenhim, who had already one of his daughters as a pledge, which wassufficient while she lived; "when she dieth he shall have anotherchild of mine." And then he broke forth in pathetic eloquence: "Ihold it not a brotherly part of your King, to desire to bereave me oftwo of my children at once; further give him to understand, that ifhe had no pledge at all, he should not need to distrust any injuryfrom me, or any under my subjection; there have been too many of hisand my men killed, and by my occasion there shall never be more; Iwhich have power to perform it have said it; no not though I shouldhave just occasion offered, for I am now old and would gladly end mydays in peace; so as if the English offer me any injury, my countryis large enough, I will remove myself farther from you."

The old man hospitably entertained his guests for a day or two,loaded them with presents, among which were two dressed buckskins,white as snow, for his son and daughter, and, requesting somearticles sent him in return, bade them farewell with this message toGovernor Dale: "I hope this will give him good satisfaction, if it donot I will go three days' journey farther from him, and never seeEnglishmen more." It speaks well for the temperate habits of thissavage that after he had feasted his guests, "he caused to be fetcheda great glass of sack, some three quarts or better, which CaptainNewport had given him six or seven years since, carefully preservedby him, not much above a pint in all this time spent, and gave eachof us in a great oyster shell some three spoonfuls."

We trust that Sir Thomas Dale gave a faithful account of all this tohis wife in England.

Sir Thomas Gates left Virginia in the spring of 1614 and neverreturned. After his departure scarcity and severity developed amutiny, and six of the settlers were executed. Rolfe was plantingtobacco (he has the credit of being the first white planter of it),and his wife was getting an inside view of Christian civilization.

In 1616 Sir Thomas Dale returned to England with his company and JohnRolfe and Pocahontas, and several other Indians. They reachedPlymouth early in June, and on the 20th Lord Carew made this note:"Sir Thomas Dale returned from Virginia; he hath brought divers menand women of thatt countrye to be educated here, and one Rolfe whomarried a daughter of Pohetan (the barbarous prince) calledPocahuntas, hath brought his wife with him into England." On the 22dSir John Chamberlain wrote to Sir Dudley Carlton that there were "tenor twelve, old and young, of that country."

The Indian girls who came with Pocahontas appear to have been a greatcare to the London company. In May, 1620, is a record that thecompany had to pay for physic and cordials for one of them who hadbeen living as a servant in Cheapside, and was very weak of aconsumption. The same year two other of the maids were shipped offto the Bermudas, after being long a charge to the company, in thehope that they might there get husbands, "that after they wereconverted and had children, they might be sent to their country andkindred to civilize them." One of them was there married. Theattempt to educate them in England was not very successful, and aproposal to bring over Indian boys obtained this comment from SirEdwin Sandys:

"Now to send for them into England, and to have them educated here,he found upon experience of those brought by Sir Thomas Dale, mightbe far from the Christian work intended." One Nanamack, a ladbrought over by Lord Delaware, lived some years in houses where "heheard not much of religion but sins, had many times examples ofdrinking, swearing and like evils, ran as he was a mere Pagan," tillhe fell in with a devout family and changed his life, but died beforehe was baptized. Accompanying Pocahontas was a councilor ofPowhatan, one Tomocomo, the husband of one of her sisters, of whomPurchas says in his "Pilgrimes": "With this savage I have oftenconversed with my good friend Master Doctor Goldstone where he was afrequent geust, and where I have seen him sing and dance hisdiabolical measures, and heard him discourse of his country andreligion…. Master Rolfe lent me a discourse which I have in myPilgrimage delivered. And his wife did not only accustom herself tocivility, but still carried herself as the daughter of a king, andwas accordingly respected, not only by the Company which allowedprovision for herself and her son, but of divers particular personsof honor, in their hopeful zeal by her to advance Christianity. Iwas present when my honorable and reverend patron, the Lord Bishop ofLondon, Doctor King, entertained her with festival state and pompbeyond what I had seen in his great hospitality offered to otherladies. At her return towards Virginia she came at Gravesend to herend and grave, having given great demonstration of her Christiansincerity, as the first fruits of Virginia conversion, leaving here agoodly memory, and the hopes of her resurrection, her soul aspiringto see and enjoy permanently in heaven what here she had joyed tohear and believe of her blessed Saviour. Not such was Tomocomo, buta blasphemer of what he knew not and preferring his God to oursbecause he taught them (by his own so appearing) to wear theirDevil-lock at the left ear; he acquainted me with the manner of thathis appearance, and believed that their Okee or Devil had taught themtheir husbandry."

Upon news of her arrival, Captain Smith, either to increase his ownimportance or because Pocahontas was neglected, addressed a letter or"little booke" to Queen Anne, the consort of King James. This letteris found in Smith's "General Historie" ( 1624), where it isintroduced as having been sent to Queen Anne in 1616. Probably hesent her such a letter. We find no mention of its receipt or of anyacknowledgment of it. Whether the "abstract" in the "GeneralHistorie" is exactly like the original we have no means of knowing.We have no more confidence in Smith's memory than we have in hisdates. The letter is as follows:

"To the most high and vertuous Princesse Queene Anne of Great
Brittaine.

"Most ADMIRED QUEENE.

"The love I beare my God, my King and Countrie hath so oft emboldenedme in the worst of extreme dangers, that now honestie doth constrainemee presume thus farre beyond my selfe, to present your Majestie thisshort discourse: if ingratitude be a deadly poyson to all honestvertues, I must be guiltie of that crime if I should omit any meanesto bee thankful. So it is.

"That some ten yeeres agoe being in Virginia, and taken prisoner bythe power of Powhaten, their chiefe King, I received from this greatSalvage exceeding great courtesie, especially from his sonneNantaquaus, the most manliest, comeliest, boldest spirit, I ever sawin a Salvage and his sister Pocahontas, the Kings most deare andwell-beloved daughter, being but a childe of twelve or thirteen yeeresof age, whose compassionate pitifull heart, of desperate estate, gaveme much cause to respect her: I being the first Christian this proudKing and his grim attendants ever saw, and thus enthralled in theirbarbarous power, I cannot say I felt the least occasion of want thatwas in the power of those my mortall foes to prevent notwithstandingal their threats. After some six weeks fatting amongst those SalvageCourtiers, at the minute of my execution, she hazarded the beating outof her owne braines to save mine, and not onely that, but so prevailedwith her father, that I was safely conducted to Jamestowne, where Ifound about eight and thirty miserable poore and sicke creatures, tokeepe possession of all those large territories of Virginia, such wasthe weaknesse of this poore Commonwealth, as had the Salvages not fedus, we directly had starved.

"And this reliefe, most gracious Queene, was commonly brought us bythis Lady Pocahontas, notwithstanding all these passages wheninconstant Fortune turned our Peace to warre, this tender Virginwould still not spare to dare to visit us, and by her our jarres havebeen oft appeased, and our wants still supplyed; were it the policieof her father thus to imploy her, or the ordinance of God thus tomake her his instrument, or her extraordinarie affection to ourNation, I know not: but of this I am sure: when her father with theutmost of his policie and power, sought to surprize mee, having buteighteene with mee, the dark night could not affright her fromcomming through the irksome woods, and with watered eies gave meintilligence, with her best advice to escape his furie: which had heeknown hee had surely slaine her. Jamestowne with her wild traine sheas freely frequented, as her father's habitation: and during the timeof two or three yeares, she next under God, was still the instrumentto preserve this Colonie from death, famine and utter confusion,which if in those times had once beene dissolved, Virginia might havelaine as it was at our first arrivall to this day. Since then, thisbuisinesse having been turned and varied by many accidents from thatI left it at: it is most certaine, after a long and troublesome warreafter my departure, betwixt her father and our Colonie, all whichtime shee was not heard of, about two yeeres longer, the Colonie bythat meanes was releived, peace concluded, and at last rejecting herbarbarous condition, was maried to an English Gentleman, with whom atthis present she is in England; the first Christian ever of thatNation, the first Virginian ever spake English, or had a childe inmariage by an Englishman, a matter surely, if my meaning bee trulyconsidered and well understood, worthy a Princes understanding.

"Thus most gracious Lady, I have related to your Majestic, what atyour best leasure our approved Histories will account you at large,and done in the time of your Majesties life, and however this mightbee presented you from a more worthy pen, it cannot from a morehonest heart, as yet I never begged anything of the State, or any,and it is my want of abilitie and her exceeding desert, your birth,meanes, and authoritie, her birth, vertue, want and simplicitie, dothmake mee thus bold, humbly to beseech your Majestic: to take thisknowledge of her though it be from one so unworthy to be thereporter, as myselfe, her husband's estate not being able to make herfit to attend your Majestic: the most and least I can doe, is to tellyou this, because none so oft hath tried it as myselfe: and therather being of so great a spirit, however her station: if she shouldnot be well received, seeing this Kingdome may rightly have aKingdome by her meanes: her present love to us and Christianitie,might turne to such scorne and furie, as to divert all this good tothe worst of evill, when finding so great a Queene should doe hersome honour more than she can imagine, for being so kinde to yourservants and subjects, would so ravish her with content, as endeareher dearest bloud to effect that, your Majestic and all the Kingshonest subjects most earnestly desire: and so I humbly kisse yourgracious hands."

The passage in this letter, "She hazarded the beating out of her ownebraines to save mine," is inconsistent with the preceding portion ofthe paragraph which speaks of "the exceeding great courtesie" ofPowhatan; and Smith was quite capable of inserting it afterwards whenhe made up his

"General Historie."

Smith represents himself at this time—the last half of 1616 and thefirst three months of 1617—as preparing to attempt a third voyage toNew England (which he did not make), and too busy to do Pocahontasthe service she desired. She was staying at Branford, either fromneglect of the company or because the London smoke disagreed withher, and there Smith went to see her. His account of his intercoursewith her, the only one we have, must be given for what it is worth.According to this she had supposed Smith dead, and took umbrage athis neglect of her. He writes:

"After a modest salutation, without any word, she turned about,obscured her face, as not seeming well contented; and in that humour,her husband with divers others, we all left her two or three hoursrepenting myself to have writ she could speak English. But not longafter she began to talke, remembering me well what courtesies she haddone: saying, 'You did promise Powhatan what was yours should be his,and he the like to you; you called him father, being in his land astranger, and by the same reason so must I do you:' which though Iwould have excused, I durst not allow of that title, because she wasa king's daughter. With a well set countenance she said: 'Were younot afraid to come into my father's country and cause fear in him andall his people (but me), and fear you have I should call you father;I tell you then I will, and you shall call me childe, and so I willbe forever and ever, your contrieman. They did tell me alwaies youwere dead, and I knew no other till I came to Plymouth, yet Powhatandid command Uttamatomakkin to seek you, and know the truth, becauseyour countriemen will lie much."'

This savage was the Tomocomo spoken of above, who had been sent byPowhatan to take a census of the people of England, and report whatthey and their state were. At Plymouth he got a long stick and beganto make notches in it for the people he saw. But he was quicklyweary of that task. He told Smith that Powhatan bade him seek himout, and get him to show him his God, and the King, Queen, andPrince, of whom Smith had told so much. Smith put him off aboutshowing his God, but said he had heard that he had seen the King.This the Indian denied, James probably not coming up to his idea of aking, till by circ*mstances he was convinced he had seen him. Thenhe replied very sadly: "You gave Powhatan a white dog, which Powhatanfed as himself, but your king gave me nothing, and I am better thanyour white dog."

Smith adds that he took several courtiers to see Pocahontas, and"they did think God had a great hand in her conversion, and they haveseen many English ladies worse favoured, proportioned, andbehavioured;" and he heard that it had pleased the King and Queengreatly to esteem her, as also Lord and Lady Delaware, and otherpersons of good quality, both at the masques and otherwise.

Much has been said about the reception of Pocahontas in London, butthe contemporary notices of her are scant. The Indians were objectsof curiosity for a time in London, as odd Americans have often beensince, and the rank of Pocahontas procured her special attention.She was presented at court. She was entertained by Dr. King, Bishopof London. At the playing of Ben Jonson's "Christmas his Mask" atcourt, January 6, 1616-17, Pocahontas and Tomocomo were both present,and Chamberlain writes to Carleton: "The Virginian woman Pocahuntaswith her father counsellor have been with the King and graciouslyused, and both she and her assistant were pleased at the Masque. Sheis upon her return though sore against her will, if the wind wouldabout to send her away."

Mr. Neill says that "after the first weeks of her residence inEngland she does not appear to be spoken of as the wife of Rolfe bythe letter writers," and the Rev. Peter Fontaine says that "when theyheard that Rolfe had married Pocahontas, it was deliberated incouncil whether he had not committed high treason by so doing, thatis marrying an Indian princesse."

It was like James to think so. His interest in the colony was neverthe most intelligent, and apt to be in things trivial. LordSouthampton (Dec. 15, 1609) writes to Lord Salisbury that he had toldthe King of the Virginia squirrels brought into England, which aresaid to fly. The King very earnestly asked if none were provided forhim, and said he was sure Salisbury would get him one. Would nothave troubled him, "but that you know so well how he is affected tothese toys."

There has been recently found in the British Museum a print of aportrait of Pocahontas, with a legend round it in Latin, which istranslated: "Matoaka, alias Rebecka, Daughter of Prince Powhatan,Emperor of Virginia; converted to Christianity, married Mr. Rolff;died on shipboard at Gravesend 1617." This is doubtless the portraitengraved by Simon De Passe in 1616, and now inserted in the extantcopies of the London edition of the "General Historie," 1624. It isnot probable that the portrait was originally published with the"General Historie." The portrait inserted in the edition of 1624 hasthis inscription:

Round the portrait:

"Matoaka als Rebecca Filia Potentiss Princ: Pohatani Imp: Virginim."

In the oval, under the portrait:

"Aetatis suae 21 A.
1616"
Below:

"Matoaks als Rebecka daughter to the mighty Prince PowhatanEmprour of Attanoughkomouck als virginia converted and baptized inthe Christian faith, and wife to the worth Mr. job Rolff.i: Pass: sculp. Compton Holland excud."

Camden in his "History of Gravesend" says that everybody paid thisyoung lady all imaginable respect, and it was believed she would havesufficiently acknowledged those favors, had she lived to return toher own country, by bringing the Indians to a kinder dispositiontoward the English; and that she died, "giving testimony all thetime she lay sick, of her being a very good Christian."

The Lady Rebecka, as she was called in London, died on shipboard atGravesend after a brief illness, said to be of only three days,probably on the 21st of March, 1617. I have seen somewhere astatement, which I cannot confirm, that her disease was smallpox.St. George's Church, where she was buried, was destroyed by fire in1727. The register of that church has this record:

"1616, May 21 Rebecca Wrothe
Wyff of Thomas Wroth gent
A Virginia lady borne, here was buried
in ye chaunncle."

Yet there is no doubt, according to a record in the Calendar of StatePapers, dated "1617, 29 March, London," that her death occurred March21, 1617.

John Rolfe was made Secretary of Virginia when Captain Argall becameGovernor, and seems to have been associated in the schemes of thatunscrupulous person and to have forfeited the good opinion of thecompany. August 23, 1618, the company wrote to Argall: "We cannotimagine why you should give us warning that Opechankano and thenatives have given the country to Mr. Rolfe's child, and that theyreserve it from all others till he comes of years except as wesuppose as some do here report it be a device of your own, to somespecial purpose for yourself." It appears also by the minutes of thecompany in 1621 that Lady Delaware had trouble to recover goods ofhers left in Rolfe's hands in Virginia, and desired a commissiondirected to Sir Thomas Wyatt and Mr. George Sandys to examine whatgoods of the late "Lord Deleware had come into Rolfe's possession andget satisfaction of him." This George Sandys is the famous travelerwho made a journey through the Turkish Empire in 1610, and who wrote,while living in Virginia, the first book written in the New World,the completion of his translation of Ovid's "Metamorphosis."

John Rolfe died in Virginia in 1622, leaving a wife and children.This is supposed to be his third wife, though there is no note of hismarriage to her nor of the death of his first. October 7, 1622, hisbrother Henry Rolfe petitioned that the estate of John should beconverted to the support of his relict wife and children and to hisown indemnity for having brought up John's child by Powhatan'sdaughter.

This child, named Thomas Rolfe, was given after the death ofPocahontas to the keeping of Sir Lewis Stukely of Plymouth, who fellinto evil practices, and the boy was transferred to the guardianshipof his uncle Henry Rolfe, and educated in London. When he was grownup he returned to Virginia, and was probably there married. There ison record his application to the Virginia authorities in 1641 forleave to go into the Indian country and visit Cleopatra, his mother'ssister. He left an only daughter who was married, says Stith (1753),"to Col. John Bolling; by whom she left an only son, the late MajorJohn Bolling, who was father to the present Col. John Bolling, andseveral daughters, married to Col. Richard Randolph, Col. JohnFleming, Dr. William Gay, Mr. Thomas Eldridge, and Mr. James Murray."Campbell in his "History of Virginia" says that the first Randolphthat came to the James River was an esteemed and industriousmechanic, and that one of his sons, Richard, grandfather of thecelebrated John Randolph, married Jane Bolling, the greatgranddaughter of Pocahontas.

In 1618 died the great Powhatan, full of years and satiated withfighting and the savage delights of life. He had many names andtitles; his own people sometimes called him Ottaniack, sometimesMamauatonick, and usually in his presence Wahunsenasawk. He ruled,by inheritance and conquest, with many chiefs under him, over a largeterritory with not defined borders, lying on the James, the York, theRappahannock, the Potomac, and the Pawtuxet Rivers. He had severalseats, at which he alternately lived with his many wives and guard ofbowmen, the chief of which at the arrival of the English wasWerowomocomo, on the Pamunkey (York) River. His state has beensufficiently described. He is said to have had a hundred wives, andgenerally a dozen—the youngest—personally attending him. When hehad a mind to add to his harem he seems to have had the ancientoriental custom of sending into all his dominions for the fairestmaidens to be brought from whom to select. And he gave the wives ofwhom he was tired to his favorites.

Strachey makes a striking description of him as he appeared about1610: "He is a goodly old man not yet shrincking, though well beatenwith cold and stormeye winters, in which he hath been patient of manynecessityes and attempts of his fortune to make his name and famelygreat. He is supposed to be little lesse than eighty yeares old, Idare not saye how much more; others saye he is of a tall stature andcleane lymbes, of a sad aspect, rownd fatt visaged, with graiehaires, but plaine and thin, hanging upon his broad showlders; somefew haires upon his chin, and so on his upper lippe: he hath been astrong and able salvadge, synowye, vigilant, ambitious, subtile toenlarge his dominions:…. cruell he hath been, and quarellous aswell with his own wcrowanccs for trifles, and that to strike aterrour and awe into them of his power and condicion, as also withhis neighbors in his younger days, though now delighted in securityand pleasure, and therefore stands upon reasonable conditions ofpeace with all the great and absolute werowances about him, and islikewise more quietly settled amongst his own."

It was at this advanced age that he had the twelve favorite youngwives whom Strachey names. All his people obeyed him with fear andadoration, presenting anything he ordered at his feet, and tremblingif he frowned. His punishments were cruel; offenders were beaten todeath before him, or tied to trees and dismembered joint by joint, orbroiled to death on burning coals. Strachey wondered how such abarbarous prince should put on such ostentation of majesty, yet heaccounted for it as belonging to the necessary divinity that dothhedge in a king: "Such is (I believe) the impression of the divinenature, and however these (as other heathens forsaken by the truelight) have not that porcion of the knowing blessed Christianspiritt, yet I am perswaded there is an infused kind of divinitiesand extraordinary (appointed that it shall be so by the King ofkings) to such as are his ymedyate instruments on earth."

Here is perhaps as good a place as any to say a word or two about theappearance and habits of Powhatan's subjects, as they were observedby Strachey and Smith. A sort of religion they had, with priests orconjurors, and houses set apart as temples, wherein images were keptand conjurations performed, but the ceremonies seem not worship, butpropitiations against evil, and there seems to have been noconception of an overruling power or of an immortal life. Smithdescribes a ceremony of sacrifice of children to their deity; butthis is doubtful, although Parson Whittaker, who calls the Indians"naked slaves of the devil," also says they sacrificed sometimesthemselves and sometimes their own children. An image of their godwhich he sent to England "was painted upon one side of a toadstool,much like unto a deformed monster." And he adds: "Their priests,whom they call Quockosoughs, are no other but such as our Englishwitches are." This notion I believe also pertained among the NewEngland colonists. There was a belief that the Indian conjurors hadsome power over the elements, but not a well-regulated power, and intime the Indians came to a belief in the better effect of theinvocations of the whites. In "Winslow's Relation," quoted byAlexander Young in his "Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers," underdate of July, 1623, we read that on account of a great drought a fastday was appointed. When the assembly met the sky was clear. Theexercise lasted eight or nine hours. Before they broke up, owing toprayers the weather was overcast. Next day began a long gentle rain.This the Indians seeing, admired the goodness of our God: "showingthe difference between their conjuration and our invocation in thename of God for rain; theirs being mixed with such storms andtempests, as sometimes, instead of doing them good, it layeth thecorn flat on the ground; but ours in so gentle and seasonable amanner, as they never observed the like."

It was a common opinion of the early settlers in Virginia, as it wasof those in New England, that the Indians were born white, but thatthey got a brown or tawny color by the use of red ointments, made ofearth and the juice of roots, with which they besmear themselveseither according to the custom of the country or as a defense againstthe stinging of mosquitoes. The women are of the same hue as themen, says Strachey; "howbeit, it is supposed neither of themnaturally borne so discolored; for Captain Smith (lyving sometymesamongst them) affirmeth how they are from the womb indifferent white,but as the men, so doe the women," "dye and disguise themselves intothis tawny cowler, esteeming it the best beauty to be nearest such akind of murrey as a sodden quince is of," as the Greek women coloredtheir faces and the ancient Britain women dyed themselves with red;"howbeit [Strachey slyly adds] he or she that hath obtained theperfected art in the tempering of this collour with any better kindof earth, yearb or root preserves it not yet so secrett and preciousunto herself as doe our great ladyes their oyle of talchum, or otherpainting white and red, but they frindly communicate the secret andteach it one another."

Thomas Lechford in his "Plain Dealing; or Newes from New England,"London, 1642, says: "They are of complexion swarthy and tawny; theirchildren are borne white, but they bedawbe them with oyle and colorspresently."

The men are described as tall, straight, and of comely proportions;no beards; hair black, coarse, and thick; noses broad, flat, and fullat the end; with big lips and wide mouths', yet nothing so unsightlyas the Moors; and the women as having "handsome limbs, slender arms,pretty hands, and when they sing they have a pleasant tange in theirvoices. The men shaved their hair on the right side, the womenacting as barbers, and left the hair full length on the left side,with a lock an ell long." A Puritan divine—"New England'sPlantation, 1630"—says of the Indians about him, "their hair isgenerally black, and cut before like our gentlewomen, and one locklonger than the rest, much like to our gentlemen, which fashion Ithink came from hence into England."

Their love of ornaments is sufficiently illustrated by an extractfrom Strachey, which is in substance what Smith writes:

"Their eares they boare with wyde holes, commonly two or three, andin the same they doe hang chaines of stayned pearle braceletts, ofwhite bone or shreeds of copper, beaten thinne and bright, and woundeup hollowe, and with a grate pride, certaine fowles' legges, eagles,hawkes, turkeys, etc., with beasts clawes, bears, arrahacounes,squirrells, etc. The clawes thrust through they let hang upon thecheeke to the full view, and some of their men there be who willweare in these holes a small greene and yellow-couloured live snake,neere half a yard in length, which crawling and lapping himself abouthis neck oftentymes familiarly, he suffreeth to kisse his lippes.Others weare a dead ratt tyed by the tayle, and such likeconundrums."

This is the earliest use I find of our word "conundrum," and thesense it bears here may aid in discovering its origin.

Powhatan is a very large figure in early Virginia history, anddeserves his prominence. He was an able and crafty savage, and madea good fight against the encroachments of the whites, but he was nomatch for the crafty Smith, nor the double-dealing of the Christians.There is something pathetic about the close of his life, his sorrowfor the death of his daughter in a strange land, when he saw histerritories overrun by the invaders, from whom he only asked peace,and the poor privilege of moving further away from them into thewilderness if they denied him peace.

In the midst of this savagery Pocahontas blooms like a sweet, wildrose. She was, like the Douglas, "tender and true." Wantingapparently the cruel nature of her race generally, her heroicqualities were all of the heart. No one of all the contemporarywriters has anything but gentle words for her. Barbarous anduntaught she was like her comrades, but of a gentle nature. Strippedof all the fictions which Captain Smith has woven into her story, andall the romantic suggestions which later writers have indulged in,she appears, in the light of the few facts that industry is able togather concerning her, as a pleasing and unrestrained Indian girl,probablv not different from her savage sisters in her habits, butbright and gentle; struck with admiration at the appearance of thewhite men, and easily moved to pity them, and so inclined to agrowing and lasting friendship for them; tractable and apt to learnrefinements; accepting the new religion through love for those whotaught it, and finally becoming in her maturity a well-balanced,sensible, dignified Christian woman.

According to the long-accepted story of Pocahontas, she did somethingmore than interfere to save from barbarous torture and death astranger and a captive, who had forfeited his life by shooting thosewho opposed his invasion. In all times, among the most savage tribesand in civilized society, women have been moved to heavenly pity bythe sight of a prisoner, and risked life to save him—the impulse wasas natural to a Highland lass as to an African maid. Pocahontas wentfurther than efforts to make peace between the superior race and herown. When the whites forced the Indians to contribute from theirscanty stores to the support of the invaders, and burned theirdwellings and shot them on sight if they refused, the Indian maidsympathized with the exposed whites and warned them of stratagemsagainst them; captured herself by a base violation of the laws ofhospitality, she was easily reconciled to her situation, adopted thehabits of the foreigners, married one of her captors, and in peaceand in war cast in her lot with the strangers. History has notpreserved for us the Indian view of her conduct.

It was no doubt fortunate for her, though perhaps not for the colony,that her romantic career ended by an early death, so that she alwaysremains in history in the bloom of youth. She did not live to bepained by the contrast, to which her eyes were opened, between herown and her adopted people, nor to learn what things could be done inthe Christian name she loved, nor to see her husband in a lesshonorable light than she left him, nor to be involved in any way inthe frightful massacre of 1622. If she had remained in England afterthe novelty was over, she might have been subject to slights andmortifying neglect. The struggles of the fighting colony could havebrought her little but pain. Dying when she did, she rounded out oneof the prettiest romances of all history, and secured for her namethe affection of a great nation, whose empire has spared little thatbelonged to her childhood and race, except the remembrance of herfriendship for those who destroyed her people.

By Charles Dudley Warner

MISAPPREHENSIONS CORRECTED

I should not like to ask an indulgent and idle public to saunterabout with me under a misapprehension. It would be more agreeable toinvite it to go nowhere than somewhere; for almost every one has beensomewhere, and has written about it. The only compromise I cansuggest is, that we shall go somewhere, and not learn anything aboutit. The instinct of the public against any thing like information ina volume of this kind is perfectly justifiable; and the reader willperhaps discover that this is illy adapted for a text-book inschools, or for the use of competitive candidates in thecivil-service examinations.

Years ago, people used to saunter over the Atlantic, and spend weeksin filling journals with their monotonous emotions. That is allchanged now, and there is a misapprehension that the Atlantic hasbeen practically subdued; but no one ever gets beyond the "rollingforties" without having this impression corrected.

I confess to have been deceived about this Atlantic, the roughest andwindiest of oceans. If you look at it on the map, it does n't appearto be much, and, indeed, it is spoken of as a ferry. What with theeight and nine days' passages over it, and the laying of the cable,which annihilates distance, I had the impression that its tediousthree thousand and odd miles had been, somehow, partly done awaywith; but they are all there. When one has sailed a thousand milesdue east and finds that he is then nowhere in particular, but isstill out, pitching about on an uneasy sea, under an inconstant sky,and that a thousand miles more will not make any perceptible change,he begins to have some conception of the unconquerable ocean.Columbus rises in my estimation.

I was feeling uncomfortable that nothing had been done for thememory of Christopher Columbus, when I heard some months ago thatthirty-seven guns had been fired off for him in Boston. It is to behoped that they were some satisfaction to him. They were discharged bycountrymen of his, who are justly proud that he should have beenable, after a search of only a few weeks, to find a land where thehand-organ had never been heard. The Italians, as a people, have notprofited much by this discovery; not so much, indeed, as theSpaniards, who got a reputation by it which even now gilds theirdecay. That Columbus was born in Genoa entitles the Italians tocelebrate the great achievement of his life; though why they shoulddischarge exactly thirty-seven guns I do not know. Columbus did notdiscover the United States: that we partly found ourselves, andpartly bought, and gouged the Mexicans out of. He did not evenappear to know that there was a continent here. He discovered theWest Indies, which he thought were the East; and ten guns would beenough for them. It is probable that he did open the way to thediscovery of the New World. If he had waited, however, somebody elsewould have discovered it,—perhaps some Englishman; and then we mighthave been spared all the old French and Spanish wars. Columbus letthe Spaniards into the New World; and their civilization hasuniformly been a curse to it. If he had brought Italians, whoneither at that time showed, nor since have shown, much inclinationto come, we should have had the opera, and made it a payinginstitution by this time. Columbus was evidently a person who likedto sail about, and did n't care much for consequences.

Perhaps it is not an open question whether Columbus did a good thingin first coming over here, one that we ought to celebrate withsalutes and dinners. The Indians never thanked him, for one party.The Africans had small ground to be gratified for the market heopened for them. Here are two continents that had no use for him.He led Spain into a dance of great expectations, which ended in hergorgeous ruin. He introduced tobacco into Europe, and laid thefoundation for more tracts and nervous diseases than the Romans hadin a thousand years. He introduced the potato into Irelandindirectly; and that caused such a rapid increase of population, thatthe great famine was the result, and an enormous emigration to NewYork—hence Tweed and the constituency of the Ring. Columbus isreally responsible for New York. He is responsible for our wholetremendous experiment of democracy, open to all comers, the bestthree in five to win. We cannot yet tell how it is coming out, whatwith the foreigners and the communists and the women. On our greatstage we are playing a piece of mingled tragedy and comedy, with whatdenouement we cannot yet say. If it comes out well, we ought toerect a monument to Christopher as high as the one at Washingtonexpects to be; and we presume it is well to fire a saluteoccasionally to keep the ancient mariner in mind while we are tryingour great experiment. And this reminds me that he ought to have hada naval salute.

There is something almost heroic in the idea of firing off guns for aman who has been stone-dead for about four centuries. It must havehad a lively and festive sound in Boston, when the meaning of thesalute was explained. No one could hear those great guns without aquicker beating of the heart in gratitude to the great discoverer whohad made Boston possible. We are trying to "realize" to ourselvesthe importance of the 12th of October as an anniversary of ourpotential existence. If any one wants to see how vivid is thegratitude to Columbus, let him start out among our business-houseswith a subscription-paper to raise money for powder to be exploded inhis honor. And yet Columbus was a well-meaning man; and if he didnot discover a perfect continent, he found the only one that wasleft.

Columbus made voyaging on the Atlantic popular, and is responsiblefor much of the delusion concerning it. Its great practical use inthis fast age is to give one an idea of distance and of monotony.

I have listened in my time with more or less pleasure to veryrollicking songs about the sea, the flashing brine, the spray and thetempest's roar, the wet sheet and the flowing sea, a life on theocean wave, and all the rest of it. To paraphrase a land proverb,let me write the songs of the sea, and I care not who goes to sea andsings 'em. A square yard of solid ground is worth miles of thepitching, turbulent stuff. Its inability to stand still for onesecond is the plague of it. To lie on deck when the sun shines, andswing up and down, while the waves run hither and thither and tosstheir white caps, is all well enough to lie in your narrow berth androll from side to side all night long; to walk uphill to yourstate-room door, and, when you get there, find you have got to thebottom of the hill, and opening the door is like lifting up atrap-door in the floor; to deliberately start for some object, and,before you know it, to be flung against it like a bag of sand; toattempt to sit down on your sofa, and find you are sitting up; toslip and slide and grasp at everything within reach, and to meeteverybody leaning and walking on a slant, as if a heavy wind wereblowing, and the laws of gravitation were reversed; to lie in yourberth, and hear all the dishes on the cabin-table go sousing offa*gainst the wall in a general smash; to sit at table holding yoursoup-plate with one hand, and watching for a chance to put your spoonin when it comes high tide on your side of the dish; to vigilantlywatch, the lurch of the heavy dishes while holding your glass andyour plate and your knife and fork, and not to notice it when Brown,who sits next you, gets the whole swash of the gravy from theroast-beef dish on his light-colored pantaloons, and see the look ofdismay that only Brown can assume on such an occasion; to see Mrs.Brown advance to the table, suddenly stop and hesitate, two waitersrush at her, with whom she struggles wildly, only to go down in aheap with them in the opposite corner; to see her partially recover,but only to shoot back again through her state-room door, and be seenno more;—all this is quite pleasant and refreshing if you are tiredof land, but you get quite enough of it in a couple of weeks. Youbecome, in time, even a little tired of the Jew who goes aboutwishing "he vas a veek older;" and the eccentric man, who looks at noone, and streaks about the cabin and on deck, without any purpose,and plays shuffle-board alone, always beating himself, and goes onthe deck occasionally through the sky-light instead of by the cabindoor, washes himself at the salt-water pump, and won't sleep in hisstate-room, saying he is n't used to sleeping in a bed,—as if thehard narrow, uneasy shelf of a berth was anything like a bed!—andyou have heard at last pretty nearly all about the officers, andtheir twenty and thirty years of sea-life, and every ocean and porton the habitable globe where they have been. There comes a day whenyou are quite ready for land, and the scream of the "gull" is awelcome sound.

Even the sailors lose the vivacity of the first of the voyage. Thefirst two or three days we had their quaint and half-doleful singingin chorus as they pulled at the ropes: now they are satisfied withshort ha-ho's, and uncadenced grunts. It used to be that the leadersang, in ever-varying lines of nonsense, and the chorus struck inwith fine effect, like this:

"I wish I was in Liverpool town.
Handy-pan, handy O!

O captain! where 'd you ship your crew
Handy-pan, handy O!

Oh! pull away, my bully crew,
Handy-pan, handy O!"

There are verses enough of this sort to reach across the Atlantic;and they are not the worst thing about it either, or the mosttedious. One learns to respect this ocean, but not to love it; andhe leaves it with mingled feelings about Columbus.

And now, having crossed it,—a fact that cannot be concealed,—let usnot be under the misapprehension that we are set to any task otherthan that of sauntering where it pleases us.

SURFACE CONTRASTS OF PARIS AND LONDON

I wonder if it is the Channel? Almost everything is laid to theChannel: it has no friends. The sailors call it the nastiest bit ofwater in the world. All travelers anathematize it. I have nowcrossed it three times in different places, by long routes and shortones, and have always found it as comfortable as any sailinganywhere, sailing being one of the most tedious and disagreeableinventions of a fallen race. But such is not the usual experience:most people would make great sacrifices to avoid the hour and threequarters in one of those loathsome little Channel boats,—they alwayscall them loathsome, though I did n't see but they are as good as anyboats. I have never found any boat that hasn't a detestable habit ofbobbing round. The Channel is hated: and no one who has much to dowith it is surprised at the projects for bridging it and for boring ahole under it; though I have scarcely ever met an Englishman whowants either done,—he does not desire any more facile communicationwith the French than now exists. The traditional hatred may not beso strong as it was, but it is hard to say on which side is the mostignorance and contempt of the other.

It must be the Channel: that is enough to produce a physicaldisagreement even between the two coasts; and there cannot be agreater contrast in the cultivated world than between the two landslying so close to each other; and the contrast of their capitals iseven more decided,—I was about to say rival capitals, but they havenot enough in common to make them rivals. I have lately been over toLondon for a week, going by the Dieppe and New Haven route at night,and returning by another; and the contrasts I speak of were impressedupon me anew. Everything here in and about Paris was in the greenand bloom of spring, and seemed to me very lovely; but my firstglance at an English landscape made it all seem pale and flat. Wewent up from New Haven to London in the morning, and feasted our eyesall the way. The French foliage is thin, spindling, sparse; thegrass is thin and light in color—in contrast. The English trees aremassive, solid in substance and color; the grass is thick, and greenas emerald; the turf is like the heaviest Wilton carpet. The wholeeffect is that of vegetable luxuriance and solidity, as it were atropical luxuriance, condensed and hardened by northern influences.If my eyes remember well, the French landscapes are more like ourown, in spring tone, at least; but the English are a revelation to usstrangers of what green really is, and what grass and trees can be.I had been told that we did well to see England before going to theContinent, for it would seem small and only pretty afterwards. Well,leaving out Switzerland, I have seen nothing in that beauty whichsatisfies the eye and wins the heart to compare with England inspring. When we annex it to our sprawling country which liesout-doors in so many climates, it will make a charming little retreatfor us in May and June, a sort of garden of delight, whence we shalldraw our May butter and our June roses. It will only be necessary toput it under glass to make it pleasant the year round.

When we passed within the hanging smoke of London town, threading ourway amid numberless railway tracks, sometimes over a road andsometimes under one, now burrowing into the ground, and now runningalong among the chimney-pots,—when we came into the pale light andthe thickening industry of a London day, we could but at oncecontrast Paris. Unpleasant weather usually reduces places to anequality of disagreeableness. But Paris, with its wide streets,light, handsome houses, gay windows and smiling little parks andfountains, keeps up a tolerably pleasant aspect, let the weather doits worst. But London, with its low, dark, smutty brick houses andinsignificant streets, settles down hopelessly into the dumps whenthe weather is bad. Even with the sun doing its best on the eternalcloud of smoke, it is dingy and gloomy enough, and so dirty, afterspick-span, shining Paris. And there is a contrast in the matter oforder and system; the lack of both in London is apparent. You detectit in public places, in crowds, in the streets. The "social evil" isbad enough in its demonstrations in Paris: it is twice as offensivein London. I have never seen a drunken woman in Paris: I saw many ofthem in the daytime in London. I saw men and women fight in thestreets,—a man kick and pound a woman; and nobody interfered. Thereis a brutal streak in the Anglo-Saxon, I fear,—a downright animalcoarseness, that does not exhibit itself the other side of theChannel. It is a proverb, that the London policemen are never athand. The stout fellows with their clubs look as if they might doservice; but what a contrast they are to the Paris sergents de ville!The latter, with his dress-coat, co*cked hat, long rapier, whitegloves, neat, polite, attentive, alert,—always with the manner of ajesuit turned soldier,—you learn to trust very much, if not respect;and you feel perfectly secure that he will protect you, and give youyour rights in any corner of Paris. It does look as if he might slipthat slender rapier through your body in a second, and pull it outand wipe it, and not move a muscle; but I don't think he would do itunless he were directly ordered to. He would not be likely to knockyou down and drag you out, in mistake for the rowdy who wasassaulting you.

A great contrast between the habits of the people of London and Parisis shown by their eating and drinking. Paris is brilliant withcafes: all the world frequents them to sip coffee (and too oftenabsinthe), read the papers, and gossip over the news; take them away,as all travelers know, and Paris would not know itself. There is nota cafe in London: instead of cafes, there are gin-mills; instead oflight wine, there is heavy beer. The restaurants and restaurant lifeare as different as can be. You can get anything you wish in Paris:you can live very cheaply or very dearly, as you like. The range ismore limited in London. I do not fancy the usual run of Parisrestaurants. You get a great deal for your money, in variety andquantity; but you don't exactly know what it is: and in time you tireof odds and ends, which destroy your hunger without exactlysatisfying you. For myself, after a pretty good run of Frenchcookery (and it beats the world for making the most out of little),when I sat down again to what the eminently respectable waiter inwhite and black calls "a dinner off the Joint, sir," with whatbelongs to it, and ended up with an attack on a section of a cheeseas big as a bass-drum, not to forget a pewter mug of amber liquid, Ifelt as if I had touched bottom again,—got something substantial,had what you call a square meal. The English give you thesubstantials, and better, I believe, than any other people.Thackeray used to come over to Paris to get a good dinner now andthen. I have tried his favorite restaurant here, the cuisine ofwhich is famous far beyond the banks of the Seine; but I think if he,hearty trencher-man that he was, had lived in Paris, he would havegone to London for a dinner oftener than he came here.

And as for a lunch,—this eating is a fascinating theme,—commend meto a quiet inn of England. We happened to be out at Kew Gardens theother afternoon. You ought to go to Kew, even if the duch*ess ofCambridge is not at home. There is not such a park out of England,considering how beautiful the Thames is there. What splendid treesit has! the horse-chestnut, now a mass of pink-and-white blossoms,from its broad base, which rests on the ground, to its high roundeddome; the hawthorns, white and red, in full flower; the sweeps andglades of living green,—turf on which you walk with a grateful senseof drawing life directly from the yielding, bountiful earth,—a greenset out and heightened by flowers in masses of color (a great varietyof rhododendrons, for one thing), to say nothing of magnificentgreenhouses and outlying flower-gardens. Just beyond are RichmondHill and Hampton Court, and five or six centuries of tradition andhistory and romance. Before you enter the garden, you pass thegreen. On one side of it are cottages, and on the other the oldvillage church and its quiet churchyard. Some boys were playingcricket on the sward, and children were getting as intimate with theturf and the sweet earth as their nurses would let them. We turnedinto a little cottage, which gave notice of hospitality for aconsideration; and were shown, by a pretty maid in calico, into anupper room,—a neat, cheerful, common room, with bright flowers inthe open windows, and white muslin curtains for contrast. We lookedout on the green and over to the beautiful churchyard, where one ofEngland's greatest painters, Gainsborough, lies in rural repose. Itis nothing to you, who always dine off the best at home, and neverencounter dirty restaurants and snuffy inns, or run the gauntlet ofContinental hotels, every meal being an experiment of great interest,if not of danger, to say that this brisk little waitress spread asnowy cloth, and set thereon meat and bread and butter and a salad:that conveys no idea to your mind. Because you cannot see that theloaf of wheaten bread was white and delicate, and full of thegoodness of the grain; or that the butter, yellow as a guinea, tastedof grass and cows, and all the rich juices of the verdant year, andwas not mere flavorless grease; or that the cuts of roast beef, fatand lean, had qualities that indicate to me some moral elevation inthe cattle,—high-toned, rich meat; or that the salad was crisp anddelicious, and rather seemed to enjoy being eaten, at least, did n'tdisconsolately wilt down at the prospect, as most salad does. I donot wonder that Walter Scott dwells so much on eating, or lets hisheroes pull at the pewter mugs so often. Perhaps one might find abetter lunch in Paris, but he surely couldn't find this one.

PARIS IN MAY—FRENCH GIRLS—THE EMPEROR AT LONGCHAMPS

It was the first of May when we came up from Italy. The spring grewon us as we advanced north; vegetation seemed further along than itwas south of the Alps. Paris was bathed in sunshine, wrapped indelicious weather, adorned with all the delicate colors of blushingspring. Now the horse-chestnuts are all in bloom and so is thehawthorn; and in parks and gardens there are rows and alleys oftrees, with blossoms of pink and of white; patches of flowers set inthe light green grass; solid masses of gorgeous color, which fill allthe air with perfume; fountains that dance in the sunlight as if justreleased from prison; and everywhere the soft suffusion of May.Young maidens who make their first communion go into the churches inprocessions of hundreds, all in white, from the flowing veil to thesatin slipper; and I see them everywhere for a week after theceremony, in their robes of innocence, often with bouquets offlowers, and attended by their friends; all concerned making it ajoyful holiday, as it ought to be. I hear, of course, with whatfalse ideas of life these girls are educated; how they are watchedbefore marriage; how the marriage is only one of arrangement, andwhat liberty they eagerly seek afterwards. I met a charming Parislady last winter in Italy, recently married, who said she had neverbeen in the Louvre in her life; never had seen any of the magnificentpictures or world-famous statuary there, because girls were notallowed to go there, lest they should see something that they oughtnot to see. I suppose they look with wonder at the young Americangirls who march up to anything that ever was created, with undismayedfront.

Another Frenchwoman, a lady of talent and the best breeding, recentlysaid to a friend, in entire unconsciousness that she was sayinganything remarkable, that, when she was seventeen, her great desirewas to marry one of her uncles (a thing not very unusual with thepapal dispensation), in order to keep all the money in the family!That was the ambition of a girl of seventeen.

I like, on these sunny days, to look into the Luxembourg Garden:nowhere else is the eye more delighted with life and color. In theafternoon, especially, it is a baby-show worth going far to see. Theavenues are full of children, whose animated play, light laughter,and happy chatter, and pretty, picturesque dress, make a sort offairy grove of the garden; and all the nurses of that quarter bringtheir charges there, and sit in the shade, sewing, gossiping, andcomparing the merits of the little dears. One baby differs fromanother in glory, I suppose; but I think on such days that they areall lovely, taken in the mass, and all in sweet harmony with thedelicious atmosphere, the tender green, and the other flowers ofspring. A baby can't do better than to spend its spring days in theLuxembourg Garden.

There are several ways of seeing Paris besides roaming up and downbefore the blazing shop-windows, and lounging by daylight or gaslightalong the crowded and gay boulevards; and one of the best is to go tothe Bois de Boulogne on a fete-day, or when the races are inprogress. This famous wood is very disappointing at first to one whohas seen the English parks, or who remembers the noble trees andglades and avenues of that at Munich. To be sure, there is a lovelylittle lake and a pretty artificial cascade, and the roads and walksare good; but the trees are all saplings, and nearly all the "wood"is a thicket of small stuff. Yet there is green grass that one canroll on, and there is a grove of small pines that one can sit under.It is a pleasant place to drive toward evening; but its greatattraction is the crowd there. All the principal avenues are linedwith chairs, and there people sit to watch the streams of carriages.

I went out to the Bois the other day, when there were races going on;not that I went to the races, for I know nothing about them, per se,and care less. All running races are pretty much alike. You see alean horse, neck and tail, flash by you, with a jockey in colors onhis back; and that is the whole of it. Unless you have some money onit, in the pool or otherwise, it is impossible to raise anyexcitement. The day I went out, the Champs Elysees, on both sides,its whole length, was crowded with people, rows and ranks of themsitting in chairs and on benches. The Avenue de l'Imperatrice, fromthe Arc de l'Etoile to the entrance of the Bois, was full ofpromenaders; and the main avenues of the Bois, from the chiefentrance to the race-course, were lined with people, who stood orsat, simply to see the passing show. There could not have been lessthan ten miles of spectators, in double or triple rows, who had takenplaces that afternoon to watch the turnouts of fashion and rank.These great avenues were at all times, from three till seven, filledwith vehicles; and at certain points, and late in the day, there was,or would have been anywhere else except in Paris, a jam. I saw agreat many splendid horses, but not so many fine liveries as one willsee on a swell-day in London. There was one that I liked. Ahandsome carriage, with one seat, was drawn by four large and elegantblack horses, the two near horses ridden by postilions in blue andsilver,—blue roundabouts, white breeches and topboots, around-topped silver cap, and the hair, or wig, powdered, and showingjust a little behind. A footman mounted behind, seated, wore the samecolors; and the whole establishment was exceedingly tonnish.

The race-track (Longchamps, as it is called), broad and beautifulspringy turf, is not different from some others, except that theinclosed oblong space is not flat, but undulating just enough forbeauty, and so framed in by graceful woods, and looked on by chateauxand upland forests, that I thought I had never seen a sweeter bit ofgreensward. St. Cloud overlooks it, and villas also regard it fromother heights. The day I saw it, the horse-chestnuts were in bloom;and there was, on the edges, a cloud of pink and white blossoms, thatgave a soft and charming appearance to the entire landscape. Thecrowd in the grounds, in front of the stands for judges, royalty, andpeople who are privileged or will pay for places, was, I suppose,much as usual,—an excited throng of young and jockey-looking men,with a few women-gamblers in their midst, making up the pool; a packof carriages along the circuit of the track, with all sorts ofpeople, except the very good; and conspicuous the elegantly habiteddaughters of sin and satin, with servants in livery, as if they hadbeen born to it; gentlemen and ladies strolling about, or recliningon the sward, and a refreshment-stand in lively operation.

When the bell rang, we all cleared out from the track, and I happenedto get a position by the railing. I was looking over to thePavilion, where I supposed the Emperor to be, when the man next to mecried, "Voila!" and, looking up, two horses brushed right by my face,of which I saw about two tails and one neck, and they were gone.Pretty soon they came round again, and one was ahead, as is apt to bethe case; and somebody cried, "Bully for Therise!" or French to thateffect, and it was all over. Then we rushed across to the Emperor'sPavilion, except that I walked with all the dignity consistent withrapidity, and there, in the midst of his suite, sat the Man ofDecember, a stout, broad, and heavy-faced man as you know, but a manwho impresses one with a sense of force and purpose,—sat, as I say,and looked at us through his narrow, half-shut eyes, till he wassatisfied that I had got his features through my glass, when hedeliberately arose and went in.

All Paris was out that day,—it is always out, by the way, when thesun shines, and in whatever part of the city you happen to be; and itseemed to me there was a special throng clear down to the gate of theTuileries, to see the Emperor and the rest of us come home. He wentround by the Rue Rivoli, but I walked through the gardens. Thesoldiers from Africa sat by the gilded portals, as usual,—aliens,and yet always with the port of conquerors here in Paris. Theirnonchalant indifference and soldierly bearing always remind me of thesort of force the Emperor has at hand to secure his throne. I thinkthe blouses must look askance at these satraps of the desert. Thesingle jet fountain in the basin was springing its highest,—aquivering pillar of water to match the stone shaft of Egypt whichstands close by. The sun illuminated it, and threw a rainbow from ita hundred feet long, upon the white and green dome of chestnut-treesnear. When I was farther down the avenue, I had the dancing columnof water, the obelisk, and the Arch of Triumph all in line, and therosy sunset beyond.

AN IMPERIAL REVIEW

The Prince and Princess of Wales came up to Paris in the beginning ofMay, from Italy, Egypt, and alongshore, stayed at a hotel on thePlace Vendome, where they can get beef that is not horse, and israre, and beer brewed in the royal dominions, and have beenentertained with cordiality by the Emperor. Among the spectacleswhich he has shown them is one calculated to give them an idea of hispeaceful intentions,-a grand review of cavalry and artillery at theBois de Boulogne. It always seems to me a curious comment upon thestate of our modern civilization, when one prince visits another herein Europe, the first thing that the visited does, by way of hospitalityis to get out his troops, and show his rival how easily he could "lick"him, if it came to that.

It is a little puerile. At any rate, it is an advance upon the oldfashion of getting up a joust at arms, and inviting the guest to comeout and have his head cracked in a friendly way.

The review, which had been a good deal talked about, came off in theafternoon; and all the world went to it. The avenues of the Boiswere crowded with carriages, and the walks with footpads. Such aconstellation of royal personages met on one field must be seen; for,besides the imperial family and Albert Edward and his Danish beauty,there was to be the Archduke of Austria and no end of titledpersonages besides. At three o'clock the royal company, in theEmperor's carriages, drove upon the training-ground of the Bois,where the troops awaited them. All the party, except the Princess ofWales, then mounted horses, and rode along the lines, and afterwardsretired to a wood-covered knoll at one end to witness the evolutions.The training-ground is a noble, slightly undulating piece ofgreensward, perhaps three quarters of a mile long and half that inbreadth, hedged about with graceful trees, and bounded on one side bythe Seine. Its borders were rimmed that day with thousands of peopleon foot and in carriages,—a gay sight, in itself, of color andfashion. A more brilliant spectacle than the field presented cannotwell be imagined. Attention was divided between the gentle eminencewhere the imperial party stood,—a throng of noble persons backed bythe gay and glittering Guard of the Emperor, as brave a show aschivalry ever made,—and the field of green, with its long lines inmartial array; every variety of splendid uniforms, the colors andcombinations that most dazzle and attract, with shining brass andgleaming steel, and magnificent horses of war, regiments of black,gray, and bay.

The evolutions were such as to stir the blood of the most sluggish.A regiment, full front, would charge down upon a dead run from thefar field, men shouting, sabers flashing, horses thundering along, sothat the ground shook, towards the imperial party, and, when near,stop suddenly, wheel to right and left, and gallop back. Otherswould succeed them rapidly, coming up the center while theirpredecessors filed down the sides; so that the whole field was amoving mass of splendid color and glancing steel. Now and then arider was unhorsed in the furious rush, and went scrambling out ofharm, while the steed galloped off with free rein. This display wasfollowed by that of the flying artillery, battalion after battalion,which came clattering and roaring along, in double lines stretchinghalf across the field, stopped and rapidly discharged its pieces,waking up all the region with echoes, filling the plain with thesmoke of gunpowder, and starting into rearing activity all thecarriage-horses in the Bois. How long this continued I do not know,nor how many men participated in the review, but they seemed to pourup from the far end in unending columns. I think the regiments musthave charged over and over again. It gave some people the impressionthat there were a hundred thousand troops on the ground. I set it atfifteen to twenty thousand. Gallignani next morning said there wereonly six thousand! After the charging was over, the reviewing partyrode to the center of the field, and the troops galloped round them;and the Emperor distributed decorations. We could recognize theEmperor and Empress; Prince Albert in huzzar uniform, with a greenplume in his cap; and the Prince Imperial, in cap and the uniform ofa lieutenant, on horseback in front; while the Princess occupied acarriage behind them.

There was a crush of people at the entrance to see the royals maketheir exit. Gendarmes were busy, and mounted guards went smashingthrough the crowd to clear a space. Everybody was on the tiptoe ofexpectation. There is a portion of the Emperor's guard; there is anofficer of the household; there is an emblazoned carriage; and,quick, there! with a rush they come, driving as if there was nocrowd, with imperial haste, postilions and outriders and the imperialcarriage. There is a sensation, a cordial and not loud greeting, butno Yankee-like cheers. That heavy gentleman in citizen's dress, wholooks neither to right nor left, is Napoleon III.; that handsomewoman, grown full in the face of late, but yet with the bloom ofbeauty and the sweet grace of command, in hat and dark riding-habit,bowing constantly to right and left, and smiling, is the EmpressEugenie. And they are gone. As we look for something more, there isa rout in the side avenue; something is coming, unexpected, fromanother quarter: dragoons dash through the dense mass, shouting andgesticulating, and a dozen horses go by, turning the corner like asmall whirlwind, urged on by whip and spur, a handsome boy riding inthe midst,—a boy in cap and simple uniform, riding gracefully andeasily and jauntily, and out of sight in a minute. It is the boyPrince Imperial and his guard. It was like him to dash inunexpectedly, as he has broken into the line of European princes. Herides gallantly, and Fortune smiles on him to-day; but he rides intoa troubled future. There was one more show,—a carriage of theEmperor, with officers, in English colors and side-whiskers, ridingin advance and behind: in it the future King of England, the heavy,selfish-faced young man, and beside him his princess, popularwherever she shows her winning face,—a fair, sweet woman, in lightand flowing silken stuffs of spring, a vision of lovely youth andrank, also gone in a minute.

These English visitors are enjoying the pleasures of the Frenchcapital. On Sunday, as I passed the Hotel Bristol, a crowd,principally English, was waiting in front of it to see the Prince andPrincess come out, and enter one of the Emperor's carriages inwaiting. I heard an Englishwoman, who was looking on with admiration"sticking out" all over, remark to a friend in a very loud whisper,"I tell you, the Prince lives every day of his life." The princelypair came out at length, and drove away, going to visit Versailles.I don't know what the Queen would think of this way of spendingSunday; but if Albert Edward never does anything worse, he does n'tneed half the praying for that he gets every Sunday in all theEnglish churches and chapels.

THE LOW COUNTRIES AND RHINELAND

AMIENS AND QUAINT OLD BRUGES

They have not yet found out the secret in France of banishing dustfrom railway-carriages. Paris, late in June, was hot, but not dusty:the country was both. There is an uninteresting glare and hardnessin a French landscape on a sunny day. The soil is thin, the treesare slender, and one sees not much luxury or comfort. Still, onedoes not usually see much of either on a flying train. We spent anight at Amiens, and had several hours for the old cathedral, thesunset light on its noble front and towers and spire and flyingbuttresses, and the morning rays bathing its rich stone. As onestands near it in front, it seems to tower away into heaven, a massof carving and sculpture,—figures of saints and martyrs who havestood in the sun and storm for ages, as they stood in their lifetime,with a patient waiting. It was like a great company, a Christianhost, in attitudes of praise and worship. There they were, ranks onranks, silent in stone, when the last of the long twilight illuminedthem; and there in the same impressive patience they waited thegolden day. It required little fancy to feel that they had lived,and now in long procession came down the ages. The central portal islofty, wide, and crowded with figures. The side is only less richthan the front. Here the old Gothic builders let their fancy riot ingrotesque gargoyles,—figures of animals, and imps of sin, whichstretch out their long necks for waterspouts above. From the groundto the top of the unfinished towers is one mass of rich stone-work,the creation of genius that hundreds of years ago knew no other wayto write its poems than with the chisel. The interior is verymagnificent also, and has some splendid stained glass. At eighto'clock, the priests were chanting vespers to a larger congregationthan many churches have on Sunday: their voices were rich andmusical, and, joined with the organ notes, floated sweetly andimpressively through the dim and vast interior. We sat near thegreat portal, and, looking down the long, arched nave and choir tothe cluster of candles burning on the high altar, before which thepriests chanted, one could not but remember how many centuries thesame act of worship had been almost uninterrupted within, while theapostles and martyrs stood without, keeping watch of the unchangingheavens.

When I stepped in, early in the morning, the first mass was inprogress. The church was nearly empty. Looking within the choir, Isaw two stout young priests lustily singing the prayers in deep, richvoices. One of them leaned back in his seat, and sang away, as if hehad taken a contract to do it, using, from time to time, an enormousred handkerchief, with which and his nose he produced a trumpetobligato. As I stood there, a poor dwarf bobbled in and knelt on thebare stones, and was the only worshiper, until, at length, ahalf-dozen priests swept in from the sacristy, and two processions ofyoung school-girls entered from either side. They have the skull ofJohn the Baptist in this cathedral. I did not see it, although Isuppose I could have done so for a franc to the beadle: but I saw avery good stone imitation of it; and his image and story fill thechurch. It is something to have seen the place that contains hisskull.

The country becomes more interesting as one gets into Belgium.Windmills are frequent: in and near Lille are some six hundred ofthem; and they are a great help to a landscape that wants fine trees.At Courtrai, we looked into Notre Dame, a thirteenth centurycathedral, which has a Vandyke ("The Raising of the Cross"), and thechapel of the Counts of Flanders, where workmen were uncovering somefrescoes that were whitewashed over in the war-times. The town hallhas two fine old chimney-pieces carved in wood, with quaint figures,—work that one must go to the Netherlands to see. Toward evening wecame into the ancient town of Bruges. The country all day has beenmostly flat, but thoroughly cultivated. Windmills appear to do allthe labor of the people,—raising the water, grinding the grain,sawing the lumber; and they everywhere lift their long arms up to thesky. Things look more and more what we call "foreign." Harvest isgoing on, of hay and grain; and men and women work together in thefields. The gentle sex has its rights here. We saw several womenacting as switch-tenders. Perhaps the use of the switch comesnatural to them. Justice, however, is still in the hands of the men.We saw a Dutch court in session in a little room in the town hall atCourtrai. The justice wore a little red cap, and sat informallybehind a cheap table. I noticed that the witnesses were treated withunusual consideration, being allowed to sit down at the tableopposite the little justice, who interrogated them in a loud voice.At the stations to-day we see more friars in coarse, woolen dresses,and sandals, and the peasants with wooden sabots.

As the sun goes to the horizon, we have an effect sometimes producedby the best Dutch artists,—a wonderful transparent light, in whichthe landscape looks like a picture, with its church-spires of stone,its windmills, its slender trees, and red-roofed houses. It is agood light and a good hour in which to enter Bruges, that city of thepast. Once the city was greater than Antwerp; and up the Rege camethe commerce of the East, merchants from the Levant, traders injewels and silks. Now the tall houses wait for tenants, and thestreets have a deserted air. After nightfall, as we walked in themiddle of the roughly paved streets, meeting few people, and hearingonly the echoing clatter of the wooden sabots of the few who wereabroad, the old spirit of the place came over us. We sat on a benchin the market-place, a treeless square, hemmed in by quaint, gabledhouses, late in the evening, to listen to the chimes from the belfry.The tower is less than four hundred feet high, and not so high bysome seventy feet as the one on Notre Dame near by; but it is verypicturesque, in spite of the fact that it springs out of arummagy-looking edifice, one half of which is devoted to soldiers'barracks, and the other to markets. The chimes are called the finestin Europe. It is well to hear the finest at once, and so have donewith the tedious things. The Belgians are as fond of chimes as theDutch are of stagnant water. We heard them everywhere in Belgium; andin some towns they are incessant, jangling every seven and a halfminutes. The chimes at Bruges ring every quarter hour for a minute,and at the full hour attempt a tune. The revolving machinery grindsout the tune, which is changed at least once a year; and on Sundays amusician, chosen by the town, plays the chimes. In so many bells(there are forty-eight), the least of which weighs twelve pounds, andthe largest over eleven thousand, there must be soft notes andsonorous tones; so sweet jangled sounds were showered down: but weliked better than the confused chiming the solemn notes of the greatbell striking the hour. There is something very poetical about thischime of bells high in the air, flinging down upon the hum and trafficof the city its oft-repeated benediction of peace; but anybody but aLowlander would get very weary of it. These chimes, to be sure, arebetter than those in London, which became a nuisance; but there is inall of them a tinkling attempt at a tune, which always fails, that isvery annoying.

Bruges has altogether an odd flavor. Piles of wooden sabots are forsale in front of the shops; and this ugly shoe, which is mysteriouslykept on the foot, is worn by all the common sort. We see long,slender carts in the street, with one horse hitched far ahead withrope traces, and no thills or pole.

The women-nearly every one we saw-wear long cloaks of black clothwith a silk hood thrown back. Bruges is famous of old for itsbeautiful women, who are enticingly described as always walking thestreets with covered faces, and peeping out from their mantles. Theyare not so handsome now they show their faces, I can testify.Indeed, if there is in Bruges another besides the beautiful girl whoshowed us the old council-chamber in the Palace of justice, she musthave had her hood pulled over her face.

Next morning was market-day. The square was lively with carts,donkeys, and country people, and that and all the streets leading toit were filled with the women in black cloaks, who flitted about asnumerous as the rooks at Oxford, and very much like them, moving in awinged way, their cloaks outspread as they walked, and distended withthe market-basket underneath. Though the streets were full, the towndid not seem any less deserted; and the early marketers had only cometo life for a day, revisiting the places that once they thronged. Inthe shade of the tall houses in the narrow streets sat red-cheekedgirls and women making lace, the bobbins jumping under their nimblefingers. At the church doors hideous beggars crouched and whined,—specimens of the fifteen thousand paupers of Bruges. In thefishmarket we saw odd old women, with Rembrandt colors in faces andcostume; and while we strayed about in the strange city, all the timefrom the lofty tower the chimes fell down. What history crowds uponus! Here in the old cathedral, with its monstrous tower of brick, aportion of it as old as the tenth century, Philip the Goodestablished, in 1429, the Order of the Golden Fleece, the lastchapter of which was held by Philip the Bad in 1559, in the rich oldCathedral of St. Bavon, at Ghent. Here, on the square, is the siteof the house where the Emperor Maximilian was imprisoned by hisrebellious Flemings; and next it, with a carved lion, that in whichCharles II. of England lived after the martyrdom of that patient andvirtuous ruler, whom the English Prayerbook calls that "blessedmartyr, Charles the First." In Notre Dame are the tombs of Charlesthe Bold and Mary his daughter.

We begin here to enter the portals of Dutch painting. Here died Janvan Eyck, the father of oil painting; and here, in the hospital ofSt. John, are the most celebrated pictures of Hans Memling. The mostexquisite in color and finish is the series painted on the casketmade to contain the arm of St. Ursula, and representing the story ofher martyrdom. You know she went on a pilgrimage to Rome, with herlover, Conan, and eleven thousand virgins; and, on their return toCologne, they were all massacred by the Huns. One would scarcelybelieve the story, if he did not see all their bones at Cologne.

GHENT AND ANTWERP

What can one do in this Belgium but write down names, and let memoryrecall the past? We came to Ghent, still a hand some city, thoughone thinks of the days when it was the capital of Flanders, and itsmerchants were princes. On the shabby old belfry-tower is the giltdragon which Philip van Artevelde captured, and brought in triumphfrom Bruges. It was originally fetched from a Greek church inConstantinople by some Bruges Crusader; and it is a link to recall tous how, at that time, the merchants of Venice and the far East tradedup the Scheldt, and brought to its wharves the rich stuffs of Indiaand Persia. The old bell Roland, that was used to call the burgherstogether on the approach of an enemy, hung in this tower. Whatfierce broils and bloody fights did these streets witness centuriesago! There in the Marche au Vendredi, a large square ofold-fashioned houses, with a statue of Jacques van Artevelde, fifteenhundred corpses were strewn in a quarrel between the hostile guildsof fullers and brewers; and here, later, Alva set blazing the firesof the Inquisition. Near the square is the old cannon, Mad Margery,used in 1382 at the siege of Oudenarde,—a hammered-iron hoopedaffair, eighteen feet long. But why mention this, or the magnificenttown hall, or St. Bavon, rich in pictures and statuary; or try to putyou back three hundred years to the wild days when the iconoclastssacked this and every other church in the Low Countries?

Up to Antwerp toward evening. All the country flat as the flattestpart of Jersey, rich in grass and grain, cut up by canals,picturesque with windmills and red-tiled roofs, framed with trees inrows. It has been all day hot and dusty. The country everywhereseems to need rain; and dark clouds are gathering in the south for astorm, as we drive up the broad Place de Meir to our hotel, and takerooms that look out to the lace-like spire of the cathedral, which issharply defined against the red western sky.

Antwerp takes hold of you, both by its present and its past, verystrongly. It is still the home of wealth. It has stately buildings,splendid galleries of pictures, and a spire of stone which charmsmore than a picture, and fascinates the eye as music does the ear.It still keeps its strong fortifications drawn around it, to whichthe broad and deep Scheldt is like a string to a bow, mindful of theunstable state of Europe. While Berlin is only a vast camp ofsoldiers, every less city must daily beat its drums, and call itsmuster-roll. From the tower here one looks upon the co*ckpit ofEurope. And yet Antwerp ought to have rest: she has had tumultenough in her time. Prosperity seems returning to her; but her old,comparative splendor can never come back. In the sixteenth centurythere was no richer city in Europe.

We walked one evening past the cathedral spire, which begins in therichest and most solid Gothic work, and grows up into the sky into anexquisite lightness and grace, down a broad street to the Scheldt.What traffic have not these high old houses looked on, when twothousand and five hundred vessels lay in the river at one time, andthe commerce of Europe found here its best mart. Along the streamnow is a not very clean promenade for the populace; and it is linedwith beer-houses, shabby theaters, and places of the most childishamusem*nts. There is an odd liking for the simple among thesepeople. In front of the booths, drums were beaten and instrumentsplayed in bewildering discord. Actors in paint and tights stoodwithout to attract the crowd within. On one low balcony, acopper-colored man, with a huge feather cap and the traditional dressof the American savage, was beating two drums; a burnt-cork black manstood beside him; while on the steps was a woman, in hat and shawl,making an earnest speech to the crowd. In another place, where acrazy band made furious music, was an enormous "go-round" of woodenponies, like those in the Paris gardens, only here, instead ofchildren, grown men and women rode the hobby-horses, and seemeddelighted with the sport. In the general Babel, everybody wasgood-natured and jolly. Little things suffice to amuse the lowerclasses, who do not have to bother their heads with elections andmass meetings.

In front of the cathedral is the well, and the fine canopy ofiron-work, by Quentin Matsys, the blacksmith of Antwerp, some ofwhose pictures we saw in the Museum, where one sees, also some of thefinest pictures of the Dutch school,—the "Crucifixion" of Rubens,the "Christ on the Cross" of Vandyke; paintings also by Teniers, OttoVennius, Albert Cuyp, and others, and Rembrandt's portrait of hiswife,—a picture whose sweet strength and wealth of color draws oneto it with almost a passion of admiration. We had already seen "TheDescent from the Cross" and "The Raising of the Cross" by Rubens, inthe cathedral. With all his power and rioting luxuriance of color, Icannot come to love him as I do Rembrandt. Doubtless he painted whathe saw; and we still find the types of his female figures in thebroad-hipped, ruddy-colored women of Antwerp. We walked down to hishouse, which remains much as it was two hundred and twenty-five yearsago. From the interior court, an entrance in the Italian style leadsinto a pleasant little garden full of old trees and flowers, with asummer-house embellished with plaster casts, and having the verystone table upon which Rubens painted. It is a quiet place, and fitfor an artist; but Rubens had other houses in the city, and lived thelife of a man who took a strong hold of the world.

AMSTERDAM

The rail from Antwerp north was through a land flat and sterile.After a little, it becomes a little richer; but a forlorner land tolive in I never saw. One wonders at the perseverance of the Flemingsand Dutchmen to keep all this vast tract above water when there is somuch good solid earth elsewhere unoccupied. At Moerdjik we changedfrom the cars to a little steamer on the Maas, which flows betweenhigh banks. The water is higher than the adjoining land, and fromthe deck we look down upon houses and farms. At Dort, the Rhinecomes in with little promise of the noble stream it is in thehighlands. Everywhere canals and ditches dividing the small fieldsinstead of fences; trees planted in straight lines, and occasionallytrained on a trellis in front of the houses, with the trunk paintedwhite or green; so that every likeness of nature shall be taken away.From Rotterdam, by cars, it is still the same. The Dutchman spendshalf his life, apparently, in fighting the water. He has to watchthe huge dikes which keep the ocean from overwhelming him, and theriver-banks, which may break, and let the floods of the Rhine swallowhim up. The danger from within is not less than from without. Yetso fond is he of his one enemy, that, when he can afford it, hebuilds him a fantastic summer-house over a stagnant pool or a slimycanal, in one corner of his garden, and there sits to enjoy theaquatic beauties of nature; that is, nature as he has made it. Theriver-banks are woven with osiers to keep them from washing; and atintervals on the banks are piles of the long withes to be used inemergencies when the swollen streams threaten to break through.

And so we come to Amsterdam, the oddest city of all,—a city whollybuilt on piles, with as many canals as streets, and an architectureso quaint as to even impress one who has come from Belgium. Thewhole town has a wharf-y look; and it is difficult to say why thetall brick houses, their gables running by steps to a peak, and eachone leaning forward or backward or sideways, and none perpendicular,and no two on a line, are so interesting. But certainly it is a mostentertaining place to the stranger, whether he explores the crowdedJews' quarter, with its swarms of dirty people, its narrow streets,and high houses hung with clothes, as if every day were washing-day;or strolls through the equally narrow streets of rich shops; orlounges upon the bridges, and looks at the queer boats with clumsyrounded bows, great helms' painted in gay colors, with flowers in thecabin windows,—boats where families live; or walks down thePlantage, with the zoological gardens on the one hand and rows ofbeer-gardens on the other; or round the great docks; or saunters atsunset by the banks of the Y, and looks upon flat North Holland andthe Zuyder Zee.

The palace on the Dam (square) is a square, stately edifice, and theonly building that the stranger will care to see. Its interior isricher and more fit to live in than any palace we have seen. Thereis nothing usually so dreary as your fine Palace. There are somegood frescoes, rooms richly decorated in marble, and a magnificenthall, or ball-room, one hundred feet in height, without pillars.Back of it is, of course, a canal, which does not smell fragrantly inthe summer; and I do not wonder that William III. and his queenprefer to stop away. From the top is a splendid view of Amsterdamand all the flat region. I speak of it with entire impartiality, forI did not go up to see it. But better than palaces are thepicture-galleries, three of which are open to the sightseer. Herethe ancient and modern Dutch painters are seen at their best, and Iknow of no richer feast of this sort. Here Rembrandt is to be seenin his glory; here Van der Helst, Jan Steen, Gerard Douw, Teniers theyounger, Hondekoeter, Weenix, Ostade, Cuyp, and other names asfamiliar. These men also painted what they saw, the people, thelandscapes, with which they were familiar. It was a strange pleasureto meet again and again in the streets of the town the faces, ortypes of them, that we had just seen on canvas so old.

In the Low Countries, the porters have the grand title ofcommissionaires. They carry trunks and bundles, black boots, and actas valets de place. As guides, they are quite as intolerable inAmsterdam as their brethren in other cities. Many of them are Jews;and they have a keen eye for a stranger. The moment he sallies fromhis hotel, there is a guide. Let him hesitate for an instant in hiswalk, either to look at something or to consult his map, or let himask the way, and he will have a half dozen of the persistent guildupon him; and they cannot easily be shaken off. The afternoon wearrived, we had barely got into our rooms at Brack's Oude Doelan,when a gray-headed commissionaire knocked at our door, and offeredhis services to show us the city. We deferred the pleasure of hisvaluable society. Shortly, when we came down to the street, asmartly dressed Israelite took off his hat to us, and offered to showus the city. We declined with impressive politeness, and walked on.The Jew accompanied us, and attempted conversation, in which we didnot join. He would show us everything for a guilder an hour,—forhalf a guilder. Having plainly told the Jew that we did not desirehis attendance, he crossed to the other side of the street, and keptus in sight, biding his opportunity. At the end of the street, wehesitated a moment whether to cross the bridge or turn up by thebroad canal. The Jew was at our side in a moment, having divinedthat we were on the way to the Dam and the palace. He obliginglypointed the way, and began to walk with us, entering intoconversation. We told him pointedly, that we did not desire hisservices, and requested him to leave us. He still walked in ourdirection, with the air of one much injured, but forgiving, and wasmore than once beside us with a piece of information. When wefinally turned upon him with great fierceness, and told him tobegone, he regarded us with a mournful and pitying expression; and asthe last act of one who returned good for evil, before he turnedaway, pointed out to us the next turn we were to make. I saw himseveral times afterward; and I once had occasion to say to him, thatI had already told him I would not employ him; and he always liftedhis hat, and looked at me with a forgiving smile. I felt that I haddeeply wronged him. As we stood by the statue, looking up at theeastern pediment of the palace, another of the tribe (they all speaka little English) asked me if I wished to see the palace. I told himI was looking at it, and could see it quite distinctly. Half a dozenmore crowded round, and proffered their aid. Would I like to go intothe palace? They knew, and I knew, that they could do nothing morethan go to the open door, through which they would not be admitted,and that I could walk across the open square to that, and enteralone. I asked the first speaker if he wished to go into the palace.Oh, yes! he would like to go. I told him he had better go at once,—they had all better go in together and see the palace,—it was anexcellent opportunity. They seemed to see the point, and slunk awayto the other side to wait for another stranger.

I find that this plan works very well with guides: when I see oneapproaching, I at once offer to guide him. It is an idea from whichhe does not rally in time to annoy us. The other day I offered toshow a persistent fellow through an old ruin for fifty kreuzers: ashis price for showing me was forty-eight, we did not come to terms.One of the most remarkable guides, by the way, we encountered atStratford-on-Avon. As we walked down from the Red Horse Inn to thechurch, a full-grown boy came bearing down upon us in the mostwonderful fashion. Early rickets, I think, had been succeeded by theSt. Vitus' dance. He came down upon us sideways, his legs all in atangle, and his right arm, bent and twisted, going round and round,as if in vain efforts to get into his pocket, his fingers spread outin impotent desire to clutch something. There was great danger thathe would run into us, as he was like a steamer with only oneside-wheel and no rudder. He came up puffing and blowing, andoffered to show us Shakespeare's tomb. Shade of the past, to beaccompanied to thy resting-place by such an object! But he fastenedhimself on us, and jerked and hitched along in his side-wheelfashion. We declined his help. He paddled on, twisting himself intoknots, and grinning in the most friendly manner. We told him tobegone. "I am," said he, wrenching himself into a new contortion, "Iam what showed Artemus Ward round Stratford." This information herepeated again and again, as if we could not resist him after we hadcomprehended that. We shook him off; but when we returned at sundownacross the fields, from a visit to Anne Hathaway's cottage, we metthe sidewheeler cheerfully towing along a large party, upon whom hehad fastened.

The people of Amsterdam are only less queer than their houses. Themen dress in a solid, old-fashioned way. Every one wears thestraight, high-crowned silk hat that went out with us years ago, andthe cut of clothing of even the most buckish young fellows is behindthe times. I stepped into the Exchange, an immense interior, thatwill hold five thousand people, where the stock-gamblers meet twice aday. It was very different from the terrible excitement and noise ofthe Paris Bourse. There were three or four thousand brokers there,yet there was very little noise and no confusion. No stocks werecalled, and there was no central ring for bidding, as at the Bourseand the New York Gold Room; but they quietly bought and sold. Someof the leading firms had desks or tables at the side, and thereawaited orders. Everything was phlegmatically and decorously done.

In the streets one still sees peasant women in native costume. Therewas a group to-day that I saw by the river, evidently just crossedover from North Holland. They wore short dresses, with the upperskirt looped up, and had broad hips and big waists. On the head wasa cap with a fall of lace behind; across the back of the head a broadband of silver (or tin) three inches broad, which terminated in frontand just above the ears in bright pieces of metal about two inchessquare, like a horse's blinders, Only flaring more from the head;across the forehead and just above the eyes a gilt band, embossed; onthe temples two plaits of hair in circular coils; and on top of all astraw hat, like an old-fashioned bonnet stuck on hindside before.Spiral coils of brass wire, coming to a point in front, are also wornon each side of the head by many. Whether they are for ornament ordefense, I could not determine.

Water is brought into the city now from Haarlem, and introduced intothe best houses; but it is still sold in the streets by old men andwomen, who sit at the faucets. I saw one dried-up old grandmother,who sat in her little caboose, fighting away the crowd of dirtychildren who tried to steal a drink when her back was turned, keepingcount of the pails of water carried away with a piece of chalk on theiron pipe, and trying to darn her stocking at the same time. Oddthings strike you at every turn. There is a sledge drawn by one poorhorse, and on the front of it is a cask of water pierced with holes,so that the water squirts out and wets the stones, making it easiersliding for the runners. It is an ingenious people!

After all, we drove out five miles to Broek, the clean village;across the Y, up the canal, over flatness flattened. Broek is ahumbug, as almost all show places are. A wooden little village on astagnant canal, into which carriages do not drive, and where thefront doors of the houses are never open; a dead, uninterestingplace, neat but not specially pretty, where you are shown into onehouse got up for the purpose, which looks inside like a crockeryshop, and has a stiff little garden with box trained in shapes ofanimals and furniture. A roomy-breeched young Dutchman, whosetrousers went up to his neck, and his hat to a peak, walked before usin slow and cow-like fashion, and showed us the place; especiallysome horrid pleasure-grounds, with an image of an old man reading ina summer-house, and an old couple in a cottage who sat at a table andworked, or ate, I forget which, by clock-work; while a dog barked bythe same means. In a pond was a wooden swan sitting on a stick, thewater having receded, and left it high and dry. Yet the trip isworth while for the view of the country and the people on the way:men and women towing boats on the canals; the red-tiled housespainted green, and in the distance the villages, with their spiresand pleasing mixture of brown, green, and red tints, are verypicturesque. The best thing that I saw, however, was a traditionalDutchman walking on the high bank of a canal, with soft hat, shortpipe, and breeches that came to the armpits above, and a little belowthe knees, and were broad enough about the seat and thighs to carryhis no doubt numerous family. He made a fine figure against the sky.

COLOGNE AND ST. URSULA

It is a relief to get out of Holland and into a country nearer tohills. The people also seem more obliging. In Cologne, abrown-cheeked girl pointed us out the way without waiting for akreuzer. Perhaps the women have more to busy themselves about in thecities, and are not so curious about passers-by. We rarely see areflector to exhibit us to the occupants of the second-story windows.In all the cities of Belgium and Holland the ladies have smallmirrors, with reflectors, fastened to their windows; so that they cansee everybody who passes, without putting their heads out. I trustwe are not inverted or thrown out of shape when we are thus caught upand cast into my lady's chamber. Cologne has a cheerful look, forthe Rhine here is wide and promising; and as for the "smells," theyare certainly not so many nor so vile as those at Mainz.

Our windows at the hotel looked out on the finest front of thecathedral. If the Devil really built it, he is to be credited withone good thing, and it is now likely to be finished, in spite of him.Large as it is, it is on the exterior not so impressive as that atAmiens; but within it has a magnificence born of a vast design andthe most harmonious proportions, and the grand effect is not brokenby any subdivision but that of the choir. Behind the altar and infront of the chapel, where lie the remains of the Wise Men of theEast who came to worship the Child, or, as they are called, the ThreeKings of Cologne, we walked over a stone in the pavement under whichis the heart of Mary de Medicis: the remainder of her body is in St.Denis near Paris. The beadle in red clothes, who stalks about thecathedral like a converted flamingo, offered to open for us thechapel; but we declined a sight of the very bones of the Wise Men.It was difficult enough to believe they were there, without seeingthem. One ought not to subject his faith to too great a strain atfirst in Europe. The bones of the Three Kings, by the way, made thefortune of the cathedral. They were the greatest religious card ofthe Middle Ages, and their fortunate possession brought a flood ofwealth to this old Domkirche. The old feudal lords would swear bythe Almighty Father, or the Son, or Holy Ghost, or by everythingsacred on earth, and break their oaths as they would break a wisp ofstraw: but if you could get one of them to swear by the Three Kingsof Cologne, he was fast; for that oath he dare not disregard.

The prosperity of the cathedral on these valuable bones set all theother churches in the neighborhood on the same track; and one canstudy right here in this city the growth of relic worship. But themost successful achievement was the collection of the bones of St.Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins, and their preservation in thechurch on the very spot where they suffered martyrdom. There isprobably not so large a collection of the bones of virgins elsewherein the world; and I am sorry to read that Professor Owen has thoughtproper to see and say that many of them are the bones of lower ordersof animals. They are built into the walls of the church, arrangedabout the choir, interred in stone coffins, laid under the pavements;and their skulls grin at you everywhere. In the chapel the bones aretastefully built into the wall and overhead, like rustic wood-work;and the skulls stand in rows, some with silver masks, like the jarson the shelves of an apothecary's shop. It is a cheerful place. Onthe little altar is the very skull of the saint herself, and that ofConan, her lover, who made the holy pilgrimage to Rome with her andher virgins, and also was slain by the Huns at Cologne. There is apicture of the eleven thousand disembarking from one boat on theRhine, which is as wonderful as the trooping of hundreds of spiritsout of a conjurer's bottle. The right arm of St. Ursula is preservedhere: the left is at Bruges. I am gradually getting the hang of thisexcellent but somewhat scattered woman, and bringing her together inmy mind. Her body, I believe, lies behind the altar in this samechurch. She must have been a lovely character, if Hans Memling'sportrait of her is a faithful one. I was glad to see here one of thejars from the marriage-supper in Cana. We can identify it by a piecewhich is broken out; and the piece is in Notre Dame in Paris. It hasbeen in this church five hundred years. The sacristan, a veryintelligent person, with a shaven crown and his hair cut straightacross his forehead, who showed us the church, gave us much usefulinformation about bones, teeth, and the remains of the garments thatthe virgins wore; and I could not tell from his face how much heexpected us to believe. I asked the little fussy old guide of anEnglish party who had joined us, how much he believed of the story.He was a Protestant, and replied, still anxious to keep up the creditof his city, "Tousands is too many; some hundreds maybe; tousands istoo many."

A GLIMPSE OF THE RHINE

You have seen the Rhine in pictures; you have read its legends. Youknow, in imagination at least, how it winds among craggy hills ofsplendid form, turning so abruptly as to leave you often shut in withno visible outlet from the wall of rock and forest; how the castles,some in ruins so as to be as unsightly as any old pile of rubbish,others with feudal towers and battlements, still perfect, hang on thecrags, or stand sharp against the sky, or nestle by the stream or onsome lonely island. You know that the Rhine has been to Germans whatthe Nile was to the Egyptians,—a delight, and the theme of song andstory. Here the Roman eagles were planted; here were the camps ofDrusus; here Caesar bridged and crossed the Rhine; here, at everyturn, a feudal baron, from his high castle, levied toll on thepassers; and here the French found a momentary halt to their invasionof Germany at different times. You can imagine how, in a mistymorning, as you leave Bonn, the Seven Mountains rise up in theirveiled might, and how the Drachenfels stands in new and changingbeauty as you pass it and sail away. You have been told that theHudson is like the Rhine. Believe me, there is no resemblance; norwould there be if the Hudson were lined with castles, and JuliusCaesar had crossed it every half mile. The Rhine satisfies you, andyou do not recall any other river. It only disappoints you as to its"vine-clad hills." You miss trees and a covering vegetation, and arenot enamoured of the patches of green vines on wall-supportedterraces, looking from the river like hills of beans or potatoes.And, if you try the Rhine wine on the steamers, you will wholly loseyour faith in the vintage. We decided that the wine on our boat wasmanufactured in the boiler.

There is a mercenary atmosphere about hotels and steamers on theRhine, a watering-place, show sort of feeling, that detracts verymuch from one's enjoyment. The old habit of the robber barons oflevying toll on all who sail up and down has not been lost. It is notthat one actually pays so much for sightseeing, but the charm ofanything vanishes when it is made merchandise. One is almost asreluctant to buy his "views" as he is to sell his opinions. But oneought to be weeks on the Rhine before attempting to say anythingabout it.

One morning, at Bingen,—I assure you it was not six o'clock,—wetook a big little rowboat, and dropped down the stream, past theMouse Tower, where the cruel Bishop Hatto was eaten up by rats, underthe shattered Castle of Ehrenfels, round the bend to the littlevillage of Assmannshausen, on the hills back of which is grown thefamous red wine of that name. On the bank walked in line a dozenpeasants, men and women, in picturesque dress, towing, by a linepassed from shoulder to shoulder, a boat filled with marketing forRudesheim. We were bound up the Niederwald, the mountain oppositeBingen, whose noble crown of forest attracted us. At the landing,donkeys awaited us; and we began the ascent, a stout, good-naturedGerman girl acting as guide and driver. Behind us, on the oppositeshore, set round about with a wealth of foliage, was the Castle ofRheinstein, a fortress more pleasing in its proportions and situationthan any other. Our way was through the little town which is jammedinto the gorge; and as we clattered up the pavement, past the church,its heavy bell began to ring loudly for matins, the soundreverberating in the narrow way, and following us with itsbenediction when we were far up the hill, breathing the fresh,inspiring morning air. The top of the Niederwald is a splendidforest of trees, which no impious Frenchman has been allowed to trim,and cut into allees of arches, taking one in thought across the waterto the free Adirondacks. We walked for a long time under the welcomeshade, approaching the brow of the hill now and then, where sometower or hermitage is erected, for a view of the Rhine and the Nahe,the villages below, and the hills around; and then crossed themountain, down through cherry orchards, and vine yards, walled up,with images of Christ on the cross on the angles of the walls, downthrough a hot road where wild flowers grew in great variety, to thequaint village of Rudesheim, with its queer streets and ancientruins. Is it possible that we can have too many ruins? "Oh dear!"exclaimed the jung-frau as we sailed along the last day, "if thereis n't another castle!"

HEIDELBERG

If you come to Heidelberg, you will never want to go away. To arrivehere is to come into a peaceful state of rest and content. The greathills out of which the Neckar flows, infold the town in a sweetsecurity; and yet there is no sense of imprisonment, for the view isalways wide open to the great plains where the Neckar goes to jointhe Rhine, and where the Rhine runs for many a league through a richand smiling land. One could settle down here to study, without adesire to go farther, nor any wish to change the dingy, shabby oldbuildings of the university for anything newer and smarter. What thestudents can find to fight their little duels about I cannot see; butfight they do, as many a scarred cheek attests. The students givelife to the town. They go about in little caps of red, green, andblue, many of them embroidered in gold, and stuck so far on theforehead that they require an elastic, like that worn by ladies,under the back hair, to keep them on; and they are also distinguishedby colored ribbons across the breast. The majority of them arewell-behaved young gentlemen, who carry switch-canes, and try to keepnear the fashions, like students at home. Some like to swagger aboutin their little skull-caps, and now and then one is attended by abull-dog.

I write in a room which opens out upon a balcony. Below it is agarden, below that foliage, and farther down the town with its oldspeckled roofs, spires, and queer little squares. Beyond is theNeckar, with the bridge, and white statues on it, and an old citygate at this end, with pointed towers. Beyond that is a white roadwith a wall on one side, along which I see peasant women walking withlarge baskets balanced on their heads. The road runs down the riverto Neuenheim. Above it on the steep hillside are vineyards; and awinding path goes up to the Philosopher's Walk, which runs along fora mile or more, giving delightful views of the castle and theglorious woods and hills back of it. Above it is the mountain ofHeiligenberg, from the other side of which one looks off towardDarmstadt and the famous road, the Bergstrasse. If I look down thestream, I see the narrow town, and the Neckar flowing out of it intothe vast level plain, rich with grain and trees and grass, with manyspires and villages; Mannheim to the northward, shining when the sunis low; the Rhine gleaming here and there near the horizon; and theVosges Mountains, purple in the last distance: on my right, and sonear that I could throw a stone into them, the ruined tower andbattlements of the northwest corner of the castle, half hidden infoliage, with statues framed in ivy, and the garden terrace, builtfor Elizabeth Stuart when she came here the bride of the ElectorFrederick, where giant trees grow. Under the walls a steep path goesdown into the town, along which little houses cling to the hillside.High above the castle rises the noble Konigstuhl, whence the whole ofthis part of Germany is visible, and, in a clear day, StrasburgMinster, ninety miles away.

I have only to go a few steps up a narrow, steep street, lined withthe queerest houses, where is an ever-running pipe of good water, towhich all the neighborhood resorts, and I am within the grounds ofthe castle. I scarcely know where to take you; for I never knowwhere to go myself, and seldom do go where I intend when I set forth.We have been here several days; and I have not yet seen the GreatTun, nor the inside of the show-rooms, nor scarcely anything that isset down as a "sight." I do not know whether to wander on through theextensive grounds, with splendid trees, bits of old ruin, overgrown,cozy nooks, and seats where, through the foliage, distant prospectsopen into quiet retreats that lead to winding walks up the terracedhill, round to the open terrace overlooking the Neckar, and givingthe best general view of the great mass of ruins. If we do, we shallbe likely to sit in some delicious place, listening to the bandplaying in the "Restauration," and to the nightingales, till the mooncomes up. Or shall we turn into the garden through the lovely Archof the Princess Elizabeth, with its stone columns cut to resembletree-trunks twined with ivy? Or go rather through the great archway,and under the teeth of the portcullis, into the irregular quadrangle,whose buildings mark the changing style and fortune of successivecenturies, from 1300 down to the seventeenth century? There isprobably no richer quadrangle in Europe: there is certainly no otherruin so vast, so impressive, so ornamented with carving, except theAlhambra. And from here we pass out upon the broad terrace ofmasonry, with a splendid flanking octagon tower, its base hidden intrees, a rich facade for a background, and below the town the river,and beyond the plain and floods of golden sunlight. What shall wedo? Sit and dream in the Rent Tower under the lindens that grow inits top? The day passes while one is deciding how to spend it, andthe sun over Heiligenberg goes down on his purpose.

ALPINE NOTES

ENTERING SWITZERLAND BERNE ITS BEAUTIES AND BEARS

If you come to Bale, you should take rooms on the river, or stand onthe bridge at evening, and have a sunset of gold and crimsonstreaming down upon the wide and strong Rhine, where it rushesbetween the houses built plumb up to it, or you will not care muchfor the city. And yet it is pleasant on the high ground, where aresome stately buildings, and where new gardens are laid out, and wherethe American consul on the Fourth of July flies our flag over thebalcony of a little cottage smothered in vines and gay with flowers.I had the honor of saluting it that day, though I did not know at thetime that gold had risen two or three per cent. under its blessedfolds at home. Not being a shipwrecked sailor, or a versatile andaccomplished but impoverished naturalized citizen, desirous of quicktransit to the land of the free, I did not call upon the consul, butleft him under the no doubt correct impression that he was doing agood thing by unfolding the flag on the Fourth.

You have not journeyed far from Bale before you are aware that youare in Switzerland. It was showery the day we went down; but theride filled us with the most exciting expectations. The countryrecalled New England, or what New England might be, if it werecultivated and adorned, and had good roads and no fences. Here atlast, after the dusty German valleys, we entered among real hills,round which and through which, by enormous tunnels, our train slowlywent: rocks looking out of foliage; sweet little valleys, green as inearly spring; the dark evergreens in contrast; snug cottages nestledin the hillsides, showing little else than enormous brown roofs thatcome nearly to the ground, giving the cottages the appearance of hugetoadstools; fine harvests of grain; thrifty apple-trees, andcherry-trees purple with luscious fruit. And this shifting panoramacontinues until, towards evening, behold, on a hill, Berne, shiningthrough showers, the old feudal round tower and buildings overhangingthe Aar, and the tower of the cathedral over all. From the balconyof our rooms at the Bellevue, the long range of the Bernese Oberlandshows its white summits for a moment in the slant sunshine, and thenthe clouds shut down, not to lift again for two days. Yet it lookswarmer on the snow-peaks than in Berne, for summer sets in inSwitzerland with a New England chill and rigor.

The traveler finds no city with more flavor of the picturesque andquaint than Berne; and I think it must have preserved the Swisscharacteristics better than any other of the large towns in Helvetia.It stands upon a peninsula, round which the Aar, a hundred feetbelow, rapidly flows; and one has on nearly every side very prettyviews of the green basin of hills which rise beyond the river. It isa most comfortable town on a rainy day; for all the principal streetshave their houses built on arcades, and one walks under the lowarches, with the shops on one side and the huge stone pillars on theother. These pillars so stand out toward the street as to give thehouse-fronts a curved look. Above are balconies, in which, upon redcushions, sit the daughters of Berne, reading and sewing, andwatching their neighbors; and in nearly every window are quantitiesof flowers of the most brilliant colors. The gray stone of thehouses, which are piled up from the streets, harmonizes well with thecolors in the windows and balconies, and the scene is quite Orientalas one looks down, especially if it be upon a market morning, whenthe streets are as thronged as the Strand. Several terraces, withgreat trees, overlook the river, and command prospects of the Alps.These are public places; for the city government has a queer notionthat trees are not hideous, and that a part of the use of living isthe enjoyment of the beautiful. I saw an elegant bank building, withcarved figures on the front, and at each side of the entrance door alarge stand of flowers,—oleanders, geraniums, and fuchsias; whilethe windows and balconies above bloomed with a like warmth of floralcolor. Would you put an American bank president in the Retreat whoshould so decorate his banking-house? We all admire the tastefuldisplay of flowers in foreign towns: we go home, and carry nothingwith us but a recollection. But Berne has also fountains everywhere;some of them grotesque, like the ogre that devours his own children,but all a refreshment and delight. And it has also its clock-tower,with one of those ingenious pieces of mechanism, in which the soberpeople of this region take pleasure. At the hour, a procession oflittle bears goes round, a jolly figure strikes the time, a co*ckflaps his wings and crows, and a solemn Turk opens his mouth toannounce the flight of the hours. It is more grotesque, but lesselaborate, than the equally childish toy in the cathedral atStrasburg.

We went Sunday morning to the cathedral; and the excellent woman whoguards the portal—where in ancient stone the Last Judgment isenacted, and the cheerful and conceited wise virgins stand overagainst the foolish virgins, one of whom has been in the penitentialattitude of having a stone finger in her eye now for over threehundred years—refused at first to admit us to the German Lutheranservice, which was just beginning. It seems that doors are locked,and no one is allowed to issue forth until after service. Thereseems to be an impression that strangers go only to hear the organ,which is a sort of rival of that at Freiburg, and do not care muchfor the well-prepared and protracted discourse in Swiss-German. Weagreed to the terms of admission; but it did not speak well forformer travelers that the woman should think it necessary to say,"You must sit still, and not talk." It is a barn-like interior. Thewomen all sit on hard, high-backed benches in the center of thechurch, and the men on hard, higher-backed benches about the sides,inclosing and facing the women, who are more directly under thedroppings of the little pulpit, hung on one of the pillars,—a verysolemn and devout congregation, who sang very well, and paid strictattention to the sermon.

I noticed that the names of the owners, and sometimes theircoats-of-arms, were carved or painted on the backs of the seats, as ifthe pews were not put up at yearly auction. One would not call it adressy congregation, though the homely women looked neat in blackwaists and white puffed sleeves and broadbrimmed hats.

The only concession I have anywhere seen to women in Switzerland, asthe more delicate sex, was in this church: they sat during most ofthe service, but the men stood all the time, except during thedelivery of the sermon. The service began at nine o'clock, as itought to with us in summer. The costume of the peasant women in andabout Berne comes nearer to being picturesque than in most otherparts of Switzerland, where it is simply ugly. You know the sort ofthing in pictures,—the broad hat, short skirt, black, pointedstomacher, with white puffed sleeves, and from each breast a largesilver chain hanging, which passes under the arm and fastens on theshoulder behind,—a very favorite ornament. This costume would notbe unbecoming to a pretty face and figure: whether there are anysuch native to Switzerland, I trust I may not be put upon thewitness-stand to declare. Some of the peasant young men wentwithout coats, and with the shirt sleeves fluted; and others worebutternut-colored suits, the coats of which I can recommend to thosewho like the swallow-tailed variety. I suppose one would take a maninto the opera in London, where he cannot go in anything but thatsort. The buttons on the backs of these came high up between theshoulders, and the tails did not reach below the waistband. There is akind of rooster of similar appearance. I saw some of these young menfrom the country, with their sweethearts, leaning over the stoneparapet, and looking into the pit of the bear-garden, where the citybears walk round, or sit on their hind legs for bits of bread thrownto them, or douse themselves in the tanks, or climb the dead trees setup for their gambols. Years ago they ate up a British officer who fellin; and they walk round now ceaselessly, as if looking for another.But one cannot expect good taste in a bear.

If you would see how charming a farming country can be, drive out onthe highway towards Thun. For miles it is well shaded with gianttrees of enormous trunks, and a clean sidewalk runs by the fine road.On either side, at little distances from the road, are picturesquecottages and rambling old farmhouses peeping from the trees and vinesand flowers. Everywhere flowers, before the house, in the windows,at the railway stations. But one cannot stay forever even indelightful Berne, with its fountains and terraces, and girls on redcushions in the windows, and noble trees and flowers, and its statelyfederal Capitol, and its bears carved everywhere in stone and wood,and its sunrises, when all the Bernese Alps lie like molten silver inthe early light, and the clouds drift over them, now hiding, nowdisclosing, the enchanting heights.

HEARING THE FREIBURG ORGAN—FIRST SIGHT OF LAKE LEMAN

Freiburg, with its aerial suspension-bridges, is also on a peninsula,formed by the Sarine; with its old walls, old watch-towers, itspiled-up old houses, and streets that go upstairs, and its deliciouscherries, which you can eat while you sit in the square by the famouslinden-tree, and wait for the time when the organ will be played inthe cathedral. For all the world stops at Freiburg to hear and enjoythe great organ,—all except the self-satisfied English clergyman,who says he does n't care much for it, and would rather go about townand see the old walls; and the young and boorish French couple, whoserefined amusem*nt in the railway-carriage consisted in the youngman's catching his wife's foot in the window-strap, and hauling it upto the level of the window, and who cross themselves and go out afterthe first tune; and the two bread-and-butter English young ladies,one of whom asks the other in the midst of the performance, if shehas thought yet to count the pipes,—a thoughtful verification ofMurray, which is very commendable in a young woman traveling for theimprovement of her little mind.

One has heard so much of this organ, that he expects impossibilities,and is at first almost disappointed, although it is not long indiscovering its vast compass, and its wonderful imitations, now of afull orchestra, and again of a single instrument. One has not towait long before he is mastered by its spell. The vox humana stopdid not strike me as so perfect as that of the organ in the Rev.Mr. Hale's church in Boston, though the imitation of choir-voicesresponding to the organ was very effective. But it is not in tricksof imitation that this organ is so wonderful: it is its power ofrevealing, by all its compass, the inmost part of any musicalcomposition.

The last piece we heard was something like this: the sound of a bell,tolling at regular intervals, like the throbbing of a life begun;about it an accompaniment of hopes, inducements, fears, the flute,the violin, the violoncello, promising, urging, entreating,inspiring; the life beset with trials, lured with pleasures,hesitating, doubting, questioning; its purpose at length grows morecertain and fixed, the bell tolling becomes a prolonged undertone,the flow of a definite life; the music goes on, twining round it, nowone sweet instrument and now many, in strife or accord, all theinfluences of earth and heaven and the base underworld meeting andwarring over the aspiring soul; the struggle becomes more earnest,the undertone is louder and clearer; the accompaniment indicatesstriving, contesting passion, an agony of endeavor and resistance,until at length the steep and rocky way is passed, the world and selfare conquered, and, in a burst of triumph from a full orchestra, thesoul attains the serene summit. But the rest is only for a moment.Even in the highest places are temptations. The sunshine fails,clouds roll up, growling of low, pedal thunder is heard, while sharplightning-flashes soon break in clashing peals about the peaks. Thisis the last Alpine storm and trial. After it the sun bursts outagain, the wide, sunny valleys are disclosed, and a sweet eveninghymn floats through all the peaceful air. We go out from the coolchurch into the busy streets of the white, gray town awed andcomforted.

And such a ride afterwards! It was as if the organ music stillcontinued. All the world knows the exquisite views southward fromFreiburg; but such an atmosphere as we had does not overhang themmany times in a season. First the Moleross, and a range of mountainsbathed in misty blue light,—rugged peaks, scarred sides, white andtawny at once, rising into the clouds which hung large and soft inthe blue; soon Mont Blanc, dim and aerial, in the south; the lovelyvalley of the River Sense; peasants walking with burdens on the whitehighway; the quiet and soft-tinted mountains beyond; towns perched onhills, with old castles and towers; the land rich with grass, grain,fruit, flowers; at Palezieux a magnificent view of the silver,purple, and blue mountains, with their chalky seams and gashed sides,near at hand; and at length, coming through a long tunnel, as if wehad been shot out into the air above a country more surprising thanany in dreams, the most wonderful sight burst upon us,—thelow-lying, deep-blue Lake Leman, and the gigantic mountains risingfrom its shores, and a sort of mist, translucent, suffused withsunlight, like the liquid of the golden wine the Steinberger pouredinto the vast basin. We came upon it out of total darkness, withoutwarning; and we seemed, from our great height, to be about to leapinto the splendid gulf of tremulous light and color.

This Lake of Geneva is said to combine the robust mountain grandeurof Luzerne with all the softness of atmosphere of Lake Maggiore.Surely, nothing could exceed the loveliness as we wound down thehillside, through the vineyards, to Lausanne, and farther on, nearthe foot of the lake, to Montreux, backed by precipitous buttree-clad hills, fronted by the lovely water, and the great mountainswhich run away south into Savoy, where Velan lifts up its snows.Below us, round the curving bay, lies white Chillon; and at sunset werow down to it over the bewitched water, and wait under its grimwalls till the failing light brings back the romance of castle andprisoner. Our garcon had never heard of the prisoner; but he knewabout the gendarmes who now occupy the castle.

OUR ENGLISH FRIENDS

Not the least of the traveler's pleasure in Switzerland is derivedfrom the English people who overrun it: they seem to regard it as akind of private park or preserve belonging to England; and theyestablish themselves at hotels, or on steamboats and diligences, witha certain air of ownership that is very pleasant. I am not veryfresh in my geology; but it is my impression that Switzerland wascreated especially for the English, about the year of the MagnaCharta, or a little later. The Germans who come here, and who don'tcare very much what they eat, or how they sleep, provided they do nothave any fresh air in diningroom or bedroom, and provided, also, thatthe bread is a little sour, growl a good deal about the English, anddeclare that they have spoiled Switzerland. The natives, too, wholive off the English, seem to thoroughly hate them; so that one isoften compelled, in self-defense, to proclaim his nationality, whichis like running from Scylla upon Charybdis; for, while the Americanis more popular, it is believed that there is no bottom to hispocket.

There was a sprig of the Church of England on the steamboat on LakeLeman, who spread himself upon a center bench, and discoursed veryinstructively to his friends,—a stout, fat-faced young man in awhite cravat, whose voice was at once loud and melodious, and whom*our manly Oxford student set down as a man who had just rubbedthrough the university, and got into a scanty living.

"I met an American on the boat yesterday," the oracle was saying tohis friends, "who was really quite a pleasant fellow. He—ah reallywas, you know, quite a sensible man. I asked him if they hadanything like this in America; and he was obliged to say that theyhad n't anything like it in his country; they really had n't. He wasreally quite a sensible fellow; said he was over here to do theEuropean tour, as he called it."

Small, sympathetic laugh from the attentive, wiry, red-faced woman onthe oracle's left, and also a chuckle, at the expense of theAmerican, from the thin Englishman on his right, who wore a largewhite waistcoat, a blue veil on his hat, and a face as red as a livecoal.

"Quite an admission, was n't it, from an American? But I think theyhave changed since the wah, you know."

At the next landing, the smooth and beaming churchman was left by hisfriends; and he soon retired to the cabin, where I saw himself-sacrificingly denying himself the views on deck, and consolinghimself with a substantial lunch and a bottle of English ale.

There is one thing to be said about the English abroad: the varietyis almost infinite. The best acquaintances one makes will beEnglish,—people with no nonsense and strong individuality; and onegets no end of entertainment from the other sort. Very differentfrom the clergyman on the boat was the old lady at table-d'hote inone of the hotels on the lake. One would not like to call her adelightfully wicked old woman, like the Baroness Bernstein; but shehad her own witty and satirical way of regarding the world. She hadlived twenty-five years at Geneva, where people, years ago, comingover the dusty and hot roads of France, used to faint away when theyfirst caught sight of the Alps. Believe they don't do it now. Shenever did; was past the susceptible age when she first came; wastired of the people. Honest? Why, yes, honest, but very fond ofmoney. Fine Swiss wood-carving? Yes. You'll get very sick of it.It's very nice, but I 'm tired of it. Years ago, I sent some of ithome to the folks in England. They thought everything of it; and itwas not very nice, either,—a cheap sort. Moral ideas? I don't carefor moral ideas: people make such a fuss about them lately (this inreply to her next neighbor, an eccentric, thin man, with bushyhair, shaggy eyebrows, and a high, falsetto voice, who ralliedthe witty old lady all dinner-time about her lack of moralideas, and accurately described the thin wine on the table as"water-bewitched"). Why did n't the baroness go back to England, ifshe was so tired of Switzerland? Well, she was too infirm now; and,besides, she did n't like to trust herself on the railroads. And therewere so many new inventions nowadays, of which she read. What was thisnitroglycerine, that exploded so dreadfully? No: she thought sheshould stay where she was.

There is little risk of mistaking the Englishman, with or without hisfamily, who has set out to do Switzerland. He wears a brandy-flask,a field-glass, and a haversack. Whether he has a silk or soft hat,he is certain to wear a veil tied round it. This precaution isadopted when he makes up his mind to come to Switzerland, I think,because he has read that a veil is necessary to protect the eyes fromthe snow-glare. There is probably not one traveler in a hundred whogets among the ice and snow-fields where he needs a veil or greenglasses: but it is well to have it on the hat; it looks adventurous.The veil and the spiked alpenstock are the signs of peril.Everybody—almost everybody—has an alpenstock. It is usually around pine stick, with an iron spike in one end. That, also, is asign of peril. We saw a noble young Briton on the steamer the otherday, who was got up in the best Alpine manner. He wore a shortsack,—in fact, an entire suit of light gray flannel, which closelyfitted his lithe form. His shoes were of undressed leather, withlarge spikes in the soles; and on his white hat he wore a largequantity of gauze, which fell in folds down his neck. I am sorry tosay that he had a red face, a shaven chin, and long side-whiskers.He carried a formidable alpenstock; and at the little landing wherewe first saw him, and afterward on the boat, he leaned on it in aseries of the most graceful and daring attitudes that I ever saw thehuman form assume. Our Oxford student knew the variety, and guessedrightly that he was an army man. He had his face burned at Malta.Had he been over the Gemmi? Or up this or that mountain? askedanother English officer. "No, I have not." And it turned out thathe had n't been anywhere, and did n't seem likely to do anything butshow himself at the frequented valley places. And yet I never sawone whose gallant bearing I so much admired. We saw him afterward atInterlaken, enduring all the hardships of that fashionable place.There was also there another of the same country, got up for the mostdangerous Alpine climbing, conspicuous in red woolen stockings thatcame above his knees. I could not learn that he ever went upanything higher than the top of a diligence.

THE DILIGENCE TO CHAMOUNY

The greatest diligence we have seen, one of the few of theold-fashioned sort, is the one from Geneva to Chamouny. It leavesearly in the morning; and there is always a crowd about it to see themount and start. The great ark stands before the diligence-office,and, for half an hour before the hour of starting, the porters arebusy stowing away the baggage, and getting the passengers on board.On top, in the banquette, are seats for eight, besides the postilionand guard; in the coupe, under the postilion's seat and looking uponthe horses, seats for three; in the interior, for three; and on top,behind, for six or eight. The baggage is stowed in the capaciousbowels of the vehicle. At seven, the six horses are brought out andhitched on, three abreast. We climb up a ladder to the banquette:there is an irascible Frenchman, who gets into the wrong seat; andbefore he gets right there is a terrible war of words between him andthe guard and the porters and the hostlers, everybody joining in withgreat vivacity; in front of us are three quiet Americans, and a slimFrenchman with a tall hat and one eye-glass. The postilion gets upto his place. Crack, crack, crack, goes the whip; and, amid"sensation" from the crowd, we are off at a rattling pace, the whipcracking all the time like Chinese fireworks. The great passion ofthe drivers is noise; and they keep the whip going all day. Nosooner does a fresh one mount the box than he gives a half-dozenpreliminary snaps; to which the horses pay no heed, as they know itis only for the driver's amusem*nt. We go at a good gait, changinghorses every six miles, till we reach the Baths of St. Gervais, wherewe dine, from near which we get our first glimpse of Mont Blancthrough clouds,—a section of a dazzlingly white glacier, a veryexciting thing to the imagination. Thence we go on in smallcarriages, over a still excellent but more hilly road, and begin toenter the real mountain wonders; until, at length, real glacierspouring down out of the clouds nearly to the road meet us, and weenter the narrow Valley of Chamouny, through which we drive to thevillage in a rain.

Everybody goes to Chamouny, and up the Flegere, and to Montanvert,and over the Mer de Glace; and nearly everybody down the Mauvais Pasto the Chapeau, and so back to the village. It is all easy to do;and yet we saw some French people at the Chapeau who seemed to thinkthey had accomplished the most hazardous thing in the world in comingdown the rocks of the Mauvais Pas. There is, as might be expected, agreat deal of humbug about the difficulty of getting about in theAlps, and the necessity of guides. Most of the dangers vanish onnear approach. The Mer de Glace is inferior to many other glaciers,and is not nearly so fine as the Glacier des Bossons: but it has areputation, and is easy of access; so people are content to walk overthe dirty ice. One sees it to better effect from below, or he mustascend it to the Jardin to know that it has deep crevasses, and is astreacherous as it is grand. And yet no one will be disappointed atthe view from Montanvert, of the upper glacier, and the needles ofrock and snow which rise beyond.

We met at the Chapeau two jolly young fellows from Charleston, S. C.who had been in the war, on the wrong side. They knew no languagebut American, and were unable to order a cutlet and an omelet forbreakfast. They said they believed they were going over the TeteNoire. They supposed they had four mules waiting for them somewhere,and a guide; but they couldn't understand a word he said, and hecouldn't understand them. The day before, they had nearly perishedof thirst, because they could n't make their guide comprehend thatthey wanted water. One of them had slung over his shoulder an Alpinehorn, which he blew occasionally, and seemed much to enjoy. All thiswhile we sit on a rock at the foot of the Mauvais Pas, looking outupon the green glacier, which here piles itself up finely, and aboveto the Aiguilles de Charmoz and the innumerable ice-pinnacles thatrun up to the clouds, while our muleteer is getting his breakfast.This is his third breakfast this morning.

The day after we reached Chamouny, Monseigneur the bishop arrivedthere on one of his rare pilgrimages into these wild valleys. Nearlyall the way down from Geneva, we had seen signs of his coming, inpreparations as for the celebration of a great victory. I did notknow at first but the Atlantic cable had been laid; or rather thatthe decorations were on account of the news of it reaching thisregion. It was a holiday for all classes; and everybody lent a handto the preparations. First, the little church where theconfirmations were to take place was trimmed within and without; andan arch of green spanned the gateway. At Les Pres, the women weresweeping the road, and the men were setting small evergreen-trees oneach side. The peasants were in their best clothes; and in front oftheir wretched hovels were tables set out with flowers. So cheerfuland eager were they about the bishop, that they forgot to beg as wepassed: the whole valley was in a fever of expectation. At onehamlet on the mulepath over the Tete Noire, where the bishop was thatday expected, and the women were sweeping away all dust and litterfrom the road, I removed my hat, and gravely thanked them for theirthoughtful preparation for our coming. But they only stared alittle, as if we were not worthy to be even forerunners ofMonseigneur.

I do not care to write here how serious a drawback to the pleasuresof this region are its inhabitants. You get the impression that halfof them are beggars. The other half are watching for a chance toprey upon you in other ways. I heard of a woman in the ZermattValley who refused pay for a glass of milk; but I did not have timeto verify the report. Besides the beggars, who may or may not behorrid-looking creatures, there are the grinning Cretins, the oldwomen with skins of parchment and the goitre, and even young childrenwith the loathsome appendage, the most wretched and filthy hovels,and the dirtiest, ugliest people in them. The poor women are thebeasts of burden. They often lead, mowing in the hayfield; theycarry heavy baskets on their backs; they balance on their heads andcarry large washtubs full of water. The more appropriate load of onewas a cradle with a baby in it, which seemed not at all to fearfalling. When one sees how the women are treated, he does not wonderthat there are so many deformed, hideous children. I think thepretty girl has yet to be born in Switzerland.

This is not much about the Alps? Ah, well, the Alps are there. Goread your guide-book, and find out what your emotions are. As Isaid, everybody goes to Chamouny. Is it not enough to sit at yourwindow, and watch the clouds when they lift from the Mont Blancrange, disclosing splendor after splendor, from the Aiguille de Gouteto the Aiguille Verte,—white needles which pierce the air for twelvethousand feet, until, jubilate! the round summit of the monarchhimself is visible, and the vast expanse of white snow-fields, thewhiteness of which is rather of heaven than of earth, dazzles theeyes, even at so great a distance? Everybody who is patient andwaits in the cold and inhospitable-looking valley of the Chamounylong enough, sees Mont Blanc; but every one does not see a sunset ofthe royal order. The clouds breaking up and clearing, after days ofbad weather, showed us height after height, and peak after peak, nowwreathing the summits, now settling below or hanging in patches onthe sides, and again soaring above, until we had the whole rangelying, far and brilliant, in the evening light. The clouds took ongorgeous colors, at length, and soon the snow caught the hue, andwhole fields were rosy pink, while uplifted peaks glowed red, as withinternal fire. Only Mont Blanc, afar off, remained purely white, ina kind of regal inaccessibility. And, afterward, one star came outover it, and a bright light shone from the hut on the Grand Mulets, arock in the waste of snow, where a Frenchman was passing the night onhis way to the summit.

Shall I describe the passage of the Tete Noire? My friend, it istwenty-four miles, a road somewhat hilly, with splendid views of MontBlanc in the morning, and of the Bernese Oberland range in theafternoon, when you descend into Martigny,—a hot place in the dustyRhone Valley, which has a comfortable hotel, with a pleasant garden,in which you sit after dinner and let the mosquitoes eat you.

THE MAN WHO SPEAKS ENGLISH

It was eleven o'clock at night when we reached Sion, a dirty littletown at the end of the Rhone Valley Railway, and got into the omnibusfor the hotel; and it was also dark and rainy. They speak German inthis part of Switzerland, or what is called German. There were twovery pleasant Americans, who spoke American, going on in thediligence at half-past five in the morning, on their way over theSimplex. One of them was accustomed to speak good, broad Englishvery distinctly to all races; and he seemed to expect that he must beunderstood if he repeated his observations in a louder tone, as healways did. I think he would force all this country to speak Englishin two months. We all desired to secure places in the diligence,which was likely to be full, as is usually the case when a railwaydischarges itself into a postroad.

We were scarcely in the omnibus, when the gentleman said to theconductor:

"I want two places in the coupe of the diligence in the morning. Can
I have them?"

"Yah" replied the good-natured German, who did n't understand a word.

"Two places, diligence, coupe, morning. Is it full?"

"Yah," replied the accommodating fellow. "Hotel man spik English."

I suggested the banquette as desirable, if it could be obtained, andthe German was equally willing to give it to us. Descending from theomnibus at the hotel, in a drizzling rain, and amidst a crowd ofporters and postilions and runners, the "man who spoke English"immediately presented himself; and upon him the American pounced witha torrent of questions. He was a willing, lively little waiter, withhis moony face on the top of his head; and he jumped round in therain like a parching pea, rolling his head about in the funniestmanner.

The American steadied the little man by the collar, and began,"I want to secure two seats in the coupe of the diligence in the.morning."

"Yaas," jumping round, and looking from one to another. "Diligence,coupe, morning."

"I—want—two seats—in—coupe. If I can't get them, two—in—banquette."

"Yaas banquette, coupe,—yaas, diligence."

"Do you understand? Two seats, diligence, Simplon, morning. Willyou get them?"

"Oh, yaas! morning, diligence. Yaas, sirr."

"Hang the fellow! Where is the office?" And the gentleman left thespry little waiter bobbing about in the middle of the street,speaking English, but probably comprehending nothing that was said tohim. I inquired the way to the office of the conductor: it wasclosed, but would soon be open, and I waited; and at length theofficial, a stout Frenchman, appeared, and I secured places in theinterior, the only ones to be had to Visp. I had seen a diligence atthe door with three places in the coupe, and one perched behind; nobanquette. The office is brightly lighted; people are waiting tosecure places; there is the usual crowd of loafers, men and women,and the Frenchman sits at his desk. Enter the American.

"I want two places in coupe, in the morning. Or banquette. Twoplaces, diligence." The official waves him off, and says something.

"What does he say?"

"He tells you to sit down on that bench till he is ready."

Soon the Frenchman has run over his big waybills, and turns to us.

"I want two places in the diligence, coupe," etc, etc, says the
American.

This remark being lost on the official, I explain to him as well as Ican what is wanted, at first,—two places in the coupe.

"One is taken," is his reply.

"The gentleman will take two," I said, having in mind the diligencein the yard, with three places in the coupe.

"One is taken," he repeats.

"Then the gentleman will take the other two."

"One is taken!" he cries, jumping up and smiting the table,—"oneis taken, I tell you!"

"How many are there in the coupe?"

"TWO."

"Oh! then the gentleman will take the one remaining in the coupe andthe one on top."

So it is arranged. When I come back to the hotel, the Americans areexplaining to the lively waiter "who speaks English" that they are togo in the diligence at half-past five, and that they are to be calledat half-past four and have breakfast. He knows all about it,—"Diligence, half-past four breakfast, Oh, yaas!" While I have beenat the diligence-office, my companions have secured room and gone tothem; and I ask the waiter to show m to my room. First, however, Itell him that we three two ladies and myself, who came together, aregoing in the diligence at half-past five, and want to be called andhave breakfast. Did he comprehend?

"Yaas," rolling his face about on the top of his head violently.
"You three gentleman want breakfast. What you have?"

I had told him before what we would I have, an now I gave up all hopeof keeping our parties separate in his mind; so I said,"Five persons want breakfast at five o'clock. Five persons, fivehours. Call all of them at half-past four." And I repeated it, andmade him repeat it in English and French. He then insisted onputting me into the room of one of the American gentlemenand then he knocked at the door of a lady, who cried out inindignation at being disturbed; and, finally, I found my room. Atthe door I reiterated the instructions for the morning; and hecheerfully bade me good-night. But he almost immediately came back,and poked in his head with,—

"Is you go by de diligence?"

"Yes, you stupid."

In the morning one of our party was called at halfpast three, andsaved the rest of us from a like fate; and we were not aroused atall, but woke early enough to get down and find the diligence nearlyready, and no breakfast, but "the man who spoke English" as livelyas ever. And we had a breakfast brought out, so filthy in allrespects that nobody could eat it. Fortunately, there was not timeto seriously try; but we paid for it, and departed. The two Americangentlemen sat in front of the house, waiting. The lively waiter hadcalled them at half-past three, for the railway train, instead of thediligence; and they had their wretched breakfast early. They willremember the funny adventure with "the man who speaks English," and,no doubt, unite with us in warmly commending the Hotel Lion d'Or atSion as the nastiest inn in Switzerland.

A WALK TO THE GORNER GRAT

When one leaves the dusty Rhone Valley, and turns southward fromVisp, he plunges into the wildest and most savage part ofSwitzerland, and penetrates the heart of the Alps. The valley isscarcely more than a narrow gorge, with high precipices on eitherside, through which the turbid and rapid Visp tears along at afurious rate, boiling and leaping in foam over its rocky bed, andnearly as large as the Rhone at the junction. From Visp to St.Nicolaus, twelve miles, there is only a mule-path, but a very goodone, winding along on the slope, sometimes high up, and againdescending to cross the stream, at first by vineyards and high stonewalls, and then on the edges of precipices, but always romantic andwild. It is noon when we set out from Visp, in true pilgrim fashion,and the sun is at first hot; but as we slowly rise up the easyascent, we get a breeze, and forget the heat in the varied charms ofthe walk.

Everything for the use of the upper valley and Zermatt, now a placeof considerable resort, must be carried by porters, or on horseback;and we pass or meet men and women, sometimes a dozen of themtogether, laboring along under the long, heavy baskets, broad at thetop and coming nearly to a point below, which are universally usedhere for carrying everything. The tubs for transporting water are ofthe same sort. There is no level ground, but every foot iscultivated. High up on the sides of the precipices, where it seemsimpossible for a goat to climb, are vineyards and houses, and evenvillages, hung on slopes, nearly up to the clouds, and with novisible way of communication with the rest of the world.

In two hours' time we are at Stalden, a village perched upon a rockypromontory, at the junction of the valleys of the Saas and the Visp,with a church and white tower conspicuous from afar. We climbup to the terrace in front of it, on our way into the town. Aseedy-looking priest is pacing up and down, taking the fresh breeze,his broad-brimmed, shabby hat held down upon the wall by a big stone.His clothes are worn threadbare; and he looks as thin and poor as aMethodist minister in a stony town at home, on three hundred a year.He politely returns our salutation, and we walk on. Nearly all thepriests in this region look wretchedly poor,—as poor as the people.Through crooked, narrow streets, with houses overhanging and thrustingout corners and gables, houses with stables below, and quaint carvingsand odd little windows above, the panes of glass hexagons, so that thewindows looked like sections of honey-comb,—we found our way to theinn, a many-storied chalet, with stairs on the outside, stone floorsin the upper passages, and no end of queer rooms; built right in themidst of other houses as odd, decorated with German-text carving, fromthe windows of which the occupants could look in upon us, if they hadcared to do so; but they did not. They seem little interested inanything; and no wonder, with their hard fight with Nature. Below is awine-shop, with a little side booth, in which some German travelerssit drinking their wine, and sputtering away in harsh gutturals. Theinn is very neat inside, and we are well served. Stalden is high; butaway above it on the opposite side is a village on the steep slope,with a slender white spire that rivals some of the snowy needles.Stalden is high, but the hill on which it stands is rich in grass. Thesecret of the fertile meadows is the most thorough irrigation. Wateris carried along the banks from the river, and distributed by numeroussluiceways below; and above, the little mountain streams are broughtwhere they are needed by artificial channels. Old men and women in thefields were constantly changing the direction of the currents. All theinhabitants appeared to be porters: women were transporting on theirbacks baskets full of soil; hay was being backed to the stables;burden-bearers were coming and going upon the road: we were told thatthere are only three horses in the place. There is a pleasant girl whobrings us luncheon at the inn; but the inhabitants for the most partare as hideous as those we see all day: some have hardly the shape ofhuman beings, and they all live in the most filthy manner in thedirtiest habitations. A chalet is a sweet thing when you buy a littlemodel of it at home.

After we leave Stalden, the walk becomes more picturesque, theprecipices are higher, the gorges deeper. It required someengineering to carry the footpath round the mountain buttresses andover the ravines. Soon the village of Emd appears on the right,—avery considerable collection of brown houses, and a shining whitechurch-spire, above woods and precipices and apparently unscalableheights, on a green spot which seems painted on the precipices; withnothing visible to keep the whole from sliding down, down, into thegorge of the Visp. Switzerland may not have so much population tothe square mile as some countries; but she has a population to someof her square miles that would astonish some parts of the earth'ssurface elsewhere. Farther on we saw a faint, zigzag footpath, thatwe conjectured led to Emd; but it might lead up to heaven. All daywe had been solicited for charity by squalid little children, whokiss their nasty little paws at us, and ask for centimes. Thechildren of Emd, however, did not trouble us. It must be a seriousaffair if they ever roll out of bed.

Late in the afternoon thunder began to tumble about the hills, andclouds snatched away from our sight the snow-peaks at the end of thevalley; and at length the rain fell on those who had just arrived andon the unjust. We took refuge from the hardest of it in a lonelychalet high up on the hillside, where a roughly dressed, frowzySwiss, who spoke bad German, and said he was a schoolmaster, gave usa bench in the shed of his schoolroom. He had only two pupils inattendance, and I did not get a very favorable impression of thishigh school. Its master quite overcame us with thanks when we gavehim a few centimes on leaving. It still rained, and we arrived inSt. Nicolaus quite damp.

There is a decent road from St. Nicolaus to Zermatt, over which gowagons without springs. The scenery is constantly grander as weascend. The day is not wholly clear; but high on our right are thevast snow-fields of the Weishorn, and out of the very clouds near itseems to pour the Bies Glacier. In front are the splendid Briethorn,with its white, round summit; the black Riffelhorn; the sharp peak ofthe little Matterhorn; and at last the giant Matterhorn itself risingbefore us, the most finished and impressive single mountain inSwitzerland. Not so high as Mont Blanc by a thousand feet, itappears immense in its isolated position and its slender aspiration.It is a huge pillar of rock, with sharply cut edges, rising to adefined point, dusted with snow, so that the rock is only here andthere revealed. To ascend it seems as impossible as to go up theColumn of Luxor; and one can believe that the gentlemen who firstattempted it in 1864, and lost their lives, did fall four thousandfeet before their bodies rested on the glacier below.

We did not stay at Zermatt, but pushed on for the hotel on the top ofthe Riffelberg,—a very stiff and tiresome climb of about threehours, an unending pull up a stony footpath. Within an hour of thetop, and when the white hotel is in sight above the zigzag on thebreast of the precipice, we reach a green and widespread Alp wherehundreds of cows are feeding, watched by two forlorn women,—the"milkmaids all forlorn" of poetry. At the rude chalets we stop, andget draughts of rich, sweet cream. As we wind up the slope, thetinkling of multitudinous bells from the herd comes to us, which isalso in the domain of poetry. All the way up we have found wildflowers in the greatest profusion; and the higher we ascend, the moreexquisite is their color and the more perfect their form. There arepansies; gentians of a deeper blue than flower ever was before;forget-me-nots, a pink variety among them; violets, the Alpine roseand the Alpine violet; delicate pink flowers of moss; harebells; andquantities for which we know no names, more exquisite in shape andcolor than the choicest products of the greenhouse. Large slopes arecovered with them,—a brilliant show to the eye, and most pleasantlybeguiling the way of its tediousness. As high as I ascended, I stillfound some of these delicate flowers, the pink moss growing inprofusion amongst the rocks of the GornerGrat, and close to thesnowdrifts.

The inn on the Riffelberg is nearly eight thousand feet high, almosttwo thousand feet above the hut on Mount Washington; yet it is not socold and desolate as the latter. Grass grows and flowers bloom onits smooth upland, and behind it and in front of it are thesnow-peaks. That evening we essayed the Gorner-Grat, a rocky ledgenearly ten thousand feet above the level of the sea; but after aclimb of an hour and a half, and a good view of Monte Rosa and theglaciers and peaks of that range, we were prevented from reaching thesummit, and driven back by a sharp storm of hail and rain. The nextmorning I started for the GornerGrat again, at four o'clock. TheMatterhorn lifted its huge bulk sharply against the sky, except wherefleecy clouds lightly draped it and fantastically blew about it. AsI ascended, and turned to look at it, its beautifully cut peak hadcaught the first ray of the sun, and burned with a rosy glow. Somegreat clouds drifted high in the air: the summits of the Breithorn,the Lyscamm, and their companions, lay cold and white; but the snowdown their sides had a tinge of pink. When I stood upon the summitof the Gorner-Grat, the two prominent silver peaks of Monte Rosa werejust touched with the sun, and its great snow-fields were visible tothe glacier at its base. The Gorner-Grat is a rounded ridge of rock,entirely encirled by glaciers and snow-peaks. The panorama from itis unexcelled in Switzerland.

Returning down the rocky steep, I descried, solitary in that greatwaste of rock and snow, the form of a lady whom I supposed I had leftsleeping at the inn, overcome with the fatigue of yesterday's tramp.Lured on by the apparently short distance to the backbone of theridge, she had climbed the rocks a mile or more above the hotel, andcome to meet me. She also had seen the great peaks lift themselvesout of the gray dawn, and Monte Rosa catch the first rays. We stoodawhile together to see how jocund day ran hither and thither alongthe mountain-tops, until the light was all abroad, and then silentlyturned downward, as one goes from a mount of devotion.

THE BATHS OF LEUK

In order to make the pass of the Gemmi, it is necessary to go throughthe Baths of Leuk. The ascent from the Rhone bridge at Susten isfull of interest, affording fine views of the valley, which is betterto look at than to travel through, and bringing you almostimmediately to the old town of Leuk, a queer, old, towered place,perched on a precipice, with the oddest inn, and a notice posted upto the effect, that any one who drives through its steep streetsfaster than a walk will be fined five francs. I paid nothing extrafor a fast walk. The road, which is one of the best in the country,is a wonderful piece of engineering, spanning streams, cut in rock,rounding precipices, following the wild valley of the Dala by many awinding and zigzag.

The Baths of Leuk, or Loeche-les-Bains, or Leukerbad, is a littlevillage at the very head of the valley, over four thousand feet abovethe sea, and overhung by the perpendicular walls of the Gemmi, whichrise on all sides, except the south, on an average of two thousandfeet above it. There is a nest of brown houses, clustered togetherlike bee-hives, into which the few inhabitants creep to hibernate inthe long winters, and several shops, grand hotels, and bathing-housesopen for the season. Innumerable springs issue out of this green,sloping meadow among the mountains, some of them icy cold, but overtwenty of them hot, and seasoned with a great many disagreeablesulphates, carbonates, and oxides, and varying in temperature fromninety-five to one hundred and twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit.Italians, French, and Swiss resort here in great numbers to take thebaths, which are supposed to be very efficacious for rheumatism andcutaneous affections. Doubtless many of them do up their bathing forthe year while here; and they may need no more after scalding andsoaking in this water for a couple of months.

Before we reached the hotel, we turned aside into one of thebath-houses. We stood inhaling a sickly steam in a large, closehall, which was wholly occupied by a huge vat, across which lowpartitions, with bridges, ran, dividing it into four compartments.When we entered, we were assailed with yells in many languages, andhowls in the common tongue, as if all the fiends of the pit hadbroken loose. We took off our hats in obedience to the demand; butthe clamor did not wholly subside, and was mingled with singing andhorrible laughter. Floating about in each vat, we at first sawtwenty or thirty human heads. The women could be distinguished fromthe men by the manner of dressing the hair. Each wore a loose woolengown. Each had a little table floating before him or her, which heor she pushed about at pleasure. One wore a hideous mask; anotherkept diving in the opaque pool and coming up to blow, like thehippopotamus in the Zoological Gardens; some were taking a lunch fromtheir tables, others playing chess; some sitting on the benches roundthe edges, with only heads out of water, as doleful as owls, whileothers roamed about, engaged in the game of spattering with theircomrades, and sang and shouted at the top of their voices. Thepeople in this bath were said to be second class; but they looked aswell and behaved better than those of the first class, whom we saw inthe establishment at our hotel afterward.

It may be a valuable scientific fact, that the water in these vats,in which people of all sexes, all diseases, and all nations spend somany hours of the twenty-four, is changed once a day. Thetemperature at which the bath is given is ninety-eight. The water islet in at night, and allowed to cool. At five in the morning, thebathers enter it, and remain until ten o'clock,—five hours, havingbreakfast served to them on the floating tables, "as they sail, asthey sail." They then have a respite till two, and go in till five.Eight hours in hot water! Nothing can be more disgusting than thesight of these baths. Gustave Dore must have learned here how tomake those ghostly pictures of the lost floating about in the Stygianpools, in his illustrations of the Inferno; and the rocks andcavernous precipices may have enabled him to complete the picture.On what principle cures are effected in these filthy vats, I couldnot learn. I have a theory, that, where so many diseases meet andmingle in one swashing fluid, they neutralize each other. It may bethat the action is that happily explained by one of the Hibernianbathmen in an American water-cure establishment. "You see, sir,"said he, "that the shock of the water unites with the electricity ofthe system, and explodes the disease." I should think that the shockto one's feeling of decency and cleanliness, at these baths, wouldexplode any disease in Europe. But, whatever the result may be, I amnot sorry to see so many French and Italians soak themselves once ayear.

Out of the bath these people seem to enjoy life. There is a longpromenade, shaded and picturesque, which they take at evening,sometimes as far as the Ladders, eight of which are fastened, in ashackling manner, to the perpendicular rocks,—a high and somewhatdangerous ascent to the village of Albinen, but undertaken constantlyby peasants with baskets on their backs. It is in winter the onlymode Leukerbad has of communicating with the world; and in summer itis the only way of reaching Albinen, except by a long journey downthe Dala and up another valley and height. The bathers werecertainly very lively and social at table-d'hote, where we had thepleasure of meeting some hundred of them, dressed. It was presumedthat the baths were the subject of the entertaining conversation; forI read in a charming little work which sets forth the delights ofLeuk, that La poussee forms the staple of most of the talk. Lapoussee, or, as this book poetically calls it, "that daughter of thewaters of Loeche," "that eruption of which we have already spoken,and which proves the action of the baths upon the skin,"—becomes theobject, and often the end, of all conversation. And it givesspecimens of this pleasant converse, as:

"Comment va votre poussee?"

"Avez-vous la poussee?"

"Je suis en pleine poussee"

"Ma poussee s'est fort bien passee!"

Indeed says this entertaining tract, sans poussee, one would not beable to hold, at table or in the salon, with a neighbor of eithersex, the least conversation. Further, it is by grace a la pousseethat one arrives at those intimacies which are the characteristics ofthe baths. Blessed, then, be La poussee, which renders possible sucha high society and such select and entertaining conversation! Longmay the bathers of Leuk live to soak and converse! In the morning,when we departed for the ascent of the Gemmi, we passed one of thebathing-houses. I fancied that a hot steam issued out of thecrevices; from within came a discord of singing and caterwauling;and, as a door swung open, I saw that the heads floating about on theturbid tide were eating breakfast from the swimming tables.

OVER THE GEMMI

I spent some time, the evening before, studying the face of the cliffwe were to ascend, to discover the path; but I could only trace itszigzag beginning. When we came to the base of the rock, we found away cut, a narrow path, most of the distance hewn out of the rock,winding upward along the face of the precipice. The view, as onerises, is of the break-neck description. The way is really safeenough, even on mule-back, ascending; but one would be foolhardy toride down. We met a lady on the summit who was about to be carrieddown on a chair; and she seemed quite to like the mode of conveyance:she had harnessed her husband in temporarily for one of the bearers,which made it still more jolly for her. When we started, a cloud ofmist hung over the edge of the rocks. As we rose, it descended tomeet us, and sunk below, hiding the valley and its houses, which hadlooked like Swiss toys from our height. When we reached the summit,the mist came boiling up after us, rising like a thick wall to thesky, and hiding all that great mountain range, the Vallais Alps, fromwhich we had come, and which we hoped to see from this point.Fortunately, there were no clouds on the other side, and we lookeddown into a magnificent rocky basin, encircled by broken andovertopping crags and snow-fields, at the bottom of which was a greenlake. It is one of the wildest of scenes.

An hour from the summit, we came to a green Alp, where a herd of cowswere feeding; and in the midst of it were three or four dirtychalets, where pigs, chickens, cattle, and animals constructed verymuch like human beings, lived; yet I have nothing to say againstthese chalets, for we had excellent cream there. We had, on the waydown, fine views of the snowy Altels, the Rinderhorn, theFinster-Aarhorn, a deep valley which enormous precipices guard, butwhich avalanches nevertheless invade, and, farther on, of theBlumlisalp, with its summit of crystalline whiteness. The descent toKandersteg is very rapid, and in a rain slippery. This village is aresort for artists for its splendid views of the range we had crossed:it stands at the gate of the mountains. From there to the Lake of Thunis a delightful drive,—a rich country, with handsome cottages and acharming landscape, even if the pyramidal Niesen did not lift up itsseven thousand feet on the edge of the lake. So, through a smilingland, and in the sunshine after the rain, we come to Spiez, and findourselves at a little hotel on the slope, overlooking town and lakeand mountains.

Spiez is not large: indeed, its few houses are nearly allpicturesquely grouped upon a narrow rib of land which is thrust intothe lake on purpose to make the loveliest picture in the world.There is the old castle, with its many slim spires and itssquare-peaked roofed tower; the slender-steepled church; a fringe ofold houses below on the lake, one overhanging towards the point; andthe promontory, finished by a willo drooping to the water. Beyond, inhazy light, over the lucid green of the lake, are mountains whosemasses of rock seem soft and sculptured. To the right, at the foot ofthe lake, tower the great snowy mountains, the cone of theSchreckhorn, the square top of the Eiger, the Jungfrau, just showingover the hills, and the Blumlisalp rising into heaven clear andsilvery.

What can one do in such a spot, but swim in the lake, lie on theshore, and watch the passing steamers and the changing light on themountains? Down at the wharf, when the small boats put off for thesteamer, one can well entertain himself. The small boat is anenormous thing, after all, and propelled by two long, heavy sweeps,one of which is pulled, and the other pushed. The laboring oar is,of course, pulled by a woman; while her husband stands up in thestern of the boat, and gently dips the other in a gallant fashion.There is a boy there, whom I cannot make out,—a short, square boy,with tasseled skull-cap, and a face that never changes itsexpression, and never has any expression to change; he may be olderthan these hills; he looks old enough to be his own father: and thereis a girl, his counterpart, who might be, judging her age by herface, the mother of both of them. These solemn old-young people arequite busy doing nothing about the wharf, and appear to be afflictedwith an undue sense of the responsibility of life. There is abeer-garden here, where several sober couples sit seriously drinkingtheir beer. There are some horrid old women, with the parchment skinand the disagreeable necks. Alone, in a window of the castle, sits alady at her work, who might be the countess; only, I am sorry, thereis no countess, nothing but a frau, in that old feudal dwelling. Andthere is a foreigner, thinking how queer it all is. And while hesits there, the melodious bell in the church-tower rings its eveningsong.

BAVARIA.

AMERICAN IMPATIENCE

We left Switzerland, as we entered it, in a rain,—a kind of doublebaptism that may have been necessary, and was certainly not too heavya price to pay for the privileges of the wonderful country. The windblew freshly, and swept a shower over the deck of the littlesteamboat, on board of which we stepped from the shabby little pierand town of Romanshorn. After the other Swiss lakes, Constance istame, except at the southern end, beyond which rise the Appenzellrange and the wooded peaks of the Bavarian hills. Through the dashof rain, and under the promise of a magnificent rainbow,—rainbowsdon't mean anything in Switzerland, and have no office asweather-prophets, except to assure you, that, as it rains to-day, soit will rain tomorrow,—we skirted the lower bend of the lake,—andat twilight sailed into the little harbor of Lindau, through thenarrow entrance between the piers, on one of which is a smalllighthouse, and on the other sits upright a gigantic stone lion,—a fine enough figure of a Bavarian lion, but with a comical,wide-awake, and expectant expression of countenance, as if he mightbark right out at any minute, and become a dog. Yet in themoonlight, shortly afterward, the lion looked very grand and stately,as he sat regarding the softly plashing waves, and the high, driftingclouds, and the old Roman tower by the bridge which connects theIsland of Lindau with the mainland, and thinking perhaps, if stonelions ever do think, of the time when Roman galleys sailed on LakeConstance, and when Lindau was an imperial town with a thrivingtrade.

On board the little steamer was an American, accompanied by twoladies, and traveling, I thought, for their gratification, who wasvery anxious to get on faster than he was able to do,—though why anyone should desire to go fast in Europe I do not know. One easilyfalls into the habit of the country, to take things easily, to gowhen the slow German fates will, and not to worry one's selfbeforehand about times and connections. But the American was in afever of impatience, desirous, if possible, to get on that night. Iknew he was from the Land of the Free by a phrase I heard him use inthe cars: he said, "I'll bet a dollar." Yet I must flatter myselfthat Americans do not always thus betray themselves. I happened, onthe Isle of Wight, to hear a bland landlord "blow up" hisglib-tongued son because the latter had not driven a stifferbargain with us for the hire of a carriage round the island.

"Didn't you know they were Americans?" asks the irate father. "Iknew it at once."

"No," replies young hopeful: "they didn't say GUESS once."

And straightway the fawning-innkeeper returns to us, professing, withhis butter-lips, the greatest admiration of all Americans, and theintensest anxiety to serve them, and all for pure good-will. TheEnglish are even more bloodthirsty at sight of a travelere than theSwiss, and twice as obsequious. But to return to our American. Hehad all the railway timetables that he could procure; and he wasbusily studying them, with the design of "getting on." I heard himsay to his companions, as he ransacked his pockets, that he was amass of hotel-bills and timetables. He confided to me afterward,that his wife and her friend had got it into their heads that theymust go both to Vienna and Berlin. Was Berlin much out of the way ingoing from Vienna to Paris? He said they told him it was n't. Atany rate, he must get round at such a date: he had no time to spare.Then, besides the slowness of getting on, there were the trunks. Helost a trunk in Switzerland, and consumed a whole day in looking itup. While the steamboat lay at the wharf at Rorschach, two stoutporters came on board, and shouldered his baggage to take it ashore.To his remonstrances in English they paid no heed; and it was sometime before they could be made to understand that the trunks were togo on to Lindau. "There," said he, "I should have lost my trunks.Nobody understands what I tell them: I can't get any information."Especially was he unable to get any information as to how to "geton." I confess that the restless American almost put me into afidget, and revived the American desire to "get on," to take the fasttrains, make all the connections,—in short, in the handsome languageof the great West, to "put her through." When I last saw ourtraveler, he was getting his luggage through the custom-house, stillundecided whether to push on that night at eleven o'clock. But Iforgot all about him and his hurry when, shortly after, we sat at thetable-d'hote at the hotel, and the sedate Germans lit their cigars,some of them before they had finished eating, and sat smoking as ifthere were plenty of leisure for everything in this world.

A CITY OF COLOR

After a slow ride, of nearly eight hours, in what, in Germany, iscalled an express train, through a rain and clouds that hid from ourview the Tyrol and the Swabian mountains, over a rolling, pleasantcountry, past pretty little railway station-houses, covered withvines, gay with flowers in the windows, and surrounded with beds offlowers, past switchmen in flaming scarlet jackets, who stand at theswitches and raise the hand to the temple, and keep it there, in amilitary salute, as we go by, we come into old Augsburg, whoseConfession is not so fresh in our minds as it ought to be. Portionsof the ancient wall remain, and many of the towers; and there arearchways, picturesquely opening from street to street, under severalof which we drive on our way to the Three Moors, a stately hostelryand one of the oldest in Germany.

It stood here in the year 1500; and the room is still shown,unchanged since then, in which the rich Count Fugger entertainedCharles V. The chambers are nearly all immense. That in which weare lodged is large enough for Queen Victoria; indeed, I am glad tosay that her sleeping-room at St. Cloud was not half so spacious.One feels either like a count, or very lonesome, to sit down in alofty chamber, say thirty-five feet square, with little furniture,and historical and tragical life-size figures staring at one from thewall-paper. One fears that they may come down in the deep night, andstand at the bedside,—those narrow, canopied beds there in thedistance, like the marble couches in the cathedral. It must be afearful thing to be a royal person, and dwell in a palace, withresounding rooms and naked, waxed, inlaid floors. At the Three Moorsone sees a visitors' book, begun in 1800, which contains the names ofmany noble and great people, as well as poets and doctors and titledladies, and much sentimental writing in French. It is my impression,from an inspection of the book, that we are the first untitledvisitors.

The traveler cannot but like Augsburg at once, for its quaint houses,colored so diversely and yet harmoniously. Remains of its formerbrilliancy yet exist in the frescoes on the outside of the buildings,some of which are still bright in color, though partially defaced.Those on the House of Fugger have been restored, and are very bravepictures. These frescoes give great animation and life to theappearance of a street, and I am glad to see a taste for themreviving. Augsburg must have been very gay with them two and threehundred years ago, when, also, it was the home of beautiful women ofthe middle class, who married princes. We went to see the house inwhich lived the beautiful Agnes Bernauer, daughter of a barber, whomarried Duke Albert III. of Bavaria. The house was nought, as oldSamuel Pepys would say, only a high stone building, in a block ofsuch; but it is enough to make a house attractive for centuries if apretty woman once looks out of its latticed windows, as I have nodoubt Agnes often did when the duke and his retinue rode by inclanking armor.

But there is no lack of reminders of old times. The cathedral, whichwas begun before the Christian era could express its age with fourfigures, has two fine portals, with quaint carving, and bronze doorsof very old work, whereon the story of Eve and the serpent isliterally given,—a representation of great theological, if of smallartistic value. And there is the old clock and watch tower, whichfor eight hundred years has enabled the Augsburgers to keep the timeof day and to look out over the plain for the approach of an enemy.The city is full of fine bronze fountains some of them of veryelaborate design, and adding a convenience and a beauty to the townwhich American cities wholly want. In one quarter of the town is theFuggerei, a little city by itself, surrounded by its own wall, thegates of which are shut at night, with narrow streets and neat littlehouses. It was built by Hans Jacob Fugger the Rich, as long ago as1519, and is still inhabited by indigent Roman-Catholic families,according to the intention of its founder. In the windows werelovely flowers. I saw in the street several of those mysterious,short, old women,—so old and yet so little, all body and hardly anylegs, who appear to have grown down into the ground with advancingyears.

It happened to be a rainy day, and cold, on the 30th of July, when weleft Augsburg; and the flat fields through which we passed wereuninviting under the gray light. Large flocks of geese were feedingon the windy plains, tended by boys and women, who are the livingfences of this country. I no longer wonder at the number offeather-beds at the inns, under which we are apparently expected tosleep even in the warmest nights. Shepherds with the regulationcrooks also were watching herds of sheep. Here and there a clusterof red-roofed houses were huddled together into a village, and in alldirections rose tapering spires. Especially we marked the steeple ofBlenheim, where Jack Churchill won the name for his magnificentcountry-seat, early in the eighteenth century. All this plain wherethe silly geese feed has been marched over and fought over by armiestime and again. We effect the passage of, the Danube withoutdifficulty, and on to Harburg, a little town of little red houses,inhabited principally by Jews, huddled under a rocky ridge, upon thesummit of which is a picturesque medieval castle, with many towersand turrets, in as perfect preservation as when feudal flags floatedover it. And so on, slowly, with long stops at many stations, togive opportunity, I suppose, for the honest passengers to take insupplies of beer and sausages, to Nuremberg.

A CITY LIVING ON THE PAST

Nuremberg, or Nurnberg, was built, I believe, about the beginning oftime. At least, in an old black-letter history of the city which Ihave seen, illustrated with powerful wood-cuts, the firstrepresentation is that of the creation of the world, which isimmediately followed by another of Nuremberg. No one who visits itis likely to dispute its antiquity. "Nobody ever goes to Nurembergbut Americans," said a cynical British officer at Chamouny; "but theyalways go there. I never saw an American who had n't been or was notgoing to Nuremberg." Well, I suppose they wish to see theoldest-looking, and, next to a true Briton on his travels, the oddestthing on the Continent. The city lives in the past still, and on itsmemories, keeping its old walls and moat entire, and nearly fourscorewall-towers, in stern array. But grass grows in the moat, fruittrees thrive there, and vines clamber on the walls. One wandersabout in the queer streets with the feeling of being transported backto the Middle Ages; but it is difficult to reproduce the impressionon paper. Who can describe the narrow and intricate ways; the oddhouses with many little gables; great roofs breaking out from eavesto ridgepole, with dozens of dormer-windows; hanging balconies ofstone, carved and figure-beset, ornamented and frescoed fronts; thearchways, leading into queer courts and alleys, and out again intobroad streets; the towers and fantastic steeples; and the many oldbridges, with obelisks and memorials of triumphal entries ofconquerors and princes?

The city, as I said, lives upon the memory of what it has been, andtrades upon relics of its former fame. What it would have beenwithout Albrecht Durer, and Adam Kraft the stone-mason, and PeterVischer the bronze-worker, and Viet Stoss who carved in wood, andHans Sachs the shoemaker and poet-minstrel, it is difficult to say.Their statues are set up in the streets; their works still live inthe churches and city buildings,—pictures, and groups in stone andwood; and their statues, in all sorts of carving, are reproduced, bigand little, in all the shop-windows, for sale. So, literally, thecity is full of the memory of them; and the business of the city,aside from its manufactory of endless, curious toys, seems to consistin reproducing them and their immortal works to sell to strangers.

Other cities project new things, and grow with a modern impetus:Nuremberg lives in the past, and traffics on its ancient reputation.Of course, we went to see the houses where these old worthies lived,and the works of art they have left behind them,—things seen anddescribed by everybody. The stone carving about the church portalsand on side buttresses is inexpressibly quaint and naive. Thesubjects are sacred; and with the sacred is mingled the comic, hereas at Augsburg, where over one portal of the cathedral, with saintsand angels, monkeys climb and gibber. A favorite subject is that ofour Lord praying in the Garden, while the apostles, who could notwatch one hour, are sleeping in various attitudes of stonycomicality. All the stone-cutters seem to have tried their chiselson this group, and there are dozens of them. The wise and foolishvirgins also stand at the church doors in time-stained stone,—theone with a perked-up air of conscious virtue, and the other with apenitent dejection that seems to merit better treatment. Over thegreat portal of St. Lawrence—a magnificent structure, with loftytwin spires and glorious rosewindow is carved "The Last Judgment."Underneath, the dead are climbing out of their stone coffins; abovesits the Judge, with the attending angels. On the right hand go awaythe stiff, prim saints, in flowing robes, and with palms and harps,up steps into heaven, through a narrow door which St. Peter opens forthem; while on the left depart the wicked, with wry faces anddistorted forms, down into the stone flames, towards which the Devilis dragging them by their stony hair.

The interior of the Church of St. Lawrence is richer than any other Iremember, with its magnificent pillars of dark red stone, rising andfoliating out to form the roof; its splendid windows of stainedglass, glowing with sacred story; a high gallery of stone entirelyround the choir, and beautiful statuary on every column. Here, too,is the famous Sacrament House of honest old Adam Kraft, the mostexquisite thing I ever saw in stone. The color is light gray; and itrises beside one of the dark, massive pillars, sixty-four feet,growing to a point, which then strikes the arch of the roof, andthere curls up like a vine to avoid it. The base is supported by thekneeling figures of Adam Kraft and two fellow-workmen, who labored onit for four years. Above is the Last Supper, Christ blessing littlechildren, and other beautiful tableaux in stone. The Gothic spiregrows up and around these, now and then throwing out gracefultendrils, like a vine, and seeming to be rather a living plant thaninanimate stone. The faithful artist evidently had this feeling forit; for, as it grew under his hands, he found that it would strikethe roof, or he must sacrifice something of its graceful proportion.So his loving and daring genius suggested the happy design of lettingit grow to its curving, graceful completeness.

He who travels by a German railway needs patience and a fullhaversack. Time is of no value. The rate of speed of the trains isso slow, that one sometimes has a desire to get out and walk, and thestoppages at the stations seem eternal; but then we must rememberthat it is a long distance to the bottom of a great mug of beer. Weleft Lindau on one of the usual trains at half-past five in themorning, and reached Augsburg at one o'clock in the afternoon: thedistance cannot be more than a hundred miles. That is quicker thanby diligence, and one has leisure to see the country as he jogsalong. There is nothing more sedate than a German train in motion;nothing can stand so dead still as a German train at a station. Butthere are express trains.

We were on one from Augsburg to Nuremberg, and I think must have runtwenty miles an hour. The fare on the express trains is one fifthhigher than on the others. The cars are all comfortable; and theofficials, who wear a good deal of uniform, are much more civil andobliging than officials in a country where they do not wear uniforms.So, not swiftly, but safely and in good-humor, we rode to the capitalof Bavaria.

OUTSIDE ASPECTS OF MUNICH

I saw yesterday, on the 31st of August, in the English Garden, deadleaves whirling down to the ground, a too evident sign that thesummer weather is going. Indeed, it has been sour, chilly weatherfor a week now, raining a little every day, and with a very autumnfeeling in the air. The nightly concerts in the beer-gardens musthave shivering listeners, if the bands do not, as many of them do,play within doors. The line of droschke drivers, in front of thepost-office colonnade, hide the red facings of their coats under longovercoats, and stand in cold expectancy beside their blanketedhorses, which must need twice the quantity of black-bread in thischilly air; for the horses here eat bread, like people. I see thedrivers every day slicing up the black loaves, and feeding them,taking now and then a mouthful themselves, wetting it down with apull from the mug of beer that stands within reach. And lastly (I amstill speaking of the weather), the gay military officers come abroadin long cloaks, to some extent concealing their manly forms and smartuniforms, which I am sure they would not do, except under thepressure of necessity.

Yet I think this raw weather is not to continue. It is only a roughvisit from the Tyrol, which will give place to kinder influences. Wecame up here from hot Switzerland at the end of July, expecting tofind Munich a furnace. It will be dreadful in Munich everybody said.So we left Luzerne, where it was warm, not daring to stay till theexpected rival sun, Victoria of England, should make the heatoverpowering. But the first week of August in Munich it wasdelicious weather,—clear, sparkling, bracing air, with no chill init and no languor in it, just as you would say it ought to be on ahigh, gravelly plain, seventeen hundred feet above the sea. Thencame a week of what the Muncheners call hot weather, with thethermometer up to eighty degrees Fahrenheit, and the white widestreets and gray buildings in a glare of light; since then, weatherof the most uncertain sort.

Munich needs the sunlight. Not that it cannot better spare it thangrimy London; for its prevailing color is light gray, and itsmany-tinted and frescoed fronts go far to relieve the most cheerlessday. Yet Munich attempts to be an architectural reproduction ofclassic times; and, in order to achieve any success in thisdirection, it is necessary to have the blue heavens and goldensunshine of Greece. The old portion of the city has some remains ofthe Gothic, and abounds in archways and rambling alleys, thatsuddenly become broad streets and then again contract to the width ofan alderman, and portions of the old wall and city gates; old feudaltowers stand in the market-place, and faded frescoes on oldclock-faces and over archways speak of other days of splendor.

But the Munich of to-day is as if built to order,—raised in a day bythe command of one man. It was the old King Ludwig I., whoseflower-wreathed bust stands in these days in the vestibule of theGlyptothek, in token of his recent death, who gave the impulse forall this, though some of the best buildings and streets in the cityhave been completed by his successors. The new city is laid out on amagnificent scale of distances, with wide streets, fine, opensquares, plenty of room for gardens, both public and private; and theart buildings and art monuments are well distributed; in fact, many astately building stands in such isolation that it seems to ask everypasser what it was put there for. Then, again, some of the newadornments lack fitness of location or purpose. At the end of thebroad, monotonous Ludwig Strasse, and yet not at the end, for theroad runs straight on into the flat country between rows of slendertrees, stands the Siegesthor, or Gate of Victory, an imitation of theConstantine arch at Rome. It is surmounted by a splendid group inbronze, by Schwanthaler, Bavaria in her war-chariot, drawn by fourlions; and it is in itself, both in its proportions and its numeroussculptural figures and bas-reliefs, a fine recognition of the valor"of the Bavarian army," to whom it is erected. Yet it is so dwarfedby its situation, that it seems to have been placed in the middle ofthe street as an obstruction. A walk runs on each side of it. ThePropylaeum, another magnificent gateway, thrown across the handsomeBrienner Strasse, beyond the Glyptothek, is an imitation of that onthe Acropolis at Athens. It has fine Doric columns on the outside,and Ionic within, and the pediment groups are bas-reliefs, bySchwanthaler, representing scenes in modern Greek history. Thepassageways for carriages are through the side arches; and thus the"sidewalk" runs into the center of the street, and foot-passers musttwice cross the carriage-drive in going through the gate. Suchthings as these give one the feeling that art has been forced beyonduse in Munich; and it is increased when one wanders through the newchurches, palaces, galleries, and finds frescoes so prodigallycrowded out of the way, and only occasionally opened rooms sooverloaded with them, and not always of the best, as to sacrifice alleffect, and leave one with the sense that some demon of unrest hasdriven painters and sculptors and plasterers, night and day, to adornthe city at a stroke; at least, to cover it with paint and bedeck itwith marbles, and to do it at once, leaving nothing for the sweetgrowth and blossoming of time.

You see, it is easy to grumble, and especially in a cheerful, open,light, and smiling city, crammed with works Of art, ancient andmodern, its architecture a study of all styles, and its foaming beer,said by antiquarians to be a good deal better than the mead drunk inOdin's halls, only seven and a half kreuzers the quart. Munich hasso much, that it, of course, contains much that can be criticised.The long, wide Ludwig Strasse is a street of palaces,—a street builtup by the old king, and regarded by him with great pride. But allthe buildings are in the Romanesque style,—a repetition of oneanother to a monotonous degree: only at the lower end are there anyshops or shop-windows, and a more dreary promenade need not beimagined. It has neither shade nor fountains; and on a hot day youcan see how the sun would pour into it, and blind the passers. Butfew ever walk there at any time. A street that leads nowhere, andhas no gay windows, does not attract. Toward the lower end, in theOdeon Platz, is the equestrian statue of Ludwig, a royally commandingfigure, with a page on either side. The street is closed (so that itflows off on either side into streets of handsome shops) by theFeldherrnhalle, Hall of the Generals, an imitation of the beautifulLoggia dei Lanzi, at Florence, that as yet contains only two statues,which seem lost in it. Here at noon, with parade of infantry, comesa military band to play for half an hour; and there are always plentyof idlers to listen to them. In the high arcade a colony of doves isdomesticated; and I like to watch them circling about and wheelinground the spires of the over-decorated Theatine church opposite, andperching on the heads of the statues on the facade.

The royal palace, near by, is a huddle of buildings and courts, thatI think nobody can describe or understand, built at different timesand in imitation of many styles. The front, toward the Hof Garden, agrassless square of small trees, with open arcades on two sides forshops, and partially decorated with frescoes of landscapes andhistorical subjects, is "a building of festive halls," a facade eighthundred feet long, in the revived Italian style, and with a fineIonic porch. The color is the royal, dirty yellow.

On the Max Joseph Platz, which has a bronze statue of King Max, aseated figure, and some elaborate bas-reliefs, is another front ofthe palace, the Konigsbau, an imitation, not fully carried out, ofthe Pitti Palace, at Florence. Between these is the old Residenz,adorned with fountain groups and statues in bronze. On another sideare the church and theater of the Residenz. The interior of thiscourt chapel is dazzling in appearance: the pillars are, I think,imitation of variegated marble; the sides are imitation of the same;the vaulting is covered with rich frescoes on gold ground. The wholeeffect is rich, but it is not at all sacred. Indeed, there is nochurch in Munich, except the old cathedral, the Frauenkirche, withits high Gothic arches, stained windows, and dusty old carvings, thatgives one at all the sort of feeling that it is supposed a churchshould give. The court chapel interior is boastingly said toresemble St. Mark's, in Venice.

You see how far imitation of the classic and Italian is carried herein Munich; so, as I said, the buildings need the southern sunlight.Fortunately, they get the right quality much of the time. TheGlyptothek, a Grecian structure of one story, erected to hold thetreasures of classic sculpture that King Ludwig collected, has abeautiful Ionic porch and pediment. On the outside are niches filledwith statues. In the pure sunshine and under a deep blue sky, itswhite marble glows with an almost ethereal beauty. Opposite standsanother successful imitation of the Grecian style of architecture,—abuilding with a Corinthian porch, also of white marble. These, withthe Propylaeum, before mentioned, come out wonderfully against a bluesky. A few squares distant is the Pinakothek, with its treasures ofold pictures, and beyond it the New Pinakothek, containing works ofmodern artists. Its exterior is decorated with frescoes, fromdesigns by Kaulbach: these certainly appear best in a sparklinglight; though I am bound to say that no light can make very much ofthem.

Yet Munich is not all imitation. Its finest street, the Maximilian,built by the late king of that name, is of a novel and wholly modernstyle of architecture, not an imitation, though it may remind some ofthe new portions of Paris. It runs for three quarters of a mile,beginning with the postoffice and its colonnades, with frescoes onone side, and the Hof Theater, with its pediment frescoes, thelargest opera-house in Germany, I believe; with stately buildingsadorned with statues, and elegant shops, down to the swift-flowingIsar, which is spanned by a handsome bridge; or rather by twobridges, for the Isar is partly turned from its bed above, and madeto turn wheels, and drive machinery. At the lower end the streetexpands into a handsome platz, with young shade trees, plats ofgrass, and gay beds of flowers. I look out on it as I write; and Isee across the Isar the college building begun by Maximilian for theeducation of government officers; and I see that it is stillunfinished, indeed, a staring mass of brick, with unsightlyscaffolding and gaping windows. Money was left to complete it; butthe young king, who does not care for architecture, keeps only amason or two on the brick-work, and an artist on the exteriorfrescoes. At this rate, the Cologne Cathedral will be finished anddecay before this is built. On either side of it, on the elevatedbank of the river, stretch beautiful grounds, with green lawns, finetrees, and well-kept walks.

Not to mention the English Garden, in speaking of the outside aspectsof the city, would be a great oversight. It was laid out originallyby the munificent American, Count Rumford, and is called English, Isuppose, because it is not in the artificial Continental style.Paris has nothing to compare with it for natural beauty,—Paris,which cannot let a tree grow, but must clip it down to suit Frenchtaste. It is a noble park four miles in length, and perhaps aquarter of that in width,—a park of splendid old trees, grand,sweeping avenues, open glades of free-growing grass, with delicious,shady walks, charming drives and rivers of water. For the Isar istrained to flow through it in two rapid streams, under bridges andover rapids, and by willow-hung banks. There is not wanting even alake; and there is, I am sorry to say, a temple on a mound, quite inthe classic style, from which one can see the sun set behind the manyspires of Munich. At the Chinese Tower two military bands play everySaturday evening in the summer; and thither the carriages drive, andthe promenaders assemble there, between five and six o'clock; andwhile the bands play, the Germans drink beer, and smoke cigars, andthe fashionably attired young men walk round and round the, circle,and the smart young soldiers exhibit their handsome uniforms, andstride about with clanking swords.

We felicitated ourselves that we should have no lack of music when wecame to Munich. I think we have not; though the opera has only justbegun, and it is the vacation of the Conservatoire. There are firstthe military bands: there is continually a parade somewhere, and thestreets are full of military music, and finely executed too. Then ofbeer-gardens there is literally no end, and there are nightlyconcerts in them. There are two brothers Hunn, each with his band,who, like the ancient Huns, have taken the city; and its gardens aregiven over to their unending waltzes, polkas, and opera medleys.Then there is the church music on Sundays and holidays, which islargely of a military character; at least, has the aid of drums andtrumpets, and the whole band of brass. For the first few days of ourstay here we had rooms near the Maximilian Platz and the Karl's Thor.I think there was some sort of a yearly fair in progress, for thegreat platz was filled with temporary booths: a circus had set itselfup there, and there were innumerable side-shows and lottery-stands;and I believe that each little shanty and puppet-show had its band orfraction of a band, for there was never heard such a tooting andblowing and scraping, such a pounding and dinning and slang-whanging,since the day of stopping work on the Tower of Babel. The circusband confined itself mostly to one tune; and as it went all day long,and late into the night, we got to know it quite well; at least, thebass notes of it, for the lighter tones came to us indistinctly. Youknow that blurt, blurt, thump, thump, dissolute sort of caravan tune.That was it.

The English Cafe was not far off, and there the Hunns and others alsomade night melodious. The whole air was one throb and thrump. Theonly refuge from it was to go into one of the gardens, and giveyourself over to one band. And so it was possible to have delightfulmusic, and see the honest Germans drink beer, and gossip in friendlyfellowship and with occasional hilarity. But music we had, early andlate. We expected quiet in our present quarters. The first morning,at six o'clock, we were startled by the resonant notes of a militaryband, that set the echoes flying between the houses, and a regimentof cavalry went clanking down the street. But that is a notunwelcome morning serenade and reveille. Not so agreeable is theyoung man next door, who gives hilarious concerts to his friends, andsings and bangs his piano all day Sunday; nor the screaming youngwoman opposite. Yet it is something to be in an atmosphere of music.

THE MILITARY LIFE OF MUNICH

This morning I was awakened early by the strains of a military band.It was a clear, sparkling morning, the air full of life, and yet thesun showing its warm, southern side. As the mounted musicians wentby, the square was quite filled with the clang of drum and trumpet,which became fainter and fainter, and at length was lost on the earbeyond the Isar, but preserved the perfection of time and theprecision of execution for which the military bands of the city areremarkable. After the band came a brave array of officers in brightuniform, upon horses that pranced and curveted in the sunshine; andthe regiment of cavalry followed, rank on rank of splendidly mountedmen, who ride as if born to the saddle. The clatter of hoofs on thepavement, the jangle of bit and saber, the occasional word ofcommand, the onward sweep of the well-trained cavalcade, continuedfor a long time, as if the lovely morning had brought all the cavalryin the city out of barracks. But this is an almost daily sight inMunich. One regiment after another goes over the river to thedrill-ground. In the hot mornings I used quite to pity the trooperswho rode away in the glare in scorching brazen helmets andbreastplates. But only a portion of the regiments dress in thatabsurd manner. The most wear a simple uniform, and look verysoldierly. The horses are almost invariably fine animals, and I havenot seen such riders in Europe. Indeed, everybody in Munich whorides at all rides well. Either most of the horsem*n have served inthe cavalry, or horsemanship, that noble art "to witch the world," isin high repute here.

Speaking of soldiers, Munich is full of them. There are huge casernsin every part of the city, crowded with troops. This little kingdomof Bavaria has a hundred and twenty thousand troops of the line.Every man is obliged to serve in the army continuously three years;and every man between the ages of twenty-one and forty-five must gowith his regiment into camp or barrack several weeks in each year, nomatter if the harvest rots in the field, or the customers desert theuncared-for shop. The service takes three of the best years of ayoung man's life. Most of the soldiers in Munich are young one meetshundreds of mere boys in the uniform of officers. I think everyseventh man you meet is a soldier. There must be between fifteen andtwenty thousand troops quartered in the city now. The young officersare everywhere, lounging in the cafes, smoking and sipping coffee, onall the public promenades, in the gardens, the theaters, thechurches. And most of them are fine-looking fellows, good figures inelegantly fitting and tasteful uniforms; but they do like to showtheir handsome forms and hear their sword-scabbards rattle on thepavement as they stride by. The beer-gardens are full of the commonsoldiers, who empty no end of quart mugs in alternate pulls from thesame earthen jug, with the utmost jollity and good fellowship. Onthe street, salutes between officers and men are perpetual,punctiliously given and returned,—the hand raised to the temple, andheld there for a second. A young gallant, lounging down theTheatiner or the Maximilian Strasse, in his shining and snug uniform,white kids, and polished boots, with jangling spurs and the longsword clanking on the walk, raising his hand ever and anon incondescending salute to a lower in rank, or with affable grace to anequal, is a sight worth beholding, and for which one cannot be toograteful. We have not all been created with the natural shape forsoldiers, but we have eyes given us that we may behold them.

Bavaria fought, you know, on the wrong side at Sadowa; but the resultof the war left her in confederation with Prussia. The company isgetting to be very distasteful, for Austria is at present moreliberal than Prussia. Under Prussia one must either be a soldier ora slave, the democrats of Munich say. Bavaria has the most liberalconstitution in Germany, except that of Wurtemberg, and the peopleare jealous of any curtailment of liberty. It seems odd that anybodyshould look to the house of Hapsburg for liberality. The attitude ofPrussia compels all the little states to keep up armies, which eat uptheir substance, and burden the people with taxes. This is the moreto be regretted now, when Bavaria is undergoing a peacefulrevolution, and throwing off the trammels of galling customs in otherrespects.

THE EMANCIPATION OF MUNICH

The 1st of September saw go into complete effect the laws enacted in1867, which have inaugurated the greatest changes in business andsocial life, and mark an era in the progress of the people worthy offetes and commemorative bronzes. We heard the other night at theopera-house "William Tell" unmutilated. For many years thisliberty-breathing opera was not permitted to be given in Bavaria,except with all the life of it cut out. It was first presented entireby order of young King Ludwig, who, they say, was induced to commandits unmutilated reproduction at the solicitation of Richard Wagner,who used to be, and very likely is now, a "Red," and was banished fromSaxony in 1848 for fighting on the people's side of a barricade inDresden. It is the fashion to say of the young king, that he pays noheed to the business of the kingdom. You hear that the handsome boycares only for music and horseback exercise: he plays much on theviolin, and rides away into the forest attended by only one groom, andis gone for days together. He has composed an opera, which has not yetbeen put on the stage. People, when they speak of him, tap theirforeheads with one finger. But I don't believe it. The same liberalitythat induced him, years ago, to restore "William Tell" to the stagehas characterized the government under him ever since.

Formerly no one could engage in any trade or business in Bavariawithout previous examination before, and permission from, amagistrate. If a boy wished to be a baker, for instance, he hadfirst to serve four years of apprenticeship. If then he wished toset up business for himself, he must get permission, after passing anexamination. This permission could rarely be obtained; for themagistrate usually decided that there were already as many bakers asthe town needed. His only other resource was to buy out an existingbusiness, and this usually costs a good deal. When he petitioned forthe privilege of starting a bakery, all the bakers protested. And hecould not even buy out a stand, and carry it on, without strictexamination as to qualifications. This was the case in every trade.And to make matters worse, a master workman could not employ ajourneyman out of his shop; so that, if a journeyman could not get aregular situation, he had no work. Then there were endlessrestrictions upon the manufacture and sale of articles: one personcould make only one article, or one portion of an article; one mightmanufacture shoes for women, but not for men; he might make anarticle in the shop and sell it, but could not sell it if any oneelse made it outside, or vice versa.

Nearly all this mass of useless restriction on trades and business,which palsied all effort in Bavaria, is removed. Persons are free toenter into any business they like. The system of apprenticeshipcontinues, but so modified as not to be oppressive; and all tradesare left to regulate themselves by natural competition. AlreadyMunich has felt the benefit of the removal of these restrictions,which for nearly a year has been anticipated, in a growth ofpopulation and increased business.

But the social change is still more important. The restrictions uponmarriage were a serious injury to the state. If Hans wished tomarry, and felt himself adequate to the burdens and responsibilitiesof the double state, and the honest fraulein was quite willing toundertake its trials and risks with him, it was not at all enoughthat in the moonlighted beergarden, while the band played, and theypeeled the stinging radish, and ate the Switzer cheese, and drankfrom one mug, she allowed his arm to steal around her stout waist.All this love and fitness went for nothing in the eyes of themagistrate, who referred the application for permission to marry tohis associate advisers, and they inquired into the applicant'scirc*mstances; and if, in their opinion, he was not worth enoughmoney to support a wife properly, permission was refused for him totry. The consequence was late marriages, and fewer than there oughtto be, and other ill results. Now the matrimonial gates are liftedhigh, and the young man has not to ask permission of any snuffy oldmagistrate to marry. I do not hear that the consent of the maidensis more difficult to obtain than formerly.

No city of its size is more prolific of pictures than Munich. I donot know how all its artists manage to live, but many of them countupon the American public. I hear everywhere that the Americans likethis, and do not like that; and I am sorry to say that some artists,who have done better things, paint professedly to suit Americans, andnot to express their own conceptions of beauty. There is one who isnow quite devoted to dashing off rather lamp-blacky moonlights,because, he says, the Americans fancy that sort of thing. I see oneof his smirchy pictures hanging in a shop window, awaiting the adventof the citizen of the United States. I trust that no word of minewill injure the sale of the moonlights. There are some excellentfigure-painters here, and one can still buy good modern pictures forreasonable prices.

FASHION IN THE STREETS

Was there ever elsewhere such a blue, transparent sky as this here inMunich? At noon, looking up to it from the street, above the grayhouses, the color and depth are marvelous. It makes a background forthe Grecian art buildings and gateways, that would cheat a risenAthenian who should see it into the belief that he was restored tohis beautiful city. The color holds, too, toward sundown, and seemsto be poured, like something solid, into the streets of the city.

You should see then the Maximilian Strasse, when the light floods theplatz where Maximilian in bronze sits in his chair, illuminates thefrescoes on the pediments of the Hof Theater, brightens the Pompeianred under the colonnade of the post-office, and streams down the gaythoroughfare to the trees and statues in front of the NationalMuseum, and into the gold-dusted atmosphere beyond the Isar. Thestreet is filled with promenaders: strangers who saunter along withthe red book in one hand,—a man and his wife, the woman draggedreluctantly past the windows of fancy articles, which are "so cheap,"the man breaking his neck to look up at the buildings, especially atthe comical heads and figures in stone that stretch out from thelittle oriel-windows in the highest story of the Four Seasons Hotel,and look down upon the moving throng; Munich bucks in coats ofvelvet, swinging light canes, and smoking cigars through long andelaborately carved meerschaum holders; Munich ladies in dresses ofthat inconvenient length that neither sweeps the pavement nor clearsit; peasants from the Tyrol, the men in black, tight breeches, thatbutton from the knee to the ankle, short jackets and vests setthickly with round silver buttons, and conical hats with feathers,and the women in short quilted and quilled petticoats, of barrel-likeroundness from the broad hips down, short waists ornamented withchains and barbarous brooches of white metal, with the oddesthead-gear of gold and silver heirlooms; students with little red orgreen embroidered brimless caps, with the ribbon across the breast, afolded shawl thrown over one shoulder, and the inevitableswitch-cane; porters in red caps, with a coil of twine about thewaist; young fellows from Bohemia, with green coats, or coats trimmedwith green, and green felt hats with a stiff feather stuck in theside; and soldiers by the hundreds, of all ranks and organizations;common fellows in blue, staring in at the shop windows, officers inresplendent uniforms, clanking their swords as they swagger past. Nowand then, an elegant equipage dashes by,—perhaps the four horses ofthe handsome young king, with mounted postilions and outriders, or aliveried carriage of somebody born with a von before his name. Asthe twilight comes on, the shutters of the shop windows are put up.It is time to go to the opera, for the curtain rises at half-pastsix, or to the beer-gardens, where delicious music marks, but doesnot interrupt, the flow of excellent beer.

Or you may if you choose, and I advise you to do it, walk at the samehour in the English Garden, which is but a step from the arcades ofthe Hof Garden,—but a step to the entrance, whence you may wanderfor miles and miles in the most enchanting scenery. Art has not beenallowed here to spoil nature. The trees, which are of magnificentsize, are left to grow naturally;—the Isar, which is turned into it,flows in more than one stream with its mountain impetuosity; the lakeis gracefully indented and overhung with trees, and presentsever-changing aspects of loveliness as you walk along its banks; thereare open, sunny meadows, in which single giant trees or splendidgroups of them stand, and walks without end winding under leafy Gothicarches. You know already that Munich owes this fine park to theforesight and liberality of an American Tory, Benjamin Thompson (CountRumford), born in Rumford, Vt., who also relieved Munich of beggars.

I have spoken of the number of soldiers in Munich. For six weeks theLandwehr, or militia, has been in camp in various parts of Bavaria.There was a grand review of them the other day on the Field of Mars,by the king, and many of them have now gone home. They strike anunmilitary man as a very efficient body of troops. So far as I couldsee, they were armed with breech-loading rifles. There is a treatyby which Bavaria agreed to assimilate her military organization tothat of Prussia. It is thus that Bismarck is continually gettingready. But if the Landwehr is gone, there are yet remaining troopsenough of the line. Their chief use, so far as it concerns me, is tomake pageants in the streets, and to send their bands to play at noonin the public squares. Every day, when the sun shines down upon themounted statue of Ludwig I., in front of the Odeon, a band plays inan open Loggia, and there is always a crowd of idlers in the squareto hear it. Everybody has leisure for that sort of thing here inEurope; and one can easily learn how to be idle and let the worldwag. They have found out here what is disbelieved in America,—thatthe world will continue to turn over once in about twenty-four hours(they are not accurate as to the time) without their aid. To returnto our soldiers. The cavalry most impresses me; the men are sofinely mounted, and they ride royally. In these sparkling mornings,when the regiments clatter past, with swelling music and shiningarmor, riding away to I know not what adventure and glory, I confessthat I long to follow them. I have long had this desire; and theother morning, determining to satisfy it, I seized my hat and wentafter the prancing procession. I am sorry I did. For, aftertrudging after it through street after street, the fine horsem*n allrode through an arched gateway, and disappeared in barracks, to mygreat disgust; and the troopers dismounted, and led their steeds intostables.

And yet one never loses a walk here in Munich. I found myself thatmorning by the Isar Thor, a restored medieval city gate. The gate isdouble, with flanking octagonal towers, inclosing a quadrangle. Uponthe inner wall is a fresco of "The Crucifixion." Over the outer frontis a representation, in fresco painting, of the triumphal entry intothe city of the Emperor Louis of Bavaria after the battle of Ampfing.On one side of the gate is a portrait of the Virgin, on gold ground,and on the other a very passable one of the late Dr. Hawes ofHartford, with a Pope's hat on. Walking on, I came to another archedgateway and clock-tower; near it an old church, with a high walladjoining, whereon is a fresco of cattle led to slaughter, showingthat I am in the vicinity of the Victual Market; and I enter itthrough a narrow, crooked alley. There is nothing there but anassemblage of shabby booths and fruit-stands, and an ancient stonetower in ruins and overgrown with ivy.

Leaving this, I came out to the Marian Platz, where stands thecolumn, with the statue of the Virgin and Child, set up by MaximilianI. in 1638 to celebrate the victory in the battle which establishedthe Catholic supremacy in Bavaria. It is a favorite praying-placefor the lower classes. Yesterday was a fete day, and the base of thecolumn and half its height are lost in a mass of flowers andevergreens. In front is erected an altar with a broad, carpetedplatform; and a strip of the platz before it is inclosed with arailing, within which are praying-benches. The sun shines down hot;but there are several poor women kneeling there, with their basketsbeside them. I happen along there at sundown; and there are a scoreof women kneeling on the hard stones, outside the railing sayingtheir prayers in loud voices. The mass of flowers is still sweet andgay and fresh; a fountain with fantastic figures is flashing near by;the crowd, going home to supper and beer, gives no heed to thepraying; the stolid droschke-drivers stand listlessly by. At thehead of the square is an artillery station, and a row of cannonfrowns on it. On one side is a house with a tablet in the wall,recording the fact that Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden once lived in it.

When we came to Munich, the great annual fair was in progress; andthe large Maximilian Platz (not to be confounded with the street ofthat name) was filled with booths of cheap merchandise, puppet-shows,lottery shanties, and all sorts of popular amusem*nts. It was a finetime to study peasant costumes. The city was crowded with them onSunday; and let us not forget that the first visit of the peasantswas to the churches; they invariably attended early mass before theyset out upon the day's pleasure. Most of the churches have servicesat all hours till noon, some of them with fine classical and militarymusic. One could not but be struck with the devotional manner of thesimple women, in their queer costumes, who walked into the gaudyedifices, were absorbed in their prayers for an hour, and then wentaway. I suppose they did not know how odd they looked in their high,round fur hats, or their fantastic old ornaments, nor that there wasanything amiss in bringing their big baskets into church with them.At least, their simple, unconscious manner was better than that ofmany of the city people, some of whom stare about a good deal, whilegoing through the service, and stop in the midst of crossings andgenuflections to take snuff and pass it to their neighbors. Butthere are always present simple and homelike sort of people, whoneither follow the fashions nor look round on them; respectable, neatold ladies, in the faded and carefully preserved silk gowns, such asthe New England women wear to "meeting."

No one can help admiring the simplicity, kindliness, and honesty ofthe Germans. The universal courtesy and friendliness of manner havea very different seeming from the politeness of the French. At thehotels in the country, the landlord and his wife and the servant joinin hoping you will sleep well when you go to bed. The little maid atHeidelberg who served our meals always went to the extent of wishingus a good appetite when she had brought in the dinner. Here inMunich the people we have occasion to address in the street areuniformly courteous. The shop-keepers are obliging, and rarelyservile, like the English. You are thanked, and punctiliously wishedthe good-day, whether you purchase anything or not. In shops tendedby women, gentlemen invariably remove their hats. If you buy only akreuzer's worth of fruit of an old woman, she says words that wouldbe, literally translated, "I thank you beautifully." With all this,one looks kindly on the childish love the Germans have for titles.It is, I believe, difficult for the German mind to comprehend that wecan be in good standing at home, unless we have some title prefixedto our names, or some descriptive phrase added. Our good landlord,who waits at the table and answers our bell, one of whose tenants isa living baron, having no title to put on his doorplate under that ofthe baron, must needs dub himself "privatier;" and he insists uponprefixing the name of this unambitious writer with the ennobling von;and at the least he insists, in common with the tradespeople, that Iam a "Herr Doctor." The bills of purchases by madame come made outto "Frau——, well-born." At a hotel in Heidelberg, where I hadregistered my name with that distinctness of penmanship for whichnewspaper men are justly conspicuous, and had added to my own name"& wife," I was not a little flattered to appear in the reckoning as"Herr Doctor Mamesweise."

THE GOTTESACKER AND BAVARIAN FUNERALS

To change the subject from gay to grave. The Gottesacker of Munichis called the finest cemetery in Germany; at least, it surpasses themin the artistic taste of its monuments. Natural beauty it has none:it is simply a long, narrow strip of ground inclosed in walls, withstraight, parallel walks running the whole length, and narrowcross-walks; and yet it is a lovely burial-ground. There are but fewtrees; but the whole inclosure is a conservatory of beautifulflowers. Every grave is covered with them, every monument issurrounded with them. The monuments are unpretending in size, butthere are many fine designs, and many finely executed busts andstatues and allegorical figures, in both marble and bronze. Theplace is full of sunlight and color. I noticed that it was muchfrequented. In front of every place of sepulcher stands a small urnfor water, with a brush hanging by, with which to sprinkle theflowers. I saw, also, many women and children coming and going withwatering-pots, so that the flowers never droop for want of care. Atthe lower end of the old ground is an open arcade, wherein are someeffigies and busts, and many ancient tablets set into the wall.Beyond this is the new cemetery, an inclosure surrounded by a highwall of brick, and on the inside by an arcade. The space within isplanted with flowers, and laid out for the burial of the people; thearcades are devoted to the occupation of those who can afford costlytombs. Only a small number of them are yet occupied; there are somegood busts and monuments, and some frescoes on the panels rather morestriking for size and color than for beauty.

Between the two cemeteries is the house for the dead. When I walkeddown the long central alle of the old ground, I saw at the fartherend, beyond a fountain, twinkling lights. Coming nearer, I foundthat they proceeded from the large windows of a building, which was apart of the arcade. People were looking in at the windows, going andcoming to and from them continually; and I was prompted by curiosityto look within. A most unexpected sight met my eye. In a long room,upon elevated biers, lay people dead: they were so disposed that thefaces could be seen; and there they rested in a solemn repose.Officers in uniform, citizens in plain dress, matrons and maids inthe habits that they wore when living, or in the white robes of thegrave. About most of them were lighted candles. About all of themwere flowers: some were almost covered with bouquets. There wererows of children, little ones scarce a span long,—in the white capsand garments of innocence, as if asleep in beds of flowers. Hownaturally they all were lying, as if only waiting to be called!Upon the thumb of every adult was a ring in which a string was tiedthat went through a pulley above and communicated with a bell in theattendant's room. How frightened he would be if the bell should eversound, and he should go into that hall of the dead to see who rang!And yet it is a most wise and humane provision; and many years ago,there is a tradition, an entombment alive was prevented by it. Thereare three rooms in all; and all those who die in Munich must bebrought and laid in one of them, to be seen of all who care to looktherein. I suppose that wealth and rank have some privileges; but itis the law that the person having been pronounced dead by thephysician shall be the same day brought to the dead-house, and liethere three whole days before interment.

There is something peculiar in the obsequies of Munich, especially inthe Catholic portion of the population. Shortly after the death,there is a short service in the courtyard of the house, which, withthe entrance, is hung in costly mourning, if the deceased was rich.The body is then carried in the car to the dead-house, attended bythe priests, the male members of the family, and a procession oftorch-bearers, if that can be afforded. Three days after, the burialtakes place from the dead-house, only males attending. The womennever go to the funeral; but some days after, of which public noticeis given by advertisem*nt, a public service is held in church, atwhich all the family are present, and to which the friends arepublicly invited. Funeral obsequies are as costly here as inAmerica; but everything is here regulated and fixed by custom. Thereare as many as five or six classes of funerals recognized. Those ofthe first class, as to rank and expense, cost about a thousandguldens. The second class is divided into six subclasses. The thirdis divided into two. The cost of the first of the third class isabout four hundred guldens. The lowest class of those able to have afuneral costs twenty-five guldens. A gulden is about two francs.There are no carriages used at the funerals of Catholics, only atthose of Protestants and Jews.

I spoke of the custom of advertising the deaths. A considerableportion of the daily newspapers is devoted to these announcements,which are printed in display type, like the advertisem*nts ofdry-goods sellers with you. I will roughly translate one which Ihappen to see just now. It reads, "Death advertisem*nt. It haspleased God the Almighty, in his inscrutable providence, to take awayour innermost loved, best husband, father, grandfather, uncle,brother-in-law, and cousin, Herr—-, dyer of cloth and silk,yesterday night, at eleven o'clock, after three weeks of severesuffering, having partaken of the holy sacrament, in his sixty-sixthyear, out of this earthly abode of calamity into the better Beyond.Those who knew his good heart, his great honesty, as well as hispatience in suffering, will know how justly to estimate our grief."This is signed by the "deep-grieving survivors,"—the widow, son,daughter, and daughter-in-law, in the name of the absent relatives.After the name of the son is written, "Dyer in cloth and silk." Thenotice closes with an announcement of the funeral at the cemetery,and a service at the church the day after. The advertisem*nt I havegiven is not uncommon either for quaintness or simplicity. It iscommon to engrave upon the monument the business as well as the titleof the departed.

THE OCTOBER FEST THE PEASANTS AND THE KING

On the 11th of October the sun came out, after a retirement of nearlytwo weeks. The cause of the appearance was the close of the OctoberFest. This great popular carnival has the same effect upon theweather in Bavaria that the Yearly Meeting of Friends is known toproduce in Philadelphia, and the Great National Horse Fair in NewEngland. It always rains during the October Fest. Having found thisout, I do not know why they do not change the time of it; but Ipresume they are wise enough to feel that it would be useless. Asimilar attempt on the part of the Pennsylvania Quakers merelydisturbed the operations of nature, but did not save the drab bonnetsfrom the annual wetting. There is a subtle connection between suchgatherings and the gathering of what are called the elements,—asympathetic connection, which we shall, no doubt, one day understand,when we have collected facts enough on the subject to make acomprehensive generalization, after Mr. Buckle's method.

This fair, which is just concluded, is a true Folks-Fest, a seasonespecially for the Bavarian people, an agricultural fair and cattleshow, but a time of general jollity and amusem*nt as well. Indeed,the main object of a German fair seems to be to have a good time andin this it is in marked contrast with American fairs. The OctoberFest was instituted for the people by the old Ludwig I. on theoccasion of his marriage; and it has ever since retained its positionas the great festival of the Bavarian people, and particularly of thepeasants. It offers a rare opportunity to the stranger to study thecostumes of the peasants, and to see how they amuse themselves. Onecan judge a good deal of the progress of a people by the sort ofamusem*nts that satisfy them. I am not about to draw anyphilosophical inferences,—I am a mere looker-on in Munich; but Ihave never anywhere else seen puppet-shows afford so much delight,nor have I ever seen anybody get more satisfaction out of a sausageand a mug of beer, with the tum-tum of a band near, by, than aBavarian peasant.

The Fest was held on the Theresien Wiese, a vast meadow on theoutskirts of the city. The ground rises on one side of this by anabrupt step, some thirty or forty feet high, like the "bench" of aWestern river. This bank is terraced for seats the whole length, oras far down as the statue of Bavaria; so that there are turf seats, Ishould judge, for three quarters of a mile, for a great manythousands of people, who can look down upon the race-course, thetents, houses, and booths of the fair-ground, and upon the roof andspires of the city beyond. The statue is, as you know, the famousbronze Bavaria of Schwanthaler, a colossal female figure fifty feethigh, and with its pedestal a hundred feet high, which stands infront of the Hall of Fame, a Doric edifice, in the open colonnades ofwhich are displayed the busts of the most celebrated Bavarians,together with those of a few poets and scholars who were sounfortunate as not to be born here. The Bavaria stands with theright hand upon the sheathed sword, and the left raised in the act ofbestowing a wreath of victory; and the lion of the kingdom is besideher. This representative being is, of course, hollow. There is roomfor eight people in her head, which I can testify is a warm place ona sunny day; and one can peep out through loopholes and get a goodview of the Alps of the Tyrol. To say that this statue is gracefulor altogether successful would be an error; but it is ratherimpressive, from its size, if for no other reason. In the cast ofthe hand exhibited at the bronze foundry, the forefinger measuresover three feet long.

Although the Fest did not officially begin until Friday, October 12,yet the essential part of it, the amusem*nts, was well under way onthe Sunday before. The town began to be filled with country people,and the holiday might be said to have commenced; for the city givesitself up to the occasion. The new art galleries are closed for somedays; but the collections and museums of various sorts are dailyopen, gratis; the theaters redouble their efforts; the concert-hallsare in full blast; there are dances nightly, and masked balls in theFolks' Theater; country relatives are entertained; the peasants goabout the streets in droves, in a simple and happy frame of mind,wholly unconscious that they are the oddest-looking guys that havecome down from the Middle Ages; there is music in all the gardens,singing in the cafes, beer flowing in rivers, and a mighty smell ofcheese, that goes up to heaven. If the eating of cheese were areligious act, and its odor an incense, I could not say enough of thedevoutness of the Bavarians.

Of the picturesqueness and oddity of the Bavarian peasants' costumes,nothing but a picture can give you any idea. You can imagine the menin tight breeches, buttoned below the knee, jackets of the jockeycut, and both jacket and waistcoat covered with big metal buttons,sometimes coins, as thickly as can be sewed on: but the women defythe pen; a Bavarian peasant woman, in holiday dress, is the mostfearfully and wonderfully made object in the universe. She displaysa good length of striped stockings, and wears thin slippers, orsandals; her skirts are like a hogshead in size and shape, and reachso near her shoulders as to make her appear hump-backed; the sleevesare hugely swelled out at the shoulder, and taper to the wrist; thebodice is a stiff and most elaborately ornamented piece of armor; andthere is a kind of breastplate, or center-piece, of gold, silver, andprecious stones, or what passes for them; and the head is adornedwith some monstrous heirloom, of finely worked gold or silver, or atower, gilded and shining with long streamers, or bound in a simpleblack turban, with flowing ends. Little old girls, dressed liketheir mothers, have the air of creations of the fancy, who havewalked out of a fairy-book. There is an endless variety in these oldcostumes; and one sees, every moment, one more preposterous than thepreceding. The girls from the Tyrol, with their bright neckerchiefsand pointed black felt hats, with gold cord and tassels, are some ofthem very pretty: but one looks a long time for a bright face amongthe other class; and, when it is discovered, the owner appears like amaiden who was enchanted a hundred years ago, and has not beenreleased from the spell, but is still doomed to wear the garments andthe ornaments that should long ago have mouldered away with herancestors.

The Theresien Wiese was a city of Vanity Fair for two weeks, everyday crowded with a motley throng. Booths, and even structures ofsome solidity, rose on it as if by magic. The lottery-houses wereset up early, and, to the last, attracted crowds, who could notresist the tempting display of goods and trinkets, which might be wonby investing six kreuzers in a bit of paper, which might, whenunrolled, contain a number. These lotteries are all authorized: someof them were for the benefit of the agricultural society; some werefor the poor, and others on individual account: and they alwaysthrive; for the German, above all others, loves to try his luck.There were streets of shanties, where various things were offered forsale besides cheese and sausages. There was a long line of booths,where images could be shot at with bird-guns; and when the shots weresuccessful, the images went through astonishing revolutions. Therewas a circus, in front of which some of the spangled performersalways stood beating drums and posturing, in order to entice inspectators. There were the puppet-booths, before which all day stoodgaping, delighted crowds, who roared with laughter whenever thelittle frau beat her loutish husband about the head, and set him totend the baby, who continued to wail, notwithstanding the manknocked its head against the doorpost. There were the greatbeer-restaurants, with temporary benches and tables' planted about withevergreens, always thronged with a noisy, jolly crowd. There werethe fires, over which fresh fish were broiling on sticks; and, if youlingered, you saw the fish taken alive from tubs of water standingby, dressed and spitted and broiling before the wiggle was out oftheir tails. There were the old women, who mixed the flour and friedthe brown cakes before your eyes, or cooked the fragrant sausage, andoffered it piping hot.

And every restaurant and show had its band, brass or string,—a fullarray of red-faced fellows tooting through horns, or a sorryquartette, the fat woman with the harp, the lean man blowing himselfout through the clarinet, the long-haired fellow with the flute, andthe robust and thick-necked fiddler. Everywhere there was music; theair was full of the odor of cheese and cooking sausage; so that therewas nothing wanting to the most complete enjoyment. The crowd surgedround, jammed together, in the best possible humor. Those who couldnot sit at tables sat on the ground, with a link of an eatable I havealready named in one hand, and a mug of beer beside them. Towardevening, the ground was strewn with these gray quart mugs, which gaveas perfect evidence of the battle of the day as the cannon-balls onthe sand before Fort Fisher did of the contest there. Besides this,for the amusem*nt of the crowd, there is, every day, a wheelbarrowrace, a sack race, a blindfold contest, or something of the sort,which turns out to be a very flat performance. But all the time theeating and the drinking go on, and the clatter and clink of it fillthe air; so that the great object of the fair is not lost sight of.

Meantime, where is the agricultural fair and cattle-show? You mustknow that we do these things differently in Bavaria. On thefair-ground, there is very little to be seen of the fair. There isan inclosure where steam-engines are smoking and puffing, andthreshing-machines are making a clamor; where some big church-bellshang, and where there are a few stalls for horses and cattle. Butthe competing horses and cattle are led before the judges elsewhere;the horses, for instance, by the royal stables in the city. I saw nosuch general exhibition of do mestic animals as you have at yourfairs. The horses that took the prizes were of native stock, a veryserviceable breed, excellent for carriage-horses, and admirable inthe cavalry service. The bulls and cows seemed also native and tothe manor born, and were worthy of little remark. The mechanical,vegetable, and fruit exhibition was in the great glass palace, in thecity, and was very creditable in the fruit department, in the show ofgrapes and pears especially. The products of the dairy were less,though I saw one that I do not recollect ever to have seen inAmerica, a landscape in butter. Inclosed in a case, it looked verymuch like a wood-carving. There was a Swiss cottage, a milkmaid,with cows in the foreground; there were trees, and in the rear roserocky precipices, with chamois in the act of skipping thereon. Ishould think something might be done in our country in this line ofthe fine arts; certainly, some of the butter that is always beingsold so cheap at St. Albans, when it is high everywhere else, must bestrong enough to warrant the attempt. As to the other departments ofthe fine arts in the glass palace, I cannot give you a better idea ofthem than by saying that they were as well filled as the like ones inthe American county fairs. There were machines for threshing, forstraw-cutting, for apple-paring, and generally such a display ofimplements as would give one a favorable idea of Bavarianagriculture. There was an interesting exhibition of live fish, greatand small, of nearly every sort, I should think, in Bavarian waters.The show in the fire-department was so antiquated, that I wasconvinced that the people of Munich never intend to have any fires.

The great day of the fete was Sunday, October 5 for on that day theking went out to the fair-ground, and distributed the prizes to theowners of the best horses, and, as they appeared to me, of the mostugly-colored bulls. The city was literally crowded with peasants andcountry people; the churches were full all the morning with devoutmasses, which poured into the waiting beer-houses afterward withequal zeal. By twelve o'clock, the city began to empty itself uponthe Theresien meadow; and long before the time for the king to arrive—two o'clock—there were acres of people waiting for the performanceto begin. The terraced bank, of which I have spoken, was takenpossession of early, and held by a solid mass of people; while thefair-ground proper was packed with a swaying concourse, densest nearthe royal pavilion, which was erected immediately on the race-course,and opposite the bank.

At one o'clock the grand stand opposite to the royal one is takenpossession of by a regiment band and by invited guests. All thespace, except the race-course, is, by this time, packed with people,who watch the red and white gate at the head of the course withgrowing impatience. It opens to let in a regiment of infantry, whichmarches in and takes position. It swings, every now and then, for asolitary horseman, who gallops down the line in all the pride ofmounted civic dignity, to the disgust of the crowd; or to let in acarriage, with some overdressed officer or splendid minister, who isentitled to a place in the royal pavilion. It is a people' fete, andthe civic officers enjoy one day of conspicuous glory. Now amajestic person in gold lace is set down; and now one in a scarletcoat, as beautiful as a flamingo. These driblets of splendor onlyfeed the popular impatience. Music is heard in the distance, and aprocession with colored banners is seen approaching from the city.That, like everything else that is to come, stops beyond the closedgate; and there it halts, ready to stream down before our eyes in avariegated pageant. The time goes on; the crowd gets denser, forthere have been steady rivers of people pouring into the grounds formore than an hour.

The military bands play in the long interval; the peasants jabber inunintelligible dialects; the high functionaries on the royal standare good enough to move around, and let us see how brave and majesticthey are.

At last the firing of cannon announces the coming of royalty. Thereis a commotion in the vast crowd yonder, the eagerly watched gatesswing wide, and a well-mounted company of cavalry dashes down theturf, in uniforms of light blue and gold. It is a citizens' companyof butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers, which would do nodiscredit to the regular army. Driving close after is a four-horsecarriage with two of the king's ministers; and then, at a rapid pace,six coal-black horses in silver harness, with mounted postilions,drawing a long, slender, open carriage with one seat, in which ridethe king and his brother, Prince Otto, come down the way, and arepulled up in front of the pavilion; while the cannon roars, the bigbells ring, all the flags of Bavaria, Prussia, and Austria, oninnumerable poles, are blowing straight out, the band plays "God savethe King," the people break into enthusiastic shouting, and the youngking, throwing off his cloak, rises and stands in his carriage for amoment, bowing right and left before he descends. He wears to-daythe simple uniform of the citizens' company which has escorted him,and is consequently more plainly and neatly dressed than any one elseon the platform,—a tall (say six feet), slender, gallant-lookingyoung fellow of three and twenty, with an open face and a gracefulmanner.

But, when he has arrived, things again come to a stand; and we waitfor an hour, and watch the thickening of the clouds, while the kinggoes from this to that delighted dignitary on the stand andconverses. At the end of this time, there is a movement. A whitedog has got into the course, and runs up and down between the wallsof people in terror, headed off by soldiers at either side of thegrand stand, and finally, becoming desperate, he makes a dive for theroyal pavilion. The consternation is extreme. The people cheer thedog and laugh: a white-handed official, in gold lace, and without hishat, rushes out to "shoo" the dog away, but is unsuccessful; for theanimal dashes between his legs, and approaches the royal and carpetedsteps. More men of rank run at him, and he is finally captured andborne away; and we all breathe freer that the danger to royalty isaverted. At one o'clock six youths in white jackets, with clubs andcoils of rope, had stationed themselves by the pavilion, but they didnot go into action at this juncture; and I thought they ratherenjoyed the activity of the great men who kept off the dog.

At length there was another stir; and the king descended from therear of his pavilion, attended by his ministers, and moved aboutamong the people, who made way for him, and uncovered at hisapproach. He spoke with one and another, and strolled about as hisfancy took him. I suppose this is called mingling with the commonpeople. After he had mingled about fifteen minutes, he returned, andtook his place on the steps in front of the pavilion; and thedistribution of prizes began. First the horses were led out; andtheir owners, approaching the king, received from his hands thediplomas, and a flag from an attendant. Most of them were peasants;and they exhibited no servility in receiving their marks ofdistinction, but bowed to the king as they would to any other man,and his majesty touched his co*cked hat in return. Then came theprize-cattle, many of them led by women, who are as interested astheir husbands in all farm matters. Everything goes off smoothly,except there is a momentary panic over a fractious bull, who plungesinto the crowd; but the six white jackets are about him in aninstant, and entangle him with their ropes.

This over, the gates again open, and the gay cavalcade that has beenso long in sight approaches. First a band of musicians in costumesof the Middle Ages; and then a band of pages in the gayest apparel,bearing pictured banners and flags of all colors, whose silken lusterwould have been gorgeous in sunshine; these were followed by mountedheralds with trumpets, and after them were led the running horsesentered for the race. The banners go up on the royal stand, andgroup themselves picturesquely; the heralds disappear at the otherend of the list; and almost immediately the horses, ridden by youngjockeys in stunning colors, come flying past in a general scramble.There are a dozen or more horses; but, after the first round, therace lies between two. The course is considerably over an Englishmile, and they make four circuits; so that the race is fullysix-miles,—a very hard one. It was a run in a rain, however, whichbegan when it did, and soon forced up the umbrellas. The vast crowddisappeared under a shed of umbrellas, of all colors,—black, green,red, blue; and the effect was very singular, especially when it movedfrom the field: there was then a Niagara of umbrellas. The race wassoon over: it is only a peasants' race, after all; the aristocraticraces of the best horses take place in May. It was over. The king'scarriage was brought round, the people again shouted, the cannonroared, the six black horses reared and plunged, and away he went.

After all, says the artist, "the King of Bavaria has not much power."

"You can see," returns a gentleman who speaks English, "just how muchhe has: it is a six-horse power."

On other days there was horse-trotting, music production, and forseveral days prize-shooting. The latter was admirably conducted: thetargets were placed at the foot of the bank; and opposite, I shouldthink not more than two hundred yards off, were shooting-houses, eachwith a room for the register of the shots, and on each side of himclosets where the shooters stand. Signal-wires run from these housesto the targets, where there are attendants who telegraph the effectof every shot. Each competitor has a little book; and he shoots atany booth he pleases, or at all, and has his shots registered. Therewas a continual fusillade for a couple of days; but what it all cameto, I cannot tell. I can only say, that, if they shoot as steadilyas they drink beer, there is no other corps of shooters that canstand before them.

INDIAN SUMMER

We are all quiet along the Isar since the October Fest; since theyoung king has come back from his summer castle on the Starnberg Seeto live in his dingy palace; since the opera has got into goodworking order, and the regular indoor concerts at the cafes havebegun. There is no lack of amusem*nts, with balls, theaters, and thecheap concerts, vocal and instrumental. I stepped into the West EndeHalle the other night, having first surrendered twelve kreuzers tothe money-changer at the entrance,—double the usual fee, by the way.It was large and well lighted, with a gallery all round it and anorchestral platform at one end. The floor and gallery were filledwith people of the most respectable class, who sat about little roundtables, and drank beer. Every man was smoking a cigar; and theatmosphere was of that degree of haziness that we associate withIndian summer at home; so that through it the people in the galleryappeared like glorified objects in a heathen Pantheon, and theorchestra like men playing in a dream. Yet nobody seemed to mind it;and there was, indeed, a general air of social enjoyment and goodfeeling. Whether this good feeling was in process of being producedby the twelve or twenty glasses of beer which it is not unusual for aGerman to drink of an evening, I do not know. "I do not drink muchbeer now," said a German acquaintance,—"not more than four or fiveglasses in an evening." This is indeed moderation, when we rememberthat sixteen glasses of beer is only two gallons. The orchestraplaying that night was Gungl's; and it performed, among other things,the whole of the celebrated Third (or Scotch) Symphony of Mendelssohnin a manner that would be greatly to the credit of orchestras thatplay without the aid of either smoke or beer. Concerts of this sort,generally with more popular music and a considerable dash of Wagner,in whom the Munichers believe, take place every night in severalcafes; while comic singing, some of it exceedingly well done, can beheard in others. Such amusem*nts—and nothing can be more harmless—are very cheap.

Speaking of Indian summer, the only approach to it I have seen was inthe hazy atmosphere at the West Ende Halle. October outdoors hasbeen an almost totally disagreeable month, with the exception of somedays, or rather parts of days, when we have seen the sun, andexperienced a mild atmosphere. At such times, I have liked to sitdown on one of the empty benches in the Hof Garden, where the leavesalready half cover the ground, and the dropping horse-chestnuts keepup a pattering on them. Soon the fat woman who has a fruit-stand atthe gate is sure to come waddling along, her beaming face making asort of illumination in the autumn scenery, and sit down near me. Assoon as she comes, the little brown birds and the doves all fly thatway, and look up expectant at her. They all know her, and expect theusual supply of bread-crumbs. Indeed, I have seen her on a stillSunday morning, when I have been sitting there waiting for theEnglish ceremony of praying for Queen Victoria and Albert Edward tobegin in the Odeon, sit for an hour, and cut up bread for her littlebrown flock. She sits now knitting a red stocking, the picture ofcontent; one after another her old gossips pass that way, and stop amoment to exchange the chat of the day; or the policeman has his jokewith her, and when there is nobody else to converse with, she talksto the birds. A benevolent old soul, I am sure, who in a New Englandvillage would be universally called "Aunty," and would lay all therising generation under obligation to her for doughnuts andsweet-cake. As she rises to go away, she scrapes together ahalf-dozen shining chestnuts with her feet; and as she cannotpossibly stoop to pick them up, she motions to a boy playing near,and smiles so happily as the urchin gathers them and runs awaywithout even a "thank ye."

A TASTE OF ULTRAMONTANISM

If that of which every German dreams, and so few are ready to takeany practical steps to attain,—German unity,—ever comes, it mustride roughshod over the Romish clergy, for one thing. Of coursethere are other obstacles. So long as beer is cheap, and songs ofthe Fatherland are set to lilting strains, will these excellentpeople "Ho, ho, my brothers," and "Hi, hi, my brothers," and wait forfate, in the shape of some compelling Bismarck, to drive them intoanything more than the brotherhood of brown mugs of beer and Wagner'smysterious music of the future. I am not sure, by the way, that themusic of Richard Wagner is not highly typical of the present (1868)state of German unity,—an undefined longing which nobody exactlyunderstands. There are those who think they can discern in his musicthe same revolutionary tendency which placed the composer on theright side of a Dresden barricade in 1848, and who go so far as tobelieve that the liberalism of the young King of Bavaria is not alittle due to his passion for the disorganizing operas of thistranscendental writer. Indeed, I am not sure that any other peoplethan Germans would not find in the repetition of the five hours ofthe "Meister-Singer von Nurnberg," which was given the other night atthe Hof Theater, sufficient reason for revolution.

Well, what I set out to say was, that most Germans would like unityif they could be the unit. Each State would like to be the center ofthe consolidated system, and thus it happens that every practicalstep toward political unity meets a host of opponents at once. WhenAustria, or rather the house of Hapsburg, had a preponderance in theDiet, and it seemed, under it, possible to revive the past reality,or to realize the dream of a great German empire, it was clearly seenthat Austria was a tyranny that would crush out all liberties. Andnow that Prussia, with its vital Protestantism and free schools,proposes to undertake the reconstruction of Germany, and make anation where there are now only the fragmentary possibilities of agreat power, why, Prussia is a military despot, whose subjects mustbe either soldiers or slaves, and the young emperor at Vienna isindeed another Joseph, filled with the most tender solicitude for thewelfare of the chosen German people.

But to return to the clergy. While the monasteries and nunneries aregoing to the ground in superstition-saturated Spain; while eagerworkmen are demolishing the last hiding-places of monkery, andletting the daylight into places that have well kept the frightfulsecrets of three hundred years, and turning the ancient cloisterdemesne into public parks and pleasure-grounds,—the Romishpriesthood here, in free Bavaria, seem to imagine that they cannotonly resist the progress of events, but that they can actually bringback the owlish twilight of the Middle Ages. The reactionary partyin Bavaria has, in some of the provinces, a strong majority; and itssupporters and newspapers are belligerent and aggressive. A fewwords about the politics of Bavaria will give you a clew to thegeneral politics of the country.

The reader of the little newspapers here in Munich finds evidence ofat least three parties. There is first the radical. Its memberssincerely desire a united Germany, and, of course, are friendly toPrussia, hate Napoleon, have little confidence in the Hapsburgs, liketo read of uneasiness in Paris, and hail any movement that overthrowstradition and the prescriptive right of classes. If its members areCatholic, they are very mildly so; if they are Protestant, they arenot enough so to harm them; and, in short, if their religiousopinions are not as deep as a well, they are certainly broader than achurch door. They are the party of free inquiry, liberal thought,and progress. Akin to them are what may be called the conservativeliberals, the majority of whom may be Catholics in profession, butare most likely rationalists in fact; and with this party the kingnaturally affiliates, taking his music devoutly every Sunday morningin the Allerheiligenkirche, attached to the Residenz, and getting hisreligion out of Wagner; for, progressive as the youthful king is, hecannot be supposed to long for a unity which would wheel his throneoff into the limbo of phantoms. The conservative liberals,therefore, while laboring for thorough internal reforms, look withlittle delight on the increasing strength of Prussia, and sympathizewith the present liberal tendencies of Austria. Opposed to boththese parties is the ultramontane, the head of which is the Romishhierarchy, and the body of which is the inert mass of ignorantpeasantry, over whom the influence of the clergy seems little shakenby any of the modern moral earthquakes. Indeed I doubt if any newideas will ever penetrate a class of peasants who still adhere tostyles of costume that must have been ancient when the Turksthreatened Vienna, which would be highly picturesque if they were notpainfully ugly, and arrayed in which their possessors walk about inthe broad light of these latter days, with entire unconsciousnessthat they do not belong to this age, and that their appearance is asmuch of an anachronism as if the figures should step out of Holbein'spictures (which Heaven forbid), or the stone images come down fromthe portals of the cathedral and walk about. The ultramontane party,which, so far as it is an intelligent force in modern affairs, is theRomish clergy, and nothing more, hears with aversion any hint ofGerman unity, listens with dread to the needle-guns at Sadowa, hatesPrussia in proportion as it fears her, and just now does not draweither with the Austrian Government, whose liberal tendencies areexceedingly distasteful. It relies upon that great unenlightenedmass of Catholic people in Southern Germany and in Austria proper,one of whose sins is certainly not skepticism. The practical fightnow in Bavaria is on the question of education; the priests beingresolved to keep the schools of the people in their own control, andthe liberal parties seeking to widen educational facilities and admitlaymen to a share in the management of institutions of learning. Nowthe school visitors must all be ecclesiastics; and although theirpower is not to be dreaded in the cities, where teachers, like othercitizens, are apt to be liberal, it gives them immense power in therural districts. The election of the Lower House of the Bavarianparliament, whose members have a six years' tenure of office, whichtakes place next spring, excites uncommon interest; for the leadingissue will be that of education. The little local newspapers—andevery city has a small swarm of them, which are remarkable for theabsence of news and an abundance of advertisem*nts—have broken outinto a style of personal controversy, which, to put it mildly, makesme, an American, feel quite at home. Both parties are very much inearnest, and both speak with a freedom that is, in itself, a veryhopeful sign.

The pretensions of the ultramontane clergy are, indeed, remarkableenough to attract the attention of others besides the liberals ofBavaria. They assume an influence and an importance in theecclesiastical profession, or rather an authority, equal to that everasserted by the Church in its strongest days. Perhaps you will getan idea of the height of this pretension if I translate a passagewhich the liberal journal here takes from a sermon preached in theparish church of Ebersburg, in Ober-Dorfen, by a priest, HerrKooperator Anton Hiring, no longer ago than August 16, 1868. Itreads: "With the power of absolution, Christ has endued thepriesthood with a might which is terrible to hell, and against whichLucifer himself cannot stand,-a might which, indeed, reaches overinto eternity, where all other earthly powers find their limit andend,—a might, I say, which is able to break the fetters which, foran eternity, were forged through the commission of heavy sin. Yes,further, this Power of the forgiveness of sins makes the priest, in acertain measure, a second God; for God alone naturally can forgivesins. And yet this is not the highest reach of the priestly might:his power reaches still higher; he compels God himself to serve him.How so? When the priest approaches the altar, in order to bringthere the holy mass-offering, there, at that moment, lifts himself upJesus Christ, who sits at the right hand of the Father, upon histhrone, in order to be ready for the beck of his priests upon earth.And scarcely does the priest begin the words of consecration, thanthere Christ already hovers, surrounded by the heavenly host, comedown from heaven to earth, and to the altar of sacrifice, andchanges, upon the words of the priest, the bread and wine into hisholy flesh and blood, and permits himself then to be taken up and tolie in the hands of the priest, even though the priest is the mostsinful and the most unworthy. Further, his power surpasses that ofthe highest archangels, and of the Queen of Heaven. Right did theholy Franciscus say, 'If I should meet a priest and an angel at thesame time, I should salute the priest first, and then the angel;because the priest is possessed of far higher might and holiness thanthe angel.'"

The radical journal calls this "ultramontane blasphemy," and, the dayafter quoting it, adds a charge that must be still more annoying tothe Herr Kooperator Hiring than that of blasphemy: it accuses him ofplagiarism; and, to substantiate the charge, quotes almost the verysame language from a sermon preached in 1785—In this it is boldlyclaimed that "in heaven, on earth, or under the earth, there isnothing mightier than a priest, except God; and, to be exact, Godhimself must obey the priest in the mass." And then, in words whichI do not care to translate, the priest is made greater than theVirgin Mary, because Christ was only born of the Virgin once, whilethe priest "with five words, as often and wherever he will," can"bring forth the Saviour of the world." So to-day keeps firm hold ofthe traditions of a hundred years ago, and ultramontanism wiselydefends the last citadel where the Middle Age superstition makes astand,—the popular veneration for the clergy.

And the clergy take good care to keep up the pomps and shows evenhere in skeptical Munich. It was my inestimable privilege the othermorning—it was All-Saints' Day—to see the archbishop in the oldFrauenkirche, the ancient cathedral, where hang tattered banners thatwere captured from the Turks three centuries ago,—to see him seatedin the choir, overlooked by saints and apostles carved in wood bysome forgotten artist of the fifteenth century. I supposed he was atleast an archbishop, from the retinue of priests who attended andserved him, and also from his great size. When he sat down, itrequired a dignitary of considerable rank to put on his hat; and whenhe arose to speak a few precious words, the effect was visible a goodmany yards from where he stood. At the close of the service he wentin great state down the center aisle, preceded by the gorgeousbeadle—a character that is always awe-inspiring to me in thesechurches, being a cross between a magnificent drum-major and a vergerand two persons in livery, and followed by a train of splendidlyattired priests, six of whom bore up his long train of purple silk.The whole cortege was resplendent in embroidery and ermine; and asthe great man swept out of my sight, and was carried on a priestlywave into his shining carriage, and the noble footman jumped upbehind, and he rolled away to his dinner, I stood leaning against apillar, and reflected if it could be possible that that religioncould be anything but genuine which had so much genuine ermine. Andthe organ-notes, rolling down the arches, seemed to me to have a veryultramontane sound.

CHANGING QUARTERS

Perhaps it may not interest you to know how we moved, that is,changed our apartments. I did not see it mentioned in the cabledispatches, and it may not be generally known, even in Germany; butthen, the cable is so occupied with relating how his Serenity this,and his Highness that, and her Loftiness the other one, went outdoorsand came in again, owing to a slight superfluity of the liquidelement in the atmosphere, that it has no time to notice the realmovements of the people. And yet, so dry are some of these littleGerman newspapers of news, that it is refreshing to read, now andthen, that the king, on Sunday, walked out with the Duke of Hesseafter dinner (one would like to know if they also had sauerkraut andsausage), and that his prospective mother-in-law, the Empress ofRussia, who was here the other day, on her way home from Como, whereshe was nearly drowned out by the inundation, sat for an hour onSunday night, after the opera, in the winter garden of the palace,enjoying the most easy family intercourse.

But about moving. Let me tell you that to change quarters in theface of a Munich winter, which arrives here the 1st of November, islike changing front to the enemy just before a battle; and if we hadperished in the attempt, it might have been put upon our monuments,as it is upon the out-of-cannon-cast obelisk in the Karolina Platz,erected to the memory of the thirty thousand Bavarian soldiers whofell in the disastrous Russian winter campaign of Napoleon, fightingagainst all the interests of Germany,—"they, too, died for theirFatherland." Bavaria happened also to fight on the wrong side atSadowa and I suppose that those who fell there also died forFatherland: it is a way the Germans have of doing, and they meannothing serious by it. But, as I was saying, to change quarters hereas late as November is a little difficult, for the wise ones seek toget housed for the winter by October: they select the sunnyapartments, get on the double windows, and store up wood. The plantsare tied up in the gardens, the fountains are covered over, and theinhabitants go about in furs and the heaviest winter clothing longbefore we should think of doing so at home. And they are wise: thesnow comes early, and, besides, a cruel fog, cold as the grave andpenetrating as remorse, comes down out of the near Tyrol. Onemorning early in November, I looked out of the window to find snowfalling, and the ground covered with it. There was dampness andfrost enough in the air to make it cling to all the tree-twigs, andto take fantastic shapes on all the queer roofs and the slenderestpinnacles and most delicate architectural ornamentations. The cityspires had a mysterious appearance in the gray haze; and above all,the round-topped towers of the old Frauenkirche, frosted with alittle snow, loomed up more grandly than ever. When I went around tothe Hof Garden, where I late had sat in the sun, and heard the brownhorse-chestnuts drop on the leaves, the benches were now full ofsnow, and the fat and friendly fruit-woman at the gate had retiredbehind glass windows into a little shop, which she might well warm byher own person, if she radiated heat as readily as she used to absorbit on the warm autumn days, when I have marked her knitting in thesunshine.

But we are not moving. The first step we took was to advertise ourwants in the "Neueste Nachrichten" ("Latest News ") newspaper. Wedesired, if possible, admission into some respectable German family,where we should be forced to speak German, and in which our society,if I may so express it, would be some compensation for our badgrammar. We wished also to live in the central part of the city,—inshort, in the immediate neighborhood of all the objects of interest(which are here very much scattered), and to have pleasant rooms. InDresden, where the people are not so rich as in Munich, and wheredifferent customs prevail, it is customary for the best people, Imean the families of university professors, for instance, to take inforeigners, and give them tolerable food and a liberal education.Here it is otherwise. Nearly all families occupy one floor of abuilding, renting just rooms enough for the family, so that theirapartments are not elastic enough to take in strangers, even if theydesire to do so. And generally they do not. Munich society isperhaps chargeable with being a little stiff and exclusive. Well, weadvertised in the "Neueste Nachrichten." This is the liberal paperof Munich. It is a poorly printed, black-looking daily sheet, foldedin octavo size, and containing anywhere from sixteen to thirty-fourpages, more or less, as it happens to have advertisem*nts. Itsometimes will not have more than two or three pages of readingmatter. There will be a scrap or two of local news, the brieftelegrams taken from the official paper of the day before, a bit ortwo of other news, and perhaps a short and slashing editorial on theultramontane party. The advantage of printing and folding it in suchsmall leaves is, that the size can be varied according to the demandsof advertisem*nts or news (if the German papers ever find out whatthat is); so that the publisher is always giving, every day, justwhat it pays to give that day; and the reader has his regularquantity of reading matter, and does not have to pay for advertisingspace, which in journals of unchangeable form cannot always be usedprofitably. This little journal was started something like twentyyears ago. It probably spends little for news, has only one or, atmost, two editors, is crowded with advertisem*nts, which are insertedcheap, and costs, delivered, a little over six francs a year. Itcirculates in the city some thirty-five thousand. There is anotherlittle paper here of the same size, but not so many leaves, called"The Daily Advertiser," with nothing but advertisem*nts, principallyof theaters, concerts, and the daily sights, and one page devoted tosome prodigious yarn, generally concerning America, of which countryits readers must get the most extraordinary and frightful impression.The "Nachrichten" made the fortune of its first owner, who builthimself a fine house out of it, and retired to enjoy his wealth. Itwas recently sold for one hundred thousand guldens; and I can seethat it is piling up another fortune for its present owner. TheGermans, who herein show their good sense and the high state ofcivilization to which they have reached, are very free advertisers,going to the newspapers with all their wants, and finding in themthat aid which all interests and all sorts of people, from kaiser tokerl, are compelled, in these days, to seek in the daily journal.Every German town of any size has three or four of these littlejournals of flying leaves, which are excellent papers in everyrespect, except that they look like badly printed handbills, and havevery little news and no editorials worth speaking of. An exceptionto these in Bavaria is the "Allgerneine Zeitung" of Augsburg, whichis old and immensely respectable, and is perhaps, for extent ofcorrespondence and splendidly written editorials on a great varietyof topics, excelled by no journal in Europe except the London"Times." It gives out two editions daily, the evening one about thesize of the New York "Nation;" and it has all the telegraphic news.It is absurdly old-grannyish, and is malevolent in its pretendedconservatism and impartiality. Yet it circulates over forty thousandcopies, and goes all over Germany.

But were we not saying something about moving? The truth is, thatthe best German families did not respond to our appeal with thatalacrity which we had no right to expect, and did not exhibit thatanxiety for our society which would have been such a pleasantevidence of their appreciation of the honor done to the royal city ofMunich by the selection of it as a residence during the mostdisagreeable months of the year by the advertising undersigned. Eventhe young king, whose approaching marriage to the Russian princess,one would think, might soften his heart, did nothing to win ourregard, or to show that he appreciated our residence "near" hiscourt, and, so far as I know, never read with any sort of attentionour advertisem*nt, which was composed with as much care as Goethe's"Faust," and probably with the use of more dictionaries. And this,when he has an extraordinary large Residenz, to say nothing aboutother outlying palaces and comfortable places to live in, in which Iknow there are scores of elegantly furnished apartments, which standidle almost the year round, and might as well be let to appreciativestrangers, who would accustom the rather washy and fierce frescoes onthe walls to be stared at. I might have selected rooms, say on thecourt which looks on the exquisite bronze fountain, Perseus with thehead of Medusa, a copy of the one in Florence by Benvenuto Cellini,where we could have a southern exposure. Or we might, so it wouldseem, have had rooms by the winter garden, where tropical plantsrejoice in perennial summer, and blossom and bear fruit, while anorthern winter rages without. Yet the king did not see it "by thoselamps;" and I looked in vain on the gates of the Residenz for thenotice so frequently seen on other houses, of apartments to let. Andyet we had responses. The day after the announcement appeared, ourbell ran perpetually; and we had as many letters as if we hadadvertised for wives innumerable. The German notes poured in upon usin a flood; each one of them containing an offer tempting enough tobeguile an angel out of paradise, at least, according to ourtranslation: they proffered us chambers that were positivelyoverheated by the flaming sun (which, I can take my oath, onlyventures a few feet above the horizon at this season), which werefriendly in appearance, splendidly furnished and near to everydesirable thing, and in which, usually, some American family had longresided, and experienced a content and happiness not to be felt outof Germany.

I spent some days in calling upon the worthy frauen who made thesealluring offers. The visits were full of profit to the student ofhuman nature, but profitless otherwise. I was ushered into low, darkchambers, small and dreary, looking towards the sunless north, whichI was assured were delightful and even elegant. I was taken up tothe top of tall houses, through a smell of cabbage that wasappalling, to find empty and dreary rooms, from which I fled infright. We were visited by so many people who had chambers to rent,that we were impressed with the idea that all Munich was to let; andyet, when we visited the places offered, we found they were only tobe let alone. One of the frauen who did us the honor to call, alsowrote a note, and inclosed a letter that she had just received froman American gentleman (I make no secret of it that he came fromHartford), in which were many kindly expressions for her welfare, andthanks for the aid he had received in his study of German; and yet Ithink her chambers are the most uninviting in the entire city. Therewere people who were willing to teach us German, without rooms orboard; or to lodge us without giving us German or food; or to feedus, and let us starve intellectually, and lodge where we could.

But all things have an end, and so did our hunt for lodgings. Ichanced one day in my walk to find, with no help from theadvertisem*nt, very nearly what we desired,—cheerful rooms in apleasant neighborhood, where the sun comes when it comes out at all,and opposite the Glass Palace, through which the sun streams in theafternoon with a certain splendor, and almost next door to theresidence and laboratory of the famous chemist, Professor Liebig; sothat we can have our feelings analyzed whenever it is desirable.When we had set up our household gods, and a fire was kindled in thetall white porcelain family monument, which is called here a stove,—and which, by the way, is much more agreeable than your hideous blackand air-scorching cast-iron stoves,—and seen that the feather-bedsunder which we were expected to lie were thick enough to roast thehalf of the body, and short enough to let the other half freeze, wedetermined to try for a season the regular German cookery, our tableheretofore having been served with food cooked in the English stylewith only a slight German flavor. A week of the experiment was quiteenough. I do not mean to say that the viands served us were notgood, only that we could not make up our minds to eat them. TheGermans eat a great deal of meat; and we were obliged to take meatwhen we preferred vegetables. Now, when a deep dish is set beforeyou wherein are chunks of pork reposing on stewed potatoes, andanother wherein a fathomless depth of sauerkraut supports coils ofboiled sausage, which, considering that you are a mortal andresponsible being, and have a stomach, will you choose? HereinMunich, nearly all the bread is filled with anise or caraway seed; itis possible to get, however, the best wheat bread we have eaten inEurope, and we usually have it; but one must maintain a constantvigilance against the inroads of the fragrant seeds. Imagine, then,our despair, when one day the potato, the one vegetable we had alwayseaten with perfect confidence, appeared stewed with caraway seeds.This was too much for American human nature, constituted as it is.Yet the dish that finally sent us back to our ordinary and excellentway of living is one for which I have no name. It may have beencompounded at different times, have been the result of many tastes ordistastes: but there was, after all, a unity in it that marked it asthe composition of one master artist; there was an unspeakableharmony in all its flavors and apparently ununitable substances. Itlooked like a terrapin soup, but it was not. Every dive of the spooninto its dark liquid brought up a different object,—a junk ofunmistakable pork, meat of the color of roast hare, what seemed to bethe neck of a goose, something in strings that resembled the rags ofa silk dress, shreds of cabbage, and what I am quite willing to takemy oath was a bit of Astrachan fur. If Professor Liebig wishes toadd to his reputation, he could do so by analyzing this dish, andpublishing the result to the world.

And, while we are speaking of eating, it may be inferred that theGermans are good eaters; and although they do not begin early, seldomtaking much more than a cup of coffee before noon, they make it up byvery substantial dinners and suppers. To say nothing of theextraordinary dishes of meats which the restaurants serve at night,the black bread and odorous cheese and beer which the men take onboard in the course of an evening would soon wear out a cast-ironstomach in America; and yet I ought to remember the deadly pie andthe corroding whisky of my native land. The restaurant life of thepeople is, of course, different from their home life, and perhaps anevening entertainment here is no more formidable than one in America,but it is different. Let me give you the outlines of a supper towhich we were invited the other night: it certainly cannot hurt youto read about it. We sat down at eight. There were first courses ofthree sorts of cold meat, accompanied with two sorts of salad; theone, a composite, with a potato basis, of all imaginable things thatare eaten. Beer and bread were unlimited. There was then roasthare, with some supporting dish, followed by jellies of varioussorts, and ornamented plates of something that seemed unable todecide whether it would be jelly or cream; and then came assortedcake and the white wine of the Rhine and the red of Hungary. We werethen surprised with a dish of fried eels, with a sauce. Then camecheese; and, to crown all, enormous, triumphal-looking loaves ofcake, works of art in appearance, and delicious to the taste. We satat the table till twelve o'clock; but you must not imagine thateverybody sat still all the time, or that, appearances to thecontrary notwithstanding, the principal object of the entertainmentwas eating. The songs that were sung in Hungarian as well as German,the poems that were recited, the burlesques of actors and acting, theimitations that were inimitable, the take-off of table-tipping and ofprominent musicians, the wit and constant flow of fun, as constant asthe good-humor and free hospitality, the unconstrained ease of thewhole evening, these things made the real supper which one rememberswhen the grosser meal has vanished, as all substantial things dovanish.

CHRISTMAS TIME-MUSIC

For a month Munich has been preparing for Christmas. The shopwindows have had a holiday look all December. I see one every day inwhich are displayed all the varieties of fruits, vegetables, andconfectionery possible to be desired for a feast, done in wax,—amost dismal exhibition, and calculated to make the adjoining window,which has a little fountain and some green plants waving amidstenormous pendent sausages and pigs' heads and various disagreeablehashes of pressed meat, positively enticing. And yet there are somevegetables here that I should prefer to have in wax,—for instance,sauerkraut. The toy windows are worthy of study, and next to themthe bakers'. A favorite toy of the season is a little crib, with theHoly Child, in sugar or wax, lying in it in the most uncomfortableattitude. Babies here are strapped upon pillows, or between pillows,and so tied up and wound up that they cannot move a muscle, except,perhaps, the tongue; and so, exactly like little mummies, they arecarried about the street by the nurses,—poor little things, packedaway so, even in the heat of summer, their little faces looking outof the down in a most pitiful fashion. The popular toy is arepresentation, in sugar or wax, of this period of life. Generallythe toy represents twins, so swathed and bound; and, notinfrequently, the bold conception of the artist carries the point ofthe humor so far as to introduce triplets, thus sporting with themost dreadful possibilities of life.

The German bakers are very ingenious; and if they could be convincedof this great error, that because things are good separately, theymust be good in combination, the produce of their ovens would be muchmore eatable. As it is, they make delicious cake, and of endlessvariety; but they also offer us conglomerate formations that may havea scientific value, but are utterly useless to a stomach not trainedin Germany. Of this sort, for the most part, is the famousLebkuchen, a sort of gingerbread manufactured in Nurnberg, and sentall over Germany: "age does not [seem to] impair, nor custom staleits infinite variety." It is very different from our simple cake ofthat name, although it is usually baked in flat cards. It maycontain nuts or fruit, and is spoiled by a flavor of conflictingspices. I should think it might be sold by the cord, it is piled upin such quantities; and as it grows old and is much handled, itacquires that brown, not to say dirty, familiar look, which may, foraught I know, be one of its chief recommendations. The cake,however, which prevails at this season of the year comes from theTyrol; and as the holidays approach, it is literally piled up on thefruit-stands. It is called Klatzenbrod, and is not a bread at all,but and amalgamation of fruits and spices. It is made up into smallround or oblong forms; and the top is ornamented in various patterns,with split almond meats. The color is a faded black, as if it hadbeen left for some time in a country store; and the weight is justabout that of pig-iron. I had formed a strong desire, mingled withdread, to taste it, which I was not likely to gratify,—one gets sotired of such experiments after a time—when a friend sent us a ballof it. There was no occasion to call in Professor Liebig to analyzethe substance: it is a plain case. The black mass contains, cut upand pressed together, figs, citron, oranges, raisins, dates, variouskinds of nuts, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and I know not what otherspices, together with the inevitable anise and caraway seeds. Itwould make an excellent cannon-ball, and would be specially fatal ifit hit an enemy in the stomach. These seeds invade all dishes. Thecooks seem possessed of one of the rules of whist,—in case of doubt,play a trump: in case of doubt, they always put in anise seed. It issprinkled profusely in the blackest rye bread, it gets into all thevegetables, and even into the holiday cakes.

The extensive Maximilian Platz has suddenly grown up into booths andshanties, and looks very much like a temporary Western village.There are shops for the sale of Christmas articles, toys, cakes, andgimcracks; and there are, besides, places of amusem*nt, if one of thesorry menageries of sick beasts with their hair half worn off can beso classed. One portion of the platz is now a lively and picturesqueforest of evergreens, an extensive thicket of large and small trees,many of them trimmed with colored and gilt strips of paper. I meetin every street persons lugging home their little trees; for it mustbe a very poor household that cannot have its Christmas tree, onwhich are hung the scanty store of candy, nuts, and fruit, and thesimple toys that the needy people will pinch themselves otherwise toobtain.

At this season, usually, the churches get up some representations forthe children, the stable at Bethlehem, with the figures of the Virginand Child, the wise men, and the oxen standing by. At least, thechurches must be put in spick-and-span order. I confess that I liketo stray into these edifices, some of them gaudy enough when theyare, so to speak, off duty, when the choir is deserted, and there isonly here and there a solitary worshiper at his prayers; unless,indeed, as it sometimes happens, when I fancy myself quite alone, Icome by chance upon a hundred people, in some remote corner before aside chapel, where mass is going on, but so quietly that the sense ofsolitude in the church is not disturbed. Sometimes, when the placeis left entirely to myself, and the servants who are putting it torights and, as it were, shifting the scenes, I get a glimpse of thereality of all the pomp and parade of the services. At first I maybe a little shocked with the familiar manner in which the images andstatues and the gilded paraphernalia are treated, very different fromthe stately ceremony of the morning, when the priests are at thealtar, the choir is in the organ-loft, and the people crowd nave andaisles. Then everything is sanctified and inviolate. Now, as Iloiter here, the old woman sweeps and dusts about as if she were inan ordinary crockery store: the sacred things are handled withoutgloves. And, lo! an unclerical servant, in his shirt-sleeves,climbs up to the altar, and, taking down the silver-gilded cherubs,holds them, head down, by one fat foot, while he wipes them off witha damp cloth. To think of submitting a holy cherub to the indignityof a damp cloth!

One could never say too much about the music here. I do not meanthat of the regimental bands, or the orchestras in every hall andbeer-garden, or that in the churches on Sundays, both orchestral andvocal. Nearly every day, at half-past eleven, there is a parade bythe Residenz, and another on the Marian Platz; and at each the bandsplay for half an hour. In the Loggie by the palace the music-standscan always be set out, and they are used in the platz when it doesnot storm; and the bands play choice overtures and selections fromthe operas in fine style. The bands are always preceded and followedby a great crowd as they march through the streets, people who seemto live only for this half hour in the day, and whom no mud or snowcan deter from keeping up with the music. It is a little gleam ofcomfort in the day for the most wearied portion of the community: Imean those who have nothing to do.

But the music of which I speak is that of the conservatoire andopera. The Hof Theater, opera, and conservatoire are all under oneroyal direction. The latter has been recently reorganized with a newdirector, in accordance with the Wagner notions somewhat. The youngking is cracked about Wagner, and appears to care little for othermusic: he brings out his operas at great expense, and it is thefashion here to like Wagner whether he is understood or not. Theopera of the "Meister-Singer von Nurnberg," which was brought outlast summer, occupied over five hours in the representation, which isunbearable to the Germans, who go to the opera at six o'clock orhalf-past, and expect to be at home before ten. His latest opera,which has not yet been produced, is founded on the Niebelungen Lied,and will take three evenings in the representation, which is almostas bad as a Chinese play. The present director of the conservatoireand opera, a Prussian, Herr von Bulow, is a friend of Wagner. Thereare formed here in town two parties: the Wagner and the conservative,the new and the old, the modern and classical; only the Wagnerites donot admit that their admiration of Beethoven and the older composersis less than that of the others, and so for this reason Bulow hasgiven us more music of Beethoven than of any other composer. Onething is certain, that the royal orchestra is trained to a high stateof perfection: its rendition of the grand operas and its weeklyconcerts in the Odeon cannot easily be surpassed. The singers arenot equal to the orchestra, for Berlin and Vienna offer greaterinducements; but there are people here who regard this orchestra assuperlative. They say that the best orchestras in the world are inGermany; that the best in Germany is in Munich; and, therefore, youcan see the inevitable deduction. We have another parallelsyllogism. The greatest pianist in the world is Liszt; but then HerrBulow is actually a better performer than Liszt; therefore you seeagain to what you must come. At any rate, we are quite satisfied inthis provincial capital; and, if there is anywhere better music, wedon't know it. Bulow's orchestra is not very large,—there are lessthan eighty pieces, but it is so handled and drilled, that when wehear it give one of the symphonies of Beethoven or Mendelssohn, thereis little left to be desired. Bulow is a wonderful conductor, alittle man, all nerve and fire, and he seems to inspire everyinstrument. It is worth something to see him lead an orchestra: hisbaton is magical; head, arms, and the whole body are in motion; heknows every note of the compositions; and the precision with which heevokes a solitary note out of a distant instrument with a jerk of hisrod, or brings a wail from the concurring violins, like the moaningof a pine forest in winter, with a sweep of his arm, is mostmasterly. About the platform of the Odeon are the marble busts ofthe great composers; and while the orchestra is giving some ofBeethoven's masterpieces, I like to fix my eyes on his serious andgenius-full face, which seems cognizant of all that is passing, andbelieve that he has a posthumous satisfaction in the interpretationof his great thoughts.

The managers of the conservatoire also give vocal concerts, and thereare, besides, quartette soiries; so that there are few eveningswithout some attraction. The opera alternates with the theater twoor three times a week. The singers are, perhaps, not known in Parisand London, but some of them are not unworthy to be. There is thebaritone, Herr Kindermann, who now, at the age of sixty-five, has asuperb voice and manner, and has had few superiors in his time on theGerman stage. There is Frau Dietz, at forty-five, the best ofactresses, and with a still fresh and lovely voice. There is HerrNachbar, a tenor, who has a future; Fraulein Stehle, a soprano, youngand with an uncommon voice, who enjoys a large salary, and was thefavorite until another soprano, the Malinger, came and turned theheads of king and opera habitues. The resources of the Academy are,however, tolerably large; and the practice of pensioning for life thesingers enables them to keep always a tolerable company. This habitof pensioning officials, as well as musicians and poets, is veryagreeable to the Germans. A gentleman the other day, who expressedgreat surprise at the smallness of the salary of our President, said,that, of course, Andrew Johnson would receive a pension when heretired from office. I could not explain to him how comical the ideawas to me; but when I think of the American people pensioning AndrewJohnson,—well, like the fictitious Yankee in "Mugby Junction,""I laff, I du."

There is some fashion, in a fudgy, quaint way, here in Munich; but itis not exhibited in dress for the opera. People go—and it ispresumed the music is the attraction in ordinary apparel. They saveall their dress parade for the concerts; and the hall of the Odeon isas brilliant as provincial taste can make it in toilet. The ladiesalso go to operas and concerts unattended by gentlemen, and arebrought, and fetched away, by their servants. There is a freedom andsimplicity about this which I quite like; and, besides, it leavestheir husbands and brothers at liberty to spend a congenial eveningin the cafes, beer-gardens, and clubs. But there is always a heavyfringe of young officers and gallants both at opera and concert,standing in the outside passages. It is cheaper to stand, and onecan hear quite as well, and see more.

LOOKING FOR WARM WEATHER

FROM MUNICH TO NAPLES

At all events, saith the best authority, "pray that your flight benot in winter;" and it might have added, don't go south if you desirewarm weather. In January, 1869, I had a little experience of huntingafter genial skies; and I will give you the benefit of it in somefree running notes on my journey from Munich to Naples.

It was the middle of January, at eleven o'clock at night, that weleft Munich, on a mixed railway train, choosing that time, and theslowest of slow trains, that we might make the famous Brenner Pass bydaylight. It was no easy matter, at last, to pull up from the dearold city in which we had become so firmly planted, and to leave theGerman friends who made the place like home to us. One gets to loveGermany and the Germans as he does no other country and people inEurope. There has been something so simple, honest, genuine, in ourMunich life, that we look back to it with longing eyes from this landof fancy, of hand-organ music, and squalid splendor. I presume thestreets are yet half the day hid in a mountain fog; but I know thesuperb military bands are still playing at noon in the old MarianPlatz and in the Loggie by the Residenz; that at half-past six in theevening our friends are quietly stepping in to hear the opera at theHof Theater, where everybody goes to hear the music, and nobody fordisplay, and that they will be at home before half-past nine, andhave dispatched the servant for the mugs of foaming beer; I know thatthey still hear every week the choice conservatoire orchestralconcerts in the Odeon; and, alas that experience should force me tothink of it! I have no doubt that they sip, every morning, coffeewhich is as much superior to that of Paris as that of Paris is tothat of London; and that they eat the delicious rolls, in comparisonwith which those of Paris are tasteless. I wonder, in this land ofwine,—and yet it must be so,—if the beer-gardens are still fillednightly; and if it could be that I should sit at a little tablethere, a comely lass would, before I could ask for what everybody ispresumed to want, place before me a tall glass full of amber liquid,crowned with creamy foam. Are the handsome officers still sippingtheir coffee in the Cafe Maximilian; and, on sunny days, is the crowdof fashion still streaming down to the Isar, and the high, sightlywalks and gardens beyond?

As I said, it was eleven o'clock of a clear and not very severenight; for Munich had had no snow on the ground since November. Adeputation of our friends were at the station to see us off, and thefarewells between the gentlemen were in the hearty fashion of thecountry. I know there is a prejudice with us against kissing betweenmen; but it is only a question of taste: and the experience ofanybody will tell him that the theory that this sort of salutationmust necessarily be desirable between opposite sexes is a delusion.But I suppose it cannot be denied that kissing between men wasinvented in Germany before they wore full beards. Well, our goodbyessaid, we climbed into our bare cars. There is no way of heating theGerman cars, except by tubes filled with hot water, which are placedunder the feet, and are called foot-warmers. As we slowly moved outover the plain, we found it was cold; in an hour the foot-warmers,not hot to start with, were stone cold. You are going to sunnyItaly, our friends had said: as soon as you pass the Brenner you willhave sunshine and delightful weather. This thought consoled us, butdid not warm our feet. The Germans, when they travel by rail, wrapthemselves in furs and carry foot-sacks.

We creaked along, with many stoppings. At two o'clock we were atRosenheim. Rosenheim is a windy place, with clear starlight, with amultitude of cars on a multiplicity of tracks, and a large, lightedrefreshment-room, which has a glowing, jolly stove. We stay there anhour, toasting by the fire and drinking excellent coffee. Groups ofGermans are seated at tables playing cards, smoking, and takingcoffee. Other trains arrive; and huge men stalk in, from Vienna orRussia, you would say, enveloped in enormous fur overcoats, reachingto the heels, and with big fur boots coming above the knees, in whichthey move like elephants. Another start, and a cold ride withcooling foot-warmers, droning on to Kurfstein. It is five o'clockwhen we reach Kurfstein, which is also a restaurant, with a hotstove, and more Germans going on as if it were daytime; but by thistime in the morning the coffee had got to be wretched.

After an hour's waiting, we dream on again, and, before we know it,come out of our cold doze into the cold dawn. Through the thickfrost on the windows we see the faint outlines of mountains.Scraping away the incrustation, we find that we are in the Tyrol,high hills on all sides, no snow in the valley, a bright morning, andthe snow-peaks are soon rosy in the sunrise. It is just as weexpected,—little villages under the hills, and slender church spireswith brick-red tops. At nine o'clock we are in Innsbruck, at thefoot of the Brenner. No snow yet. It must be charming here in thesummer.

During the night we have got out of Bavaria. The waiter at therestaurant wants us to pay him ninety kreuzers for our coffee, whichis only six kreuzers a cup in Munich. Remembering that it takes onehundred kreuzers to make a gulden in Austria, I launch out a Bavariangulden, and expect ten kreuzers in change. I have heard that sixtyBavarian kreuzers are equal to one hundred Austrian; but this waiterexplains to me that my gulden is only good for ninety kreuzers. I,in my turn, explain to the waiter that it is better than the coffee;but we come to no understanding, and I give up, before I begin,trying to understand the Austrian currency. During the day I get mypockets full of coppers, which are very convenient to take in change,but appear to have a very slight purchasing, power in Austria even,and none at all elsewhere, and the only use for which I have found isto give to Italian beggars. One of these pieces satisfies a beggarwhen it drops into his hat; and then it detains him long enough inthe examination of it, so that your carriage has time to get so faraway that his renewed pursuit is usually unavailing.

The Brenner Pass repaid us for the pains we had taken to see it,especially as the sun shone and took the frost from our windows, andwe encountered no snow on the track; and, indeed, the fall was notdeep, except on the high peaks about us. Even if the engineering ofthe road were not so interesting, it was something to be again amidstmountains that can boast a height of ten thousand feet. After wepassed the summit, and began the zigzag descent, we were on a sharplookout for sunny Italy. I expected to lay aside my heavy overcoat,and sun myself at the first station among the vineyards. Instead ofthat, we bade good-by to bright sky, and plunged into a snowstorm,and, so greeted, drove down into the narrow gorges, whose steepslopes we could see were terraced to the top, and planted with vines.We could distinguish enough to know that, with the old Roman ruins,the churches and convent towers perched on the crags, and all, thescenery in summer must be finer than that of the Rhine, especially asthe vineyards here are picturesque,—the vines being trained so as tohide and clothe the ground with verdure.

It was four o'clock when we reached Trent, and colder than on top ofthe Brenner. As the Council, owing to the dead state of its membersfor now three centuries, was not in session, we made no long tarry.We went into the magnificent large refreshment-room to get warm; butit was as cold as a New England barn. I asked the proprietor if wecould not get at a fire; but he insisted that the room was warm, thatit was heated with a furnace, and that he burned good stove-coal, andpointed to a register high up in the wall. Seeing that I lookedincredulous, he insisted that I should test it. Accordingly, Iclimbed upon a table, and reached up my hand. A faint warmth cameout; and I gave it up, and congratulated the landlord on his furnace.But the register had no effect on the great hall. You might as welltry to heat the dome of St. Peter's with a lucifer-match. At dark,Allah be praised! we reached Ala, where we went through the humbugof an Italian custom-house, and had our first glimpse of Italy in thepicturesque-looking idlers in red-tasseled caps, and the jabber of astrange tongue. The snow turned into a cold rain: the foot-warmers,we having reached the sunny lands, could no longer be afforded; andwe shivered along till nine o'clock, dark and rainy, brought us toVerona. We emerged from the station to find a crowd of omnibuses,carriages, drivers, runners, and people anxious to help us, allvociferating in the highest key. Amidst the usual Italian clamorabout nothing, we gained our hotel omnibus, and sat there for tenminutes watching the dispute over our luggage, and serenely listeningto the angry vituperations of policemen and drivers. It sounded likea revolution, but it was only the ordinary Italian way of doingthings; and we were at last rattling away over the broad pavements.

Of course, we stopped at a palace turned hotel, drove into a courtwith double flights of high stone and marble stairways, and werehurried up to the marble-mosaic landing by an active boy, and, almostbefore we could ask for rooms, were shown into a suite of magnificentapartments. I had a glimpse of a garden in the rear,—flowers andplants, and a balcony up which I suppose Romeo climbed to hold thatimmortal love-prattle with the lovesick Juliet. Boy began to lightthe candles. Asked in English the price of such fine rooms. Replyin Italian. Asked in German. Reply in Italian. Asked in French,with the same result. Other servants appeared, each with a piece ofbaggage. Other candles were lighted. Everybody talked in chorus.The landlady—a woman of elegant manners and great command of hernative tongue—appeared with a candle, and joined in the melodiousconfusion. What is the price of these rooms? More jabber, moreservants bearing lights. We seemed suddenly to have come into anillumination and a private lunatic asylum. The landlady and hertroop grew more and more voluble and excited. Ah, then, if theserooms do not suit the signor and signoras, there are others; and wewere whisked off to apartments yet grander, great suites with high,canopied beds, mirrors, and furniture that was luxurious a hundredyears ago. The price? Again a torrent of Italian; servants pouringin, lights flashing, our baggage arriving, until, in the tumult,hopeless of any response to our inquiry for a servant who could speakanything but Italian, and when we had decided, in despair, to hirethe entire establishment, a waiter appeared who was accomplished inall languages, the row subsided, and we were left alone in our glory,and soon in welcome sleep forgot our desperate search for a warmclimate.

The next day it was rainy and not warm; but the sun came outoccasionally, and we drove about to see some of the sights. Thefirst Italian town which the stranger sees he is sure to remember,the outdoor life of the people is so different from that at theNorth. It is the fiction in Italy that it is always summer; and thepeople sit in the open market-place, shiver in the open doorways,crowd into corners where the sun comes, and try to keep up thebeautiful pretense. The picturesque groups of idlers and traffickerswere more interesting to us than the palaces with sculptured frontsand old Roman busts, or tombs of the Scaligers, and old gates.Perhaps I ought to except the wonderful and perfect Romanamphitheater, over every foot of which a handsome boy in ragsfollowed us, looking over every wall that we looked over, peeringinto every hole that we peered into, thus showing his fellowship withus, and at every pause planting himself before us, and throwing asomerset, and then extending his greasy cap for coppers, as if heknew that the modern mind ought not to dwell too exclusively on hoaryantiquity without some relief.

Anxious, as I have said, to find the sunny South, we left Verona thatafternoon for Florence, by way of Padua and Bologna. The ride toPadua was through a plain, at this season dreary enough, were it not,here and there, for the abrupt little hills and the snowy Alps, whichwere always in sight, and towards sundown and between showerstranscendently lovely in a purple and rosy light. But nothing nowcould be more desolate than the rows of unending mulberry-trees,pruned down to the stumps, through which we rode all the afternoon.I suppose they look better when the branches grow out with the tenderleaves for the silk-worms, and when they are clothed with grapevines.Padua was only to us a name. There we turned south, lost mountainsand the near hills, and had nothing but the mulberry flats andditches of water, and chilly rain and mist. It grew unpleasant as wewent south. At dark we were riding slowly, very slowly, for milesthrough a country overflowed with water, out of which trees andhouses loomed up in a ghastly show. At all the stations soldierswere getting on board, shouting and singing discordantly chorusesfrom the operas; for there was a rising at Padua, and one feared atBologna the populace getting up insurrections against the enforcementof the grist-tax,—a tax which has made the government veryunpopular, as it falls principally upon the poor.

Creeping along at such a slow rate, we reached Bologna too late forthe Florence train, It was eight o'clock, and still raining. Thenext train went at two o'clock in the morning, and was the best onefor us to take. We had supper in an inn near by, and a fair attemptat a fire in our parlor. I sat before it, and kept it as lively aspossible, as the hours wore away, and tried to make believe that Iwas ruminating on the ancient greatness of Bologna and its famousuniversity, some of whose chairs had been occupied by women, and uponthe fact that it was on a little island in the Reno, just below here,that Octavius and Lepidus and Mark Antony formed the secondTriumvirate, which put an end to what little liberty Rome had left;but in reality I was thinking of the draught on my back, and thecomforts of a sunny clime. But the time came at length for starting;and in luxurious cars we finished the night very comfortably, androde into Florence at eight in the morning to find, as we had hoped,on the other side of the Apennines, a sunny sky and balmy air.

As this is strictly a chapter of travel and weather, I may not stopto say how impressive and beautiful Florence seemed to us; howbewildering in art treasures, which one sees at a glance in thestreets; or scarcely to hint how lovely were the Boboli Gardensbehind the Pitti Palace, the roses, geraniums etc, in bloom, thebirds singing, and all in a soft, dreamy air. The next day was notso genial; and we sped on, following our original intention ofseeking the summer in winter. In order to avoid trouble with baggageand passports in Rome, we determined to book through for Naples,making the trip in about twenty hours. We started at nine o'clock inthe evening, and I do not recall a more thoroughly uncomfortablejourney. It grew colder as the night wore on, and we went farthersouth. Late in the morning we were landed at the station outside ofRome. There was a general appearance of ruin and desolation. Thewind blew fiercely from the hills, and the snowflakes from the flyingclouds added to the general chilliness. There was no chance to geteven a cup of coffee, and we waited an hour in the cold car. If Ihad not been so half frozen, the consciousness that I was actually onthe outskirts of the Eternal City, that I saw the Campagna and theaqueducts, that yonder were the Alban Hills, and that every foot ofsoil on which I looked was saturated with history, would have excitedme. The sun came out here and there as we went south, and we caughtsome exquisite lights on the near and snowy hills; and there wassomething almost homelike in the miles and miles of olive orchards,that recalled the apple-trees, but for their shining silvered leaves.And yet nothing could be more desolate than the brown marshy ground,the brown hillocks, with now and then a shabby stone hut or a bit ofruin, and the flocks of sheep shivering near their corrals, and theirshepherd, clad in sheepskin, as his ancestor was in the time ofRomulus, leaning on his staff, with his back to the wind. Now andthen a white town perched on a hillside, its houses piled above eachother, relieved the eye; and I could imagine that it might be all thepoets have sung of it, in the spring, though the Latin poets, I amconvinced, have wonderfully imposed upon us.

To make my long story short, it happened to be colder next morning atNaples than it was in Germany. The sun shone; but the northeastwind, which the natives poetically call the Tramontane, was blowing,and the white smoke of Vesuvius rolled towards the sea. It wouldonly last three days, it was very unusual, and all that. The nextday it was colder, and the next colder yet. Snow fell, and blewabout unmelted: I saw it in the streets of Pompeii.

The fountains were frozen, icicles hung from the locks of the marblestatues in the Chiaia. And yet the oranges glowed like gold amongtheir green leaves; the roses, the heliotrope, the geraniums, bloomedin all the gardens. It is the most contradictory climate. Welunched one day, sitting in our open carriage in a lemon grove, andnear at hand the Lucrine Lake was half frozen over. We feasted oureyes on the brilliant light and color on the sea, and the lovelyoutlined mountains round the shore, and waited for a change of wind.The Neapolitans declare that they have not had such weather in twentyyears. It is scarcely one's ideal of balmy Italy.

Before the weather changed, I began to feel in this great Naples,with its roaring population of over half a million, very much likethe sailor I saw at the American consul's, who applied for help to besent home, claiming to be an American. He was an oratorical bummer,and told his story with all the dignity and elevated language of anold Roman. He had been cast away in London. How cast away? Oh! itwas all along of a boarding-house. And then he found himself shippedon an English vessel, and he had lost his discharge-papers; and"Listen, your honor," said he, calmly extending his right hand, "hereI am cast away on this desolate island with nothing before me butwind and weather."

RAVENNA

A DEAD CITY

Ravenna is so remote from the route of general travel in Italy, thatI am certain you can have no late news from there, nor can I bringyou anything much later than the sixth century. Yet, if you were tosee Ravenna, you would say that that is late enough. I am surprisedthat a city which contains the most interesting early Christianchurches and mosaics, is the richest in undisturbed specimens ofearly Christian art, and contains the only monuments of Romanemperors still in their original positions, should be so seldomvisited. Ravenna has been dead for some centuries; and becausenobody has cared to bury it, its ancient monuments are yet aboveground. Grass grows in its wide streets, and its houses stand in asleepy, vacant contemplation of each other: the wind must like tomourn about its silent squares. The waves of the Adriatic oncebrought the commerce of the East to its wharves; but the deposits ofthe Po and the tides have, in process of time, made it an inlandtown, and the sea is four miles away.

In the time of Augustus, Ravenna was a favorite Roman port and harborfor fleets of war and merchandise. There Theodoric, the great kingof the Goths, set up his palace, and there is his enormous mausoleum.As early as A. D. 44 it became an episcopal see, with St.Apollinaris, a disciple of St. Peter, for its bishop. There some ofthe later Roman emperors fixed their residences, and there theyrepose. In and about it revolved the adventurous life of GallaPlacidia, a woman of considerable talent and no principle, thedaughter of Theodosius (the great Theodosius, who subdued the Arianheresy, the first emperor baptized in the true faith of the Trinity,the last who had a spark of genius), the sister of one emperor, andthe mother of another,—twice a slave, once a queen, and once anempress; and she, too, rests there in the great mausoleum builded forher. There, also, lies Dante, in his tomb "by the upbraiding shore;"rejected once of ungrateful Florence, and forever after passionatelylonged for. There, in one of the earliest Christian churches inexistence, are the fine mosaics of the Emperor Justinian andTheodora, the handsome courtesan whom he raised to the dignity andluxury of an empress on his throne in Constantinople. There is thefamous forest of pines, stretching—unbroken twenty miles down thecoast to Rimini, in whose cool and breezy glades Dante and Boccacciowalked and meditated, which Dryden has commemorated, and Byron hasinvested with the fascination of his genius; and under the whisperingboughs of which moved the glittering cavalcade which fetched thebride to Rimini,—the fair Francesca, whose sinful confession Danteheard in hell.

We went down to Ravenna from Bologna one afternoon, through a countrylevel and rich, riding along toward hazy evening, the land gettingflatter as we proceeded (you know, there is a difference betweenlevel and flat), through interminable mulberry-trees and vines, andfields with the tender green of spring, with church spires in therosy horizon; on till the meadows became marshes, in which millionsof frogs sang the overture of the opening year. Our arrival, I havereason to believe, was an event in the old town. We had a crowd ofmoldy loafers to witness it at the station, not one of whom hadambition enough to work to earn a sou by lifting our traveling-bags.We had our hotel to ourselves, and wished that anybody else had it.The rival house was quite aware of our advent, and watched us withjealous eyes; and we, in turn, looked wistfully at it, for our ownfood was so scarce that, as an old traveler says, we feared that weshouldn't have enough, until we saw it on the table, when its qualitymade it appear too much. The next morning, when I sallied out to hirea conveyance, I was an object of interest to the entire population,who seemed to think it very odd that any one should walk about andexplore the quiet streets. If I were to describe Ravenna, I shouldsay that it is as flat as Holland and as lively as New London. Thereare broad streets, with high houses, that once were handsome, palacesthat were once the abode of luxury, gardens that still bloom, andchurches by the score. It is an open gate through which one walksunchallenged into the past, with little to break the association withthe early Christian ages, their monuments undimmed by time, untouchedby restoration and innovation, the whole struck with ecclesiasticaldeath. With all that we saw that day,—churches, basilicas, mosaics,statues, mausoleums,—I will not burden these pages; but I will setdown is enough to give you the local color, and to recall someof the most interesting passages in Christian history in thisout-of-the-way city on the Adriatic.

Our first pilgrimage was to the Church of St. Apollinare Nuova; butwhy it is called new I do not know, as Theodoric built it for anArian cathedral in about the year 500. It is a noble interior,having twenty-four marble columns of gray Cippolino, brought fromConstantinople, with composite capitals, on each of which is animpost with Latin crosses sculptured on it. These columns supportround arches, which divide the nave from the aisles, and on the wholelength of the wall of the nave so supported are superb mosaics,full-length figures, in colors as fresh as if done yesterday, thoughthey were executed thirteen hundred years ago. The mosaic on theleft side—which is, perhaps, the finest one of the period inexistence—is interesting on another account. It represents the cityof Classis, with sea and ships, and a long procession of twenty-twovirgins presenting offerings to the Virgin and Child, seated on athrone. The Virgin is surrounded by angels, and has a glory roundher head, which shows that homage is being paid to her. It has beensupposed, from the early monuments of Christian art, that the worshipof the Virgin is of comparatively recent origin; but this mosaicwould go to show that Mariolatry was established before the end ofthe sixth century. Near this church is part of the front of thepalace of Theodoric, in which the Exarchs and Lombard kingssubsequently resided. Its treasures and marbles Charlemagne carriedoff to Germany.

DOWN TO THE PINETA

We drove three miles beyond the city, to the Church of St. Apollinarein Classe, a lonely edifice in a waste of marsh, a grand oldbasilica, a purer specimen of Christian art than Rome or any otherItalian town can boast. Just outside the city gate stands a Greekcross on a small fluted column, which marks the site of the oncemagnificent Basilica of St. Laurentius, which was demolished in thesixteenth century, its stone built into a new church in town, and itsrich marbles carried to all-absorbing Rome. It was the last relic ofthe old port of Caesarea, famous since the time of Augustus. Amarble column on a green meadow is all that remains of a onceprosperous city. Our road lay through the marshy plain, across anelevated bridge over the sluggish united stream of the Ronco andMontone, from which there is a wide view, including the Pineta (orPine Forest), the Church of St. Apollinare in the midst ofrice-fields and marshes, and on a clear day the Alps and Apennines.

I can imagine nothing more desolate than this solitary church, or theapproach to it. Laborers were busy spading up the heavy, wet ground,or digging trenches, which instantly filled with water, for the wholecountry was afloat. The frogs greeted us with clamorous chorus outof their slimy pools, and the mosquitoes attacked us as we rodealong. I noticed about on the bogs, wherever they could findstanding-room, half-naked wretches, with long spears, having severalprongs like tridents, which they thrust into the grass and shallowwater. Calling one of them to us, we found that his business wasfishing, and that he forked out very fat and edible-looking fish withhis trident. Shaggy, undersized horses were wading in the water,nipping off the thin spears of grass. Close to the church is arickety farmhouse. If I lived there, I would as lief be a fish as ahorse.

The interior of this primitive old basilica is lofty and imposing,with twenty-four handsome columns of the gray Cippolino marble, andan elevated high altar and tribune, decorated with splendid mosaicsof the sixth century,—biblical subjects, in all the stifffaithfulness of the holy old times. The marble floor is green anddamp and slippery. Under the tribune is the crypt, where the body ofSt. Apollinaris used to lie (it is now under the high altar above);and as I desired to see where he used to rest, I walked in. I alsowalked into about six inches of water, in the dim, irreligious light;and so made a cold-water Baptist devotee of myself. In the sideaisles are wonderful old sarcophagi, containing the ashes ofarchbishops of Ravenna, so old that the owners' names are forgottenof two of them, which shows that a man may build a tomb more enduringthan his memory. The sculptured bas-reliefs are very interesting,being early Christian emblems and curious devices,—symbols of sheep,palms, peaco*cks, crosses, and the four rivers of Paradise flowingdown in stony streams from stony sources, and monograms, and piousrebuses. At the entrance of the crypt is an open stone book, calledthe Breviary of Gregory the Great. Detached from the church is theBell Tower, a circular campanile of a sort peculiar to Ravenna, whichadds to the picturesqueness of the pile, and suggests the notion thatit is a mast unshipped from its vessel, the church, whichconsequently stands there water-logged, with no power to catch anywind, of doctrine or other, and move. I forgot to say that thebasilica was launched in the year 534.

A little weary with the good but damp old Christians, we ordered ourdriver to continue across the marsh to the Pineta, whose dark fringebounded all our horizon toward the Adriatic. It is the largestunbroken forest in Italy, and by all odds the most poetic in itselfand its associations. It is twenty-five miles long, and from one tothree in breadth, a free growth of stately pines, whose boughs arefull of music and sweet odors,—a succession of lovely glades andavenues, with miles and miles of drives over the springy turf. Atthe point where we entered is a farmhouse. Laborers had beengathering the cones, which were heaped up in immense windrows,hundreds of feet in length. Boys and men were busy pounding out theseeds from the cones. The latter are used for fuel, and the formerare pressed for their oil. They are also eaten: we have often hadthem served at hotel tables, and found them rather tasteless, but notunpleasant. The turf, as we drove into the recesses of the forest,was thickly covered with wild flowers, of many colors and delicateforms; but we liked best the violets, for they reminded us of home,though the driver seemed to think them less valuable than the seedsof the pine-cones. A lovely day and history and romance united tofascinate us with the place. We were driving over the spot where,eighteen centuries ago, the Roman fleet used to ride at anchor.Here, it is certain, the gloomy spirit of Dante found congenial placefor meditation, and the gay Boccaccio material for fiction. Here forhours, day after day, Byron used to gallop his horse, giving vent tothat restless impatience which could not all escape from his fierypen, hearing those voices of a past and dead Italy which he, moretruthfully and pathetically than any other poet, has put into livingverse. The driver pointed out what is called Byron's Path, where hewas wont to ride. Everybody here, indeed, knows of Byron; and Ithink his memory is more secure than any saint of them all in theirstone boxes, partly because his poetry has celebrated the region,perhaps rather from the perpetuated tradition of his generosity. Noforeigner was ever so popular as he while he lived at Ravenna. Atleast, the people say so now, since they find it so profitable tokeep his memory alive and to point out his haunts. The Italians, tobe sure, know how to make capital out of poets and heroes, and arequick to learn the curiosity of foreigners, and to gratify it for acompensation. But the evident esteem in which Byron's memory is heldin the Armenian monastery of St. Lazzaro, at Venice, must beotherwise accounted for. The monks keep his library-room and tableas they were when he wrote there, and like to show his portrait, andtell of his quick mastery of the difficult Armenian tongue. We havea notable example of a Person who became a monk when he was sick; butByron accomplished too much work during the few months he was on theIsland of St. Lazzaro, both in original composition and intranslating English into Armenian, for one physically ruined andbroken.

DANTE AND BYRON

The pilgrim to Ravenna, who has any idea of what is due to the geniusof Dante, will be disappointed when he approaches his tomb. Itssituation is in a not very conspicuous corner, at the foot of anarrow street, bearing the poet's name, and beside the Church of SanFrancisco, which is interesting as containing the tombs of thePolenta family, whose hospitality to the wandering exile has rescuedtheir names from oblivion. Opposite the tomb is the shabby old brickhouse of the Polentas, where Dante passed many years of his life. Itis tenanted now by all sorts of people, and a dirty carriage-shop inthe courtyard kills the poetry of it. Dante died in 1321, and was atfirst buried in the neighboring church; but this tomb, since twicerenewed, was erected, and his body removed here, in 1482. It is asquare stuccoed structure, stained light green, and covered by adome,—a tasteless monument, embellished with stucco medallions,inside, of the poet, of Virgil, of Brunetto Latini, the poet'smaster, and of his patron, Guido da Polenta. On the sarcophagus isthe epitaph, composed in Latin by Dante himself, who seems to havethought, with Shakespeare, that for a poet to make his own epitaphwas the safest thing to do. Notwithstanding the mean appearance ofthis sepulcher, there is none in all the soil of Italy that thetraveler from America will visit with deeper interest. Near by isthe house where Byron first resided in Ravenna, as a tablet records.

The people here preserve all the memorials of Byron; and, I shouldjudge, hold his memory in something like affection. The PalaceGuiccioli, in which he subsequently resided, is in another part ofthe town. He spent over two years in Ravenna, and said he preferredit to any place in Italy. Why I cannot see, unless it was remotefrom the route of travel, and the desolation of it was congenial tohim. Doubtless he loved these wide, marshy expanses on the Adriatic,and especially the great forest of pines on its shore; but Byron wasapt to be governed in his choice of a residence by the woman withwhom he was intimate. The palace was certainly pleasanter than hisgloomy house in the Strada di Porta Sisi, and the society of theCountess Guiccioli was rather a stimulus than otherwise to hisliterary activity. At her suggestion he wrote the "Prophecy ofDante;" and the translation of "Francesca da Rimini" was "executed atRavenna, where, five centuries before, and in the very house in whichthe unfortunate lady was born, Dante's poem had been composed." Someof his finest poems were also produced here, poems for which Veniceis as grateful as Ravenna. Here he wrote "Marino Faliero," "The TwoFoscari," "Morganti Maggiore," "Sardanapalus," "The Blues," "Thefifth canto of Don Juan," "Cain," "Heaven and Earth," and "TheVision of Judgment." I looked in at the court of the palace,—apleasant, quiet place,—where he used to work, and tried to guesswhich were the windows of his apartments. The sun was shiningbrightly, and a bird was singing in the court; but there was no othersign of life, nor anything to remind one of the profligate genius whowas so long a guest here.

RESTING-PLACE OF CAESARS—PICTURE OF A BEAUTIFUL HERETIC

Very different from the tomb of Dante, and different in theassociations it awakes, is the Rotunda or Mausoleum of Theodoric theGoth, outside the Porta Serrata, whose daughter, Amalasuntha, as itis supposed, about the year 530, erected this imposing structure as acertain place "to keep his memory whole and mummy hid" for ever. Butthe Goth had not lain in it long before Arianism went out of fashionquite, and the zealous Roman Catholics despoiled his costlysleeping-place, and scattered his ashes abroad. I do not know thatany dead person has lived in it since. The tomb is still a verysolid affair,—a rotunda built of solid blocks of limestone, andresting on a ten-sided base, each side having a recess surmounted byan arch. The upper story is also decagonal, and is reached by aflight of modern stone steps. The roof is composed of a single blockof Istrian limestone, scooped out like a shallow bowl inside; and,being the biggest roof-stone I ever saw, I will give you thedimensions. It is thirty-six feet in diameter, hollowed out to thedepth of ten feet, four feet thick at the center, and two feet nineinches at the edges, and is estimated to weigh two hundred tons.Amalasuntha must have had help in getting it up there. The lowerstory is partly under water. The green grass of the inclosure inwhich it stands is damp enough for frogs. An old woman opened theiron gate to let us in. Whether she was any relation of the ancientproprietor, I did not inquire; but she had so much trouble in,turning the key in the rusty lock, and letting us in, that I presumewe were the only visitors she has had for some centuries.

Old women abound in Ravenna; at least, she was not young who showedus the mausoleum of Galla Placidia. Placidia was also prudent andforeseeing, and built this once magnificent sepulcher for her ownoccupation. It is in the form of a Latin cross, forty-six feet inlength by about forty in width. The floor is paved with richmarbles; the cupola is covered with mosaics of the time of theempress; and in the arch over the door is a fine representation ofthe Good Shepherd. Behind the altar is the massive sarcophagus ofmarble (its cover of silver plates was long ago torn off) in whichare literally the ashes of the empress. She was immured in it as amummy, in a sitting position, clothed in imperial robes; and therethe ghastly corpse sat in a cypress-wood chair, to be looked at byanybody who chose to peep through the aperture, for more than elevenhundred years, till one day, in 1577, some children introduced alighted candle, perhaps out of compassion for her who sat so long indarkness, when her clothes caught fire, and she was burned up,—awarning to all children not to play with a dead and dry empress. Inthis resting-place are also the tombs of Honorius II., her brother,of Constantius III., her second husband, and of Honoria, herdaughter.

There are no other undisturbed tombs of the Caesars in existence.Hers is almost the last, and the very small last, of a greatsuccession. What thoughts of a great empire in ruins do not forcethemselves on one in the confined walls of this little chamber!What a woman was she whose ashes lie there! She saw and aided theruin of the empire; but it may be said of her, that her vices weregreater than her misfortunes. And what a story is her life! Born tothe purple, educated in the palace at Constantinople, accomplishedbut not handsome, at the age of twenty she was in Rome when Alaricbesieged it. Carried off captive by the Goths, she became the notunwilling object of the passion of King Adolphus, who at lengthmarried her at Narbonne. At the nuptials the king, in a Roman habit,occupied a seat lower than hers, while she sat on a throne habited asa Roman empress, and received homage. Fifty handsome youths bore toher in each hand a dish of gold, one filled with coin, and the otherwith precious stones,—a small part only, these hundred vessels oftreasure, of the spoils the Goths brought from her country. WhenAdolphus, who never abated his fondness for his Roman bride, wasassassinated at Barcelona, she was treated like a slave by hisassassins, and driven twelve miles on foot before the horse of hismurderer. Ransomed at length for six hundred thousand measures ofwheat by her brother Honorius, who handed her over struggling toConstantius, one of his generals. But, once married, her reluctanceceased; and she set herself to advance the interests of herself andhusband, ruling him as she had done the first one. Her purpose wasaccomplished when he was declared joint emperor with Honorius. Hedied shortly after; and scandalous stories of her intimacy with herbrother caused her removal to Constantinople; but she came backagain, and reigned long as the regent of her son, Valentinian III.,—a feeble youth, who never grew to have either passions or talents,and was very likely, as was said, enervated by his mother indissolute indulgence, so that she might be supreme. But she died atRome in 450, much praised for her orthodoxy and her devotion to theTrinity. And there was her daughter, Honoria, who ran off with achamberlain, and afterward offered to throw herself into the arms ofAttila who wouldn't take her as a gift at first, but afterwarddemanded her, and fought to win her and her supposed inheritance.But they were a bad lot altogether; and it is no credit to aChristian of the nineteenth century to stay in this tomb so long.

Near this mausoleum is the magnificent Basilica of St. Vitale, builtin the reign of Justinian, and consecrated in 547, I was interestedto see it because it was erected in confessed imitation of St. Sophiaat Constantinople, is in the octagonal form, and has all theaccessories of Eastern splendor, according to the architecturalauthorities. Its effect is really rich and splendid; and it ratherdazzled us with its maze of pillars, its upper and lower columns, itsgalleries, complicated capitals, arches on arches, and Byzantineintricacies. To the student of the very early ecclesiastical art, itmust be an object of more interest than even of wonder. But what Icared most to see were the mosaics in the choir, executed in the timeof Justinian, and as fresh and beautiful as on the day they weremade. The mosaics and the exquisite arabesques on the roof of thechoir, taken together, are certainly unequaled by any other earlychurch decoration I have seen; and they are as interesting as theyare beautiful. Any description of them is impossible; but mentionmay be made of two characteristic groups, remarkable for execution,and having yet a deeper interest.

In one compartment of the tribune is the figure of the EmperorJustinian, holding a vase with consecrated offerings, and surroundedby courtiers and soldiers. Opposite is the figure of the EmpressTheodora, holding a similar vase, and attended by ladies of hercourt. There is a refinement and an elegance about the empress, agrace and sweet dignity, that is fascinating. This is royalty,—stately and cold perhaps: even the mouth may be a little cruel, Ibegin to perceive, as I think of her; but she wears the purple bydivine right. I have not seen on any walls any figure walking out ofhistory so captivating as this lady, who would seem to have beenworthy of apotheosis in a Christian edifice. Can there be any doubtthat this lovely woman was orthodox? She, also, has a story, whichyou doubtless have been recalling as you read. Is it worth while torepeat even its outlines? This charming regal woman was the daughterof the keeper of the bears in the circus at Constantinople; and sheearly went upon the stage as a pantomimist and buffoon. She wasbeautiful, with regular features, a little pale, but with a tinge ofnatural color, vivacious eyes, and an easy motion that displayed toadvantage the graces of her small but elegant figure. I can see allthat in the mosaic. But she sold her charms to whoever cared to buythem in Constantinople; she led a life of dissipation that cannot beeven hinted at in these days; she went off to Egypt as the concubineof a general; was deserted, and destitute even to misery in Cairo;wandered about a vagabond in many Eastern cities, and won thereputation everywhere of the most beautiful courtesan of her time;reappeared in Constantinople; and, having, it is said, a vision ofher future, suddenly took to a pretension of virtue and plain sewing;contrived to gain the notice of Justinian, to inflame his passions asshe did those of all the world besides, to captivate him into firstan alliance, and at length a marriage. The emperor raised her to anequal seat with himself on his throne; and she was worshiped asempress in that city where she had been admired as harlot. And onthe throne she was a wise woman, courageous and chaste; and had herpalaces on the Bosphorus; and took good care of her beauty, andindulged in the pleasures of a good table; had ministers who kissedher feet; a crowd of women and eunuchs in her secret chambers, whosepassions she indulged; was avaricious and sometimes cruel; andfounded a convent for the irreclaimably bad of her own sex, some ofwhom liked it, and some of whom threw themselves into the sea indespair; and when she died was an irreparable loss to her emperor.So that it seems to me it is a pity that the historian should saythat she was devout, but a little heretic.

A HIGH DAY IN ROME

PALM SUNDAY IN ST. PETER'S

The splendid and tiresome ceremonies of Holy Week set in; also therain, which held up for two days. Rome without the sun, and withrain and the bone-penetrating damp cold of the season, is a wretchedplace. Squalor and ruins and cheap splendor need the sun; thegalleries need it; the black old masters in the dark corners of thegaudy churches need it; I think scarcely anything of a cardinal'sbig, blazing footman, unless the sun shines on him, and radiates fromhis broad back and his splendid calves; the models, who get up intheatrical costumes, and get put into pictures, and pass the worldover for Roman peasants (and beautiful many of them are), can't siton the Spanish Stairs in indolent pose when it rains; the streets areslimy and horrible; the carriages try to run over you, and stand avery good chance of succeeding, where there are no sidewalks, and youare limping along on the slippery round cobble-stones; you can't getinto the country, which is the best part of Rome: but when the sunshines all this is changed; the dear old dirty town exercises, itsfascinations on you then, and you speedily forget your recent misery.

Holy Week is a vexation to most people. All the world crowds here tosee its exhibitions and theatrical shows, and works hard to catch aglimpse of them, and is tired out, if not disgusted, at the end. Thethings to see and hear are Palm Sunday in St. Peter's; singing of theMiserere by the pope's choir on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday inthe Sistine Chapel; washing of the pilgrims' feet in a chapel of St.Peter's, and serving the apostles at table by the pope on Thursday,with a papal benediction from the balcony afterwards; Easter Sunday,with the illumination of St. Peter's in the evening; and fireworks(this year in front of St. Peter's in Montorio) Monday evening.Raised seats are built up about the high altar under the dome in St.Peter's, which will accommodate a thousand, and perhaps more, ladies;and for these tickets are issued without numbers, and for twice asmany as they will seat. Gentlemen who are in evening dress areadmitted to stand in the reserved places inside the lines ofsoldiers. For the Miserere in the Sistine Chapel tickets are alsoissued. As there is only room for about four hundred ladies, and athousand and more tickets are given out, you may imagine thescramble. Ladies go for hours before the singing begins, and make agrand rush when the doors are open. I do not know any sight sounseemly and cruel as a crowd of women intent on getting in to such aceremony: they are perfectly rude and unmerciful to each other. Theypush and trample one another under foot; veils and dresses are torn;ladies faint away in the scrimmage, and only the strongest and mostunscrupulous get in. I have heard some say, who have been in thepellmell, that, not content with elbowing and pushing and pounding,some women even stick pins into those who are in the way. I hopethis latter is not true; but it is certain that the conduct of mostof the women is brutal. A weak or modest or timid woman stands nomore chance than she would in a herd of infuriated Campagna cattle.The same scenes are enacted in the efforts to see the pope wash feet,and serve at the table. For the possession of the seats under thedome on Palm Sunday and Easter there is a like crush. The ceremoniesdo not begin until half-past nine; but ladies go between five and sixo'clock in the morning, and when the passages are open they make agrand rush. The seats, except those saved for the nobility, are soonall taken, and the ladies who come after seven are lucky if they canget within the charmed circle, and find a spot to sit down on acampstool. They can then see only a part of the proceedings, andhave a weary, exhausting time of it for hours. This year Rome ismore crowded than ever before. There are American ladies enough tofill all the reserved places; and I fear they are energetic enough toget their share of them.

It rained Sunday; but there was a steady stream of people andcarriages all the morning pouring over the Bridge of St. Angelo, anddischarging into the piazza of St. Peter's. It was after nine when Iarrived on the ground. There was a crowd of carriages under thecolonnades, and a heavy fringe in front of them; but the hundreds ofpeople moving over the piazza, and up the steps to the entrances,made only the impression of dozens in the vast space. I do not knowif there are people enough in Rome to fill St. Peter's; certainlythere was no appearance of a crowd as we entered, although they hadbeen pouring in all the morning, and still thronged the doors. Iheard a traveler say that he followed ten thousand soldiers into thechurch, and then lost them from sight: they disappeared in the sidechapels. He did not make his affidavit as to the number of soldiers.The interior area of the building is not much greater than the squareof St. Mark in Venice. To go into the great edifice is almost likegoing outdoors. Lines of soldiers kept a wide passage clear from thefront door away down to the high altar; and there was a good mass ofspectators on the outside. The tribunes for the ladies, built upunder the dome, were of course, filled with masses of ladies insolemn black; and there was more or less of a press of people surgingabout in that vicinity. Thousands of people were also roaming aboutin the great spaces of the edifice; but there was nowhere elseanything like a crowd. It had very much the appearance of a largefair-ground, with little crowds about favorite booths. Gentlemen indress-coats were admitted to the circle under the dome. The pope'schoir was stationed in a gallery there opposite the high altar. Backof the altar was a wide space for the dignitaries; seats were there,also, for ambassadors and those born to the purple; and the pope'sseat was on a raised dais at the end. Outsiders could see nothing ofwhat went on within there; and the ladies under the dome could onlypartially see, in the seats they had fought so gallantly to obtain.

St. Peter's is a good place for grand processions and ceremonies; butit is a poor one for viewing them. A procession which moves down thenave is hidden by the soldiers who stand on either side, or isvisible only by sections as it passes: there is no good place to getthe grand effect of the masses of color, and the total of thegorgeous pageantry. I should like to see the display upon a grandstage, and enjoy it in a coup d'oeil. It is a fine study of colorand effect, and the groupings are admirable; but the whole affair isnearly lost to the mass of spectators. It must be a sublime feelingto one in the procession to walk about in such monstrous fineclothes; but what would his emotions be if more people could see him!The grand altar stuck up under the dome not only breaks the effect ofwhat would be the fine sweep of the nave back to the apse, but itcuts off all view of the celebration of the mass behind it, and, ineffect, reduces what should be the great point of display in thechurch to a mere chapel. And when you add to that the temporarytribunes erected under the dome for seating the ladies, the entirenave is shut off from a view of the gorgeous ceremony of high mass.The effect would be incomparable if one could stand in the door, oranywhere in the nave, and, as in other churches, look down to the endupon a great platform, with the high altar and all the sublimespectacle in full view, with the blaze of candles and the clouds ofincense rising in the distance.

At half-past nine the great doors opened, and the procession began,in slow and stately moving fashion, to enter. One saw a throng ofecclesiastics in robes and ermine; the white plumes of the GuardNoble; the pages and chamberlains in scarlet; other pages, or whatnot, in black short-clothes, short swords, gold chains, cloak hangingfrom the shoulder, and stiff white ruffs; thirty-six cardinals inviolet robes, with high miter-shaped white silk hats, that looked notunlike the pasteboard "trainer-caps" that boys wear when they playsoldier; crucifixes, and a blazoned banner here and there; and, atlast, the pope, in his red chair, borne on the shoulders of redlackeys, heaving along in a sea-sicky motion, clad in scarlet andgold, with a silver miter on his head, feebly making the papalbenediction with two upraised fingers, and moving his lips inblessing. As the pope came in, a supplementary choir of men andsoprano hybrids, stationed near the door, set up a high, welcomingsong, or chant, which echoed rather finely through the building. Allthe music of the day is vocal.

The procession having reached its destination, and disappeared behindthe altar of the dome, the pope dismounted, and took his seat on histhrone. The blessing of the palms began, the cardinals firstapproaching, and afterwards the members of the diplomatic corps, thearchbishops and bishops, the heads of the religious orders, and suchprivate persons as have had permission to do so. I had previouslyseen the palms carried in by servants in great baskets. It is,perhaps, not necessary to say that they are not the poetical greenwaving palms, but stiff sort of wands, woven out of dry, yellow,split palm-leaves, sometimes four or five feet in length, braidedinto the semblance of a crown on top,—a kind of rough basket-work.The palms having been blessed, a procession was again formed down thenave and out the door, all in it "carrying palms in their hands," theyellow color of which added a new element of picturesqueness to thesplendid pageant. The pope was carried as before, and bore in hishand a short braided palm, with gold woven in, flowers added, and themonogram "I. H. S." worked in the top. It is the pope's custom togive this away when the ceremony is over. Last year he presented itto an American lady, whose devotion attracted him; this year I saw itgo away in a gilded coach in the hands of an ecclesiastic. Theprocession disappeared through the great portal into the vestibule,and the door closed. In a moment somebody knocked three times on thedoor: it opened, and the procession returned, and moved again to therear of the altar, the singers marching with it and chanting. Thecardinals then changed their violet for scarlet robes; and high mass,for an hour, was celebrated by a cardinal priest: and I was told thatit was the pope's voice that we heard, high and clear, singing thepassion. The choir made the responses, and performed at intervals.The singing was not without a certain power; indeed, it was marveloushow some of the voices really filled the vast spaces of the edifice,and the choruses rolled in solemn waves of sound through the arches.The singing, with the male sopranos, is not to my taste; but itcannot be denied that it had a wild and strange effect.

While this was going on behind the altar, the people outside werewandering about, looking at each other, and on the watch not to missany of the shows of the day. People were talking, chattering, andgreeting each other as they might do in the street. Here and theresomebody was kneeling on the pavement, unheeding the passing throng.At several of the chapels, services were being conducted; and therewas a large congregation, an ordinary church full, about each ofthem. But the most of those present seemed to regard it as aspectacle only; and as a display of dress, costumes, andnationalities it was almost unsurpassed. There are few morewonderful sights in this world than an Englishwoman in what sheconsiders full dress. An English dandy is also a pleasing object.For my part, as I have hinted, I like almost as well as anything thebig footmen,—those in scarlet breeches and blue gold-embroideredcoats. I stood in front of one of the fine creations for some time,and contemplated him as one does the Farnese Hercules. One likes tosee to what a splendor his species can come, even if the brains haveall run down into the calves of the legs. There were also the pages,the officers of the pope's household, in costumes of the Middle Ages;the pope's Swiss guard in the showy harlequin uniform designed byMichael Angelo; the foot-soldiers in white short-clothes, whichthreatened to burst, and let them fly into pieces; there were fineladies and gentlemen, loafers and loungers, from every civilizedcountry, jabbering in all the languages; there were beggars in rags,and boors in coats so patched that there was probably none of theoriginal material left; there were groups of peasants from theCampagna, the men in short jackets and sheepskin breeches with thewool side out, the women with gay-colored folded cloths on theirheads, and coarse woolen gowns; a squad of wild-looking Spanishgypsies, burning-eyed, olive-skinned, hair long, black, crinkled, andgreasy, as wild in raiment as in face; priests and friars, Zouaves injaunty light gray and scarlet; rags and velvets, silks and sergecloths,—a cosmopolitan gathering poured into the world's great placeof meeting,—a fine religious Vanity Fair on Sunday.

There came an impressive moment in all this confusion, a point ofaugust solemnity. Up to that instant, what with chanting and singingthe many services, and the noise of talking and walking, there was awild babel. But at the stroke of the bell and the elevation of theHost, down went the muskets of the guard with one clang on themarble; the soldiers kneeled; the multitude in the nave, in theaisles, at all the chapels, kneeled; and for a minute in that vastedifice there was perfect stillness: if the whole great concourse hadbeen swept from the earth, the spot where it lately was could nothave been more silent. And then the military order went down theline, the soldiers rose, the crowd rose, and the mass and the humwent on.

It was all over before one; and the pope was borne out again, and thevast crowd began to discharge itself. But it was a long time beforethe carriages were all filled and rolled off. I stood for a halfhour watching the stream go by,—the pompous soldiers, the peasantsand citizens, the dazzling equipages, and jaded, exhausted women inblack, who had sat or stood half a day under the dome, and could getno carriage; and the great state coaches of the cardinals, swinginghigh in the air, painted and gilded, with three noble footmen hangingon behind each, and a cardinal's broad face in the window.

VESUVIUS

CLIMBING A VOLCANO

Everybody who comes to Naples,—that is, everybody except the ladywho fell from her horse the other day at Resina and injured hershoulder, as she was mounting for the ascent,—everybody, I say, goesup Vesuvius, and nearly every one writes impressions and descriptionsof the performance. If you believe the tales of travelers, it is anundertaking of great hazard, an experience of frightful emotions.How unsafe it is, especially for ladies, I heard twenty times inNaples before I had been there a day. Why, there was a lady thrownfrom her horse and nearly killed, only a week ago; and she still layill at the next hotel, a witness of the truth of the story. Iimagined her plunged down a precipice of lava, or pitched over thelip of the crater, and only rescued by the devotion of a gallantguide, who threatened to let go of her if she didn't pay him twentyfrancs instantly. This story, which will live and grow for years inthis region, a waxing and never-waning peril of the volcano, I found,subsequently, had the foundation I have mentioned above. The ladydid go to Resina in order to make the ascent of Vesuvius, mounted ahorse there, fell off, being utterly unhorsewomanly, and hurtherself; but her injury had no more to do with Vesuvius than it hadwith the entrance of Victor Emanuel into Naples, which took place acouple of weeks after. Well, as I was saying, it is the fashion towrite descriptions of Vesuvius; and you might as well have mine,which I shall give to you in rough outline.

There came a day when the Tramontane ceased to blow down on us thecold air of the snowy Apennines, and the white cap of Vesuvius, whichis, by the way, worn generally like the caps of the Neapolitans,drifted inland instead of toward the sea. Warmer weather had come tomake the bright sunshine no longer a mockery. For some days I hadbeen getting the gauge of the mountain. With its white plume it is aconstant quantity in the landscape: one sees it from every point ofview; and we had been scarcely anywhere that volcanic remains, orsigns of such action,—a thin crust shaking under our feet, as atSolfatara, where blasts of sulphurous steam drove in our faces,—didnot remind us that the whole ground is uncertain, and undermined bythe subterranean fires that have Vesuvius for a chimney. All thecoast of the bay, within recent historic periods, in different spotsat different times, has risen and sunk and risen again, in simpleobedience to the pulsations of the great fiery monster below. Itpuffs up or sinks, like the crust of a baking apple-pie. This regionis evidently not done; and I think it not unlikely it may have to beturned over again before it is. We had seen where Herculaneum liesunder the lava and under the town of Resina; we had walked thoseclean and narrow streets of Pompeii, and seen the workmen pickingaway at the imbedded gravel, sand, and ashes which still cover nearlytwo thirds of the nice little, tight little Roman city; we had lookedat the black gashes on the mountain-sides, where the lava streams hadgushed and rolled and twisted over vineyards and villas and villages;and we decided to take a nearer look at the immediate cause of allthis abnormal state of things.

In the morning when I awoke the sun was just rising behind Vesuvius;and there was a mighty display of gold and crimson in that quarter,as if the curtain was about to be lifted on a grand performance, saya ballet at San Carlo, which is the only thing the Neapolitans thinkworth looking at. Straight up in the air, out of the mountain, rosea white pillar, spreading out at the top like a palm-tree, or, tocompare it to something I have seen, to the Italian pines, that comeso picturesquely into all these Naples pictures. If you will believeme, that pillar of steam was like a column of fire, from the sunshining on and through it, and perhaps from the reflection of thebackground of crimson clouds and blue and gold sky, spread out thereand hung there in royal and extravagant profusion, to make a highwayand a regal gateway, through which I could just then see coming thehorses and the chariot of a southern perfect day. They said that thetree-shaped cloud was the sign of an eruption; but the hotel-keepershere are always predicting that. The eruption is usually about twoor three weeks distant; and the hotel proprietors get thisinformation from experienced guides, who observe the action of thewater in the wells; so that there can be no mistake about it.

We took carriages at nine o'clock to Resina, a drive of four miles,and one of exceeding interest, if you wish to see Naples life. Theway is round the curving bay by the sea; but so continuously built upis it, and so inclosed with high walls of villas, through the opengates of which the golden oranges gleam, that you seem never to leavethe city. The streets and quays swarm with the most vociferous,dirty, multitudinous life. It is a drive through Rag Fair. Thetall, whitey-yellow houses fronting the water, six, seven, eightstories high, are full as beehives; people are at all the openwindows; garments hang from the balconies and from poles thrust out;up every narrow, gloomy, ascending street are crowds of strugglinghuman shapes; and you see how like herrings in a box are packed theover half a million people of Naples. In front of the houses are themarkets in the open air,—fish, vegetables, carts of oranges; in thesun sit women spinning from distaffs or weaving fishing-nets; androws of children who were never washed and never clothed but once,and whose garments have nearly wasted away; beggars, fishermen in redcaps, sailors, priests, donkeys, fruit-venders, street-musicians,carriages, carts, two-wheeled break-down vehicles,—the whole tangledin one wild roar and rush and babel,—a shifting, varied panorama ofcolor, rags,—a pandemonium such as the world cannot show elsewhere,that is what one sees on the road to Resina. The drivers all drivein the streets here as if they held a commission from the devil,cracking their whips, shouting to their horses, and dashing into thethickest tangle with entire recklessness. They have one cry, usedalike for getting more speed out of their horses or for checkingthem, or in warning to the endangered crowds on foot. It is anexclamatory grunt, which may be partially expressed by the letters"a-e-ugh." Everybody shouts it, mule-driver, "coachee," orcattle-driver; and even I, a passenger, fancied I could do it todisagreeable perfection after a time. Out of this throng in thestreets I like to select the meek, patient, diminutive littledonkeys, with enormous panniers that almost hide them. One wouldhave a woman seated on top, with a child in one pannier and cabbagesin the other; another, with an immense stock of market-greens on hisback, or big baskets of oranges, or with a row of wine-casks and aman seated behind, adhering, by some unknown law of adhesion, to thesloping tail. Then there was the cart drawn by one diminutivedonkey, or by an ox, or by an ox and a donkey, or by a donkey andhorse abreast, never by any possibility a matched team. And,funniest of all, was the high, two-wheeled caleche, with one seat,and top thrown back, with long thills and poor horse. Upon thisvehicle were piled, Heaven knows how, behind, before, on the thills,and underneath the high seat, sometimes ten, and not seldom as manyas eighteen people, men, women, and children,—all in flaunting rags,with a colored scarf here and there, or a gay petticoat, or a scarletcap,—perhaps a priest, with broad black hat, in the center,—drivingalong like a comet, the poor horse in a gallop, the bells on hisornamented saddle merrily jingling, and the whole load in a roar ofmerriment.

But we shall never get to Vesuvius at this rate. I will not evenstop to examine the macaroni manufactories on the road. The longstrips of it were hung out on poles to dry in the streets, and to geta rich color from the dirt and dust, to say nothing of its contactwith the filthy people who were making it. I am very fond ofmacaroni. At Resina we take horses for the ascent. We had sentahead for a guide and horses for our party of ten; but we foundbesides, I should think, pretty nearly the entire population of thelocality awaiting us, not to count the importunate beggars, the hags,male and female, and the ordinary loafers of the place. We werebesieged to take this and that horse or mule, to buy walking-sticksfor the climb, to purchase lava cut into charms, and veritableancient coins, and dug-up cameos, all manufactured for the demand.One wanted to hold the horse, or to lead it, to carry a shawl, or toshow the way. In the midst of infinite clamor and noise, we at lastgot mounted, and, turning into a narrow lane between high walls,began the ascent, our cavalcade attended by a procession of rags andwretchedness up through the village. Some of them fell off as werose among the vineyards, and they found us proof against begging;but several accompanied us all day, hoping that, in some unguardedmoment, they could do us some slight service, and so establish aclaim on us. Among these I noticed some stout fellows with shortropes, with which they intended to assist us up the steeps. If Ilooked away an instant, some urchin would seize my horse's bridle;and when I carelessly let my stick fall on his hand, in token for himto let go, he would fall back with an injured look, and grasp thetail, from which I could only loosen him by swinging my staff andpreparing to break his head.

The ascent is easy at first between walls and the vineyards whichproduce the celebrated Lachryma Christi. After a half hour wereached and began to cross the lava of 1858, and the wild desolationand gloom of the mountain began to strike us. One is here consciousof the titanic forces at work. Sometimes it is as if a giant hadploughed the ground, and left the furrows without harrowing them toharden into black and brown stone. We could see again how the broadstream, flowing down, squeezed and squashed like mud, had taken allfantastic shapes,—now like gnarled tree roots; now like serpents ina coil; here the human form, or a part of it,—a torso or a limb,—inagony; now in other nameless convolutions and contortions, as ifheaved up and twisted in fiery pain and suffering,—for there wasalmost a human feeling in it; and again not unlike stone billows. Wecould see how the cooling crust had been lifted and split and turnedover by the hot stream underneath, which, continually oozing from therent of the eruption, bore it down and pressed it upward. Even solow as the point where we crossed the lava of 1858 were fissureswhence came hot air.

An hour brought us to the resting-place called the Hermitage, anosteria and observatory established by the government. Standing uponthe end of a spur, it seems to be safe from the lava, whose coursehas always been on either side; but it must be an uncomfortable placein a shower of stones and ashes. We rode half an hour longer onhorseback, on a nearly level path, to the foot of the steep ascent,the base of the great crater. This ride gave us completely the wideand ghastly desolation of the mountain, the ruin that the lava haswrought upon slopes that were once green with vine and olive, andbusy with the hum of life. This black, contorted desert waste ismore sterile and hopeless than any mountain of stone, because theidea of relentless destruction is involved here. This greathummocked, sloping plain, ridged and seamed, was all about us,without cheer or relaxation of grim solitude. Before us rose, asblack and bare, what the guides call the mountain, and which used tobe the crater. Up one side is worked in the lava a zigzag path,steep, but not very fatiguing, if you take it slowly. Two thirds ofthe way up, I saw specks of people climbing. Beyond it rose the coneof ashes, out of which the great cloud of sulphurous smoke rises androlls night and day now. On the very edge of that, on the lip of it,where the smoke rose, I also saw human shapes; and it seemed as ifthey stood on the brink of Tartarus and in momently imminent peril.

We left our horses in a wild spot, where scorched boulders had fallenupon the lava bed; and guides and boys gathered about us likecormorants: but, declining their offers to pull us up, we began theascent, which took about three quarters of an hour. We were then onthe summit, which is, after all, not a summit at all, but an unevenwaste, sloping away from the Cone in the center. This sloping lavawaste was full of little cracks,—not fissures with hot lava in them,or anything of the sort,—out of which white steam issued, not unlikethe smoke from a great patch of burned timber; and the wind blew italong the ground towards us. It was cool, for the sun was hidden bylight clouds, but not cold. The ground under foot was slightly warm.I had expected to feel some dread, or shrinking, or at least somesense of insecurity, but I did not the slightest, then or afterwards;and I think mine is the usual experience. I had no more sense ofdanger on the edge of the crater than I had in the streets of Naples.

We next addressed ourselves to the Cone, which is a loose hill ofashes and sand,—a natural slope, I should say, of about one and ahalf to one, offering no foothold. The climb is very fatiguing,because you sink in to the ankles, and slide back at every step; butit is short,—we were up in six to eight minutes,—though the ladies,who had been helped a little by the guides, were nearly exhausted,and sank down on the very edge of the crater, with their backs to thesmoke. What did we see? What would you see if you looked into asteam boiler? We stood on the ashy edge of the crater, the sharpedge sloping one way down the mountain, and the other into thebowels, whence the thick, stifling smoke rose. We rolled stonesdown, and heard them rumbling for half a minute. The diameter of thecrater on the brink of which we stood was said to be an eighth of amile; but the whole was completely filled with vapor. The edge wherewe stood was quite warm.

We ate some rolls we had brought in our pockets, and some of theparty tried a bottle of the wine that one of the cormorants hadbrought up, but found it anything but the Lachryma Christi it wasnamed. We looked with longing eyes down into the vapor-boilingcaldron; we looked at the wide and lovely view of land and sea; wetried to realize our awful situation, munched our dry bread, andlaughed at the monstrous demands of the vagabonds about us for money,and then turned and went down quicker than we came up.

We had chosen to ascend to the old crater rather than to the new oneof the recent eruption on the side of the mountain, where there isnothing to be seen. When we reached the bottom of the Cone, ourguide led us to the north side, and into a region that did begin tolook like business. The wind drove all the smoke round there, and wewere half stifled with sulphur fumes to begin with. Then the wholeground was discolored red and yellow, and with many more gay andsulphur-suggesting colors. And it actually had deep fissures in it,over which we stepped and among which we went, out of which cameblasts of hot, horrid vapor, with a roaring as if we were in themidst of furnaces. And if we came near the cracks the heat waspowerful in our faces, and if we thrust our sticks down them theywere instantly burned; and the guides cooked eggs; and the crust wasthin, and very hot to our boots; and half the time we couldn't seeanything; and we would rush away where the vapor was not so thick,and, with handkerchiefs to our mouths, rush in again to get the fulleffect. After we came out again into better air, it was as if we hadbeen through the burning, fiery furnace, and had the smell of it onour garments. And, indeed, the sulphur had changed to red certain ofour clothes, and noticeably my pantaloons and the black velvet cap ofone of the ladies; and it was some days before they recovered theircolor. But, as I say, there was no sense of danger in the adventure.

We descended by a different route, on the south side of the mountain,to our horses, and made a lark of it. We went down an ash slope,very steep, where we sank in a foot or little less at every step, andthere was nothing to do for it, but to run and jump. We took stepsas long as if we had worn seven-league boots. When the whole partygot in motion, the entire slope seemed to slide a little with us, andthere appeared some danger of an avalanche. But we did n't stop forit. It was exactly like plunging down a steep hillside that iscovered thickly with light, soft snow. There was a gray-hairedgentleman with us, with a good deal of the boy in him, who thought itgreat fun.

I have said little about the view; but I might have written aboutnothing else, both in the ascent and descent. Naples, and all thevillages which rim the bay with white, the gracefully curving armsthat go out to sea, and do not quite clasp rocky Capri, which lies atthe entrance, made the outline of a picture of surpassing loveliness.But as we came down, there was a sight that I am sure was unique. Asone in a balloon sees the earth concave beneath, so now, from wherewe stood, it seemed to rise, not fall, to the sea, and all the whitevillages were raised to the clouds; and by the peculiar light, thesea looked exactly like sky, and the little boats on it seemed tofloat, like balloons in the air. The illusion was perfect. As theday waned, a heavy cloud hid the sun, and so let down the light thatthe waters were a dark purple. Then the sun went behind Posilipo ina perfect blaze of scarlet, and all the sea was violet. Only itstill was not the sea at all; but the little chopping waves lookedlike flecked clouds; and it was exactly as if one of the violet,cloud-beautified skies that we see at home over some sunsets hadfallen to the ground. And the slant white sails and the black specksof boats on it hung in the sky, and were as unsubstantial as thewhole pageant. Capri alone was dark and solid. And as we descendedand a high wall hid it, a little handsome rascal, who had attended mefor an hour, now at the head and now at the tail of my pony, recalledme to the realities by the request that I should give him a franc.For what? For carrying signor's coat up the mountain. I rewardedthe little liar with a German copper. I had carried my own overcoatall day.

SORRENTO DAYS

OUTLINES

The day came when we tired of the brilliancy and din of Naples, mostnoisy of cities. Neapolis, or Parthenope, as is well known, wasfounded by Parthenope, a siren who was cast ashore there. Herdescendants still live here; and we have become a little weary oftheir inherited musical ability: they have learned to play upon manynew instruments, with which they keep us awake late at night, andarouse us early in the morning. One of them is always there underthe window, where the moonlight will strike him, or the early dawnwill light up his love-worn visage, strumming the guitar with hishorny thumb, and wailing through his nose as if his throat was fullof seaweed. He is as inexhaustible as Vesuvius. We shall have toflee, or stop our ears with wax, like the sailors of Ulysses.

The day came when we had checked off the Posilipo, and the Grotto,Pozzuoli, Baiae, Cape Misenum, the Museum, Vesuvius, Pompeii,Herculaneum, the moderns buried at the Campo Santo; and we said, Letus go and lie in the sun at Sorrento. But first let us settle ourgeography.

The Bay of Naples, painted and sung forever, but never adequately,must consent to be here described as essentially a parallelogram,with an opening towards the southwest. The northeast side of this,with Naples in the right-hand corner, looking seaward andCastellamare in the left-hand corner, at a distance of some fourteenmiles, is a vast rich plain, fringed on the shore with towns, andcovered with white houses and gardens. Out of this rises theisolated bulk of Vesuvius. This growing mountain is manufacturedexactly like an ant-hill.

The northwest side of the bay, keeping a general westerly direction,is very uneven, with headlands, deep bays, and outlying islands.First comes the promontory of Posilipo, pierced by two tunnels,partly natural and partly Greek and Roman work, above the entrance ofone of which is the tomb of Virgil, let us believe; then a beautifulbay, the shore of which is incrusted with classic ruins. On this baystands Pozzuoli, the ancient Puteoli where St. Paul landed one Mayday, and doubtless walked up this paved road, which leads direct toRome. At the entrance, near the head of Posilipo, is the volcanicisland of "shining Nisida," to which Brutus retired after theassassination of Caesar, and where he bade Portia good-by before hedeparted for Greece and Philippi: the favorite villa of Cicero, wherehe wrote many of his letters to Atticus, looked on it. Baiae,epitome of the luxury and profligacy, of the splendor and crime ofthe most sensual years of the Roman empire, spread there its temples,palaces, and pleasure-gardens, which crowded the low slopes, andextended over the water; and yonder is Cape Misenum, which shelteredthe great fleets of Rome.

This region, which is still shaky from fires bubbling under the thincrust, through which here and there the sulphurous vapor breaks out,is one of the most sacred in the ancient world. Here are the LucrineLake, the Elysian Fields, the cave of the Cumean Sibyl, and the LakeAvernus. This entrance to the infernal regions was frozen over theday I saw it; so that the profane prophecy of skating on thebottomless pit might have been realized. The islands of Procida andIschia continue and complete this side of the bay, which is abouttwenty miles long as the boat sails.

At Castellamare the shore makes a sharp bend, and runs southwestalong the side of the Sorrentine promontory. This promontory is ahigh, rocky, diversified ridge, which extends out between the bays ofNaples and Salerno, with its short and precipitous slope towards thelatter. Below Castellamare, the mountain range of the Great St.Angelo (an offshoot of the Apennines) runs across the peninsula, andcuts off that portion of it which we have to consider. The mostconspicuous of the three parts of this short range is over fourthousand seven hundred feet above the Bay of Naples, and the highestland on it. From Great St. Angelo to the point, the Punta diCampanella, it is, perhaps, twelve miles by balloon, but twenty byany other conveyance. Three miles off this point lies Capri.

This promontory has a backbone of rocky ledges and hills; but it hasat intervals transverse ledges and ridges, and deep valleys andchains cutting in from either side; so that it is not very passablein any direction. These little valleys and bays are warm nooks forthe olive and the orange; and all the precipices and sunny slopes areterraced nearly to the top. This promontory of rocks is far frombeing barren.

From Castellamare, driving along a winding, rockcut road by the bay,—one of the most charming in southern Italy,—a distance of sevenmiles, we reach the Punta di Scutolo. This point, and the oppositeheadland, the Capo di Sorrento, inclose the Piano di Sorrento, anirregular plain, three miles long, encircled by limestone hills,which protect it from the east and south winds. In this amphitheaterit lies, a mass of green foliage and white villages, fronting Naplesand Vesuvius.

If nature first scooped out this nook level with the sea, and thenfilled it up to a depth of two hundred to three hundred feet withvolcanic tufa, forming a precipice of that height along the shore, Ican understand how the present state of things came about.

This plain is not all level, however. Decided spurs push down intoit from the hills; and great chasms, deep, ragged, impassable, splitin the tufa, extend up into it from the sea. At intervals, at theopenings of these ravines, are little marinas, where the fishermenhave their huts' and where their boats land. Little villages,separate from the world, abound on these marinas. The warm volcanicsoil of the sheltered plain makes it a paradise of fruits andflowers.

Sorrento, ancient and romantic city, lies at the southwest end ofthis plain, built along the sheer sea precipice, and running back tothe hills,—a city of such narrow streets, high walls, and luxuriantgroves that it can be seen only from the heights adjacent. Theancient boundary of the city proper was the famous ravine on the eastside, a similar ravine on the south, which met it at right angles,and was supplemented by a high Roman wall, and the same wallcontinued on the west to the sea. The growing town has pushed awaythe wall on the west side; but that on the south yet stands as goodas when the Romans made it. There is a little attempt at a mall,with double rows of trees, under that wall, where lovers walk, andragged, handsome urchins play the exciting game of fives, or sit inthe dirt, gambling with cards for the Sorrento currency. I do notknow what sin it may be to gamble for a bit of printed paper whichhas the value of one sou.

The great ravine, three quarters of a mile long, the ancient boundarywhich now cuts the town in two, is bridged where the main street, theCorso, crosses, the bridge resting on old Roman substructions, aseverything else about here does. This ravine, always invested withmystery, is the theme of no end of poetry and legend. Demons inhabitit. Here and there, in its perpendicular sides, steps have been cutfor descent. Vines and lichens grow on the walls: in one place, atthe bottom, an orange grove has taken root. There is even a milldown there, where there is breadth enough for a building; andaltogether, the ravine is not so delivered over to the power ofdarkness as it used to be. It is still damp and slimy, it is true;but from above, it is always beautiful, with its luxuriant growth ofvines, and at twilight mysterious. I like as well, however, to lookinto its entrance from the little marina, where the old fishwives areweaving nets.

These little settlements under the cliff, called marinas, are worldsin themselves, picturesque at a distance, but squalid seen close athand. They are not very different from the little fishing-stationson the Isle of Wight; but they are more sheltered, and theirinhabitants sing at their work, wear bright colors, and bask in thesun a good deal, feeling no sense of responsibility for the worldthey did not create. To weave nets, to fish in the bay, to selltheir fish at the wharves, to eat unexciting vegetables and fish, todrink moderately, to go to the chapel of St. Antonino on Sunday, notto work on fast and feast days, nor more than compelled to any day,this is life at the marinas. Their world is what they can see, andNaples is distant and almost foreign. Generation after generation iscontent with the same simple life. They have no more idea of the badway the world is in than bees in their cells.

THE VILLA NARDI

The Villa Nardi hangs over the sea. It is built on a rock, and Iknow not what Roman and Greek foundations, and the remains of yetearlier peoples, traders, and traffickers, whose galleys used to rockthere at the base of the cliff, where the gentle waves beat even inthis winter-time with a summer swing and sound of peace.

It was at the close of a day in January that I first knew the VillaNardi,—a warm, lovely day, at the hour when the sun was just goingbehind the Capo di Sorrento, in order to disrobe a little, I fancy,before plunging into the Mediterranean off the end of Capri, as ishis wont about this time of year. When we turned out of the littlepiazza, our driver was obliged to take off one of our team of threehorses driven abreast, so that we could pass through the narrow andcrooked streets, or rather lanes of blank walls. With cracking whip,rattling wheels, and shouting to clear the way, we drove into theStrada di San Francisca, and to an arched gateway. This led down astraight path, between olives and orange and lemon-trees, gleamingwith shining leaves and fruit of gold, with hedges of rose-trees infull bloom, to another leafy arch, through which I saw tropicaltrees, and a terrace with a low wall and battered busts guarding it,and beyond, the blue sea, a white sail or two slanting across theopening, and the whiteness of Naples some twenty miles away on theshore.

The noble family of the Villa did not descend into the garden towelcome us, as we should have liked; in fact, they have been absentnow for a long time, so long that even their ghosts, if they everpace the terrace-walk towards the convent, would appear strange toone who should meet them; and yet our hostess, the Tramontano, didwhat the ancient occupants scarcely could have done, gave us thechoice of rooms in the entire house. The stranger who finds himselfin this secluded paradise, at this season, is always at a losswhether to take a room on the sea, with all its changeableloveliness, but no sun, or one overlooking the garden, where the sunall day pours itself into the orange boughs, and where the birds arejust beginning to get up a spring twitteration. My friend, whosecapacity for taking in the luxurious repose of this region issomething extraordinary, has tried, I believe, nearly every room inthe house, and has at length gone up to a solitary room on the top,where, like a bird on a tree he looks all ways, and, so to say,swings in the entrancing air. But, wherever you are, you will growinto content with your situation.

At the Villa Nardi we have no sound of wheels, no noise of work ortraffic, no suggestion of conflict. I am under the impression thateverything that was to have been done has been done. I am, it istrue, a little afraid that the Saracens will come here again, andcarry off more of the nut-brown girls, who lean over the walls, andlook down on us from under the boughs. I am not quite sure that aFrench Admiral of the Republic will not some morning anchor histhree-decker in front, and open fire on us; but nothing else canhappen. Naples is a thousand miles away. The boom of the salutingguns of Castel Nuovo is to us scarcely an echo of modern life. Romedoes not exist. And as for London and New York, they send theirpeople and their newspapers here, but no pulse of unrest from themdisturbs our tranquillity. Hemmed in on the land side by high walls,groves, and gardens, perched upon a rock two hundred feet above thewater, how much more secure from invasion is this than any fabledisland of the southern sea, or any remote stream where the boats ofthe lotus-eaters float!

There is a little terrace and flower-plat, where we sometimes sit,and over the wall of which we like to lean, and look down the cliffto the sea. This terrace is the common ground of many exotics aswell as native trees and shrubs. Here are the magnolia, the laurel,the Japanese medlar, the oleander, the pepper, the bay, thedate-palm, a tree called the plumbago, another from the Cape of GoodHope, the pomegranate, the elder in full leaf, the olive, salvia,heliotrope; close by is a banana-tree.

I find a good deal of companionship in the rows of plaster busts thatstand on the wall, in all attitudes of listlessness, and all stagesof decay. I thought at first they were penates of the premises; butbetter acquaintance has convinced me that they never were gods, butthe clayey representations of great men and noble dames. The stainsof time are on them; some have lost a nose or an ear; and one hasparted with a still more important member—his head,—an accidentthat might profitably have befallen his neighbor, whose curly locksand villainously low forehead proclaim him a Roman emperor. Cut inthe face of the rock is a walled and winding way down to the water.I see below the archway where it issues from the underground recessesof our establishment; and there stands a bust, in serious expectationthat some one will walk out and saunter down among the rocks; but noone ever does. Just at the right is a little beach, with a few oldhouses, and a mimic stir of life, a little curve in the cliff, themouth of the gorge, where the waves come in with a lazy swash. Somefishing-boats ride there; and the shallow water, as I look down thissunny morning, is thickly strewn with floating peels of oranges andlemons, as if some one was brewing a gigantic bowl of punch. Andthere is an uncommon stir of life; for a schooner is shipping a cargoof oranges, and the entire population is in a clamor. Donkeys arecoming down the winding way, with a heavy basket on either flank;stout girls are stepping lightly down with loads on their heads; thedrivers shout, the donkeys bray, the people jabber and order eachother about; and the oranges, in a continual stream, are poured intothe long, narrow vessel, rolling in with a thud, until there is ayellow mass of them. Shouting, scolding, singing, and braying, allcome up to me a little mellowed. The disorder is not so great as onthe opera stage of San Carlo in Naples; and the effect is much morepleasing.

This settlement, the marina, under the cliff, used to extend alongthe shore; and a good road ran down there close by the water. Therock has split off, and covered it; and perhaps the shore has sunk.They tell me that those who dig down in the edge of the shallow waterfind sunken walls, and the remains of old foundations of Romanworkmanship. People who wander there pick up bits of marble,serpentine, and malachite,—remains of the palaces that long ago fellinto the sea, and have not left even the names of their owners andbuilders,-the ancient loafers who idled away their days as everybodymust in this seductive spot. Not far from here, they point out theveritable caves of the Sirens, who have now shut up house, and goneaway, like the rest of the nobility. If I had been a mariner intheir day, I should have made no effort to sail by and away fromtheir soothing shore.

I went, one day, through a long, sloping arch, near the sailors'Chapel of St. Antonino, past a pretty shrine of the Virgin, down thezigzag path to this little marina; but it is better to be contentwith looking at it from above, and imagining how delightful it wouldbe to push off in one of the little tubs of boats. Sometimes, atnight, I hear the fishermen coming home, singing in their lustyfashion; and I think it is a good haven to arrive at. I never godown to search for stones on the beach: I like to believe that thereare great treasures there, which I might find; and I know that thegreen and brown and spotty appearance of the water is caused by theshowing through of the pavements of courts, and marble floors ofpalaces, which might vanish if I went nearer, such a place ofillusion is this.

The Villa Nardi stands in pleasant relations to Vesuvius, which isjust across the bay, and is not so useless as it has beenrepresented; it is our weather-sign and prophet. When the whiteplume on his top floats inland, that is one sort of weather; when itstreams out to sea, that is another. But I can never tell which iswhich: nor in my experience does it much matter; for it seemsimpossible for Sorrento to do anything but woo us with gentleweather. But the use of Vesuvius, after all, is to furnish us abackground for the violet light at sundown, when the villages at itsfoot gleam like a silver fringe. I have become convinced of onething: it is always best when you build a house to have it fronttoward a volcano, if you can. There is just that lazy activity abouta volcano, ordinarily, that satisfies your demand for something thatis not exactly dead, and yet does not disturb you.

Sometimes when I wake in the night,—though I don't know why one everwakes in the night, or the daytime either here,—I hear the bell ofthe convent, which is in our demesne,—a convent which is suppressed,and where I hear, when I pass in the morning, the humming of aschool. At first I tried to count the hour; but when the bell wenton to strike seventeen, and even twenty-one o'clock, the absurdity ofthe thing came over me, and I wondered whether it was some frequentcall to prayer for a feeble band of sisters remaining, some reminderof midnight penance and vigil, or whether it was not something moreghostly than that, and was not responded to by shades of nuns, whowere wont to look out from their narrow latticed windows upon thesesame gardens, as long ago as when the beautiful Queen Joanna used tocome down here to repent—if she ever did repent—of her wanton waysin Naples.

On one side of the garden is a suppressed monastery. The narrowfront towards the sea has a secluded little balcony, where I like tofancy the poor orphaned souls used to steal out at night for a breathof fresh air, and perhaps to see, as I did one dark evening, Napleswith its lights like a conflagration on the horizon. Upon the tilesof the parapet are cheerful devices, the crossbones tied with a cord,and the like. How many heavy-hearted recluses have stood in thatsecluded nook, and been tempted by the sweet, lulling sound of thewaves below; how many have paced along this narrow terrace, and feltlike prisoners who wore paths in the stone floor where they trod; andhow many stupid louts have walked there, insensible to all the charmof it!

If I pass into the Tramontano garden, it is not to escape thepresence of history, or to get into the modern world, where travelersare arriving, and where there is the bustle and proverbial discontentof those who travel to enjoy themselves. In the pretty garden, whichis a constant surprise of odd nooks and sunny hiding-places, withruins, and most luxuriant ivy, is a little cottage where, I am toldin confidence, the young king of Bavaria slept three nights not verylong ago. I hope he slept well. But more important than the sleep,or even death, of a king, is the birth of a poet, I take it; andwithin this inclosure, on the eleventh day of March, 1541, TorquatoTasso, most melancholy of men, first saw the light; and here was bornhis noble sister Cornelia, the descendants of whose union with thecavalier Spasiano still live here, and in a manner keep the memory ofthe poet green with the present generation. I am indebted to agentleman who is of this lineage for many favors, and for preciseinformation as to the position in the house that stood here of thevery room in which Tasso was born. It is also minutely given in amemoir of Tasso and his family, by Bartolommeo Capasso, whose carefulresearches have disproved the slipshod statements of the guidebooks,that the poet was born in a house which is still standing, farther tothe west, and that the room has fallen into the sea. The descendantof the sister pointed out to me the spot on the terrace of theTramontano where the room itself was, when the house still stood;and, of course, seeing is believing. The sun shone full upon it, aswe stood there; and the air was full of the scent of tropical fruitand just-coming blossoms. One could not desire a more tranquil sceneof advent into life; and the wandering, broken-hearted author of"Jerusalem Delivered" never found at court or palace any retreat sosoothing as that offered him here by his steadfast sister.

If I were an antiquarian, I think I should have had Tasso born at theVilla Nardi, where I like best to stay, and where I find traces ofmany pilgrims from other countries. Here, in a little corner room onthe terrace, Mrs. Stowe dreamed and wrote; and I expect, everymorning, as I take my morning sun here by the gate, Agnes of Sorrentowill come down the sweet-scented path with a basket of oranges on herhead.

SEA AND SHORE

It is not always easy, when one stands upon the highlands whichencircle the Piano di Sorrento, in some conditions of the atmosphere,to tell where the sea ends and the sky begins. It seems.practicable, at such times, for one to take ship and sail up intoheaven. I have often, indeed, seen white sails climbing up there,and fishing-boats, at secure anchor I suppose, riding apparently likeballoons in the hazy air. Sea and air and land here are all kin, Isuspect, and have certain immaterial qualities in common. Thecontours of the shores and the outlines of the hills are as gracefulas the mobile waves; and if there is anywhere ruggedness andsharpness, the atmosphere throws a friendly veil over it, and tonesall that is inharmonious into the repose of beauty.

The atmosphere is really something more than a medium: it is adrapery, woven, one could affirm, with colors, or dipped in orientaldyes. One might account thus for the prismatic colors I have oftenseen on the horizon at noon, when the sun was pouring down floods ofclear golden light. The simple light here, if one could everrepresent it by pen, pencil, or brush, would draw the world hither tobathe in it. It is not thin sunshine, but a royal profusion, agolden substance, a transforming quality, a vesture of splendor forall these Mediterranean shores.

The most comprehensive idea of Sorrento and the great plain on whichit stands, imbedded almost out of sight in foliage, we obtained oneday from our boat, as we put out round the Capo di Sorrento, andstood away for Capri. There was not wind enough for sails, but therewere chopping waves, and swell enough to toss us about, and toproduce bright flashes of light far out at sea. The red-shirtedrowers silently bent to their long sweeps; and I lay in the tossingbow, and studied the high, receding shore. The picture is simple, aprecipice of rock or earth, faced with masonry in spots, almost ofuniform height from point to point of the little bay, except where adeep gorge has split the rock, and comes to the sea, forming a cove,where a cluster of rude buildings is likely to gather. Along theprecipice, which now juts and now recedes a little, are villas,hotels, old convents, gardens, and groves. I can see steps andgalleries cut in the face of the cliff, and caves and caverns,natural and artificial: for one can cut this tufa with a knife; andit would hardly seem preposterous to attempt to dig out a cool, roomymansion in this rocky front with a spade.

As we pull away, I begin to see the depth of the plain of Sorrento,with its villages, walled roads, its groves of oranges, olives,lemons, its figs, pomegranates, almonds, mulberries, and acacias; andsoon the terraces above, where the vineyards are planted, and theolives also. These terraces must be a brave sight in the spring,when the masses of olives are white as snow with blossoms, which fillall the plain with their sweet perfume. Above the terraces, the eyereaches the fine outline of the hill; and, to the east, the bareprecipice of rock, softened by the purple light; and turning still tothe left, as the boat lazily swings, I have Vesuvius, the gracefuldip into the plain, and the rise to the heights of Naples, Nisida,the shining houses of Pozzuoli, Cape Misenum, Procida, and roughIschia. Rounding the headland, Capri is before us, so sharp andclear that we seem close to it; but it is a weary pull before we getunder its rocky side.

Returning from Capri late in the afternoon, we had one of thoseeffects which are the despair of artists. I had been told thattwilights are short here, and that, when the sun disappeared, colorvanished from the sky. There was a wonderful light on all the innerbay, as we put off from shore. Ischia was one mass of violet color,As we got from under the island, there was the sun, a red ball offire, just dipping into the sea. At once the whole horizon line ofwater became a bright crimson, which deepened as evening advanced,glowing with more intense fire, and holding a broad band of whatseemed solid color for more than three quarters of an hour. Thecolors, meantime, on the level water, never were on painter'spalette, and never were counterfeited by the changeable silks ofeastern looms; and this gorgeous spectacle continued till the starscame out, crowding the sky with silver points.

Our boatmen, who had been reinforced at Capri, and were inspiredeither by the wine of the island or the beauty of the night, pulledwith new vigor, and broke out again and again into the wild songs ofthis coast. A favorite was the Garibaldi song, which invariably endedin a cheer and a tiger, and threw the singers into such a spurt ofexcitement that the oars forgot to keep time, and there was moresplash than speed. The singers all sang one part in minor: there wasno harmony, the voices were not rich, and the melody was notremarkable; but there was, after all, a wild pathos in it. Music isvery much here what it is in Naples. I have to keep saying to myselfthat Italy is a land of song; else I should think that people mistakenoise for music.

The boatmen are an honest set of fellows, as Italians go; and, let ushope, not unworthy followers of their patron, St. Antonino, whosechapel is on the edge of the gorge near the Villa Nardi. A silverimage of the saint, half life-size, stands upon the rich marblealtar. This valuable statue has been, if tradition is correct, fivetimes captured and carried away by marauders, who have at differenttimes sacked Sorrento of its marbles, bronzes, and precious things,and each time, by some mysterious providence, has found its way backagain,—an instance of constancy in a solid silver image which isworthy of commendation. The little chapel is hung all about withvotive offerings in wax of arms, legs, heads, hands, effigies, andwith coarse lithographs, in frames, of storms at sea and perils ofships, hung up by sailors who, having escaped the dangers of thedeep, offer these tributes to their dear saint. The skirts of theimage are worn quite smooth with kissing. Underneath it, at the backof the altar, an oil light is always burning; and below repose thebones of the holy man.

The whole shore is fascinating to one in an idle mood, and is goodmousing-ground for the antiquarian. For myself, I am content withone generalization, which I find saves a world of bother andperplexity: it is quite safe to style every excavation, cavern,circular wall, or arch by the sea, a Roman bath. It is the finalresort of the antiquarians. This theory has kept me from enteringthe discussion, whether the substructions in the cliff under thePoggio Syracuse, a royal villa, are temples of the Sirens, or cavesof Ulysses. I only know that I descend to the sea there by broadinterior flights of steps, which lead through galleries andcorridors, and high, vaulted passages, whence extend apartments andcaves far reaching into the solid rock. At intervals are landings,where arched windows are cut out to the sea, with stone seats andprotecting walls. At the base of the cliff I find a hewn passage, asif there had once been here a way of embarkation; and enormousfragments of rocks, with steps cut in them, which have fallen fromabove.

Were these anything more than royal pleasure galleries, where onecould sit in coolness in the heat of summer and look on the bay andits shipping, in the days when the great Roman fleet used to lieopposite, above the point of Misenum? How many brave and gayretinues have swept down these broad interior stairways, let us sayin the picturesque Middle Ages, to embark on voyages of pleasure orwarlike forays! The steps are well worn, and must have been troddenfor ages, by nobles and robbers, peasants and sailors, priests ofmore than one religion, and traders of many seas, who have gone, andleft no record. The sun was slanting his last rays into thecorridors as I musingly looked down from one of the arched openings,quite spellbound by the strangeness and dead silence of the place,broken only by the plash of waves on the sandy beach below. I hadfound my way down through a wooden door half ajar; and I thought ofthe possibility of some one's shutting it for the night, and leavingme a prisoner to await the spectres which I have no doubt throng herewhen it grows dark. Hastening up out of these chambers of the past,I escaped into the upper air, and walked rapidly home through thenarrow orange lanes.

ON TOP OF THE HOUSE

The tiptop of the Villa Nardi is a flat roof, with a wall about itthree feet high, and some little turreted affairs, that look verymuch like chimneys. Joseph, the gray-haired servitor, has brought mychair and table up here to-day, and here I am, established to write.

I am here above most earthly annoyances, and on a level with theheavenly influences. It has always seemed to me that the higher onegets, the easier it must be to write; and that, especially at a greatelevation, one could strike into lofty themes, and launch out,without fear of shipwreck on any of the earthly headlands, in hisaerial voyages. Yet, after all, he would be likely to arrivenowhere, I suspect; or, to change the figure, to find that, inparting with the taste of the earth, he had produced a flavorlesscomposition. If it were not for the haze in the horizon to-day, Icould distinguish the very house in Naples—that of Manso, Marquis ofVilla,—where Tasso found a home, and where John Milton wasentertained at a later day by that hospitable nobleman. I wonder, ifhe had come to the Villa Nardi and written on the roof, if thetheological features of his epic would have been softened, and if hewould not have received new suggestions for the adornment of thegarden. Of course, it is well that his immortal production was notcomposed on this roof, and in sight of these seductive shores, or itwould have been more strongly flavored with classic mythology than itis. But, letting Milton go, it may be necessary to say that mywriting to-day has nothing to do with my theory of composition in anelevated position; for this is the laziest place that I have yetfound.

I am above the highest olive-trees, and, if I turned that way, shouldlook over the tops of what seems a vast grove of them, out of which awhite roof, and an old time-eaten tower here and there, appears; andthe sun is flooding them with waves of light, which I think a persondelicately enough organized could hear beat. Beyond the brown roofsof the town, the terraced hills arise, in semicircular embrace of theplain; and the fine veil over them is partly the natural shimmer ofthe heat, and partly the silver duskiness of the olive-leaves. I sitwith my back to all this, taking the entire force of this winter sun,which is full of life and genial heat, and does not scorch one, as Iremember such a full flood of it would at home. It is puttingsweetness, too, into the oranges, which, I observe, are gettingredder and softer day by day. We have here, by the way, such a habitof taking up an orange, weighing it in the hand, and guessing if itis ripe, that the test is extending to other things. I saw agentleman this morning, at breakfast, weighing an egg in the samemanner; and some one asked him if it was ripe.

It seems to me that the Mediterranean was never bluer than it isto-day. It has a shade or two the advantage of the sky: though Ilike the sky best, after all; for it is less opaque, and offers anillimitable opportunity of exploration. Perhaps this is because I amnearer to it. There are some little ruffles of air on the sea, whichI do not feel here, making broad spots of shadow, and here and thereflecks and sparkles. But the schooners sail idly, and thefishing-boats that have put out from the marina float in the mostdreamy manner. I fear that the fishermen who have made a show ofindustry, and got away from their wives, who are busily weaving netson shore, are yielding to the seductions of the occasion, and makinga day of it. And, as I look at them, I find myself debating which Iwould rather be, a fisherman there in the boat, rocked by the swell,and warmed by the sun, or a friar, on the terrace of the garden onthe summit of Deserto, lying perfectly tranquil, and also soaked inthe sun. There is one other person, now that I think of it, who maybe having a good time to-day, though I do not know that I envy him.His business is a new one to me, and is an occupation that one wouldnot care to recommend to a friend until he had tried it: it is beingcarried about in a basket. As I went up the new Massa road the otherday, I met a ragged, stout, and rather dirty woman, with a largeshallow basket on her head. In it lay her husband, a large man,though I think a little abbreviated as to his legs. The woman askedalms. Talk of Diogenes in his tub! How must the world look to a manin a basket, riding about on his wife's head? When I returned, shehad put him down beside the road in the sun, and almost in danger ofthe passing vehicles. I suppose that the affectionate creaturethought that, if he got a new injury in this way, his value in thebeggar market would be increased. I do not mean to do this exemplarywife any injustice; and I only suggest the idea in this land, whereevery beggar who is born with a deformity has something to thank theVirgin for. This custom of carrying your husband on your head in abasket has something to recommend it, and is an exhibition of faithon the one hand, and of devotion on the other, that is seldom metwith. Its consideration is commended to my countrywomen at home. Itis, at least, a new commentary on the apostolic remark, that the manis the head of the woman. It is, in some respects, a happy divisionof labor in the walk of life: she furnishes the locomotive power, andhe the directing brains, as he lies in the sun and looks abroad;which reminds me that the sun is getting hot on my back. The littlebunch of bells in the convent tower is jangling out a suggestion ofworship, or of the departure of the hours. It is time to eat anorange.

Vesuvius appears to be about on a level with my eyes and I never knewhim to do himself more credit than to-day. The whole coast of thebay is in a sort of obscuration, thicker than an Indian summer haze;and the veil extends almost to the top of Vesuvius. But his summitis still distinct, and out of it rises a gigantic billowy column ofwhite smoke, greater in quantity than on any previous day of oursojourn; and the sun turns it to silver. Above a long line ofordinary looking clouds, float great white masses, formed of thesulphurous vapor. This manufacture of clouds in a clear, sunny dayhas an odd appearance; but it is easy enough, if one has such alaboratory as Vesuvius. How it tumbles up the white smoke! It ispiled up now, I should say, a thousand feet above the crater,straight into the blue sky,—a pillar of cloud by day. One might sithere all day watching it, listening the while to the melodious springsinging of the hundreds of birds which have come to take possessionof the garden, receiving southern reinforcements from Sicily andTunis every morning, and think he was happy. But the morning hasgone; and I have written nothing.

THE PRICE OF ORANGES

If ever a northern wanderer could be suddenly transported to lookdown upon the Piano di Sorrento, he would not doubt that he saw theGarden of the Hesperides. The orange-trees cannot well be fuller:their branches bend with the weight of fruit. With the almond-treesin full flower, and with the silver sheen of the olive leaves, theoranges are apples of gold in pictures of silver. As I walk in thesesunken roads, and between these high walls, the orange boughseverywhere hang over; and through the open gates of villas I lookdown alleys of golden glimmer, roses and geraniums by the walk, andthe fruit above,—gardens of enchantment, with never a dragon, that Ican see, to guard them.

All the highways and the byways, the streets and lanes, wherever Igo, from the sea to the tops of the hills, are strewn withorange-peel; so that one, looking above and below, comes back from awalk with a golden dazzle in his eyes,—a sense that yellow is theprevailing color. Perhaps the kerchiefs of the dark-skinned girlsand women, which take that tone, help the impression. Theinhabitants are all orange-eaters. The high walls show that thegardens are protected with great care; yet the fruit seems to be asfree as apples are in a remote New England town about cider-time.

I have been trying, ever since I have been here, to ascertain theprice of oranges; not for purposes of exportation, nor yet for thepersonal importation that I daily practice, but in order to give anAmerican basis of fact to these idle chapters. In all the paths Imeet, daily, girls and boys bearing on their heads large baskets ofthe fruit, and little children with bags and bundles of the same, aslarge as they can stagger under; and I understand they are carryingthem to the packers, who ship them to New York, or to the depots,where I see them lying in yellow heaps, and where men and women arecutting them up, and removing the peel, which goes to England forpreserves. I am told that these oranges are sold for a couple offrancs a hundred. That seems to me so dear that I am not temptedinto any speculation, but stroll back to the Tramontano, in thegardens of which I find better terms.

The only trouble is to find a sweet tree; for the Sorrento orangesare usually sour in February; and one needs to be a good judge of thefruit, and know the male orange from the female, though which it isthat is the sweeter I can never remember (and should not dare to say,if I did, in the present state of feeling on the woman question),—orhe might as well eat a lemon. The mercenary aspect of my query doesnot enter in here. I climb into a tree, and reach out to the end ofthe branch for an orange that has got reddish in the sun, that comesoff easily and is heavy; or I tickle a large one on the top boughwith a cane pole; and if it drops readily, and has a fine grain, Icall it a cheap one. I can usually tell whether they are good bysplitting them open and eating a quarter. The Italians pare theiroranges as we do apples; but I like best to open them first, and seethe yellow meat in the white casket. After you have eaten a few fromone tree, you can usually tell whether it is a good tree; but thereis nothing certain about it,—one bough that gets the sun will bebetter than another that does not, and one half of an orange willfill your mouth with more delicious juices than the other half.

The oranges that you knock off with your stick, as you walk along thelanes, don't cost anything; but they are always sour, as I think thegirls know who lean over the wall, and look on with a smile: and, inthat, they are more sensible than the lively dogs which bark at youfrom the top, and wake all the neighborhood with their clamor. Ihave no doubt the oranges have a market price; but I have beenseeking the value the gardeners set on them themselves. As I walkedtowards the heights, the other morning, and passed an orchard, thegardener, who saw my ineffectual efforts, with a very long cane, toreach the boughs of a tree, came down to me with a basketful he hadbeen picking. As an experiment on the price, I offered him atwo-centime piece, which is a sort of satire on the very name ofmoney,—when he desired me to help myself to as many oranges as Iliked. He was a fine-looking fellow, with a spick-span new redPhrygian cap; and I had n't the heart to take advantage of hisgenerosity, especially as his oranges were not of the sweetest. Oneought never to abuse generosity.

Another experience was of a different sort, and illustrates theItalian love of bargaining, and their notion of a sliding scale ofprices. One of our expeditions to the hills was one day making itslong, straggling way through the narrow street of a little village ofthe Piano, when I lingered behind my companions, attracted by ahandcart with several large baskets of oranges. The cart stooduntended in the street; and selecting a large orange, which wouldmeasure twelve inches in circumference, I turned to look for theowner. After some time a fellow got from the open front of theneighboring cobbler's shop, where he sat with his lazy cronies,listening to the honest gossip of the follower of St. Crispin, andsauntered towards me.

"How much for this?" I ask.

"One franc, signor," says the proprietor, with a polite bow, holdingup one finger.

I shake my head, and intimate that that is altogether too much, infact, preposterous.

The proprietor is very indifferent, and shrugs his shoulders in anamiable manner. He picks up a fair, handsome orange, weighs it inhis hand, and holds it up temptingly. That also is one, franc.

I suggest one sou as a fair price, a suggestion which he onlyreceives with a smile of slight pity, and, I fancy, a little disdain.A woman joins him, and also holds up this and that gold-skinned onefor my admiration.

As I stand, sorting over the fruit, trying to please myself withsize, color, and texture, a little crowd has gathered round; and Isee, by a glance, that all the occupations in that neighborhood,including loafing, are temporarily suspended to witness the trade.The interest of the circle visibly increases; and others take such apart in the transaction that I begin to doubt if the first man is,after all, the proprietor.

At length I select two oranges, and again demand the price. There isa little consultation and jabber, when I am told that I can have bothfor a franc. I, in turn, sigh, shrug my shoulders, and put down theoranges, amid a chorus of exclamations over my graspingness. Myoffer of two sous is met with ridicule, but not with indifference. Ican see that it has made a sensation. These simple, idle children ofthe sun begin to show a little excitement. I at length determineupon a bold stroke, and resolve to show myself the Napoleon oforanges, or to meet my Waterloo. I pick out four of the largestoranges in the basket, while all eyes are fixed on me intently, and,for the first time, pull out a piece of money. It is a two-souspiece. I offer it for the four oranges.

"No, no, no, no, signor! Ah, signor! ah, signor!" in a chorus fromthe whole crowd.

I have struck bottom at last, and perhaps got somewhere near thevalue; and all calmness is gone. Such protestations, suchindignation, such sorrow, I have never seen before from so small acause. It cannot be thought of; it is mere ruin! I am, in turn, asfirm, and nearly as excited in seeming. I hold up the fruit, andtender the money.

"No, never, never! The signor cannot be in earnest."

Looking round me for a moment, and assuming a theatrical manner,befitting the gestures of those about me, I fling the fruit down,and, with a sublime renunciation, stalk away.

There is instantly a buzz and a hum that rises almost to a clamor. Ihave not proceeded far, when a skinny old woman runs after me, andbegs me to return. I go back, and the crowd parts to receive me.

The proprietor has a new proposition, the effect of which upon me isintently watched. He proposes to give me five big oranges for foursous. I receive it with utter scorn, and a laugh of derision. Iwill give two sous for the original four, and not a centesimo more.That I solemnly say, and am ready to depart. Hesitation and renewedconference; but at last the proprietor relents; and, with the look ofone who is ruined for life, and who yet is willing to sacrificehimself, he hands me the oranges. Instantly the excitement is dead,the crowd disperses, and the street is as quiet as ever; when I walkaway, bearing my hard-won treasures.

A little while after, as I sat upon the outer wall of the terrace ofthe Camaldoli, with my feet hanging over, these same oranges weretaken from my pockets by Americans; so that I am prevented frommaking any moral reflections upon the honesty of the Italians.

There is an immense garden of oranges and lemons at the village ofMassa, through which travelers are shown by a surly fellow, who keepswatch of his trees, and has a bulldog lurking about for the unwary.I hate to see a bulldog in a fruit orchard. I have eaten a good manyoranges there, and been astonished at the boughs of immense lemonswhich bend the trees to the ground. I took occasion to measure oneof the lemons, called a citron-lemon, and found its circumference tobe twenty-one inches one way by fifteen inches the other,—about asbig as a railway conductor's lantern. These lemons are not so souras the fellow who shows them: he is a mercenary dog, and his pricesafford me no clew to the just value of oranges.

I like better to go to a little garden in the village of Meta, undera sunny precipice of rocks overhung by the ruined convent ofCamaldoli. I turn up a narrow lane, and push open the wooden door inthe garden of a little villa. It is a pretty garden; and, besidesthe orange and lemon-trees on the terrace, it has other fruit-trees,and a scent of many flowers. My friend, the gardener, is sortingoranges from one basket to another, on a green bank, and evidentlyselling the fruit to some women, who are putting it into bags tocarry away.

When he sees me approach, there is always the same pantomime. Ipropose to take some of the fruit he is sorting. With a knowing air,and an appearance of great mystery, he raises his left hand, the palmtoward me, as one says hush. Having dispatched his business, hetakes an empty basket, and with another mysterious flourish, desiringme to remain quiet, he goes to a storehouse in one corner of thegarden, and returns with a load of immense oranges, all soaked withthe sun, ripe and fragrant, and more tempting than lumps of gold. Itake one, and ask him if it is sweet. He shrugs his shoulders,raises his hands, and, with a sidewise shake of the head, and a lookwhich says, How can you be so faithless? makes me ashamed of mydoubts.

I cut the thick skin, which easily falls apart and discloses theluscious quarters, plump, juicy, and waiting to melt in the mouth. Ilook for a moment at the rich pulp in its soft incasem*nt, and thentry a delicious morsel. I nod. My gardener again shrugs hisshoulders, with a slight smile, as much as to say, It could not beotherwise, and is evidently delighted to have me enjoy his fruit. Ifill capacious pockets with the choicest; and, if I have friends withme, they do the same. I give our silent but most expressiveentertainer half a franc, never more; and he always seems surprisedat the size of the largesse. We exhaust his basket, and he proposesto get more.

When I am alone, I stroll about under the heavily-laden trees, andpick up the largest, where they lie thickly on the ground, liking tohold them in my hand and feel the agreeable weight, even when I cancarry away no more. The gardener neither follows nor watches me; andI think perhaps knows, and is not stingy about it, that more valuableto me than the oranges I eat or take away are those on the treesamong the shining leaves. And perhaps he opines that I am from acountry of snow and ice, where the year has six hostile months, andthat I have not money enough to pay for the rich possession of theeye, the picture of beauty, which I take with me.

FASCINATION

There are three places where I should like to live; naming them inthe inverse order of preference,—the Isle of Wight, Sorrento, andHeaven. The first two have something in common, the almost mysticunion of sky and sea and shore, a soft atmospheric suffusion thatworks an enchantment, and puts one into a dreamy mood. And yet thereare decided contrasts. The superabundant, soaking sunshine ofSorrento is of very different quality from that of the Isle of Wight.On the island there is a sense of home, which one misses on thispromontory, the fascination of which, no less strong, is that of asouthern beauty, whose charms conquer rather than win. I rememberwith what feeling I one day unexpectedly read on a white slab, in thelittle inclosure of Bonchurch, where the sea whispered as gently asthe rustle of the ivy-leaves, the name of John Sterling. Could therebe any fitter resting-place for that most, weary, and gentle spirit?There I seemed to know he had the rest that he could not haveanywhere on these brilliant historic shores. Yet so impressible washis sensitive nature, that I doubt not, if he had given himself up tothe enchantment of these coasts in his lifetime, it would have ledhim by a spell he could not break.

I am sometimes in doubt what is the spell of Sorrento, and halfbelieve that it is independent of anything visible. There is said tobe a fatal enchantment about Capri. The influences of Sorrento arenot so dangerous, but are almost as marked. I do not wonder that theGreeks peopled every cove and sea-cave with divinities, and builttemples on every headland and rocky islet here; that the Romans builtupon the Grecian ruins; that the ecclesiastics in succeedingcenturies gained possession of all the heights, and built conventsand monasteries, and set out vineyards, and orchards of olives andoranges, and took root as the creeping plants do, spreadingthemselves abroad in the sunshine and charming air. The Italian ofto-day does not willingly emigrate, is tempted by no seduction ofbetter fortune in any foreign clime. And so in all ages the swarmingpopulations have clung to these shores, filling all the coasts andevery nook in these almost inaccessible hills with life. Perhaps thedelicious climate, which avoids all extremes, sufficiently accountsfor this; and yet I have sometimes thought there is a more subtlereason why travelers from far lands are spellbound here, oftenagainst will and judgment, week after week, month after month.

However this may be, it is certain that strangers who come here, andremain long enough to get entangled in the meshes which someinfluence, I know not what, throws around them, are in danger ofnever departing. I know there are scores of travelers, who whiskdown from Naples, guidebook in hand, goaded by the fell purpose ofseeing every place in Europe, ascend some height, buy a load of thebeautiful inlaid woodwork, perhaps row over to Capri and stay fiveminutes in the azure grotto, and then whisk away again, untouched bythe glamour of the place. Enough that they write "delightful spot"in their diaries, and hurry off to new scenes, and more noisy life.But the visitor who yields himself to the place will soon find hispower of will departing. Some satirical people say, that, as onegrows strong in body here, he becomes weak in mind. The theory I donot accept: one simply folds his sails, unships his rudder, and waitsthe will of Providence, or the arrival of some compelling fate. Thelonger one remains, the more difficult it is to go. We have afashion—indeed, I may call it a habit—of deciding to go, and ofnever going. It is a subject of infinite jest among the habitues ofthe villa, who meet at table, and who are always bidding each othergood-by. We often go so far as to write to Naples at night, andbespeak rooms in the hotels; but we always countermand the orderbefore we sit down to breakfast. The good-natured mistress ofaffairs, the head of the bureau of domestic relations, is at herwits' end, with guests who always promise to go and never depart.There are here a gentleman and his wife, English people of decisionenough, I presume, in Cornwall, who packed their luggage beforeChristmas to depart, but who have not gone towards the end ofFebruary,—who daily talk of going, and little by little unpack theirwardrobe, as their determination oozes out. It is easy enough todecide at night to go next day; but in the morning, when the softsunshine comes in at the window, and when we descend and walk in thegarden, all our good intentions vanish. It is not simply that we donot go away, but we have lost the motive for those long excursionswhich we made at first, and which more adventurous travelers indulgein. There are those here who have intended for weeks to spend a dayon Capri. Perfect day for the expedition succeeds perfect day,boatload after boatload sails away from the little marina at the baseof the cliff, which we follow with eves of desire, but—to-morrowwill do as well. We are powerless to break the enchantment.

I confess to the fancy that there is some subtle influence workingthis sea-change in us, which the guidebooks, in their enumeration ofthe delights of the region, do not touch, and which maybe reachesback beyond the Christian era. I have always supposed that the storyof Ulysses and the Sirens was only a fiction of the poets, intendedto illustrate the allurements of a soul given over to pleasure, anddeaf to the call of duty and the excitement of a grapple with theworld. But a lady here, herself one of the entranced, tells me thatwhoever climbs the hills behind Sorrento, and looks upon the Isle ofthe Sirens, is struck with an inability to form a desire to departfrom these coasts. I have gazed at those islands more than once, asthey lie there in the Bay of Salerno; and it has always happened thatthey have been in a half-misty and not uncolored sunlight, but not sodraped that I could not see they were only three irregular rocks, notfar from shore, one of them with some ruins on it. There are neithersirens there now, nor any other creatures; but I should be sorry tothink I should never see them again. When I look down on them, I canalso turn and behold on the other side, across the Bay of Naples, thePosilipo, where one of the enchanters who threw magic over them issaid to lie in his high tomb at the opening of the grotto. Whetherhe does sleep in his urn in that exact spot is of no moment. Modernlife has disillusioned this region to a great extent; but the romancethat the old poets have woven about these bays and rocky promontoriescomes very easily back upon one who submits himself long to theeternal influences of sky and sea which made them sing. It is allone,—to be a Roman poet in his villa, a lazy friar of the MiddleAges toasting in the sun, or a modern idler, who has drifted here outof the active currents of life, and cannot make up his mind todepart.

MONKISH PERCHES

On heights at either end of the Piano di Sorrento, and commanding it,stood two religious houses: the Convent of the Carnaldoli to thenortheast, on the crest of the hill above Meta; the CarthusianMonastery of the Deserto, to the southwest, three miles aboveSorrento. The longer I stay here, the more respect I have for thetaste of the monks of the Middle Ages. They invariably secured thebest places for themselves. They seized all the strategic points;they appropriated all the commanding heights; they knew where the sunwould best strike the grapevines; they perched themselves whereverthere was a royal view. When I see how unerringly they did selectand occupy the eligible places, I think they were moved by a sort ofinspiration. In those days, when the Church took the first choice ineverything, the temptation to a Christian life must have been strong.

The monastery at the Deserto was suppressed by the French of thefirst republic, and has long been in a ruinous condition. Itsbuildings crown the apex of the highest elevation in this part of thepromontory: from its roof the fathers paternally looked down upon thechurches and chapels and nunneries which thickly studded all thisregion; so that I fancy the air must have been full of the sound ofbells, and of incense perpetually ascending. They looked also uponSt. Agata under the hill, with a church bigger than itself; upon moredistinct Massa, with its chapels and cathedral and overlooking feudaltower; upon Torca, the Greek Theorica, with its Temple of Apollo, thescene yet of an annual religious festival, to which the peasants ofSorrento go as their ancestors did to the shrine of the heathen god;upon olive and orange orchards, and winding paths and wayside shrinesinnumerable. A sweet and peaceful scene in the foreground, it musthave been, and a whole horizon of enchantment beyond the sunnypeninsula over which it lorded: the Mediterranean, with poetic Capri,and Ischia, and all the classic shore from Cape Misenum, Baiae, andNaples, round to Vesuvius; all the sparkling Bay of Naples; and onthe other side the Bay of Salerno, covered with the fleets of thecommerce of Amalfi, then a republican city of fifty thousand people;and Grecian Paestum on the marshy shore, even then a ruin, itsdeserted porches and columns monuments of an architecture neverequaled elsewhere in Italy. Upon this charming perch, the oldCarthusian monks took the summer breezes and the winter sun, prunedtheir olives, and trimmed their grapevines, and said prayers for thepoor sinners toiling in the valleys below.

The monastery is a desolate old shed now. We left our donkeys to eatthistles in front, while we climbed up some dilapidated steps, andentered the crumbling hall. The present occupants are half a dozenmonks, and fine fellows too, who have an orphan school of some twentylads. We were invited to witness their noonday prayers. Theflat-roofed rear buildings extend round an oblong, quadrangularspace, which is a rich garden, watered from capacious tanks, andcoaxed into easy fertility by the impregnating sun. Upon these roofsthe brothers were wont to walk, and here they sat at peacefulevening. Here, too, we strolled; and here I could not resist thetemptation to lie an unheeded hour or two, soaking in the benignantFebruary sun, above every human concern and care, looking upon a landand sea steeped in romance. The sky was blue above; but in the southhorizon, in the direction of Tunis, were the prismatic colors. Whynot be a monk, and lie in the sun?

One of the handsome brothers invited us into the refectory, a placeas bare and cheerless as the feeding-room of a reform school, and setbefore us bread and cheese, and red wine, made by the monks. Inotice that the monks do not water their wine so much as the osteriakeepers do; which speaks equally well for their religion and theirtaste. The floor of the room was brick, the table plain boards, andthe seats were benches; not much luxury. The monk who served us wasan accomplished man, traveled, and master of several languages. Hespoke English a little. He had been several years in America, andwas much interested when we told him our nationality.

"Does the signor live near Mexico?"

"Not in dangerous proximity," we replied; but we did not forfeit hisgood opinion by saying that we visited it but seldom.

Well, he had seen all quarters of the globe: he had been for years atraveler, but he had come back here with a stronger love for it thanever; it was to him the most delightful spot on earth, he said. Andwe could not tell him where its equal is. If I had nothing else todo, I think I should cast in my lot with him,—at least for a week.

But the monks never got into a cozier nook than the Convent of theCamaldoli. That also is suppressed: its gardens, avenues, colonnadedwalks, terraces, buildings, half in ruins. It is the level surfaceof a hill, sheltered on the east by higher peaks, and on the north bythe more distant range of Great St. Angelo, across the valley, and isone of the most extraordinarily fertile plots of ground I ever saw.The rich ground responds generously to the sun. I should like tohave seen the abbot who grew on this fat spot. The workmen were busyin the garden, spading and pruning.

A group of wild, half-naked children came about us begging, as we satupon the walls of the terrace,—the terrace which overhangs the busyplain below, and which commands the entire, varied, nooky promontory,and the two bays. And these children, insensible to beauty, wantcentesimi!

In the rear of the church are some splendid specimens of theumbrella-like Italian pine. Here we found, also, a pretty littleruin,—it might be Greek and—it might be Druid for anything thatappeared, ivy-clad, and suggesting a religion older than that of theconvent. To the east we look into a fertile, terraced ravine; andbeyond to a precipitous brown mountain, which shows a sharp outlineagainst the sky; halfway up are nests of towns, white houses,churches, and above, creeping along the slope, the thread of anancient road, with stone arches at intervals, as old as Caesar.

We descend, skirting for some distance the monastery walls, overwhich patches of ivy hang like green shawls. There are flowers inprofusion, scented violets, daisies, dandelions, and crocuses, largeand of the richest variety, with orange pistils, and stamens purpleand violet, the back of every alternate leaf exquisitely penciled.

We descend into a continuous settlement, past shrines, past brown,sturdy men and handsome girls working in the vineyards; we descend—but words express nothing—into a wonderful ravine, a sort of refinedSwiss scene,—high, bare steps of rock butting over a chasm, ruins,old walls, vines, flowers. The very spirit of peace is here, and itis not disturbed by the sweet sound of bells echoed in the passes.On narrow ledges of precipices, aloft in the air where it would seemthat a bird could scarcely light, we distinguish the forms of men andwomen; and their voices come down to us. They are peasants cuttinggrass, every spire of which is too precious to waste.

We descend, and pass by a house on a knoll, and a terrace of olivesextending along the road in front. Half a dozen children come to theroad to look at us as we approach, and then scamper back to the housein fear, tumbling over each other and shouting, the eldest girlmaking good her escape with the baby. My companion swings his hat,and cries, "Hullo, baby!" And when we have passed the gate, and areunder the wall, the whole ragged, brown-skinned troop scurry out uponthe terrace, and run along, calling after us, in perfect English, aslong as we keep in sight, "Hullo, baby!" "Hullo, baby!" The nexttraveler who goes that way will no doubt be hailed by thequick-witted natives with this salutation; and, if he is of aphilological turn, he will probably benefit his mind by running thephrase back to its ultimate Greek roots.

A DRY TIME

For three years, once upon a time, it did not rain in Sorrento. Nota drop out of the clouds for three years, an Italian lady here, bornin Ireland, assures me. If there was an occasional shower on thePiano during all that drought, I have the confidence in her to thinkthat she would not spoil the story by noticing it.

The conformation of the hills encircling the plain would be likely tolead any shower astray, and discharge it into the sea, with whatevergood intentions it may have started down the promontory for Sorrento.I can see how these sharp hills would tear the clouds asunder, andlet out all their water, while the people in the plain below watchedthem with longing eyes. But it can rain in Sorrento. Occasionallythe northeast wind comes down with whirling, howling fury, as if itwould scoop villages and orchards out of the little nook; and therain, riding on the whirlwind, pours in drenching floods. At suchtimes I hear the beat of the waves at the foot of the rock, and feellike a prisoner on an island. Eden would not be Eden in a rainstorm.

The drought occurred just after the expulsion of the Bourbons fromNaples, and many think on account of it. There is this to be said infavor of the Bourbons: that a dry time never had occurred while theyreigned,—a statement in which all good Catholics in Sorrento willconcur. As the drought went on, almost all the wells in the placedried up, except that of the Tramontano and the one in the suppressedconvent of the Sacred Heart,—I think that is its name.

It is a rambling pile of old buildings, in the center of the town,with a courtyard in the middle, and in it a deep well, boring down Iknow not how far into the rock, and always full of cold sweet water.The nuns have all gone now; and I look in vain up at the narrow slitsin the masonry, which served them for windows, for the glance of aworldly or a pious eye. The poor people of Sorrento, when the publicwells and fountains had gone dry, used to come and draw at theTramontano; but they were not allowed to go to the well of theconvent, the gates were closed. Why the government shut them Icannot see: perhaps it knew nothing of it, and some stupid officialtook the pompous responsibility. The people grumbled, and cursed thegovernment; and, in their simplicity, probably never took any stepsto revoke the prohibitory law. No doubt, as the government hadcaused the drought, it was all of a piece, the good rustics thought.

For the government did indirectly occasion the dry spell. I have theinformation from the Italian lady of whom I have spoken. Among thefirst steps of the new government of Italy was the suppression of theuseless convents and nunneries. This one at Sorrento early cameunder the ban. It always seemed to me almost a pity to rout out thisasylum of praying and charitable women, whose occupation was theencouragement of beggary and idleness in others, but whose prayerswere constant, and whose charities to the sick of the little citywere many. If they never were of much good to the community, it wasa pleasure to have such a sweet little hive in the center of it; andI doubt not that the simple people felt a genuine satisfaction, asthey walked around the high walls, in believing that pure prayerswithin were put up for them night and day; and especially when theywaked at night, and heard the bell of the convent, and knew that atthat moment some faithful soul kept her vigils, and chanted prayersfor them and all the world besides; and they slept the sounder for itthereafter. I confess that, if one is helped by vicarious prayer, Iwould rather trust a convent of devoted women (though many of themare ignorant, and some of them are worldly, and none are fair to see)to pray for me, than some of the houses of coarse monks which I haveseen.

But the order came down from Naples to pack off all the nuns of theSacred Heart on a day named, to close up the gates of the nunnery,and hang a flaming sword outside. The nuns were to be pulled up bythe roots, so to say, on the day specified, and without postponement,and to be transferred to a house prepared for them at Massa, a fewmiles down the promontory, and several hundred feet nearer heaven.Sorrento was really in mourning: it went about in grief. It seemedas if something sacrilegious were about to be done. It was theintention of the whole town to show its sense of it in some way.

The day of removal came, and it rained! It poured: the water camedown in sheets, in torrents, in deluges; it came down with thewildest tempest of many a year. I think, from accurate reports ofthose who witnessed it, that the beginning of the great Deluge wasonly a moisture compared to this. To turn the poor women out ofdoors such a day as this was unchristian, barbarous, impossible.Everybody who had a shelter was shivering indoors. But the officialswere inexorable. In the order for removal, nothing was said aboutpostponement on account of weather; and go the nuns must.

And go they did; the whole town shuddering at the impiety of it, butkept from any demonstration by the tempest. Carriages went round tothe convent; and the women were loaded into them, packed into them,carried and put in, if they were too infirm to go themselves. Theywere driven away, cross and wet and bedraggled. They found theirdwelling on the hill not half prepared for them, leaking and cold andcheerless. They experienced very rough treatment, if I can credit myinformant, who says she hates the government, and would not even lookout of her lattice that day to see the carriages drive past.

And when the Lady Superior was driven away from the gate, she said tothe officials, and the few faithful attendants, prophesying in themidst of the rain that poured about her, "The day will come shortly,when you will want rain, and shall not have it; and you will pray formy return."

And it did not rain, from that day for three years.

And the simple people thought of the good Superior, whose departurehad been in such a deluge, and who had taken away with her all themoisture of the land; and they did pray for her return, and believedthat the gates of heaven would be again opened if only the nunnerywere repeopled. But the government could not see the connectionbetween convents and the theory of storms, and the remnant of piouswomen was permitted to remain in their lodgings at Massa. Perhapsthe government thought they could, if they bore no malice, pray aseffectually for rain there as anywhere.

I do not know, said my informant, that the curse of the Lady Superiorhad anything to do with the drought, but many think it had; and thoseare the facts.

CHILDREN OF THE SUN

The common people of this region are nothing but children; andragged, dirty, and poor as they are, apparently as happy, to speakidiomatically, as the day is long. It takes very little to pleasethem; and their easily-excited mirth is contagious. It is very rarethat one gets a surly return to a salutation; and, if one shows theleast good-nature, his greeting is met with the most jolly return.The boatman hauling in his net sings; the brown girl, whom we meetdescending a steep path in the hills, with an enormous bag or basketof oranges on her head, or a building-stone under which she stands aserect as a pillar, sings; and, if she asks for something, there is amerry twinkle in her eye, that says she hardly expects money, butonly puts in a "beg" at a venture because it is the fashion; theworkmen clipping the olive-trees sing; the urchins, who dance aboutthe foreigner in the street, vocalize their petitions for un po' dimoneta in a tuneful manner, and beg more in a spirit of deviltry thanwith any expectation of gain. When I see how hard the peasantslabor, what scraps and vegetable odds and ends they eat, and in whatwretched, dark, and smoke-dried apartments they live, I wonder theyare happy; but I suppose it is the all-nourishing sun and the equableclimate that do the business for them. They have few artificialwants, and no uneasy expectation—bred by the reading of books andnewspapers—that anything is going to happen in the world, or thatany change is possible. Their fruit-trees yield abundantly yearafter year; their little patches of rich earth, on the built-upterraces and in the crevices of the rocks, produce fourfold. The sundoes it all.

Every walk that we take here with open mind and cheerful heart issure to be an adventure. Only yesterday, we were coming down abranch of the great gorge which splits the plain in two. On one sidethe path is a high wall, with garden trees overhanging. On theother, a stone parapet; and below, in the bed of the ravine, anorange orchard. Beyond rises a precipice; and, at its foot, men andboys were quarrying stone, which workmen raised a couple of hundredfeet to the platform above with a windlass. As we came along, ahandsome girl on the height had just taken on her head a large blockof stone, which I should not care to lift, to carry to a pile in therear; and she stopped to look at us. We stopped, and looked at her.This attracted the attention of the men and boys in the quarry below,who stopped work, and set up a cry for a little money. We laughed,and responded in English. The windlass ceased to turn. The workmenon the height joined in the conversation. A grizzly beggar hobbledup, and held out his greasy cap. We nonplussed him by extending ourhats, and beseeching him for just a little something. Some passerson the road paused, and looked on, amused at the transaction. A boyappeared on the high wall, and began to beg. I threatened to shoothim with my walkingstick, whereat he ran nimbly along the wall interror The workmen shouted; and this started up a couple of yellowdogs, which came to the edge of the wall and barked violently. Thegirl, alone calm in the confusion, stood stock still under herenormous load looking at us. We swung out hats, and hurrahed. Thecrowd replied from above, below, and around us, shouting, laughing,singing, until the whole little valley was vocal with a gale ofmerriment, and all about nothing. The beggar whined; the spectatorsaround us laughed; and the whole population was aroused into a jollymood. Fancy such a merry hullaballoo in America. For ten minutes,while the funny row was going on, the girl never moved, havingforgotten to go a few steps and deposit her load; and when wedisappeared round a bend of the path, she was still watching us,smiling and statuesque.

As we descend, we come upon a group of little children seated about adoorstep, black-eyed, chubby little urchins, who are cutting orangesinto little bits, and playing "party," as children do on the otherside of the Atlantic. The instant we stop to speak to them, theskinny hand of an old woman is stretched out of a window just aboveour heads, the wrinkled palm itching for money. The mother comesforward out of the house, evidently pleased with our notice of thechildren, and shows us the baby in her arms. At once we are on goodterms with the whole family. The woman sees that there is nothingimpertinent in our cursory inquiry into her domestic concerns, but, Ifancy, knows that we are genial travelers, with human sympathies. Sothe people universally are not quick to suspect any imposition, andmeet frankness with frankness, and good-nature with good-nature, in asimple-hearted, primeval manner. If they stare at us from doorwayand balcony, or come and stand near us when we sit reading or writingby the shore, it is only a childlike curiosity, and they are quiteunconscious of any breach of good manners. In fact, I thinktravelers have not much to say in the matter of staring. I only praythat we Americans abroad may remember that we are in the presence ofolder races, and conduct ourselves with becoming modesty, rememberingalways that we were not born in Britain.

Very likely I am in error; but it has seemed to me that even thefunerals here are not so gloomy as in other places. I have looked inat the churches when they are in progress, now and then, and beenstruck with the general good feeling of the occasion. The realmourners I could not always distinguish; but the seats would befilled with a motley gathering of the idle and the ragged, who seemedto enjoy the show and the ceremony. On one occasion, it was theobsequies of an officer in the army. Guarding the gilded casket,which stood upon a raised platform before the altar, were foursoldiers in uniform. Mass was being said and sung; and a priest wasplaying the organ. The church was light and cheerful, and pervaded.by a pleasant bustle. Ragged boys and beggars, and dirty childrenand dogs, went and came wherever they chose—about the unoccupiedspaces of the church. The hired mourners, who are numerous inproportion to the rank of the deceased, were clad in white cotton,—asort of nightgown put on over the ordinary clothes, with a hood ofthe same drawn tightly over the face, in which slits were cut for theeyes and mouth. Some of them were seated on benches near the front;others were wandering about among the pillars, disappearing in thesacristy, and reappearing with an aimless aspect, altogetherconducting themselves as if it were a holiday, and if there wasanything they did enjoy, it was mourning at other people's expense.They laughed and talked with each other in excellent spirits; and onevarlet near the coffin, who had slipped off his mask, winked at merepeatedly, as if to inform me that it was not his funeral. Amasquerade might have been more gloomy and depressing.

SAINT ANTONINO

The most serviceable saint whom I know is St. Antonino. He is thepatron saint of the good town of Sorrento; he is the good genius ofall sailors and fishermen; and he has a humbler office,—that ofprotector of the pigs. On his day the pigs are brought into thepublic square to be blessed; and this is one reason why the pork ofSorrento is reputed so sweet and wholesome. The saint is the friend,and, so to say, companion of the common people. They seem to be allfond of him, and there is little of fear in their confiding relation.His humble origin and plebeian appearance have something to do withhis popularity, no doubt. There is nothing awe-inspiring in thebrown stone figure, battered and cracked, that stands at one cornerof the bridge, over the chasm at the entrance of the city. He holdsa crosier in one hand, and raises the other, with fingers uplifted,in act of benediction. If his face is an indication of hischaracter, he had in him a mixture of robust good-nature with a touchof vulgarity, and could rough it in a jolly manner with fishermen andpeasants. He may have appeared to better advantage when he stood ontop of the massive old city gate, which the present government, withthe impulse of a vandal, took down a few years ago. The demolitionhad to be accomplished in the night, under a guard of soldiers, soindignant were the populace. At that time the homely saint wasdeposed; and he wears now, I think, a snubbed and cast-aside aspect.Perhaps he is dearer to the people than ever; and I confess that Ilike him much better than many grander saints, in stone, I have seenin more conspicuous places. If ever I am in rough water and foulweather, I hope he will not take amiss anything I have here writtenabout him.

Sunday, and it happened to be St. Valentine's also, was the greatfete-day of St. Antonino. Early in the morning there was a greatclanging of bells; and the ceremony of the blessing of the pigs tookplace,—I heard, but I was not abroad early enough to see it,—alaziness for which I fancy I need not apologize, as the Catholic isknown to be an earlier religion than the Protestant. When I did goout, the streets were thronged with people, the countryfolk havingcome in for miles around. The church of the patron saint was thegreat center of attraction. The blank walls of the little square infront, and of the narrow streets near, were hung with cheap andhighly-colored lithographs of sacred subjects, for sale; tables andbooths were set up in every available space for the traffic inpre-Raphaelite gingerbread, molasses candy, strings of dried nuts,pinecone and pumpkin seeds, scarfs, boots and shoes, and all sorts oftrumpery. One dealer had preempted a large space on the pavement,where he had spread out an assortment of bits of old iron, nails,pieces of steel traps, and various fragments which might be useful tothe peasants. The press was so great, that it was difficult to getthrough it; but the crowd was a picturesque one, and in the highestgood humor. The occasion was a sort of Fourth of July, but withoutit* worry and powder and flowing bars.

The spectacle of the day was the procession bearing the silver imageof the saint through the streets. I think there could never beanything finer or more impressive; at least, I like these littlefussy provincial displays,—these tag-rags and ends of grandeur, inwhich all the populace devoutly believe, and at which they are lostin wonder,—better than those imposing ceremonies at the capital, inwhich nobody believes. There was first a band of musicians, walkingin more or less disorder, but blowing away with great zeal, so thatthey could be heard amid the clangor of bells the peals of whichreverberate so deafeningly between the high houses of these narrowstreets. Then follow boys in white, and citizens in black and whiterobes, carrying huge silken banners, triangular like sea-pennants,and splendid silver crucifixes which flash in the sun. Then comeecclesiastics, walking with stately step, and chanting in loud andpleasant unison. These are followed by nobles, among whom Irecognize, with a certain satisfaction, two descendants of Tasso,whose glowing and bigoted soul may rejoice in the devotion of hisposterity, who help to bear today the gilded platform upon which isthe solid silver image of the saint. The good old bishop walkshumbly in the rear, in full canonical rig, with crosier and miter,his rich robes upborne by priestly attendants, his splendid footmanat a respectful distance, and his roomy carriage not far behind.

The procession is well spread out and long; all its members carrylighted tapers, a good many of which are not lighted, having gone outin the wind. As I squeeze into a shallow doorway to let the cortegepass, I am sorry to say that several of the young fellows in whitegowns tip me the wink, and even smile in a knowing fashion, as if itwere a mere lark, after all, and that the saint must know it. Butnot so thinks the paternal bishop, who waves a blessing, which Icatch in the flash of the enormous emerald on his right hand. Theprocession ends, where it started, in the patron's church; and therehis image is set up under a gorgeous canopy of crimson and gold, tohear high mass, and some of the choicest solos, choruses, andbravuras from the operas.

In the public square I find a gaping and wondering crowd of rusticscollected about one of the mountebanks whose trade is not peculiar toany country. This one might be a clock-peddler from Connecticut. Heis mounted in a one-seat vettura, and his horse is quietly eatinghis dinner out of a bag tied to his nose. There is nothing unusualin the fellow's dress; he wears a shiny silk hat, and has one ofthose grave faces which would be merry if their owner were notconscious of serious business on hand. On the driver's perch beforehim are arranged his attractions,—a box of notions, a grinningskull, with full teeth and jaws that work on hinges, some vials ofred liquid, and a closed jar containing a most disagreeableanatomical preparation. This latter he holds up and displays,turning it about occasionally in an admiring manner. He isdiscoursing, all the time, in the most voluble Italian. He has anointment, wonderfully efficacious for rheumatism and every sort ofbruise: he pulls up his sleeve, and anoints his arm with it, bindingit up with a strip of paper; for the simplest operation must beexplained to these grown children. He also pulls teeth, with an easeand expedition hitherto unknown, and is in no want of patients amongthis open-mouthed crowd. One sufferer after another climbs up intothe wagon, and goes through the operation in the public gaze. Astolid, good-natured hind mounts the seat. The dentist examines hismouth, and finds the offending tooth. He then turns to the crowd andexplains the case. He takes a little instrument that is neitherforceps nor turnkey, stands upon the seat, seizes the man's nose, andjerks his head round between his knees, pulling his mouth open (thereis nothing that opens the mouth quicker than a sharp upward jerk ofthe nose) with a rude jollity that sets the spectators in a roar.Down he goes into the cavern, and digs away for a quarter of aminute, the man the while as immovable as a stone image, when heholds up the bloody tooth. The patient still persists in sittingwith his mouth stretched open to its widest limit, waiting for theoperation to begin, and will only close the orifice when he is wellshaken and shown the tooth. The dentist gives him some yellow liquidto hold in his mouth, which the man insists on swallowing, wets ahandkerchief and washes his face, roughly rubbing his nose the wrongway, and lets him go. Every step of the process is eagerly watchedby the delighted spectators.

He is succeeded by a woman, who is put through the same heroictreatment, and exhibits like fortitude. And so they come; and thedentist after every operation waves the extracted trophy high in air,and jubilates as if he had won another victory, pointing to the stonestatue yonder, and reminding them that this is the glorious day ofSt. Antonino. But this is not all that this man of science does. Hehas the genuine elixir d'amour, love-philters and powders which neverfail in their effects. I see the bashful girls and the sheepishswains come slyly up to the side of the wagon, and exchange theirhard-earned francs for the hopeful preparation. O my brown beauty,with those soft eyes and cheeks of smothered fire, you have no needof that red philter! What a simple, childlike folk! The shrewdfellow in the wagon is one of a race as old as Thebes and as new asPorkopolis; his brazen face is older than the invention of bronze,but I think he never had to do with a more credulous crowd than this.The very cunning in the face of the peasants is that of the fox; itis a sort of instinct, and not an intelligent suspicion.

This is Sunday in Sorrento, under the blue sky. These peasants, whoare fooled by the mountebank and attracted by the piles of adamantinegingerbread, do not forget to crowd the church of the saint atvespers, and kneel there in humble faith, while the choir sings theAgnus Dei, and the priests drone the service. Are they so different,then, from other people? They have an idea on Capri that England issuch another island, only not so pleasant; that all Englishmen arerich and constantly travel to escape the dreariness at home; andthat, if they are not absolutely mad, they are all a little queer.It was a fancy prevalent in Hamlet's day. We had the English servicein the Villa Nardi in the evening. There are some Englishmen stayinghere, of the class one finds in all the sunny spots of Europe, ennuyeand growling, in search of some elixir that shall bring back youthand enjoyment. They seem divided in mind between the attractions ofthe equable climate of this region and the fear of the gout whichlurks in the unfermented wine. One cannot be too grateful to thesturdy islanders for carrying their prayers, like their drumbeat, allround the globe; and I was much edified that night, as the readingwent on, by a row of rather battered men of the world, who stood inline on one side of the room, and took their prayers with a certainBritish fortitude, as if they were conscious of performing aconstitutional duty, and helping by the act to uphold the majesty ofEnglish institutions.

PUNTA DELLA CAMPANELLA

There is always a mild excitement about mounting donkeys in themorning here for an excursion among the hills. The warm sun pouringinto the garden, the smell of oranges, the stimulating air, thegeneral openness and freshness, promise a day of enjoyment. There isalways a doubt as to who will go; generally a donkey wanting;somebody wishes to join the party at the last moment; there is no endof running up and downstairs, calling from balconies and terraces;some never ready, and some waiting below in the sun; the whole housein a tumult, drivers in a worry, and the sleepy animals now and thenjoining in the clatter with a vocal performance that is neither atrumpet-call nor a steam-whistle, but an indescribable noise, thatbegins in agony and abruptly breaks down in despair. It is difficultto get the train in motion. The lady who ordered Succarina has got astrange donkey, and Macaroni has on the wrong saddle. Succarina is afavorite, the kindest, easiest, and surest-footed of beasts,—adiminutive animal, not bigger than a Friesland sheep; old, in factgrizzly with years, and not unlike the aged, wizened little women whoare so common here: for beauty in this region dries up; and thesehandsome Sorrento girls, if they live, and almost everybody doeslive, have the prospect, in their old age, of becoming mummies, withparchment skins. I have heard of climates that preserve femalebeauty; this embalms it, only the beauty escapes in the process. AsI was saying, Succarina is little, old, and grizzly; but her head islarge, and one might be contented to be as wise as she looks.

The party is at length mounted, and clatters away through the narrowstreets. Donkey-riding is very good for people who think they cannotwalk. It looks very much like riding, to a spectator; and itdeceives the person undertaking it into an amount of exercise equalto walking. I have a great admiration for the donkey character.There never was such patience under wrong treatment, such return ofdevotion for injury. Their obstinacy, which is so much talked about,is only an exercise of the right of private judgment, and anintelligent exercise of it, no doubt, if we could take the donkeypoint of view, as so many of us are accused of doing in other things.I am certain of one thing: in any large excursion party there will bemore obstinate people than obstinate donkeys; and yet the poor brutesget all the thwacks and thumps. We are bound to-day for the Puntadella Campanella, the extreme point of the promontory, and ten milesaway. The path lies up the steps from the new Massa carriage-road,now on the backbone of the ridge, and now in the recesses of thebroken country. What an animated picture is the donkeycade, as itmounts the steeps, winding along the zigzags! Hear the littlebridlebells jingling, the drivers groaning their "a-e-ugh, a-e-ugh,"the riders making a merry din of laughter, and firing off a fusilladeof ejacul*tions of delight and wonder.

The road is between high walls; round the sweep of curved terraceswhich rise above and below us, bearing the glistening olive; throughglens and gullies; over and under arches, vine-grown,—how little wemake use of the arch at home!—round sunny dells where orangeorchards gleam; past shrines, little chapels perched on rocks, rudevillas commanding most extensive sweeps of sea and shore. The almondtrees are in full bloom, every twig a thickly-set spike of the pinkand white blossoms; daisies and dandelions are out; the purplecrocuses sprinkle the ground, the petals exquisitely varied on thereverse side, and the stamens of bright salmon color; the largedouble anemones have come forth, certain that it is spring; on thehigher crags by the wayside the Mediterranean heather has shaken outit* delicate flowers, which fill the air with a mild fragrance; whileblue violets, sweet of scent like the English, make our path aperfumed one. And this is winter.

We have made a late start, owing to the fact that everybody iscaptain of the expedition, and to the Sorrento infirmity that no oneis able to make up his mind about anything. It is one o'clock whenwe reach a high transverse ridge, and find the headlands of thepeninsula rising before us, grim hills of limestone, one of them withthe ruins of a convent on top, and no road apparent thither, andCapri ahead of us in the sea, the only bit of land that catches anylight; for as we have journeyed the sky has thickened, the clouds ofthe sirocco have come up from the south; there has been first a mist,and then a fine rain; the ruins on the peak of Santa Costanza are nowhid in mist. We halt for consultation. Shall we go on and brave awetting, or ignominiously retreat? There are many opinions, but fewdecided ones. The drivers declare that it will be a bad time. Onegentleman, with an air of decision, suggests that it is best to goon, or go back, if we do not stand here and wait. The deaf lady,from near Dublin, being appealed to, says that, perhaps, if it ismore prudent, we had better go back if it is going to rain. It doesrain. Waterproofs are put on, umbrellas spread, backs turned to thewind; and we look like a group of explorers under adversecirc*mstances, "silent on a peak in Darien," the donkeys especiallydowncast and dejected. Finally, as is usual in life, a, compromiseprevails. We decide to continue for half an hour longer and see whatthe weather is. No sooner have we set forward over the brow of ahill than it grows lighter on the sea horizon in the southwest, theruins on the peak become visible, Capri is in full sunlight. Theclouds lift more and more, and still hanging overhead, but with nomore rain, are like curtains gradually drawn up, opening to us aglorious vista of sunshine and promise, an illumined, sparkling,illimitable sea, and a bright foreground of slopes and picturesquerocks. Before the half hour is up, there is not one of the party whodoes not claim to have been the person who insisted upon goingforward.

We halt for a moment to look at Capri, that enormous, irregular rock,raising its huge back out of the sea, its back broken in the middle,with the little village for a saddle. On the farther summit, aboveAnacapri, a precipice of two thousand feet sheer down to the water onthe other side, hangs a light cloud. The east elevation, whence theplayful Tiberius used to amuse his green old age by casting hisprisoners eight hundred feet down into the sea, has the strongsunlight on it; and below, the row of tooth-like rocks, which are theextreme eastern point, shine in a warm glow. We descend through avillage, twisting about in its crooked streets. The inhabitants, whodo not see strangers every day, make free to stare at and comment onus, and even laugh at something that seems very comical in ourappearance; which shows how ridiculous are the costumes of Paris andNew York in some places. Stalwart girls, with only an apology forclothes, with bare legs, brown faces, and beautiful eyes, stop intheir spinning, holding the distaff suspended, while they examine usat leisure. At our left, as we turn from the church and its sunnypiazza, where old women sit and gabble, down the ravine, is a snugvillage under the mountain by the shore, with a great square medievaltower. On the right, upon rocky points, are remains of round towers,and temples perhaps.

We sweep away to the left round the base of the hill, over adifficult and stony path. Soon the last dilapidated villa is passed,the last terrace and olive-tree are left behind; and we emerge upon awild, rocky slope, barren of vegetation, except little tufts of grassand a sort of lentil; a wide sweep of limestone strata set on edge,and crumbling in the beat of centuries, rising to a considerableheight on the left. Our path descends toward the sea, still creepinground the end of the promontory. Scattered here and there over therocks, like conies, are peasants, tending a few lean cattle, anddigging grasses from the crevices. The women and children are wildin attire and manner, and set up a clamor of begging as we pass. Agroup of old hags begin beating a poor child as we approach, toexcite our compassion for the abused little object, and draw outcentimes.

Walking ahead of the procession, which gets slowly down the ruggedpath, I lose sight of my companions, and have the solitude, the sunon the rocks, the glistening sea, all to myself. Soon I espy a manbelow me sauntering down among the rocks. He sees me and moves away,a solitary figure. I say solitary; and so it is in effect, althoughhe is leading a little boy, and calling to his dog, which runs backto bark at me. Is this the brigand of whom I have read, and is heluring me to his haunt? Probably. I follow. He throws his cloakabout his shoulders, exactly as brigands do in the opera, and loiterson. At last there is the point in sight, a gray wall with blindarches. The man disappears through a narrow archway, and I follow.Within is an enormous square tower. I think it was built in Spanishdays, as an outlook for Barbary pirates. A bell hung in it, whichwas set clanging when the white sails of the robbers appeared to thesouthward; and the alarm was repeated up the coast, the towers weremanned, and the brown-cheeked girls flew away to the hills, I doubtnot, for the touch of the sirocco was not half so much to be dreadedas the rough importunity of a Saracen lover. The bell is gone now,and no Moslem rovers are in sight. The maidens we had just passedwould be safe if there were. My brigand disappears round the tower;and I follow down steps, by a white wall, and lo! a house,—a redstucco, Egyptian-looking building,—on the very edge of the rocks.The man unlocks a door and goes in. I consider this an invitation,and enter. On one side of the passage a sleeping-room, on the othera kitchen,—not sumptuous quarters; and we come then upon a prettycircular terrace; and there, in its glass case, is the lantern of thepoint. My brigand is a lighthouse-keeper, and welcomes me in a quietway, glad, evidently, to see the face of a civilized being. It isvery solitary, he says. I should think so. It is the end ofeverything. The Mediterranean waves beat with a dull thud on theworn crags below. The rocks rise up to the sky behind. There isnothing there but the sun, an occasional sail, and quiet, petrifiedCapri, three miles distant across the strait. It is an excellentplace for a misanthrope to spend a week, and get cured. There mustbe a very dispiriting influence prevailing here; the keeper refusedto take any money, the solitary Italian we have seen so affected.

We returned late. The young moon, lying in the lap of the old one,was superintending the brilliant sunset over Capri, as we passed thelast point commanding it; and the light, fading away, left usstumbling over the rough path among the hills, darkened by the highwalls. We were not sorry to emerge upon the crest above the Massaroad. For there lay the sea, and the plain of Sorrento, with itsdarkening groves and hundreds of twinkling lights. As we went downthe last descent, the bells of the town were all ringing, for it wasthe eve of the fete of St. Antonino.

CAPRI

"CAP, signor? Good day for Grott." Thus spoke a mariner, touchinghis Phrygian cap. The people here abbreviate all names. With themMassa is Mas, Meta is Met, Capri becomes Cap, the Grotta Azzurra isreduced familiarly to Grott, and they even curtail musical Sorrentointo Serent.

Shall we go to Capri? Should we dare return to the great Republic,and own that we had not been into the Blue Grotto? We like to climbthe steeps here, especially towards Massa, and look at Capri. I haveread in some book that it used to be always visible from Sorrento.But now the promontory has risen, the Capo di Sorrento has thrust outit* rocky spur with its ancient Roman masonry, and the island itselfhas moved so far round to the south that Sorrento, which frontsnorth, has lost sight of it.

We never tire of watching it, thinking that it could not be sparedfrom the landscape. It lies only three miles from the curving end ofthe promontory, and is about twenty miles due south of Naples. Inthis atmosphere distances dwindle. The nearest land, to thenorthwest, is the larger island of Ischia, distant nearly as far asNaples; yet Capri has the effect of being anchored off the bay toguard the entrance. It is really a rock, three miles and a halflong, rising straight out of the water, eight hundred feet high atone end, and eighteen hundred feet at the other, with a depressionbetween. If it had been chiseled by hand and set there, it could notbe more sharply defined. So precipitous are its sides of rock, thatthere are only two fit boat-landings, the marina on the north side,and a smaller place opposite. One of those light-haired and freckledEnglishmen, whose pluck exceeds their discretion, rowed round theisland alone in rough water, last summer, against the advice of theboatman, and unable to make a landing, and weary with the strife ofthe waves, was in considerable peril.

Sharp and clear as Capri is in outline, its contour is still mostgraceful and poetic. This wonderful atmosphere softens even itsruggedness, and drapes it with hues of enchanting beauty. Sometimesthe haze plays fantastic tricks with it,—a cloud-cap hangs on MonteSolaro, or a mist obscures the base, and the massive summits of rockseem to float in the air, baseless fabrics of a vision that therising wind will carry away perhaps. I know now what Homer means by"wandering islands." Shall we take a boat and sail over there, and sodestroy forever another island of the imagination? The bane oftravel is the destruction of illusions.

We like to talk about Capri, and to talk of going there. TheSorrento people have no end of gossip about the wild island; and,simple and primitive as they are, Capri is still more out of theworld. I do not know what enchantment there is on the island; but—whoever sets foot there, they say, goes insane or dies a drunkard. Ifancy the reason of this is found in the fact that the Capri girlsare raving beauties. I am not sure but the monotony of beinganchored off there in the bay, the monotony of rocks and precipicesthat goats alone can climb, the monotony of a temperature thatscarcely ever, winter and summer, is below 55 or above 75 Fahrenheitindoors, might drive one into lunacy. But I incline to think it isdue to the handsome Capri girls.

There are beautiful girls in Sorrento, with a beauty more than skindeep, a glowing, hidden fire, a ripeness like that of the grape andthe peach which grows in the soft air and the sun. And they wither,like grapes that hang upon the stem. I have never seen a handsome,scarcely a decent-looking, old woman here. They are lank and dry,and their bones are covered with parchment. One of thesebrown-cheeked girls, with large, longing eyes, gives the stranger astart, now and then, when he meets her in a narrow way with a basketof oranges on her head. I hope he has the grace to go right by. Lethim meditate what this vision of beauty will be like in twenty ears.

The Capri girls are famed as magnificent beauties, but they fade liketheir mainland sisters. The Saracens used to descend on theirisland, and carry them off to their harems. The English, a veryadventurous people, who have no harems, have followed the Saracens.The young lords and gentlemen have a great fondness for Capri. Ihear gossip enough about elopements, and not seldom marriages, withthe island girls,—bright girls, with the Greek mother-wit, andsurpassingly handsome; but they do not bear transportation tocivilized life (any more than some of the native wines do): theyaccept no intellectual culture; and they lose their beauty as theygrow old. What then? The young English blade, who was intoxicatedby beauty into an injudicious match and might, as the proverb says,have gone insane if he could not have made it, takes to drink now,and so fulfills the other alternative. Alas! the fatal gift ofbeauty.

But I do not think Capri is so dangerous as it is represented. For(of course we went to Capri) neither at the marina, where a crowd ofbare-legged, vociferous maidens with donkeys assailed us, nor in thevillage above, did I see many girls for whom and one little isle aperson would forswear the world. But I can believe that they growhere. One of our donkey girls was a handsome, dark-skinned,black-eyed girl; but her little sister, a mite of a being of sixyears, who could scarcely step over the small stones in the road, andwas forced to lead the donkey by her sister in order to establishanother lien on us for buona mano, was a dirty little angel in rags,and her great soft black eyes will look somebody into the asylum orthe drunkard's grave in time, I have no doubt. There was a stout,manly, handsome little fellow of five years, who established himselfas the guide and friend of the tallest of our party. His hat wasnearly gone; he was sadly out of repair in the rear; his short legsmade the act of walking absurd; but he trudged up the hill with acertain dignity. And there was nothing mercenary about his attachment:he and his friend got upon very cordial terms: they exchanged gifts ofshells and copper coin, but nothing was said about pay.

Nearly all the inhabitants, young and old, joined us in livelyprocession, up the winding road of three quarters of a mile, to thetown. At the deep gate, entering between thick walls, we stopped tolook at the sea. The crowd and clamor at our landing had been sogreat that we enjoyed the sight of the quiet old woman sitting herein the sun, and the few beggars almost too lazy to stretch out theirhands. Within the gate is a large paved square, with the governmentoffices and the tobacco-shop on one side, and the church opposite;between them, up a flight of broad stone steps, is the Hotel Tiberio.Our donkeys walk up them and into the hotel. The church and hotelare six hundred years old; the hotel was a villa belonging to JoannaII. of Naples. We climb to the roof of the quaint old building, andsit there to drink in the strange oriental scene. The landlord saysit is like Jaffa or Jerusalem. The landlady, an Irish woman fromDevonshire, says it is six francs a day. In what friendlyintercourse the neighbors can sit on these flat roofs! How sightlythis is, and yet how sheltered! To the east is the height whereAugustus, and after him Tiberius, built palaces. To the west, upthat vertical wall, by means of five hundred steps cut in the face ofthe rock, we go to reach the tableland of Anacapri, the primitivevillage of that name, hidden from view here; the medieval castle ofBarbarossa, which hangs over a frightful precipice; and the height ofMonte Solaro. The island is everywhere strewn with Roman ruins, andwith faint traces of the Greeks.

Capri turns out not to be a barren rock. Broken and picturesque asit is, it is yet covered with vegetation. There is not a foot, onemight say a point, of soil that does not bear something; and there isnot a niche in the rock, where a scrap of dirt will stay, that is notmade useful. The whole island is terraced. The most wonderful thingabout it, after all, is its masonry. You come to think, after atime, that the island is not natural rock, but a mass of masonry. Ifthe labor that has been expended here, only to erect platforms forthe soil to rest on, had been given to our country, it would havebuilt half a dozen Pacific railways, and cut a canal through theIsthmus.

But the Blue Grotto? Oh, yes! Is it so blue? That depends upon thetime of day, the sun, the clouds, and something upon the person whoenters it. It is frightfully blue to some. We bend down in ourrowboat, slide into the narrow opening which is three feet high, andpassing into the spacious cavern, remain there for half an hour. Itis, to be sure, forty feet high, and a hundred by a hundred and fiftyin extent, with an arched roof, and clear water for a floor. Thewater appears to be as deep as the roof is high, and is of a light,beautiful blue, in contrast with the deep blue of the bay. At theentrance the water is illuminated, and there is a pleasant, mildlight within: one has there a novel subterranean sensation; but itdid not remind me of anything I have seen in the "Arabian Nights." Ihave seen pictures of it that were much finer.

As we rowed close to the precipice in returning, I saw many similaropenings, not so deep, and perhaps only sham openings; and thewater-line was fretted to honeycomb by the eating waves. Beneath thewater-line, and revealed here and there when the waves receded, was aline of bright red coral.

THE STORY OF FIAMMETTA

At vespers on the fete of St. Antonino, and in his church, I saw theSignorina Fiammetta. I stood leaning against a marble pillar nearthe altar-steps, during the service, when I saw the young girlkneeling on the pavement in act of prayer. Her black lace veil hadfallen a little back from her head; and there was something in hermodest attitude and graceful figure that made her conspicuous amongall her kneeling companions, with their gay kerchiefs and brightgowns. When she rose and sat down, with folded hands and eyesdowncast, there was something so pensive in her subdued mien that Icould not take my eyes from her. To say that she had the rich olivecomplexion, with the gold struggling through, large, lustrous blackeyes, and harmonious features, is only to make a weak photograph,when I should paint a picture in colors and infuse it with the sweetloveliness of a maiden on the way to sainthood. I was sure that Ihad seen her before, looking down from the balcony of a villa justbeyond the Roman wall, for the face was not one that even the mostunimpressible idler would forget. I was sure that, young as she was,she had already a history; had lived her life, and now walked amidthese groves and old streets in a dream. The story which I heard isnot long.

In the drawing-room of the Villa Nardi was shown, and offered forsale, an enormous counterpane, crocheted in white cotton. Loop byloop, it must have been an immense labor to knit it; for it wasfashioned in pretty devices, and when spread out was rich and showyenough for the royal bed of a princess. It had been crocheted byFiammetta for her marriage, the only portion the poor child couldbring to that sacrament. Alas! the wedding was never to be; and therich work, into which her delicate fingers had knit so many maidendreams and hopes and fears, was offered for sale in the resort ofstrangers. It could not have been want only that induced her to putthis piece of work in the market, but the feeling, also, that thetime never again could return when she would have need of it. I hadno desire to purchase such a melancholy coverlet, but I could wellenough fancy why she would wish to part with what must be rather apall than a decoration in her little chamber.

Fiammetta lived with her mother in a little villa, the roof of whichis in sight from my sunny terrace in the Villa Nardi, just to theleft of the square old convent tower, rising there out of the silverolive-boughs,—a tumble-down sort of villa, with a flat roof and oddangles and parapets, in the midst of a thrifty but small grove oflemons and oranges. They were poor enough, or would be in anycountry where physical wants are greater than here, and yet did notbelong to that lowest class, the young girls of which are little morethan beasts of burden, accustomed to act as porters, bearing about ontheir heads great loads of stone, wood, water, and baskets of orangesin the shipping season. She could not have been forced to suchlabor, or she never would have had the time to work that wonderfulcoverlet.

Giuseppe was an honest and rather handsome young fellow of Sorrento,industrious and good-natured, who did not bother his head much aboutlearning. He was, however, a skillful workman in the celebratedinlaid and mosaic woodwork of the place, and, it is said, had eveninvented some new figures for the inlaid pictures in colored woods.He had a little fancy for the sea as well, and liked to pull an oarover to Capri on occasion, by which he could earn a few francs easierthan he could saw them out of the orangewood. For the stupid fellow,who could not read a word in his prayer-book, had an idea of thriftin his head, and already, I suspect, was laying up liras with anobject. There are one or two dandies in Sorrento who attempt todress as they do in Naples. Giuseppe was not one of these; but therewas not a gayer or handsomer gallant than he on Sunday, or one morelooked at by the Sorrento girls, when he had on his clean suit andhis fresh red Phrygian cap. At least the good Fiammetta thought so,when she met him at church, though I feel sure she did not allow evenhis handsome figure to come between her and the Virgin. At any rate,there can be no doubt of her sentiments after church, when she andher mother used to walk with him along the winding Massa road abovethe sea, and stroll down to the shore to sit on the greensward overthe Temple of Hercules, or the Roman Baths, or the remains of thevilla of C. Fulvius Cunctatus Cocles, or whatever those ruinssubterranean are, there on the Capo di Sorrento. Of course, this ismere conjecture of mine. They may have gone on the hills behind thetown instead, or they may have stood leaning over the garden-wall ofher mother's little villa, looking at the passers-by in the deeplane, thinking about nothing in the world, and talking about it allthe sunny afternoon, until Ischia was purple with the last light, andthe olive terraces behind them began to lose their gray bloom. All Ido know is, that they were in love, blossoming out in it as thealmond-trees do here in February; and that all the town knew it, andsaw a wedding in the future, just as plain as you can see Capri fromthe heights above the town.

It was at this time that the wonderful counterpane began to grow, tothe continual astonishment of Giuseppe, to whom it seemed a marvel ofskill and patience, and who saw what love and sweet hope Fiammettawas knitting into it with her deft fingers. I declare, as I think ofit, the white cotton spread out on her knees, in such contrast to therich olive of her complexion and her black shiny hair, while sheknits away so merrily, glancing up occasionally with those liquid,laughing eyes to Giuseppe, who is watching her as if she were anangel right out of the blue sky, I am tempted not to tell this storyfurther, but to leave the happy two there at the open gate of life,and to believe that they entered in.

This was about the time of the change of government, after thisregion had come to be a part of the Kingdom of Italy. After thefirst excitement was over, and the simple people found they were notall made rich, nor raised to a condition in which they could livewithout work, there began to be some dissatisfaction. Why theconvents need have been suppressed, and especially the poor nunspacked off, they couldn't see; and then the taxes were heavier thanever before; instead of being supported by the government, they hadto support it; and, worst of all, the able young fellows must stillgo for soldiers. Just as one was learning his trade, or perhaps hadacquired it, and was ready to earn his living and begin to make ahome for his wife, he must pass the three best years of his life inthe army. The conscription was relentless.

The time came to Giuseppe, as it did to the others. I never heardbut he was brave enough; there was no storm on the Mediterranean thathe dare not face in his little boat; and he would not have objectedto a campaign with the red shirts of Garibaldi. But to be torn awayfrom his occupations by which he was daily laying aside a little forhimself and Fiammetta, and to leave her for three years,—that seemeddreadful to him. Three years is a longtime; and though he had nodoubt of the pretty Fiammetta, yet women are women, said the shrewdfellow to himself, and who knows what might happen, if a gallant camealong who could read and write, as Fiammetta could, and, besides,could play the guitar?

The result was, that Giuseppe did not appear at the mustering-officeon the day set; and, when the file of soldiers came for him, he wasnowhere to be found. He had fled to the mountains. I scarcely knowwhat his plan was, but he probably trusted to some good luck toescape the conscription altogether, if he could shun it now; and, atleast, I know that he had many comrades who did the same, so that attimes the mountains were full of young fellows who were lurking inthem to escape the soldiers. And they fared very roughly usually,and sometimes nearly perished from hunger; for though the sympathiesof the peasants were undoubtedly with the quasi-outlaws rather thanwith the carbineers, yet the latter were at every hamlet in thehills, and liable to visit every hut, so that any relief extended tothe fugitives was attended with great danger; and, besides, thehunted men did not dare to venture from their retreats. Thusoutlawed and driven to desperation by hunger, these fugitives, whomnobody can defend for running away from their duties as citizens,became brigands. A cynical German, who was taken by them some yearsago on the road to Castellamare, a few miles above here, and held forransom, declared that they were the most honest fellows he had seenin Italy; but I never could see that he intended the remark as anycompliment to them. It is certain that the inhabitants of all thesetowns held very loose ideas on the subject of brigandage: the poorfellows, they used to say, only robbed because they were hungry, andthey must live somehow.

What Fiammetta thought, down in her heart, is not told: but I presumeshe shared the feelings of those about her concerning the brigands,and, when she heard that Giuseppe had joined them, was more anxiousfor the safety of his body than of his soul; though I warrant she didnot forget either, in her prayers to the Virgin and St. Antonino.And yet those must have been days, weeks, months, of terrible anxietyto the poor child; and if she worked away at the counterpane, nettingin that elaborate border, as I have no doubt she did, it must havebeen with a sad heart and doubtful fingers. I think that one of thepsychological sensitives could distinguish the parts of the bedspreadthat were knit in the sunny days from those knit in the long hours ofcare and deepening anxiety.

It was rarely that she received any message from him and it was thenonly verbal and of the briefest; he was in the mountains aboveAmalfi; one day he had come so far round as the top of the Great St.Angelo, from which he could look down upon the piano of Sorrento,where the little Fiammetta was; or he had been on the hills nearSalerno, hunted and hungry; or his company had descended upon sometravelers going to Paestum, made a successful haul, and escaped intothe steep mountains beyond. He didn't intend to become a regularbandit, not at all. He hoped that something might happen so that hecould steal back into Sorrento, unmarked by the government; or, atleast, that he could escape away to some other country or island,where Fiammetta could join him. Did she love him yet, as in the oldhappy days? As for him, she was now everything to him; and he wouldwillingly serve three or thirty years in the army, if the governmentcould forget he had been a brigand, and permit him to have a littlehome with Fiammetta at the end of the probation. There was not muchcomfort in all this, but the simple fellow could not send anythingmore cheerful; and I think it used to feed the little maiden's heartto hear from him, even in this downcast mood, for his love for herwas a dear certainty, and his absence and wild life did not dim it.

My informant does not know how long this painful life went on, nordoes it matter much. There came a day when the government was shamedinto new vigor against the brigands. Some English people ofconsequence (the German of whom I have spoken was with them) had beencaptured, and it had cost them a heavy ransom. The number of thecarbineers was quadrupled in the infested districts, soldierspenetrated the fastnesses of the hills, there were daily fights withthe banditti; and, to show that this was no sham, some of them wereactually shot, and others were taken and thrown into prison. Amongthose who were not afraid to stand and fight, and who would not becaptured, was our Giuseppe. One day the Italia newspaper of Napleshad an account of a fight with brigands; and in the list of those whofell was the name of Giuseppe—-, of Sorrento, shot through the head,as he ought to have been, and buried without funeral among the rocks.

This was all. But when the news was read in the little post officein Sorrento, it seemed a great deal more than it does as I write it;for, if Giuseppe had an enemy in the village, it was not among thepeople; and not one who heard the news did not think at once of thepoor girl to whom it would be more than a bullet through the heart.And so it was. The slender hope of her life then went out. I amtold that there was little change outwardly, and that she was aslovely as before; but a great cloud of sadness came over her, inwhich she was always enveloped, whether she sat at home, or walkedabroad in the places where she and Giuseppe used to wander. Thesimple people respected her grief, and always made a tender-heartedstillness when the bereft little maiden went through the streets,—astillness which she never noticed, for she never noticed anythingapparently. The bishop himself when he walked abroad could not betreated with more respect.

This was all the story of the sweet Fiammetta that was confided tome. And afterwards, as I recalled her pensive face that evening asshe kneeled at vespers, I could not say whether, after all, she wasaltogether to be pitied, in the holy isolation of her grief, which Iam sure sanctified her, and, in some sort, made her life complete.For I take it that life, even in this sunny Sorrento, is not alone amatter of time.

ST. MARIA A CASTELLO

The Great St. Angelo and that region are supposed to be the haunts ofbrigands. From those heights they spy out the land, and from thencehave, more than once, descended upon the sea-road betweenCastellamare and Sorrento, and caught up English and Germantravelers. This elevation commands, also, the Paestum way. We haveno faith in brigands in these days; for in all our remote and lonelyexplorations of this promontory we have never met any but the mostsimple-hearted and good-natured people, who were quite as much afraidof us as we were of them. But there are not wanting stories, everyday, to keep alive the imagination of tourists.

We are waiting in the garden this sunny, enticing morning-just theday for a tramp among the purple hills—for our friend, the longEnglishman, who promised, over night, to go with us. This excellent,good-natured giant, whose head rubs the ceiling of any room in thehouse, has a wife who is fond of him, and in great dread of thebrigands. He comes down with a sheepish air, at length, and informsus that his wife won't let him go.

"Of course I can go, if I like," he adds. "But the fact is, I haven't slept much all night: she kept asking me if I was going!" On thewhole, the giant don't care to go. There are things more to befeared than brigands.

The expedition is, therefore, reduced to two unarmed persons. In thepiazza we pick up a donkey and his driver for use in case ofaccident; and, mounting the driver on the donkey,—an arrangementthat seems entirely satisfactory to him,—we set forward. Ifanything can bring back youth, it is a day of certain sunshine and abit of unexplored country ahead, with a whole day in which to wanderin it without a care or a responsibility. We walk briskly up thewalled road of the piano, striking at the overhanging golden fruitwith our staves; greeting the orange-girls who come down the sidelanes; chaffing with the drivers, the beggars, the old women who sitin the sun; looking into the open doors of houses and shops uponwomen weaving, boys and girls slicing up heaps of oranges, upon themakers of macaroni, the sellers of sour wine, the merry shoemakers,whose little dens are centers of gossip here, as in all the East: thewhole life of these people is open and social; to be on the street isto be at home.

We wind up the steep hill behind Meta, every foot of which isterraced for olive-trees, getting, at length, views over the waysidewall of the plain and bay and rising into the purer air and the scentof flowers and other signs of coming spring, to the little village ofArola, with its church and bell, its beggars and idlers,—just alittle street of houses jammed in between the hills of Camaldoli andPergola, both of which we know well.

Upon the cliff by Pergola is a stone house, in front of which I liketo lie, looking straight down a thousand or two feet upon the roofsof Meta, the map of the plain, and the always fascinating bay. Iwent down the backbone of the limestone ridge towards the sea theother afternoon, before sunset, and unexpectedly came upon a group oflittle stone cottages on a ledge, which are quite hidden from below.The inhabitants were as much surprised to see a foreigner breakthrough their seclusion as I was to come upon them. However, theysoon recovered presence of mind to ask for a little money. Half adozen old hags with the parchment also sat upon the rocks in the sun,spinning from distaffs, exactly as their ancestors did in Greece twothousand years ago, I doubt not. I do not know that it is true, asTasso wrote, that this climate is so temperate and serene that onealmost becomes immortal in it. Since two thousand years all thesecoasts have changed more or less, risen and sunk, and the temples andpalaces of two civilizations have tumbled into the sea. Yet I do notknow but these tranquil old women have been sitting here on the rocksall the while, high above change and worry and decay, gossiping andspinning, like Fates. Their yarn must be uncanny.

But we wander. It is difficult to go to any particular place here;impossible to write of it in a direct manner. Our mulepath continuesmost delightful, by slopes of green orchards nestled in shelteredplaces, winding round gorges, deep and ragged with loose stones, andgroups of rocks standing on the edge of precipices, like medievaltowers, and through village after village tucked away in the hills.The abundance of population is a constant surprise. As we proceed,the people are wilder and much more curious about us, having, it isevident, seen few strangers lately. Women and children, half-dressedin dirty rags which do not hide the form, come out from their lowstone huts upon the windy terraces, and stand, arms akimbo, staringat us, and not seldom hailing us in harsh voices. Their sole dressis often a single split and torn gown, not reaching to the bareknees, evidently the original of those in the Naples ballet (it will,no doubt, be different when those creatures exchange the ballet forthe ballot); and, with their tangled locks and dirty faces, they seemrather beasts than women. Are their husbands brigands, and are theyin wait for us in the chestnut-grove yonder?

The grove is charming; and the men we meet there gathering sticks arenot so surly as the women. They point the way; and when we emergefrom the wood, St. Maria a Castello is before us on a height, itswhite and red church shining in the sun. We climb up to it. Infront is a broad, flagged terrace; and on the edge are deep wells inthe rock, from which we draw cool water. Plentifully victualed, onecould stand a siege here, and perhaps did in the gamey Middle Ages.Monk or soldier need not wish a pleasanter place to lounge.Adjoining the church, but lower, is a long, low building with threerooms, at once house and stable, the stable in the center, though allof them have hay in the lofts. The rooms do not communicate. Thatis the whole of the town of St. Maria a Castello.

In one of the apartments some rough-looking peasants are eatingdinner, a frugal meal: a dish of unclean polenta, a plate of gratedcheese, a basket of wormy figs, and some sour red wine; no bread, nomeat. They looked at us askance, and with no sign of hospitality.We made friends, however, with the ragged children, one of whom tookgreat delight in exhibiting his litter of puppies; and we at lengthso far worked into the good graces of the family that the mother wasprevailed upon to get us some milk and eggs. I followed the womaninto one of the apartments to superintend the cooking of the eggs.It was a mere den, with an earth floor. A fire of twigs was kindledagainst the farther wall, and a little girl, half-naked, carrying ababy still more economically clad, was stooping down to blow thesmudge into a flame. The smoke, some of it, went over our heads outat the door. We boiled the eggs. We desired salt; and the womanbrought us pepper in the berry. We insisted on salt, and at lengthgot the rock variety, which we pounded on the rocks. We ate our eggsand drank our milk on the terrace, with the entire family interestedspectators. The men were the hardest-looking ruffians we had metyet: they were making a bit of road near by, but they seemed capableof turning their hands to easier money-getting; and there couldn't bea more convenient place than this.

When our repast was over, and I had drunk a glass of wine with theproprietor, I offered to pay him, tendering what I knew was a fairprice in this region. With some indignation of gesture, he refusedit, intimating that it was too little. He seemed to be seeking anexcuse for a quarrel with us; so I pocketed the affront, money andall, and turned away. He appeared to be surprised, and going indoorspresently came out with a bottle of wine and glasses, and followed usdown upon the rocks, pressing us to drink. Most singular conduct; nodoubt drugged wine; travelers put into deep sleep; robbed; thrownover precipice; diplomatic correspondence, flattering, but nocompensation to them. Either this, or a case of hospitality. Wedeclined to drink, and the brigand went away.

We sat down upon the jutting ledge of a precipice, the like of whichis not in the world: on our left, the rocky, bare side of St. Angelo,against which the sunshine dashes in waves; below us, sheer down twothousand feet, the city of Positano, a nest of brown houses, thicklyclustered on a conical spur, and lying along the shore, the home ofthree thousand people,—with a running jump I think I could land inthe midst of it,—a pygmy city, inhabited by mites, as we look downupon it; a little beach of white sand, a sailboat lying on it, andsome fishermen just embarking; a long hotel on the beach; beyond, bythe green shore, a country seat charmingly situated amid trees andvines; higher up, the ravine-seamed hill, little stone huts, bits ofruin, towers, arches. How still it is! All the stiller that I can,now and then, catch the sound of an axe, and hear the shouts of somechildren in a garden below. How still the sea is! How many ages hasit been so? Does the purple mist always hang there upon the watersof Salerno Bay, forever hiding from the gaze Paestum and its temples,and all that shore which is so much more Grecian than Roman?

After all, it is a satisfaction to turn to the towering rock of St.Angelo; not a tree, not a shrub, not a spire of grass, on itsperpendicular side. We try to analyze the satisfaction there is insuch a bald, treeless, verdureless mass. We can grasp itintellectually, in its sharp solidity, which is undisturbed by anyornament: it is, to the mind, like some complete intellectualperformance; the mind rests on it, like a demonstration in Euclid.And yet what a color of beauty it takes on in the distance!

When we return, the bandits have all gone to their road-making: thesuspicious landlord is nowhere to be seen. We call the woman fromthe field, and give her money, which she seemed not to expect, andfor which she shows no gratitude. Life appears to be indifferent tothese people. But, if these be brigands, we prefer them to those ofNaples, and even to the innkeepers of England. As we saunter home inthe pleasant afternoon, the vesper-bells are calling to each other,making the sweetest echoes of peace everywhere in the hills, and allthe piano is jubilant with them, as we come down the steeps atsunset.

"You see there was no danger," said the giant to his wife thatevening at the supper-table.

"You would have found there was danger, if you had gone," returnedthe wife of the giant significantly.

THE MYTH OF THE SIRENS

I like to walk upon the encircling ridge behind Sorrento, whichcommands both bays. From there I can look down upon the Isles of theSirens. The top is a broad, windy strip of pasture, which falls offabruptly to the Bay of Salerno on the south: a regular embankment ofearth runs along the side of the precipitous steeps, towardsSorrento. It appears to be a line of defence for musketry, such asour armies used to throw up: whether the French, who conducted siegeoperations from this promontory on Capri, under Murat, had anythingto do with it, does not appear.

Walking there yesterday, we met a woman shepherdess, cowherd,or siren—standing guard over three steers while they fed;a scantily-clad, brown woman, who had a distaff in her hand, and spunthe flax as she watched the straying cattle, an example of doubleindustry which the men who tend herds never imitate. Very likely herancestors so spun and tended cattle on the plains of Thessaly. We gavethe rigid woman good-morning, but she did not heed or reply; we madesome inquiries as to paths, but she ignored us; we bade her good-day,and she scowled at us: she only spun. She was so out of tune with thepeople, and the gentle influences of this region, that we could onlyregard her as an anomaly,—the representative of some perversity andevil genius, which, no doubt, lurks here as it does elsewhere in theworld. She could not have descended from either of the groups of theSirens; for she was not fascinating enough to be fatal.

I like to look upon these islets or rocks of the Sirens, barren anddesolate, with a few ruins of the Roman time and remains of theMiddle-Age prisons of the doges of Amalfi; but I do not care todissipate any illusions by going to them. I remember how the Sirenssat on flowery meads by the shore and sang, and are vulgarly supposedto have allured passing mariners to a life of ignoble pleasure, andthen let them perish, hungry with all unsatisfied longings. Thebones of these unfortunates, whitening on the rocks, of which Virgilspeaks, I could not see. Indeed, I think any one who lingers long inthis region will doubt if they were ever there, and will come tobelieve that the characters of the Sirens are popularly misconceived.Allowing Ulysses to be only another name for the sun-god, who appearsin myths as Indra, Apollo, William Tell, the sure-hitter, the greatarcher, whose arrows are sunbeams, it is a degrading conception ofhim that he was obliged to lash himself to the mast when he went intoaction with the Sirens, like Farragut at Mobile, though for a verydifferent reason. We should be forced to believe that Ulysses wasnot free from the basest mortal longings, and that he had notstrength of mind to resist them, but must put himself in durance; asour moderns who cannot control their desires go into inebriateasylums.

Mr. Ruskin says that "the Sirens are the great constant desires, theinfinite sicknesses of heart, which, rightly placed, give life, and,wrongly placed, waste it away; so that there are two groups ofSirens, one noble and saving, as the other is fatal." Unfortunatelywe are all, as were the Greeks, ministered unto by both these groups,but can fortunately, on the other hand, choose which group we willlisten to the singing of, though the strains are somewhat mingled;as, for instance, in the modern opera, where the music quite as oftenwastes life away, as gives to it the energy of pure desire. Yet, ifI were to locate the Sirens geographically, I should place thebeneficent desires on this coast, and the dangerous ones on that ofwicked Baiae; to which group the founder of Naples no doubt belonged.

Nowhere, perhaps, can one come nearer to the beautiful myths ofGreece, the springlike freshness of the idyllic and heroic age, thanon this Sorrentine promontory. It was no chance that made thesecoasts the home of the kind old monarch Eolus, inventor of sails andstorm-signals. On the Telegrafo di Mare Cuccola is a rudesignal-apparatus for communication with Capri,—to ascertain if windand wave are propitious for entrance to the Blue Grotto,—whichprobably was not erected by Eolus, although he doubtless used thissightly spot as one of his stations. That he dwelt here, in greatcontent, with his six sons and six daughters, the Months, is nearlycertain; and I feel as sure that the Sirens, whose islands were closeat hand, were elevators and not destroyers of the primitive racesliving here.

It seems to me this must be so; because the pilgrim who surrendershimself to the influences of these peaceful and sun-inundated coasts,under this sky which the bright Athena loved and loves, loses, by andby, those longings and heart-sicknesses which waste away his life,and comes under the dominion, more and more, of those constantdesires after that which is peaceful and enduring and has the savingquality of purity. I know, indeed, that it is not always so; andthat, as Boreas is a better nurse of rugged virtue than Zephyr, sothe soft influences of this clime only minister to the fatal desiresof some: and such are likely to sail speedily back to Naples.

The Sirens, indeed, are everywhere; and I do not know that we can goanywhere that we shall escape the infinite longings, or satisfy them.Here, in the purple twilight of history, they offered men the choiceof good and evil. I have a fancy, that, in stepping out of the whirlof modern life upon a quiet headland, so blessed of two powers, theair and the sea, we are able to come to a truer perception of thedrift of the eternal desires within us. But I cannot say whether itis a subtle fascination, linked with these mythic and moralinfluences, or only the physical loveliness of this promontory, thatlures travelers hither, and detains them on flowery meads.

By Charles Dudley Warner

BEING A BOY

One of the best things in the world to be is a boy; it requires noexperience, though it needs some practice to be a good one. Thedisadvantage of the position is that it does not last long enough; itis soon over; just as you get used to being a boy, you have to besomething else, with a good deal more work to do and not half so muchfun. And yet every boy is anxious to be a man, and is very uneasywith the restrictions that are put upon him as a boy. Good fun as itis to yoke up the calves and play work, there is not a boy on a farmbut would rather drive a yoke of oxen at real work. What a gloriousfeeling it is, indeed, when a boy is for the first time given thelong whip and permitted to drive the oxen, walking by their side,swinging the long lash, and shouting "Gee, Buck!" "Haw, Golden!""Whoa, Bright!" and all the rest of that remarkable language, untilhe is red in the face, and all the neighbors for half a mile areaware that something unusual is going on. If I were a boy, I am notsure but I would rather drive the oxen than have a birthday.The proudest day of my life was one day when I rode on the neap ofthe cart, and drove the oxen, all alone, with a load of apples to thecider-mill. I was so little that it was a wonder that I did n't falloff, and get under the broad wheels. Nothing could make a boy, whocared anything for his appearance, feel flatter than to be run overby the broad tire of a cart-wheel. But I never heard of one who was,and I don't believe one ever will be. As I said, it was a great dayfor me, but I don't remember that the oxen cared much about it. Theysagged along in their great clumsy way, switching their tails in myface occasionally, and now and then giving a lurch to this or thatside of the road, attracted by a choice tuft of grass. And then I"came the Julius Caesar" over them, if you will allow me to use sucha slang expression, a liberty I never should permit you. I don'tknow that Julius Caesar ever drove cattle, though he must often haveseen the peasants from the Campagna "haw" and "gee" them round theForum (of course in Latin, a language that those cattle understood aswell as ours do English); but what I mean is, that I stood up and"hollered" with all my might, as everybody does with oxen, as if theywere born deaf, and whacked them with the long lash over the head,just as the big folks did when they drove. I think now that it was acowardly thing to crack the patient old fellows over the face andeyes, and make them wink in their meek manner. If I am ever a boyagain on a farm, I shall speak gently to the oxen, and not goscreaming round the farm like a crazy man; and I shall not hit them acruel cut with the lash every few minutes, because it looks big to doso and I cannot think of anything else to do. I never liked lickingsmyself, and I don't know why an ox should like them, especially as hecannot reason about the moral improvement he is to get out of them.

Speaking of Latin reminds me that I once taught my cows Latin. Idon't mean that I taught them to read it, for it is very difficult toteach a cow to read Latin or any of the dead languages,—a cow caresmore for her cud than she does for all the classics put together.But if you begin early, you can teach a cow, or a calf (if you canteach a calf anything, which I doubt), Latin as well as English.There were ten cows, which I had to escort to and from pasture nightand morning. To these cows I gave the names of the Roman numerals,beginning with Unus and Duo, and going up to Decem. Decem was, ofcourse, the biggest cow of the party, or at least she was the rulerof the others, and had the place of honor in the stable andeverywhere else. I admire cows, and especially the exactness withwhich they define their social position. In this case, Decem could"lick" Novem, and Novem could "lick" Octo, and so on down to Unus,who could n't lick anybody, except her own calf. I suppose I oughtto have called the weakest cow Una instead of Unus, considering hersex; but I did n't care much to teach the cows the declensions ofadjectives, in which I was not very well up myself; and, besides, itwould be of little use to a cow. People who devote themselves tooseverely to study of the classics are apt to become dried up; and youshould never do anything to dry up a cow. Well, these ten cows knewtheir names after a while, at least they appeared to, and would taketheir places as I called them. At least, if Octo attempted to getbefore Novem in going through the bars (I have heard people speak ofa "pair of bars" when there were six or eight of them), or into thestable, the matter of precedence was settled then and there, and,once settled, there was no dispute about it afterwards. Novem eitherput her horns into Octo's ribs, and Octo shambled to one side, orelse the two locked horns and tried the game of push and gore untilone gave up. Nothing is stricter than the etiquette of a party ofcows. There is nothing in royal courts equal to it; rank is exactlysettled, and the same individuals always have the precedence. Youknow that at Windsor Castle, if the Royal Three-Ply Silver Stickshould happen to get in front of the Most Royal Double-and-TwistedGolden Rod, when the court is going in to dinner, something sodreadful would happen that we don't dare to think of it. It iscertain that the soup would get cold while the Golden Rod waspitching the Silver Stick out of the Castle window into the moat, andperhaps the island of Great Britain itself would split in two. Butthe people are very careful that it never shall happen, so we shallprobably never know what the effect would be. Among cows, as I say,the question is settled in short order, and in a different mannerfrom what it sometimes is in other society. It is said that in othersociety there is sometimes a great scramble for the first place, forthe leadership, as it is called, and that women, and men too, fightfor what is called position; and in order to be first they willinjure their neighbors by telling stories about them and bybackbiting, which is the meanest kind of biting there is, notexcepting the bite of fleas. But in cow society there is nothing ofthis detraction in order to get the first place at the crib, or thefarther stall in the stable. If the question arises, the cows turnin, horns and all, and settle it with one square fight, and that endsit. I have often admired this trait in COWS.

Besides Latin, I used to try to teach the cows a little poetry, andit is a very good plan. It does not do the cows much good, but it isvery good exercise for a boy farmer. I used to commit to memory asgood short poems as I could find (the cows liked to listen to"Thanatopsis" about as well as anything), and repeat them when I wentto the pasture, and as I drove the cows home through the sweet fernsand down the rocky slopes. It improves a boy's elocution a greatdeal more than driving oxen.

It is a fact, also, that if a boy repeats "Thanatopsis" while he ismilking, that operation acquires a certain dignity.

II

THE BOY AS A FARMER

Boys in general would be very good farmers if the current notionsabout farming were not so very different from those they entertain.What passes for laziness is very often an unwillingness to farm in aparticular way. For instance, some morning in early summer John istold to catch the sorrel mare, harness her into the spring wagon, andput in the buffalo and the best whip, for father is obliged to driveover to the "Corners, to see a man" about some cattle, to talk withthe road commissioner, to go to the store for the "women folks," andto attend to other important business; and very likely he will not beback till sundown. It must be very pressing business, for the oldgentleman drives off in this way somewhere almost every pleasant day,and appears to have a great deal on his mind.

Meantime, he tells John that he can play ball after he has done upthe chores. As if the chores could ever be "done up" on a farm. Heis first to clean out the horse-stable; then to take a bill-hook andcut down the thistles and weeds from the fence corners in the homemowing-lot and along the road towards the village; to dig up thedocks round the garden patch; to weed out the beet-bed; to hoe theearly potatoes; to rake the sticks and leaves out of the front yard;in short, there is work enough laid out for John to keep him busy, itseems to him, till he comes of age; and at half an hour to sundown heis to go for the cows "and mind he don't run 'em!"

"Yes, sir," says John, "is that all?"

"Well, if you get through in good season, you might pick over thosepotatoes in the cellar; they are sprouting; they ain't fit to eat."

John is obliged to his father, for if there is any sort of chore morecheerful to a boy than another, on a pleasant day, it is rubbing thesprouts off potatoes in a dark cellar. And the old gentleman mountshis wagon and drives away down the enticing road, with the dogbounding along beside the wagon, and refusing to come back at John'scall. John half wishes he were the dog. The dog knows the part offarming that suits him. He likes to run along the road and see allthe dogs and other people, and he likes best of all to lie on thestore steps at the Corners—while his master's horse is dozing at thepost and his master is talking politics in the store—with the otherdogs of his acquaintance, snapping at mutually annoying flies, andindulging in that delightful dog gossip which is expressed by a wagof the tail and a sniff of the nose. Nobody knows how many dogs'characters are destroyed in this gossip, or how a dog may be able toinsinuate suspicion by a wag of the tail as a man can by a shrug ofthe shoulders, or sniff a slander as a man can suggest one by raisinghis eyebrows.

John looks after the old gentleman driving off in state, with theodorous buffalo-robe and the new whip, and he thinks that is the sortof farming he would like to do. And he cries after his departingparent,

"Say, father, can't I go over to the farther pasture and salt thecattle?" John knows that he could spend half a day very pleasantlyin going over to that pasture, looking for bird's nests and shying atred squirrels on the way, and who knows but he might "see" a suckerin the meadow brook, and perhaps get a "jab" at him with a sharpstick. He knows a hole where there is a whopper; and one of hisplans in life is to go some day and snare him, and bring him home intriumph. It is therefore strongly impressed upon his mind that thecattle want salting. But his father, without turning his head,replies,

"No, they don't need salting any more 'n you do!" And the oldequipage goes rattling down the road, and John whistles hisdisappointment. When I was a boy on a farm, and I suppose it is sonow, cattle were never salted half enough!

John goes to his chores, and gets through the stable as soon as hecan, for that must be done; but when it comes to the out-door work,that rather drags. There are so many things to distract theattention—a chipmunk in the fence, a bird on a near-tree, and ahen-hawk circling high in the air over the barnyard. John loses alittle time in stoning the chipmunk, which rather likes the sport, andin watching the bird, to find where its nest is; and he convinceshimself that he ought to watch the hawk, lest it pounce upon thechickens, and therefore, with an easy conscience, he spends fifteenminutes in hallooing to that distant bird, and follows it away out ofsight over the woods, and then wishes it would come back again. Andthen a carriage with two horses, and a trunk on behind, goes along theroad; and there is a girl in the carriage who looks out at John, whois suddenly aware that his trousers are patched on each knee and intwo places behind; and he wonders if she is rich, and whose name is onthe trunk, and how much the horses cost, and whether that nice-lookingman is the girl's father, and if that boy on the seat with the driveris her brother, and if he has to do chores; and as the gay sightdisappears, John falls to thinking about the great world beyond thefarm, of cities, and people who are always dressed up, and a greatmany other things of which he has a very dim notion. And then a boy,whom John knows, rides by in a wagon with his father, and the boymakes a face at John, and John returns the greeting with a twist ofhis own visage and some symbolic gestures. All these things taketime. The work of cutting down the big weeds gets on slowly, althoughit is not very disagreeable, or would not be if it were play. Johnimagines that yonder big thistle is some whiskered villain, of whom hehas read in a fairy book, and he advances on him with "Die, ruffian!"and slashes off his head with the bill-hook; or he charges upon therows of mullein-stalks as if they were rebels in regimental ranks, andhews them down without mercy. What fun it might be if there were onlyanother boy there to help. But even war, single handed, gets to betiresome. It is dinner-time before John finishes the weeds, and it iscow-time before John has made much impression on the garden.

This garden John has no fondness for. He would rather hoe corn allday than work in it. Father seems to think that it is easy work thatJohn can do, because it is near the house! John's continual plan inthis life is to go fishing. When there comes a rainy day, heattempts to carry it out. But ten chances to one his father hasdifferent views. As it rains so that work cannot be done out-doors,it is a good time to work in the garden. He can run into the housebetween the heavy showers. John accordingly detests the garden; andthe only time he works briskly in it is when he has a stent set, todo so much weeding before the Fourth of July. If he is spry, he canmake an extra holiday the Fourth and the day after. Two days ofgunpowder and ball-playing! When I was a boy, I supposed there wassome connection between such and such an amount of work done on thefarm and our national freedom. I doubted if there could be anyFourth of July if my stent was not done. I, at least, worked for myIndependence.

III

THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING

There are so many bright spots in the life of a farm-boy, that Isometimes think I should like to live the life over again; I shouldalmost be willing to be a girl if it were not for the chores. Thereis a great comfort to a boy in the amount of work he can get rid ofdoing. It is sometimes astonishing how slow he can go on an errand,—he who leads the school in a race. The world is new andinteresting to him, and there is so much to take his attention off,when he is sent to do anything. Perhaps he himself couldn't explainwhy, when he is sent to the neighbor's after yeast, he stops to stonethe frogs; he is not exactly cruel, but he wants to see if he can hit'em. No other living thing can go so slow as a boy sent on anerrand. His legs seem to be lead, unless he happens to espy awoodchuck in an adjoining lot, when he gives chase to it like a deer;and it is a curious fact about boys, that two will be a great dealslower in doing anything than one, and that the more you have to helpon a piece of work the less is accomplished. Boys have a great powerof helping each other to do nothing; and they are so innocent aboutit, and unconscious. "I went as quick as ever I could," says theboy: his father asks him why he did n't stay all night, when he hasbeen absent three hours on a ten-minute errand. The sarcasm has noeffect on the boy.

Going after the cows was a serious thing in my day. I had to climb ahill, which was covered with wild strawberries in the season. Couldany boy pass by those ripe berries? And then in the fragrant hillpasture there were beds of wintergreen with red berries, tufts ofcolumbine, roots of sassafras to be dug, and dozens of things good toeat or to smell, that I could not resist. It sometimes even lay inmy way to climb a tree to look for a crow's nest, or to swing in thetop, and to try if I could see the steeple of the village church. Itbecame very important sometimes for me to see that steeple; and inthe midst of my investigations the tin horn would blow a great blastfrom the farmhouse, which would send a cold chill down my back in thehottest days. I knew what it meant. It had a frightfully impatientquaver in it, not at all like the sweet note that called us to dinnerfrom the hay-field. It said, "Why on earth does n't that boy comehome? It is almost dark, and the cows ain't milked!" And that wasthe time the cows had to start into a brisk pace and make up for losttime. I wonder if any boy ever drove the cows home late, who did notsay that the cows were at the very farther end of the pasture, andthat "Old Brindle" was hidden in the woods, and he couldn't find herfor ever so long! The brindle cow is the boy's scapegoat, many atime.

No other boy knows how to appreciate a holiday as the farm-boy does;and his best ones are of a peculiar kind. Going fishing is of courseone sort. The excitement of rigging up the tackle, digging the bait,and the anticipation of great luck! These are pure pleasures,enjoyed because they are rare. Boys who can go a-fishing any timecare but little for it. Tramping all day through bush and brier,fighting flies and mosquitoes, and branches that tangle the line, andsnags that break the hook, and returning home late and hungry, withwet feet and a string of speckled trout on a willow twig, and havingthe family crowd out at the kitchen door to look at 'em, and say,"Pretty well done for you, bub; did you catch that big one yourself?"—this is also pure happiness, the like of which the boy will neverhave again, not if he comes to be selectman and deacon and to "keepstore."

But the holidays I recall with delight were the two days in springand fall, when we went to the distant pasture-land, in a neighboringtown, maybe, to drive thither the young cattle and colts, and tobring them back again. It was a wild and rocky upland where ourgreat pasture was, many miles from home, the road to it running by abrawling river, and up a dashing brook-side among great hills. Whata day's adventure it was! It was like a journey to Europe. Thenight before, I could scarcely sleep for thinking of it! and therewas no trouble about getting me up at sunrise that morning. Thebreakfast was eaten, the luncheon was packed in a large basket, withbottles of root beer and a jug of switchel, which packing Isuperintended with the greatest interest; and then the cattle were tobe collected for the march, and the horses hitched up. Did I shirkany duty? Was I slow? I think not. I was willing to run my legsoff after the frisky steers, who seemed to have an idea they weregoing on a lark, and frolicked about, dashing into all gates, andthrough all bars except the right ones; and how cheerfully I did yellat them.

It was a glorious chance to "holler," and I have never since heardany public speaker on the stump or at camp-meeting who could makemore noise. I have often thought it fortunate that the amount ofnoise in a boy does not increase in proportion to his size; if itdid, the world could not contain it.

The whole day was full of excitement and of freedom. We were awayfrom the farm, which to a boy is one of the best parts of farming; wesaw other farms and other people at work; I had the pleasure ofmarching along, and swinging my whip, past boys whom I knew, who werepicking up stones. Every turn of the road, every bend and rapid ofthe river, the great bowlders by the wayside, the watering-troughs,the giant pine that had been struck by lightning, the mysteriouscovered bridge over the river where it was, most swift and rocky andfoamy, the chance eagle in the blue sky, the sense of goingsomewhere,—why, as I recall all these things I feel that even thePrince Imperial, as he used to dash on horseback through the Bois deBoulogne, with fifty mounted hussars clattering at his heels, andcrowds of people cheering, could not have been as happy as was I, aboy in short jacket and shorter pantaloons, trudging in the dust thatday behind the steers and colts, cracking my black-stock whip.

I wish the journey would never end; but at last, by noon, we reachthe pastures and turn in the herd; and after making the tour of thelots to make sure there are no breaks in the fences, we take ourluncheon from the wagon and eat it under the trees by the spring.This is the supreme moment of the day. This is the way to live; thisis like the Swiss Family Robinson, and all the rest of my delightfulacquaintances in romance. Baked beans, rye-and-indian bread (moist,remember), doughnuts and cheese, pie, and root beer. What richness!You may live to dine at Delmonico's, or, if those Frenchmen do noteat each other up, at Philippe's, in Rue Montorgueil in Paris, wherethe dear old Thackeray used to eat as good a dinner as anybody; butyou will get there neither doughnuts, nor pie, nor root beer, noranything so good as that luncheon at noon in the old pasture, highamong the Massachusetts hills! Nor will you ever, if you live to bethe oldest boy in the world, have any holiday equal to the one I havedescribed. But I always regretted that I did not take along afishline, just to "throw in" the brook we passed. I know there weretrout there.

IV

NO FARMING WITHOUT A BOY

Say what you will about the general usefulness of boys, it is myimpression that a farm without a boy would very soon come to grief.What the boy does is the life of the farm. He is the factotum,always in demand, always expected to do the thousand indispensablethings that nobody else will do. Upon him fall all the odds andends, the most difficult things. After everybody else is through, hehas to finish up. His work is like a woman's,—perpetual waiting onothers. Everybody knows how much easier it is to eat a good dinnerthan it is to wash the dishes afterwards. Consider what a boy on afarm is required to do; things that must be done, or life wouldactually stop.

It is understood, in the first place, that he is to do all theerrands, to go to the store, to the post office, and to carry allsorts of messages. If he had as many legs as a centipede, they wouldtire before night. His two short limbs seem to him entirelyinadequate to the task. He would like to have as many legs as awheel has spokes, and rotate about in the same way. This hesometimes tries to do; and people who have seen him "turningcart-wheels" along the side of the road have supposed that he wasamusing himself, and idling his time; he was only trying to invent anew mode of locomotion, so that he could economize his legs and do hiserrands with greater dispatch. He practices standing on his head, inorder to accustom himself to any position. Leapfrog is one of hismethods of getting over the ground quickly. He would willingly go anerrand any distance if he could leap-frog it with a few other boys.He has a natural genius for combining pleasure with business. This isthe reason why, when he is sent to the spring for a pitcher of water,and the family are waiting at the dinner-table, he is absent so long;for he stops to poke the frog that sits on the stone, or, if there isa penstock, to put his hand over the spout and squirt the water alittle while. He is the one who spreads the grass when the men havecut it; he mows it away in the barn; he rides the horse to cultivatethe corn, up and down the hot, weary rows; he picks up the potatoeswhen they are dug; he drives the cows night and morning; he bringswood and water and splits kindling; he gets up the horse and puts outthe horse; whether he is in the house or out of it, there is alwayssomething for him to do. Just before school in winter he shovelspaths; in summer he turns the grindstone. He knows where there arelots of winter-greens and sweet flag-root, but instead of going forthem, he is to stay in-doors and pare apples and stone raisins andpound something in a mortar. And yet, with his mind full of schemesof what he would like to do, and his hands full of occupations, he isan idle boy who has nothing to busy himself with but school andchores! He would gladly do all the work if somebody else would do thechores, he thinks, and yet I doubt if any boy ever amounted toanything in the world, or was of much use as a man, who did not enjoythe advantages of a liberal education in the way of chores.

A boy on a farm is nothing without his pets; at least a dog, andprobably rabbits, chickens, ducks, and guinea-hens. A guinea-hensuits a boy. It is entirely useless, and makes a more disagreeablenoise than a Chinese gong. I once domesticated a young fox which aneighbor had caught. It is a mistake to suppose the fox cannot betamed. Jacko was a very clever little animal, and behaved, in allrespects, with propriety. He kept Sunday as well as any day, and allthe ten commandments that he could understand. He was a verygraceful playfellow, and seemed to have an affection for me. Helived in a wood-pile in the dooryard, and when I lay down at theentrance to his house and called him, he would come out and sit onhis tail and lick my face just like a grown person. I taught him agreat many tricks and all the virtues. That year I had a largenumber of hens, and Jacko went about among them with the most perfectindifference, never looking on them to lust after them, as I couldsee, and never touching an egg or a feather. So excellent was hisreputation that I would have trusted him in the hen-roost in the darkwithout counting the hens. In short, he was domesticated, and I wasfond of him and very proud of him, exhibiting him to all our visitorsas an example of what affectionate treatment would do in subduing thebrute instincts. I preferred him to my dog, whom I had, with muchpatience, taught to go up a long hill alone and surround the cows,and drive them home from the remote pasture. He liked the fun of itat first, but by and by he seemed to get the notion that it was a"chore," and when I whistled for him to go for the cows, he wouldturn tail and run the other way, and the more I whistled and threwstones at him, the faster he would run. His name was Turk, and Ishould have sold him if he had not been the kind of dog that nobodywill buy. I suppose he was not a cow-dog, but what they call asheep-dog. At least, when he got big enough, he used to get into thepasture and chase the sheep to death. That was the way he got intotrouble, and lost his valuable life. A dog is of great use on afarm, and that is the reason a boy likes him. He is good to bitepeddlers and small children, and run out and yelp at wagons that passby, and to howl all night when the moon shines. And yet, if I were aboy again, the first thing I would have should be a dog; for dogs aregreat companions, and as active and spry as a boy at doing nothing.They are also good to bark at woodchuck-holes.

A good dog will bark at a woodchuck-hole long after the animal hasretired to a remote part of his residence, and escaped by anotherhole. This deceives the woodchuck. Some of the most delightfulhours of my life have been spent in hiding and watching the holewhere the dog was not. What an exquisite thrill ran through my framewhen the timid nose appeared, was withdrawn, poked out again, andfinally followed by the entire animal, who looked cautiously about,and then hopped away to feed on the clover. At that moment I rushedin, occupied the "home base," yelled to Turk, and then danced withdelight at the combat between the spunky woodchuck and the dog. Theywere about the same size, but science and civilization won the day.I did not reflect then that it would have been more in the interestof civilization if the woodchuck had killed the dog. I do not knowwhy it is that boys so like to hunt and kill animals; but the excusethat I gave in this case for the murder was, that the woodchuck atethe clover and trod it down, and, in fact, was a woodchuck. It wasnot till long after that I learned with surprise that he is a rodentmammal, of the species Arctomys monax, is called at the West aground-hog, and is eaten by people of color with great relish.

But I have forgotten my beautiful fox. Jacko continued to deporthimself well until the young chickens came; he was actually cured ofthe fox vice of chicken-stealing. He used to go with me about thecoops, pricking up his ears in an intelligent manner, and with ademure eye and the most virtuous droop of the tail. Charming fox!If he had held out a little while longer, I should have put him intoa Sunday-school book. But I began to miss chickens. Theydisappeared mysteriously in the night. I would not suspect Jacko atfirst, for he looked so honest, and in the daytime seemed to be asmuch interested in the chickens as I was. But one morning, when Iwent to call him, I found feathers at the entrance of his hole,—chicken feathers. He couldn't deny it. He was a thief. His foxnature had come out under severe temptation. And he died anunnatural death. He had a thousand virtues and one crime. But thatcrime struck at the foundation of society. He deceived and stole; hewas a liar and a thief, and no pretty ways could hide the fact. Hisintelligent, bright face couldn't save him. If he had been honest,he might have grown up to be a large, ornamental fox.

V

THE BOY'S SUNDAY

Sunday in the New England hill towns used to begin Saturday night atsundown; and the sun is lost to sight behind the hills there beforeit has set by the almanac. I remember that we used to go by thealmanac Saturday night and by the visible disappearance Sunday night.On Saturday night we very slowly yielded to the influences of theholy time, which were settling down upon us, and submitted to theablutions which were as inevitable as Sunday; but when the sun (andit never moved so slow) slid behind the hills Sunday night, theeffect upon the watching boy was like a shock from a galvanicbattery; something flashed through all his limbs and set them inmotion, and no "play" ever seemed so sweet to him as that betweensundown and dark Sunday night. This, however, was on the suppositionthat he had conscientiously kept Sunday, and had not gone in swimmingand got drowned. This keeping of Saturday night instead of Sundaynight we did not very well understand; but it seemed, on the whole, agood thing that we should rest Saturday night when we were tired, andplay Sunday night when we were rested. I supposed, however, that itwas an arrangement made to suit the big boys who wanted to go"courting" Sunday night. Certainly they were not to be blamed, forSunday was the day when pretty girls were most fascinating, and Ihave never since seen any so lovely as those who used to sit in thegallery and in the singers' seats in the bare old meeting-houses.

Sunday to the country farmer-boy was hardly the relief that it was tothe other members of the family; for the same chores must be donethat day as on others, and he could not divert his mind withwhistling, hand-springs, or sending the dog into the river aftersticks. He had to submit, in the first place, to the restraint ofshoes and stockings. He read in the Old Testament that when Mosescame to holy ground, he put off his shoes; but the boy was obliged toput his on, upon the holy day, not only to go to meeting, but whilehe sat at home. Only the emancipated country-boy, who is as agile onhis bare feet as a young kid, and rejoices in the pressure of thewarm soft earth, knows what a hardship it is to tie on stiff shoes.The monks who put peas in their shoes as a penance do not suffer morethan the country-boy in his penitential Sunday shoes. I recall thecelerity with which he used to kick them off at sundown.

Sunday morning was not an idle one for the farmer-boy. He must risetolerably early, for the cows were to be milked and driven topasture; family prayers were a little longer than on other days;there were the Sunday-school verses to be relearned, for they did notstay in mind over night; perhaps the wagon was to be greased beforethe neighbors began to drive by; and the horse was to be caught outof the pasture, ridden home bareback, and harnessed.

This catching the horse, perhaps two of them, was very good funusually, and would have broken the Sunday if the horse had not beenwanted for taking the family to meeting. It was so peaceful andstill in the pasture on Sunday morning; but the horses were never soplayful, the colts never so frisky. Round and round the lot the boywent calling, in an entreating Sunday voice, "Jock, jock, jock,jock," and shaking his salt-dish, while the horses, with heads erect,and shaking tails and flashing heels, dashed from corner to corner,and gave the boy a pretty good race before he could coax the nose ofone of them into his dish. The boy got angry, and came very nearsaying "dum it," but he rather enjoyed the fun, after all.

The boy remembers how his mother's anxiety was divided between theset of his turn-over collar, the parting of his hair, and his memoryof the Sunday-school verses; and what a wild confusion there wasthrough the house in getting off for meeting, and how he was keptrunning hither and thither, to get the hymn-book, or a palm-leaf fan,or the best whip, or to pick from the Sunday part of the garden thebunch of caraway-seed. Already the deacon's mare, with a wagon-loadof the deacon's folks, had gone shambling past, head and taildrooping, clumsy hoofs kicking up clouds of dust, while the gooddeacon sat jerking the reins, in an automatic way, and the"womenfolks" patiently saw the dust settle upon their best summerfinery. Wagon after wagon went along the sandy road, and when ourboy's family started, they became part of a long procession, whichsent up a mile of dust and a pungent, if not pious smell ofbuffalo-robes. There were fiery horses in the trail which had to beheld in, for it was neither etiquette nor decent to pass anybody onSunday. It was a great delight to the farmer-boy to see all thisprocession of horses, and to exchange sly winks with the other boys,who leaned over the wagon-seats for that purpose. Occasionally a boyrode behind, with his back to the family, and his pantomime was alwayssome thing wonderful to see, and was considered very daring andwicked.

The meeting-house which our boy remembers was a high, squarebuilding, without a steeple. Within it had a lofty pulpit, withdoors underneath and closets where sacred things were kept, and wherethe tithing-men were supposed to imprison bad boys. The pews weresquare, with seats facing each other, those on one side low for thechildren, and all with hinges, so that they could be raised when thecongregation stood up for prayers and leaned over the backs of thepews, as horses meet each other across a pasture fence. Afterprayers these seats used to be slammed down with a long-continuedclatter, which seemed to the boys about the best part of theexercises. The galleries were very high, and the singers' seats,where the pretty girls sat, were the most conspicuous of all. To sitin the gallery away from the family, was a privilege not oftengranted to the boy. The tithing-man, who carried a long rod and keptorder in the house, and out-doors at noontime, sat in the gallery,and visited any boy who whispered or found curious passages in theBible and showed them to another boy. It was an awful moment whenthe bushy-headed tithing-man approached a boy in sermon-time. Theeyes of the whole congregation were on him, and he could feel theguilt ooze out of his burning face.

At noon was Sunday-school, and after that, before the afternoonservice, in summer, the boys had a little time to eat their luncheontogether at the watering-trough, where some of the elders were likelyto be gathered, talking very solemnly about cattle; or they went overto a neighboring barn to see the calves; or they slipped off down theroadside to a place where they could dig sassafras or the root of thesweet-flag, roots very fragrant in the mind of many a boy withreligious associations to this day. There was often an odor ofsassafras in the afternoon service. It used to stand in my mind as asubstitute for the Old Testament incense of the Jews. Something inthe same way the big bass-viol in the choir took the place of"David's harp of solemn sound."

The going home from meeting was more cheerful and lively than thecoming to it. There was all the bustle of getting the horses out ofthe sheds and bringing them round to the meeting-house steps. Atnoon the boys sometimes sat in the wagons and swung the whips withoutcracking them: now it was permitted to give them a little snap inorder to bring the horses up in good style; and the boy wasrather proud of the horse if it pranced a little while the timid"women-folks" were trying to get in. The boy had an eye for whateverlife and stir there was in a New England Sunday. He liked to drivehome fast. The old house and the farm looked pleasant to him. Therewas an extra dinner when they reached home, and a cheerfulconsciousness of duty performed made it a pleasant dinner. Longbefore sundown the Sunday-school book had been read, and the boy satwaiting in the house with great impatience the signal that the "day ofrest" was over. A boy may not be very wicked, and yet not see theneed of "rest." Neither his idea of rest nor work is that of olderfarmers.

VI

THE GRINDSTONE OF LIFE

If there is one thing more than another that hardens the lot of thefarmer-boy, it is the grindstone. Turning grindstones to grindscythes is one of those heroic but unobtrusive occupations for whichone gets no credit. It is a hopeless kind of task, and, howeverfaithfully the crank is turned, it is one that brings littlereputation. There is a great deal of poetry about haying—I mean forthose not engaged in it. One likes to hear the whetting of thescythes on a fresh morning and the response of the noisy bobolink,who always sits upon the fence and superintends the cutting of thedew-laden grass. There is a sort of music in the "swish" and arhythm in the swing of the scythes in concert. The boy has not muchtime to attend to it, for it is lively business "spreading" afterhalf a dozen men who have only to walk along and lay the grass low,while the boy has the whole hay-field on his hands. He has littletime for the poetry of haying, as he struggles along, filling the airwith the wet mass which he shakes over his head, and picking his waywith short legs and bare feet amid the short and freshly cut stubble.

But if the scythes cut well and swing merrily, it is due to the boywho turned the grindstone. Oh, it was nothing to do, just turn thegrindstone a few minutes for this and that one before breakfast; any"hired man" was authorized to order the boy to turn the grindstone.How they did bear on, those great strapping fellows! Turn, turn,turn, what a weary go it was. For my part, I used to like agrindstone that "wabbled" a good deal on its axis, for when I turnedit fast, it put the grinder on a lively lookout for cutting hishands, and entirely satisfied his desire that I should "turn faster."It was some sport to make the water fly and wet the grinder, suddenlystarting up quickly and surprising him when I was turning veryslowly. I used to wish sometimes that I could turn fast enough tomake the stone fly into a dozen pieces. Steady turning is what thegrinders like, and any boy who turns steadily, so as to give an evenmotion to the stone, will be much praised, and will be in demand. Iadvise any boy who desires to do this sort of work to turn steadily.If he does it by jerks and in a fitful manner, the "hired men" willbe very apt to dispense with his services and turn the grindstone foreach other.

This is one of the most disagreeable tasks of the boy farmer, and,hard as it is, I do, not know why it is supposed to belong especiallyto childhood. But it is, and one of the certain marks that secondchildhood has come to a man on a farm is, that he is asked to turnthe grindstone as if he were a boy again. When the old man is goodfor nothing else, when he can neither mow nor pitch, and scarcely"rake after," he can turn grindstone, and it is in this way that herenews his youth. "Ain't you ashamed to have your granther turn thegrindstone?" asks the hired man of the boy. So the boy takes holdand turns himself, till his little back aches. When he gets older,he wishes he had replied, "Ain't you ashamed to make either an oldman or a little boy do such hard grinding work?"

Doing the regular work of this world is not much, the boy thinks, butthe wearisome part is the waiting on the people who do the work. Andthe boy is not far wrong. This is what women and boys have to do ona farm, wait upon everybody who—works. The trouble with the boy'slife is, that he has no time that he can call his own. He is, like abarrel of beer, always on draft. The men-folks, having worked in theregular hours, lie down and rest, stretch themselves idly in theshade at noon, or lounge about after supper. Then the boy, who hasdone nothing all day but turn grindstone, and spread hay, and rakeafter, and run his little legs off at everybody's beck and call, issent on some errand or some household chore, in order that time shallnot hang heavy on his hands. The boy comes nearer to perpetualmotion than anything else in nature, only it is not altogether avoluntary motion. The time that the farm-boy gets for his own isusually at the end of a stent. We used to be given a certain pieceof corn to hoe, or a certain quantity of corn to husk in so manydays. If we finished the task before the time set, we had theremainder to ourselves. In my day it used to take very sharp work togain anything, but we were always anxious to take the chance. Ithink we enjoyed the holiday in anticipation quite as much as we didwhen we had won it. Unless it was training-day, or Fourth of July,or the circus was coming, it was a little difficult to find anythingbig enough to fill our anticipations of the fun we would have in theday or the two or three days we had earned. We did not want to wastethe time on any common thing. Even going fishing in one of the wildmountain brooks was hardly up to the mark, for we could sometimes dothat on a rainy day. Going down to the village store was not veryexciting, and was, on the whole, a waste of our precious time.Unless we could get out our military company, life was apt to be alittle blank, even on the holidays for which we had worked so hard.If you went to see another boy, he was probably at work in thehay-field or the potato-patch, and his father looked at you askance.You sometimes took hold and helped him, so that he could go and playwith you; but it was usually time to go for the cows before the taskwas done. The fact is, or used to be, that the amusem*nts of a boy inthe country are not many. Snaring "suckers" out of the deep meadowbrook used to be about as good as any that I had. The North Americansucker is not an engaging animal in all respects; his body is comelyenough, but his mouth is puckered up like that of a purse. The mouthis not formed for the gentle angle-worm nor the delusive fly of thefishermen. It is necessary, therefore, to snare the fish if you wanthim. In the sunny days he lies in the deep pools, by some big stoneor near the bank, poising himself quite still, or only stirring hisfins a little now and then, as an elephant moves his ears. He willlie so for hours, or rather float, in perfect idleness and apparentbliss. The boy who also has a holiday, but cannot keep still, comesalong and peeps over the bank. "Golly, ain't he a big one!" Perhapshe is eighteen inches long, and weighs two or three pounds. He liesthere among his friends, little fish and big ones, quite a school ofthem, perhaps a district school, that only keeps in warm days in thesummer. The pupils seem to have little to learn, except to balancethemselves and to turn gracefully with a flirt of the tail. Not muchis taught but "deportment," and some of the old suckers are perfectTurveydrops in that. The boy is armed with a pole and a stout line,and on the end of it a brass wire bent into a hoop, which is aslipnoose, and slides together when anything is caught in it. The boyapproaches the bank and looks over. There he lies, calm as a whale.The boy devours him with his eyes. He is almost too much excited todrop the snare into the water without making a noise. A puff of windcomes and ruffles the surface, so that he cannot see the fish. It iscalm again, and there he still is, moving his fins in peacefulsecurity. The boy lowers his snare behind the fish and slips italong. He intends to get it around him just back of the gills andthen elevate him with a sudden jerk. It is a delicate operation, forthe snare will turn a little, and if it hits the fish, he is off.However, it goes well; the wire is almost in place, when suddenly thefish, as if he had a warning in a dream, for he appears to seenothing, moves his tail just a little, glides out of the loop, andwith no seeming appearance of frustrating any one's plans, loungesover to the other side of the pool; and there he reposes just as if hewas not spoiling the boy's holiday. This slight change of base on thepart of the fish requires the boy to reorganize his whole campaign,get a new position on the bank, a new line of approach, and patientlywait for the wind and sun before he can lower his line. This time,cunning and patience are rewarded. The hoop encircles theunsuspecting fish. The boy's eyes almost start from his head as hegives a tremendous jerk, and feels by the dead-weight that he has gothim fast. Out he comes, up he goes in the air, and the boy runs tolook at him. In this transaction, however, no one can be moresurprised than the sucker.

VII

FICTION AND SENTIMENT

The boy farmer does not appreciate school vacations as highly as hiscity cousin. When school keeps, he has only to "do chores and go toschool," but between terms there are a thousand things on the farmthat have been left for the boy to do. Picking up stones in thepastures and piling them in heaps used to be one of them. Some lotsappeared to grow stones, or else the sun every year drew them to thesurface, as it coaxes the round cantelopes out of the soft gardensoil; it is certain that there were fields that always gave the boysthis sort of fall work. And very lively work it was on frostymornings for the barefooted boys, who were continually turning up thelarger stones in order to stand for a moment in the warm place thathad been covered from the frost. A boy can stand on one leg as wellas a Holland stork; and the boy who found a warm spot for the sole ofhis foot was likely to stand in it until the words, "Come, stir yourstumps," broke in discordantly upon his meditations. For the boy isvery much given to meditations. If he had his way, he would donothing in a hurry; he likes to stop and think about things, andenjoy his work as he goes along. He picks up potatoes as if each onewere a lump of gold just turned out of the dirt, and requiringcareful examination.

Although the country-boy feels a little joy when school breaks up (ashe does when anything breaks up, or any change takes place), since heis released from the discipline and restraint of it, yet the schoolis his opening into the world,—his romance. Its opportunities forenjoyment are numberless. He does not exactly know what he is set atbooks for; he takes spelling rather as an exercise for his lungs,standing up and shouting out the words with entire recklessness ofconsequences; he grapples doggedly with arithmetic and geography assomething that must be cleared out of his way before recess, but notat all with the zest he would dig a woodchuck out of his hole. Butrecess! Was ever any enjoyment so keen as that with which a boyrushes out of the schoolhouse door for the ten minutes of recess?He is like to burst with animal spirits; he runs like a deer;he can nearly fly; and he throws himself into play with entireself-forgetfulness, and an energy that would overturn the world ifhis strength were proportioned to it. For ten minutes the world isabsolutely his; the weights are taken off, restraints are loosed, andhe is his own master for that brief time,—as he never again will beif he lives to be as old as the king of Thule,—and nobody knows howold he was. And there is the nooning, a solid hour, in which vastprojects can be carried out which have been slyly matured during theschool-hours: expeditions are undertaken; wars are begun between theIndians on one side and the settlers on the other; the militarycompany is drilled (without uniforms or arms), or games are carriedon which involve miles of running, and an expenditure of windsufficient to spell the spelling-book through at the highest pitch.

Friendships are formed, too, which are fervent, if not enduring, andenmities contracted which are frequently "taken out" on the spot,after a rough fashion boys have of settling as they go along; casesof long credit, either in words or trade, are not frequent with boys;boot on jack-knives must be paid on the nail; and it is consideredmuch more honorable to out with a personal grievance at once, even ifthe explanation is made with the fists, than to pretend fair, andthen take a sneaking revenge on some concealed opportunity. Thecountry-boy at the district school is introduced into a wider worldthan he knew at home, in many ways. Some big boy brings to school acopy of the Arabian Nights, a dog-eared copy, with cover, title-page,and the last leaves missing, which is passed around, and slyly readunder the desk, and perhaps comes to the little boy whose parentsdisapprove of novel-reading, and have no work of fiction in the houseexcept a pious fraud called "Six Months in a Convent," and the latestcomic almanac. The boy's eyes dilate as he steals some of thetreasures out of the wondrous pages, and he longs to lose himself inthe land of enchantment open before him. He tells at home that hehas seen the most wonderful book that ever was, and a big boy haspromised to lend it to him. "Is it a true book, John?" asks thegrandmother; "because, if it is n't true, it is the worst thing that aboy can read." (This happened years ago.) John cannot answer as tothe truth of the book, and so does not bring it home; but he borrowsit, nevertheless, and conceals it in the barn and, lying in thehay-mow, is lost in its enchantments many an odd hour when he issupposed to be doing chores. There were no chores in the ArabianNights; the boy there had but to rub the ring and summon a genius, whowould feed the calves and pick up chips and bring in wood in a minute.It was through this emblazoned portal that the boy walked into theworld of books, which he soon found was larger than his own, andfilled with people he longed to know.

And the farmer-boy is not without his sentiment and his secrets,though he has never been at a children's party in his life, and, infact, never has heard that children go into society when they areseven, and give regular wine-parties when they reach the ripe age ofnine. But one of his regrets at having the summer school close isdimly connected with a little girl, whom he does not care much for,would a great deal rather play with a boy than with her at recess,—but whom he will not see again for some time,—a sweet little thing,who is very friendly with John, and with whom he has been known toexchange bits of candy wrapped up in paper, and for whom he cut intwo his lead-pencil, and gave her half. At the last day of schoolshe goes part way with John, and then he turns and goes a longerdistance towards her home, so that it is late when he reaches hisown. Is he late? He did n't know he was late; he came straight homewhen school was dismissed, only going a little way home with AliceLinton to help her carry her books. In a box in his chamber, whichhe has lately put a padlock on, among fishhooks and lines andbaitboxes, odd pieces of brass, twine, early sweet apples, pop-corn,beechnuts, and other articles of value, are some little billets-doux,fancifully folded, three-cornered or otherwise, and written, I willwarrant, in red or beautifully blue ink. These little notes areparting gifts at the close of school, and John, no doubt, gave hisown in exchange for them, though the writing was an immense labor,and the folding was a secret bought of another boy for a big piece ofsweet flag-root baked in sugar, a delicacy which John used to carryin his pantaloons-pocket until his pocket was in such a state thatputting his fingers into it was about as good as dipping them intothe sugar-bowl at home. Each precious note contained a lock or curlof girl's hair,—a rare collection of all colors, after John had beenin school many terms, and had passed through a great many partingscenes,—black, brown, red, tow-color, and some that looked like spungold and felt like silk. The sentiment contained in the notes wasthat which was common in the school, and expressed a melancholyforeboding of early death, and a touching desire to leave hair enoughthis side the grave to constitute a sort of strand of remembrance.With little variation, the poetry that made the hair precious was inthe words, and, as a co*ckney would say, set to the hair, following:

"This lock of hair,
Which I did wear,
Was taken from my head;
When this you see,
Remember me,
Long after I am dead."

John liked to read these verses, which always made a new and freshimpression with each lock of hair, and he was not critical; they werefor him vehicles of true sentiment, and indeed they were what he usedwhen he inclosed a clip of his own sandy hair to a friend. And itdid not occur to him until he was a great deal older and lessinnocent, to smile at them. John felt that he would sacredly keepevery lock of hair intrusted to him, though death should come on thewings of cholera and take away every one of these sad, red-inkcorrespondents. When John's big brother one day caught sight ofthese treasures, and brutally told him that he "had hair enough tostuff a horse-collar," John was so outraged and shocked, as he shouldhave been, at this rude invasion of his heart, this coarsesuggestion, this profanation of his most delicate feeling, that hewas kept from crying only by the resolution to "lick" his brother assoon as ever he got big enough.

VIII

THE COMING OF THANKSGIVING

One of the best things in farming is gathering the chestnuts,hickory-nuts, butternuts, and even beechnuts, in the late fall, afterthe frosts have cracked the husks and the high winds have shakenthem, and the colored leaves have strewn the ground. On a brightOctober day, when the air is full of golden sunshine, there isnothing quite so exhilarating as going nutting. Nor is the pleasureof it altogether destroyed for the boy by the consideration that heis making himself useful in obtaining supplies for the winterhousehold. The getting-in of potatoes and corn is a different thing;that is the prose, but nutting is the poetry, of farm life. I am notsure but the boy would find it very irksome, though, if he wereobliged to work at nut-gathering in order to procure food for thefamily. He is willing to make himself useful in his own way. TheItalian boy, who works day after day at a huge pile of pine-cones,pounding and cracking them and taking out the long seeds, which aresold and eaten as we eat nuts (and which are almost as good aspumpkin-seeds, another favorite with the Italians), probably does notsee the fun of nutting. Indeed, if the farmer-boy here were set atpounding off the walnut-shucks and opening the prickly chestnut-bursas a task, he would think himself an ill-used boy. What a hardshipthe prickles in his fingers would be! But now he digs them out withhis jack-knife, and enjoys the process, on the whole. The boy iswilling to do any amount of work if it is called play.

In nutting, the squirrel is not more nimble and industrious than theboy. I like to see a crowd of boys swarm over a chestnut-grove; theyleave a desert behind them like the seventeen-year locusts. To climba tree and shake it, to club it, to strip it of its fruit, and passto the next, is the sport of a brief time. I have seen a legion ofboys scamper over our grass-plot under the chestnut-trees, each oneas active as if he were a new patent picking-machine, sweeping theground clean of nuts, and disappear over the hill before I could goto the door and speak to them about it. Indeed, I have noticed thatboys don't care much for conversation with the owners of fruit-trees.They could speedily make their fortunes if they would work as rapidlyin cotton-fields. I have never seen anything like it, except a flockof turkeys removing the grasshoppers from a piece of pasture.

Perhaps it is not generally known that we get the idea of some of ourbest military maneuvers from the turkey. The deploying of theskirmish-line in advance of an army is one of them. The drum-majorof our holiday militia companies is copied exactly from the turkeygobbler; he has the same splendid appearance, the same proud step,and the same martial aspect. The gobbler does not lead his forces inthe field, but goes behind them, like the colonel of a regiment, sothat he can see every part of the line and direct its movements.This resemblance is one of the most singular things in naturalhistory. I like to watch the gobbler maneuvering his forces in agrasshopper-field. He throws out his company of two dozen turkeys ina crescent-shaped skirmish-line, the number disposed at equaldistances, while he walks majestically in the rear. They advancerapidly, picking right and left, with military precision, killing thefoe and disposing of the dead bodies with the same peck. Nobody hasyet discovered how many grasshoppers a turkey will hold; but he isvery much like a boy at a Thanksgiving dinner,—he keeps on eating aslong as the supplies last. The gobbler, in one of these raids, doesnot condescend to grab a single grasshopper,—at least, not whileanybody is watching him. But I suppose he makes up for it when hisdignity cannot be injured by having spectators of his voracity;perhaps he falls upon the grasshoppers when they are driven into acorner of the field. But he is only fattening himself fordestruction; like all greedy persons, he comes to a bad end. And ifthe turkeys had any Sunday-school, they would be taught this.

The New England boy used to look forward to Thanksgiving as the greatevent of the year. He was apt to get stents set him,—so much cornto husk, for instance, before that day, so that he could have anextra play-spell; and in order to gain a day or two, he would work athis task with the rapidity of half a dozen boys. He always had theday after Thanksgiving as a holiday, and this was the day he countedon. Thanksgiving itself was rather an awful festival,—very muchlike Sunday, except for the enormous dinner, which filled hisimagination for months before as completely as it did his stomach forthat day and a week after. There was an impression in the house thatthat dinner was the most important event since the landing from theMayflower. Heliogabalus, who did not resemble a Pilgrim Father atall, but who had prepared for himself in his day some very sumptuousbanquets in Rome, and ate a great deal of the best he could get (andliked peaco*cks stuffed with asafetida, for one thing), never hadanything like a Thanksgiving dinner; for do you suppose that he, orSardanapalus either, ever had twenty-four different kinds of pie atone dinner? Therein many a New England boy is greater than the Romanemperor or the Assyrian king, and these were among the most luxuriouseaters of their day and generation. But something more is necessaryto make good men than plenty to eat, as Heliogabalus no doubt foundwhen his head was cut off. Cutting off the head was a mode thepeople had of expressing disapproval of their conspicuous men.Nowadays they elect them to a higher office, or give them a missionto some foreign country, if they do not do well where they are.

For days and days before Thanksgiving the boy was kept at workevenings, pounding and paring and cutting up and mixing (not beingallowed to taste much), until the world seemed to him to be made offragrant spices, green fruit, raisins, and pastry,—a world that hewas only yet allowed to enjoy through his nose. How filled the housewas with the most delicious smells! The mince-pies that were made!If John had been shut in solid walls with them piled about him, hecould n't have eaten his way out in four weeks. There were daintiesenough cooked in those two weeks to have made the entire yearluscious with good living, if they had been scattered along in it.But people were probably all the better for scrimping themselves alittle in order to make this a great feast. And it was not by anymeans over in a day. There were weeks deep of chicken-pie and otherpastry. The cold buttery was a cave of Aladdin, and it took a longtime to excavate all its riches.

Thanksgiving Day itself was a heavy dav, the hilarity of it being sosubdued by going to meeting, and the universal wearing of the Sundayclothes, that the boy could n't see it. But if he felt littleexhilaration, he ate a great deal. The next day was the realholiday. Then were the merry-making parties, and perhaps theskatings and sleigh-rides, for the freezing weather came before thegovernor's proclamation in many parts of New England. The nightafter Thanksgiving occurred, perhaps, the first real party that theboy had ever attended, with live girls in it, dressed sobewitchingly. And there he heard those philandering songs, andplayed those sweet games of forfeits, which put him quite besidehimself, and kept him awake that night till the rooster crowed at theend of his first chicken-nap. What a new world did that party opento him! I think it likely that he saw there, and probably did notdare say ten words to, some tall, graceful girl, much older thanhimself, who seemed to him like a new order of being. He could seeher face just as plainly in the darkness of his chamber. He wonderedif she noticed how awkward he was, and how short his trousers-legswere. He blushed as he thought of his rather ill-fitting shoes; anddetermined, then and there, that he wouldn't be put off with a ribbonany longer, but would have a young man's necktie. It was somewhatpainful, thinking the party over, but it was delicious, too. He didnot think, probably, that he would die for that tall, handsome girl;he did not put it exactly in that way. But he rather resolved tolive for her, which might in the end amount to the same thing. Atleast, he thought that nobody would live to speak twicedisrespectfully of her in his presence.

IX

THE SEASON OF PUMPKIN-PIE

What John said was, that he did n't care much for pumpkin-pie; butthat was after he had eaten a whole one. It seemed to him then thatmince would be better.

The feeling of a boy towards pumpkin-pie has never been properlyconsidered. There is an air of festivity about its approach in thefall. The boy is willing to help pare and cut up the pumpkin, and hewatches with the greatest interest the stirring-up process and thepouring into the scalloped crust. When the sweet savor of the bakingreaches his nostrils, he is filled with the most delightfulanticipations. Why should he not be? He knows that for months tocome the buttery will contain golden treasures, and that it willrequire only a slight ingenuity to get at them.

The fact is, that the boy is as good in the buttery as in any part offarming. His elders say that the boy is always hungry; but that is avery coarse way to put it. He has only recently come into a worldthat is full of good things to eat, and there is, on the whole, avery short time in which to eat them; at least, he is told, among thefirst information he receives, that life is short. Life being brief,and pie and the like fleeting, he very soon decides upon an activecampaign. It may be an old story to people who have been eating forforty or fifty years, but it is different with a beginner. He takesthe thick and thin as it comes, as to pie, for instance. Some peopledo make them very thin. I knew a place where they were not thickerthan the poor man's plaster; they were spread so thin upon the crustthat they were better fitted to draw out hunger than to satisfy it.They used to be made up by the great oven-full and kept in the drycellar, where they hardened and dried to a toughness you would hardlybelieve. This was a long time ago, and they make the pumpkin-pie inthe country better now, or the race of boys would have been sodiscouraged that I think they would have stopped coming into theworld.

The truth is, that boys have always been so plenty that they are nothalf appreciated. We have shown that a farm could not get alongwithout them, and yet their rights are seldom recognized. One of themost amusing things is their effort to acquire personal property.The boy has the care of the calves; they always need feeding, orshutting up, or letting out; when the boy wants to play, there arethose calves to be looked after,—until he gets to hate the name ofcalf. But in consideration of his faithfulness, two of them aregiven to him. There is no doubt that they are his: he has the entirecharge of them. When they get to be steers he spends all hisholidays in breaking them in to a yoke. He gets them so broken inthat they will run like a pair of deer all over the farm, turning theyoke, and kicking their heels, while he follows in full chase,shouting the ox language till he is red in the face. When the steersgrow up to be cattle, a drover one day comes along and takes themaway, and the boy is told that he can have another pair of calves;and so, with undiminished faith, he goes back and begins over againto make his fortune. He owns lambs and young colts in the same way,and makes just as much out of them.

There are ways in which the farmer-boy can earn money, as bygathering the early chestnuts and taking them to the corner store, orby finding turkeys' eggs and selling them to his mother; and anotherway is to go without butter at the table—but the money thus made isfor the heathen. John read in Dr. Livingstone that some of thetribes in Central Africa (which is represented by a blank spot in theatlas) use the butter to grease their hair, putting on pounds of itat a time; and he said he had rather eat his butter than have it putto that use, especially as it melted away so fast in that hotclimate.

Of course it was explained to John that the missionaries do notactually carry butter to Africa, and that they must usually gowithout it themselves there, it being almost impossible to make itgood from the milk in the cocoanuts. And it was further explained tohim that even if the heathen never received his butter or the moneyfor it, it was an excellent thing for a boy to cultivate the habit ofself-denial and of benevolence, and if the heathen never heard ofhim, he would be blessed for his generosity. This was all true.

But John said that he was tired of supporting the heathen out of hisbutter, and he wished the rest of the family would also stop eatingbutter and save the money for missions; and he wanted to know wherethe other members of the family got their money to send to theheathen; and his mother said that he was about half right, and thatself-denial was just as good for grown people as it was for littleboys and girls.

The boy is not always slow to take what he considers his rights.Speaking of those thin pumpkin-pies kept in the cellar cupboard. Iused to know a boy, who afterwards grew to be a selectman, andbrushed his hair straight up like General Jackson, and went to thelegislature, where he always voted against every measure that wasproposed, in the most honest manner, and got the reputation of beingthe "watch-dog of the treasury." Rats in the cellar were nothing tobe compared to this boy for destructiveness in pies. He used to godown whenever he could make an excuse, to get apples for the family,or draw a mug of cider for his dear old grandfather (who was a famousstory-teller about the Revolutionary War, and would no doubt havebeen wounded in battle if he had not been as prudent as he waspatriotic), and come upstairs with a tallow candle in one hand andthe apples or cider in the other, looking as innocent and asunconscious as if he had never done anything in his life except denyhimself butter for the sake of the heathen. And yet this boy wouldhave buttoned under his jacket an entire round pumpkin-pie. And thepie was so well made and so dry that it was not injured in the least,and it never hurt the boy's clothes a bit more than if it had beeninside of him instead of outside; and this boy would retire to asecluded place and eat it with another boy, being never suspectedbecause he was not in the cellar long enough to eat a pie, and henever appeared to have one about him. But he did something worsethan this. When his mother saw that pie after pie departed, she toldthe family that she suspected the hired man; and the boy never said aword, which was the meanest kind of lying. That hired man wasprobably regarded with suspicion by the family to the end of hisdays, and if he had been accused of robbing, they would have believedhim guilty.

I shouldn't wonder if that selectman occasionally has remorse nowabout that pie; dreams, perhaps, that it is buttoned up under hisjacket and sticking to him like a breastplate; that it lies upon hisstomach like a round and red-hot nightmare, eating into his vitals.Perhaps not. It is difficult to say exactly what was the sin ofstealing that kind of pie, especially if the one who stole it ate it.It could have been used for the game of pitching quoits, and a pairof them would have made very fair wheels for the dog-cart. And yetit is probably as wrong to steal a thin pie as a thick one; and itmade no difference because it was easy to steal this sort. Easystealing is no better than easy lying, where detection of the lie isdifficult. The boy who steals his mother's pies has no right to besurprised when some other boy steals his watermelons. Stealing islike charity in one respect,—it is apt to begin at home.

X

FIRST EXPERIENCE OF THE WORLD

If I were forced to be a boy, and a boy in the country,—the bestkind of boy to be in the summer,—I would be about ten years of age.As soon as I got any older, I would quit it. The trouble with a boyis, that just as he begins to enjoy himself he is too old, and has tobe set to doing something else. If a country boy were wise, he wouldstay at just that age when he could enjoy himself most, and have theleast expected of him in the way of work.

Of course the perfectly good boy will always prefer to work and to do"chores" for his father and errands for his mother and sisters,rather than enjoy himself in his own way. I never saw but one suchboy. He lived in the town of Goshen,—not the place where the butteris made, but a much better Goshen than that. And I never saw him,but I heard of him; and being about the same age, as I supposed, Iwas taken once from Zoah, where I lived, to Goshen to see him. Buthe was dead. He had been dead almost a year, so that it wasimpossible to see him. He died of the most singular disease: it wasfrom not eating green apples in the season of them. This boy, whosename was Solomon, before he died, would rather split up kindling-woodfor his mother than go a-fishing,—the consequence was, that he waskept at splitting kindling-wood and such work most of the time, andgrew a better and more useful boy day by day. Solomon would notdisobey his parents and eat green apples,—not even when they wereripe enough to knock off with a stick, but he had such a longing forthem, that he pined, and passed away. If he had eaten the greenapples, he would have died of them, probably; so that his example isa difficult one to follow. In fact, a boy is a hard subject to get amoral from. All his little playmates who ate green apples came toSolomon's funeral, and were very sorry for what they had done.

John was a very different boy from Solomon, not half so good, norhalf so dead. He was a farmer's boy, as Solomon was, but he did nottake so much interest in the farm. If John could have had his way,he would have discovered a cave full of diamonds, and lots ofnail-kegs full of gold-pieces and Spanish dollars, with a prettylittle girl living in the cave, and two beautifully caparisonedhorses, upon which, taking the jewels and money, they would haveridden off together, he did not know where. John had got thus far inhis studies, which were apparently arithmetic and geography, but werein reality the Arabian Nights, and other books of high and mightyadventure. He was a simple country-boy, and did not know much aboutthe world as it is, but he had one of his own imagination, in which helived a good deal. I daresay he found out soon enough what the worldis, and he had a lesson or two when he was quite young, in twoincidents, which I may as well relate.

If you had seen John at this time, you might have thought he was onlya shabbily dressed country lad, and you never would have guessed whatbeautiful thoughts he sometimes had as he went stubbing his toesalong the dusty road, nor what a chivalrous little fellow he was.You would have seen a short boy, barefooted, with trousers at oncetoo big and too short, held up perhaps by one suspender only, achecked cotton shirt, and a hat of braided palm-leaf, frayed at theedges and bulged up in the crown. It is impossible to keep a hatneat if you use it to catch bumblebees and whisk 'em; to bail thewater from a leaky boat; to catch minnows in; to put over honey-bees'nests, and to transport pebbles, strawberries, and hens' eggs. Johnusually carried a sling in his hand, or a bow, or a limber stick,sharp at one end, from which he could sling apples a great distance.If he walked in the road, he walked in the middle of it, shuffling upthe dust; or if he went elsewhere, he was likely to be running on thetop of the fence or the stone wall, and chasing chipmunks.

John knew the best place to dig sweet-flag in all the farm; it was ina meadow by the river, where the bobolinks sang so gayly. He neverliked to hear the bobolink sing, however, for he said it alwaysreminded him of the whetting of a scythe, and that reminded him ofspreading hay; and if there was anything he hated, it was spreadinghay after the mowers. "I guess you would n't like it yourself," saidJohn, "with the stubbs getting into your feet, and the hot sun, andthe men getting ahead of you, all you could do."

Towards evening, once, John was coming along the road home with somestalks of the sweet-flag in his hand; there is a succulent pith inthe end of the stalk which is very good to eat,—tender, and not sostrong as the root; and John liked to pull it, and carry home what hedid not eat on the way. As he was walking along he met a carriage,which stopped opposite to him; he also stopped and bowed, as countryboys used to bow in John's day. A lady leaned from the carriage, andsaid:

"What have you got, little boy?"

She seemed to be the most beautiful woman John had ever seen; withlight hair, dark, tender eyes, and the sweetest smile. There wasthat in her gracious mien and in her dress which reminded John of thebeautiful castle ladies, with whom he was well acquainted in books.He felt that he knew her at once, and he also seemed to be a sort ofyoung prince himself. I fancy he did n't look much like one. But ofhis own appearance he thought not at all, as he replied to the lady'squestion, without the least embarrassment:

"It's sweet-flag stalk; would you like some?"

"Indeed, I should like to taste it," said the lady, with a mostwinning smile. "I used to be very fond of it when I was a littlegirl."

John was delighted that the lady should like sweet-flag, and that shewas pleased to accept it from him. He thought himself that it wasabout the best thing to eat he knew. He handed up a large bunch ofit. The lady took two or three stalks, and was about to return therest, when John said:

"Please keep it all, ma'am. I can get lots more."

"I know where it's ever so thick."

"Thank you, thank you," said the lady; and as the carriage started,she reached out her hand to John. He did not understand the motion,until he saw a cent drop in the road at his feet. Instantly all hisillusion and his pleasure vanished. Something like tears were in hiseyes as he shouted:

"I don't want your cent. I don't sell flag!"

John was intensely mortified. "I suppose," he said, "she thought Iwas a sort of beggar-boy. To think of selling flag!"

At any rate, he walked away and left the cent in the road, ahumiliated boy. The next day he told Jim Gates about it. Jim saidhe was green not to take the money; he'd go and look for it now, ifhe would tell him about where it dropped. And Jim did spend an hourpoking about in the dirt, but he did not find the cent. Jim,however, had an idea; he said he was going to dig sweet-flag, and seeif another carriage wouldn't come along.

John's next rebuff and knowledge of the world was of another sort.He was again walking the road at twilight, when he was overtaken by awagon with one seat, upon which were two pretty girls, and a younggentleman sat between them, driving. It was a merry party, and Johncould hear them laughing and singing as they approached him. Thewagon stopped when it overtook him, and one of the sweet-faced girlsleaned from the seat and said, quite seriously and pleasantly:

"Little boy, how's your mar?"

John was surprised and puzzled for a moment. He had never seen theyoung lady, but he thought that she perhaps knew his mother; at anyrate, his instinct of politeness made him say:

"She's pretty well, I thank you."

"Does she know you are out?"

And thereupon all three in the wagon burst into a roar of laughter,and dashed on.

It flashed upon John in a moment that he had been imposed on, and ithurt him dreadfully. His self-respect was injured somehow, and hefelt as if his lovely, gentle mother had been insulted. He wouldlike to have thrown a stone at the wagon, and in a rage he cried:

"You're a nice…." but he could n't think of any hard, bitter wordsquick enough.

Probably the young lady, who might have been almost any young lady,never knew what a cruel thing she had done.

XI

HOME INVENTIONS

The winter season is not all sliding downhill for the farmer-boy, byany means; yet he contrives to get as much fun out of it as from anypart of the year. There is a difference in boys: some are alwaysjolly, and some go scowling always through life as if they had astone-bruise on each heel. I like a jolly boy.

I used to know one who came round every morning to sell molassescandy, offering two sticks for a cent apiece; it was worth fiftycents a day to see his cheery face. That boy rose in the world. Heis now the owner of a large town at the West. To be sure, there areno houses in it except his own; but there is a map of it, and roadsand streets are laid out on it, with dwellings and churches andacademies and a college and an opera-house, and you could scarcelytell it from Springfield or Hartford,—on paper. He and all hisfamily have the fever and ague, and shake worse than the people atLebanon; but they do not mind it; it makes them lively, in fact. EdMay is just as jolly as he used to be. He calls his town Mayopolis,and expects to be mayor of it; his wife, however, calls the townMaybe.

The farmer-boy likes to have winter come for one thing, because itfreezes up the ground so that he can't dig in it; and it is coveredwith snow so that there is no picking up stones, nor driving the cowsto pasture. He would have a very easy time if it were not for thegetting up before daylight to build the fires and do the "chores."Nature intended the long winter nights for the farmer-boy to sleep;but in my day he was expected to open his sleepy eyes when the co*ckcrew, get out of the warm bed and light a candle, struggle into hiscold pantaloons, and pull on boots in which the thermometer wouldhave gone down to zero, rake open the coals on the hearth and startthe morning fire, and then go to the barn to "fodder." The frost wasthick on the kitchen windows, the snow was drifted against the door,and the journey to the barn, in the pale light of dawn, over thecreaking snow, was like an exile's trip to Siberia. The boy was nothalf awake when he stumbled into the cold barn, and was greeted bythe lowing and bleating and neighing of cattle waiting for theirbreakfast. How their breath steamed up from the mangers, and hung infrosty spears from their noses. Through the great lofts above thehay, where the swallows nested, the winter wind whistled, and thesnow sifted. Those old barns were well ventilated.

I used to spend much valuable time in planning a barn that should betight and warm, with a fire in it, if necessary, in order to keep thetemperature somewhere near the freezing-point. I could n't see howthe cattle could live in a place where a lively boy, full of youngblood, would freeze to death in a short time if he did not swing hisarms and slap his hands, and jump about like a goat. I thought Iwould have a sort of perpetual manger that should shake down the haywhen it was wanted, and a self-acting machine that should cut up theturnips and pass them into the mangers, and water always flowing forthe cattle and horses to drink. With these simple arrangements Icould lie in bed, and know that the "chores" were doing themselves.It would also be necessary, in order that I should not be disturbed,that the crow should be taken out of the roosters, but I could thinkof no process to do it. It seems to me that the hen-breeders, ifthey know as much as they say they do, might raise a breed ofcrowless roosters for the benefit of boys, quiet neighborhoods, andsleepy families.

There was another notion that I had about kindling the kitchen fire,that I never carried out. It was to have a spring at the head of mybed, connecting with a wire, which should run to a torpedo which Iwould plant over night in the ashes of the fireplace. By touchingthe spring I could explode the torpedo, which would scatter the ashesand cover the live coals, and at the same time shake down the sticksof wood which were standing by the side of the ashes in the chimney,and the fire would kindle itself. This ingenious plan was frowned onby the whole family, who said they did not want to be waked up everymorning by an explosion. And yet they expected me to wake up withoutan explosion! A boy's plans for making life agreeable are hardlyever heeded.

I never knew a boy farmer who was not eager to go to the districtschool in the winter. There is such a chance for learning, that hemust be a dull boy who does not come out in the spring a fair skater,an accurate snow-baller, and an accomplished slider-down-hill, withor without a board, on his seat, on his stomach, or on his feet.Take a moderate hill, with a foot-slide down it worn to icysmoothness, and a "go-round" of boys on it, and there is nothing likeit for whittling away boot-leather. The boy is the shoemaker'sfriend. An active lad can wear down a pair of cowhide soles in aweek so that the ice will scrape his toes. Sledding or coasting isalso slow fun compared to the "bareback" sliding down a steep hillover a hard, glistening crust. It is not only dangerous, but it isdestructive to jacket and pantaloons to a degree to make a tailorlaugh. If any other animal wore out his skin as fast as a schoolboywears out his clothes in winter, it would need a new one once amonth. In a country district-school patches were not by any means asign of poverty, but of the boy's courage and adventurousdisposition. Our elders used to threaten to dress us in leather andput sheet-iron seats in our trousers. The boy said that he wore outhis trousers on the hard seats in the schoolhouse cipheringhard sums. For that extraordinary statement he received twocastigations,—one at home, that was mild, and one from theschoolmaster, who was careful to lay the rod upon the boy'ssliding-place, punishing him, as he jocosely called it, on asliding scale, according to the thinness of his pantaloons.

What I liked best at school, however, was the study of history,—early history,—the Indian wars. We studied it mostly atnoontime, and we had it illustrated as the children nowadays have"object-lessons," though our object was not so much to have lessonsas it was to revive real history.

Back of the schoolhouse rose a round hill, upon which, traditionsaid, had stood in colonial times a block-house, built by thesettlers for defense against the Indians. For the Indians had theidea that the whites were not settled enough, and used to come nightsto settle—them with a tomahawk. It was called Fort Hill. It wasvery steep on each side, and the river ran close by. It was acharming place in summer, where one could find laurel, andcheckerberries, and sassafras roots, and sit in the cool breeze,looking at the mountains across the river, and listening to themurmur of the Deerfield. The Methodists built a meeting-house thereafterwards, but the hill was so slippery in winter that the agedcould not climb it and the wind raged so fiercely that it blew nearlyall the young Methodists away (many of whom were afterwards heard ofin the West), and finally the meeting-house itself came down into thevalley, and grew a steeple, and enjoyed itself ever afterwards. Itused to be a notion in New England that a meeting-house ought tostand as near heaven as possible.

The boys at our school divided themselves into two parties: one wasthe Early Settlers and the other the Pequots, the latter the mostnumerous. The Early Settlers built a snow fort on the hill, and astrong fortress it was, constructed of snowballs, rolled up to a vastsize (larger than the cyclopean blocks of stone which form theancient Etruscan walls in Italy), piled one upon another, and thewhole cemented by pouring on water which froze and made the wallssolid. The Pequots helped the whites build it. It had a covered wayunder the snow, through which only could it be entered, and it hadbastions and towers and openings to fire from, and a great many otherthings for which there are no names in military books. And it had aglacis and a ditch outside.

When it was completed, the Early Settlers, leaving the women in theschoolhouse, a prey to the Indians, used to retire into it, and awaitthe attack of the Pequots. There was only a handful of the garrison,while the Indians were many, and also barbarous. It was agreed thatthey should be barbarous. And it was in this light that the greatquestion was settled whether a boy might snowball with balls that hehad soaked over night in water and let freeze. They were as hard ascobble-stones, and if a boy should be hit in the head by one of them,he could not tell whether he was a Pequot or an Early Settler. Itwas considered as unfair to use these ice-balls in open fight, as itis to use poisoned ammunition in real war. But as the whites wereprotected by the fort, and the Indians were treacherous by nature, itwas decided that the latter might use the hard missiles.

The Pequots used to come swarming up the hill, with hideouswar-whoops, attacking the fort on all sides with great noise and ashower of balls. The garrison replied with yells of defiance andwell-directed shots, hurling back the invaders when they attempted toscale the walls. The Settlers had the advantage of position, butthey were sometimes overpowered by numbers, and would often have hadto surrender but for the ringing of the school-bell. The Pequotswere in great fear of the school-bell.

I do not remember that the whites ever hauled down their flag andsurrendered voluntarily; but once or twice the fort was carried bystorm and the garrison were massacred to a boy, and thrown out of thefortress, having been first scalped. To take a boy's cap was toscalp him, and after that he was dead, if he played fair. There werea great many hard hits given and taken, but always cheerfully, for itwas in the cause of our early history. The history of Greece andRome was stuff compared to this. And we had many boys in our schoolwho could imitate the Indian war whoop enough better than they couldscan arma, virumque cano.

XII

THE LONELY FARMHOUSE

The winter evenings of the farmer-boy in New England used not to beso gay as to tire him of the pleasures of life before he became ofa*ge. A remote farmhouse, standing a little off the road, banked upwith sawdust and earth to keep the frost out of the cellar, blockadedwith snow, and flying a blue flag of smoke from its chimney, lookslike a besieged fort. On cold and stormy winter nights, to thetraveler wearily dragging along in his creaking sleigh, the lightfrom its windows suggests a house of refuge and the cheer of ablazing fire. But it is no less a fort, into which the family retirewhen the New England winter on the hills really sets in.

The boy is an important part of the garrison. He is not only one ofthe best means of communicating with the outer world, but hefurnishes half the entertainment and takes two thirds of the scoldingof the family circle. A farm would come to grief without a boy-onit, but it is impossible to think of a farmhouse without a boy in it.

"That boy" brings life into the house; his tracks are to be seeneverywhere; he leaves all the doors open; he has n't half filled thewood-box; he makes noise enough to wake the dead; or he is in abrown-study by the fire and cannot be stirred, or he has fastened agrip into some Crusoe book which cannot easily be shaken off. Isuppose that the farmer-boy's evenings are not now what they used tobe; that he has more books, and less to do, and is not half so good aboy as formerly, when he used to think the almanac was pretty livelyreading, and the comic almanac, if he could get hold of that, was asupreme delight.

Of course he had the evenings to himself, after he had done the"chores" at the barn, brought in the wood and piled it high in thebox, ready to be heaped upon the great open fire. It was nearly darkwhen he came from school (with its continuation of snowballing andsliding), and he always had an agreeable time stumbling and fumblingaround in barn and wood-house, in the waning light.

John used to say that he supposed nobody would do his "chores" if hedid not get home till midnight; and he was never contradicted.Whatever happened to him, and whatever length of days or sort ofweather was produced by the almanac, the cardinal rule was that heshould be at home before dark.

John used to imagine what people did in the dark ages, and wondersometimes whether he was n't still in them.

Of course, John had nothing to do all the evening, after his"chores,"—except little things. While he drew his chair up to thetable in order to get the full radiance of the tallow candle on hisslate or his book, the women of the house also sat by the tableknitting and sewing. The head of the house sat in his chair, tippedback against the chimney; the hired man was in danger of burning hisboots in the fire. John might be deep in the excitement of a bearstory, or be hard at writing a "composition" on his greasy slate; butwhatever he was doing, he was the only one who could always beinterrupted. It was he who must snuff the candles, and put on astick of wood, and toast the cheese, and turn the apples, and crackthe nuts. He knew where the fox-and-geese board was, and he couldfind the twelve-men-Morris. Considering that he was expected to goto bed at eight o'clock, one would say that the opportunity for studywas not great, and that his reading was rather interrupted. Thereseemed to be always something for him to do, even when all the restof the family came as near being idle as is ever possible in a NewEngland household.

No wonder that John was not sleepy at eight o'clock; he had beenflying about while the others had been yawning before the fire. Hewould like to sit up just to see how much more solemn and stupid itwould become as the night went on; he wanted to tinker his skates, tomend his sled, to finish that chapter. Why should he go away fromthat bright blaze, and the company that sat in its radiance, to thecold and solitude of his chamber? Why did n't the people who weresleepy go to bed?

How lonesome the old house was; how cold it was, away from that greatcentral fire in the heart of it; how its timbers creaked as if in thecontracting pinch of the frost; what a rattling there was of windows,what a concerted attack upon the clapboards; how the floors squeaked,and what gusts from round corners came to snatch the feeble flame ofthe candle from the boy's hand. How he shivered, as he paused at thestaircase window to look out upon the great fields of snow, upon thestripped forest, through which he could hear the wind raving in akind of fury, and up at the black flying clouds, amid which the youngmoon was dashing and driven on like a frail shallop at sea. And histeeth chattered more than ever when he got into the icy sheets, anddrew himself up into a ball in his flannel nightgown, like a fox inhis hole.

For a little time he could hear the noises downstairs, and anoccasional laugh; he could guess that now they were having cider, andnow apples were going round; and he could feel the wind tugging atthe house, even sometimes shaking the bed. But this did not lastlong. He soon went away into a country he always delighted to be in:a calm place where the wind never blew, and no one dictated the timeof going to bed to any one else. I like to think of him sleepingthere, in such rude surroundings, ingenious, innocent, mischievous,with no thought of the buffeting he is to get from a world that has agood many worse places for a boy than the hearth of an old farmhouse,and the sweet, though undemonstrative, affection of its family life.

But there were other evenings in the boy's life, that were differentfrom these at home, and one of them he will never forget. It openeda new world to John, and set him into a great flutter. It produced arevolution in his mind in regard to neckties; it made him wonder ifgreased boots were quite the thing compared with blacked boots; andhe wished he had a long looking-glass, so that he could see, as hewalked away from it, what was the effect of round patches on theportion of his trousers he could not see, except in a mirror; and ifpatches were quite stylish, even on everyday trousers. And he beganto be very much troubled about the parting of his hair, and how tofind out on which side was the natural part.

The evening to which I refer was that of John's first party. He knewthe girls at school, and he was interested in some of them with adifferent interest from that he took in the boys. He never wanted to"take it out" with one of them, for an insult, in a stand-up fight,and he instinctively softened a boy's natural rudeness when he waswith them. He would help a timid little girl to stand erect andslide; he would draw her on his sled, till his hands were stiff withcold, without a murmur; he would generously give her red apples intowhich he longed to set his own sharp teeth; and he would cut in twohis lead-pencil for a girl, when he would not for a boy. Had he notsome of the beautiful auburn tresses of Cynthia Rudd in his skate,spruce-gum, and wintergreen box at home? And yet the grand sentimentof life was little awakened in John. He liked best to be with boys,and their rough play suited him better than the amusem*nts of theshrinking, fluttering, timid, and sensitive little girls. John hadnot learned then that a spider-web is stronger than a cable; or thata pretty little girl could turn him round her finger a great dealeasier than a big bully of a boy could make him cry "enough."

John had indeed been at spelling-schools, and had accomplished thefeat of "going home with a girl" afterwards; and he had been growinginto the habit of looking around in meeting on Sunday, and noticinghow Cynthia was dressed, and not enjoying the service quite as muchif Cynthia was absent as when she was present. But there was verylittle sentiment in all this, and nothing whatever to make John blushat hearing her name.

But now John was invited to a regular party. There was theinvitation, in a three-cornered billet, sealed with a transparentwafer: "Miss C. Rudd requests the pleasure of the company of," etc.,all in blue ink, and the finest kind of pin-scratching writing. Whata precious document it was to John! It even exhaled a faint sort ofperfume, whether of lavender or caraway-seed he could not tell. Heread it over a hundred times, and showed it confidentially to hisfavorite cousin, who had beaux of her own and had even "sat up" withthem in the parlor. And from this sympathetic cousin John got adviceas to what he should wear and how he should conduct himself at theparty.

XIII

JOHN'S FIRST PARTY

It turned out that John did not go after all to Cynthia Rudd's party,having broken through the ice on the river when he was skating thatday, and, as the boy who pulled him out said, "come within an inch ofhis life." But he took care not to tumble into anything that shouldkeep him from the next party, which was given with due formality byMelinda Mayhew.

John had been many a time to the house of Deacon Mayhew, and neverwith any hesitation, even if he knew that both the deacon'sdaughters—Melinda and Sophronia were at home. The only fear he hadfelt was of the deacon's big dog, who always surlily watched him ashe came up the tan-bark walk, and made a rush at him if he showed theleast sign of wavering. But upon the night of the party his couragevanished, and he thought he would rather face all the dogs in townthan knock at the front door.

The parlor was lighted up, and as John stood on the broad flaggingbefore the front door, by the lilac-bush, he could hear the sound ofvoices—girls' voices—which set his heart in a flutter. He couldface the whole district school of girls without flinching,—he didn'tmind 'em in the meeting-house in their Sunday best; but he began tobe conscious that now he was passing to a new sphere, where the girlsare supreme and superior, and he began to feel for the first timethat he was an awkward boy. The girl takes to society as naturallyas a duckling does to the placid pond, but with a semblance of shytimidity; the boy plunges in with a great splash, and hides his shyawkwardness in noise and commotion.

When John entered, the company had nearly all come. He knew themevery one, and yet there was something about them strange andunfamiliar. They were all a little afraid of each other, as peopleare apt to be when they are well dressed and met together for socialpurposes in the country. To be at a real party was a novel thing formost of them, and put a constraint upon them which they could not atonce overcome. Perhaps it was because they were in the awfulparlor,—that carpeted room of haircloth furniture, which was soseldom opened. Upon the wall hung two certificates framed in black,—one certifying that, by the payment of fifty dollars, Deacon Mayhewwas a life member of the American Tract Society, and the other that,by a like outlay of bread cast upon the waters, his wife was a lifemember of the A. B. C. F. M., a portion of the alphabet which has anawful significance to all New England childhood. These certificatesare a sort of receipt in full for charity, and are a constant andconsoling reminder to the farmer that he has discharged his religiousduties.

There was a fire on the broad hearth, and that, with the tallowcandles on the mantelpiece, made quite an illumination in the room,and enabled the boys, who were mostly on one side of the room, to seethe girls, who were on the other, quite plainly. How sweet anddemure the girls looked, to be sure! Every boy was thinking if hishair was slick, and feeling the full embarrassment of his entranceinto fashionable life. It was queer that these children, who were sofree everywhere else, should be so constrained now, and not know whatto do with themselves. The shooting of a spark out upon the carpetwas a great relief, and was accompanied by a deal of scrambling tothrow it back into the fire, and caused much giggling. It was onlygradually that the formality was at all broken, and the young peoplegot together and found their tongues.

John at length found himself with Cynthia Rudd, to his great delightand considerable embarrassment, for Cynthia, who was older than John,never looked so pretty. To his surprise he had nothing to say toher. They had always found plenty to talk about before—but nownothing that he could think of seemed worth saying at a party.

"It is a pleasant evening," said John.

"It is quite so," replied Cynthia.

"Did you come in a cutter?" asked John anxiously.

"No; I walked on the crust, and it was perfectly lovely walking,"said Cynthia, in a burst of confidence.

"Was it slippery?" continued John.

"Not very."

John hoped it would be slippery—very—when he walked home withCynthia, as he determined to do, but he did not dare to say so, andthe conversation ran aground again. John thought about his dog andhis sled and his yoke of steers, but he didn't see any way to bringthem into conversation. Had she read the "Swiss Family Robinson"?Only a little ways. John said it was splendid, and he would lend itto her, for which she thanked him, and said, with such a sweetexpression, she should be so glad to have it from him. That wasencouraging.

And then John asked Cynthia if she had seen Sally Hawkes since thehusking at their house, when Sally found so many red ears; and didn'tshe think she was a real pretty girl.

"Yes, she was right pretty;" and Cynthia guessed that Sally knew itpretty well. But did John like the color of her eyes?

No; John didn't like the color of her eyes exactly.

"Her mouth would be well enough if she did n't laugh so much and showher teeth."

John said her mouth was her worst feature.

"Oh, no," said Cynthia warmly; "her mouth is better than her nose."

John did n't know but it was better than her nose, and he should likeher looks better if her hair was n't so dreadful black.

But Cynthia, who could afford to be generous now, said she likedblack hair, and she wished hers was dark. Whereupon John protestedthat he liked light hair—auburn hair—of all things.

And Cynthia said that Sally was a dear, good girl, and she did n'tbelieve one word of the story that she only really found one red earat the husking that night, and hid that and kept pulling it out as ifit were a new one.

And so the conversation, once started, went on as briskly aspossible about the paring-bee, and the spelling-school, and the newsinging-master who was coming, and how Jack Thompson had gone toNorthampton to be a clerk in a store, and how Elvira Reddington, inthe geography class at school, was asked what was the capital ofMassachusetts, and had answered "Northampton," and all the schoollaughed. John enjoyed the conversation amazingly, and he half wishedthat he and Cynthia were the whole of the party.

But the party had meantime got into operation, and the formality wasbroken up when the boys and girls had ventured out of the parlor intothe more comfortable living-room, with its easy-chairs and everydaythings, and even gone so far as to penetrate the kitchen in theirfrolic. As soon as they forgot they were a party, they began toenjoy themselves.

But the real pleasure only began with the games. The party wasnothing without the games, and, indeed, it was made for the games.Very likely it was one of the timid girls who proposed to playsomething, and when the ice was once broken, the whole company wentinto the business enthusiastically. There was no dancing. We shouldhope not. Not in the deacon's house; not with the deacon'sdaughters, nor anywhere in this good Puritanic society. Dancing wasa sin in itself, and no one could tell what it would lead to. Butthere was no reason why the boys and girls shouldn't come togetherand kiss each other during a whole evening occasionally. Kissing wasa sign of peace, and was not at all like taking hold of hands andskipping about to the scraping of a wicked fiddle.

In the games there was a great deal of clasping hands, of going roundin a circle, of passing under each other's elevated arms, of singingabout my true love, and the end was kisses distributed with more orless partiality, according to the rules of the play; but, thankHeaven, there was no fiddler. John liked it all, and was quite braveabout paying all the forfeits imposed on him, even to the kissing allthe girls in the room; but he thought he could have amended that bykissing a few of them a good many times instead of kissing them allonce.

But John was destined to have a damper put upon his enjoyment. Theywere playing a most fascinating game, in which they all stand in acircle and sing a philandering song, except one who is in the centerof the ring, and holds a cushion. At a certain word in the song, theone in the center throws the cushion at the feet of some one in thering, indicating thereby the choice of a "mate" and then the twosweetly kneel upon the cushion, like two meek angels, and—and soforth. Then the chosen one takes the cushion and the delightful playgoes on. It is very easy, as it will be seen, to learn how to playit. Cynthia was holding the cushion, and at the fatal word she threwit down, not before John, but in front of Ephraim Leggett. And theytwo kneeled, and so forth. John was astounded. He had neverconceived of such perfidy in the female heart. He felt like wipingEphraim off the face of the earth, only Ephraim was older and biggerthan he. When it came his turn at length,—thanks to a plain littlegirl for whose admiration he did n't care a straw,—he threw thecushion down before Melinda Mayhew with all the devotion he couldmuster, and a dagger look at Cynthia. And Cynthia's perfidious smileonly enraged him the more. John felt wronged, and worked himself upto pass a wretched evening.

When supper came, he never went near Cynthia, and busied himself incarrying different kinds of pie and cake, and red apples and cider,to the girls he liked the least. He shunned Cynthia, and when he wasaccidentally near her, and she asked him if he would get her a glassof cider, he rudely told her—like a goose as he was—that she hadbetter ask Ephraim. That seemed to him very smart; but he got moreand more miserable, and began to feel that he was making himselfridiculous.

Girls have a great deal more good sense in such matters than boys.Cynthia went to John, at length, and asked him simply what the matterwas. John blushed, and said that nothing was the matter. Cynthiasaid that it wouldn't do for two people always to be together at aparty; and so they made up, and John obtained permission to "see"Cynthia home.

It was after half-past nine when the great festivities at theDeacon's broke up, and John walked home with Cynthia over the shiningcrust and under the stars. It was mostly a silent walk, for this wasalso an occasion when it is difficult to find anything fit to say.And John was thinking all the way how he should bid Cynthiagood-night; whether it would do and whether it wouldn't do, this notbeing a game, and no forfeits attaching to it. When they reached thegate, there was an awkward little pause. John said the stars wereuncommonly bright. Cynthia did not deny it, but waited a minute andthen turned abruptly away, with "Good-night, John!"

"Good-night, Cynthia!"

And the party was over, and Cynthia was gone, and John went home in akind of dissatisfaction with himself.

It was long before he could go to sleep for thinking of the new worldopened to him, and imagining how he would act under a hundreddifferent circ*mstances, and what he would say, and what Cynthiawould say; but a dream at length came, and led him away to a greatcity and a brilliant house; and while he was there, he heard a loudrapping on the under floor, and saw that it was daylight.

XIV

THE SUGAR CAMP

I think there is no part of farming the boy enjoys more than themaking of maple sugar; it is better than "blackberrying," and nearlyas good as fishing. And one reason he likes this work is, thatsomebody else does the most of it. It is a sort of work in which hecan appear to be very active, and yet not do much.

And it exactly suits the temperament of a real boy to be very busyabout nothing. If the power, for instance, that is expended in playby a boy between the ages of eight and fourteen could be applied tosome industry, we should see wonderful results. But a boy is like agalvanic battery that is not in connection with anything; hegenerates electricity and plays it off into the air with the mostreckless prodigality. And I, for one, would n't have it otherwise.It is as much a boy's business to play off his energies into space asit is for a flower to blow, or a catbird to sing snatches of thetunes of all the other birds.

In my day maple-sugar-making used to be something between picnickingand being shipwrecked on a fertile island, where one should save fromthe wreck tubs and augers, and great kettles and pork, and hen's eggsand rye-and-indian bread, and begin at once to lead the sweetest lifein the world. I am told that it is something different nowadays, andthat there is more desire to save the sap, and make good, pure sugar,and sell it for a large price, than there used to be, and that theold fun and picturesqueness of the business are pretty much gone. Iam told that it is the custom to carefully collect the sap and bringit to the house, where there are built brick arches, over which it isevaporated in shallow pans, and that pains is taken to keep theleaves, sticks, and ashes and coals out of it, and that the sugar isclarified; and that, in short, it is a money-making business, inwhich there is very little fun, and that the boy is not allowed todip his paddle into the kettle of boiling sugar and lick off thedelicious sirup. The prohibition may improve the sugar, but it iscruel to the boy.

As I remember the New England boy (and I am very intimate with one),he used to be on the qui vive in the spring for the sap to beginrunning. I think he discovered it as soon as anybody. Perhaps heknew it by a feeling of something starting in his own veins,—a sortof spring stir in his legs and arms, which tempted him to stand onhis head, or throw a handspring, if he could find a spot of groundfrom which the snow had melted. The sap stirs early in the legs of acountry-boy, and shows itself in uneasiness in the toes, which gettired of boots, and want to come out and touch the soil just as soonas the sun has warmed it a little. The country-boy goes barefootjust as naturally as the trees burst their buds, which were packedand varnished over in the fall to keep the water and the frost out.Perhaps the boy has been out digging into the maple-trees with hisjack-knife; at any rate, he is pretty sure to announce the discoveryas he comes running into the house in a great state of excitement—asif he had heard a hen cackle in the barn—with "Sap's runnin'!"

And then, indeed, the stir and excitement begin. The sap-buckets,which have been stored in the garret over the wood-house, and whichthe boy has occasionally climbed up to look at with another boy, forthey are full of sweet suggestions of the annual spring frolic,—thesap-buckets are brought down and set out on the south side of thehouse and scalded. The snow is still a foot or two deep in thewoods, and the ox-sled is got out to make a road to the sugar camp,and the campaign begins. The boy is everywhere present,superintending everything, asking questions, and filled with a desireto help the excitement.

It is a great day when the cart is loaded with the buckets and theprocession starts into the woods. The sun shines almostunobstructedly into the forest, for there are only naked branches tobar it; the snow is soft and beginning to sink down, leaving theyoung bushes spindling up everywhere; the snowbirds are twitteringabout, and the noise of shouting and of the blows of the axe echoesfar and wide. This is spring, and the boy can scarcely contain hisdelight that his out-door life is about to begin again.

In the first place, the men go about and tap the trees, drive in thespouts, and hang the buckets under. The boy watches all theseoperations with the greatest interest. He wishes that sometime, whena hole is bored in a tree, the sap would spout out in a stream as itdoes when a cider-barrel is tapped; but it never does, it only drops,sometimes almost in a stream, but on the whole slowly, and the boylearns that the sweet things of the world have to be patiently waitedfor, and do not usually come otherwise than drop by drop.

Then the camp is to be cleared of snow. The shanty is re-coveredwith boughs. In front of it two enormous logs are rolled nearlytogether, and a fire is built between them. Forked sticks are set ateach end, and a long pole is laid on them, and on this are hung thegreat caldron kettles. The huge hogsheads are turned right side up,and cleaned out to receive the sap that is gathered. And now, ifthere is a good "sap run," the establishment is under full headway.

The great fire that is kindled up is never let out, night or day, aslong as the season lasts. Somebody is always cutting wood to feedit; somebody is busy most of the time gathering in the sap; somebodyis required to watch the kettles that they do not boil over, and tofill them. It is not the boy, however; he is too busy with things ingeneral to be of any use in details. He has his own little sap-yokeand small pails, with which he gathers the sweet liquid. He has alittle boiling-place of his own, with small logs and a tiny kettle.In the great kettles the boiling goes on slowly, and the liquid, asit thickens, is dipped from one to another, until in the end kettleit is reduced to sirup, and is taken out to cool and settle, untilenough is made to "sugar off." To "sugar off" is to boil the sirupuntil it is thick enough to crystallize into sugar. This is thegrand event, and is done only once in two or three days.

But the boy's desire is to "sugar off" perpetually. He boils hiskettle down as rapidly as possible; he is not particular about chips,scum, or ashes; he is apt to burn his sugar; but if he can get enoughto make a little wax on the snow, or to scrape from the bottom of thekettle with his wooden paddle, he is happy. A good deal is wasted onhis hands, and the outside of his face, and on his clothes, but hedoes not care; he is not stingy.

To watch the operations of the big fire gives him constant pleasure.Sometimes he is left to watch the boiling kettles, with a piece ofpork tied on the end of a stick, which he dips into the boiling masswhen it threatens to go over. He is constantly tasting of it,however, to see if it is not almost sirup. He has a long roundstick, whittled smooth at one end, which he uses for this purpose, atthe constant risk of burning his tongue. The smoke blows in hisface; he is grimy with ashes; he is altogether such a mass of dirt,stickiness, and sweetness, that his own mother would n't know him.

He likes to boil eggs in the hot sap with the hired man; he likes toroast potatoes in the ashes, and he would live in the camp day andnight if he were permitted. Some of the hired men sleep in the boughshanty and keep the fire blazing all night. To sleep there withthem, and awake in the night and hear the wind in the trees, and seethe sparks fly up to the sky, is a perfect realization of all thestories of adventures he has ever read. He tells the other boysafterwards that he heard something in the night that sounded verymuch like a bear. The hired man says that he was very much scared bythe hooting of an owl.

The great occasions for the boy, though, are the times of"sugaring-off." Sometimes this used to be done in the evening, and itwas made the excuse for a frolic in the camp. The neighbors wereinvited; sometimes even the pretty girls from the village, who filledall the woods with their sweet voices and merry laughter and littleaffectations of fright. The white snow still lies on all the groundexcept the warm spot about the camp. The tree branches all showdistinctly in the light of the fire, which sends its ruddy glare farinto the darkness, and lights up the bough shanty, the hogsheads, thebuckets on the trees, and the group about the boiling kettles, untilthe scene is like something taken out of a fairy play. If Rembrandtcould have seen a sugar party in a New England wood, he would havemade out of its strong contrasts of light and shade one of the finestpictures in the world. But Rembrandt was not born in Massachusetts;people hardly ever do know where to be born until it is too late.Being born in the right place is a thing that has been very muchneglected.

At these sugar parties every one was expected to eat as much sugar aspossible; and those who are practiced in it can eat a great deal. Itis a peculiarity about eating warm maple sugar, that though you mayeat so much of it one day as to be sick and loathe the thought of it,you will want it the next day more than ever. At the "sugaring-off"they used to pour the hot sugar upon the snow, where it congealed,without crystallizing, into a sort of wax, which I do suppose is themost delicious substance that was ever invented. And it takes agreat while to eat it. If one should close his teeth firmly on aball of it, he would be unable to open his mouth until it dissolved.The sensation while it is melting is very pleasant, but one cannotconverse.

The boy used to make a big lump of it and give it to the dog, whoseized it with great avidity, and closed his jaws on it, as dogs willon anything. It was funny the next moment to see the expression ofperfect surprise on the dog's face when he found that he could notopen his jaws. He shook his head; he sat down in despair; he ranround in a circle; he dashed into the woods and back again. He dideverything except climb a tree, and howl. It would have been such arelief to him if he could have howled. But that was the one thing hecould not do.

XV

THE HEART OF NEW ENGLAND

It is a wonder that every New England boy does not turn out a poet,or a missionary, or a peddler. Most of them used to. There iseverything in the heart of the New England hills to feed theimagination of the boy, and excite his longing for strange countries.I scarcely know what the subtle influence is that forms him andattracts him in the most fascinating and aromatic of all lands, andyet urges him away from all the sweet delights of his home to becomea roamer in literature and in the world, a poet and a wanderer.There is something in the soil and the pure air, I suspect, thatpromises more romance than is forthcoming, that excites theimagination without satisfying it, and begets the desire ofadventure. And the prosaic life of the sweet home does not at allcorrespond to the boy's dreams of the world. In the good old days, Iam told, the boys on the coast ran away and became sailors; thecountryboys waited till they grew big enough to be missionaries, andthen they sailed away, and met the coast boys in foreign ports.John used to spend hours in the top of a slender hickory-tree that alittle detached itself from the forest which crowned the brow of thesteep and lofty pasture behind his house. He was sent to make war onthe bushes that constantly encroached upon the pastureland; but Johnhad no hostility to any growing thing, and a very little bushwhackingsatisfied him. When he had grubbed up a few laurels and youngtree-sprouts, he was wont to retire into his favorite post ofobservation and meditation. Perhaps he fancied that the wide-swayingstem to which he clung was the mast of a ship; that the tossing forestbehind him was the heaving waves of the sea; and that the wind whichmoaned over the woods and murmured in the leaves, and now and thensent him a wide circuit in the air, as if he had been a blackbird onthe tip-top of a spruce, was an ocean gale. What life, and action, andheroism there was to him in the multitudinous roar of the forest, andwhat an eternity of existence in the monologue of the river, whichbrawled far, far below him over its wide stony bed! How the riversparkled and danced and went on, now in a smooth amber current, nowfretted by the pebbles, but always with that continuous busy song!John never knew that noise to cease, and he doubted not, if he stayedhere a thousand years, that same loud murmur would fill the air.

On it went, under the wide spans of the old wooden, covered bridge,swirling around the great rocks on which the piers stood, spreadingaway below in shallows, and taking the shadows of a row of maplesthat lined the green shore. Save this roar, no sound reached him,except now and then the rumble of a wagon on the bridge, or themuffled far-off voices of some chance passers on the road. Seen fromthis high perch, the familiar village, sending its brown roofs andwhite spires up through the green foliage, had a strange aspect, andwas like some town in a book, say a village nestled in the Swissmountains, or something in Bohemia. And there, beyond the purplehills of Bozrah, and not so far as the stony pastures of Zoah,whither John had helped drive the colts and young stock in thespring, might be, perhaps, Jerusalem itself. John had himself oncebeen to the land of Canaan with his grandfather, when he was a verysmall boy; and he had once seen an actual, no-mistake Jew, amysterious person, with uncut beard and long hair, who soldscythe-snaths in that region, and about whom there was a rumor that hewas once caught and shaved by the indignant farmers, who apprehendedin his long locks a contempt of the Christian religion. Oh, the worldhad vast possibilities for John. Away to the south, up a vast basin offorest, there was a notch in the horizon and an opening in the line ofwoods, where the road ran. Through this opening John imagined an armymight appear, perhaps British, perhaps Turks, and banners of red andof yellow advance, and a cannon wheel about and point its long nose,and open on the valley. He fancied the army, after this salute,winding down the mountain road, deploying in the meadows, and givingthe valley to pillage and to flame. In which event his position wouldbe an excellent one for observation and for safety. While he was inthe height of this engagement, perhaps the horn would be blown fromthe back porch, reminding him that it was time to quit cutting brushand go for the cows. As if there were no better use for a warrior anda poet in New England than to send him for the cows!

John knew a boy—a bad enough boy I daresay—who afterwards became ageneral in the war, and went to Congress, and got to be a realgovernor, who also used to be sent to cut brush in the back pastures,and hated it in his very soul; and by his wrong conduct forecast whatkind of a man he would be. This boy, as soon as he had cut about onebrush, would seek for one of several holes in the ground (and he wasfamiliar with several), in which lived a white-and-black animal thatmust always be nameless in a book, but an animal quite capable of themost pungent defense of himself. This young aspirant to Congresswould cut a long stick, with a little crotch in the end of it, andrun it into the hole; and when the crotch was punched into the furand skin of the animal, he would twist the stick round till it got agood grip on the skin, and then he would pull the beast out; andwhen he got the white-and-black just out of the hole so that his dogcould seize him, the boy would take to his heels, and leave the twoto fight it out, content to scent the battle afar off. And this boy,who was in training for public life, would do this sort of thing allthe afternoon, and when the sun told him that he had spent longenough time cutting brush, he would industriously go home as innocentas anybody. There are few such boys as this nowadays; and that isthe reason why the New England pastures are so much overgrown withbrush.

John himself preferred to hunt the pugnacious woodchuck. He bore aspecial grudge against this clover-eater, beyond the usual hostilitythat boys feel for any wild animal. One day on his way to school awoodchuck crossed the road before him, and John gave chase. Thewoodchuck scrambled into an orchard and climbed a small apple-tree.John thought this a most cowardly and unfair retreat, and stood underthe tree and taunted the animal and stoned it. Thereupon thewoodchuck dropped down on John and seized him by the leg of histrousers. John was both enraged and scared by this dastardly attack;the teeth of the enemy went through the cloth and met; and there hehung. John then made a pivot of one leg and whirled himself around,swinging the woodchuck in the air, until he shook him off; but in hisdeparture the woodchuck carried away a large piece of John's summertrousers-leg. The boy never forgot it. And whenever he had aholiday, he used to expend an amount of labor and ingenuity in thepursuit of woodchucks that would have made his for tune in any usefulpursuit. There was a hill pasture, down on one side of which ran asmall brook, and this pasture was full of woodchuck-holes. Itrequired the assistance of several boys to capture a woodchuck. Itwas first necessary by patient watching to ascertain that thewoodchuck was at home. When one was seen to enter his burrow, thenall the entries to it except one—there are usually three—wereplugged up with stones. A boy and a dog were then left to watch theopen hole, while John and his comrades went to the brook and began todig a canal, to turn the water into the residence of the woodchuck.This was often a difficult feat of engineering, and a long job.Often it took more than half a day of hard labor with shovel and hoeto dig the canal. But when the canal was finished and the waterbegan to pour into the hole, the excitement began. How long would ittake to fill the hole and drown out the woodchuck? Sometimes itseemed as if the hole was a bottomless pit. But sooner or later thewater would rise in it, and then there was sure to be seen the noseof the woodchuck, keeping itself on a level with the rising flood.It was piteous to see the anxious look of the hunted, half-drownedcreature as—it came to the surface and caught sight of the dog.There the dog stood, at the mouth of the hole, quivering withexcitement from his nose to the tip of his tail, and behind him werethe cruel boys dancing with joy and setting the dog on. The poorcreature would disappear in the water in terror; but he must breathe,and out would come his nose again, nearer the dog each time. At lastthe water ran out of the hole as well as in, and the soaked beastcame with it, and made a desperate rush. But in a trice the dog hadhim, and the boys stood off in a circle, with stones in their hands,to see what they called "fair play." They maintained perfect"neutrality" so long as the dog was getting the best of thewoodchuck; but if the latter was likely to escape, they "interfered"in the interest of peace and the "balance of power," and killed thewoodchuck. This is a boy's notion of justice; of course, he'd nobusiness to be a woodchuck,—an—unspeakable woodchuck.

I used the word "aromatic" in relation to the New England soil.John knew very well all its sweet, aromatic, pungent, and medicinalproducts, and liked to search for the scented herbs and the wildfruits and exquisite flowers; but he did not then know, and few doknow, that there is no part of the globe where the subtle chemistryof the earth produces more that is agreeable to the senses than a NewEngland hill-pasture and the green meadow at its foot. The poetshave succeeded in turning our attention from it to the comparativelybarren Orient as the land of sweet-smelling spices and odorous gums.And it is indeed a constant surprise that this poor and stony soilelaborates and grows so many delicate and aromatic products.

John, it is true, did not care much for anything that did not appealto his taste and smell and delight in brilliant color; and he troddown the exquisite ferns and the wonderful mosses—withoutcompunction. But he gathered from the crevices of the rocks thecolumbine and the eglantine and the blue harebell; he picked thehigh-flavored alpine strawberry, the blueberry, the boxberry, wildcurrants and gooseberries, and fox-grapes; he brought home armfuls ofthe pink-and-white laurel and the wild honeysuckle; he dug the rootsof the fragrant sassafras and of the sweet-flag; he ate the tenderleaves of the wintergreen and its red berries; he gathered thepeppermint and the spearmint; he gnawed the twigs of the black birch;there was a stout fern which he called "brake," which he pulled up,and found that the soft end "tasted good;" he dug the amber gum fromthe spruce-tree, and liked to smell, though he could not chew, thegum of the wild cherry; it was his melancholy duty to bring home suchmedicinal herbs for the garret as the gold-thread, the tansy, and theloathsome "boneset;" and he laid in for the winter, like a squirrel,stores of beechnuts, hazel-nuts, hickory-nuts, chestnuts, andbutternuts. But that which lives most vividly in his memory and moststrongly draws him back to the New England hills is the aromaticsweet-fern; he likes to eat its spicy seeds, and to crush in hishands its fragrant leaves; their odor is the unique essence of NewEngland.

XVI

JOHN'S REVIVAL

The New England country-boy of the last generation never heard ofChristmas. There was no such day in his calendar. If John ever cameacross it in his reading, he attached no meaning to the word.

If his curiosity had been aroused, and he had asked his elders aboutit, he might have got the dim impression that it was a kind ofPopish holiday, the celebration of which was about as wicked as"card-playing," or being a "Democrat." John knew a couple ofdesperately bad boys who were reported to play "seven-up" in a barn,on the haymow, and the enormity of this practice made him shudder. Hehad once seen a pack of greasy "playing-cards," and it seemed to himto contain the quintessence of sin. If he had desired to defy allDivine law and outrage all human society, he felt that he could do itby shuffling them. And he was quite right. The two bad boys enjoyed instealth their scandalous pastime, because they knew it was the mostwicked thing they could do. If it had been as sinless as playingmarbles, they would n't have cared for it. John sometimes drove past abrown, tumble-down farmhouse, whose shiftless inhabitants, it wassaid, were card-playing people; and it is impossible to describe howwicked that house appeared to John. He almost expected to see itsshingles stand on end. In the old New England one could not in anyother way so express his contempt of all holy and orderly life as byplaying cards for amusem*nt.

There was no element of Christmas in John's life, any more than therewas of Easter; and probably nobody about him could have explainedEaster; and he escaped all the demoralization attending Christmasgifts. Indeed, he never had any presents of any kind, either on hisbirthday or any other day. He expected nothing that he did not earn,or make in the way of "trade" with another boy. He was taught towork for what he received. He even earned, as I said, the extraholidays of the day after the Fourth and the day after Thanksgiving.Of the free grace and gifts of Christmas he had no conception. Thesingle and melancholy association he had with it was the quaking hymnwhich his grandfather used to sing in a cracked and quavering voice:

"While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
All seated on the ground."

The "glory" that "shone around" at the end of it—the doleful voicealways repeating, "and glory shone around "—made John as miserableas "Hark! from the tombs." It was all one dreary expectation ofsomething uncomfortable. It was, in short, "religion." You'd got tohave it some time; that John believed. But it lay in his unthinkingmind to put off the "Hark! from the tombs" enjoyment as long aspossible. He experienced a kind of delightful wickedness inindulging his dislike of hymns and of Sunday.

John was not a model boy, but I cannot exactly define in what hiswickedness consisted. He had no inclination to steal, nor much tolie; and he despised "meanness" and stinginess, and had a chivalrousfeeling toward little girls. Probably it never occurred to him thatthere was any virtue in not stealing and lying, for honesty andveracity were in the atmosphere about him. He hated work, and he"got mad" easily; but he did work, and he was always ashamed when hewas over his fit of passion. In short, you couldn't find a muchbetter wicked boy than John.

When the "revival" came, therefore, one summer, John was in aquandary. Sunday meeting and Sunday-school he did n't mind; theywere a part of regular life, and only temporarily interrupted a boy'spleasures. But when there began to be evening meetings at thedifferent houses, a new element came into affairs. There was a kindof solemnity over the community, and a seriousness in all faces. Atfirst these twilight assemblies offered a little relief to themonotony of farm life; and John liked to meet the boys and girls, andto watch the older people coming in, dressed in their second best. Ithink John's imagination was worked upon by the sweet and mournfulhymns that were discordantly sung in the stiff old parlors. Therewas a suggestion of Sunday, and sanctity too, in the odor ofcaraway-seed that pervaded the room. The windows were wide open also,and the scent of June roses came in, with all the languishing soundsof a summer night. All the little boys had a scared look, but thelittle girls were never so pretty and demure as in this theirsusceptible seriousness. If John saw a boy who did not come to theevening meeting, but was wandering off with his sling down the meadow,looking for frogs, maybe, that boy seemed to him a monster ofwickedness.

After a time, as the meetings continued, John fell also under thegeneral impression of fright and seriousness. All the talk was of"getting religion," and he heard over and over again that theprobability was if he did not get it now, he never would. The chancedid not come often, and if this offer was not improved, John would begiven over to hardness of heart. His obstinacy would show that hewas not one of the elect. John fancied that he could feel his hearthardening, and he began to look with a wistful anxiety into the facesof the Christians to see what were the visible signs of being one ofthe elect. John put on a good deal of a manner that he "did n'tcare," and he never admitted his disquiet by asking any questions orstanding up in meeting to be prayed for. But he did care. He heardall the time that all he had to do was to repent and believe. Butthere was nothing that he doubted, and he was perfectly willing torepent if he could think of anything to repent of.

It was essential he learned, that he should have a "conviction ofsin." This he earnestly tried to have. Other people, no better thanhe, had it, and he wondered why he could n't have it. Boys and girlswhom he knew were "under conviction," and John began to feel not onlypanicky, but lonesome. Cynthia Rudd had been anxious for days anddays, and not able to sleep at night, but now she had given herselfup and found peace. There was a kind of radiance in her face thatstruck John with awe, and he felt that now there was a great gulfbetween him and Cynthia. Everybody was going away from him, and hisheart was getting harder than ever. He could n't feel wicked, all hecould do. And there was Ed Bates his intimate friend, though olderthan he, a "whaling," noisy kind of boy, who was under conviction andsure he was going to be lost. How John envied him! And pretty soonEd "experienced religion." John anxiously watched the change in Ed'sface when he became one of the elect. And a change there was.And John wondered about another thing. Ed Bates used to gotrout-fishing, with a tremendously long pole, in a meadow brook near theriver; and when the trout didn't bite right off, Ed would—get mad,and as soon as one took hold he would give an awful jerk, sending thefish more than three hundred feet into the air and landing it in thebushes the other side of the meadow, crying out, "Gul darn ye, I'lllearn ye." And John wondered if Ed would take the little trout outany more gently now.

John felt more and more lonesome as one after another of hisplaymates came out and made a profession. Cynthia (she too was olderthan John) sat on Sunday in the singers' seat; her voice, which wasgoing to be a contralto, had a wonderful pathos in it for him, and heheard it with a heartache. "There she is," thought John, "singingaway like an angel in heaven, and I am left out." During all hisafter life a contralto voice was to John one of his most bitter andheart-wringing pleasures. It suggested the immaculate scornful, themelancholy unattainable.

If ever a boy honestly tried to work himself into a conviction ofsin, John tried. And what made him miserable was, that he couldn'tfeel miserable when everybody else was miserable. He even began topretend to be so. He put on a serious and anxious look like theothers. He pretended he did n't care for play; he refrained fromchasing chipmunks and snaring suckers; the songs of birds and thebright vivacity of the summer—time that used to make him turnhand-springs smote him as a discordant levity. He was not a hypocriteat all, and he was getting to be alarmed that he was not alarmed athimself. Every day and night he heard that the spirit of the Lordwould probably soon quit striving with him, and leave him out. Thephrase was that he would "grieve away the Holy Spirit." John wonderedif he was not doing it. He did everything to put himself in the way ofconviction, was constant at the evening meetings, wore a grave face,refrained from play, and tried to feel anxious. At length he concludedthat he must do something.

One night as he walked home from a solemn meeting, at which severalof his little playmates had "come forward," he felt that he couldforce the crisis. He was alone on the sandy road; it was anenchanting summer night; the stars danced overhead, and by his sidethe broad and shallow river ran over its stony bed with a loud butsoothing murmur that filled all the air with entreaty. John did notthen know that it sang, "But I go on forever," yet there was in itfor him something of the solemn flow of the eternal world. When hecame in sight of the house, he knelt down in the dust by a pile ofrails and prayed. He prayed that he might feel bad, and bedistressed about himself. As he prayed he heard distinctly, and yetnot as a disturbance, the multitudinous croaking of the frogs by themeadow spring. It was not discordant with his thoughts; it had in ita melancholy pathos, as if it were a kind of call to the unconverted.What is there in this sound that suggests the tenderness of spring,the despair of a summer night, the desolateness of young love? Yearsafter it happened to John to be at twilight at a railway station onthe edge of the Ravenna marshes. A little way over the purple plainhe saw the darkening towers and heard "the sweet bells of Imola."The Holy Pontiff Pius IX. was born at Imola, and passed his boyhoodin that serene and moist region. As the train waited, John heardfrom miles of marshes round about the evening song of millions offrogs, louder and more melancholy and entreating than the vesper callof the bells. And instantly his mind went back for the associationof sound is as subtle as that of odor—to the prayer, years ago, bythe roadside and the plaintive appeal of the unheeded frogs, and hewondered if the little Pope had not heard the like importunity, andperhaps, when he thought of himself as a little Pope, associated hisconversion with this plaintive sound.

John prayed, but without feeling any worse, and then went desperatelyinto the house, and told the family that he was in an anxious stateof mind. This was joyful news to the sweet and pious household, andthe little boy was urged to feel that he was a sinner, to repent, andto become that night a Christian; he was prayed over, and told toread the Bible, and put to bed with the injunction to repeat all thetexts of Scripture and hymns he could think of. John did this, andsaid over and over the few texts he was master of, and tossed aboutin a real discontent now, for he had a dim notion that he was playingthe hypocrite a little. But he was sincere enough in wanting tofeel, as the other boys and girls felt, that he was a wicked sinner.He tried to think of his evil deeds; and one occurred to him; indeed,it often came to his mind. It was a lie; a deliberate, awful lie,that never injured anybody but himself John knew he was not wickedenough to tell a lie to injure anybody else.

This was the lie. One afternoon at school, just before John's classwas to recite in geography, his pretty cousin, a young lady he heldin great love and respect, came in to visit the school. John was afavorite with her, and she had come to hear him recite. As ithappened, John felt shaky in the geographical lesson of that day, andhe feared to be humiliated in the presence of his cousin; he feltembarrassed to that degree that he could n't have "bounded"Massachusetts. So he stood up and raised his hand, and said to theschoolma'am, "Please, ma'am, I 've got the stomach-ache; may I gohome?" And John's character for truthfulness was so high (and eventhis was ever a reproach to him), that his word was instantlybelieved, and he was dismissed without any medical examination. Fora moment John was delighted to get out of school so early; but soonhis guilt took all the light out of the summer sky and thepleasantness out of nature. He had to walk slowly, without a singlehop or jump, as became a diseased boy. The sight of a woodchuck at adistance from his well-known hole tempted John, but he restrainedhimself, lest somebody should see him, and know that chasing awoodchuck was inconsistent with the stomach-ache. He was acting amiserable part, but it had to be gone through with. He went home andtold his mother the reason he had left school, but he added that hefelt "some" better now. The "some" did n't save him. Genuinesympathy was lavished on him. He had to swallow a stiff dose ofnasty "picra,"—the horror of all childhood, and he was put in bedimmediately. The world never looked so pleasant to John, but to bedhe was forced to go. He was excused from all chores; he was not evento go after the cows. John said he thought he ought to go after thecows,—much as he hated the business usually, he would now willinglyhave wandered over the world after cows,—and for this heroic offer,in the condition he was, he got credit for a desire to do his duty;and this unjust confidence in him added to his torture. And he hadintended to set his hooks that night for eels. His cousin came home,and sat by his bedside and condoled with him; his schoolma'am hadsent word how sorry she was for him, John was Such a good boy. Allthis was dreadful.

He groaned in agony. Besides, he was not to have any supper; itwould be very dangerous to eat a morsel. The prospect was appalling.Never was there such a long twilight; never before did he hear somany sounds outdoors that he wanted to investigate. Being illwithout any illness was a horrible condition. And he began to havereal stomach-ache now; and it ached because it was empty. John washungry enough to have eaten the New England Primer. But by and bysleep came, and John forgot his woes in dreaming that he knew whereMadagascar was just as easy as anything.

It was this lie that came back to John the night he was trying to beaffected by the revival. And he was very much ashamed of it, andbelieved he would never tell another. But then he fell thinkingwhether, with the "picra," and the going to bed in the afternoon, andthe loss of his supper, he had not been sufficiently paid for it.And in this unhopeful frame of mind he dropped off in sleep.

And the truth must be told, that in the morning John was no nearer torealizing the terrors he desired to feel. But he was a conscientiousboy, and would do nothing to interfere with the influences of theseason. He not only put himself away from them all, but he refrainedfrom doing almost everything that he wanted to do. There came atthat time a newspaper, a secular newspaper, which had in it a longaccount of the Long Island races, in which the famous horse"Lexington" was a runner. John was fond of horses, he knew aboutLexington, and he had looked forward to the result of this race withkeen interest. But to read the account of it how he felt mightdestroy his seriousness of mind, and in all reverence and simplicityhe felt it—be a means of "grieving away the Holy Spirit." Hetherefore hid away the paper in a table-drawer, intending to read itwhen the revival should be over. Weeks after, when he looked for thenewspaper, it was not to be found, and John never knew what "time"Lexington made nor anything about the race. This was to him aserious loss, but by no means so deep as another feeling thatremained with him; for when his little world returned to its ordinarycourse, and long after, John had an uneasy apprehension of his ownseparateness from other people, in his insensibility to the revival.Perhaps the experience was a damage to him; and it is a pity thatthere was no one to explain that religion for a little fellow likehim is not a "scheme."

XVII

WAR

Every boy who is good for anything is a natural savage. Thescientists who want to study the primitive man, and have so muchdifficulty in finding one anywhere in this sophisticated age,couldn't do better than to devote their attention to the commoncountry-boy. He has the primal, vigorous instincts and impulses ofthe African savage, without any of the vices inherited from acivilization long ago decayed or developed in an unrestrainedbarbaric society. You want to catch your boy young, and study himbefore he has either virtues or vices, in order to understand theprimitive man.

Every New England boy desires (or did desire a generation ago, beforechildren were born sophisticated, with a large library, and with theword "culture" written on their brows) to live by hunting, fishing,and war. The military instinct, which is the special mark ofbarbarism, is strong in him. It arises not alone from his love offighting, for the boy is naturally as cowardly as the savage, butfrom his fondness for display,—the same that a corporal or a generalfeels in decking himself in tinsel and tawdry colors and struttingabout in view of the female sex. Half the pleasure in going out tomurder another man with a gun would be wanting if one did not wearfeathers and gold-lace and stripes on his pantaloons. The law alsotakes this view of it, and will not permit men to shoot each other inplain clothes. And the world also makes some curious distinctions inthe art of killing. To kill people with arrows is barbarous; to killthem with smooth-bores and flintlock muskets is semi-civilized; tokill them with breech-loading rifles is civilized. That nation isthe most civilized which has the appliances to kill the most ofanother nation in the shortest time. This is the result of sixthousand years of constant civilization. By and by, when the nationscease to be boys, perhaps they will not want to kill each other atall. Some people think the world is very old; but here is anevidence that it is very young, and, in fact, has scarcely yet begunto be a world. When the volcanoes have done spouting, and theearthquakes are quaked out, and you can tell what land is going to besolid and keep its level twenty-four hours, and the swamps are filledup, and the deltas of the great rivers, like the Mississippi and theNile, become terra firma, and men stop killing their fellows in orderto get their land and other property, then perhaps there will be aworld that an angel would n't weep over. Now one half the world areemployed in getting ready to kill the other half, some of them bymarching about in uniform, and the others by hard work to earn moneyto pay taxes to buy uniforms and guns.

John was not naturally very cruel, and it was probably the love ofdisplay quite as much as of fighting that led him into a militarylife; for he, in common with all his comrades, had other traits ofthe savage. One of them was the same passion for ornament thatinduces the African to wear anklets and bracelets of hide and ofmetal, and to decorate himself with tufts of hair, and to tattoo hisbody. In John's day there was a rage at school among the boys forwearing bracelets woven of the hair of the little girls. Some ofthem were wonderful specimens of braiding and twist. These were notcaptured in war, but were sentimental tokens of friendship given bythe young maidens themselves. John's own hair was kept so short (asbecame a warrior) that you couldn't have made a bracelet out of it,or anything except a paintbrush; but the little girls were not undermilitary law, and they willingly sacrificed their tresses to decoratethe soldiers they esteemed. As the Indian is honored in proportionto the scalps he can display, at John's school the boy was held inhighest respect who could show the most hair trophies on his wrist.John himself had a variety that would have pleased a Mohawk, fine andcoarse and of all colors. There were the flaxen, the faded straw,the glossy black, the lustrous brown, the dirty yellow, the undecidedauburn, and the fiery red. Perhaps his pulse beat more quickly underthe red hair of Cynthia Rudd than on account of all the otherwristlets put together; it was a sort of gold-tried-in-the-fire-colorto John, and burned there with a steady flame. Now that Cynthia hadbecome a Christian, this band of hair seemed a more sacred if lessglowing possession (for all detached hair will fade in time), and ifhe had known anything about saints, he would have imagined that itwas a part of the aureole that always goes with a saint. But I ambound to say that while John had a tender feeling for this redstring, his sentiment was not that of the man who becomes entangledin the meshes of a woman's hair; and he valued rather the number thanthe quality of these elastic wristlets.

John burned with as real a military ardor as ever inflamed the breastof any slaughterer of his fellows. He liked to read of war, ofencounters with the Indians, of any kind of wholesale killing inglittering uniform, to the noise of the terribly exciting fife anddrum, which maddened the combatants and drowned the cries of thewounded. In his future he saw himself a soldier with plume and swordand snug-fitting, decorated clothes,—very different from hissomewhat roomy trousers and country-cut roundabout, made by AuntEllis, the village tailoress, who cut out clothes, not according tothe shape of the boy, but to what he was expected to grow to,—goingwhere glory awaited him. In his observation of pictures, it was thecommon soldier who was always falling and dying, while the officerstood unharmed in the storm of bullets and waved his sword in aheroic attitude. John determined to be an officer.

It is needless to say that he was an ardent member of the militarycompany of his village. He had risen from the grade of corporal tothat of first lieutenant; the captain was a boy whose father wascaptain of the grown militia company, and consequently had inheritedmilitary aptness and knowledge. The old captain was a flaming son ofMars, whose nose militia, war, general training, and New England rumhad painted with the color of glory and disaster. He was one of thegallant old soldiers of the peaceful days of our country, splendid inuniform, a martinet in drill, terrible in oaths, a glorious objectwhen he marched at the head of his company of flintlock muskets, withthe American banner full high advanced, and the clamorous drumdefying the world. In this he fulfilled his duties of citizen,faithfully teaching his uniformed companions how to march by the leftleg, and to get reeling drunk by sundown; otherwise he did n't amountto much in the community; his house was unpainted, his fences weretumbled down, his farm was a waste, his wife wore an old gown tomeeting, to which the captain never went; but he was a goodtrout-fisher, and there was no man in town who spent more time at thecountry store and made more shrewd observations upon the affairs ofhis neighbors. Although he had never been in an asylum any more thanhe had been in war, he was almost as perfect a drunkard as he wassoldier. He hated the British, whom he had never seen, as much as heloved rum, from which he was never separated.

The company which his son commanded, wearing his father's belt andsword, was about as effective as the old company, and more orderly.It contained from thirty to fifty boys, according to the pressure of"chores" at home, and it had its great days of parade and its autumnmaneuvers, like the general training. It was an artillery company,which gave every boy a chance to wear a sword, and it possessed asmall mounted cannon, which was dragged about and limbered andunlimbered and fired, to the imminent danger of everybody, especiallyof the company. In point of marching, with all the legs goingtogether, and twisting itself up and untwisting breaking intosingle-file (for Indian fighting), and forming platoons, turning asharp corner, and getting out of the way of a wagon, circling the townpump, frightening horses, stopping short in front of the tavern, withranks dressed and eyes right and left, it was the equal of anymilitary organization I ever saw. It could train better than the bigcompany, and I think it did more good in keeping alive the spirit ofpatriotism and desire to fight. Its discipline was strict. If a boyleft the ranks to jab a spectator, or make faces at a window, or "gofor" a striped snake, he was "hollered" at no end.

It was altogether a very serious business; there was no levity aboutthe hot and hard marching, and as boys have no humor, nothingludicrous occurred. John was very proud of his office, and of hisability to keep the rear ranks closed up and ready to execute anymaneuver when the captain "hollered," which he did continually. Hecarried a real sword, which his grandfather had worn in many amilitia campaign on the village green, the rust upon which Johnfancied was Indian blood; he had various red and yellow insignia ofmilitary rank sewed upon different parts of his clothes, and thoughhis co*cked hat was of pasteboard, it was decorated with gilding andbright rosettes, and floated a red feather that made his heart beatwith martial fury whenever he looked at it. The effect of thisuniform upon the girls was not a matter of conjecture. I think theyreally cared nothing about it, but they pretended to think it fine,and they fed the poor boy's vanity, the weakness by which womengovern the world.

The exalted happiness of John in this military service I daresay wasnever equaled in any subsequent occupation. The display of thecompany in the village filled him with the loftiest heroism. Therewas nothing wanting but an enemy to fight, but this could only be hadby half the company staining themselves with elderberry juice andgoing into the woods as Indians, to fight the artillery from behindtrees with bows and arrows, or to ambush it and tomahawk the gunners.This, however, was made to seem very like real war. Traditions ofIndian cruelty were still fresh in western Massachusetts. BehindJohn's house in the orchard were some old slate tombstones, sunkenand leaning, which recorded the names of Captain Moses Rice andPhineas Arms, who had been killed by Indians in the last centurywhile at work in the meadow by the river, and who slept there in thehope of the glorious resurrection. Phineas Arms martial name—waslong since dust, and even the mortal part of the great Captain MosesRice had been absorbed in the soil and passed perhaps with the sap upinto the old but still blooming apple-trees. It was a quiet placewhere they lay, but they might have heard—if hear they could—theloud, continuous roar of the Deerfield, and the stirring of the longgrass on that sunny slope. There was a tradition that years ago anIndian, probably the last of his race, had been seen moving along thecrest of the mountain, and gazing down into the lovely valley whichhad been the favorite home of his tribe, upon the fields where hegrew his corn, and the sparkling stream whence he drew his fish.John used to fancy at times, as he sat there, that he could see thatred specter gliding among the trees on the hill; and if the tombstonesuggested to him the trump of judgment, he could not separate it fromthe war-whoop that had been the last sound in the ear of PhineasArms. The Indian always preceded murder by the war-whoop; and thiswas an advantage that the artillery had in the fight with theelderberry Indians. It was warned in time. If there was nowar-whoop, the killing did n't count; the artillery man got up andkilled the Indian. The Indian usually had the worst of it; he not onlygot killed by the regulars, but he got whipped by the home guard atnight for staining himself and his clothes with the elderberry.

But once a year the company had a superlative parade. This was whenthe military company from the north part of the town joined thevillagers in a general muster. This was an infantry company, and notto be compared with that of the village in point of evolutions.There was a great and natural hatred between the north town boys andthe center. I don't know why, but no contiguous African tribes couldbe more hostile. It was all right for one of either section to"lick" the other if he could, or for half a dozen to "lick" one ofthe enemy if they caught him alone. The notion of honor, as ofmercy, comes into the boy only when he is pretty well grown; to someneither ever comes. And yet there was an artificial militarycourtesy (something like that existing in the feudal age, no doubt)which put the meeting of these two rival and mutually detestedcompanies on a high plane of behavior. It was beautiful to see theseriousness of this lofty and studied condescension on both sides.For the time everything was under martial law. The village companybeing the senior, its captain commanded the united battalion in themarch, and this put John temporarily into the position of captain,with the right to march at the head and "holler;" a responsibilitywhich realized all his hopes of glory. I suppose there has yet beendiscovered by man no gratification like that of marching at the headof a column in uniform on parade, unless, perhaps, it is marching attheir head when they are leaving a field of battle. John experiencedall the thrill of this conspicuous authority, and I daresay thatnothing in his later life has so exalted him in his own esteem;certainly nothing has since happened that was so important as theevents of that parade day seemed. He satiated himself with all thedelights of war.

XVIII

COUNTRY SCENES

It is impossible to say at what age a New England country-boy becomesconscious that his trousers-legs are too short, and is anxious aboutthe part of his hair and the fit of his woman-made roundabout. Theseharrowing thoughts come to him later than to the city lad. At least,a generation ago he served a long apprenticeship with nature only fora master, absolutely unconscious of the artificialities of life.

But I do not think his early education was neglected. And yet it iseasy to underestimate the influences that, unconsciously to him, wereexpanding his mind and nursing in him heroic purposes. There was thelovely but narrow valley, with its rapid mountain stream; there werethe great hills which he climbed, only to see other hills stretchingaway to a broken and tempting horizon; there were the rocky pastures,and the wide sweeps of forest through which the winter tempestshowled, upon which hung the haze of summer heat, over which the greatshadows of summer clouds traveled; there were the clouds themselves,shouldering up above the peaks, hurrying across the narrow sky,—theclouds out of which the wind came, and the lightning and the suddendashes of rain; and there were days when the sky was ineffably blueand distant, a fathomless vault of heaven where the hen-hawk and theeagle poised on outstretched wings and watched for their prey. Canyou say how these things fed the imagination of the boy, who had fewbooks and no contact with the great world? Do you think any city ladcould have written "Thanatopsis" at eighteen?

If you had seen John, in his short and roomy trousers and ill-usedstraw hat, picking his barefooted way over the rocks along theriver-bank of a cool morning to see if an eel had "got on," you wouldnot have fancied that he lived in an ideal world. Nor did heconsciously. So far as he knew, he had no more sentiment than ajack-knife. Although he loved Cynthia Rudd devotedly, and blushedscarlet one day when his cousin found a lock of Cynthia's flaminghair in the box where John kept his fishhooks, spruce gum, flag-root,tickets of standing at the head, gimlet, billets-doux in blue ink, avile liquid in a bottle to make fish bite, and other preciouspossessions, yet Cynthia's society had no attractions for himcomparable to a day's trout-fishing. She was, after all, only asingle and a very undefined item in his general ideal world, andthere was no harm in letting his imagination play about her illuminedhead. Since Cynthia had "got religion" and John had got nothing, hislove was tempered with a little awe and a feeling of distance. Hewas not fickle, and yet I cannot say that he was not ready toconstruct a new romance, in which Cynthia should be eliminated.Nothing was easier. Perhaps it was a luxurious traveling carriage,drawn by two splendid horses in plated harness, driven along thesandy road. There were a gentleman and a young lad on the frontseat, and on the back seat a handsome pale lady with a little girlbeside her. Behind, on the rack with the trunk, was a colored boy,an imp out of a story-book. John was told that the black boy was aslave, and that the carriage was from Baltimore. Here was a chancefor a romance. Slavery, beauty, wealth, haughtiness, especially onthe part of the slender boy on the front seat,—here was an openinginto a vast realm. The high-stepping horses and the shining harnesswere enough to excite John's admiration, but these were nothing tothe little girl. His eyes had never before fallen upon that kind ofgirl; he had hardly imagined that such a lovely creature could exist.Was it the soft and dainty toilet, was it the brown curls, or thelarge laughing eyes, or the delicate, finely cut features, or thecharming little figure of this fairy-like person? Was thisexpression on her mobile face merely that of amusem*nt at seeing acountry-boy? Then John hated her. On the contrary, did she see inhim what John felt himself to be? Then he would go the world over toserve her. In a moment he was self-conscious. His trousers seemedto creep higher up his legs, and he could feel his very ankles blush.He hoped that she had not seen the other side of him, for, in fact,the patches were not of the exact shade of the rest of the cloth.The vision flashed by him in a moment, but it left him with aresentful feeling. Perhaps that proud little girl would be sorrysome day, when he had become a general, or written a book, or kept astore, to see him go away and marry another. He almost made up hiscruel mind on the instant that he would never marry her, however badshe might feel. And yet he could n't get her out of his mind fordays and days, and when her image was present, even Cynthia in thesingers' seat on Sunday looked a little cheap and common. PoorCynthia! Long before John became a general or had his revenge on theBaltimore girl, she married a farmer and was the mother of children,red-headed; and when John saw her years after, she looked tired anddiscouraged, as one who has carried into womanhood none of theromance of her youth.

Fishing and dreaming, I think, were the best amusem*nts John had.The middle pier of the long covered bridge over the river stood upona great rock, and this rock (which was known as the swimming-rock,whence the boys on summer evenings dove into the deep pool by itsside) was a favorite spot with John when he could get an hour or twofrom the everlasting "chores." Making his way out to it over therocks at low water with his fish-pole, there he was content to sitand observe the world; and there he saw a great deal of life. Healways expected to catch the legendary trout which weighed two poundsand was believed to inhabit that pool. He always did catch horneddace and shiners, which he despised, and sometimes he snared amonstrous sucker a foot and a half long. But in the summer thesucker is a flabby fish, and John was not thanked for bringing himhome. He liked, however, to lie with his face close to the water andwatch the long fishes panting in the clear depths, and occasionallyhe would drop a pebble near one to see how gracefully he would scudaway with one wave of the tail into deeper water. Nothing fears thelittle brown boy. The yellow-bird slants his wings, almost touchesthe deep water before him, and then escapes away under the bridge tothe east with a glint of sunshine on his back; the fish-hawk comesdown with a swoop, dips one wing, and, his prey having darted under astone, is away again over the still hill, high soaring on even-poisedpinions, keeping an eye perhaps upon the great eagle which issweeping the sky in widening circles.

But there is other life. A wagon rumbles over the bridge, and thefarmer and his wife, jogging along, do not know that they havestartled a lazy boy into a momentary fancy that a thunder-shower iscoming up. John can see as he lies there on a still summer day, withthe fishes and the birds for company, the road that comes down theleft bank of the river,—a hot, sandy, well-traveled road, hiddenfrom view here and there by trees and bushes. The chief point ofinterest, however, is an enormous sycamore-tree by the roadside andin front of John's house. The house is more than a century old, andits timbers were hewed and squared by Captain Moses Rice (who lies inhis grave on the hillside above it), in the presence of the Red Manwho killed him with arrow and tomahawk some time after his house wasset in order. The gigantic tree, struck with a sort of leprosy, likeall its species, appears much older, and of course has itstradition. They say that it grew from a green stake which the firstland-surveyor planted there for one of his points of sight. John wasreminded of it years after when he sat under the shade of thedecrepit lime-tree in Freiburg and was told that it was originally atwig which the breathless and bloody messenger carried in his handwhen he dropped exhausted in the square with the word "Victory!" onhis lips, announcing thus the result of the glorious battle of Morat,where the Swiss in 1476 defeated Charles the Bold. Under the broadbut scanty shade of the great button-ball tree (as it was called)stood an old watering-trough, with its half-decayed penstock andwell-worn spout pouring forever cold, sparkling water into theoverflowing trough. It is fed by a spring near by, and the water issweeter and colder than any in the known world, unless it be the wellZem-zem, as generations of people and horses which have drunk of itwould testify, if they could come back. And if they could file alongthis road again, what a procession there would be riding down thevalley!—antiquated vehicles, rusty wagons adorned with theinvariable buffalo-robe even in the hottest days, lean andlong-favored horses, frisky colts, drawing, generation aftergeneration, the sober and pious saints, that passed this way tomeeting and to mill.

What a refreshment is that water-spout! All day long there arepilgrims to it, and John likes nothing better than to watch them.Here comes a gray horse drawing a buggy with two men,—cattlebuyers, probably. Out jumps a man, down goes the check-rein. What agood draught the nag takes! Here comes a long-stepping trotter in asulky; man in a brown linen coat and wide-awake hat,—dissolute,horsey-looking man. They turn up, of course. Ah, there is anestablishment he knows well: a sorrel horse and an old chaise. Thesorrel horse scents the water afar off, and begins to turn up longbefore he reaches the trough, thrusting out his nose in anticipationof the coot sensation. No check to let down; he plunges his nose innearly to his eyes in his haste to get at it. Two maiden ladies—unmistakably such, though they appear neither "anxious nor aimless"—within the scoop-top smile benevolently on the sorrel back. It isthe deacon's horse, a meeting-going nag, with a sedate, leisurely jogas he goes; and these are two of the "salt of the earth,"—the brevetrank of the women who stand and wait,—going down to the villagestore to dicker. There come two men in a hurry, horse driven upsmartly and pulled up short; but as it is rising ground, and thehorse does not easily reach the water with the wagon pulling back,the nervous man in the buggy hitches forward on his seat, as if thatwould carry the wagon a little ahead! Next, lumber-wagon with loadof boards; horse wants to turn up, and driver switches him and cries"G'lang," and the horse reluctantly goes by, turning his headwistfully towards the flowing spout. Ah, here comes an equipagestrange to these parts, and John stands up to look; an elegantcarriage and two horses; trunks strapped on behind; gentleman and boyon front seat and two ladies on back seat,—city people. Thegentleman descends, unchecks the horses, wipes his brow, takes adrink at the spout and looks around, evidently remarking upon thelovely view, as he swings his handkerchief in an explanatory manner.Judicious travelers. John would like to know who they are. Perhapsthey are from Boston, whence come all the wonderfully paintedpeddlers' wagons drawn by six stalwart horses, which the driver,using no rein, controls with his long whip and cheery voice. If so,great is the condescension of Boston; and John follows them with anundefined longing as they drive away toward the mountains of Zoar.Here is a footman, dusty and tired, who comes with lagging steps. Hestops, removes his hat, as he should to such a tree, puts his mouthto the spout, and takes a long pull at the lively water. And then hegoes on, perhaps to Zoar, perhaps to a worse place.

So they come and go all the summer afternoon; but the great event ofthe day is the passing down the valley of the majestic stage-coach,—the vast yellow-bodied, rattling vehicle. John can hear a mile offthe shaking of chains, traces, and whiffle-trees, and the creaking ofits leathern braces, as the great bulk swings along piled high withtrunks. It represents to John, somehow, authority, government, theright of way; the driver is an autocrat, everybody must make way forthe stage-coach. It almost satisfies the imagination, this royalvehicle; one can go in it to the confines of the world,—to Bostonand to Albany.

There were other influences that I daresay contributed to the boy'seducation. I think his imagination was stimulated by a band ofgypsies who used to come every summer and pitch a tent on a littleroadside patch of green turf by the river-bank not far from hishouse. It was shaded by elms and butternut-trees, and a long spit ofsand and pebbles ran out from it into the brawling stream. Probablythey were not a very good kind of gypsy, although the story was thatthe men drank and beat the women. John didn't know much aboutdrinking; his experience of it was confined to sweet cider; yet hehad already set himself up as a reformer, and joined the Cold WaterBand. The object of this Band was to walk in a procession under abanner that declared,

"So here we pledge perpetual hate
To all that can intoxicate;"

and wear a badge with this legend, and above it the device of awell-curb with a long sweep. It kept John and all the little boys andgirls from being drunkards till they were ten or eleven years of age;though perhaps a few of them died meantime from eating loaf-cake andpie and drinking ice-cold water at the celebrations of the Band.

The gypsy camp had a strange fascination for John, mingled ofcuriosity and fear. Nothing more alien could come into the NewEngland life than this tatterdemalion band. It was hardly crediblethat here were actually people who lived out-doors, who slept intheir covered wagon or under their tent, and cooked in the open air;it was a visible romance transferred from foreign lands and theremote times of the story-books; and John took these city thieves,who were on their annual foray into the country, trading and stealinghorses and robbing hen-roosts and cornfields, for the mysterious racewho for thousands of years have done these same things in all lands,by right of their pure blood and ancient lineage. John was afraid toapproach the camp when any of the scowling and villainous men werelounging about, pipes in mouth; but he took more courage when onlywomen and children were visible. The swarthy, black-haired women indirty calico frocks were anything but attractive, but they spokesoftly to the boy, and told his fortune, and wheedled him intobringing them any amount of cucumbers and green corn in the course ofthe season. In front of the tent were planted in the ground threepoles that met together at the top, whence depended a kettle. Thiswas the kitchen, and it was sufficient. The fuel for the fire wasthe driftwood of the stream. John noted that it did not require tobe sawed into stove-lengths; and, in short, that the "chores" aboutthis establishment were reduced to the minimum. And an older personthan John might envy the free life of these wanderers, who paidneither rent nor taxes, and yet enjoyed all the delights of nature.It seemed to the boy that affairs would go more smoothly in the worldif everybody would live in this simple manner. Nor did he then know,or ever after find out, why it is that the world permits only wickedpeople to be Bohemians.

XIX

A CONTRAST TO THE NEW ENGLAND BOY

One evening at vespers in Genoa, attracted by a burst of music fromthe swinging curtain of the doorway, I entered a little church muchfrequented by the common people. An unexpected and exceedinglypretty sight rewarded me.

It was All Souls' Day. In Italy almost every day is set apart forsome festival, or belongs to some saint or another, and I supposethat when leap year brings around the extra day, there is a saintready to claim the 29th of February. Whatever the day was to theelders, the evening was devoted to the children. The first thing Inoticed was, that the quaint old church was lighted up withinnumerable wax tapers,—an uncommon sight, for the darkness of aCatholic church in the evening is usually relieved only by a candlehere and there, and by a blazing pyramid of them on the high altar.The use of gas is held to be a vulgar thing all over Europe, andespecially unfit for a church or an aristocratic palace.

Then I saw that each taper belonged to a little boy or girl, and thegroups of children were scattered all about the church. There was agroup by every side altar and chapel, all the benches were occupiedby knots of them, and there were so many circles of them seated onthe pavement that I could with difficulty make my way among them.There were hundreds of children in the church, all dressed in theirholiday apparel, and all intent upon the illumination, which seemedto be a private affair to each one of them.

And not much effect had their tapers upon the darkness of the vastvaults above them. The tapers were little spiral coils of wax, whichthe children unrolled as fast as they burned, and when they weretired of holding them, they rested them on the ground and watched theburning. I stood some time by a group of a dozen seated in a cornerof the church. They had massed all the tapers in the center andformed a ring about the spectacle, sitting with their legs straightout before them and their toes turned up. The light shone full intheir happy faces, and made the group, enveloped otherwise indarkness, like one of Correggio's pictures of children or angels.Correggio was a famous Italian artist of the sixteenth century, whopainted cherubs like children who were just going to heaven, andchildren like cherubs who had just come out of it. But then, he hadthe Italian children for models, and they get the knack of beinglovely very young. An Italian child finds it as easy to be pretty asan American child to be good.

One could not but be struck with the patience these little peopleexhibited in their occupation, and the enjoyment they got out of it.There was no noise; all conversed in subdued whispers and behaved inthe most gentle manner to each other, especially to the smallest, andthere were many of them so small that they could only toddle about bythe most judicious exercise of their equilibrium. I do not say thisby way of reproof to any other kind of children.

These little groups, as I have said, were scattered all about thechurch; and they made with their tapers little spots of light, whichlooked in the distance very much like Correggio's picture which is atDresden,—the Holy Family at Night, and the light from the DivineChild blazing in the faces of all the attendants. Some of thechildren were infants in the nurses' arms, but no one was too smallto have a taper, and to run the risk of burning its fingers.

There is nothing that a baby likes more than a lighted candle, andthe church has understood this longing in human nature, and foundmeans to gratify it by this festival of tapers.

The groups do not all remain long in place, you may imagine; there isa good deal of shifting about, and I see little stragglers wanderingover the church, like fairies lighted by fireflies. Occasionallythey form a little procession and march from one altar to another,their lights twinkling as they go.

But all this time there is music pouring out of the organ-loft at theend of the church, and flooding all its spaces with its volume. Infront of the organ is a choir of boys, led by a round-faced and jollymonk, who rolls about as he sings, and lets the deep bass noiserumble about a long time in his stomach before he pours it out of hismouth. I can see the faces of all of them quite well, for eachsinger has a candle to light his music-book.

And next to the monk stands the boy,—the handsomest boy in the wholeworld probably at this moment. I can see now his great, liquid, darkeyes, and his exquisite face, and the way he tossed back his longwaving hair when he struck into his part. He resembled the portraitsof Raphael, when that artist was a boy; only I think he looked betterthan Raphael, and without trying, for he seemed to be a spontaneoussort of boy. And how that boy did sing! He was the soprano of thechoir, and he had a voice of heavenly sweetness. When he opened hismouth and tossed back his head, he filled the church with exquisitemelody.

He sang like a lark, or like an angel. As we never heard an angelsing, that comparison is not worth much. I have seen pictures ofangels singing, there is one by Jan and Hubert Van Eyck in thegallery at Berlin,—and they open their mouths like this boy, but Ican't say as much for their singing. The lark, which you very likelynever heard either, for larks are as scarce in America as angels,—isa bird that springs up from the meadow and begins to sing as he risesin a spiral flight, and the higher he mounts, the sweeter he sings,until you think the notes are dropping out of heaven itself, and youhear him when he is gone from sight, and you think you hear him longafter all sound has ceased.

And yet this boy sang better than a lark, because he had more notesand a greater compass and more volume, although he shook out hisvoice in the same gleesome abundance.

I am sorry that I cannot add that this ravishingly beautiful boy wasa good boy. He was probably one of the most mischievous boys thatwas ever in an organ-loft. All the time that he was singing thevespers he was skylarking like an imp. While he was pouring out themost divine melody, he would take the opportunity of kicking theshins of the boy next to him, and while he was waiting for his part,he would kick out behind at any one who was incautious enough toapproach him. There never was such a vicious boy; he kept the wholeloft in a ferment. When the monk rumbled his bass in his stomach,the boy cut up monkey-shines that set every other boy into a laugh,or he stirred up a row that set them all at fisticuffs.

And yet this boy was a great favorite. The jolly monk loved him bestof all and bore with his wildest pranks. When he was wanted to singhis part and was skylarking in the rear, the fat monk took him by theear and brought him forward; and when he gave the boy's ear a twist,the boy opened his lovely mouth and poured forth such a flood ofmelody as you never heard. And he did n't mind his notes; he seemedto know his notes by heart, and could sing and look off like anightingale on a bough. He knew his power, that boy; and he steppedforward to his stand when he pleased, certain that he would beforgiven as soon as he began to sing. And such spirit and life as hethrew into the performance, rollicking through the Vespers with aperfect abandon of carriage, as if he could sing himself out of hisskin if he liked.

While the little angels down below were pattering about with theirwax tapers, keeping the holy fire burning, suddenly the organstopped, the monk shut his book with a bang, the boys blew out thecandles, and I heard them all tumbling down-stairs in a gale of noiseand laughter. The beautiful boy I saw no more.

About him plays the light of tender memory; but were he twice aslovely, I could never think of him as having either the simplemanliness or the good fortune of the New England boy.

By Charles Dudley Warner

I

"The way to mount a horse"—said the Professor.

"If you have no ladder—put in the Friend of Humanity."

The Professor had ridden through the war for the Union on the rightside, enjoying a much better view of it than if he had walked, andknew as much about a horse as a person ought to know for the sake ofhis character. The man who can recite the tales of the CanterburyPilgrims, on horseback, giving the contemporary pronunciation, nevermissing an accent by reason of the trot, and at the same time witchNorth Carolina and a strip of East Tennessee with his noblehorsemanship, is a kind of Literary Centaur of whose doubleinstruction any Friend of Humanity may be glad to avail himself.

"The way to mount a horse is to grasp the mane with the left handholding the bridle-rein, put your left foot in the stirrup, with theright hand on the back of the saddle, and—-"

Just then the horse stepped quickly around on his hind feet,and looked the Professor in the face. The Superintendents ofAffairs, who occupy the flagging in front of the hotel, seated incane-bottomed chairs tilted back, smiled. These useful persons appearto have a life-lease of this portion of the city pavement, and prettyeffectually block it up nearly all day and evening. When a lady wishesto make her way through the blockade, it is the habit of theseobservers of life to rise and make room, touching their hats, while shepicks her way through, and goes down the street with a prettyconsciousness of the flutter she has caused. The war has not changedthe Southern habit of sitting out-of-doors, but has added a new elementof street picturesqueness in groups of colored people lounging aboutthe corners. There appears to be more leisure than ever.

The scene of this little lesson in horsemanship was the old town ofAbingdon, in southwest Virginia, on the Virginia and East Tennesseerailway; a town of ancient respectability, which gave birth to theJohnstons and Floyds and other notable people; a town, that stillpreserves the flavor of excellent tobacco and, something of theeasy-going habits of the days of slavery, and is a sort of educationalcenter, where the young ladies of the region add the final graces ofintellectual life in moral philosophy and the use of the globes totheir natural gifts. The mansion of the late and left Floyd is now aseminary, and not far from it is the Stonewall Jackson Institute, inthe midst of a grove of splendid oaks, whose stately boles andwide-spreading branches give a dignity to educational life. Thedistinction of the region is its superb oak-trees. As it wasvacation in these institutions of learning, the travelers did not seeany of the vines that traditionally cling to the oak.

The Professor and the Friend of Humanity were about starting on ajourney, across country southward, through regions about which thepeople of Abingdon could give little useful information. If thetravelers had known the capacities and resources of the country, theywould not have started without a supply train, or the establishmentof bases of provisions in advance. But, as the Professor remarked,knowledge is something that one acquires when he has no use for it.The horses were saddled; the riders were equipped with flannel shirtsand leather leggings; the saddle-bags were stuffed with clean linen,and novels, and sonnets of Shakespeare, and other baggage, it wouldhave been well if they had been stuffed with hard-tack, for in reallife meat is more than raiment.

The hotel, in front of which there is cultivated so much of what theGermans call sitzfleisch, is a fair type of the majority of Southernhotels, and differs from the same class in the North in being left alittle more to run itself. The only information we obtained about itwas from its porter at the station, who replied to the question, "Isit the best?" "We warrant you perfect satisfaction in everyrespect." This seems to be only a formula of expression, for wefound that the statement was highly colored. It was left to ourimagination to conjecture how the big chambers of the old house, withtheir gaping fireplaces, might have looked when furnished and filledwith gay company, and we got what satisfaction we could out of abygone bustle and mint-julep hilarity. In our struggles with theporter to obtain the little items of soap, water, and towels, we wereconvinced that we had arrived too late, and that for perfectsatisfaction we should have been here before the war. It was notalways as now. In colonial days the accommodations and prices atinns were regulated by law. In the old records in the court-house weread that if we had been here in 1777, we could have had a gallon ofgood rum for sixteen shillings; a quart bowl of rum toddy made withloaf sugar for two shillings, or with brown sugar for one shillingand sixpence. In 1779 prices had risen. Good rum sold for fourpounds a gallon. It was ordered that a warm dinner should costtwelve shillings, a cold dinner nine shillings, and a good breakfasttwelve shillings. But the item that pleased us most, and made usregret our late advent, was that for two shillings we could have hada "good lodging, with clean sheets." The colonists were fastidiouspeople.

Abingdon, prettily situated on rolling hills, and a couple ofthousand feet above the sea, with views of mountain peaks to thesouth, is a cheerful and not too exciting place for a brief sojourn,and hospitable and helpful to the stranger. We had dined—so much,at least, the public would expect of us—with a descendant ofPocahontas; we had assisted on Sunday morning at the dedication of anew brick Methodist church, the finest edifice in the region—a dedication that took a long time, since the bishop would notproceed with it until money enough was raised in open meeting to paythe balance due on it: a religious act, though it did give a businessaspect to the place at the time; and we had been the light spots inthe evening service at the most aristocratic church of color. Theirresponsibility of this amiable race was exhibited in the tardinesswith which they assembled: at the appointed time nobody was thereexcept the sexton; it was three quarters of an hour before thecongregation began to saunter in, and the sermon was nearly overbefore the pews were at all filled. Perhaps the sermon was not new,but it was fervid, and at times the able preacher roared so thatarticulate sounds were lost in the general effect. It was preciselythese passages of cataracts of sound and hard breathing which excitedthe liveliest responses,—"Yes, Lord," and "Glory to God." Most ofthese responses came from the "Amen corner." The sermon containedthe usual vivid description of the last judgment—ah, and I fanciedthat the congregation did not get the ordinary satisfaction out ofit. Fashion had entered the fold, and the singing was mostlyexecuted by a choir in the dusky gallery, who thinly and harshlywarbled the emotional hymns. It occupied the minister a long time togive out the notices of the week, and there was not an evening orafternoon that had not its meetings, its literary or socialgathering, its picnic or fair for the benefit of the church, itsDorcas society, or some occasion of religious sociability. Theraising of funds appeared to be the burden on the preacher's mind.Two collections were taken up. At the first, the boxes appeared toget no supply except from the two white trash present. But thesecond was more successful. After the sermon was over, an elder tookhis place at a table within the rails, and the real business of theevening began. Somebody in the Amen corner struck up a tune that hadno end, but a mighty power of setting the congregation in motion.The leader had a voice like the pleasant droning of a bag-pipe, andthe faculty of emitting a continuous note like that instrument,without stopping to breathe. It went on and on like a Bach fugue,winding and whining its way, turning the corners of the lines of thecatch without a break. The effect was soon visible in the emotionalcrowd: feet began to move in a regular cadence and voices to join in,with spurts of ejacul*tion; and soon, with an air of martyrdom, themembers began to leave their seats and pass before the table anddeposit their contributions. It was a cent contribution, and wefound it very difficult, under the contagious influence of the humfrom the Amen corner, not to rise and go forward and deposit a cent.If anything could extract the pennies from a reluctant worldling, itwould be the buzzing of this tune. It went on and on, until thehouse appeared to be drained dry of its cash; and we inferred by thestopping of the melody that the preacher's salary was secure for thetime being. On inquiring, we ascertained that the pecuniary floodthat evening had risen to the height of a dollar and sixty cents.

All was ready for the start. It should have been early in themorning, but it was not; for Virginia is not only one of the blessedregions where one can get a late breakfast, but where it is almostimpossible to get an early one. At ten A. M. the two horsem*n rodeaway out of sight of the Abingdon spectators, down the easternturnpike. The day was warm, but the air was full of vitality and thespirit of adventure. It was the 22d of July. The horses were notambitious, but went on at an easy fox-trot that permits observationand encourages conversation. It had been stipulated that the horsesshould be good walkers, the one essential thing in a horsebackjourney. Few horses, even in a country where riding is general, aretrained to walk fast. We hear much of horses that can walk fivemiles an hour, but they are as rare as white elephants. Ourhorses were only fair walkers. We realized how necessary thisaccomplishment is, for between the Tennessee line and Asheville,North Carolina, there is scarcely a mile of trotting-ground.

We soon turned southward and descended into the Holston River Valley.Beyond lay the Tennessee hills and conspicuous White-Top Mountain(5530 feet), which has a good deal of local celebrity (standing wherethe States of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina corner), andhad been pointed out to us at Abingdon. We had been urged,personally and by letter, to ascend this mountain, without fail.People recommend mountains to their friends as they do patentmedicines. As we leisurely jogged along we discussed this, andendeavored to arrive at some rule of conduct for the journey. TheProfessor expressed at once a feeling about mountain-climbing thatamounted to hostility,—he would go nowhere that he could not ride.Climbing was the most unsatisfactory use to which a mountain could beput. As to White-Top, it was a small mountain, and not worthascending. The Friend of Humanity, who believes in mountain-climbingas a theory, and for other people, and knows the value of being ableto say, without detection, that he has ascended any high mountainabout which he is questioned,—since this question is the first oneasked about an exploration in a new country,—saw that he should haveto use a good deal of diplomacy to get the Professor over anyconsiderable elevation on the trip. And he had to confess also thata view from a mountain is never so satisfactory as a view of amountain, from a moderate height. The Professor, however, did notargue the matter on any such reasonable ground, but took his stand onhis right as a man not to ascend a mountain. With this appeal tofirst principles,—a position that could not be confuted on accountof its vagueness (although it might probably be demonstrated that insociety man has no such right), there was no way of agreement exceptby a compromise. It was accordingly agreed that no mountain undersix thousand feet is worth ascending; that disposed of White-Top. Itwas further agreed that any mountain that is over six thousand feethigh is too high to ascend on foot.

With this amicable adjustment we forded the Holston, crossing ittwice within a few miles. This upper branch of the Tennessee is anoble stream, broad, with a rocky bed and a swift current. Fordingit is ticklish business except at comparatively low water, and as itis subject to sudden rises, there must be times when it seriouslyinterrupts travel. This whole region, full of swift streams, iswithout a bridge, and, as a consequence, getting over rivers andbrooks and the dangers of ferries occupy a prominent place in thethoughts of the inhabitants. The life necessarily had the "frontier"quality all through, for there can be little solid advance incivilization in the uncertainties of a bridgeless condition. Anopen, pleasant valley, the Holston, but cultivation is more and morenegligent and houses are few and poorer as we advance.

We had left behind the hotels of "perfect satisfaction," and expectedto live on the country, trusting to the infrequent but remuneratedhospitality of the widely scattered inhabitants. We were to dine atRamsey's. Ramsey's had been recommended to us as a royal place ofentertainment the best in all that region; and as the sun grew hot inthe sandy valley, and the weariness of noon fell upon us, wemagnified Ramsey's in our imagination,—the nobility of itssituation, its cuisine, its inviting restfulness,—and half decidedto pass the night there in the true abandon of plantation life. Longbefore we reached it, the Holston River which we followed had becomethe Laurel, a most lovely, rocky, winding stream, which we fordedcontinually, for the valley became too narrow much of the way toaccommodate a road and a river. Eagerly as we were looking out forit, we passed the great Ramsey's without knowing it, for it was thefirst of a little settlement of two houses and a saw-mill and barn.It was a neat log house of two lower rooms and a summer kitchen,quite the best of the class that we saw, and the pleasant mistress ofit made us welcome. Across the road and close, to the Laurel was thespring-house, the invariable adjunct to every well-to-do house in theregion, and on the stony margin of the stream was set up the bigcaldron for the family washing; and here, paddling in the shallowstream, while dinner was preparing, we established an intimacy withthe children and exchanged philosophical observations on life withthe old negress who was dabbling the clothes. What impressed thiswoman was the inequality in life. She jumped to the unwarrantedconclusion that the Professor and the Friend were very rich, andspoke with asperity of the difficulty she experienced in gettingshoes and tobacco. It was useless to point out to her that heralfresco life was singularly blessed and free from care, and thehappy lot of any one who could loiter all day by this laughingstream, undisturbed by debt or ambition. Everybody about the placewas barefooted, except the mistress, including the comely daughter ofeighteen, who served our dinner in the kitchen. The dinner wasabundant, and though it seemed to us incongruous at the time, we werenot twelve hours older when we looked back upon it with longing. Onthe table were hot biscuit, ham, pork, and green beans, apple-sauce,blackberry preserves, cucumbers, coffee, plenty of milk, honey, andapple and blackberry pie. Here we had our first experience, and Imay say new sensation, of "honey on pie." It has a cloying sound asit is written, but the handmaiden recommended it with enthusiasm, andwe evidently fell in her esteem, as persons from an uncultivatedsociety, when we declared our inexperience of "honey on pie." "Wherebe you from?" It turned out to be very good, and we have tried tointroduce it in families since our return, with indifferent success.There did not seem to be in this family much curiosity about theworld at large, nor much stir of social life. The gayety of madameappeared to consist in an occasional visit to paw and maw andgrandmaw, up the river a few miles, where she was raised.

Refreshed by the honey and fodder at Ramsey's, the pilgrims wentgayly along the musical Laurel, in the slanting rays of the afternoonsun, which played upon the rapids and illumined all the woody way.Inspired by the misapprehension of the colored philosopher and thedainties of the dinner, the Professor soliloquized:

"So am I as the rich, whose blessed key
Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
The which he will not every hour survey,
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
Since seldom coming, in the long year set,
Like stones of wealth they thinly placed are,
Or captain jewels in the carcanet."

Five miles beyond Ramsey's the Tennessee line was crossed. TheLaurel became more rocky, swift, full of rapids, and the valleynarrowed down to the riverway, with standing room, however, forstately trees along the banks. The oaks, both black and white, were,as they had been all day, gigantic in size and splendid in foliage.There is a certain dignity in riding in such stately company, and thetravelers clattered along over the stony road under the impression ofpossible high adventure in a new world of such freshness. Nor wasbeauty wanting. The rhododendrons had, perhaps, a week ago reachedtheir climax, and now began to strew the water and the ground withtheir brilliant petals, dashing all the way with color; but they werestill matchlessly beautiful. Great banks of pink and white coveredthe steep hillsides; the bending stems, ten to twenty feet high, hungtheir rich clusters over the river; avenues of glory opened away inthe glade of the stream; and at every turn of the winding way vistasglowing with the hues of romance wrenched exclamations of delight andwonder from the Shakespearean sonneteer and his humble Friend. Inthe deep recesses of the forest suddenly flamed to the view, like thesplashes of splendor on the somber canvas of an old Venetian, thesewonders of color,—the glowing summer-heart of the woods.

It was difficult to say, meantime, whether the road was laid out inthe river, or the river in the road. In the few miles to Egger's(this was the destination of our great expectations for the night)the stream was crossed twenty-seven times,—or perhaps it would bemore proper to say that the road was crossed twenty-seven times.Where the road did not run in the river, its bed was washed out andas stony as the bed of the stream. This is a general and accuratedescription of all the roads in this region, which wind along and inthe streams, through narrow valleys, shut in by low and steep hills.The country is full of springs and streams, and between Abingdon andEgger's is only one (small) bridge. In a region with scarcely anylevel land or intervale, farmers are at a disadvantage. All alongthe road we saw nothing but mean shanties, generally of logs, withnow and then a decent one-story frame, and the people lookedmiserably poor.

As we picked our way along up the Laurel, obliged for the most partto ride single-file, or as the Professor expressed it,

"Let me confess that we two must be twain,
Although our undivided loves are one,"

we gathered information about Egger's from the infrequent hovels onthe road, which inflamed our imaginations. Egger was the thrivingman of the region, and lived in style in a big brick house. We beganto feel a doubt that Egger would take us in, and so much did hisbrick magnificence impress us that we regretted we had not broughtapparel fit for the society we were about to enter.

It was half-past six, and we were tired and hungry, when the domainof Egger towered in sight,—a gaunt, two-story structure of rawbrick, unfinished, standing in a narrow intervale. We rode up to thegate, and asked a man who sat in the front-door porch if this wasEgger's, and if we could be accommodated for the night. The man,without moving, allowed that it was Egger's, and that we couldprobably stay there. This person, however, exhibited so muchindifference to our company, he was such a hairy, unkempt man, andcarried on face, hands, and clothes so much more of the soil of theregion than a prudent proprietor would divert from raising corn, thatwe set him aside as a poor relation, and asked for Mr. Egger. Butthe man, still without the least hospitable stir, admitted that thatwas the name he went by, and at length advised us to "lite" and hitchour horses, and sit on the porch with him and enjoy the cool of theevening. The horses would be put up by and by, and in fact thingsgenerally would come round some time. This turned out to be the easyway of the country. Mr. Egger was far from being inhospitable, butwas in no hurry, and never had been in a hurry. He was not exactly agentleman of the old school. He was better than that. He dated fromthe time when there were no schools at all, and he lived in thatplacid world which is without information and ideas. Mr. Eggershowed his superiority by a total lack of curiosity about any otherworld.

This brick house, magnificent by comparison with other dwellings inthis country, seemed to us, on nearer acquaintance, only a thin,crude shell of a house, half unfinished, with bare rooms, theplastering already discolored. In point of furnishing it had not yetreached the "God bless our Home" stage in crewel. In the narrowmeadow, a strip of vivid green south of the house, ran a littlestream, fed by a copious spring, and over it was built the inevitablespring-house. A post, driven into the bank by the stream, supporteda tin wash-basin, and here we performed our ablutions. The travelergets to like this freedom and primitive luxury.

The farm of Egger produces corn, wheat, grass, and sheep; it is agood enough farm, but most of it lies at an angle of thirty-five toforty degrees. The ridge back of the house, planted in corn, was assteep as the roof of his dwelling. It seemed incredible that it evercould have been plowed, but the proprietor assured us that it wasplowed with mules, and I judged that the harvesting must be done bysquirrels. The soil is good enough, if it would stay in place, butall the hillsides are seamed with gullies. The discolored state ofthe streams was accounted for as soon as we saw this cultivated land.No sooner is the land cleared of trees and broken up than it beginsto wash. We saw more of this later, especially in North Carolina,where we encountered no stream of water that was not muddy, and sawno cultivated ground that was not washed. The process of denudationis going on rapidly wherever the original forests are girdled (acommon way of preparing for crops), or cut away.

As the time passed and there was no sign of supper, the questionbecame a burning one, and we went to explore the kitchen. No sign ofit there. No fire in the stove, nothing cooked in the house, ofcourse. Mrs. Egger and her comely young barefooted daughter hadstill the milking to attend to, and supper must wait for the otherchores. It seemed easier to be Mr. Egger, in this state ofexistence, and sit on the front porch and meditate on the price ofmules and the prospect of a crop, than to be Mrs. Egger, whose workwas not limited from sun to sun; who had, in fact, a day's work to doafter the men-folks had knocked off; whose chances of neighborhoodgossip were scanty, whose amusem*nts were confined to a religiousmeeting once a fortnight. Good, honest people these, not undulypuffed up by the brick house, grubbing away year in and year out.Yes, the young girl said, there was a neighborhood party, now andthen, in the winter. What a price to pay for mere life!

Long before supper was ready, nearly nine o'clock, we had almost lostinterest in it. Meantime two other guests had arrived, a couple ofdrovers from North Carolina, who brought into the circle—by thistime a wood-fire had been kindled in the sitting-room, whichcontained a bed, an almanac, and some old copies of a newspaper—arich flavor of cattle, and talk of the price of steers. As topolitics, although a presidential campaign was raging, there wasscarcely an echo of it here. This was Johnson County, Tennessee, astrong Republican county but dog-gone it, says Mr. Egger, it's nouse to vote; our votes are overborne by the rest of the State. Yes,they'd got a Republican member of Congress,—he'd heard his name, buthe'd forgotten it. The drover said he'd heard it also, but he didn'ttake much interest in such things, though he wasn't any Republican.Parties is pretty much all for office, both agreed. Even theProfessor, who was traveling in the interest of Reform, couldn't wakeup a discussion out of such a state of mind.

Alas! the supper, served in a room dimly lighted with a smoky lamp,on a long table covered with oilcloth, was not of the sort to arousethe delayed and now gone appetite of a Reformer, and yet it did notlack variety: cornpone (Indian meal stirred up with water and heatedthrough), hot biscuit, slack-baked and livid, fried salt-porkswimming in grease, apple-butter, pickled beets, onions and cucumbersraw, coffee (so-called), buttermilk, and sweet milk when speciallyasked for (the correct taste, however, is for buttermilk), and pie.This was not the pie of commerce, but the pie of the country,—twothick slabs of dough, with a squeezing of apple between. Theprofusion of this supper staggered the novices, but the droversattacked it as if such cooking were a common occurrence and didjustice to the weary labors of Mrs. Egger.

Egger is well prepared to entertain strangers, having several roomsand several beds in each room. Upon consultation with the drovers,they said they'd just as soon occupy an apartment by themselves, andwe gave up their society for the night. The beds in our chamber hadeach one sheet, and the room otherwise gave evidence of the modernspirit; for in one corner stood the fashionable aesthetic decorationof our Queen Anne drawing-rooms,—the spinning-wheel. Soothed bythis concession to taste, we crowded in between the straw and thehome-made blanket and sheet, and soon ceased to hear the barking ofdogs and the horned encounters of the drovers' herd.

We parted with Mr. Egger after breakfast (which was a close copy ofthe supper) with more respect than regret. His total charge for theentertainment of two men and two horses—supper, lodging, andbreakfast—was high or low, as the traveler chose to estimate it. Itwas $1.20: that is, thirty cents for each individual, or ten centsfor each meal and lodging.

Our road was a sort of by-way up Gentry Creek and over the Cut LaurelGap to Worth's, at Creston Post Office, in North Carolina,—the nextavailable halting place, said to be fifteen miles distant, andturning out to be twenty-two, and a rough road. There is a littlesettlement about Egger's, and the first half mile of our way we hadthe company of the schoolmistress, a modest, pleasant-spoken girl.Neither she nor any other people we encountered had any dialect orlocal peculiarity of speech. Indeed, those we encountered thatmorning had nothing in manner or accent to distinguish them. Thenovelists had led us to expect something different; and the modestand pretty young lady with frank and open blue eyes, who wore glovesand used the common English speech, had never figured in the fictionof the region. Cherished illusions vanish often on near approach.The day gave no peculiarity of speech to note, except the occasionaluse of "hit" for "it."

The road over Cut Laurel Gap was very steep and stony, thethermometer mounted up to 80 deg., and, notwithstanding the beauty ofthe way, the ride became tedious before we reached the summit. Onthe summit is the dwelling and distillery of a colonel famous inthese parts. We stopped at the house for a glass of milk; thecolonel was absent, and while the woman in charge went after it, wesat on the veranda and conversed with a young lady, tall, gent, wellfavored, and communicative, who leaned in the doorway.

"Yes, this house stands on the line. Where you sit, you are in
Tennessee; I'm in North Carolina."

"Do you live here?"

"Law, no; I'm just staying a little while at the colonel's. I liveover the mountain here, three miles from Taylorsville. I thought I'dbe where I could step into North Carolina easy."

"How's that?"

"Well, they wanted me to go before the grand jury and testify aboutsome pistol-shooting down by our house, some friends of mine got intoa little difficulty,—and I did n't want to. I never has nodifficulty with nobody, never says nothing about nobody, has nothingagainst nobody, and I reckon nobody has nothing against me."

"Did you come alone?"

"Why, of course. I come across the mountain by a path through thewoods. That's nothing."

A discreet, pleasant, pretty girl. This surely must be the Esmeraldawho lives in these mountains, and adorns low life by her virginpurity and sentiment. As she talked on, she turned from time to timeto the fireplace behind her, and discharged a dark fluid from herpretty lips, with accuracy of aim, and with a nonchalance that wasnot assumed, but belongs to our free-born American girls. I cannottell why this habit of hers (which is no worse than the sister habitof "dipping") should take her out of the romantic setting that herface and figure had placed her in; but somehow we felt inclined toride on farther for our heroine.

"And yet," said the Professor, as we left the site of the colonel'sthriving distillery, and by a winding, picturesque road through arough farming country descended into the valley,—"and yet, why flingaside so readily a character and situation so full of romance, onaccount of a habit of this mountain Helen, which one of our bestpoets has almost made poetical, in the case of the pioneer taking hiswestward way, with ox-goad pointing to the sky:

"'He's leaving on the pictured rock
His fresh tobacco stain.'

"To my mind the incident has Homeric elements. The Greeks would havelooked at it in a large, legendary way. Here is Helen, strong andlithe of limb, ox-eyed, courageous, but woman-hearted andlove-inspiring, contended for by all the braves and daring moonshinersof Cut Laurel Gap, pursued by the gallants of two States, the prize ofa border warfare of bowie knives and revolvers. This Helen,magnanimous as attractive, is the witness of a pistol difficulty on herbehalf, and when wanted by the areopagus, that she may neitherimplicate a lover nor punish an enemy (having nothing, this noble typeof her sex against nobody), skips away to Mount Ida, and there, underthe aegis of the flag of her country, in a Licensed Distillery, standswith one slender foot in Tennessee and the other in North Carolina"

"Like the figure of the Republic itself, superior to statesovereignty," interposed the Friend.

"I beg your pardon," said the Professor, urging up Laura Matilda (forso he called the nervous mare, who fretted herself into a fever inthe stony path), "I was quite able to get the woman out of thatposition without the aid of a metaphor. It is a large and Greekidea, that of standing in two mighty States, superior to the law,looking east and looking west, ready to transfer her agile body toeither State on the approach of messengers of the court; and I'll behanged if I didn't think that her nonchalant rumination of the weed,combined with her lofty moral attitude, added something to thepicture."

The Friend said that he was quite willing to join in the extremestdefense of the privileges of beauty,—that he even held in abeyancejudgment on the practice of dipping; but when it came to chewing, gumwas as far as he could go as an allowance for the fair sex.

"When I consider everything that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment…"

The rest of the stanza was lost, for the Professor was splashingthrough the stream. No sooner had we descended than the fording ofstreams began again. The Friend had been obliged to stipulate thatthe Professor should go ahead at these crossings, to keep theimpetuous nag of the latter from throwing half the contents of thestream upon his slower and uncomplaining companion.

What a lovely country, but for the heat of noon and the longwearisomeness of the way!—not that the distance was great, but milesand miles more than expected. How charming the open glades of theriver, how refreshing the great forests of oak and chestnut, and whata panorama of beauty the banks of rhododendrons, now intermingledwith the lighter pink and white of the laurel! In this region therhododendron is called laurel and the laurel (the sheep-laurel ofNew England) is called ivy.

At Worth's, well on in the afternoon, we emerged into a wide, openfarming intervale, a pleasant place of meadows and streams and decentdwellings. Worth's is the trading center of the region, has a postoffice and a saw-mill and a big country store; and the dwelling ofthe proprietor is not unlike a roomy New England country house.Worth's has been immemorially a stopping-place in a region whereplaces of accommodation are few. The proprietor, now an elderly man,whose reminiscences are long ante bellum, has seen the world grow upabout him, he the honored, just center of it, and a family come upinto the modern notions of life, with a boarding-school education andglimpses of city life and foreign travel. I fancy that nothing buttradition and a remaining Southern hospitality could induce thisprivate family to suffer the incursions of this wayfaring man. Ourtravelers are not apt to be surprised at anything in American life,but they did not expect to find a house in this region with twopianos and a bevy of young ladies, whose clothes were certainly notmade on Cut Laurel Gap, and to read in the books scattered about thehouse the evidences of the finishing schools with which our countryis blessed, nor to find here pupils of the Stonewall JacksonInstitute at Abingdon. With a flush of local pride, the Professortook up, in the roomy, pleasant chamber set apart for the guests, acopy of Porter's "Elements of Moral Science."

"Where you see the 'Elements of Moral Science,'" the Friendgeneralized, "there'll be plenty of water and towels;" and the signdid not fail. The friends intended to read this book in the cool ofthe day; but as they sat on the long veranda, the voice of a maidenreading the latest novel to a sewing group behind the blinds in thedrawing-room; and the antics of a mule and a boy in front of thestore opposite; and the arrival of a spruce young man, who had justridden over from somewhere, a matter of ten miles' gallop, to get amedicinal potion for his sick mother, and lingered chatting with theyoung ladies until we began to fear that his mother would recoverbefore his return; the coming and going of lean women in shacklywagons to trade at the store; the coming home of the cows, splashingthrough the stream, hooking right and left, and lowing for the handof the milker,—all these interruptions, together with the generallydrowsy quiet of the approach of evening, interfered with the study ofthe Elements. And when the travelers, after a refreshing rest, wenton their way next morning, considering the Elements and the pianosand the refinement, to say nothing of the cuisine, which is nottreated of in the text-book referred to, they were content with abill double that of brother Egger, in his brick magnificence.

The simple truth is, that the traveler in this region must be contentto feed on natural beauties. And it is an unfortunate truth innatural history that the appetite for this sort of diet fails after atime, if the inner man is not supplied with other sort of food.There is no landscape in the world that is agreeable after two daysof rusty-bacon and slack biscuit.

"How lovely this would be," exclaimed the Professor, if it had abackground of beefsteak and coffee!

We were riding along the west fork of the Laurel, distinguishedlocally as Three Top Creek,—or, rather, we were riding in it,crossing it thirty-one times within six miles; a charming wood (andwater) road, under the shade of fine trees with the rhododendronilluminating the way, gleaming in the forest and reflected in thestream, all the ten miles to Elk Cross Roads, our next destination.We had heard a great deal about Elk Cross Roads; it was on the map,it was down in the itinerary furnished by a member of the CoastSurvey. We looked forward to it as a sweet place of repose from thenoontide heat. Alas! Elk Cross Roads is a dirty grocery store,encumbered with dry-goods boxes, fly-blown goods, flies, loafers. Inreply to our inquiry we were told that they had nothing to eat, forus, and not a grain of feed for the horses. But there was a man amile farther on, who was well to do and had stores of food,—old manTatern would treat us in bang-up style. The difficulty of gettingfeed for the horses was chronic all through the journey. The lastcorn crop had failed, the new oats and corn had not come in, and thecountry was literally barren. We had noticed all along that the henswere taking a vacation, and that chickens were not put forward as anarticle of diet.

We were unable, when we reached the residence of old man Tatem, toimagine how the local superstition of his wealth arose. His house isof logs, with two rooms, a kitchen and a spare room, with a low loftaccessible by a ladder at the side of the chimney. The chimney is ahuge construction of stone, separating the two parts of the house; infact, the chimney was built first, apparently, and the two rooms werethen built against it. The proprietor sat in a little railedveranda. These Southern verandas give an air to the meanestdwelling, and they are much used; the family sit here, and here arethe washbasin and pail (which is filled from the neighboringspring-house), and the row of milk-pans. The old man Tatern did notwelcome us with enthusiasm; he had no corn,—these were hard times. Helooked like hard times, grizzled times, dirty times. It seemed timeout of mind since he had seen comb or razor, and although the lovelyNew River, along which we had ridden to his house,—a broad, invitingstream,—was in sight across the meadow, there was no evidence that hehad ever made acquaintance with its cleansing waters. As to corn, thenecessities of the case and pay being dwelt on, perhaps he could find adozen ears. A dozen small cars he did find, and we trust that thehorses found them.

We took a family dinner with old man Tatern in the kitchen, wherethere was a bed and a stove,—a meal that the host seemed to enjoy,but which we could not make much of, except the milk; that was good.A painful meal, on the whole, owing to the presence in the room of agrown-up daughter with a graveyard cough, without physician ormedicine, or comforts. Poor girl! just dying of "a misery."

In the spare room were two beds; the walls were decorated with thegay-colored pictures of patent-medicine advertisem*nts—a favoriteart adornment of the region; and a pile of ancient illustrated paperswith the usual patent-office report, the thoughtful gift of themember for the district. The old man takes in the "Blue RidgeBaptist," a journal which we found largely taken up with theexperiences of its editor on his journeys roundabout in search ofsubscribers. This newspaper was the sole communication of the familywith the world at large, but the old man thought he should stop it,—he did n't seem to get the worth of his money out of it. And old manTatem was a thrifty and provident man. On the hearth in this bestroom—as ornaments or memento mori were a couple of marblegravestones, a short headstone and foot-stone, mounted on bases andready for use, except the lettering. These may not have been somournful and significant as they looked, nor the evidence of simple,humble faith; they may have been taken for debt. But as parlorornaments they had a fascination which we could not escape.

It was while we were bathing in the New River, that afternoon, andmeditating on the grim, unrelieved sort of life of our host, that theProfessor said, "judging by the face of the 'Blue Ridge Baptist,' hewill charge us smartly for the few nubbins of corn and the milk."The face did not deceive us; the charge was one dollar. At this rateit would have broken us to have tarried with old man Tatem (perhapshe is not old, but that is the name he goes by) over night.

It was a hot afternoon, and it needed some courage to mount and climbthe sandy hill leading us away from the corn-crib of Tatem. But weentered almost immediately into fine stretches of forest, and rodeunder the shade of great oaks. The way, which began by the NewRiver, soon led us over the hills to the higher levels of WataugaCounty. So far on our journey we had been hemmed in by low hills,and without any distant or mountain outlooks. The excessive heatseemed out of place at the elevation of over two thousand feet, onwhich we were traveling. Boone, the county seat of Watauga County,was our destination, and, ever since morning, the guideboards and thetrend of the roads had notified us that everything in this regiontends towards Boone as a center of interest. The simple ingenuity ofsome of the guide-boards impressed us. If, on coming to a fork, thetraveler was to turn to the right, the sign read,

To BOONE 10 M.
If he was to go to the left, it read,
.M 01 ENOOB oT

A short ride of nine miles, on an ascending road, through an open,unfenced forest region, brought us long before sundown to thiscapital. When we had ridden into its single street, which wandersover gentle hills, and landed at the most promising of the taverns,the Friend informed his comrade that Boone was 3250 feet aboveAlbemarle Sound, and believed by its inhabitants to be the highestvillage east of the Rocky Mountains. The Professor said that itmight be so, but it was a God-forsaken place. Its inhabitantsnumbered perhaps two hundred and fifty, a few of them colored. Ithad a gaunt, shaky court-house and jail, a store or two, and twotaverns. The two taverns are needed to accommodate the judges andlawyers and their clients during the session of the court. The courtis the only excitement and the only amusem*nt. It is the event fromwhich other events date. Everybody in the county knows exactly whencourt sits, and when court breaks. During the session the wholecounty is practically in Boone, men, women, and children. They campthere, they attend the trials, they take sides; half of them,perhaps, are witnesses, for the region is litigious, and theneighborhood quarrels are entered into with spirit. To be fond oflawsuits seems a characteristic of an isolated people in newconditions. The early settlers of New England were.

Notwithstanding the elevation of Boone, which insured a pure air, thethermometer that afternoon stood at from 85 to 89 deg. The fliesenjoyed it. How they swarmed in this tavern! They would havecarried off all the food from the dining-room table (for flies do notmind eating off oilcloth, and are not particular how food is cooked),but for the machine with hanging flappers that swept the length ofit; and they destroy all possibility of sleep except in the dark.The mountain regions of North Carolina are free from mosquitoes, butthe fly has settled there, and is the universal scourge. Thistavern, one end of which was a store, had a veranda in front, and aback gallery, where there were evidences of female refinement in potsof plants and flowers. The landlord himself kept tavern very much asa hostler would, but we had to make a note in his favor that he hadnever heard of a milk punch. And it might as well be said here, forit will have to be insisted on later, that the traveler, who has readabout the illicit stills till his imagination dwells upon theindulgence of his vitiated tastes in the mountains of North Carolina,is doomed to disappointment. If he wants to make himself anexception to the sober people whose cooking will make him long forthe maddening bowl, he must bring his poison with him. We had foundno bread since we left Virginia; we had seen cornmeal and water,slack-baked; we had seen potatoes fried in grease, and baconincrusted with salt (all thirst-provokers), but nothing to drinkstronger than buttermilk. And we can say that, so far as our exampleis concerned, we left the country as temperate as we found it. Howcan there be mint juleps (to go into details) without ice? and in thesummer there is probably not a pound of ice in all the State north ofBuncombe County.

There is nothing special to be said about Boone. We were anxious toreach it, we were glad to leave it; we note as to all these placesthat our joy at departing always exceeds that on arriving, which is amerciful provision of nature for people who must keep moving. Thiscountry is settled by genuine Americans, who have the aboriginalprimitive traits of the universal Yankee nation. The front porch inthe morning resembled a carpenter's shop; it was literally coveredwith the whittlings of the row of natives who had spent the eveningthere in the sedative occupation of whittling.

We took that morning a forest road to Valle Crusis, seven miles,through noble growths of oaks, chestnuts, hemlocks, rhododendrons,—acharming wood road, leading to a place that, as usual, did not keepthe promise of its name. Valle Crusis has a blacksmith shop and adirty, flyblown store. While the Professor consulted the blacksmithabout a loose shoe, the Friend carried his weariness of life withoutprovisions up to a white house on the hill, and negotiated for boiledmilk. This house was occupied by flies. They must have numberedmillions, settled in black swarms, covering tables, beds, walls, theveranda; the kitchen was simply a hive of them. The only book insight, Whewell's—"Elements of Morality," seemed to attract flies.Query, Why should this have such a different effect from Porter's? Awhite house,—a pleasant-looking house at a distance,—amiable,kindly people in it,—why should we have arrived there on its dirtyday? Alas! if we had been starving, Valle Crusis had nothing tooffer us.

So we rode away, in the blazing heat, no poetry exuding from theProfessor, eight miles to Banner's Elk, crossing a mountain andpassing under Hanging Rock, a conspicuous feature in the landscape,and the only outcropping of rock we had seen: the face of a ledge,rounded up into the sky, with a green hood on it. From the summit wehad the first extensive prospect during our journey. The road can bedescribed as awful,—steep, stony, the horses unable to make twomiles an hour on it. Now and then we encountered a rude log cabinwithout barns or outhouses, and a little patch of feeble corn. Thewomen who regarded the passers from their cabin doors were frowzy andlooked tired. What with the heat and the road and this discouragedappearance of humanity, we reached the residence of Dugger, atBanner's Elk, to which we had been directed, nearly exhausted. It isno use to represent this as a dash across country on impatientsteeds. It was not so. The love of truth is stronger than thedesire of display. And for this reason it is impossible to say thatMr. Dugger, who is an excellent man, lives in a clean and attractivehouse, or that he offers much that the pampered child of civilizationcan eat. But we shall not forget the two eggs, fresh from the hens,whose temperature must have been above the normal, nor thespring-house in the glen, where we found a refuge from the flies andthe heat. The higher we go, the hotter it is. Banner's Elk boasts anelevation of thirty-five to thirty-seven hundred feet.

We were not sorry, towards sunset, to descend along the Elk Rivertowards Cranberry Forge. The Elk is a lovely stream, and, though notvery clear, has a reputation for trout; but all this region was underoperation of a three-years game law, to give the trout a chance tomultiply, and we had no opportunity to test the value of itsreputation. Yet a boy whom we encountered had a good string ofquarter-pound trout, which he had taken out with a hook and a featherrudely tied on it, to resemble a fly. The road, though not to becommended, was much better than that of the morning, the forests grewcharming in the cool of the evening, the whippoorwill sang, and asnight fell the wanderers, in want of nearly everything that makeslife desirable, stopped at the Iron Company's hotel, under theimpression that it was the only comfortable hotel in North Carolina.

II

Cranberry Forge is the first wedge of civilization fairly driven intothe northwest mountains of North Carolina. A narrow-gauge railway,starting from Johnson City, follows up the narrow gorge of the DoeRiver, and pushes into the heart of the iron mines at Cranberry,where there is a blast furnace; and where a big company store, rowsof tenement houses, heaps of slag and refuse ore, interlacing tracks,raw embankments, denuded hillsides, and a blackened landscape, arethe signs of a great devastating American enterprise. The Cranberryiron is in great esteem, as it has the peculiar quality of theSwedish iron. There are remains of old furnaces lower down thestream, which we passed on our way. The present "plant" is that of aPhiladelphia company, whose enterprise has infused new life into allthis region, made it accessible, and spoiled some pretty scenery.

When we alighted, weary, at the gate of the pretty hotel, whichcrowns a gentle hill and commands a pleasing, evergreen prospect ofmany gentle hills, a mile or so below the works, and wholly removedfrom all sordid associations, we were at the point of willingnessthat the whole country should be devastated by civilization. In thelocal imagination this hotel of the company is a palace of unequaledmagnificence, but probably its good taste, comfort, and quietelegance are not appreciated after all. There is this to be saidabout Philadelphia,—and it will go far in pleading for it in theLast Day against its monotonous rectangularity and the babel-likeambition of its Public Building,—that wherever its influenceextends, there will be found comfortable lodgings and the luxury ofan undeniably excellent cuisine. The visible seal that Philadelphiasets on its enterprise all through the South is a good hotel.

This Cottage Beautiful has on two sides a wide veranda, set aboutwith easy chairs; cheerful parlors and pretty chambers, finished innative woods, among which are conspicuous the satin stripes of thecucumber-tree; luxurious beds, and an inviting table ordered by aPhiladelphia landlady, who knows a beefsteak from a boot-tap. Is it"low" to dwell upon these things of the senses, when one is on a tourin search of the picturesque? Let the reader ride from Abingdonthrough a wilderness of cornpone and rusty bacon, and then judge.There were, to be sure, novels lying about, and newspapers, andfragments of information to be picked up about a world into which thetravelers seemed to emerge. They, at least, were satisfied, and wentoff to their rooms with the restful feeling that they had arrivedsomewhere and no unquiet spirit at morn would say "to horse." Tosleep, perchance to dream of Tatem and his household cemetery; andthe Professor was heard muttering in his chamber,

"Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body's work's expir'd."

The morning was warm (the elevation of the hotel must be betweentwenty-five hundred and three thousand feet), rainy, mildly rainy;and the travelers had nothing better to do than lounge upon theveranda, read feeble ten-cent fictions, and admire the stems of thewhite birches, glistening in the moisture, and the rhododendron—trees, twenty feet high, which were shaking off their last pinkblossoms, and look down into the valley of the Doe. It is not anexciting landscape, nothing bold or specially wild in it, but restfulwith the monotony of some of the wooded Pennsylvania hills.

Sunday came up smiling, a lovely day, but offering no churchprivileges, for the ordinance of preaching is only occasional in thisregion. The ladies of the hotel have, however, gathered in thevalley a Sunday-school of fifty children from the mountain cabins. Acouple of rainy days, with the thermometer rising to 80 deg.,combined with natural laziness to detain the travelers in thiscottage of ease. They enjoyed this the more because it was on theirconsciences that they should visit Linville Falls, some twenty-fivemiles eastward, long held up before them as the most magnificentfeature of this region, and on no account to be omitted. Hence,naturally, a strong desire to omit it. The Professor takes boldground against these abnormal freaks of nature, and it was nothing tohim that the public would demand that we should see Linville Falls.In the first place, we could find no one who had ever seen them, andwe spent two days in catechizing natives and strangers. The nearestwe came to information was from a workman at the furnace, who wasborn and raised within three miles of the Falls. He had heard ofpeople going there. He had never seen them himself. It was a goodtwenty-five miles there, over the worst road in the State we'd thinkit thirty before we got there. Fifty miles of such travel to see alittle water run down-hill! The travelers reflected. Every countryhas a local waterfall of which it boasts; they had seen a great many.One more would add little to the experience of life. The vaguenessof information, to be sure, lured the travelers to undertake thejourney; but the temptation was resisted—something ought to be leftfor the next explorer—and so Linville remains a thing of theimagination.

Towards evening, July 29, between showers, the Professor and theFriend rode along the narrow-gauge road, down Johnson's Creek, toRoan Station, the point of departure for ascending Roan Mountain. Itwas a ride of an hour and a half over a fair road, fringed withrhododendrons, nearly blossomless; but at a point on the stream thissturdy shrub had formed a long bower where under a table might havebeen set for a temperance picnic, completely overgrown with wildgrape, and still gay with bloom. The habitations on the way aremostly board shanties and mean frame cabins, but the railway isintroducing ambitious architecture here and there in the form ofornamental filigree work on flimsy houses; ornamentation is apt toprecede comfort in our civilization.

Roan Station is on the Doe River (which flows down from RoanMountain), and is marked at 1265 feet above the sea. The visitorwill find here a good hotel, with open wood fires (not ungrateful ina July evening), and obliging people. This railway from JohnsonCity, hanging on the edge of the precipices that wall the gorge ofthe Doe, is counted in this region by the inhabitants one of theengineering wonders of the world. The tourist is urged by all meansto see both it and Linville Falls.

The tourist on horseback, in search of exercise and recreation, isnot probably expected to take stock of moral conditions. But thisMitchell County, although it was a Union county during the war and isRepublican in politics (the Southern reader will perhaps preferanother adverb to "although"), has had the worst possible reputation.The mountains were hiding-places of illicit distilleries; the woodswere full of grog-shanties, where the inflaming fluid was sold as"native brandy," quarrels and neighborhood difficulties werefrequent, and the knife and pistol were used on the slightestprovocation. Fights arose about boundaries and the title to micamines, and with the revenue officers; and force was the arbiter ofall disputes. Within the year four murders were committed in thesparsely settled county. Travel on any of the roads was unsafe. Thetone of morals was what might be expected with such lawlessness. Alady who came up on the road on the 4th of July, when an excursionparty of country people took possession of the cars, witnessed ascene and heard language past belief. Men, women, and children drankfrom whisky bottles that continually circulated, and a wild orgyresulted. Profanity, indecent talk on topics that even the licenseof the sixteenth century would not have tolerated, and freedom ofmanners that even Teniers would have shrunk from putting on canvas,made the journey horrible.

The unrestrained license of whisky and assault and murder hadproduced a reaction a few months previous to our visit. The peoplehad risen up in their indignation and broken up the groggeries. Sofar as we observed temperance prevailed, backed by public-opinion.In our whole ride through the mountain region we saw only one or twoplaces where liquor was sold.

It is called twelve miles from Roan Station to Roan Summit. Thedistance is probably nearer fourteen, and our horses were five hoursin walking it. For six miles the road runs by Doe River, here apretty brook shaded with laurel and rhododendron, and a fewcultivated patches of ground, and infrequent houses. It was a blithemorning, and the horsem*n would have given full indulgence to thespirit of adventure but for the attitude of the Professor towardsmountains. It was not with him a matter of feeling, but ofprinciple, not to ascend them. But here lay Roan, a long, sprawlingridge, lifting itself 6250 feet up into the sky. Impossible to goaround it, and the other side must be reached. The Professor wasobliged to surrender, and surmount a difficulty which he could notphilosophize out of his mind.

From the base of the mountain a road is very well engineered, in easygrades for carriages, to the top; but it was in poor repair andstony. We mounted slowly through splendid forests, specially of finechestnuts and hemlocks. This big timber continues till within a mileand a half of the summit by the winding road, really within a shortdistance of the top. Then there is a narrow belt of scrubbyhardwood, moss-grown, and then large balsams, which crown themountain. As soon as we came out upon the southern slope we foundgreat open spaces, covered with succulent grass, and giving excellentpasturage to cattle. These rich mountain meadows are found on allthe heights of this region. The surface of Roan is uneven, and hasno one culminating peak that commands the country, like the peak ofMount Washington, but several eminences within its range of probablya mile and a half, where various views can be had. Near the highestpoint, sheltered from the north by balsams, stands a house ofentertainment, with a detached cottage, looking across the greatvalley to the Black Mountain range. The surface of the mountain ispebbly, but few rocks crop out; no ledges of any size are seen exceptat a distance from the hotel, on the north side, and the mountainconsequently lacks that savage, unsubduable aspect which the WhiteHills of New Hampshire have. It would, in fact, have been difficultto realize that we were over six thousand feet above the sea, exceptfor that pallor in the sunlight, that atmospheric thinness and wantof color which is an unpleasant characteristic of high altitudes. Tobe sure, there is a certain brilliancy in the high air,—it is apt tobe foggy on Roan,—and objects appear in sharp outline, but I haveoften experienced on such places that feeling of melancholy, whichwould, of course, deepen upon us all if we were sensible that the sunwas gradually withdrawing its power of warmth and light. The blackbalsam is neither a cheerful nor a picturesque tree; the frequentrains and mists on Roan keep the grass and mosses green, but theground damp. Doubtless a high mountain covered with vegetation hasits compensation, but for me the naked granite rocks in sun andshower are more cheerful.

The advantage of Roan is that one can live there and be occupied fora long time in mineral and botanical study. Its mild climate,moisture, and great elevation make it unique in this country for thebotanist. The variety of plants assembled there is very large, andthere are many, we were told, never or rarely found elsewhere in theUnited States. At any rate, the botanists rave about Roan Mountain,and spend weeks at a time on it. We found there ladies who coulddraw for us Grey's lily (then passed), and had kept specimens of therhododendron (not growing elsewhere in this region) which has a deepred, almost purple color.

The hotel (since replaced by a good house) was a rude mountainstructure, with a couple of comfortable rooms for office andsitting-room, in which big wood fires were blazing; for though thethermometer might record 60 deg., as it did when we arrived, fire waswelcome. Sleeping-places partitioned off in the loft above gave theoccupants a feeling of camping out, all the conveniences beingprimitive; and when the wind rose in the night and darkness, and theloose boards rattled and the timbers creaked, the sensation was notunlike that of being at sea. The hotel was satisfactorily kept, andSouthern guests, from as far south as New Orleans, were spending theseason there, and not finding time hang heavy on their hands. Thisstatement is perhaps worth more than pages of description as to thecharacter of Roan, and its contrast to Mount Washington.

The summer weather is exceedingly uncertain on all these NorthCarolina mountains; they are apt at any moment to be enveloped inmist; and it would rather rain on them than not. On the afternoon ofour arrival there was fine air and fair weather, but not a clear sky.The distance was hazy, but the outlines were preserved. We could seeWhite Top, in Virginia; Grandfather Mountain, a long serrated range;the twin towers of Linville; and the entire range of the BlackMountains, rising from the valley, and apparently lower than we were.They get the name of Black from the balsams which cover the summits.

The rain on Roan was of less annoyance by reason of the delightfulcompany assembled at the hotel, which was in a manner at home there,and, thrown upon its own resources, came out uncommonly strong inagreeableness. There was a fiddle in the house, which had some ofthe virtues of that celebrated in the history of old Mark Langston;the Professor was enabled to produce anything desired out of theliterature of the eighteenth century; and what with the repartee ofbright women, big wood fires, reading, and chat, there was no dullday or evening on Roan. I can fancy, however, that it might tire intime, if one were not a botanist, without the resource of women'ssociety. The ladies staying here were probably all accomplishedbotanists, and the writer is indebted to one of them for a list ofplants found on Roan, among which is an interesting weed, cataloguedas Humana, perplexia negligens. The species is, however, commonelsewhere.

The second morning opened, after a night of high wind, with athunder-shower. After it passed, the visitors tried to reach EagleCliff, two miles off, whence an extensive western prospect is had,but were driven back by a tempest, and rain practically occupied theday. Now and then through the parted clouds we got a glimpse of amountain-side, or the gleam of a valley. On the lower mountains, atwide intervals apart, were isolated settlements, commonly a wretchedcabin and a spot of girdled trees. A clergyman here, not long ago,undertook to visit some of these cabins and carry his message tothem. In one wretched hut of logs he found a poor woman, with whom,after conversation on serious subjects, he desired to pray. Sheoffered no objection, and he kneeled down and prayed. The womanheard him, and watched him for some moments with curiosity, in aneffort to ascertain what he was doing, and then said:

"Why, a man did that when he put my girl in a hole."

Towards night the wind hauled round from the south to the northwest,and we went to High Bluff, a point on the north edge, where somerocks are piled up above the evergreens, to get a view of the sunset.In every direction the mountains were clear, and a view was obtainedof the vast horizon and the hills and lowlands of several States—acontinental prospect, scarcely anywhere else equaled for variety ordistance. The grandeur of mountains depends mostly on the state ofthe atmosphere. Grandfather loomed up much more loftily than the daybefore, the giant range of the Blacks asserted itself in griminaccessibility, and we could see, a small pyramid on the southwesthorizon, King's Mountain in South Carolina, estimated to be distantone hundred and fifty miles. To the north Roan falls from this pointabruptly, and we had, like a map below us, the low country all theway into Virginia. The clouds lay like lakes in the valleys of thelower hills, and in every direction were ranges of mountains woodedto the summits. Off to the west by south lay the Great SmokyMountains, disputing eminence with the Blacks.

Magnificent and impressive as the spectacle was, we were obliged tocontrast it unfavorably with that of the White Hills. The rock hereis a sort of sand or pudding stone; there is no limestone or granite.And all the hills are tree-covered. To many this clothing of verdureis most restful and pleasing. I missed the sharp outlines, thedelicate artistic sky lines, sharply defined in uplifted bare granitepeaks and ridges, with the purple and violet color of the northernmountains, and which it seems to me that limestone and graniteformations give. There are none of the great gorges and awfulabysses of the White Mountains, both valleys and mountains here beingmore uniform in outline. There are few precipices and jutting crags,and less is visible of the giant ribs and bones of the planet.

Yet Roan is a noble mountain. A lady from Tennessee asked me if Ihad ever seen anything to compare with it—she thought there could benothing in the world. One has to dodge this sort of question in theSouth occasionally, not to offend a just local pride. It iscertainly one of the most habitable of big mountains. It is roomy ontop, there is space to move about without too great fatigue, and onemight pleasantly spend a season there, if he had agreeable companyand natural tastes.

Getting down from Roan on the south side is not as easy as ascendingon the north; the road for five miles to the foot of the mountain ismerely a river of pebbles, gullied by the heavy rains, down which thehorses picked their way painfully. The travelers endeavored topresent a dashing and cavalier appearance to the group of ladies whowaved good-by from the hotel, as they took their way over the wasteand wind-blown declivities, but it was only a show, for the horseswould neither caracole nor champ the bit (at a dollar a day)down-hill over the slippery stones, and, truth to tell, the wanderersturned with regret from the society of leisure and persiflage to facethe wilderness of Mitchell County.

"How heavy," exclaimed the Professor, pricking Laura Matilda to callher attention sharply to her footing—

"How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek—my weary travel's end
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,
Thus far the miles are measur'd from thy friend!
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider loved not speed, being made from thee:
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side;
For that same groan doth put this in my mind;
My grief lies onward and my joy behind."

This was not spoken to the group who fluttered their farewells, butpoured out to the uncomplaining forest, which rose up in everstatelier—and grander ranks to greet the travelers as theydescended—the silent, vast forest, without note of bird or chip ofsquirrel, only the wind tossing the great branches high overhead inresponse to the sonnet. Is there any region or circ*mstance of lifethat the poet did not forecast and provide for? But what would havebeen his feelings if he could have known that almost three centuriesafter these lines were penned, they would be used to express theemotion of an unsentimental traveler in the primeval forests of theNew World? At any rate, he peopled the New World with the childrenof his imagination. And, thought the Friend, whose attention to hishorse did not permit him to drop into poetry, Shakespeare might havehad a vision of this vast continent, though he did not refer to it,when he exclaimed:

"What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?"

Bakersville, the capital of Mitchell County, is eight miles from thetop of Roan, and the last three miles of the way the horsem*n foundtolerable going, over which the horses could show their paces. Thevalley looked fairly thrifty and bright, and was a pleasingintroduction to Bakersville, a pretty place in the hills, of some sixhundred inhabitants, with two churches, three indifferent hotels, anda court-house. This mountain town, 2550 feet above the sea, is saidto have a decent winter climate, with little snow, favorable tofruit-growing, and, by contrast with New England, encouraging topeople with weak lungs.

This is the center of the mica mining, and of considerable excitementabout minerals. All around, the hills are spotted with "diggings."Most of the mines which yield well show signs of having been workedbefore, a very long time ago, no doubt by the occupants before theIndians. The mica is of excellent quality and easily mined. It isgot out in large irregular-shaped blocks and transported to thefactories, where it is carefully split by hand, and the laminae, ofas large size as can be obtained, are trimmed with shears and tied upin packages for market. The quantity of refuse, broken, and rottenmica piled up about the factories is immense, and all the roads roundabout glisten with its scales. Garnets are often found imbedded inthe laminae, flattened by the extreme pressure to which the mass wassubjected. It is fascinating material, this mica, to handle, and weamused ourselves by experimenting on the thinness to which its scalescould be reduced by splitting. It was at Bakersville that we sawspecimens of mica that resembled the delicate tracery in themoss-agate and had the iridescent sheen of the rainbow colors—the mostdelicate greens, reds, blues, purples, and gold, changing from one tothe other in the reflected light. In the texture were the tracingsof fossil forms of ferns and the most exquisite and delicatevegetable beauty of the coal age. But the magnet shows this traceryto be iron. We were shown also emeralds and "diamonds," picked up inthis region, and there is a mild expectation in all the inhabitantsof great mineral treasure. A singular product of the region is theflexible sandstone. It is a most uncanny stone. A slip of it acouple of feet long and an inch in diameter each way bends in thehand like a half-frozen snake. This conduct of a substance that wehave been taught to regard as inflexible impairs one's confidence inthe stability of nature and affects him as an earthquake does.

This excitement over mica and other minerals has the usual effect ofstarting up business and creating bad blood. Fortunes have beenmade, and lost in riotous living; scores of visionary men have beendisappointed; lawsuits about titles and claims have multiplied, andquarrels ending in murder have been frequent in the past few years.The mica and the illicit whisky have worked together to make thisregion one of lawlessness and violence. The travelers were toldstories of the lack of common morality and decency in the region, butthey made no note of them. And, perhaps fortunately, they were notthere during court week to witness the scenes of license that weredescribed. This court week, which draws hither the whole population,is a sort of Saturnalia. Perhaps the worst of this is already athing of the past; for the outrages a year before had reached such apass that by a common movement the sale of whisky was stopped (notinterdicted, but stopped), and not a drop of liquor could be boughtin Bakersville nor within three miles of it.

The jail at Bakersville is a very simple residence. The mainbuilding is brick, two stories high and about twelve feet square.The walls are so loosely laid up that it seems as if a coloredprisoner might butt his head through. Attached to this is a room forthe jailer. In the lower room is a wooden cage, made of logs boltedtogether and filled with spikes, nine feet by ten feet square andperhaps seven or eight feet high. Between this cage and the wall isa space of eighteen inches in width. It has a narrow door, and anopening through which the food is passed to the prisoners, and aconduit leading out of it. Of course it soon becomes foul, and inwarm weather somewhat warm. A recent prisoner, who wanted moreventilation than the State allowed him, found some means, by a looseplank, I think, to batter a hole in the outer wall opposite thewindow in the cage, and this ragged opening, seeming to the jailer agood sanitary arrangement, remains. Two murderers occupied thisapartment at the time of our visit. During the recent session ofcourt, ten men had been confined in this narrow space, without roomenough for them to lie down together. The cage in the room above, alittle larger, had for tenant a person who was jailed for somemisunderstanding about an account, and who was probably innocent—from the jailer's statement. This box is a wretched residence, monthafter month, while awaiting trial.

We learned on inquiry that it is practically impossible to get a juryto convict of murder in this region, and that these admitted felonswould undoubtedly escape. We even heard that juries were purchasablehere, and that a man's success in court depended upon the length ofhis purse. This is such an unheard-of thing that we refused tocredit it. When the Friend attempted to arouse the indignation ofthe Professor about the barbarity of this jail, the latter defendedit on the ground that as confinement was the only punishment thatmurderers were likely to receive in this region, it was well to maketheir detention disagreeable to them. But the Friend did not likethis wild-beast cage for men, and could only exclaim,

"Oh, murder! what crimes are done in thy name."

If the comrades wished an adventure, they had a small one, moreinteresting to them than to the public, the morning they leftBakersville to ride to Burnsville, which sets itself up as thecapital of Yancey. The way for the first three miles lay down asmall creek and in a valley fairly settled, the houses, a store, anda grist-mill giving evidence of the new enterprise of the region.When Toe River was reached, there was a choice of routes. We mightford the Toe at that point, where the river was wide, but shallow,and the crossing safe, and climb over the mountain by a rough butsightly road, or descend the stream by a better road and ford theriver at a place rather dangerous to those unfamiliar with it. Thedanger attracted us, but we promptly chose the hill road on accountof the views, for we were weary of the limited valley prospects.

The Toe River, even here, where it bears westward, is a veryrespectable stream in size, and not to be trifled with after ashower. It gradually turns northward, and, joining the Nollechucky,becomes part of the Tennessee system. We crossed it by a long,diagonal ford, slipping and sliding about on the round stones, andbegan the ascent of a steep hill. The sun beat down unmercifully,the way was stony, and the horses did not relish the weary climbing.The Professor, who led the way, not for the sake of leadership, butto be the discoverer of laden blackberry bushes, which began to offeroccasional refreshment, discouraged by the inhospitable road andperhaps oppressed by the moral backwardness of things in general,cried out:

"Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,—
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily foresworn,
And gilded honor shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone."

In the midst of a lively discussion of this pessimistic view of theinequalities of life, in which desert and capacity are so often putat disadvantage by birth in beggarly conditions, and brazenassumption raises the dust from its chariot wheels for modest meritto plod along in, the Professor swung himself off his horse to attacka blackberry bush, and the Friend, representing simple truth, anddesirous of getting a wider prospect, urged his horse up the hill.At the top he encountered a stranger, on a sorrel horse, with whom heentered into conversation and extracted all the discouragement theman had as to the road to Burnsville.

Nevertheless, the view opened finely and extensively. There are fewexhilarations comparable to that of riding or walking along a highridge, and the spirits of the traveler rose many degrees above thepoint of restful death, for which the Professor was crying when heencountered the blackberry bushes. Luckily the Friend soon fell inwith a like temptation, and dismounted. He discovered something thatspoiled his appetite for berries. His coat, strapped on behind thesaddle, had worked loose, the pocket was open, and the pocket-bookwas gone. This was serious business. For while the Professor wasthe cashier, and traveled like a Rothschild, with large drafts, theFriend represented the sub-treasury. That very morning, in responseto inquiry as to the sinews of travel, the Friend had displayed,without counting, a roll of bills. These bills had now disappeared,and when the Friend turned back to communicate his loss, in thecharacter of needy nothing not trimm'd in jollity, he had asympathetic listener to the tale of woe.

Going back on such a journey is the woefulest experience, but retraceour steps we must. Perhaps the pocket-book lay in the road not halfa mile back. But not in half a mile, or a mile, was it found.Probably, then, the man on the sorrel horse had picked it up. Butwho was the man on the sorrel horse, and where had he gone? Probablythe coat worked loose in crossing Toe River and the pocket-book hadgone down-stream. The number of probabilities was infinite, and eachmore plausible than the others as it occurred to us. We inquired atevery house we had passed on the way, we questioned every one we met.At length it began to seem improbable that any one would remember ifhe had picked up a pocketbook that morning. This is just the sort ofthing that slips an untrained memory.

At a post office or doctor's shop, or inn for drovers, it might beeither or neither, where several horses were tied to the fence, anda group of men were tilted back in cane chairs on the veranda, weunfolded our misfortune and made particular inquiries for a man on asorrel horse. Yes, such a man, David Thomas by name, had just riddentowards Bakersville. If he had found the pocket-book, we wouldrecover it. He was an honest man. It might, however, fall intohands that would freeze to it.

Upon consultation, it was the general verdict that there were men inthe county who would keep it if they had picked it up. But theassembly manifested the liveliest interest in the incident. Onesuggested Toe River. Another thought it risky to drop a purse on anyroad. But there was a chorus of desire expressed that we should findit, and in this anxiety was exhibited a decided sensitiveness aboutthe honor of Mitchell County. It seemed too bad that a strangershould go away with the impression that it was not safe to leavemoney anywhere in it. We felt very much obliged for this genuinesympathy, and we told them that if a pocket-book were lost in thisway on a Connecticut road, there would be felt no neighborhoodresponsibility for it, and that nobody would take any interest in theincident except the man who lost, and the man who found.

By the time the travelers pulled up at a store in Bakersville theyhad lost all expectation of recovering the missing article, and werediscussing the investment of more money in an advertisem*nt in theweekly newspaper of the capital. The Professor, whose reformsentiments agreed with those of the newspaper, advised it. There wasa group of idlers, mica acquaintances of the morning, andphilosophers in front of the store, and the Friend opened thecolloquy by asking if a man named David Thomas had been seen in town.He was in town, had ridden in within an hour, and his brother, whowas in the group, would go in search of him. The information wasthen given of the loss, and that the rider had met David Thomas justbefore it was discovered, on the mountain beyond the Toe. The newsmade a sensation, and by the time David Thomas appeared a crowd of ahundred had drawn around the horsem*n eager for further developments.Mr. Thomas was the least excited of the group as he took his positionon the sidewalk, conscious of the dignity of the occasion and that hewas about to begin a duel in which both reputation and profit wereconcerned. He recollected meeting the travelers in the morning.

The Friend said, "I discovered that I had lost my purse just aftermeeting you; it may have been dropped in Toe River, but I was toldback here that if David Thomas had picked it up, it was as safe as ifit were in the bank."

"What sort of a pocket-book was it?" asked Mr. Thomas.

"It was of crocodile skin, or what is sold for that, very likely itis an imitation, and about so large indicating the size."

"What had it in it?"

"Various things. Some specimens of mica; some bank checks, somemoney."

"Anything else?"

"Yes, a photograph. And, oh, something that I presume is not inanother pocket-book in North Carolina,—in an envelope, a lock of thehair of George Washington, the Father of his Country." Sensationmixed with incredulity. Washington's hair did seem such an odd partof an outfit for a journey of this kind.

"How much money was in it?"

"That I cannot say, exactly. I happen to remember four twenty-dollarUnited States notes, and a roll of small bills, perhaps somethingover a hundred dollars."

"Is that the pocket-book?" asked David Thomas, slowly pulling theloved and lost out of his trousers pocket.

"It is."

"You'd be willing to take your oath on it?"

"I should be delighted to."

"Well, I guess there ain't so much money in it. You can count it[handing it over]; there hain't been nothing taken out. I can'tread, but my friend here counted it over, and he says there ain't asmuch as that."

Intense interest in the result of the counting. One hundred and tendollars! The Friend selected one of the best engraved of the notes,and appealed to the crowd if they thought that was the square thingto do. They did so think, and David Thomas said it was abundant.And then said the Friend:

"I'm exceedingly grateful to you besides. Washington's hair isgetting scarce, and I did not want to lose these few hairs, gray asthey are. You've done the honest thing, Mr. Thomas, as was expectedof you. You might have kept the whole. But I reckon if there hadbeen five hundred dollars in the book and you had kept it, itwouldn't have done you half as much good as giving it up has done;and your reputation as an honest man is worth a good deal more thanthis pocket-book. [The Professor was delighted with this sentiment,because it reminded him of a Sunday-school.] I shall go away with ahigh opinion of the honesty of Mitchell County."

"Oh, he lives in Yancey," cried two or three voices. At which therewas a great laugh.

"Well, I wondered where he came from." And the Mitchell Countypeople laughed again at their own expense, and the levee broke up.It was exceedingly gratifying, as we spread the news of the recoveredproperty that afternoon at every house on our way to the Toe, to seewhat pleasure it gave. Every man appeared to feel that the honor ofthe region had been on trial—and had stood the test.

The eighteen miles to Burnsville had now to be added to the morningexcursion, but the travelers were in high spirits, feeling the truthof the adage that it is better to have loved and lost, than never tohave lost at all. They decided, on reflection, to join company withthe mail-rider, who was going to Burnsville by the shorter route, andcould pilot them over the dangerous ford of the Toe.

The mail-rider was a lean, sallow, sinewy man, mounted on a sorrysorrel nag, who proved, however, to have blood in her, and to be afast walker and full of endurance. The mail-rider was taciturn, anatural habit for a man who rides alone the year round, over a lonelyroad, and has nothing whatever to think of. He had been in the warsixteen months, in Hugh White's regiment,—reckon you've heerd ofhim?

"Confederate?"

"Which?"

"Was he on the Union or Confederate side?"

"Oh, Union."

"Were you in any engagements?"

"Which?"

"Did you have any fighting?"

"Not reg'lar."

"What did you do?"

"Which?"

"What did you do in Hugh White's regiment?"

"Oh, just cavorted round the mountains."

"You lived on the country?"

"Which?"

"Picked up what you could find, corn, bacon, horses?"

"That's about so. Did n't make much difference which side was round,the country got cleaned out."

"Plunder seems to have been the object?"

"Which?"

"You got a living out of the farmers?"

"You bet."

Our friend and guide seemed to have been a jayhawker and mountainmarauder—on the right side. His attachment to the word "which"prevented any lively flow of conversation, and there seemed to beonly two trains of ideas running in his mind: one was the subject ofhorses and saddles, and the other was the danger of the ford we werecoming to, and he exhibited a good deal of ingenuity in endeavoringto excite our alarm. He returned to the ford from every otherconversational excursion, and after every silence.

"I do' know's there 's any great danger; not if you know the ford.Folks is carried away there. The Toe gits up sudden. There's beenright smart rain lately.

"If you're afraid, you can git set over in a dugout, and I'll takeyour horses across. Mebbe you're used to fording? It's a pretty badford for them as don't know it. But you'll get along if you mindyour eye. There's some rocks you'll have to look out for. Butyou'll be all right if you follow me."

Not being very successful in raising an interest in the dangers ofhis ford, although he could not forego indulging a malicious pleasurein trying to make the strangers uncomfortable, he finally turned hisattention to a trade. "This hoss of mine," he said, "is just thekind of brute-beast you want for this country. Your hosses is tooheavy. How'll you swap for that one o' yourn?" The reiteratedassertion that the horses were not ours, that they were hired, madelittle impression on him. All the way to Burnsville he keptreferring to the subject of a trade. The instinct of "swap" wasstrong in him. When we met a yoke of steers, he turned round andbantered the owner for a trade. Our saddles took his fancy. Theywere of the army pattern, and he allowed that one of them would justsuit him. He rode a small flat English pad, across which was flungthe United States mail pouch, apparently empty. He dwelt upon thefact that his saddle was new and ours were old, and the advantagesthat would accrue to us from the exchange. He did n't care if theyhad been through the war, as they had, for he fancied an army saddle.The Friend answered for himself that the saddle he rode belonged to adistinguished Union general, and had a bullet in it that was putthere by a careless Confederate in the first battle of Bull Run, andthe owner would not part with it for money. But the mail-rider saidhe did n't mind that. He would n't mind swapping his new saddle formy old one and the rubber coat and leggings. Long before we reachedthe ford we thought we would like to swap the guide, even at the,risk of drowning. The ford was passed, in due time, with noinconvenience save that of wet feet, for the stream was breast highto the horses; but being broad and swift and full of sunken rocks andslippery stones, and the crossing tortuous, it is not a ford to becommended. There is a curious delusion that a rider has in crossinga swift broad stream. It is that he is rapidly drifting up-stream,while in fact the tendency of the horse is to go with the current.

The road in the afternoon was not unpicturesque, owing to the streamsand the ever noble forests, but the prospect was always very limited.Agriculturally, the country was mostly undeveloped. The travelersendeavored to get from the rider an estimate of the price of land.Not much sold, he said. "There was one sale of a big piece lastyear; the owner enthorited Big Tom Wilson to sell it, but I d'knowwhat he got for it."

All the way along, the habitations were small log cabins, with oneroom, chinked with mud, and these were far between; and onlyoccasionally thereby a similar log structure, unchinked, laid up likea cob house, that served for a stable. Not much cultivation, exceptnow and then a little patch of poor corn on a steep hillside,occasionally a few apple-trees, and a peach-tree without fruit. Hereand there was a house that had been half finished and then abandoned,or a shanty in which a couple of young married people were justbeginning life. Generally the cabins (confirming the accuracy of thecensus of 1880) swarmed with children, and nearly all the women werethin and sickly.

In the day's ride we did not see a wheeled vehicle, and only now andthen a horse. We met on the road small sleds, drawn by a steer,sometimes by a cow, on which a bag of grist was being hauled to themill, and boys mounted on steers gave us good-evening with as muchpride as if they were bestriding fiery horses.

In a house of the better class, which was a post-house, and where therider and the woman of the house had a long consultation over aletter to be registered, we found the rooms decorated withpatent-medicine pictures, which were often framed in strips of mica, anevidence of culture that was worth noting. Mica was the rage. Everyone with whom we talked, except the rider, had more or less the mineralfever. The impression was general that the mountain region of NorthCarolina was entering upon a career of wonderful mineral development,and the most extravagant expectations were entertained. Mica was theshining object of most "prospecting," but gold was also on the cards.

The country about Burnsville is not only mildly picturesque, but verypleasing. Burnsville, the county-seat of Yancey, at an elevation of2840 feet, is more like a New England village than any hitherto seen.Most of the houses stand about a square, which contains the shabbycourt-house; around it are two small churches, a jail, an invitingtavern with a long veranda, and a couple of stores. On anoverlooking hill is the seminary. Mica mining is the excitingindustry, but it is agriculturally a good country. The tavern hadrecently been enlarged to meet the new demands for entertainment andis a roomy structure, fresh with paint and only partially organized.The travelers were much impressed with the brilliant chambers, thefloors of which were painted in alternate stripes of vivid green andred. The proprietor, a very intelligent and enterprising man, whohad traveled often in the North, was full of projects for thedevelopment of his region and foremost in its enterprises, and hadformed a considerable collection of minerals. Besides, more than anyone else we met, he appreciated the beauty of his country, and tookus to a neighboring hill, where we had a view of Table Mountain tothe east and the nearer giant Blacks. The elevation of Burnsvillegives it a delightful summer climate, the gentle undulations of thecountry are agreeable, the views noble, the air is good, and it isaltogether a "livable" and attractive place. With facilities ofcommunication, it would be a favorite summer resort. Its nearness tothe great mountains (the whole Black range is in Yancey County), itsfine pure air, its opportunity for fishing and hunting, commend it tothose in search of an interesting and restful retreat in summer.

But it should be said that before the country can attract and retaintravelers, its inhabitants must learn something about the preparationof food. If, for instance, the landlord's wife at Burnsville hadtraveled with her husband, her table would probably have been more ona level with his knowledge of the world, and it would have containedsomething that the wayfaring man, though a Northerner, could eat. Wehave been on the point several times in this journey of making theobservation, but have been restrained by a reluctance to touch uponpolitics, that it was no wonder that a people with such a cuisineshould have rebelled. The travelers were in a rebellious mood mostof the time.

The evidences of enterprise in this region were pleasant to see, butthe observers could not but regret, after all, the intrusion of themoney-making spirit, which is certain to destroy much of the presentsimplicity. It is as yet, to a degree, tempered by a philosophicspirit. The other guest of the house was a sedate, long-beardedtraveler for some Philadelphia house, and in the evening he and thelandlord fell into a conversation upon what Socrates calls thedisadvantage of the pursuit of wealth to the exclusion of all nobleobjects, and they let their fancy play about Vanderbilt, who wasagreed to be the richest man in the world, or that ever lived.

"All I want," said the long-bearded man, "is enough to becomfortable. I would n't have Vanderbilt's wealth if he'd give it tome."

"Nor I," said the landlord. "Give me just enough to be comfortable."[The tourist couldn't but note that his ideas of enough to becomfortable had changed a good deal since he had left his little farmand gone into the mica business, and visited New York, and enlargedand painted his tavern.] I should like to know what more Vanderbiltgets out of his money than I get out of mine. I heard tell of ayoung man who went to Vanderbilt to get employment. Vanderbiltfinally offered to give the young man, if he would work for him, justwhat he got himself. The young man jumped at that—he'd be perfectlysatisfied with that pay. And Vanderbilt said that all he got waswhat he could eat and wear, and offered to give the young man hisboard and clothes."

"I declare" said the long-bearded man. "That's just it. Did youever see Vanderbilt's house? Neither did I, but I heard he had avault built in it five feet thick, solid. He put in it two hundredmillions of dollars, in gold. After a year, he opened it and put intwelve millions more, and called that a poor year. They say hishouse has gold shutters to the windows, so I've heard."

"I shouldn't wonder," said the landlord. "I heard he had one door inhis house cost forty thousand dollars. I don't know what it is madeof, unless it's made of gold."

Sunday was a hot and quiet day. The stores were closed and the twochurches also, this not being the Sunday for the itinerant preacher.The jail also showed no sign of life, and when we asked about it, welearned that it was empty, and had been for some time. No liquor issold in the place, nor within at least three miles of it. It is notmuch use to try to run a jail without liquor.

In the course of the morning a couple of stout fellows arrived,leading between them a young man whom they had arrested,—it didn'tappear on any warrant, but they wanted to get him committed andlocked up. The offense charged was carrying a pistol; the boy hadnot used it against anybody, but he had flourished it about andthreatened, and the neighbors wouldn't stand that; they were bound toenforce the law against carrying concealed weapons.

The captors were perfectly good-natured and on friendly enough termswith the young man, who offered no resistance, and seemed notunwilling to go to jail. But a practical difficulty arose. The jailwas locked up, the sheriff had gone away into the country with thekey, and no one could get in. It did not appear that there was anyprovision for boarding the man in jail; no one in fact kept it. Thesheriff was sent for, but was not to be found, and the prisoner andhis captors loafed about the square all day, sitting on the fence,rolling on the grass, all of them sustained by a simple trust thatthe jail would be open some time.

Late in the afternoon we left them there, trying to get into thejail. But we took a personal leaf out of this experience. OurVirginia friends, solicitous for our safety in this wild country, hadurged us not to venture into it without arms—take at least, theyinsisted, a revolver each. And now we had to congratulate ourselvesthat we had not done so. If we had, we should doubtless on thatSunday have been waiting, with the other law-breaker, for admissioninto the Yancey County jail.

III

From Burnsville the next point in our route was Asheville, the mostconsiderable city in western North Carolina, a resort of fashion, andthe capital of Buncombe County. It is distant some forty toforty-five miles, too long a journey for one day over such roads. Theeasier and common route is by the Ford of Big Ivy, eighteen miles, thefirst stopping-place; and that was a long ride for the late afternoonwhen we were in condition to move.

The landlord suggested that we take another route, stay that night onCaney River with Big Tom Wilson, only eight miles from Burnsville,cross Mount Mitchell, and go down the valley of the Swannanoa toAsheville. He represented this route as shorter and infinitely morepicturesque. There was nothing worth seeing on the Big Ivy way.With scarcely a moment's reflection and while the horses weresaddling, we decided to ride to Big Tom Wilson's. I could not at thetime understand, and I cannot now, why the Professor consented. Ishould hardly dare yet confess to my fixed purpose to ascend MountMitchell. It was equally fixed in the Professor's mind not to do it.We had not discussed it much. But it is safe to say that if he hadone well-defined purpose on this trip, it was not to climb Mitchell."Not," as he put it,—

"Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,"

had suggested the possibility that he could do it.

But at the moment the easiest thing to do seemed to be to ride downto Wilson's. When there we could turn across country to the Big Ivy,although, said the landlord, you can ride over Mitchell just as easyas anywhere—a lady rode plump over the peak of it last week, andnever got off her horse. You are not obliged to go; at Big Tom's,you can go any way you please.

Besides, Big Tom himself weighed in the scale more than MountMitchell, and not to see him was to miss one of the mostcharacteristic productions of the country, the typical backwoodsman,hunter, guide. So we rode down Bolling Creek, through a pretty,broken country, crossed the Caney River, and followed it up a fewmiles to Wilson's plantation. There are little intervales along theriver, where hay is cut and corn grown, but the region is not muchcleared, and the stock browse about in the forest. Wilson is theagent of the New York owner of a tract of some thirteen thousandacres of forest, including the greater portion of Mount Mitchell, awilderness well stocked with bears and deer, and full of streamsabounding in trout. It is also the playground of the rattlesnake.With all these attractions Big Tom's life is made lively in watchinggame poachers, and endeavoring to keep out the foraging cattle of thefew neighbors. It is not that the cattle do much injury in theforest, but the looking after them is made a pretense for roamingaround, and the roamers are liable to have to defend themselvesagainst the deer, or their curiosity is excited about the bears, andlately they have taken to exploding powder in the streams to kill thefish.

Big Tom's plantation has an openwork stable, an ill-put-togetherframe house, with two rooms and a kitchen, and a veranda in front, aloft, and a spring-house in the rear. Chickens and other animalshave free run of the premises. Some fish-rods hung in the porch, andhunter's gear depended on hooks in the passage-way to the kitchen.In one room were three beds, in the other two, only one in thekitchen. On the porch was a loom, with a piece of cloth in process.The establishment had the air of taking care of itself. Neither BigTom nor his wife was at home. Sunday seemed to be a visiting day,and the travelers had met many parties on horseback. Mrs. Wilsonwas away for a visit of a day or two. One of the sons, who waslounging on the veranda, was at last induced to put up the horses; avery old woman, who mumbled and glared at the visitors, was found inthe kitchen, but no intelligible response could be got out of her.Presently a bright little girl, the housekeeper in charge, appeared.She said that her paw had gone up to her brother's (her brother wasjust married and lived up the river in the house where Mr. Murchisonstayed when he was here) to see if he could ketch a bear that hadbeen rootin' round in the corn-field the night before. She expectedhim back by sundown—by dark anyway. 'Les he'd gone after the bear,and then you could n't tell when he would come.

It appeared that Big Tom was a thriving man in the matter of family.More boys appeared. Only one was married, but four had "got theirtime." As night approached, and no Wilson, there was a good deal oflively and loud conversation about the stock and the chores, in allof which the girl took a leading and intelligent part, showing awillingness to do her share, but not to have all the work put uponher. It was time to go down the road and hunt up the cows; the mulehad disappeared and must be found before dark; a couple of steershadn't turned up since the day before yesterday, and in the midst ofthe gentle contention as to whose business all this was, there was analarm of cattle in the corn-patch, and the girl started off on a runin that direction. It was due to the executive ability of this smallgirl, after the cows had been milked and the mule chased and the boysproperly stirred up, that we had supper. It was of the oilcloth,iron fork, tin spoon, bacon, hot bread and honey variety,distinguished, however, from all meals we had endured or enjoyedbefore by the introduction of fried eggs (as the breakfast nextmorning was by the presence of chicken), and it was served by theactive maid with right hearty good-will and genuine hospitableintent.

While it was in progress, after nine o'clock, Big Tom arrived, and,with a simple greeting, sat down and attacked the supper and began totell about the bear. There was not much to tell except that hehadn't seen the bear, and that, judged by his tracks and his sloshingaround, he must be a big one. But a trap had been set for him, andhe judged it wouldn't be long before we had some bear meat. Big TomWilson, as he is known all over this part of the State, would notattract attention from his size. He is six feet and two inches tall,very spare and muscular, with sandy hair, long gray beard, and honestblue eyes. He has a reputation for great strength and endurance; aman of native simplicity and mild manners. He had been ratherexpecting us from what Mr. Murchison wrote; he wrote (his son hadread out the letter) that Big Tom was to take good care of us, andanybody that Mr. Murchison sent could have the best he'd got.

Big Tom joined us in our room after supper. This apartment, with twomighty feather-beds, was hung about with all manner of stuffy familyclothes, and had in one end a vast cavern for a fire. The floor wasuneven, and the hearthstones billowy. When the fire was lighted, theeffect of the bright light in the cavern and the heavy shadows in theroom was Rembrandtish. Big Tom sat with us before the fire and toldbear stories. Talk? Why, it was not the least effort. The streamflowed on without a ripple. "Why, the old man," one of the sonsconfided to us next morning, "can begin and talk right over MountMitchell and all the way back, and never make a break." Though BigTom had waged a lifelong warfare with the bears, and taken the hideoff at least a hundred of them, I could not see that he had anyvindictive feeling towards the varmint, but simply an insatiable loveof killing him, and he regarded him in that half-humorous light inwhich the bear always appears to those who study him. As to deer—hecouldn't tell how many of them he had slain. But Big Tom was agentleman: he never killed deer for mere sport. With rattlesnakes,now, it was different. There was the skin of one hanging upon a treeby the route we would take in the morning, a buster, he skinned himyesterday. There was an entire absence, of braggadocio in Big Tom'stalk, but somehow, as he went on, his backwoods figure loomed largerand larger in our imagination, and he seemed strangely familiar. Atlength it came over us where we had met him before. It was inCooper's novels. He was the Leather-Stocking exactly. And yet hewas an original; for he assured us that he had never read theLeather-Stocking Tales. What a figure, I was thinking, he must havemade in the late war! Such a shot, such a splendid physique, suchiron endurance! I almost dreaded to hear his tales of the havoc hehad wrought on the Union army. Yes, he was in the war, he wassixteen months in the Confederate army, this Homeric man. In whatrank? "Oh, I was a fifer!"

But hunting and war did not by any means occupy the whole of BigTom's life. He was also engaged in "lawin'." He had a long-timefeud with a neighbor about a piece of land and alleged trespass, andthey'd been "lawin'" for years, with no definite result; but as atopic of conversation it was as fully illustrative of frontier lifeas the bear-fighting.

Long after we had all gone to bed, we heard Big Tom's continuousvoice, through the thin partition that separated us from the kitchen,going on to his little boy about the bear; every circ*mstance of howhe tracked him, and what corner of the field he entered, and where hewent out, and his probable size and age, and the prospect of hiscoming again; these were the details of real everyday life, andworthy to be dwelt on by the hour. The boy was never tired ofpursuing them. And Big Tom was just a big boy, also, in his delightin it all.

Perhaps it was the fascination of Big Tom, perhaps the representationthat we were already way off the Big Ivy route, and that it would, infact, save time to go over the mountain and we could ride all theway, that made the Professor acquiesce, with no protest worthnoticing, in the preparations that went on, as by a naturalassumption, for going over Mitchell. At any rate, there was an earlybreakfast, luncheon was put up, and by half-past seven we were ridingup the Caney,—a half-cloudy day,—Big Tom swinging along on footahead, talking nineteen to the dozen. There was a delightfulfreshness in the air, the dew-laden bushes, and the smell of theforest. In half an hour we called at the hunting shanty of Mr.Murchison, wrote our names on the wall, according to custom, andregretted that we could not stay for a day in that retreat and trythe speckled trout. Making our way through the low growth and bushesof the valley, we came into a fine open forest, watered by a noisybrook, and after an hour's easy going reached the serious ascent.

From Wilson's to the peak of Mitchell it is seven and a half miles;we made it in five and a half hours. A bridle path was cut yearsago, but it has been entirely neglected. It is badly washed, it isstony, muddy, and great trees have fallen across it which whollyblock the way for horses. At these places long detours werenecessary, on steep hillsides and through gullies, over treacheroussink-holes in the rocks, through quaggy places, heaps of brush, androtten logs. Those who have ever attempted to get horses over suchground will not wonder at the slow progress we made. Before we werehalfway up the ascent, we realized the folly of attempting it onhorseback; but then to go on seemed as easy as to go back. The waywas also exceedingly steep in places, and what with roots, and logs,and slippery rocks and stones, it was a desperate climb for thehorses.

What a magnificent forest! Oaks, chestnuts, Poplars, hemlocks, thecucumber (a species of magnolia, with a pinkish, cucumber-like cone),and all sorts of northern and southern growths meeting here insplendid array. And this gigantic forest, with little diminution insize of trees, continued two thirds of the way up. We marked, as wewent on, the maple, the black walnut, the buckeye, the hickory, thelocust, and the guide pointed out in one section the largestcherry-trees we had ever seen; splendid trunks, each worth a large sumif it could be got to market. After the great trees were left behind,we entered a garden of white birches, and then a plateau of swamp,thick with raspberry bushes, and finally the ridges, densely crowdedwith the funereal black balsam.

Halfway up, Big Tom showed us his favorite, the biggest tree he knew.It was a poplar, or tulip. It stands more like a column than a tree,rising high into the air, with scarcely a perceptible taper, perhapssixty, more likely a hundred, feet before it puts out a limb.

Its girth six feet from the ground is thirty-two feet! I think itmight be called Big Tom. It stood here, of course, a giant, whenColumbus sailed from Spain, and perhaps some sentimental travelerwill attach the name of Columbus to it.

In the woods there was not much sign of animal life, scarcely thenote of a bird, but we noticed as we rode along in the otherwiseprimeval silence a loud and continuous humming overhead, almost likethe sound of the wind in pine tops. It was the humming of bees! Theupper branches were alive with these industrious toilers, and Big Tomwas always on the alert to discover and mark a bee-gum, which hecould visit afterwards. Honey hunting is one of his occupations.Collecting spruce gum is another, and he was continually hacking offwith his hatchet knobs of the translucent secretion. How rich andfragrant are these forests! The rhododendron was still in occasionalbloom' and flowers of brilliant hue gleamed here and there.

The struggle was more severe as we neared the summit, and the footingworse for the horses. Occasionally it was safest to dismount andlead them up slippery ascents; but this was also dangerous, for itwas difficult to keep them from treading on our heels, in theirfrantic flounderings, in the steep, wet, narrow, brier-grown path.At one uncommonly pokerish place, where the wet rock sloped into abog, the rider of Jack thought it prudent to dismount, but Big Tominsisted that Jack would "make it" all right, only give him his head.The rider gave him his head, and the next minute Jack's four heelswere in the air, and he came down on his side in a flash. The riderfortunately extricated his leg without losing it, Jack scrambled outwith a broken shoe, and the two limped along. It was a wonder thatthe horses' legs were not broken a dozen times.

As we approached the top, Big Tom pointed out the direction, a halfmile away, of a small pond, a little mountain tarn, overlooked by aledge of rock, where Professor Mitchell lost his life. Big Tom wasthe guide that found his body. That day, as we sat on the summit, hegave in great detail the story, the general outline of which is wellknown.

The first effort to measure the height of the Black Mountains wasmade in 1835, by Professor Elisha Mitchell, professor of mathematicsand chemistry in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Mr. Mitchell was a native of Connecticut, born in Washington,Litchfield County, in 1793; graduated at Yale, ordained aPresbyterian minister, and was for a time state surveyor; and becamea professor at Chapel Hill in 1818. He first ascertained andpublished the fact that the Black Mountains are the highest land eastof the Rocky Mountains. In 1844 he visited the locality again.Measurements were subsequently made by Professor Guyot and by SenatorClingman. One of the peaks was named for the senator (the one nextin height to Mitchell is described as Clingman on the state map), anda dispute arose as to whether Mitchell had really visited andmeasured the highest peak. Senator Clingman still maintains that hedid not, and that the peak now known as Mitchell is the one thatClingman first described. The estimates of altitudes made by thethree explorers named differed considerably. The height now fixedfor Mount Mitchell is 6711; that of Mount Washington is 6285. Thereare twelve peaks in this range higher than Mount Washington, and ifwe add those in the Great Smoky Mountains which overtop it, there aresome twenty in this State higher than the granite giant of NewHampshire.

In order to verify his statement, Professor Mitchell (then in hissixty-fourth year) made a third ascent in June, 1857. He was alone,and went up from the Swannanoa side. He did not return. No anxietywas felt for two or three days, as he was a good mountaineer, and itwas supposed he had crossed the mountain and made his way out by theCaney River. But when several days passed without tidings of him, asearch party was formed. Big Tom Wilson was with it. They exploredthe mountain in all directions unsuccessfully. At length Big Tomseparated himself from his companions and took a course in accordancewith his notion of that which would be pursued by a man lost in theclouds or the darkness. He soon struck the trail of the wanderer,and, following it, discovered Mitchell's body lying in a pool at thefoot of a rocky precipice some thirty feet high. It was evident thatMitchell, making his way along the ridge in darkness or fog, hadfallen off. It was the ninth (or the eleventh) day of hisdisappearance, but in the pure mountain air the body had suffered nochange. Big Tom brought his companions to the place, and onconsultation it was decided to leave the body undisturbed tillMitchell's friends could be present.

There was some talk of burying him on the mountain, but the friendsdecided otherwise, and the remains, with much difficulty, were gotdown to Asheville and there interred.

Some years afterwards, I believe at the instance of a society ofscientists, it was resolved to transport the body to the summit ofMount Mitchell; for the tragic death of the explorer had foreversettled in the popular mind the name of the mountain. The task wasnot easy. A road had to be cut, over which a sledge could be hauled,and the hardy mountaineers who undertook the removal were three daysin reaching the summit with their burden. The remains wereaccompanied by a considerable concourse, and the last rites on thetop were participated in by a hundred or more scientists andprominent men from different parts of the State. Such a strangecortege had never before broken the silence of this lonelywilderness, nor was ever burial more impressive than this wildinterment above the clouds.

We had been preceded in our climb all the way by a huge bear. Thathe was huge, a lunker, a monstrous old varmint, Big Tom knew by thesize of his tracks; that he was making the ascent that morning aheadof us, Big Tom knew by the freshness of the trail. We might comeupon him at any moment; he might be in the garden; was quite likelyto be found in the raspberry patch. That we did not encounter him Iam convinced was not the fault of Big Tom, but of the bear.

After a struggle of five hours we emerged from the balsams and briersinto a lovely open meadow, of lush clover, timothy, and blue grass.We unsaddled the horses and turned them loose to feed in it. Themeadow sloped up to a belt of balsams and firs, a steep rocky knob,and climbing that on foot we stood upon the summit of Mitchell at oneo'clock. We were none too soon, for already the clouds werepreparing for what appears to be a daily storm at this season.

The summit is a nearly level spot of some thirty or forty feet inextent either way, with a floor of rock and loose stones. Thestunted balsams have been cut away so as to give a view. The sweepof prospect is vast, and we could see the whole horizon except in thedirection of Roan, whose long bulk was enveloped in cloud. Portionsof six States were in sight, we were told, but that is merely ageographical expression. What we saw, wherever we looked, was aninextricable tumble of mountains, without order or leading line ofdirection,—domes, peaks, ridges, endless and countless, everywhere,some in shadow, some tipped with shafts of sunlight, all wooded andgreen or black, and all in more softened contours than our Northernhills, but still wild, lonesome, terrible. Away in the southwest,lifting themselves up in a gleam of the western sky, the Great SmokyMountains loomed like a frowning continental fortress, sullen andremote. With Clingman and Gibbs and Holdback peaks near at hand andapparently of equal height, Mitchell seemed only a part and notseparate from the mighty congregation of giants.

In the center of the stony plot on the summit lie the remains ofMitchell. To dig a grave in the rock was impracticable, but theloose stones were scooped away to the depth of a foot or so, the bodywas deposited, and the stones were replaced over it. It was theoriginal intention to erect a monument, but the enterprise of theprojectors of this royal entombment failed at that point. The graveis surrounded by a low wall of loose stones, to which each visitoradds one, and in the course of ages the cairn may grow to a goodsize. The explorer lies there without name or headstone to mark hisawful resting-place. The mountain is his monument. He is alone withits majesty. He is there in the clouds, in the tempests, where thelightnings play, and thunders leap, amid the elemental tumult, in theoccasional great calm and silence and the pale sunlight. It is themost majestic, the most lonesome grave on earth.

As we sat there, awed a little by this presence, the clouds weregathering from various quarters and drifting towards us. We couldwatch the process of thunder-storms and the manufacture of tempests.I have often noticed on other high mountains how the clouds, forminglike genii released from the earth, mount into the upper air, and inmasses of torn fragments of mist hurry across the sky as to arendezvous of witches. This was a different display. These cloudscame slowly sailing from the distant horizon, like ships on an aerialvoyage. Some were below us, some on our level; they were all inwell-defined, distinct masses, molten silver on deck, below trailingrain, and attended on earth by gigantic shadows that moved with them.This strange fleet of battle-ships, drifted by the shifting currents,was maneuvering for an engagement. One after another, as they cameinto range about our peak of observation, they opened fire. Sharpflashes of lightning darted from one to the other; a jet of flamefrom one leaped across the interval and was buried in the bosom ofits adversary; and at every discharge the boom of great guns echoedthrough the mountains. It was something more than a royal salute tothe tomb of the mortal at our feet, for the masses of cloud were rentin the fray, at every discharge the rain was precipitated inincreasing torrents, and soon the vast hulks were trailing tornfragments and wreaths of mist, like the shot-away shrouds and sailsof ships in battle. Gradually, from this long-range practice withsingle guns and exchange of broadsides, they drifted into closerconflict, rushed together, and we lost sight of the individualcombatants in the general tumult of this aerial war.

We had barely twenty minutes for our observations, when it was timeto go; and had scarcely left the peak when the clouds enveloped it.We hastened down under the threatening sky to the saddles and theluncheon. Just off from the summit, amid the rocks, is a completearbor, or tunnel, of rhododendrons. This cavernous place a Westernwriter has made the scene of a desperate encounter between Big Tomand a catamount, or American panther, which had been caught in a trapand dragged it there, pursued by Wilson. It is an exceedinglygraphic narrative, and is enlivened by the statement that Big Tom hadthe night before drunk up all the whisky of the party which had spentthe night on the summit. Now Big Tom assured us that the whisky partof the story was an invention; he was not (which is true) in thehabit of using it; if he ever did take any, it might be a drop onMitchell; in fact, when he inquired if we had a flask, he remarkedthat a taste of it would do him good then and there. We regrettedthe lack of it in our baggage. But what inclined Big Tom todiscredit the Western writer's story altogether was the fact that henever in his life had had a difficulty with a catamount, and neverhad seen one in these mountains.

Our lunch was eaten in haste. Big Tom refused the chicken he hadprovided for us, and strengthened himself with slices of raw saltpork, which he cut from a hunk with his clasp-knife. We caught andsaddled our horses, who were reluctant to leave the rich feed,enveloped ourselves in waterproofs, and got into the stony path forthe descent just as the torrent came down. It did rain. Itlightened, the thunder crashed, the wind howled and twisted thetreetops. It was as if we were pursued by the avenging spirits ofthe mountains for our intrusion. Such a tempest on this height hadits terrors even for our hardy guide. He preferred to be lower downwhile it was going on. The crash and reverberation of the thunderdid not trouble us so much as the swish of the wet branches in ourfaces and the horrible road, with its mud, tripping roots, loosestones, and slippery rocks. Progress was slow. The horses were inmomentary danger of breaking their legs. In the first hour there wasnot much descent. In the clouds we were passing over Clingman,Gibbs, and Holdback. The rain had ceased, but the mist still shutoff all view, if any had been attainable, and bushes and paths weredeluged. The descent was more uncomfortable than the ascent, and wewere compelled a good deal of the way to lead the jaded horses downthe slippery rocks.

From the peak to the Widow Patten's, where we proposed to pass thenight, is twelve miles, a distance we rode or scrambled down, everystep of the road bad, in five and a half hours. Halfway down we cameout upon a cleared place, a farm, with fruit-trees and a house inruins. Here had been a summer hotel much resorted to before the war,but now abandoned. Above it we turned aside for the view fromElizabeth rock, named from the daughter of the proprietor of thehotel, who often sat here, said Big Tom, before she went out of thisworld. It is a bold rocky ledge, and the view from it, lookingsouth, is unquestionably the finest, the most pleasing andpicture-like, we found in these mountains. In the foreground is thedeep gorge of a branch of the Swannanoa, and opposite is the great wallof the Blue Ridge (the Blue Ridge is the most capricious andinexplicable system) making off to the Blacks. The depth of the gorge,the sweep of the sky line, and the reposeful aspect of the scene to thesunny south made this view both grand and charming. Nature does notalways put the needed dash of poetry into her extensive prospects.

Leaving this clearing and the now neglected spring, where fashionused to slake its thirst, we zigzagged down the mountain-side througha forest of trees growing at every step larger and nobler, and atlength struck a small stream, the North Fork of the Swannanoa, whichled us to the first settlement. Just at night,—it was nearly seveno'clock,—we entered one of the most stately forests I have everseen, and rode for some distance in an alley of rhododendrons thatarched overhead and made a bower. It was like an aisle in a temple;high overhead was the somber, leafy roof, supported by giganticcolumns. Few widows have such an avenue of approach to their domainas the Widow Patten has.

Cheering as this outcome was from the day's struggle and storm, theProfessor seemed sunk in a profound sadness. The auguries which theFriend drew from these signs of civilization of a charming inn and aroyal supper did not lighten the melancholy of his mind. "Alas," hesaid,

"Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?
'T is not enough that through the cloud thou break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak
That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief:
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss."

"Loss of what?" cried the Friend, as he whipped up his haltingsteed.

"Loss of self-respect. I feel humiliated that I consented to climbthis mountain."

"Nonsense! You'll live to thank me for it, as the best thing youever did. It's over and done now, and you've got it to tell yourfriends."

"That's just the trouble. They'll ask me if I went up Mitchell, andI shall have to say I did. My character for consistency is gone.Not that I care much what they think, but my own self-respect isgone. I never believed I would do it. A man ca'nt afford to lowerhimself in his own esteem, at my time of life."

The Widow Patten's was only an advanced settlement in this narrowvalley on the mountain-side, but a little group of buildings, afence, and a gate gave it the air of a place, and it had once beenbetter cared for than it is now. Few travelers pass that way, andthe art of entertaining, if it ever existed, is fallen intodesuetude. We unsaddled at the veranda, and sat down to review ouradventure, make the acquaintance of the family, and hear the laststory from Big Tom. The mountaineer, though wet, was as fresh as adaisy, and fatigue in no wise checked the easy, cheerful flow of histalk. He was evidently a favorite with his neighbors, and notunpleasantly conscious of the extent of his reputation. But heencountered here another social grade. The Widow Patten was highlyconnected. We were not long in discovering that she was anAlexander. She had been a schoolmate of Senator Vance,—"Zeb Vance"he still was to her,—and the senator and his wife had stayed at herhouse. I wish I could say that the supper, for which we waited tillnine o'clock, was as "highly connected" as the landlady. It was,however, a supper that left its memory. We were lodged in a detachedhouse, which we had to ourselves, where a roaring wood fire madeamends for other things lacking. It was necessary to close the doorsto keep out the wandering cows and pigs, and I am bound to say that,notwithstanding the voices of the night, we slept there the sleep ofpeace.

In the morning a genuine surprise awaited us; it seemed impossible,but the breakfast was many degrees worse than the supper; and when wepaid our bill, large for the region, we were consoled by thethought that we paid for the high connection as well as for theaccommodations. This is a regular place of entertainment, and one isat liberty to praise it without violation of delicacy.

The broken shoe of Jack required attention, and we were all themorning hunting a blacksmith, as we rode down the valley. Threeblacksmith's shanties were found, and after long waiting to send forthe operator it turned out in each case that he had no shoes, nonails, no iron to make either of. We made a detour of three miles towhat was represented as a regular shop. The owner had secured theservice of a colored blacksmith for a special job, and was, notinclined to accommodate us; he had no shoes, no nails. But thecolored blacksmith, who appreciated the plight we were in, offered tomake a shoe, and to crib four nails from those he had laid aside fora couple of mules; and after a good deal of delay, we were enabled togo on. The incident shows, as well as anything, the barrenness andshiftlessness of the region. A horseman with whom we rode in themorning gave us a very low estimate of the trustworthiness of theinhabitants. The valley is wild and very pretty all the way down toColonel Long's,—twelve miles,—but the wretched-looking people alongthe way live in a wretched manner.

Just before reaching Colonel Long's we forded the stream (here ofgood size), the bridge having tumbled down, and encountered a partyof picnickers under the trees—signs of civilization; a railwaystation is not far off. Colonel Long's is a typical Southernestablishment: a white house, or rather three houses, all of onestory, built on to each other as beehives are set in a row, allporches and galleries. No one at home but the cook, a rotund,broad-faced woman, with a merry eye, whose very appearance suggestedgood cooking and hospitality; the Missis and the children had gone upto the river fishing; the Colonel was somewhere about the place; alwayswas away when he was wanted. Guess he'd take us in, mighty fine manthe Colonel; and she dispatched a child from a cabin in the rear tohunt him up. The Colonel was a great friend of her folks down toGreenville; they visited here. Law, no, she didn't live here. Wasjust up here spending the summer, for her health. God-forsaken lot ofpeople up here, poor trash. She wouldn't stay here a day, but theColonel was a friend of her folks, the firstest folks in Greenville.Nobody round here she could 'sociate with. She was a Presbyterian, thefolks round here mostly Baptists and Methodists. More style about thePresbyterians. Married? No, she hoped not. She did n't want tosupport no husband. Got 'nuff to do to take care of herself. That herlittle girl? No; she'd only got one child, down to Greenville, justthe prettiest boy ever was, as white as anybody. How did she what?reconcile this state of things with not being married and being aPresbyterian? Sho! she liked to carry some religion along; it wasmighty handy occasionally, mebbe not all the time. Yes, indeed, sheenjoyed her religion.

The Colonel appeared and gave us a most cordial welcome. The fat andmerry cook blustered around and prepared a good dinner, memorable forits "light" bread, the first we had seen since Cranberry Forge. TheColonel is in some sense a public man, having been a mail agent, anda Republican. He showed us photographs and engravings of Northernpoliticians, and had the air of a man who had been in Washington.This was a fine country for any kind of fruit,—apples, grapes,pears; it needed a little Northern enterprise to set things going.The travelers were indebted to the Colonel for a delightful noondayrest, and with regret declined his pressing invitation to pass thenight with him.

The ride down the Swannanoa to Asheville was pleasant, through acultivated region, over a good road. The Swannanoa is, however, aturbid stream. In order to obtain the most impressive view ofAsheville we approached it by the way of Beaucatcher Hill, a sharpelevation a mile west of the town. I suppose the name is acorruption of some descriptive French word, but it has long been afavorite resort of the frequenters of Asheville, and it may betraditional that it is a good place to catch beaux. The summit isoccupied by a handsome private residence, and from this ridge theview, which has the merit of "bursting" upon the traveler as he comesover the hill, is captivating in its extent and variety. The prettytown of Asheville is seen to cover a number of elevations gentlyrising out of the valley, and the valley, a rich agricultural region,well watered and fruitful, is completely inclosed by picturesquehills, some of them rising to the dignity of mountains. The mostconspicuous of these is Mount Pisgah, eighteen miles distant to thesouthwest, a pyramid of the Balsam range, 5757 feet high. MountPisgah, from its shape, is the most attractive mountain in thisregion.

The sunset light was falling upon the splendid panorama and softeningit. The windows of the town gleamed as if on fire. From the steepslope below came the mingled sounds of children shouting, cattledriven home, and all that hum of life that marks a thickly peopledregion preparing for the night. It was the leisure hour of an Augustafternoon, and Asheville was in all its watering-place gayety, as wereined up at the Swannanoa hotel. A band was playing on the balcony.We had reached ice-water, barbers, waiters, civilization.

IV

Ashville, delightful for situation, on small hills that rise abovethe French Broad below its confluence with the Swannanoa, is a sortof fourteenth cousin to Saratoga. It has no springs, but lying 2250feet above the sea and in a lovely valley, mountain girt, it has pureatmosphere and an equable climate; and being both a summer and winterresort, it has acquired a watering-place air. There are Southernerswho declare that it is too hot in summer, and that the completecircuit of mountains shuts out any lively movement of air. But thescenery is so charming and noble, the drives are so varied, the roadsso unusually passable for a Southern country, and the facilities forexcursions so good, that Asheville is a favorite resort.

Architecturally the place is not remarkable, but its surface is soirregular, there are so many acclivities and deep valleys thatimprovements can never obliterate, that it is perforce picturesque.It is interesting also, if not pleasing, in its contrasts—theenterprise of taste and money-making struggling with the laissezfaire of the South. The negro, I suppose, must be regarded as aconservative element; he has not much inclination to change hisclothes or his cabin, and his swarming presence gives a ragged aspectto the new civilization. And to say the truth, the new element ofSouthern smartness lacks the trim thrift the North is familiar with;though the visitor who needs relaxation is not disposed to quarrelwith the easy-going terms on which life is taken.

Asheville, it is needless to say, appeared very gay and stimulatingto the riders from the wilderness. The Professor, who does not evenpretend to patronize Nature, had his revenge as we strolled about thestreets (there is but one of much consideration), immenselyentertained by the picturesque contrasts. There was more life andamusem*nt here in five minutes, he declared, than in five days ofwhat people called scenery—the present rage for scenery, anyway,being only a fashion and a modern invention. The Friend suspectedfrom this penchant for the city that the Professor must have beenbrought up in the country.

There was a kind of predetermined and willful gayety about Ashevillehowever, that is apt to be present in a watering-place, and gave toit the melancholy tone that is always present in gay places. Wefancied that the lively movement in the streets had an air ofunreality. A band of musicians on the balcony of the Swannanoa werescraping and tooting and twanging with a hired air, and on theopposite balcony of the Eagle a rival band echoed and redoubled theperfunctory joyousness. The gayety was contagious: the horses feltit; those that carried light burdens of beauty minced and pranced,the pony in the dog-cart was inclined to dash, the few passingequipages had an air of pleasure; and the people of color, the comelywaitress and the slouching corner-loafer, responded to the animationof the festive strains. In the late afternoon the streets were fullof people, wagons, carriages, horsem*n, all with a holiday air,dashed with African color and humor—the irresponsibility of the mostinsouciant and humorous race in the world, perhaps more comical thanhumorous; a mixture of recent civilization and rudeness, peculiar andamusing; a happy coming together, it seemed, of Southern abandon andNorthern wealth, though the North was little represented at thisseason.

As evening came on, the streets, though wanting gas, were still moreanimated; the shops were open, some very good ones, and the white andblack throng increasing, especially the black, for the negro ispreeminently a night bird. In the hotels dancing was promised—thegerman was announced; on the galleries and in the corridors weregroups of young people, a little loud in manner and voice,—the younggentleman, with his over-elaborate manner to ladies in bowing andhat-lifting, and the blooming girls from the lesser Southern cities,with the slight provincial note, and yet with the frank and engagingcordiality which is as charming as it is characteristic. I do notknow what led the Professor to query if the Southern young women werenot superior to the Southern young men, but he is always askingquestions nobody can answer. At the Swannanoa were half a dozenbridal couples, readily recognizable by the perfect air they had ofhaving been married a long time. How interesting such young voyagersare, and how interesting they are to each other! Columbus neverdiscovered such a large world as they have to find out and possesseach in the other.

Among the attractions of the evening it was difficult to choose.There was a lawn-party advertised at Battery Point (where a finehotel has since been built) and we walked up to that round knob afterdark. It is a hill with a grove, which commands a charming view, andwas fortified during the war. We found it illuminated with Chineselanterns; and little tables set about under the trees, laden withcake and ice-cream, offered a chance to the stranger to contributemoney for the benefit of the Presbyterian Church. I am afraid it wasnot a profitable entertainment, for the men seemed to have businesselsewhere, but the ladies about the tables made charming groups inthe lighted grove. Man is a stupid animal at best, or he would notmake it so difficult for the womenkind to scrape together a littlemoney for charitable purposes. But probably the women like thismethod of raising money better than the direct one.

The evening gayety of the town was well distributed. When wedescended to the Court-House Square, a great crowd had collected,black, white, and yellow, about a high platform, upon which fourglaring torches lighted up the novel scene, and those who could readmight decipher this legend on a standard at the back of the stage:

HAPPY JOHN. ONE OF THE SLAVES OF WADE HAMPTON. COME AND SEE HIM!

Happy John, who occupied the platform with Mary, a "bright" yellowgirl, took the comical view of his race, which was greatly enjoyed byhis audience. His face was blackened to the proper color of thestage-darky, and he wore a flaming suit of calico, the trousers andcoat striped longitudinally according to Punch's idea of "Uncle Sam,"the coat a swallow-tail bound and faced with scarlet, and abell-crowned white hat. This conceit of a colored Yankee seemed totickle all colors in the audience amazingly. Mary, the "bright" woman(this is the universal designation of the light mulatto), was apleasing but bold yellow girl, who wore a natty cap trimmed withscarlet, and had the assured or pert manner of all traveling sawdustperformers.

"Oh, yes," exclaimed a bright woman in the crowd, "Happy John wassure enough one of Wade Hampton's slaves, and he's right good lookingwhen he's not blackened up."

Happy John sustained the promise of his name by spontaneous gayetyand enjoyment of the fleeting moment; he had a glib tongue and aready, rude wit, and talked to his audience with a delicious minglingof impudence, deference, and patronage, commenting upon themgenerally, administering advice and correction in a strain of humorthat kept his hearers in a pleased excitement. He handled the banjoand the guitar alternately, and talked all the time when he was notsinging. Mary (how much harder featured and brazen a woman is insuch a position than a man of the same caliber!) sang, in anuntutored treble, songs of sentiment, often risque, in solo and incompany with John, but with a cold, indifferent air, in contrast tothe rollicking enjoyment of her comrade.

The favorite song, which the crowd compelled her to repeat, touchedlightly the uncertainties of love, expressed in the falsetto patheticrefrain:

"Mary's gone away wid de coon."

All this, with the moon, the soft summer night, the mixed crowd ofdarkies and whites, the stump eloquence of Happy John, the singing,the laughter, the flaring torches, made a wild scene. Theentertainment was quite free, with a "collection" occasionally duringthe performance.

What most impressed us, however, was the turning to account by HappyJohn of the "nigg*r" side of the black man as a means of low comedy,and the enjoyment of it by all the people of color. They appeared toappreciate as highly as anybody the comic element in themselves, andHappy John had emphasized it by deepening his natural color andexaggerating the "nigg*r" peculiarities. I presume none of themanalyzed the nature of his infectious gayety, nor thought of thepathos that lay so close to it, in the fact of his recent slavery,and the distinction of being one of Wade Hampton's nigg*rs, and themelancholy mirth of this light-hearted race's burlesque of itself.

A performance followed which called forth the appreciation of thecrowd more than the wit of Happy John or the faded songs of theyellow girl. John took two sweet-cakes and broke each in fine piecesinto a saucer, and after sugaring and eulogizing the dry messes,called for two small darky volunteers from the audience to come up onthe platform and devour them. He offered a prize of fifteen cents tothe one who should first eat the contents of his dish, not using hishands, and hold up the saucer empty in token of his victory. Thecake was tempting, and the fifteen cents irresistible, and a coupleof boys in ragged shirts and short trousers and a suspender apiececame up shamefacedly to enter for the prize. Each one grasped hissaucer in both hands, and with face over the dish awaited the word"go," which John gave, and started off the contest with a banjoaccompaniment. To pick up with the mouth the dry cake and choke itdown was not so easy as the boys apprehended, but they went into thetask with all their might, gobbling and swallowing as if they lovedcake, occasionally rolling an eye to the saucer of the contestant tosee the relative progress, John strumming, ironically encouraging,and the crowd roaring. As the combat deepened and the contestantsstrangled and stuffed and sputtered, the crowd went into spasms oflaughter. The smallest boy won by a few seconds, holding up hisempty saucer, with mouth stuffed, vigorously trying to swallow, likea chicken with his throat clogged with dry meal, and utterly unableto speak. The impartial John praised the victor in mock heroics, butsaid that the trial was so even that he would divide the prize, tencents to one and five to the other—a stroke of justice that greatlyincreased his popularity. And then he dismissed the assembly, sayingthat he had promised the mayor to do so early, because he did notwish to run an opposition to the political meeting going on in thecourthouse.

The scene in the large court-room was less animated than thatout-doors; a half-dozen tallow dips, hung on the wall in sconces andstuck on the judge's long desk, feebly illuminated the mixed crowd ofblack and white who sat in, and on the backs of, the benches, andcast only a fitful light upon the orator, who paced back and forthand pounded the rail. It was to have been a joint discussion betweenthe two presidential electors running in that district, but, theRepublican being absent, his place was taken by a young man of thetown. The Democratic orator took advantage of the absence of hisopponent to describe the discussion of the night before, and to givea portrait of his adversary. He was represented as a cross between ababoon and a jackass, who would be a natural curiosity for Barnum."I intend," said the orator, "to put him in a cage and exhibit himabout the deestrict." This political hit called forth greatapplause. All his arguments were of this pointed character, and theyappeared to be unanswerable. The orator appeared to prove that therewasn't a respectable man in the opposite party who wasn't anoffice-holder, nor a white man of any kind in it who was not anoffice-holder. If there were any issues or principles in the canvass,he paid his audience the compliment of knowing all about them, for henever alluded to any. In another state of society, such a speech ofpersonalities might have led to subsequent shootings, but no doubt hisadversary would pay him in the same coin when next they met, and theexhibition seemed to be regarded down here as satisfactory andenlightened political canvassing for votes. The speaker who replied,opened his address with a noble tribute to woman (as the first speakerhad ended his), directed to a dozen of that sex who sat in the gloom ofa corner. The young man was moderate in his sarcasm, and attempted tospeak of national issues, but the crowd had small relish for that sortof thing. At eleven o'clock, when we got away from the unsavory room(more than half the candles had gone out), the orator was making slowheadway against the refished blackguardism of the evening. The germanwas still "on" at the hotel when we ascended to our chamber, satisfiedthat Asheville was a lively town.

The sojourner at Asheville can amuse himself very well by walking ordriving to the many picturesque points of view about the town; liverystables abound, and the roads are good. The Beau-catcher Hill isalways attractive; and Connolly's, a private place a couple of milesfrom town, is ideally situated, being on a slight elevation in thevalley, commanding the entire circuit of mountains, for it has theair of repose which is so seldom experienced in the location of adwelling in America whence an extensive prospect is given. Or if thevisitor is disinclined to exertion, he may lounge in the rooms of thehospitable Asheville Club; or he may sit on the sidewalk in front ofthe hotels, and talk with the colonels and judges and generals andex-members of Congress, the talk generally drifting to the newcommercial and industrial life of the South, and only to politics asit affects these; and he will be pleased, if the conversationtakes a reminiscent turn, with the lack of bitterness and thetone of friendliness. The negro problem is commonly discussedphilosophically and without heat, but there is always discovered,underneath, the determination that the negro shall never again getthe legislative upper hand. And the gentleman from South Carolinawho has an upland farm, and is heartily glad slavery is gone, andwants the negro educated, when it comes to ascendency in politics—such as the State once experienced—asks you what you would doyourself. This is not the place to enter upon the politico-socialquestion, but the writer may note one impression gathered from muchfriendly and agreeable conversation. It is that the Southern whitesmisapprehend and make a scarecrow of "social equality." When, duringthe war, it was a question at the North of giving the colored peopleof the Northern States the ballot, the argument against it used to bestated in the form of a question: "Do you want your daughter to marrya negro?" Well, the negro has his political rights in the North, andthere has come no change in the social conditions whatever. Andthere is no doubt that the social conditions would remain exactly asthey are at the South if the negro enjoyed all the civil rights whichthe Constitution tries to give him. The most sensible view of thiswhole question was taken by an intelligent colored man, whose brotherwas formerly a representative in Congress. "Social equality," hesaid in effect, "is a humbug. We do not expect it, we do not wantit. It does not exist among the blacks themselves. We have our ownsocial degrees, and choose our own associates. We simply want theordinary civil rights, under which we can live and make our way inpeace and amity. This is necessary to our self-respect, and if wehave not self-respect, it is not to be supposed that the race canimprove. I'll tell you what I mean. My wife is a modest,intelligent woman, of good manners, and she is always neat, andtastefully dressed. Now, if she goes to take the cars, she is notpermitted to go into a clean car with decent people, but is orderedinto one that is repellent, and is forced into company that anyrefined woman would shrink from. But along comes a flauntinglydressed woman, of known disreputable character, whom my wife would bedisgraced to know, and she takes any place that money will buy. Itis this sort of thing that hurts."

We took the eastern train one evening to Round Nob (Henry's Station),some thirty miles, in order to see the wonderful railway thatdescends, a distance of eight miles, from the summit of Swannanoa Gap(2657 feet elevation) to Round Nob Hotel (1607 feet). The SwannanoaSummit is the dividing line between the waters that flow to theAtlantic and those that go to the Gulf of Mexico. This fact wasimpressed upon us by the inhabitants, who derive a good deal ofcomfort from it. Such divides are always matter of local pride.Unfortunately, perhaps, it was too dark before we reached Henry's toenable us to see the road in all its loops and parallels as itappears on the map, but we gained a better effect. The hotel, whenwe first sighted it, all its windows blazing with light, was at thebottom of a well. Beside it—it was sufficiently light to see that—a column of water sprang straight into the air to the height, as welearned afterwards from two official sources, of 225 and 265 feet;and the information was added that it is the highest fountain in theworld. This stout column, stiff as a flagstaff, with its featheryhead of mist gleaming like silver in the failing light, had the mostcharming effect. We passed out of sight of hotel and fountain, butwere conscious of being—whirled on a circular descending grade, andvery soon they were in sight again. Again and again they disappearedand came to view, now on one side and now on the other, until ourtrain seemed to be bewitched, making frantic efforts by dodgings andturnings, now through tunnels and now over high pieces of trestle, toescape the inevitable attraction that was gravitating it down to thehospitable lights at the bottom of the well. When we climbed back upthe road in the morning, we had an opportunity to see the marvelousengineering, but there is little else to see, the view being nearlyalways very limited.

The hotel at the bottom of the ravine, on the side of Round Nob,offers little in the way of prospect, but it is a picturesque place,and we could understand why it was full of visitors when we came tothe table. It was probably the best-kept house of entertainment inthe State, and being in the midst of the Black Hills, it offers goodchances for fishing and mountain climbing.

In the morning the fountain, which is, of course, artificial, refusedto play, the rain in the night having washed in debris which cloggedthe conduit. But it soon freed itself and sent up for a long time,like a sulky geyser, mud and foul water. When it got freedom andtolerable clearness, we noted that the water went up in pulsations,which were marked at short distances by the water falling off, givingthe column the appearance of a spine. The summit, always beating theair in efforts to rise higher, fell over in a veil of mist.

There are certain excursions that the sojourner at Asheville mustmake. He must ride forty-five miles south through Henderson andTransylvania to Caesar's Head, on the South Carolina border, wherethe mountain system abruptly breaks down into the vast southernplain; where the observer, standing on the edge of the precipice, hasbehind him and before him the greatest contrast that nature canoffer. He must also take the rail to Waynesville, and visit themuch-frequented White Sulphur Springs, among the Balsam Mountains,and penetrate the Great Smoky range by way of Quallatown, and makethe acquaintance of the remnant of Cherokee Indians living on thenorth slope of Cheoah Mountain. The Professor could have made it amatter of personal merit that he escaped all these encounters withwild and picturesque nature, if his horse had not been too disabledfor such long jaunts. It is only necessary, however, to explain tothe public that the travelers are not gormandizers of scenery, andwere willing to leave some portions of the State to the curiosity offuture excursionists.

But so much was said about Hickory Nut Gap that a visit to it couldnot be evaded. The Gap is about twenty-four miles southeast ofAsheville. In the opinion of a well-informed colonel, who urged usto make the trip, it is the finest piece of scenery it this region.We were brought up on the precept "get the best," and it was withhigh anticipations that we set out about eleven o'clock one warm,foggy morning. We followed a very good road through a broken,pleasant country, gradually growing wilder and less cultivated.There was heavy rain most of the day on the hills, and occasionally ashower swept across our path. The conspicuous object toward which wetraveled all the morning was a shapely conical hill at the beginningof the Gap.

At three o'clock we stopped at the Widow Sherrill's for dinner. Herhouse, only about a mile from the summit, is most picturesquelysituated on a rough slope, giving a wide valley and mountain view.The house is old rambling, many-roomed, with wide galleries on twosides. If one wanted a retired retreat for a few days, with good airand fair entertainment, this could be commended. It is an excellentfruit region; apples especially are sound and of good flavor. Thatmay be said of all this part of the State. The climate is adapted toapples, as the hilly part of New England is. I fancy the fruitripens slowly, as it does in New England, and is not subject to quickdecay like much of that grown in the West. But the grape also can begrown in all this mountain region. Nothing but lack of enterpriseprevents any farmer from enjoying abundance of fruit. The industrycarried on at the moment at the Widow Sherrill's was the artificialdrying of apples for the market. The apples are pared, cored, andsliced in spirals, by machinery, and dried on tin sheets in apatented machine. The industry appears to be a profitable onehereabouts, and is about the only one that calls in the aid ofinvention.

While our dinner was preparing, we studied the well-known pictures of"Jane" and "Eliza," the photographs of Confederate boys, who hadnever returned from the war, and the relations, whom the travelingphotographers always like to pillory in melancholy couples, and somestray volumes of the Sunday-school Union. Madame Sherrill, whocarries on the farm since the death of her husband, is a woman ofstrong and liberal mind, who informed us that she got small comfortin the churches in the neighborhood, and gave us, in fact, adiscouraging account of the unvital piety of the region.

The descent from the summit of the Gap to Judge Logan's, nine miles,is rapid, and the road is wild and occasionally picturesque,following the Broad River, a small stream when we first overtook it,but roaring, rocky, and muddy, owing to frequent rains, and now andthen tumbling down in rapids. The noisy stream made the rideanimated, and an occasional cabin, a poor farmhouse, a mill, aschoolhouse, a store with an assemblage of lean horses tied to thehitching rails, gave the Professor opportunity for remarks upon thevalue of life under such circ*mstances.

The valley which we followed down probably owes its celebrity to theuncommon phenomena of occasional naked rocks and precipices. Theinclosing mountains are from 3000 to 4000 feet high, and generallywooded. I do not think that the ravine would be famous in a countrywhere exposed ledges and buttressing walls of rock are common. It isonly by comparison with the local scenery that this is remarkable.About a mile above judge Logan's we caught sight, through the trees,of the famous waterfall. From the top of the high ridge on theright, a nearly perpendicular cascade pours over the ledge of rocksand is lost in the forest. We could see nearly the whole of it, at agreat height above us, on the opposite side of the river, and itwould require an hour's stiff climb to reach its foot. From where weviewed it, it seemed a slender and not very important, but certainlya very beautiful cascade, a band of silver in the mass of greenfoliage. The fall is said to be 1400 feet. Our colonel insists thatit is a thousand. It may be, but the valley where we stood is atleast at an elevation of 1300 feet; we could not believe that theridge over which the water pours is much higher than 3000 feet, andthe length of the fall certainly did not appear to be a quarter ofthe height of the mountain from our point of observation. But we hadno desire to belittle this pretty cascade, especially when we foundthat Judge Logan would regard a foot abated from the 1400 as apersonal grievance. Mr. Logan once performed the functions of localjudge, a Republican appointment, and he sits around the premises nowin the enjoyment of that past dignity and of the fact that his wifeis postmistress. His house of entertainment is at the bottom of thevalley, a place shut in, warm, damp, and not inviting to a long stay,although the region boasts a good many natural curiosities.

It was here that we encountered again the political current, out ofwhich we had been for a month. The Judge himself was reticent, asbecame a public man, but he had conspicuously posted up a monsterprospectus, sent out from Augusta, of a campaign life of Blaine andLogan, in which the Professor read, with shaking knees, thissentence: "Sure to be the greatest and hottest [campaign and civilbattle] ever known in this world. The thunder of the supremestruggle and its reverberations will shake the continents for months,and will be felt from Pole to Pole."

For this and other reasons this seemed a risky place to be in. Therewas something sinister about the murky atmosphere, and a suspicion ofmosquitoes besides. Had there not been other travelers staying here,we should have felt still more uneasy. The house faced BaldMountain, 4000 feet high, a hill that had a very bad reputation someyears ago, and was visited by newspaper reporters. This is, in fact,the famous Shaking Mountain. For a long time it had a habit oftrembling, as if in an earthquake spasm, but with a shivering motionvery different from that produced by an earthquake. The only goodthat came of it was that it frightened all the "moonshiners," andcaused them to join the church. It is not reported what became ofthe church afterwards. It is believed now that the trembling wascaused by the cracking of a great ledge on the mountain, which slowlyparted asunder. Bald Mountain is the scene of Mrs. Burnett'sdelightful story of "Louisiana," and of the play of "Esmeralda."A rock is pointed out toward the summit, which the beholder is askedto see resembles a hut, and which is called "Esmeralda's Cottage."But this attractive maiden has departed, and we did not discover anywoman in the region who remotely answers to her description.

In the morning we rode a mile and a half through the woods andfollowed up a small stream to see the celebrated pools, one of whichthe Judge said was two hundred feet deep, and another bottomless.These pools, not round, but on one side circular excavations, sometwenty feet across, worn in the rock by pebbles, are very goodspecimens, and perhaps remarkable specimens, of "pot-holes." Theyare, however, regarded here as one of the wonders of the world. Onthe way to them we saw beautiful wild trumpet-creepers in blossom,festooning the trees.

The stream that originates in Hickory Nut Gap is the westernmostbranch of several forks of the Broad, which unite to the southeast inRutherford County, flow to Columbia, and reach the Atlantic throughthe channel of the Santee. It is not to be confounded with theFrench Broad, which originates among the hills of Transylvania, runsnorthward past Asheville, and finds its way to the Tennessee throughthe Warm Springs Gap in the Bald Mountains. As the French claimedownership of all the affluents of the Mississippi, this latter wascalled the French Broad.

It was a great relief the next morning, on our return, to rise out ofthe lifeless atmosphere of the Gap into the invigorating air at theWidow Sherrill's, whose country-seat is three hundred feet higherthan Asheville. It was a day of heavy showers, and apparently ofleisure to the scattered population; at every store and mill was acongregation of loafers, who had hitched their scrawny horses andmules to the fences, and had the professional air of the idler andgossip the world over. The vehicles met on the road were a varietyof the prairie schooner, long wagons with a top of hoops over whichis stretched a cotton cloth. The wagons are without seats, and thecanvas is too low to admit of sitting upright, if there were. Theoccupants crawl in at either end, sit or lie on the bottom of thewagon, and jolt along in shiftless uncomfortableness.

Riding down the French Broad was one of the original objects of ourjourney. Travelers with the same intention may be warned that theroute on horseback is impracticable. The distance to the WarmSprings is thirty-seven miles; to Marshall, more than halfway, theroad is clear, as it runs on the opposite side of the river from therailway, and the valley is something more than river and rails. Butbelow Marshall the valley contracts, and the rails are laid a goodportion of the way in the old stage road. One can walk the track,but to ride a horse over its sleepers and culverts and occasionalbridges, and dodge the trains, is neither safe nor agreeable. Wesent our horses round—the messenger taking the risk of leading them,between trains, over the last six or eight miles,—and took thetrain.

The railway, after crossing a mile or two of meadows, hugs the riverall the way. The scenery is the reverse of bold. The hills are low,monotonous in form, and the stream winds through them, with many apretty turn and "reach," with scarcely a ribbon of room to spare oneither side. The river is shallow, rapid, stony, muddy, full ofrocks, with an occasional little island covered with low bushes. Therock seems to be a clay formation, rotten and colored. As weapproach Warm Springs the scenery becomes a little bolder, and weemerge into the open space about the Springs through a narrowerdefile, guarded by rocks that are really picturesque in color andsplintered decay, one of them being known, of course, as the "Lover'sLeap," a name common in every part of the modern or ancient worldwhere there is a settlement near a precipice, with always the samelegend attached to it.

There is a little village at Warm Springs, but the hotel—sinceburned and rebuilt—(which may be briefly described as a palatialshanty) stands by itself close to the river, which is here a deep,rapid, turbid stream. A bridge once connected it with the road onthe opposite bank, but it was carried away three or four years ago,and its ragged butments stand as a monument of procrastination, whilethe stream is crossed by means of a flatboat and a cable. In frontof the hotel, on the slight slope to the river, is a meager grove oflocusts. The famous spring, close to-the stream, is marked only by arough box of wood and an iron pipe, and the water, which has atemperature of about one hundred degrees, runs to a shabby bath-housebelow, in which is a pool for bathing. The bath is very agreeable,the tepid water being singularly soft and pleasant. It has aslightly sulphurous taste. Its good effects are much certified. Thegrounds, which might be very pretty with care, are ill-kept andslatternly, strewn with debris, as if everything was left to theeasy-going nature of the servants. The main house is of brick, withverandas and galleries all round, and a colonnade of thirteen hugebrick and stucco columns, in honor of the thirteen States,—a relicof post-Revolutionary times, when the house was the resort ofSouthern fashion and romance. These columns have stood through onefire, and perhaps the recent one, which swept away the rest of thestructure. The house is extended in a long wooden edifice, withgalleries and outside stairs, the whole front being nearly sevenhundred feet long. In a rear building is a vast, barrack-likedining-room, with a noble ball-room above, for dancing is theimportant occupation of visitors.

The situation is very pretty, and the establishment has apicturesqueness of its own. Even the ugly little brick structurenear the bath-house imposes upon one as Wade Hampton's cottage. Nodoubt we liked the place better than if it had been smart, andenjoyed the neglige condition, and the easy terms on which life istaken there. There was a sense of abundance in the sight of fowlstiptoeing about the verandas, and to meet a chicken in the parlor wasa sort of guarantee that we should meet him later on in thedining-room. There was nothing incongruous in the presence of pigs,turkeys, and chickens on the grounds; they went along with thegood-natured negro-service and the general hospitality; and we had amental rest in the thought that all the gates would have been off thehinges, if there had been any gates. The guests were very welltreated indeed, and were put under no sort of restraint bydiscipline. The long colonnade made an admirable promenade andlounging-place and point of observation. It was interesting to watchthe groups under the locusts, to see the management of the ferry, themounting and dismounting of the riding-parties, and to study thecolors on the steep hill opposite, halfway up which was a neatcottage and flower-garden. The type of people was very pleasantlySouthern. Colonels and politicians stand in groups and tell stories,which are followed by explosions of laughter; retire occasionallyinto the saloon, and come forth reminded of more stories, and alllift their hats elaborately and suspend the narratives when a ladygoes past. A company of soldiers from Richmond had pitched its tentsnear the hotel, and in the evening the ball-room was enlivened withuniforms. Among the graceful dancers—and every one danced well, andwith spirit was pointed out the young widow of a son of AndrewJohnson, whose pretty cottage overlooks the village. But theProfessor, to whom this information was communicated, doubted whetherhere it was not a greater distinction to be the daughter of the ownerof this region than to be connected with a President of the UnitedStates.

A certain air of romance and tradition hangs about the French Broadand the Warm Springs, which the visitor must possess himself of inorder to appreciate either. This was the great highway of trade andtravel. At certain seasons there was an almost continuous processionof herds of cattle and sheep passing to the Eastern markets, and oftrains of big wagons wending their way to the inviting lands wateredby the Tennessee. Here came in the summer-time the Southern plantersin coach and four, with a great retinue of household servants, andkept up for months that unique social life, a mixture of courtlyceremony and entire freedom, the civilization which had thedrawing-room at one end and the negro-quarters at the other,—which haspassed away. It was a continuation into our own restless era of themanners and the literature of George the Third, with the accompanyinghumor and happy-go-lucky decadence of the negro slaves. On our waydown we saw on the river-bank, under the trees, the old hostelry,Alexander's, still in decay,—an attractive tavern, that was formerlyone of the notable stopping-places on the river. Master, and finelady, and obsequious, larking darky, and lumbering coach, and throngof pompous and gay life, have all disappeared. There was no room inthis valley for the old institutions and for the iron track.

"When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
We, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise."

This perverted use of noble verse was all the response the Friend gotin his attempt to drop into the sentimental vein over the past of theFrench Broad.

The reader must not think there is no enterprise in this sedative andidle resort. The conceited Yankee has to learn that it is not healone who can be accused of the thrift of craft. There is at theWarm Springs a thriving mill for crushing and pulverizing barites,known vulgarly as heavy-spar. It is the weight of this heaviest ofminerals, and not its lovely crystals, that gives it value. The rockis crushed, washed, sorted out by hand, to remove the foreignsubstances, then ground and subjected to acids, and at the end of theprocess it is as white and fine as the best bolted flour. This heavyadulterant is shipped to the North in large quantities,—the managersaid he had recently an order for a hundred thousand dollars' worthof it. What is the use of this powder? Well, it is of use to thedealer who sells white lead for paint, to increase the weight of thelead, and it is the belief hereabouts that it is mixed with powderedsugar. The industry is profitable to those engaged in it.

It was impossible to get much information about our route intoTennessee, except that we should go by Paint Rock, and cross PaintMountain. Late one morning,—a late start is inevitable here,—accompanied by a cavalcade, we crossed the river by the rope ferry,and trotted down the pretty road, elevated above the stream andtree-shaded, offering always charming glimpses of swift water andoverhanging foliage (the railway obligingly taking the other side ofthe river), to Paint Rock,—six miles. This Paint Rock is a nakedprecipice by the roadside, perhaps sixty feet high, which has a largelocal reputation. It is said that its face shows painting done bythe Indians, and hieroglyphics which nobody can read. On this bold,crumbling cliff, innumerable visitors have written their names. Westared at it a good while to discover the paint and hieroglyphics,but could see nothing except iron stains. Round the corner is afarmhouse and place of call for visitors, a neat cottage, with adisplay of shells and minerals and flower-pots; and here we turnednorth crossed the little stream called Paint River, the only clearwater we had seen in a month, passed into the State of Tennessee, andby a gentle ascent climbed Paint Mountain. The open forest road,with the murmur of the stream below, was delightfully exhilarating,and as we rose the prospect opened,—the lovely valley below, BaldMountains behind us, and the Butt Mountains rising as we came overthe ridge.

Nobody on the way, none of the frowzy women or unintelligent men,knew anything of the route, or could give us any information of thecountry beyond. But as we descended in Tennessee the country and thefarms decidedly improved,—apple-trees and a grapevine now and then.

A ride of eight miles brought us to Waddle's, hungry and disposed toreceive hospitality. We passed by an old farm building to a newtwo-storied, gayly painted house on a hill. We were deceived byappearances. The new house, with a new couple in it, had nothing tooffer us except some buttermilk. Why should anybody be obliged tofeed roving strangers? As to our horses, the young woman with a babyin her arms declared,

"We've got nothing for stock but roughness; perhaps you can getsomething at the other house."

"Roughness," we found out at the other house, meant hay in thisregion. We procured for the horses a light meal of green oats, andfor our own dinner we drank at the brook and the Professor produced afew sonnets. On this sustaining repast we fared on nearly twelvemiles farther, through a rolling, good farming country, offeringlittle for comment, in search of a night's lodging with one of thebrothers Snap. But one brother declined our company on the plea thathis wife was sick, and the other because his wife lived inGreenville, and we found ourselves as dusk came on without shelter ina tavernless land. Between the two refusals we enjoyed the mostpicturesque bit of scenery of the day, at the crossing of Camp Creek,a swift little stream, that swirled round under the ledge of boldrocks before the ford. This we learned was a favorite camp-meetingground. Mary was calling the cattle home at the farm of the secondSnap. It was a very peaceful scene of rural life, and we wereinclined to tarry, but Mary, instead of calling us home with thecattle, advised us to ride on to Alexander's before it got dark.

It is proper to say that at Alexander's we began to see what thispleasant and fruitful country might be, and will be, with thrift andintelligent farming. Mr. Alexander is a well-to-do farmer, withplenty of cattle and good barns (always an evidence of prosperity),who owes his success to industry and an open mind to new ideas. Hewas a Unionist during the war, and is a Democrat now, though hiscounty (Greene) has been Republican. We had been riding all theafternoon through good land, and encountering a better class offarmers. Peach-trees abounded (though this was an off year forfruit), and apples and grapes throve. It is a land of honey and ofmilk. The persimmon flourishes; and, sign of abundance generally, webelieve, great flocks of turkey-buzzards—majestic floaters in thehigh air—hovered about. This country was ravaged during the war byUnionists and Confederates alternately, the impartial patriots asthey passed scooping in corn, bacon, and good horses, leaving thefarmers little to live on. Mr. Alexander's farm cost him fortydollars an acre, and yields good crops of wheat and maize. This wasthe first house on our journey where at breakfast we had grace beforemeat, though there had been many tables that needed it more. Fromthe door the noble range of the Big Bald is in sight and not distant;and our host said he had a shanty on it, to which he was accustomedto go with his family for a month or six weeks in the summer andenjoy a real primitive woods life.

Refreshed by this little touch of civilization, and with horses wellfed, we rode on next morning towards Jonesboro, over a rolling,rather unpicturesque country, but ennobled by the Big Bald and Buttranges, which we had on our right all day. At noon we crossed theNollechucky River at a ford where the water was up to the saddlegirth, broad, rapid, muddy, and with a treacherous stony bottom, andcame to the little hamlet of Boylesville, with a flour-mill, and ahospitable old-fashioned house, where we found shelter from the heatof the hot day, and where the daughters of the house, especially onepretty girl in a short skirt and jaunty cap, contradicted thecurrently received notion that this world is a weary pilgrimage. Thebig parlor, with its photographs and stereoscope, and bits of shelland mineral, a piano and a melodeon, and a coveted old sideboard ofmahogany, recalled rural New England. Perhaps these refinements aredue to the Washington College (a school for both sexes), which isnear. We noted at the tables in this region a singular use of theword fruit. When we were asked, Will you have some of the fruit?and said Yes, we always got applesauce.

Ten miles more in the late afternoon brought us to Jonesboro, theoldest town in the State, a pretty place, with a flavor of antiquity,set picturesquely on hills, with the great mountains in sight.People from further South find this an agreeable summering place, anda fair hotel, with odd galleries in front and rear, did not wantcompany. The Warren Institute for negroes has been flourishing hereever since the war.

A ride of twenty miles next day carried us to Union. Before noon weforded the Watauga, a stream not so large as the Nollechucky, andwere entertained at the big brick house of Mr. Devault, a prosperousand hospitable farmer. This is a rich country. We had met in themorning wagon-loads of watermelons and muskmelons, on the way toJonesboro, and Mr. Devault set abundance of these refreshing fruitsbefore us as we lounged on the porch before dinner.

It was here that we made the acquaintance of a colored woman, awithered, bent old pensioner of the house, whose industry (sheexcelled any modern patent apple-parer) was unabated, although shewas by her own confession (a woman, we believe, never owns her agetill she has passed this point) and the testimony of others a hundredyears old. But age had not impaired the brightness of her eyes, northe limberness of her tongue, nor her shrewd good sense. She talkedfreely about the want of decency and morality in the young coloredfolks of the present day. It was n't so when she was a girl. Long,long time ago, she and her husband had been sold at sheriff's saleand separated, and she never had another husband. Not that sheblamed her master so much he could n't help it; he got in debt. Andshe expounded her philosophy about the rich, and the danger they arein. The great trouble is that when a person is rich, he can borrowmoney so easy, and he keeps drawin' it out of the bank and pilin' upthe debt, like rails on top of one another, till it needs a ladder toget on to the pile, and then it all comes down in a heap, and the manhas to begin on the bottom rail again. If she'd to live her lifeover again, she'd lay up money; never cared much about it till now.The thrifty, shrewd old woman still walked about a good deal, andkept her eye on the neighborhood. Going out that morning she hadseen some fence up the road that needed mending, and she told Mr.Devault that she didn't like such shiftlessness; she didn't know aswhite folks was much better than colored folks. Slavery? Yes,slavery was pretty bad—she had seen five hundred nigg*rs inhandcuffs, all together in a field, sold to be sent South.

About six miles from here is a beech grove of historical interest,worth a visit if we could have spared the time. In it is the largebeech (six and a half feet around six feet from the ground) on whichDaniel Boone shot a bear, when he was a rover in this region. Hehimself cut an inscription on the tree recording his prowess, and itis still distinctly legible:

D. BOONE CILT A BAR ON THIS TREE, 1760.

This tree is a place of pilgrimage, and names of people from allparts of the country are cut on it, until there is scarcely room forany more records of such devotion. The grove is ancient looking, thetrees are gnarled and moss-grown. Hundreds of people go there, andthe trees are carved all over with their immortal names.

A pleasant ride over a rich rolling country, with an occasional stripof forest, brought us to Union in the evening, with no otheradventure than the meeting of a steam threshing-machine in the road,with steam up, clattering along. The devil himself could not inventany machine calculated to act on the nerves of a horse like this.Jack took one look and then dashed into the woods, scraping off hisrider's hat but did not succeed in getting rid of his burden orknocking down any trees.

Union, on the railway, is the forlornest of little villages, withsome three hundred inhabitants and a forlorn hotel, kept by anex-stage-driver. The village, which lies on the Holston, has nodrinking-water in it nor enterprise enough to bring it in; not a wellnor a spring in its limits; and for drinking-water everybody crossesthe river to a spring on the other side. A considerable part of thelabor of the town is fetching water over the bridge. On a hilloverlooking the village is a big, pretentious brick house, with atower, the furniture of which is an object of wonder to those whohave seen it. It belonged to the late Mrs. Stover, daughter ofAndrew Johnson. The whole family of the ex-President have departedthis world, but his memory is still green in this region, where hewas almost worshiped—so the people say in speaking of him.

Forlorn as was the hotel at Union, the landlord's daughters werebeginning to draw the lines in rural refinement. One of them hadbeen at school in Abingdon. Another, a mature young lady of fifteen,who waited on the table, in the leisure after supper asked the Friendfor a light for her cigarette, which she had deftly rolled.

"Why do you smoke?"

"So as I shan't get into the habit of dipping. Do you think dippingis nice?"

The traveler was compelled to say that he did not, though he had seena good deal of it wherever he had been.

"All the girls dips round here. But me and my sisters rather smokethan get in a habit of dipping."

To the observation that Union seemed to be a dull place:

"Well, there's gay times here in the winter—dancing. Like to dance?Well, I should say! Last winter I went over to Blountsville to adance in the court-house; there was a trial between Union andBlountsville for the best dancing. You bet I brought back the cakeand the blue ribbon."

The country was becoming too sophisticated, and the travelershastened to the end of their journey. The next morning Bristol, atfirst over a hilly country with magnificent oak-trees,—happily notgirdled, as these stately monarchs were often seen along the roads inNorth Carolina,—and then up Beaver Creek, a turbid stream, turningsome mills. When a closed woolen factory was pointed out to theProfessor (who was still traveling for Reform), as the result of theagitation in Congress, he said, Yes, the effect of agitation wasevident in all the decayed dams and ancient abandoned mills we hadseen in the past month.

Bristol is mainly one long street, with some good stores, butgenerally shabby, and on this hot morning sleepy. One side of thestreet is in Tennessee, the other in Virginia. How handy forfighting this would have been in the war, if Tennessee had gone outand Virginia stayed in. At the hotel—may a kind Providence wake itup to its responsibilities—we had the pleasure of reading one ofthose facetious handbills which the great railway companies of theWest scatter about, the serious humor of which is so pleasing to ourEnglish friends. This one was issued by the accredited agents of theOhio and Mississippi Railway, and dated April 1, 1984. One sentencewill suffice:

"Allow us to thank our old traveling friends for the many favors inour line, and if you are going on your bridal trip, or to see yourgirl out West, drop in at the general office of the Ohio andMississippi Railway and we will fix you up in Queen Anne style.Passengers for Dakota, Montana, or the Northwest will have anovercoat and sealskin cap thrown in with all tickets sold on or afterthe above date."

The great republic cannot yet take itself seriously. Let us hope thehumors of it will last another generation. Meditating on this, wehailed at sundown the spires of Abingdon, and regretted the end of ajourney that seems to have been undertaken for no purpose.

BACKLOG EDITION

THE COMPLETE WRITINGS

OF CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

1904

CONTENTS OF THE ENTIRE VOLUME:

AS WE WERE SAYING ROSE AND CHRYSANTHEMUM THE RED BONNET THE LOSS IN CIVILIZATION SOCIAL SCREAMING DOES REFINEMENT KILL INDIVIDUALITY? THE DIRECTOIRE GOWN THE MYSTERY OF THE SEX THE CLOTHES OF FICTION THE BROAD A CHEWING GUM WOMEN IN CONGRESS SHALL WOMEN PROPOSE? FROCKS AND THE STAGE ALTRUISM SOCIAL CLEARING-HOUSE DINNER-TABLE TALK NATURALIZATION ART OF GOVERNING LOVE OF DISPLAY VALUE OF THE COMMONPLACE THE BURDEN OF CHRISTMAS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF WRITERS THE CAP AND GOWN A TENDENCY OF THE AGE A LOCOED NOVELISTAS WE GO OUR PRESIDENT THE NEWSPAPER-MADE MAN INTERESTING GIRLS GIVE THE MEN A CHANCE THE ADVENT OF CANDOR THE AMERICAN MAN THE ELECTRIC WAY CAN A HUSBAND OPEN HIS WIFE'S LETTERS? A LEISURE CLASS WEATHER AND CHARACTER BORN WITH AN "EGO" JUVENTUS MUNDI A BEAUTIFUL OLD AGE THE ATTRACTION OF THE REPULSIVE GIVING AS A LUXURY CLIMATE AND HAPPINESS THE NEW FEMININE RESERVE REPOSE IN ACTIVITY WOMEN—IDEAL AND REAL THE ART OF IDLENESS IS THERE ANY CONVERSATION THE TALL GIRL THE DEADLY DIARY THE WHISTLING GIRL BORN OLD AND RICH THE "OLD SOLDIER" THE ISLAND OF BIMINI JUNENINE SHORT ESSAYS A NIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF THE TUILERIES TRUTHFULNESS THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS LITERATURE AND THE STAGE THE LIFE-SAVING AND LIFE PROLONGING ART "H.H." IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SIMPLICITY THE ENGLISH VOLUNTEERS DURING THE LATE INVASION NATHAN HALEFASHIONS IN LITERATURETHE AMERICAN NEWSPAPERCERTAIN DIVERSITIES OF AMERICAN LIFETHE PILGRIM, AND THE AMERICAN OF TODAY—[1892]SOME CAUSES OF THE PREVAILING DISCONTENTTHE EDUCATION OF THE NEGROTHE INDETERMINATE SENTENCELITERARY COPYRIGHTTHE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY. THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE"EQUALITY"WHAT IS YOUR CULTURE TO ME?MODERN FICTIONTHOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY MR. FROUDE'S "PROGRESS"ENGLANDTHE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOLTHE PEOPLE FOR WHOM SHAKESPEARE WROTE

By Charles Dudley Warner

BACKLOG EDITION

THE COMPLETE WRITINGS

OF CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

1904

AS WE WERE SAYING

CONTENTS: (25 Short Studies)

ROSE AND CHRYSANTHEMUMTHE RED BONNETTHE LOSS IN CIVILIZATIONSOCIAL SCREAMINGDOES REFINEMENT KILL INDIVIDUALITY?THE DIRECTOIRE GOWNTHE MYSTERY OF THE SEXTHE CLOTHES OF FICTIONTHE BROAD ACHEWING GUMWOMEN IN CONGRESSSHALL WOMEN PROPOSE?FROCKS AND THE STAGEALTRUISMSOCIAL CLEARING-HOUSEDINNER-TABLE TALKNATURALIZATIONART OF GOVERNINGLOVE OF DISPLAYVALUE OF THE COMMONPLACETHE BURDEN OF CHRISTMASTHE RESPONSIBILITY OF WRITERSTHE CAP AND GOWNA TENDENCY OF THE AGEA LOCOED NOVELIST

The Drawer will still bet on the rose. This is not a wager, but only astrong expression of opinion. The rose will win. It does not look so now.To all appearances, this is the age of the chrysanthemum. What this gaudyflower will be, daily expanding and varying to suit the whim of fashion,no one can tell. It may be made to bloom like the cabbage; it may spreadout like an umbrella—it can never be large enough nor showy enough tosuit us. Undeniably it is very effective, especially in masses ofgorgeous color. In its innumerable shades and enlarging proportions, itis a triumph of the gardener. It is a rival to the analine dyes and tothe marabout feathers. It goes along with all the conceits and fantasticunrest of the decorative art. Indeed, but for the discovery of thecapacities of the chrysanthemum, modern life would have experienced afatal hitch in its development. It helps out our age of plush with aflame of color. There is nothing shamefaced or retiring about it, and italready takes all provinces for its own. One would be onlyhalf-married—civilly, and not fashionably—without a chrysanthemumwedding; and it lights the way to the tomb. The maiden wears a bunch ofit in her corsage in token of her blooming expectations, and the youngman flaunts it on his coat lapel in an effort to be at once effective andin the mode. Young love that used to express its timid desire with theviolet, or, in its ardor, with the carnation, now seeks to bring itsemotions to light by the help of the chrysanthemum. And it can expressevery shade of feeling, from the rich yellow of prosperous wooing to thebrick-colored weariness of life that is hardly distinguishable from theliver complaint. It is a little stringy for a boutonniere, but it fillsthe modern-trained eye as no other flower can fill it. We used to saythat a girl was as sweet as a rose; we have forgotten that language. Weused to call those tender additions to society, on the eve of their eventinto that world which is always so eager to receive fresh young life,"rose-buds"; we say now simply "buds," but we mean chrysanthemum buds.They are as beautiful as ever; they excite the same exquisite interest;perhaps in their maiden hearts they are one or another variety of thatflower which bears such a sweet perfume in all literature; but can itmake no difference in character whether a young girl comes out into thegarish world as a rose or as a chrysanthemum? Is her life set to the noteof display, of color and show, with little sweetness, or to that retiringmodesty which needs a little encouragement before it fully reveals itsbeauty and its perfume? If one were to pass his life in moving in apalace car from one plush hotel to another, a bunch of chrysanthemums inhis hand would seem to be a good symbol of his life. There are agedpeople who can remember that they used to choose various roses, as totheir color, odor, and degree of unfolding, to express the delicateshades of advancing passion and of devotion. What can one do with thisnew favorite? Is not a bunch of chrysanthemums a sort oftake-it-or-leave-it declaration, boldly and showily made, an offerwithout discrimination, a tender without romance? A young man will catchthe whole family with this flaming message, but where is that sentimentthat once set the maiden heart in a flutter? Will she press achrysanthemum, and keep it till the faint perfume reminds her of thesweetest moment of her life?

Are we exaggerating this astonishing rise, development, and spread of thechrysanthemum? As a fashion it is not so extraordinary as the hoop-skirt,or as the neck ruff, which is again rising as a background to the lovelyhead. But the remarkable thing about it is that heretofore in all nationsand times, and in all changes of fashion in dress, the rose has held itsown as the queen of flowers and as the finest expression of sentiment.But here comes a flaunting thing with no desirable perfume, looking as ifit were cut with scissors out of tissue-paper, but capable of takinginfinite varieties of color, and growing as big as a curtain tassel, thatliterally captures the world, and spreads all over the globe, like theCanada thistle. The florists have no eye for anything else, and thebiggest floral prizes are awarded for the production of itseccentricities. Is the rage for this flower typical of this fast andflaring age?

The Drawer is not an enemy to the chrysanthemum, nor to the sunflower,nor to any other gorgeous production of nature. But it has anold-fashioned love for the modest and unobtrusive virtues, and an abidingfaith that they will win over the strained and strident displays of life.There is the violet: all efforts of cultivation fail to make it as big asthe peony, and it would be no more dear to the heart if it werequadrupled in size. We do, indeed, know that satisfying beauty andrefinement are apt to escape us when we strive too much and force natureinto extraordinary display, and we know how difficult it is to get merebigness and show without vulgarity. Cultivation has its limits. After wehave produced it, we find that the biggest rose even is not the mostprecious; and lovely as woman is, we instinctively in our admiration puta limit to her size. There being, then, certain laws that ultimatelyfetch us all up standing, so to speak, it does seem probable that thechrysanthemum rage will end in a gorgeous sunset of its splendor; thatfashion will tire of it, and that the rose, with its secret heart oflove; the rose, with its exquisite form; the rose, with its capacity ofshyly and reluctantly unfolding its beauty; the rose, with that odor—ofthe first garden exhaled and yet kept down through all the ages of sin—will become again the fashion, and be more passionately admired for itstemporary banishment. Perhaps the poet will then come back again andsing. What poet could now sing of the "awful chrysanthemum of dawn"?

THE RED BONNET

The Drawer has no wish to make Lent easier for anybody, or rather todiminish the benefit of the penitential season. But in this period ofhuman anxiety and repentance it must be said that not enough account ismade of the moral responsibility of Things. The doctrine is sound; theonly difficulty is in applying it. It can, however, be illustrated by alittle story, which is here confided to the reader in the same trust inwhich it was received. There was once a lady, sober in mind and sedate inmanner, whose plain dress exactly represented her desire to beinconspicuous, to do good, to improve every day of her life in actionsthat should benefit her kind. She was a serious person, inclined toimproving conversation, to the reading of bound books that cost at leasta dollar and a half (fifteen cents of which she gladly contributed to theauthor), and she had a distaste for the gay society which was mainly aflutter of ribbons and talk and pretty faces; and when she meditated, asshe did in her spare moments, her heart was sore over the frivolity oflife and the emptiness of fashion. She longed to make the world better,and without any priggishness she set it an example of simplicity andsobriety, of cheerful acquiescence in plainness and inconspicuousness.

One day—it was in the autumn—this lady had occasion to buy a new hat.From a great number offered to her she selected a red one with a dull redplume. It did not agree with the rest of her apparel; it did not fit herapparent character. What impulse led to this selection she could notexplain. She was not tired of being good, but something in the jauntinessof the hat and the color pleased her. If it were a temptation, she didnot intend to yield to it, but she thought she would take the hat homeand try it. Perhaps her nature felt the need of a little warmth. The hatpleased her still more when she got it home and put it on and surveyedherself in the mirror. Indeed, there was a new expression in her facethat corresponded to the hat. She put it off and looked at it. There wassomething almost humanly winning and temptatious in it. In short, shekept it, and when she wore it abroad she was not conscious of itsincongruity to herself or to her dress, but of the incongruity of therest of her apparel to the hat, which seemed to have a sort ofintelligence of its own, at least a power of changing and conformingthings to itself. By degrees one article after another in the lady'swardrobe was laid aside, and another substituted for it that answered tothe demanding spirit of the hat. In a little while this plain lady wasnot plain any more, but most gorgeously dressed, and possessed with thedesire to be in the height of the fashion. It came to this, that she hada tea-gown made out of a window-curtain with a flamboyant pattern.Solomon in all his glory would have been ashamed of himself in herpresence.

But this was not all. Her disposition, her ideas, her whole life, waschanged. She did not any more think of going about doing good, but ofamusing herself. She read nothing but stories in paper covers. In placeof being sedate and sober-minded, she was frivolous to excess; she spentmost of her time with women who liked to "frivol." She kept Lent in themost expensive way, so as to make the impression upon everybody that shewas better than the extremest kind of Lent. From liking the sedatestcompany she passed to liking the gayest society and the most fashionablemethod of getting rid of her time. Nothing whatever had happened to her,and she is now an ornament to society.

This story is not an invention; it is a leaf out of life. If this ladythat autumn day had bought a plain bonnet she would have continued on inher humble, sensible way of living. Clearly it was the hat that made thewoman, and not the woman the hat. She had no preconception of it; itsimply happened to her, like any accident—as if she had fallen andsprained her ankle. Some people may say that she had in her a concealedpropensity for frivolity; but the hat cannot escape the moralresponsibility of calling it out if it really existed. The power ofthings to change and create character is well attested. Men live up to orlive down to their clothes, which have a great moral influence on manner,and even on conduct. There was a man run down almost to vagabondage,owing to his increasingly shabby clothing, and he was only saved frombecoming a moral and physical wreck by a remnant of good-breeding in himthat kept his worn boots well polished. In time his boots brought up therest of his apparel and set him on his feet again. Then there is thewell-known example of the honest clerk on a small salary who was ruinedby the gift of a repeating watch—an expensive timepiece that required atleast ten thousand a year to sustain it: he is now in Canada.

Sometimes the influence of Things is good and sometimes it is bad. Weneed a philosophy that shall tell us why it is one or the other, and fixthe responsibility where it belongs. It does no good, as people alwaysfind out by reflex action, to kick an inanimate thing that has offended,to smash a perverse watch with a hammer, to break a rocking-chair thathas a habit of tipping over backward. If Things are not actuallymalicious, they seem to have a power of revenging themselves. We ought totry to understand them better, and to be more aware of what they can doto us. If the lady who bought the red hat could have known the hiddennature of it, could have had a vision of herself as she was transformedby it, she would as soon have taken a viper into her bosom as have placedthe red tempter on her head. Her whole previous life, her feeling of themoment, show that it was not vanity that changed her, but theinconsiderate association with a Thing that happened to strike her fancy,and which seemed innocent. But no Thing is really powerless for good orevil.

THE LOSS IN CIVILIZATION

Have we yet hit upon the right idea of civilization? The process whichhas been going on ever since the world began seems to have a defect init; strength, vital power, somehow escapes. When you've got a manthoroughly civilized you cannot do anything more with him. And it isworth reflection what we should do, what could we spend our energies on,and what would evoke them, we who are both civilized and enlightened, ifall nations were civilized and the earth were entirely subdued. That isto say, are not barbarism and vast regions of uncultivated land anecessity of healthful life on this globe? We do not like to admit thatthis process has its cycles, that nations and men, like trees and fruit,grow, ripen, and then decay. The world has always had a conceit that theglobe could be made entirely habitable, and all over the home of asociety constantly growing better. In order to accomplish this we havestriven to eliminate barbarism in man and in nature:

Is there anything more unsatisfactory than a perfect house, perfectgrounds, perfect gardens, art and nature brought into the most absoluteharmony of taste and culture? What more can a man do with it? Whatsatisfaction has a man in it if he really gets to the end of his power toimprove it? There have been such nearly ideal places, and how strongnature, always working against man and in the interest of untamedwildness, likes to riot in them and reduce them to picturesquedestruction! And what sweet sadness, pathos, romantic suggestion, thehuman mind finds in such a ruin! And a society that has attained its endin all possible culture, entire refinement in manners, in tastes, in theart of elegant intellectual and luxurious living—is there nothingpathetic in that? Where is the primeval, heroic force that made the joyof living in the rough old uncivilized days? Even throw in goodness, acertain amount of altruism, gentleness, warm interest in unfortunatehumanity—is the situation much improved? London is probably the mostcivilized centre the world has ever seen; there are gathered more of theelements of that which we reckon the best. Where in history, unless someone puts in a claim for the Frenchman, shall we find a Man so nearlyapproaching the standard we have set up of civilization as theEnglishman, refined by inheritance and tradition, educated almost beyondthe disturbance of enthusiasm, and cultivated beyond the chance ofsurprise? We are speaking of the highest type in manner, information,training, in the acquisition of what the world has to give. Could thesem*n have conquered the world? Is it possible that our highestcivilization has lost something of the rough and admirable element thatwe admire in the heroes of Homer and of Elizabeth? What is this London,the most civilized city ever known? Why, a considerable part of itspopulation is more barbarous, more hopelessly barbarous, than any wildrace we know, because they are the barbarians of civilization, the refuseand slag of it, if we dare say that of any humanity. More hopeless,because the virility of savagery has measurably gone out of it. We can dosomething with a degraded race of savages, if it has any stamina in it.What can be done with those who are described as "East-Londoners"?

Every great city has enough of the same element. Is this an accident, oris it a necessity of the refinement that we insist on callingcivilization? We are always sending out missionaries to savage orperverted nations, we are always sending out emigrants to occupy andreduce to order neglected territory. This is our main business. How wouldit be if this business were really accomplished, and there were no morepeoples to teach our way of life to, and no more territory to bring underproductive cultivation? Without the necessity of putting forth thisenergy, a survival of the original force in man, how long would ourcivilization last? In a word, if the world were actually all civilized,wouldn't it be too weak even to ripen? And now, in the great centres,where is accumulated most of that we value as the product of man's bestefforts, is there strength enough to elevate the degraded humanity thatattends our highest cultivation? We have a gay confidence that we can dosomething for Africa. Can we reform London and Paris and New York, whichour own hands have made?

If we cannot, where is the difficulty? Is this a hopeless world? Must italways go on by spurts and relapses, alternate civilization andbarbarism, and the barbarism being necessary to keep us employed andgrowing? Or is there some mistake about our ideal of civilization? Doesour process too much eliminate the rough vigor, courage, stamina of therace? After a time do we just live, or try to live, on literature warmedover, on pretty coloring and drawing instead of painting that stirs thesoul to the heroic facts and tragedies of life? Where did this virile,blood-full, throbbing Russian literature come from; this Russian paintingof Verestchagin, that smites us like a sword with the consciousness ofthe tremendous meaning of existence? Is there a barbaric force left inthe world that we have been daintily trying to cover and apologize forand refine into gentle agreeableness?

These questions are too deep for these pages. Let us make the worldpleasant, and throw a cover over the refuse. We are doing very well, onthe whole, considering what we are and the materials we have to work on.And we must not leave the world so perfectly civilized that theinhabitants, two or three centuries ahead, will have nothing to do.

SOCIAL SCREAMING

Of all the contrivances for amusem*nt in this agreeable world the"Reception" is the most ingenious, and would probably most excite thewonder of an angel sent down to inspect our social life. If he shouldpause at the entrance of the house where one is in progress, he would bepuzzled. The noise that would greet his ears is different from the deepcontinuous roar in the streets, it is unlike the hum of millions ofseventeen-year locusts, it wants the musical quality of the springconventions of the blackbirds in the chestnuts, and he could not compareit to the vociferation in a lunatic asylum, for that is really subduedand infrequent. He might be incapable of analyzing this, but when hecaught sight of the company he would be compelled to recognize it as thenoise of our highest civilization. It may not be perfect, for there arelimits to human powers of endurance, but it is the best we can do. It isnot a chance affair. Here are selected, picked out by special invitation,the best that society can show, the most intelligent, the mostaccomplished, the most beautiful, the best dressed persons in thecommunity—all receptions have this character. The angel would noticethis at once, and he would be astonished at the number of such persons,for the rooms would be so crowded that he would see the hopelessness ofattempting to edge or wedge his way through the throng without tearingoff his wings. An angel, in short, would stand no chance in one of thesebrilliant assemblies on account of his wings, and he probably could notbe heard, on account of the low, heavenly pitch of his voice. Hisinference would be that these people had been selected to come togetherby reason of their superior power of screaming. He would be wrong.

—They are selected on account of their intelligence, agreeableness, andpower of entertaining each other. They come together, not for exercise,but pleasure, and the more they crowd and jam and struggle, and thelouder they scream, the greater the pleasure. It is a kind of contest,full of good-humor and excitement. The one that has the shrillest voiceand can scream the loudest is most successful. It would seem at firstthat they are under a singular hallucination, imagining that the morenoise there is in the room the better each one can be heard, and so eachone continues to raise his or her voice in order to drown the othervoices. The secret of the game is to pitch the voice one or two octavesabove the ordinary tone. Some throats cannot stand this strain long; theybecome rasped and sore, and the voices break; but this adds to theexcitement and enjoyment of those who can scream with less inconvenience.The angel would notice that if at any time silence was called, in orderthat an announcement of music could be made, in the awful hush thatfollowed people spoke to each other in their natural voices, andeverybody could be heard without effort. But this was not the object ofthe Reception, and in a moment more the screaming would begin again, thevoices growing higher and higher, until, if the roof were taken off, onevast shriek would go up to heaven.

This is not only a fashion, it is an art. People have to train for it,and as it is a unique amusem*nt, it is worth some trouble to be able tosucceed in it. Men, by reason of their stolidity and deeper voices, cannever be proficients in it; and they do not have so much practice—unlessthey are stock-brokers. Ladies keep themselves in training in theirordinary calls. If three or four meet in a drawing-room they all begin toscream, not that they may be heard—for the higher they go the less theyunderstand each other—but simply to acquire the art of screaming atreceptions. If half a dozen ladies meeting by chance in a parlor shouldconverse quietly in their sweet, ordinary home tones, it might be in acertain sense agreeable, but it would not be fashionable, and it wouldnot strike the prevailing note of our civilization. If it were true thata group of women all like to talk at the same time when they meet (whichis a slander invented by men, who may be just as loquacious, but not solimber-tongued and quick-witted), and raise their voices to a shriek inorder to dominate each other, it could be demonstrated that they would bemore readily heard if they all spoke in low tones. But the object is notconversation; it is the social exhilaration that comes from the wildexercise of the voice in working off a nervous energy; it is so seldomthat in her own house a lady gets a chance to scream.

The dinner-party, where there are ten or twelve at table, is a favoritechance for this exercise. At a recent dinner, where there were a dozenuncommonly intelligent people, all capable of the most entertainingconversation, by some chance, or owing to some nervous condition, theyall began to speak in a high voice as soon as they were seated, and theeffect was that of a dynamite explosion. It was a cheerful babel ofindistinguishable noise, so loud and shrill and continuous that it wasabsolutely impossible for two people seated on the opposite sides of thetable, and both shouting at each other, to catch an intelligiblesentence. This made a lively dinner. Everybody was animated, and if therewas no conversation, even between persons seated side by side, there wasa glorious clatter and roar; and when it was over, everybody was hoarseand exhausted, and conscious that he had done his best in a high socialfunction.

This topic is not the selection of the Drawer, the province of which isto note, but not to criticise, the higher civilization. But the inquiryhas come from many cities, from many women, "Cannot something be done tostop social screaming?" The question is referred to the scientific branchof the Social Science Association. If it is a mere fashion, theassociation can do nothing. But it might institute some practicalexperiments. It might get together in a small room fifty people all letloose in the ordinary screaming contest, measure the total volume ofnoise and divide it by fifty, and ascertain how much throat power wasneeded in one person to be audible to another three feet from thelatter's ear. This would sift out the persons fit for such a contest. Theinvestigator might then call a dead silence in the assembly, and requesteach person to talk in a natural voice, then divide the total noise asbefore, and see what chance of being heard an ordinary individual had init. If it turned out in these circ*mstances that every person presentcould speak with ease and hear perfectly what was said, then the ordermight be given for the talk to go on in that tone, and that every personwho raised the voice and began to scream should be gagged and removed toanother room. In this room could be collected all the screamers to enjoytheir own powers. The same experiment might be tried at a dinner-party,namely, to ascertain if the total hum of low voices in the natural keywould not be less for the individual voice to overcome than the totalscream of all the voices raised to a shriek. If scientific researchdemonstrated the feasibility of speaking in an ordinary voice atreceptions, dinner-parties, and in "calls," then the Drawer is of opinionthat intelligible and enjoyable conversation would be possible on theseoccasions, if it becomes fashionable not to scream.

DOES REFINEMENT KILL INDIVIDUALITY?

Is it true that cultivation, what we call refinement, killsindividuality? Or, worse than that even, that one loses his taste byover-cultivation? Those persons are uninteresting, certainly, who havegone so far in culture that they accept conventional standards supposedto be correct, to which they refer everything, and by which they measureeverybody. Taste usually implies a sort of selection; the cultivatedtaste of which we speak is merely a comparison, no longer an individualpreference or appreciation, but only a reference to the conventional andaccepted standard. When a man or woman has reached this stage ofpropriety we are never curious any more concerning their opinions on anysubject. We know that the opinions expressed will not be theirs, evolvedout of their own feeling, but that they will be the cut-and-dried resultsof conventionality.

It is doubtless a great comfort to a person to know exactly how to feeland what to say in every new contingency, but whether the zest of life isnot dulled by this ability is a grave question, for it leaves no room forsurprise and little for emotion. O ye belles of Newport and of BarHarbor, in your correct and conventional agreement of what is proper andagreeable, are you wasting your sweet lives by rule? Is your compact,graceful, orderly society liable to be monotonous in its gay repetitionof the same thing week after week? Is there nothing outside of thatenvied circle which you make so brilliant? Is the Atlantic shore the onlycoast where beauty may lounge and spread its net of enchantment? TheAtlantic shore and Europe? Perhaps on the Pacific you might come back toyour original selves, and find again that freedom and that charm ofindividuality that are so attractive. Some sparkling summer morning, ifyou chanced to drive four-in-hand along the broad beach at Santa Barbara,inhaling, the spicy breeze from the Sandwich Islands, along the curvedshore where the blue of the sea and the purple of the mountains remindyou of the Sorrentine promontory, and then dashed away into the canon ofMontecito, among the vineyards and orange orchards and live-oaks andpalms, in vales and hills all ablaze with roses and flowers of the gardenand the hothouse, which bloom the year round in the gracious sea-air,would you not, we wonder, come to yourselves in the sense of a new lifewhere it is good form to be enthusiastic and not disgraceful to besurprised? It is a far cry from Newport to Santa Barbara, and a wholeworld of new sensations lies on the way, experiences for which you willhave no formula of experience. To take the journey is perhaps too heroictreatment for the disease of conformity—the sort of malaria of ourexclusive civilization.

The Drawer is not urging this journey, nor any break-up of the socialorder, for it knows how painful a return to individuality may be. It iseasier to go on in the subordination of one's personality to the strictlyconventional life. It expects rather to record a continually perfectedmachinery, a life in which not only speech but ideas are brought intorule. We have had something to say occasionally of the art ofconversation, which is in danger of being lost in the confused babel ofthe reception and the chatter of the dinner-party—the art of listeningand the art of talking both being lost. Society is taking alarm at this,and the women as usual are leaders in a reform. Already, by reason ofclubs-literary, scientific, economic—woman is the well-informed part ofour society. In the "Conversation Lunch" this information is now broughtinto use. The lunch, and perhaps the dinner, will no longer be theoccasion of satisfying the appetite or of gossip, but of improving talk.The giver of the lunch will furnish the topic of conversation. Twopersons may not speak at once; two persons may not talk with each other;all talk is to be general and on the topic assigned, and while one isspeaking, the others must listen. Perhaps each lady on taking her seatmay find in her napkin a written slip of paper which shall be the guideto her remarks. Thus no time is to be wasted on frivolous topics. Theordinary natural flow of rejoinder and repartee, the swirling of talkaround one obstacle and another, its winding and rippling here and thereas individual whim suggests, will not be allowed, but all will beimproving, and tend to that general culture of which we have beenspeaking. The ladies' lunch is not to be exactly a debating society, butan open occasion for the delivery of matured thought and the acquisitionof information.

The object is not to talk each other down, but to improve the mind,which, unguided, is apt to get frivolous at the convivial board. It isnotorious that men by themselves at lunch or dinner usually shun gravetopics and indulge in persiflage, and even descend to talk about wine andthe made dishes. The women's lunch of this summer takes higher ground. Itwill give Mr. Browning his final estimate; it will settle Mr. Ibsen; itwill determine the suffrage question; it will adjudicate between thetotal abstainers and the halfway covenant of high license; it will nothesitate to cut down the tariff.

The Drawer anticipates a period of repose in all our feverish sociallife. We shall live more by rule and less by impulse. When we meet weshall talk on set topics, determined beforehand. By this concentration weshall be able as one man or one woman to reach the human limit ofcultivation, and get rid of all the aberrations of individual assertionand feeling. By studying together in clubs, by conversing in monotone andby rule, by thinking the same things and exchanging ideas until we havenone left, we shall come into that social placidity which is one dream ofthe nationalists—one long step towards what may be called a prairiemental condition—the slope of Kansas, where those who are five thousandfeet above the sea-level seem to be no higher than those who dwell in theMissouri Valley.

THE DIRECTOIRE GOWN

We are all more or less devoted to 'liberte', 'egalite', and considerable'fraternite', and we have various ways of showing it. It is the opinionof many that women do not care much about politics, and that if they areinterested at all in them, they are by nature aristocrats. It is said,indeed, that they care much more about their dress than they do about thelaws or the form of government. This notion arises from a misapprehensionboth of the nature of woman and of the significance of dress.

Men have an idea that fashions are haphazard, and are dictated and guidedby no fixed principles of action, and represent no great currents inpolitics or movements of the human mind. Women, who are exceedinglysubtle in all their operations, feel that it is otherwise. They have aprescience of changes in the drift of public affairs, and a delicatesensitiveness that causes them to adjust their raiment to express thesechanges. Men have written a great deal in their bungling way about thephilosophy of clothes. Women exhibit it, and if we should study them moreand try to understand them instead of ridiculing their fashions as whimsbred of an inconstant mind and mere desire for change, we would have abetter apprehension of the great currents of modern political life andsociety.

Many observers are puzzled by the gradual and insidious return recentlyto the mode of the Directoire, and can see in it no significance otherthan weariness of some other mode. We need to recall the fact of theinfluence of the centenary period upon the human mind. It is nearly acentury since the fashion of the Directoire. What more natural,considering the evidence that we move in spirals, if not in circles, thatthe signs of the anniversary of one of the most marked periods in historyshould be shown in feminine apparel? It is woman's way of hinting what isin the air, the spirit that is abroad in the world. It will be rememberedthat women took a prominent part in the destruction of the Bastile,helping, indeed, to tear down that odious structure with their own hands,the fall of which, it is well known, brought in the classic Greek andrepublican simplicity, the subtle meaning of the change being expressedin French gowns. Naturally there was a reaction from all this towardsaristocratic privileges and exclusiveness, which went on for many years,until in France monarchy and empire followed the significant leadershipof the French modistes. So strong was this that it passed to othercountries, and in England the impulse outlasted even the Reform Bill, andskirts grew more and more bulbous, until it did not need more than threeor four women to make a good-sized assembly. This was not the result of,a whim about clothes, but a subtle recognition of a spirit ofexclusiveness and defense abroad in the world. Each woman became her ownBastile. Men surrounded it and thundered against it without the leasteffect. It seemed as permanent as the Pyramids. At every male attack itexpanded, and became more aggressive and took up more room. Women havesuch an exquisite sense of things—just as they have now in regard to bigobstructive hats in the theatres. They know that most of the plays areinferior and some of them are immoral, and they attend the theatres withhead-dresses that will prevent as many people as possible from seeing thestage and being corrupted by anything that takes place on it. They objectto the men seeing some of the women who are now on the stage. Ithappened, as to the private Bastiles, that the women at last recognized achange in the sociological and political atmosphere of the world, andwithout consulting any men of affairs or caring for their opinion, downwent the Bastiles. When women attacked them, in obedience to theirpolitical instincts, they collapsed like punctured balloons. Naturalwoman was measurably (that is, a capacity of being measured) restored tothe world. And we all remember the great political revolutionarymovements of 1848.

Now France is still the arbiter of the modes. Say what we may aboutBerlin, copy their fashion plates as we will, or about London, or NewYork, or Tokio, it is indisputable that the woman in any company who hason a Paris gown—the expression is odious, but there is no other that inthese days would be comprehended—"takes the cake." It is not that thewomen care for this as a mere matter of apparel. But they are sensitiveto the political atmosphere, to the philosophical significance that ithas to great impending changes. We are approaching the centenary of thefall of the Bastile. The French have no Bastile to lay low, nor, indeed,any Tuileries to burn up; but perhaps they might get a good way ahead bydemolishing Notre Dame and reducing most of Paris to ashes. Apparentlythey are on the eve of doing something. The women of the world may notknow what it is, but they feel the approaching recurrence of a period.Their movements are not yet decisive. It is as yet only tentatively thatthey adopt the mode of the Directoire. It is yet uncertain—a sort ofBoulangerism in dress. But if we watch it carefully we shall be able topredict with some assurance the drift in Paris. The Directoire dresspoints to another period of republican simplicity, anarchy, and the ruleof a popular despot.

It is a great pity, in view of this valuable instinct in women and theprophetic significance of dress, that women in the United States do notexercise their gifts with regard to their own country. We should thenknow at any given time whether we are drifting into Blaineism, orClevelandism, or centralization, or free-trade, or extreme protection, orrule by corporations. We boast greatly of our smartness. It is time wewere up and dressed to prove it.

THE MYSTERY OF THE SEX

There appears to be a great quantity of conceit around, especiallyconcerning women. The statement was recently set afloat that a well-knownlady had admitted that George Meredith understands women better than anywriter who has preceded him. This may be true, and it may be a wilystatement to again throw men off the track; at any rate it contains theold assumption of a mystery, practically insoluble, about the gentlersex. Women generally encourage this notion, and men by their gingerlytreatment of it seemed to accept it. But is it well-founded, is there anymore mystery about women—than about men? Is the feminine nature any moredifficult to understand than the masculine nature? Have women, consciousof inferior strength, woven this notion of mystery about themselves as adefense, or have men simply idealized them for fictitious purposes? Torecur to the case cited, is there any evidence that Mr. Meredithunderstands human nature—as exhibited in women any better than humannature—in men, or is more consistent in the production of one than ofthe other? Historically it would be interesting to trace the rise of thisnotion of woman as an enigma. The savage races do not appear to have it.A woman to the North American Indian is a simple affair, dealt withwithout circumlocution. In the Bible records there is not much mysteryabout her; there are many tributes to her noble qualities, and somepretty severe and uncomplimentary things are said about her, but there islittle affectation of not understanding her. She may be a prophetess, ora consoler, or a snare, but she is no more "deceitful and desperatelywicked" than anybody else. There is nothing mysterious about her firstrecorded performance. Eve trusted the serpent, and Adam trusted Eve. Themystery was in the serpent. There is no evidence that the ancientEgyptian woman was more difficult to comprehend than the Egyptian man.They were both doubtless wily as highly civilized people are apt to be;the "serpent of old Nile" was in them both. Is it in fact till we come tomediaeval times, and the chivalric age, that women are set up as beingmore incomprehensible than men? That is, less logical, more whimsical,more uncertain in their mental processes? The play-writers and essayistsof the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries "worked" this notioncontinually. They always took an investigating and speculating attitudetowards women, that fostered the conceit of their separateness and veiledpersonality. Every woman was supposed to be playing a part behind a mask.Montaigne is always investigating woman as a mystery. It is, forinstance, a mystery he does not relish that, as he says, women commonlyreserve the publication of their vehement affections for their husbandstill they have lost them; then the woful countenance "looks not so muchback as forward, and is intended rather to get a new husband than tolament the old." And he tells this story:

"When I was a boy, a very beautiful and virtuous lady who is yet living,and the widow of a prince, had, I know not what, more ornament in herdress than our laws of widowhood will well allow, which being reproachedwith as a great indecency, she made answer 'that it was because she wasnot cultivating more friendships, and would never marry again.'" Thiscynical view of woman, as well as the extravagantly complimentary onesometimes taken by the poets, was based upon the notion that woman was anunexplainable being. When she herself adopted the idea is uncertain. Ofcourse all this has a very practical bearing upon modern life, theposition of women in it, and the so-called reforms. If woman is sodifferent from man, to the extent of being an unexplainable mystery,science ought to determine the exact state of the case, and ascertain ifthere is any remedy for it. If it is only a literary creation, we oughtto know it. Science could tell, for instance, whether there is apeculiarity in the nervous system, any complications in the nervouscentres, by which the telegraphic action of the will gets crossed, sothat, for example, in reply to a proposal of marriage, the intended "Yes"gets delivered as "No." Is it true that the mental process in one sex isintuitive, and in the other logical, with every link necessary andvisible? Is it true, as the romancers teach, that the mind in one sexacts indirectly and in the other directly, or is this indirect processonly characteristic of exceptions in both sexes? Investigation ought tofind this out, so that we can adjust the fit occupations for both sexeson a scientific basis. We are floundering about now in a sea of doubt. Associety becomes more complicated, women will become a greater and greatermystery, or rather will be regarded so by themselves and be treated so bymen.

Who can tell how much this notion of mystery in the sex stands in the wayof its free advancement all along the line? Suppose the proposal weremade to women to exchange being mysterious for the ballot? Would they doit? Or have they a sense of power in the possession of this concededincomprehensibility that they would not lay down for any visible insigniaof that power? And if the novelists and essayists have raised a mistabout the sex, which it willingly masquerades in, is it not time that thescientists should determine whether the mystery exists in nature or onlyin the imagination?

THE CLOTHES OF FICTION

The Drawer has never undervalued clothes. Whatever other heresies it mayhave had, however it may have insisted that the more a woman learns, themore she knows of books, the higher her education is carried in all theknowledges, the more interesting she will be, not only for an hour, butas a companion for life, it has never said that she is less attractivewhen dressed with taste and according to the season. Love itself couldscarcely be expected to survive a winter hat worn after Easter. And thephilosophy of this is not on the surface, nor applicable to women only.In this the highest of created things are under a law having a much widerapplication. Take as an item novels, the works of fiction, which havebecome an absolute necessity in the modern world, as necessary to divertthe mind loaded with care and under actual strain as to fill the vacancyin otherwise idle brains. They have commonly a summer and a winterapparel. The publishers understand this. As certainly as the birdsappear, comes the crop of summer novels, fluttering down upon the stalls,in procession through the railway trains, littering the drawing-roomtables, in light paper, covers, ornamental, attractive in colors andfanciful designs, as welcome and grateful as the girls in muslin. Whenthe thermometer is in the eighties, anything heavy and formidable isdistasteful. The housekeeper knows we want few solid dishes, but saladsand cooling drinks. The publisher knows that we want our literature (orwhat passes for that) in light array. In the winter we prefer the boardsand the rich heavy binding, however light the tale may be; but in thesummer, though the fiction be as grave and tragic as wandering love andbankruptcy, we would have it come to us lightly clad—out of stays, as itwere.

It would hardly be worth while to refer to this taste in the apparel ofour fiction did it not have deep and esoteric suggestions, and could notthe novelists themselves get a hint from it. Is it realized how muchdepends upon the clothes that are worn by the characters in the novels—clothes put on not only to exhibit the inner life of the characters,but to please the readers who are to associate with them? It is true thatthere are novels that almost do away with the necessity of fashionmagazines and fashion plates in the family, so faithful are they in thelatest millinery details, and so fully do they satisfy the longing of allof us to know what is chic for the moment. It is pretty well understood,also, that women, and even men, are made to exhibit the deepest passionsand the tenderest emotions in the crises of their lives by the clothesthey put on. How the woman in such a crisis hesitates before herwardrobe, and at last chooses just what will express her innermostfeeling! Does she dress for her lover as she dresses to receive herlawyer who has come to inform her that she is living beyond her income?Would not the lover be spared time and pain if he knew, as the novelistknows, whether the young lady is dressing for a rejection or anacceptance? Why does the lady intending suicide always throw on awaterproof when she steals out of the house to drown herself? Thenovelist knows the deep significance of every article of toilet, andnature teaches him to array his characters for the summer novel in theairy draperies suitable to the season. It is only good art that the coverof the novel and the covers of the characters shall be in harmony. Heknows, also, that the characters in the winter novel must be adequatelyprotected. We speak, of course, of the season stories. Novels that are torun through a year, or maybe many years, and are to set forth thepassions and trials of changing age and varying circ*mstance, requiredifferent treatment and wider millinery knowledge. They are naturallymore expensive. The wardrobe required in an all-round novel wouldbankrupt most of us.

But to confine ourselves to the season novel, it is strange that some onehas not invented the patent adjustable story that with a slight changewould do for summer or winter, following the broad hint of thepublishers, who hasten in May to throw whatever fiction they have on handinto summer clothes. The winter novel, by this invention, could be easilyfitted for summer wear. All the novelist need do would be to change theclothes of his characters. And in the autumn, if the novel provedpopular, he could change again, with the advantage of being in the latestfashion. It would only be necessary to alter a few sentences in a few ofthe stereotype pages. Of course this would make necessary other slightalterations, for no kind-hearted writer would be cruel to his owncreations, and expose them to the vicissitudes of the seasons. He couldinsert "rain" for "snow," and "green leaves" for "skeleton branches,"make a few verbal changes of that sort, and regulate the thermometer. Itwould cost very little to adjust the novel in this way to any season. Itis worth thinking of.

And this leads to a remark upon the shocking indifference of somenovelists to the ordinary comfort of their characters. In practical lifewe cannot, but in his realm the novelist can, control the weather. He canmake it generally pleasant. We do not object to a terrific thunder-showernow and then, as the sign of despair and a lost soul, but perpetualdrizzle and grayness and inclemency are tedious to the reader, who hasenough bad weather in his private experience. The English are greatersinners in this respect than we are. They seem to take a brutal delightin making it as unpleasant as possible for their fictitious people. Thereis R—b—rt 'lsm—r', for example. External trouble is piled on to theinternal. The characters are in a perpetual soak. There is not a dry ragon any of them, from the beginning of the book to the end. They are sentout in all weathers, and are drenched every day. Often their wet clothesare frozen on them; they are exposed to cutting winds and sleet in theirfaces, bedrabbled in damp grass, stood against slippery fences, with hailand frost lowering their vitality, and expected under these circ*mstancesto make love and be good Christians. Drenched and wind-blown for years,that is what they are. It may be that this treatment has excited thesympathy of the world, but is it legitimate? Has a novelist the right tosubject his creations to tortures that he would not dare to inflict uponhis friends? It is no excuse to say that this is normal English weather;it is not the office of fiction to intensify and rub in the unavoidableevils of life. The modern spirit of consideration for fictitiouscharacters that prevails with regard to dress ought to extend in areasonable degree to their weather. This is not a strained corollary tothe demand for an appropriately costumed novel.

THE BROAD A

It cannot for a moment be supposed that the Drawer would discourageself-culture and refinement of manner and of speech. But it would nothesitate to give a note of warning if it believed that the presentdevotion to literature and the pursuits of the mind were likely, by thehighest authorities, to be considered bad form. In an intellectuallyinclined city (not in the northeast) a club of ladies has been formed forthe cultivation of the broad 'a' in speech. Sporadic efforts havehitherto been made for the proper treatment of this letter of thealphabet with individual success, especially with those who have been inEngland, or have known English men and women of the broad-gauge variety.Discerning travelers have made the American pronunciation of the letter aa reproach to the republic, that is to say, a means of distinguishing anative of this country. The true American aspires to be cosmopolitan, anddoes not want to be "spotted"—if that word may be used—in society byany peculiarity of speech, that is, by any American peculiarity. Why, atthe bottom of the matter, a narrow 'a' should be a disgrace it is noteasy to see, but it needs no reason if fashion or authority condemns it.This country is so spread out, without any social or literary centreuniversally recognized as such, and the narrow 'a' has become soprevalent, that even fashion finds it difficult to reform it. The bestpeople, who are determined to broaden all their 'a''s, will forget inmoments of excitement, and fall back into old habits. It requiresconstant vigilance to keep the letter 'a' flattened out. It is in vainthat scholars have pointed out that in the use of this letter lies themain difference between the English and the American speech; eitherAmericans generally do not care if this is the fact, or fashion can onlywork a reform in a limited number of people. It seems, therefore,necessary that there should be an organized effort to deal with thispronunciation, and clubs will no doubt be formed all over the country, inimitation of the one mentioned, until the broad a will become as commonas flies in summer. When this result is attained it will be time toattack the sound of 'u' with clubs, and make universal the French sound.In time the American pronunciation will become as superior to all othersas are the American sewing-machines and reapers. In the Broad A Clubevery member who misbehaves—that is, mispronounces—is fined a nickelfor each offense. Of course in the beginning there is a good deal ofrevenue from this source, but the revenue diminishes as the clubimproves, so that we have the anomaly of its failure to beself-supporting in proportion to its excellence. Just now if these clubscould suddenly become universal, and the penalty be enforced, we couldhave the means of paying off the national debt in a year.

We do not wish to attach too much importance to this movement, but ratherto suggest to a continent yearning for culture in letters and in speechwhether it may not be carried too far. The reader will remember thatthere came a time in Athens when culture could mock at itself, and therest of the country may be warned in time of a possible departure fromgood form in devotion to language and literature by the present attitudeof modern Athens. Probably there is no esoteric depth in literature orreligion, no refinement in intellectual luxury, that this favored cityhas not sounded. It is certainly significant, therefore, when thepriestesses and devotees of mental superiority there turn upon it andrend it, when they are heartily tired of the whole literary business.There is always this danger when anything is passionately pursued as afashion, that it will one day cease to be the fashion. Plato and Buddhaand even Emerson become in time like a last season's fashion plate. Evena "friend of the spirit" will have to go. Culture is certain to mockitself in time.

The clubs for the improvement of the mind—the female mind—and ofspeech, which no doubt had their origin in modern Athens, should know,then, that it is the highest mark of female culture now in that beautifultown to despise culture, to affect the gayest and most joyous ignorance—ignorance of books, of all forms of so-called intellectual development,and all literary men, women, and productions whatsoever! This genuinemovement of freedom may be a real emancipation. If it should reach themetropolis, what a relief it might bring to thousands who are, under ahigh sense of duty, struggling to advance the intellectual life. There isthis to be said, however, that it is only the very brightest people,those who have no need of culture, who have in fact passed beyond allculture, who can take this position in regard to it, and actually revelin the delights of ignorance. One must pass into a calm place when he isbeyond the desire to know anything or to do anything.

It is a chilling thought, unless one can rise to the highest philosophyof life, that even the broad 'a', when it is attained, may not be apermanence. Let it be common, and what distinction will there be in it?When devotion to study, to the reading of books, to conversation onimproving topics, becomes a universal fashion, is it not evident that onecan only keep a leadership in fashion by throwing the whole thingoverboard, and going forward into the natural gayety of life, which caresfor none of these things? We suppose the Constitution of the UnitedStates will stand if the day comes—nay, now is—when the women ofChicago call the women of Boston frivolous, and the women of Boston knowtheir immense superiority and advancement in being so, but it would be ablank surprise to the country generally to know that it was on the wrongtrack. The fact is that culture in this country is full of surprises, andso doubles and feints and comes back upon itself that the most diligentrecorder can scarcely note its changes. The Drawer can only warn; itcannot advise.

CHEWING GUM

No language that is unfortunately understood by the greater portion ofthe people who speak English, thousands are saying on the first ofJanuary—in 1890, a far-off date that it is wonderful any one has livedto see—"Let us have a new deal!" It is a natural exclamation, and doesnot necessarily mean any change of purpose. It always seems to a man thatif he could shuffle the cards he could increase his advantages in thegame of life, and, to continue the figure which needs so littleexplanation, it usually appears to him that he could play anybody else'shand better than his own. In all the good resolutions of the new year,then, it happens that perhaps the most sincere is the determination toget a better hand. Many mistake this for repentance and an intention toreform, when generally it is only the desire for a new shuffle of thecards. Let us have a fresh pack and a new deal, and start fair. It seemsidle, therefore, for the moralist to indulge in a homily about annualgood intentions, and habits that ought to be dropped or acquired, on thefirst of January. He can do little more than comment on the passing show.

It will be admitted that if the world at this date is not sociallyreformed it is not the fault of the Drawer, and for the reason that ithas been not so much a critic as an explainer and encourager. It is inthe latter character that it undertakes to defend and justify a nationalindustry that has become very important within the past ten years. Agreat deal of capital is invested in it, and millions of people areactively employed in it. The varieties of chewing gum that aremanufactured would be a matter of surprise to those who have paid noattention to the subject, and who may suppose that the millions of mouthsthey see engaged in its mastication have a common and vulgar taste. Fromthe fact that it can be obtained at the apothecary's, an impression hasgot abroad that it is medicinal. This is not true. The medical professiondo not use it, and what distinguishes it from drugs-that they also do notuse—is the fact that they do not prescribe it. It is neither a narcoticnor a stimulant. It cannot strictly be said to soothe or to excite. Thehabit of using it differs totally from that of the chewing of tobacco orthe dipping of snuff. It might, by a purely mechanical operation, keep aperson awake, but no one could go to sleep chewing gum. It is in itselfneither tonic nor sedative. It is to be noticed also that the gum habitdiffers from the tobacco habit in that the aromatic and elastic substanceis masticated, while the tobacco never is, and that the mastication leadsto nothing except more mastication. The task is one that can never befinished. The amount of energy expended in this process if capitalized orconserved would produce great results. Of course the individual doeslittle, but if the power evolved by the practice in a district schoolcould be utilized, it would suffice to run the kindergarten department.The writer has seen a railway car—say in the West—filled with youngwomen, nearly every one of whose jaws and pretty mouths was engaged inthis pleasing occupation; and so much power was generated that it would,if applied, have kept the car in motion if the steam had been shutoff—at least it would have furnished the motive for illuminating the carby electricity.

This national industry is the subject of constant detraction, satire, andridicule by the newspaper press. This is because it is not understood,and it may be because it is mainly a female accomplishment: the few menwho chew gum may be supposed to do so by reason of gallantry. There mightbe no more sympathy with it in the press if the real reason for thepractice were understood, but it would be treated more respectfully. Somehave said that the practice arises from nervousness—the idle desire tobe busy without doing anything—and because it fills up the pauses ofvacuity in conversation. But this would not fully account for thepractice of it in solitude. Some have regarded it as in obedience to thefeminine instinct for the cultivation of patience and self-denial—patience in a fruitless activity, and self-denial in the eternal act ofmastication without swallowing. It is no more related to these virtuesthan it is to the habit of the reflective cow in chewing her cud. The cowwould never chew gum. The explanation is a more philosophical one, andrelates to a great modern social movement. It is to strengthen anddevelop and make more masculine the lower jaw. The critic who says thatthis is needless, that the inclination in women to talk would adequatelydevelop this, misses the point altogether. Even if it could be provedthat women are greater chatterers than men, the critic would gainnothing. Women have talked freely since creation, but it remains truethat a heavy, strong lower jaw is a distinctively masculinecharacteristic. It is remarked that if a woman has a strong lower jaw sheis like a man. Conversation does not create this difference, nor removeit; for the development of a lower jaw in women constant mechanicalexercise of the muscles is needed. Now, a spirit of emancipation, ofemulation, is abroad, as it ought to be, for the regeneration of theworld. It is sometimes called the coming to the front of woman in everyact and occupation that used to belong almost exclusively to man. It isnot necessary to say a word to justify this. But it is often accompaniedby a misconception, namely, that it is necessary for woman to be likeman, not only in habits, but in certain physical characteristics. Nowoman desires a beard, because a beard means care and trouble, and woulddetract from feminine beauty, but to have a strong and, in appearance, aresolute under-jaw may be considered a desirable note of masculinity, andof masculine power and privilege, in the good time coming. Hence thecultivation of it by the chewing of gum is a recognizable and reasonableinstinct, and the practice can be defended as neither a whim nor a vainwaste of energy and nervous force. In a generation or two it may be laidaside as no longer necessary, or men may be compelled to resort to it topreserve their supremacy.

WOMEN IN CONGRESS

It does not seem to be decided yet whether women are to take the Senateor the House at Washington in the new development of what is called thedual government. There are disadvantages in both. The members of theSenate are so few that the women of the country would not be adequatelyrepresented in it; and the Chamber in which the House meets is too largefor women to make speeches in with any pleasure to themselves or theirhearers. This last objection is, however, frivolous, for the speecheswill be printed in the Record; and it is as easy to count women on a voteas men. There is nothing in the objection, either, that the Chamber wouldneed to be remodeled, and the smoking-rooms be turned into Day Nurseries.The coming woman will not smoke, to be sure; neither will she, in comingforward to take charge of the government, plead the Baby Act. Only thosewomen, we are told, would be elected to Congress whose age and positionenable them to devote themselves exclusively to politics. The question,therefore, of taking to themselves the Senate or the House will bedecided by the women themselves upon other grounds—as to whether theywish to take the initiative in legislation and hold the power of thepurse, or whether they prefer to act as a check, to exercise the hightreaty-making power, and to have a voice in selecting the women who shallbe sent to represent us abroad. Other things being equal, women willnaturally select the Upper House, and especially as that will give theman opportunity to reject any but the most competent women for the SupremeBench. The irreverent scoffers at our Supreme Court have in the pastcomplained (though none do now) that there were "old women" in gowns onthe bench. There would be no complaint of the kind in the future. Thejudges would be as pretty as those who assisted in the judgment of Paris,with changed functions; there would be no monotony in the dress, and theSupreme Bench would be one of the most attractive spectacles inWashington. When the judges as well as the advocates are Portias, the lawwill be an agreeable occupation.

This is, however, mere speculation. We do not understand that it is theimmediate purpose of women to take the whole government, though someextravagant expectations are raised by the admission of new States thatare ruled by women. They may wish to divide—and conquer. One plan is,instead of dual Chambers of opposite sexes, to mingle in both the Senateand the House. And this is more likely to be the plan adopted, becausethe revolution is not to be violent, and, indeed, cannot take placewithout some readjustment of the home life. We have at present whatCharles Reade would have called only a right-handed civilization. Tospeak metaphorically, men cannot use their left hands, or, to drop themetaphor, before the government can be fully reorganized men must learnto do women's work. It may be a fair inference from this movement thatwomen intend to abandon the sacred principle of Home Rule. Thisabandonment is foreshadowed in a recent election in a small Western city,where the female voters made a clean sweep, elected an entire citycouncil of women and most of the other officers, including the policejudge and the mayor. The latter lady, by one of those intrusions ofnature which reform is not yet able to control, became a mother and amayor the same week. Her husband had been city clerk, and held over; butfortunately an arrangement was made with him to stay at home and takecare of the baby, unofficially, while the mayor attends to her publicduties. Thus the city clerk will gradually be initiated into the dutiesof home rule, and when the mayor is elected to Congress he will be readyto accompany her to Washington and keep house. The imagination likes todwell upon this, for the new order is capable of infinite extension. Whenthe State takes care of all the children in government nurseries, and themayor has taken her place in the United States Senate, her husband, if hehas become sufficiently reformed and feminized, may go to the House, andthe reunited family of two, clubbing their salaries, can live in greatcomfort.

All this can be easily arranged, whether we are to have a dual governmentof sexes or a mixed House and Senate. The real difficulty is about asingle Executive. Neither sex will be willing to yield to the other thisvast power. We might elect a man and wife President and Vice-President,but the Vice-President, of whatever sex, could not well preside over theSenate and in the White House at the same time. It is true that theConstitution provides that the President and Vice-President shall not beof the same State, but residence can be acquired to get over this aseasily as to obtain a divorce; and a Constitution that insists uponspeaking of the President as "he" is too antiquated to be respected. Whenthe President is a woman, it can matter little whether her husband orsome other woman presides in the Senate. Even the reformers will hardlyinsist upon two Presidents in order to carry out the equality idea, sothat we are probably anticipating difficulties that will not occur inpractice.

The Drawer has only one more practical suggestion. As the right of votingcarries with it the right to hold any elective office, a great changemust take place in Washington life. Now for some years the divergence ofsociety and politics has been increasing at the capital. With women inboth Houses, and on the Supreme Bench, and at the heads of thedepartments, social and political life will become one and the samething; receptions and afternoon teas will be held in the Senate andHouse, and political caucuses in all the drawing-rooms. And then lifewill begin to be interesting.

SHALL WOMEN PROPOSE?

The shyness of man—meaning the "other sex" referred to in the woman'sjournals—has often been noticed in novels, and sometimes in real life.This shyness is, however, so exceptional as to be suspicious. The shyyoung man may provoke curiosity, but he does not always inspire respect.Roughly estimated, shyness is not considered a manly quality, while it isone of the most pleasing and attractive of the feminine traits, and thereis something pathetic in the expression "He is as shy as a girl;" it mayappeal for sympathy and the exercise of the protective instinct in women.Unfortunately it is a little discredited, so many of the old playsturning upon its assumption by young blades who are no better than theyshould be.

What would be the effect upon the masculine character and comfort if thisshyness should become general, as it may in a contingency that is alreadyon the horizon? We refer, of course, to the suggestion, coming fromvarious quarters, that women should propose. The reasonableness of thissuggestion may not lie on the surface; it may not be deduced from theuniform practice, beginning with the primitive men and women; it may notbe inferred from the open nature of the two sexes (for the sake ofargument two sexes must still be insisted on); but it is found in theadvanced civilization with which we are struggling. Why should not womenpropose? Why should they be at a disadvantage in an affair which concernsthe happiness of the whole life? They have as much right to a choice asmen, and to an opportunity to exercise it. Why should they occupy anegative position, and be restricted, in making the most important partof their career, wholly to the choice implied in refusals? In fact,marriage really concerns them more than it does men; they have to bearthe chief of its burdens. A wide and free choice for them would, then,seem to be only fair. Undeniably a great many men are inattentive,unobserving, immersed in some absorbing pursuit, undecided, and at timesbashful, and liable to fall into union with women who happen to be nearthem, rather than with those who are conscious that they would make themthe better wives. Men, unaided by the finer feminine instincts of choice,are so apt to be deceived. In fact, man's inability to "match" anythingis notorious. If he cannot be trusted in the matter of worsted-work, whyshould he have such distinctive liberty in the most important matter ofhis life? Besides, there are many men—and some of the best who get intoa habit of not marrying at all, simply because the right woman has notpresented herself at the right time. Perhaps, if women had the openprivilege of selection, many a good fellow would be rescued frommiserable isolation, and perhaps also many a noble woman whom chance, ora stationary position, or the inertia of the other sex, has left to bloomalone, and waste her sweetness on relations, would be the centre of acharming home, furnishing the finest spectacle seen in this uphill world—a woman exercising gracious hospitality, and radiating to a circle farbeyond her home the influence of her civilizing personality. For,notwithstanding all the centrifugal forces of this age, it is probablethat the home will continue to be the fulcrum on which women will movethe world.

It may be objected that it would be unfair to add this opportunity to thealready, overpowering attractions of woman, and that man would be put atan immense disadvantage, since he might have too much gallantry, or notenough presence of mind, to refuse a proposal squarely and fascinatinglymade, although his judgment scarcely consented, and his ability tosupport a wife were more than doubtful. Women would need to exercise agreat deal of prudence and discretion, or there would be something like apanic, and a cry along the male line of 'Sauve qui peut'; for it ismatter of record that the bravest men will sometimes run away from dangeron a sudden impulse.

This prospective social revolution suggests many inquiries. What would bethe effect upon the female character and disposition of a possible,though not probable, refusal, or of several refusals? Would she becomeembittered and desperate, and act as foolishly as men often do? Would herown sex be considerate, and give her a fair field if they saw she waspaying attention to a young man, or an old one? And what effect wouldthis change in relations have upon men? Would it not render that sporadicshyness of which we have spoken epidemic? Would it frighten men,rendering their position less stable in their own eyes, or would itfeminize them—that is, make them retiring, blushing, self-consciousbeings? And would this change be of any injury to them in their necessaryfight for existence in this pushing world? What would be the effect uponcourtship if both the men and the women approached each other as wooers?In ordinary transactions one is a buyer and one is a seller—to put itcoarsely. If seller met seller and buyer met buyer, trade would languish.But this figure cannot be continued, for there is no romance in a bargainof any sort; and what we should most fear in a scientific age is the lossof romance.

This is, however, mere speculation. The serious aspect of the proposedchange is the effect it will have upon the character of men, who are notenough considered in any of these discussions. The revolution will be aradical one in one respect. We may admit that in the future woman cantake care of herself, but how will it be with man, who has had littledisciplinary experience of adversity, simply because he has beenpermitted to have his own way? Heretofore his life has had a stimulus.When he proposes to a woman, he in fact says: "I am able to support you;I am able to protect you from the rough usage of the world; I am strongand ambitious, and eager to take upon myself the lovely bondage of thisresponsibility. I offer you this love because I feel the courage andresponsibility of my position." That is the manly part of it. What effectwill it have upon his character to be waiting round, unselected andundecided, until some woman comes to him, and fixes her fascinating eyesupon him, and says, in effect: "I can support you; I can defend you. Haveno fear of the future; I will be at once your shield and your backbone. Itake the responsibility of my choice." There are a great many men now,who have sneaked into their positions by a show of courage, who aresupported one way and another by women. It might be humiliating to knowjust how many men live by the labors of their wives. And what would bethe effect upon the character of man if the choice, and theresponsibility of it, and the support implied by it in marriage, weregenerally transferred to woman?

FROCKS AND THE STAGE

The condescension to literature and to the stage is one of the notablecharacteristics of this agreeable time. We have to admit that literatureis rather the fashion, without the violent presumption that the authorand the writer have the same social position that is conferred by money,or by the mysterious virtue there is in pedigree. A person does not losecaste by using the pen, or even by taking the not-needed pay for usingit. To publish a book or to have an article accepted by a magazine maygive a sort of social distinction, either as an exhibition of a certainunexpected capacity or a social eccentricity. It is hardly too much tosay that it has become the fashion to write, as it used to be to dancethe minuet well, or to use the broadsword, or to stand a gentlemanly millwith a renowned bruiser. Of course one ought not to do thisprofessionally exactly, ought not to prepare for doing it by study andsevere discipline, by training for it as for a trade, but simply to tossit off easily, as one makes a call, or pays a compliment, or drivesfour-in-hand. One does not need to have that interior impulse whichdrives a poor devil of an author to express himself, that something tosay which torments the poet into extreme irritability unless he can berid of it, that noble hunger for fame which comes from a consciousness ofthe possession of vital thought and emotion.

The beauty of this condescension to literature of which we speak is thatit has that quality of spontaneity that does not presuppose either acapacity or a call. There is no mystery about the craft. One resolves towrite a book, as he might to take a journey or to practice on the piano,and the thing is done. Everybody can write, at least everybody doeswrite. It is a wonderful time for literature. The Queen of England writesfor it, the Queen of Roumania writes for it, the Shah of Persia writesfor it, Lady Brassey, the yachtswoman, wrote for it, Congressmen writefor it, peers write for it. The novel is the common recreation of ladiesof rank, and where is the young woman in this country who has not triedher hand at a romance or made a cast at a popular magazine? The effect ofall this upon literature is expansive and joyous. Superstition about anymystery in the art has nearly disappeared. It is a common observationthat if persons fail in everything else, if they are fit for nothingelse, they can at least write. It is such an easy occupation, and theremuneration is in such disproportion to the expenditure! Isn't it indeedthe golden era of letters? If only the letters were gold!

If there is any such thing remaining as a guild of authors, somewhere onthe back seats, witnessing this marvelous Kingdom Come of Literature,there must also be a little bunch of actors, born for the stage, who seewith mixed feelings their arena taken possession of by fairer if not morecompetent players. These players are not to be confounded with theplay-actors whom the Puritans denounced, nor with those trained to theprofession in the French capital.

In the United States and in England we are born to enter upon anyavocation, thank Heaven! without training for it. We have not in thiscountry any such obstacle to universal success as the Theatre Francais,but Providence has given us, for wise purposes no doubt, PrivateTheatricals (not always so private as they should be), which domesticatethe drama, and supply the stage with some of the most beautiful and bestdressed performers the world has ever seen. Whatever they may say of it,it is a gallant and a susceptible age, and all men bow to loveliness, andall women recognize a talent for clothes. We do not say that there is notsuch a thing as dramatic art, and that there are not persons who need assevere training before they attempt to personate nature in art as thepainter must undergo who attempts to transfer its features to his canvas.But the taste of the age must be taken into account. The public does notdemand that an actor shall come in at a private door and climb a steepstaircase to get to the stage. When a Star from the Private Theatricalsdescends upon the boards, with the arms of Venus and the throat of Juno,and a wardrobe got out of Paris and through our stingy Custom-house inforty trunks, the plodding actor, who has depended upon art, finds out,what he has been all the time telling us, that all the world's a stage,and men and women merely players. Art is good in its way; but what abouta perfect figure? and is not dressing an art? Can training give one anelegant form, and study command the services of a man milliner? The stageis broadened out and re-enforced by a new element. What went ye out forto see?

A person clad in fine raiment, to be sure. Some of the critics may growla little, and hint at the invasion of art by fashionable life, but theeditor, whose motto is that the newspaper is made for man, not man forthe newspaper, understands what is required in this inspiring histrionicmovement, and when a lovely woman condescends to step from thedrawing-room to the stage he confines his descriptions to her person, anddoes not bother about her capacity; and instead of wearying us with alist of her plays and performances, he gives us a column about herdresses in beautiful language that shows us how closely allied poetry isto tailoring. Can the lady act? Why, simpleminded, she has nearly ahundred frocks, each one a dream, a conception of genius, a vaporousidea, one might say, which will reveal more beauty than it hides, andteach the spectator that art is simply nature adorned. Rachel in all herglory was not adorned like one of these. We have changed all that. Theactress used to have a rehearsal. She now has an "opening." Does itrequire nowadays, then, no special talent or gift to go on the stage? Nomore, we can assure our readers, than it does to write a book. But homelypeople and poor people can write books. As yet they cannot act.

ALTRUISM

Christmas is supposed to be an altruistic festival. Then, if ever, weallow ourselves to go out to others in sympathy expressed by gifts andgood wishes. Then self-forgetfulness in the happiness of others becomes atemporary fashion. And we find—do we not?—the indulgence of the feelingso remunerative that we wish there were other days set apart to it. Wecan even understand those people who get a private satisfaction in beinggood on other days besides Sunday. There is a common notion that thisChristmas altruistic sentiment is particularly shown towards theunfortunate and the dependent by those more prosperous, and in what iscalled a better social position. We are exhorted on this day to rememberthe poor. We need to be reminded rather to remember the rich, the lonely,not-easy-to-be-satisfied rich, whom we do not always have with us. TheDrawer never sees a very rich person that it does not long to give himsomething, some token, the value of which is not estimated by its cost,that should be a consoling evidence to him that he has not lostsympathetic touch with ordinary humanity. There is a great deal ofsympathy afloat in the world, but it is especially shown downward in thesocial scale. We treat our servants—supposing that we are society—better than we treat each other. If we did not, they would leave us. Weare kinder to the unfortunate or the dependent than to each other, and wehave more charity for them.

The Drawer is not indulging in any indiscriminate railing at society.There is society and society. There is that undefined something, morelike a machine than an aggregate of human sensibilities, which is setgoing in a "season," or at a watering-place, or permanently selectsitself for certain social manifestations. It is this that needs amissionary to infuse into it sympathy and charity. If it were indeed amachine and not made up of sensitive personalities, it would not be toits members so selfish and cruel. It would be less an ambitious scramblefor place and favor, less remorseless towards the unsuccessful, not soharsh and hard and supercilious. In short, it would be much moreagreeable if it extended to its own members something of theconsideration and sympathy that it gives to those it regards as itsinferiors. It seems to think that good-breeding and good form areseparable from kindliness and sympathy and helpfulness. Tender-heartedand charitable enough all the individuals of this "society" are topersons below them in fortune or position, let us allow, but how are theyto each other? Nothing can be ruder or less considerate of the feelingsof others than much of that which is called good society, and this is whythe Drawer desires to turn the altruistic sentiment of the world upon itin this season, set apart by common consent for usefulness. Unfortunateare the fortunate if they are lifted into a sphere which is sapless ofdelicacy of feeling for its own. Is this an intangible matter? Takehospitality, for instance. Does it consist in astonishing the invited, inoverwhelming him with a sense of your own wealth, or felicity, or family,or cleverness even; in trying to absorb him in your concerns, yoursuccesses, your possessions, in simply what interests you? Howeverdelightful all these may be, it is an offense to his individuality toinsist that he shall admire at the point of the social bayonet. How doyou treat the stranger? Do you adapt yourself and your surroundings tohim, or insist that he shall adapt himself to you? How often does thestranger, the guest, sit in helpless agony in your circle (all of whomknow each other) at table or in the drawing-room, isolated and separate,because all the talk is local and personal, about your little world, andthe affairs of your clique, and your petty interests, in which he or shecannot possibly join? Ah! the Sioux Indian would not be so cruel as thatto a guest. There is no more refined torture to a sensitive person thanthat. Is it only thoughtlessness? It is more than that. It is a want ofsympathy of the heart, or it is a lack of intelligence and broad-mindedinterest in affairs of the world and in other people. It is thistrait—absorption in self—pervading society more or less, that makes itso unsatisfactory to most people in it. Just a want of human interest;people do not come in contact.

Avid pursuit of wealth, or what is called pleasure, perhaps makes peoplehard to each other, and infuses into the higher social life, which shouldbe the most unselfish and enjoyable life, a certain vulgarity, similar tothat noticed in well-bred tourists scrambling for the seats on top of amountain coach. A person of refinement and sensibility and intelligence,cast into the company of the select, the country-house, the radiant,twelve-button society, has been struck with infinite pity for it, andasks the Drawer to do something about it. The Drawer cannot do anythingabout it. It can only ask the prayers of all good people on Christmas Dayfor the rich. As we said, we do not have them with us always—they arehere today, they are gone to Canada tomorrow. But this is, of course,current facetiousness. The rich are as good as anybody else, according totheir lights, and if what is called society were as good and as kind toitself as it is to the poor, it would be altogether enviable. We are notof those who say that in this case, charity would cover a multitude ofsins, but a diffusion in society of the Christmas sentiment of goodwilland kindliness to itself would tend to make universal the joy on thereturn of this season.

SOCIAL CLEARING-HOUSE

The Drawer would like to emphasize the noble, self-sacrificing spirit ofAmerican women. There are none like them in the world. They take up allthe burdens of artificial foreign usage, where social caste prevails, andbear them with a heroism worthy of a worse cause. They indeed representthese usages to be a burden almost intolerable, and yet they submit tothem with a grace and endurance all their own. Probably there is noharder-worked person than a lady in the season, let us say in Washington,where the etiquette of visiting is carried to a perfection that it doesnot reach even in New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, and where woman'seffort to keep the social fabric together requires more expenditure ofintellect and of physical force than was needed to protect the capital inits peril a quarter of a century ago. When this cruel war is over, themonument to the women who perished in it will need to be higher than thatto the Father of his Country. Merely in the item of keeping an account ofthe visits paid and due, a woman needs a bookkeeper. Only to know theetiquette of how and when and to whom and in what order the visits are tobe paid is to be well educated in a matter that assumes the firstimportance in her life. This is, however, only a detail of bookkeepingand of memory; to pay and receive, or evade, these visits of ceremony isa work which men can admire without the power to imitate; even on thesupposition that a woman has nothing else to do, it calls for our humblegratitude and a recognition of the largeness of nature that can put asideany duties to husband or children in devotion to the public welfare. Thefutile round of society life while it lasts admits of no rival. It seemsas important as the affairs of the government. The Drawer is far fromsaying that it is not. Perhaps no one can tell what confusion would fallinto all the political relations if the social relations of the capitalwere not kept oiled by the system of exchange of fictitious courtesiesamong the women; and it may be true that society at large—men are soapt, when left alone, to relapse—would fall into barbarism if ourpasteboard conventions were neglected. All honor to the self-sacrifice ofwoman!

What a beautiful civilization ours is, supposed to be growing inintelligence and simplicity, and yet voluntarily taking upon itself thisartificial burden in an already overtaxed life! The angels in heaven mustadmire and wonder. The cynic wants to know what is gained for anyrational being when a city-full of women undertake to make and receiveformal visits with persons whom for the most part they do not wish tosee. What is gained, he asks, by leaving cards with all these people andreceiving their cards? When a woman makes her tedious rounds, why is shealways relieved to find people not in? When she can count upon her tenfingers the people she wants to see, why should she pretend to want tosee the others? Is any one deceived by it? Does anybody regard it asanything but a sham and a burden? Much the cynic knows about it! Is itnot necessary to keep up what is called society? Is it not necessary tohave an authentic list of pasteboard acquaintances to invite to thereceptions? And what would become of us without Receptions? Everybodylikes to give them. Everybody flocks to them with much alacrity. Whensociety calls the roll, we all know the penalty of being left out. Isthere any intellectual or physical pleasure equal to that of jamming somany people into a house that they can hardly move, and treating them toa Babel of noises in which no one can make herself heard withoutscreaming? There is nothing like a reception in any uncivilized country.It is so exhilarating! When a dozen or a hundred people are gatheredtogether in a room, they all begin to raise their voices and to shoutlike pool-sellers in the noble rivalry of "warious langwidges," raspingtheir throats into bronchitis in the bidding of the conversational ring.If they spoke low, or even in the ordinary tone, conversation would bepossible. But then it would not be a reception, as we understand it. Wecannot neglect anywhere any of the pleasures of our social life. We trainfor it in lower assemblies. Half a dozen women in a "call" are obliged toshout, just for practice, so that they can be heard by everybody in theneighborhood except themselves. Do not men do the same? If they do, itonly shows that men also are capable of the higher civilization.

But does society—that is, the intercourse of congenial people—dependupon the elaborate system of exchanging calls with hundreds of people whoare not congenial? Such thoughts will sometimes come by a winter firesideof rational-talking friends, or at a dinner-party not too large for talkwithout a telephone, or in the summer-time by the sea, or in the cottagein the hills, when the fever of social life has got down to a normaltemperature. We fancy that sometimes people will give way to a realenjoyment of life and that human intercourse will throw off thisartificial and wearisome parade, and that if women look back with pride,as they may, upon their personal achievements and labors, they will alsoregard them with astonishment. Women, we read every day, long for therights and privileges of men, and the education and serious purpose inlife of men. And yet, such is the sweet self-sacrifice of their nature,they voluntarily take on burdens which men have never assumed, and whichthey would speedily cast off if they had. What should we say of men ifthey consumed half their time in paying formal calls upon each othermerely for the sake of paying calls, and were low-spirited if they didnot receive as many cards as they had dealt out to society? Have they notthe time? Have women more time? and if they have, why should they spendit in this Sisyphus task? Would the social machine go to pieces—theinquiry is made in good faith, and solely for information—if they maderational business for themselves to be attended to, or even if they gavethe time now given to calls they hate to reading and study, and to makingtheir household civilizing centres of intercourse and enjoyment, and paidvisits from some other motive than "clearing off their list"? If all theartificial round of calls and cards should tumble down, what valuablething would be lost out of anybody's life?

The question is too vast for the Drawer, but as an experiment insociology it would like to see the system in abeyance for one season. Ifat the end of it there had not been just as much social enjoyment asbefore, and there were not fewer women than usual down with nervousprostration, it would agree to start at its own expense a new experiment,to wit, a kind of Social Clearing-House, in which all cards should bedelivered and exchanged, and all social debts of this kind be balanced byexperienced bookkeepers, so that the reputation of everybody forpropriety and conventionality should be just as good as it is now.

DINNER-TABLE TALK

Many people suppose that it is the easiest thing in the world to dine ifyou can get plenty to eat. This error is the foundation of much socialmisery. The world that never dines, and fancies it has a grievancejustifying anarchy on that account, does not know how much misery itescapes. A great deal has been written about the art of dining. From timeto time geniuses have appeared who knew how to compose a dinner; indeed,the art of doing it can be learned, as well as the art of cooking andserving it. It is often possible, also, under extraordinarily favorableconditions, to select a company congenial and varied and harmoniousenough to dine together successfully. The tact for getting the rightpeople together is perhaps rarer than the art of composing the dinner.But it exists. And an elegant table with a handsome and brilliant companyabout it is a common conjunction in this country. Instructions are notwanting as to the shape of the table and the size of the party; it isuniversally admitted that the number must be small. The bigdinner-parties which are commonly made to pay off social debts aregenerally of the sort that one would rather contribute to in money thanin personal attendance. When the dinner is treated as a means ofdischarging obligations, it loses all character, and becomes one of thesocial inflictions. While there is nothing in social intercourse soagreeable and inspiring as a dinner of the right sort, society hasinvented no infliction equal to a large dinner that does not "go," as thephrase is. Why it does not go when the viands are good and the company isbright is one of the acknowledged mysteries.

There need be no mystery about it. The social instinct and the socialhabit are wanting to a great many people of uncommon intelligence andcultivation—that sort of flexibility or adaptability that makesagreeable society. But this even does not account for the failure of somany promising dinners. The secret of this failure always is that theconversation is not general. The sole object of the dinner is talk—atleast in the United States, where "good eating" is pretty common, howeverit may be in England, whence come rumors occasionally of accomplished menwho decline to be interrupted by the frivolity of talk upon theappearance of favorite dishes. And private talk at a table is not thesort that saves a dinner; however good it is, it always kills it. Thechance of arrangement is that the people who would like to talk togetherare not neighbors; and if they are, they exhaust each other to wearinessin an hour, at least of topics which can be talked about with the risk ofbeing overheard. A duet to be agreeable must be to a certain extentconfidential, and the dinner-table duet admits of little exceptgeneralities, and generalities between two have their limits ofentertainment. Then there is the awful possibility that the neighbors attable may have nothing to say to each other; and in the best-selectedcompany one may sit beside a stupid man—that is, stupid for the purposeof a 'tete-a-tete'. But this is not the worst of it. No one can talk wellwithout an audience; no one is stimulated to say bright things except bythe attention and questioning and interest of other minds. There islittle inspiration in side talk to one or two. Nobody ought to go to adinner who is not a good listener, and, if possible, an intelligent one.To listen with a show of intelligence is a great accomplishment. It isnot absolutely essential that there should be a great talker or a numberof good talkers at a dinner if all are good listeners, and able to "chipin" a little to the general talk that springs up. For the success of thedinner does not necessarily depend upon the talk being brilliant, but itdoes depend upon its being general, upon keeping the ball rolling roundthe table; the old-fashioned game becomes flat when the balls alldisappear into private pockets. There are dinners where the object seemsto be to pocket all the balls as speedily as possible. We have learnedthat that is not the best game; the best game is when you not only dependon the carom, but in going to the cushion before you carom; that is tosay, including the whole table, and making things lively. The hostesssucceeds who is able to excite this general play of all the forces at thetable, even using the silent but not non-elastic material as cushions, ifone may continue the figure. Is not this, O brothers and sisters, an evilunder the sun, this dinner as it is apt to be conducted? Think of theweary hours you have given to a rite that should be the highest socialpleasure! How often when a topic is started that promises well, and mightcome to something in a general exchange of wit and fancy, and some onebegins to speak on it, and speak very well, too, have you not had a ladyat your side cut in and give you her views on it—views that might beamusing if thrown out into the discussion, but which are simplyimpertinent as an interruption! How often when you have tried to get a"rise" out of somebody opposite have you not had your neighbor cut inacross you with some private depressing observation to your nextneighbor! Private talk at a dinner-table is like private chat at a parlormusicale, only it is more fatal to the general enjoyment. There is anotion that the art of conversation, the ability to talk well, has goneout. That is a great mistake. Opportunity is all that is needed. Theremust be the inspiration of the clash of minds and the encouragement ofgood listening. In an evening round the fire, when couples begin, towhisper or talk low to each other, it is time to put out the lights.Inspiring interest is gone. The most brilliant talker in the world isdumb. People whose idea of a dinner is private talk betweenseat-neighbors should limit the company to two. They have no right tospoil what can be the most agreeable social institution that civilizationhas evolved.

NATURALIZATION

Is it possible for a person to be entirely naturalized?—that is, to bedenationalized, to cast off the prejudice and traditions of one countryand take up those of another; to give up what may be called theinstinctive tendencies of one race and take up those of another. It iseasy enough to swear off allegiance to a sovereign or a government, andto take on in intention new political obligations, but to separate one'sself from the sympathies into which he was born is quite another affair.One is likely to remain in the inmost recesses of his heart an alien, andas a final expression of his feeling to hoist the green flag, or thedragon, or the cross of St. George. Probably no other sentiment is, sostrong in a man as that of attachment to his own soil and people, asub-sentiment always remaining, whatever new and unbreakable attachmentshe may form. One can be very proud of his adopted country, and brag forit, and fight for it; but lying deep in a man's nature is something, nodoubt, that no oath nor material interest can change, and that is nevernaturalized. We see this experiment in America more than anywhere else,because here meet more different races than anywhere else with theserious intention of changing their nationality. And we have a notionthat there is something in our atmosphere, or opportunities, or ourgovernment, that makes this change more natural and reasonable than ithas been anywhere else in history. It is always a surprise to us when aborn citizen of the United States changes his allegiance, but it seems athing of course that a person of any other country should, by an oath,become a good American, and we expect that the act will work a suddenchange in him equal to that wrought in a man by what used to be called aconviction of sin. We expect that he will not only come into our family,but that he will at once assume all its traditions and dislikes, thatwhatever may have been his institutions or his race quarrels, the movinginfluence of his life hereafter will be the "Spirit of '76."

What is this naturalization, however, but a sort of parable of humanlife? Are we not always trying to adjust ourselves to new relations, toget naturalized into a new family? Does one ever do it entirely? And howmuch of the lonesomeness of life comes from the failure to do it! It is atremendous experiment, we all admit, to separate a person from his race,from his country, from his climate, and the habits of his part of thecountry, by marriage; it is only an experiment differing in degree tointroduce him by marriage into a new circle of kinsfolk. Is he everanything but a sort of tolerated, criticised, or admired alien? Does thetime ever come when the distinction ceases between his family and hers?They say love is stronger than death. It may also be stronger thanfamily—while it lasts; but was there ever a woman yet whose mostineradicable feeling was not the sentiment of family and blood, a sort ofbase-line in life upon which trouble and disaster always throw her back?Does she ever lose the instinct of it? We used to say in jest that apatriotic man was always willing to sacrifice his wife's relations inwar; but his wife took a different view of it; and when it becomes aquestion of office, is it not the wife's relations who get them? To besure, Ruth said, thy people shall be my people, and where thou goest Iwill go, and all that, and this beautiful sentiment has touched all time,and man has got the historic notion that he is the head of things. But isit true that a woman is ever really naturalized? Is it in her nature tobe? Love will carry her a great way, and to far countries, and to manyendurances, and her capacity of self-sacrifice is greater than man's; butwould she ever be entirely happy torn from her kindred, transplanted fromthe associations and interlacings of her family life? Does anythingreally take the place of that entire ease and confidence that one has inkin, or the inborn longing for their sympathy and society? There are twotheories about life, as about naturalization: one is that love is enough,that intention is enough; the other is that the whole circle of humanrelations and attachments is to be considered in a marriage, and that inthe long-run the question of family is a preponderating one. Does thegate of divorce open more frequently from following the one theory thanthe other? If we were to adopt the notion that marriage is really atremendous act of naturalization, of absolute surrender on one side orthe other of the deepest sentiments and hereditary tendencies, wouldthere be so many hasty marriages—slip-knots tied by one justice to beundone by another? The Drawer did not intend to start such a deepquestion as this. Hosts of people are yearly naturalized in this country,not from any love of its institutions, but because they can more easilyget a living here, and they really surrender none of their hereditaryideas, and it is only human nature that marriages should be made withlike purpose and like reservations. These reservations do not, however,make the best citizens or the most happy marriages. Would it be anybetter if country lines were obliterated, and the great brotherhood ofpeoples were established, and there was no such thing as patriotism orfamily, and marriage were as free to make and unmake as some people thinkit should be? Very likely, if we could radically change human nature. Buthuman nature is the most obstinate thing that the InternationalConventions have to deal with.

ART OF GOVERNING

He was saying, when he awoke one morning, "I wish I were governor of asmall island, and had nothing to do but to get up and govern." It was anobservation quite worthy of him, and one of general application, forthere are many men who find it very difficult to get a living on theirown resources, to whom it would be comparatively easy to be a very fairsort of governor. Everybody who has no official position or routine dutyon a salary knows that the most trying moment in the twenty-four hours isthat in which he emerges from the oblivion of sleep and faces life.Everything perplexing tumbles in upon him, all the possible vexations ofthe day rise up before him, and he is little less than a hero if he getsup cheerful.

It is not to be wondered at that people crave office, some salariedposition, in order to escape the anxieties, the personalresponsibilities, of a single-handed struggle with the world. It must bemuch easier to govern an island than to carry on almost any retailbusiness. When the governor wakes in the morning he thinks first of hissalary; he has not the least anxiety about his daily bread or the supportof his family. His business is all laid out for him; he has not to createit. Business comes to him; he does not have to drum for it. His day isagreeably, even if sympathetically, occupied with the troubles of otherpeople, and nothing is so easy to bear as the troubles of other people.After he has had his breakfast, and read over the "Constitution," he hasnothing to do but to "govern" for a few hours, that is, to decide aboutthings on general principles, and with little personal application, andperhaps about large concerns which nobody knows anything about, and whichare much easier to dispose of than the perplexing details of privatelife. He has to vote several times a day; for giving a decision is reallycasting a vote; but that is much easier than to scratch around in all theanxieties of a retail business. Many men who would make very respectablePresidents of the United States could not successfully run a retailgrocery store. The anxieties of the grocery would wear them out. Forconsider the varied ability that the grocery requires-the foresight aboutthe markets, to take advantage of an eighth per cent. off or on here andthere; the vigilance required to keep a "full line" and not overstock, todispose of goods before they spoil or the popular taste changes; thesuavity and integrity and duplicity and fairness and adaptability neededto get customers and keep them; the power to bear the daily and hourlyworry; the courage to face the ever-present spectre of "failure," whichis said to come upon ninety merchants in a hundred; the tact needed tomeet the whims and the complaints of patrons, and the difficulty ofgetting the patrons who grumble most to pay in order to satisfy thecreditors. When the retail grocer wakens in the morning he feels that hisbusiness is not going to come to him spontaneously; he thinks of hisrivals, of his perilous stock, of his debts and delinquent customers. Hehas no "Constitution" to go by, nothing but his wits and energy to setagainst the world that day, and every day the struggle and the anxietyare the same. What a number of details he has to carry in his head(consider, for instance, how many different kinds of cheese there are,and how different people hate and love the same kind), and how keen mustbe his appreciation of the popular taste. The complexities and annoyancesof his business are excessive, and he cannot afford to make manymistakes; if he does he will lose his business, and when a man fails inbusiness (honestly), he loses his nerve, and his career is ended. It issimply amazing, when you consider it, the amount of talent shown in whatare called the ordinary businesses of life.

It has been often remarked with how little wisdom the world is governed.That is the reason it is so easy to govern. "Uneasy lies the head thatwears a crown" does not refer to the discomfort of wearing it, but to thedanger of losing it, and of being put back upon one's native resources,having to run a grocery or to keep school. Nobody is in such a pitiableplight as a monarch or politician out of business. It is very difficultfor either to get a living. A man who has once enjoyed the blessedfeeling of awaking every morning with the thought that he has a certainsalary despises the idea of having to drum up a business by his owntalents. It does not disturb the waking hour at all to think that adeputation is waiting in the next room about a post-office in Indiana orabout the codfish in Newfoundland waters—the man can take a second napon any such affair; but if he knows that the living of himself and familythat day depends upon his activity and intelligence, uneasy lies hishead. There is something so restful and easy about public business! It isso simple! Take the average Congressman. The Secretary of the Treasurysends in an elaborate report—a budget, in fact—involving a complete andharmonious scheme of revenue and expenditure. Must the Congressman readit? No; it is not necessary to do that; he only cares for practicalmeasures. Or a financial bill is brought in. Does he study that bill? Hehears it read, at least by title. Does he take pains to inform himself byreading and conversation with experts upon its probable effect? Or aninternational copyright law is proposed, a measure that will relieve thepeople of the United States from the world-wide reputation of sneakingmeanness towards foreign authors. Does he examine the subject, and try tounderstand it? That is not necessary. Or it is a question of tariff. Heis to vote "yes" or "no" on these proposals. It is not necessary for himto master these subjects, but it is necessary for him to know how tovote. And how does he find out that? In the first place, by inquiringwhat effect the measure will have upon the chance of election of the manhe thinks will be nominated for President, and in the second place, whateffect his vote will have on his own reelection. Thus the principles oflegislation become very much simplified, and thus it happens that it iscomparatively so much easier to govern than it is to run a grocery store.

LOVE OF DISPLAY

It is fortunate that a passion for display is implanted in human nature;and if we owe a debt of gratitude to anybody, it is to those who make thedisplay for us. It would be such a dull, colorless world without it! Wetry in vain to imagine a city without brass bands, and militarymarchings, and processions of societies in regalia and banners andresplendent uniforms, and gayly caparisoned horses, and men clad in redand yellow and blue and gray and gold and silver and feathers, moving inbeautiful lines, proudly wheeling with step elate upon some responsivehuman being as axis, deploying, opening, and closing ranks in exquisiteprecision to the strains of martial music, to the thump of the drum andthe scream of the fife, going away down the street with nodding plumes,heads erect, the very port of heroism. There is scarcely anything in theworld so inspiring as that. And the self-sacrifice of it! What will notmen do and endure to gratify their fellows! And in the heat of summer,too, when most we need something to cheer us! The Drawer saw, withfeelings that cannot be explained, a noble company of men, the pride oftheir city, all large men, all fat men, all dressed alike, but each oneas beautiful as anything that can be seen on the stage, perspiringthrough the gala streets of another distant city, the admiration ofcrowds of huzzaing men and women and boys, following another company asresplendent as itself, every man bearing himself like a hero, despisingthe heat and the dust, conscious only of doing his duty. We make a greatmistake if we suppose it is a feeling of ferocity that sets these mentramping about in gorgeous uniform, in mud or dust, in rain or under abroiling sun. They have no desire to kill anybody. Out of theseresplendent clothes they are much like other people; only they have anobler spirit, that which leads them to endure hardships for the sake ofpleasing others. They differ in degree, though not in kind, from thoseorders, for keeping secrets, or for encouraging a distaste for strongdrink, which also wear bright and attractive regalia, and go about inprocessions, with banners and music, and a pomp that cannot bedistinguished at a distance from real war. It is very fortunate that mendo like to march about in ranks and lines, even without anydistinguishing apparel. The Drawer has seen hundreds of citizens in abody, going about the country on an excursion, parading through townafter town, with no other distinction of dress than a uniform high whitehat, who carried joy and delight wherever they went. The good of thisdisplay cannot be reckoned in figures. Even a funeral is comparativelydull without the military band and the four-and-four processions, and thecities where these resplendent corteges of woes are of daily occurrenceare cheerful cities. The brass band itself, when we consider itphilosophically, is one of the most striking things in our civilization.We admire its commonly splendid clothes, its drums and cymbals andbraying brass, but it is the impartial spirit with which it lends itselfto our varying wants that distinguishes it. It will not do to say that ithas no principles, for nobody has so many, or is so impartial inexercising them. It is equally ready to play at a festival or a funeral,a picnic or an encampment, for the sons of war or the sons of temperance,and it is equally willing to express the feeling of a Democratic meetingor a Republican gathering, and impartially blows out "Dixie" or "Marchingthrough Georgia," "The Girl I Left Behind Me" or "My Country, 'tis ofThee." It is equally piercing and exciting for St. Patrick or the Fourthof July.

There are cynics who think it strange that men are willing to dress up infantastic uniform and regalia and march about in sun and rain to make aholiday for their countrymen, but the cynics are ungrateful, and fail tocredit human nature with its trait of self-sacrifice, and they do not atall comprehend our civilization. It was doubted at one time whether thefreedman and the colored man generally in the republic was capable of thehigher civilization. This doubt has all been removed. No other race takesmore kindly to martial and civic display than it. No one has a greaterpassion for societies and uniforms and regalias and banners, and the pompof marchings and processions and peaceful war. The negro naturallyinclines to the picturesque, to the flamboyant, to vivid colors and thetrappings of office that give a man distinction. He delights in the drumand the trumpet, and so willing is he to add to what is spectacular andpleasing in life that he would spend half his time in parading. Hiscapacity for a holiday is practically unlimited. He has not yet the meansto indulge his taste, and perhaps his taste is not yet equal to hismeans, but there is no question of his adaptability to the sort ofdisplay which is so pleasing to the greater part of the human race, andwhich contributes so much to the brightness and cheerfulness of thisworld. We cannot all have decorations, and cannot all wear uniforms, oreven regalia, and some of us have little time for going about in militaryor civic processions, but we all like to have our streets put on aholiday appearance; and we cannot express in words our gratitude to thosewho so cheerfully spend their time and money in glittering apparel and inparades for our entertainment.

VALUE OF THE COMMONPLACE

The vitality of a fallacy is incalculable. Although the Drawer has beengoing many years, there are still remaining people who believe that"things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other." Thismathematical axiom, which is well enough in its place, has been extendedinto the field of morals and social life, confused the perception ofhuman relations, and raised "hob," as the saying is, in politicaleconomy. We theorize and legislate as if people were things. Most of theschemes of social reorganization are based on this fallacy. It alwaysbreaks down in experience. A has two friends, B and C—to state itmathematically. A is equal to B, and A is equal to C. A has for B andalso for C the most cordial admiration and affection, and B and C havereciprocally the same feeling for A. Such is the harmony that A cannottell which he is more fond of, B or C. And B and C are sure that A is thebest friend of each. This harmony, however, is not triangular. A makesthe mistake of supposing that it is—having a notion that things whichare equal to the same thing are equal to each other—and he brings B andC together. The result is disastrous. B and C cannot get on with eachother. Regard for A restrains their animosity, and they hypocriticallypretend to like each other, but both wonder what A finds so congenial inthe other. The truth is that this personal equation, as we call it, ineach cannot be made the subject of mathematical calculation. Humanrelations will not bend to it. And yet we keep blundering along as ifthey would. We are always sure, in our letter of introduction, that thisfriend will be congenial to the other, because we are fond of both.Sometimes this happens, but half the time we should be more successful inbringing people into accord if we gave a letter of introduction to aperson we do not know, to be delivered to one we have never seen. On theface of it this is as absurd as it is for a politician to indorse theapplication of a person he does not know for an office the duties ofwhich he is unacquainted with; but it is scarcely less absurd than theexpectation that men and women can be treated like mathematical units andequivalents. Upon the theory that they can, rest the present grotesqueschemes of Nationalism.

In saying all this the Drawer is well aware that it subjects itself tothe charge of being commonplace, but it is precisely the commonplace thatthis essay seeks to defend. Great is the power of the commonplace. "Myfriends," says the preacher, in an impressive manner, "Alexander died;Napoleon died; you will all die!" This profound remark, so true, sothoughtful, creates a deep sensation. It is deepened by the statementthat "man is a moral being." The profundity of such startling assertionscows the spirit; they appeal to the universal consciousness, and we bowto the genius that delivers them. "How true!" we exclaim, and go awaywith an enlarged sense of our own capacity for the comprehension of deepthought. Our conceit is flattered. Do we not like the books that raise usto the great level of the commonplace, whereon we move with a sense ofpower? Did not Mr. Tupper, that sweet, melodious shepherd of theundisputed, lead about vast flocks of sheep over the satisfying plain ofmediocrity? Was there ever a greater exhibition of power, while itlasted? How long did "The Country Parson" feed an eager world withrhetorical statements of that which it already knew? The thinner thissort of thing is spread out, the more surface it covers, of course. Whatis so captivating and popular as a book of essays which gathers togetherand arranges a lot of facts out of histories and cyclopaedias, set forthin the form of conversations that any one could have taken part in? Isnot this book pleasing because it is commonplace? And is this because wedo not like to be insulted with originality, or because in our experienceit is only the commonly accepted which is true? The statesman or the poetwho launches out unmindful of these conditions will be likely to come togrief in her generation. Will not the wise novelist seek to encounter theleast intellectual resistance?

Should one take a cynical view of mankind because he perceives this greatpower of the commonplace? Not at all. He should recognize and respectthis power. He may even say that it is this power that makes the world goon as smoothly and contentedly as it does, on the whole. Woe to us, isthe thought of Carlyle, when a thinker is let loose in this world! Hebecomes a cause of uneasiness, and a source of rage very often. But hispower is limited. He filters through a few minds, until gradually hisideas become commonplace enough to be powerful. We draw our supply ofwater from reservoirs, not from torrents. Probably the man who first saidthat the line of rectitude corresponds with the line of enjoyment wasdisliked as well as disbelieved. But how impressive now is the idea thatvirtue and happiness are twins!

Perhaps it is true that the commonplace needs no defense, since everybodytakes it in as naturally as milk, and thrives on it. Beloved and read andfollowed is the writer or the preacher of commonplace. But is not thesunshine common, and the bloom of May? Why struggle with these things inliterature and in life? Why not settle down upon the formula that to beplatitudinous is to be happy?

THE BURDEN OF CHRISTMAS

It would be the pity of the world to destroy it, because it would be nextto impossible to make another holiday as good as Christmas. Perhaps thereis no danger, but the American people have developed an unexpectedcapacity for destroying things; they can destroy anything. They have eveninvented a phrase for it—running a thing into the ground. They haveperfected the art of making so much of a thing as to kill it; they canmagnify a man or a recreation or an institution to death. And they do itwith such a hearty good-will and enjoyment. Their motto is that youcannot have too much of a good thing. They have almost made funeralsunpopular by over-elaboration and display, especially what are calledpublic funerals, in which an effort is made to confer great distinctionon the dead. So far has it been carried often that there has been areaction of popular sentiment and people have wished the man were alive.We prosecute everything so vigorously that we speedily either wear it outor wear ourselves out on it, whether it is a game, or a festival, or aholiday. We can use up any sport or game ever invented quicker than anyother people. We can practice anything, like a vegetable diet, forinstance, to an absurd conclusion with more vim than any other nation.This trait has its advantages; nowhere else will a delusion run so fast,and so soon run up a tree—another of our happy phrases. There is alargeness and exuberance about us which run even into our ordinaryphraseology. The sympathetic clergyman, coming from the bedside of aparishioner dying of dropsy, says, with a heavy sigh, "The poor fellow isjust swelling away."

Is Christmas swelling away? If it is not, it is scarcely our fault. Sincethe American nation fairly got hold of the holiday—in some parts of thecountry, as in New England, it has been universal only about fiftyyears—we have made it hum, as we like to say. We have appropriated theEnglish conviviality, the German simplicity, the Roman pomp, and we haveadded to it an element of expense in keeping with our own greatness. Isanybody beginning to feel it a burden, this sweet festival of charity andgood-will, and to look forward to it with apprehension? Is the timeapproaching when we shall want to get somebody to play it for us, likebase-ball? Anything that interrupts the ordinary flow of life, introducesinto it, in short, a social cyclone that upsets everything for afortnight, may in time be as hard to bear as that festival of housewivescalled housecleaning, that riot of cleanliness which men fear as they doa panic in business. Taking into account the present preparations forChristmas, and the time it takes to recover from it, we arebeginning—are we not?—to consider it one of the most serious events ofmodern life.

The Drawer is led into these observations out of its love for Christmas.It is impossible to conceive of any holiday that could take its place,nor indeed would it seem that human wit could invent another so adaptedto humanity. The obvious intention of it is to bring together, for aseason at least, all men in the exercise of a common charity and afeeling of good-will, the poor and the rich, the successful and theunfortunate, that all the world may feel that in the time called theTruce of God the thing common to all men is the best thing in life. Howwill it suit this intention, then, if in our way of exaggeratedostentation of charity the distinction between rich and poor is made toappear more marked than on ordinary days? Blessed are those that expectnothing. But are there not an increasing multitude of persons in theUnited States who have the most exaggerated expectations of personalprofit on Christmas Day? Perhaps it is not quite so bad as this, but itis safe to say that what the children alone expect to receive, in moneyvalue would absorb the national surplus, about which so much fuss ismade. There is really no objection to this—the terror of the surplus isa sort of nightmare in the country—except that it destroys thesimplicity of the festival, and belittles small offerings that have theirchief value in affection. And it points inevitably to the creation of asort of Christmas "Trust"—the modern escape out of ruinous competition.When the expense of our annual charity becomes so great that the poor arediscouraged from sharing in it, and the rich even feel it a burden, therewould seem to be no way but the establishment of neighborhood "Trusts" inorder to equalize both cost and distribution. Each family could buy ashare according to its means, and the division on Christmas Day wouldcreate a universal satisfaction in profit sharing—that is, the richwould get as much as the poor, and the rivalry of ostentation would bequieted. Perhaps with the money question a little subdued, and the femaleanxieties of the festival allayed, there would be more room for thedevelopment of that sweet spirit of brotherly kindness, or all-embracingcharity, which we know underlies this best festival of all the ages. Isthis an old sermon? The Drawer trusts that it is, for there can benothing new in the preaching of simplicity.

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF WRITERS

It is difficult enough to keep the world straight without theinterposition of fiction. But the conduct of the novelists and thepainters makes the task of the conservators of society doubly perplexing.Neither the writers nor the artists have a due sense of theresponsibilities of their creations. The trouble appears to arise fromthe imitativeness of the race. Nature herself seems readily to fall intoimitation. It was noticed by the friends of nature that when the peculiarcoal-tar colors were discovered, the same faded, aesthetic, and sometimessickly colors began to appear in the ornamental flower-beds and masses offoliage plants. It was hardly fancy that the flowers took the colors ofthe ribbons and stuffs of the looms, and that the same instant nature andart were sicklied o'er with the same pale hues of fashion. If thisrelation of nature and art is too subtle for comprehension, there isnothing fanciful in the influence of the characters in fiction uponsocial manners and morals. To convince ourselves of this, we do not needto recall the effect of Werther, of Childe Harold, and of Don Juan, andthe imitation of their sentimentality, misanthropy, and adventure, downto the copying of the rakishness of the loosely-knotted necktie and thebroad turn-over collar. In our own generation the heroes and heroines offiction begin to appear in real life, in dress and manner, while they arestill warm from the press. The popular heroine appears on the street in ahundred imitations as soon as the popular mind apprehends her traits inthe story. We did not know the type of woman in the poems of theaesthetic school and on the canvas of Rossetti—the red-haired, wide-eyedchild of passion and emotion, in lank clothes, enmeshed in spider-webs—but so quickly was she multiplied in real life that she seemed to havestepped from the book and the frame, ready-made, into the street and thedrawing-room. And there is nothing wonderful about this. It is a truismto say that the genuine creations in fiction take their places in generalapprehension with historical characters, and sometimes they live morevividly on the printed page and on canvas than the others in their pale,contradictory, and incomplete lives. The characters of history we seldomagree about, and are always reconstructing on new information; but thecharacters of fiction are subject to no such vicissitudes.

The importance of this matter is hardly yet perceived. Indeed, it isunreasonable that it should be, when parents, as a rule, have so slight afeeling of responsibility for the sort of children they bring into theworld. In the coming scientific age this may be changed, and society mayvisit upon a grandmother the sins of her grandchildren, recognizing herresponsibility to the very end of the line. But it is not strange that inthe apathy on this subject the novelists should be careless andinconsiderate as to the characters they produce, either as ideals orexamples. They know that the bad example is more likely to be copied thanto be shunned, and that the low ideal, being easy to, follow, is morelikely to be imitated than the high ideal. But the novelists have toolittle sense of responsibility in this respect, probably from aninadequate conception of their power. Perhaps the most harmful sinnersare not those who send into the world of fiction the positively wickedand immoral, but those who make current the dull, the commonplace, andthe socially vulgar. For most readers the wicked character is repellant;but the commonplace raises less protest, and is soon deemed harmless,while it is most demoralizing. An underbred book—that is, a book inwhich the underbred characters are the natural outcome of the author'sown, mind and apprehension of life—is worse than any possible epidemic;for while the epidemic may kill a number of useless or vulgar people, thebook will make a great number. The keen observer must have noticed theincreasing number of commonplace, undiscriminating people of lowintellectual taste in the United States. These are to a degree the resultof the feeble, underbred literature (so called) that is most hawkedabout, and most accessible, by cost and exposure, to the greater numberof people. It is easy to distinguish the young ladies—many of thembeautifully dressed, and handsome on first acquaintance—who have beenbred on this kind of book. They are betrayed by their speech, theirtaste, their manners. Yet there is a marked public insensibility aboutthis. We all admit that the scrawny young woman, anaemic and physicallyundeveloped, has not had proper nourishing food: But we seldom think thatthe mentally-vulgar girl, poverty-stricken in ideas, has been starved bya thin course of diet on anaemic books. The girls are not to blame ifthey are as vapid and uninteresting as the ideal girls they have beenassociating with in the books they have read. The responsibility is withthe novelist and the writer of stories, the chief characteristic of whichis vulgar commonplace.

Probably when the Great Assize is held one of the questions asked willbe, "Did you, in America, ever write stories for children?" What aquaking of knees there will be! For there will stand the victims of thissort of literature, who began in their tender years to enfeeble theirminds with the wishy-washy flood of commonplace prepared for them by dullwriters and commercial publishers, and continued on in those so-calleddomestic stories (as if domestic meant idiotic) until their minds werediluted to that degree that they could not act upon anything that offeredthe least resistance. Beginning with the pepsinized books, they mustcontinue with them, and the dull appetite by-and-by must be stimulatedwith a spice of vulgarity or a little pepper of impropriety. Andfortunately for their nourishment in this kind, the dullest writers canbe indecent.

Unfortunately the world is so ordered that the person of the feeblestconstitution can communicate a contagious disease. And these people, bredon this pabulum, in turn make books. If one, it is now admitted, can donothing else in this world, he can write, and so the evil widens andwidens. No art is required, nor any selection, nor any ideality, onlycapacity for increasing the vacuous commonplace in life. A princess bornmay have this, or the leader of cotillons. Yet in the judgment theresponsibility will rest upon the writers who set the copy.

THE CAP AND GOWN

One of the burning questions now in the colleges for the higher educationof women is whether the undergraduates shall wear the cap and gown. Thesubject is a delicate one, and should not be confused with the broaderone, what is the purpose of the higher education? Some hold that thepurpose is to enable a woman to dispense with marriage, while othersmaintain that it is to fit a woman for the higher duties of the marriedlife. The latter opinion will probably prevail, for it has nature on itsside, and the course of history, and the imagination. But meantime thepoint of education is conceded, and whether a girl is to educate herselfinto single or double blessedness need not interfere with theconsideration of the habit she is to wear during her college life. Thatis to be determined by weighing a variety of reasons.

Not the least of these is the consideration whether the cap-and-gownhabit is becoming. If it is not becoming, it will not go, not even by anamendment to the Constitution of the United States; for woman's dressobeys always the higher law. Masculine opinion is of no value on thispoint, and the Drawer is aware of the fact that if it thinks the cap andgown becoming, it may imperil the cap-and-gown cause to say so; but thecold truth is that the habit gives a plain girl distinction, and ahandsome girl gives the habit distinction. So that, aside from themysterious working of feminine motive, which makes woman a law untoherself, there should be practical unanimity in regard to this habit.There is in the cap and gown a subtle suggestion of the union of learningwith womanly charm that is very captivating to the imagination. On theother hand, all this may go for nothing with the girl herself, who isconscious of the possession of quite other powers and attractions in avaried and constantly changing toilet, which can reflect her moods fromhour to hour. So that if it is admitted that this habit is almostuniversally becoming today, it might, in the inscrutable depths of thefeminine nature—the something that education never can and never shouldchange—be irksome tomorrow, and we can hardly imagine what a blight to ayoung spirit there might be in three hundred and sixty-five days ofuniformity.

The devotees of the higher education will perhaps need to approach thesubject from another point of view—namely, what they are willing tosurrender in order to come into a distinctly scholastic influence. Thecap and gown are scholastic emblems. Primarily they marked the student,and not alliance with any creed or vows to any religious order. Theybelong to the universities of learning, and today they have no moreecclesiastic meaning than do the gorgeous robes of the Oxford chancellorand vice-chancellor and the scarlet hood. From the scholarly side, then,if not from the dress side, there is much to be said for the cap andgown. They are badges of devotion, for the time being, to an intellectuallife.

They help the mind in its effort to set itself apart to unworldlypursuits; they are indications of separateness from the prevailingfashions and frivolities. The girl who puts on the cap and gown devotesherself to the society which is avowedly in pursuit of a largerintellectual sympathy and a wider intellectual life. The enduring of thishabit will have a confirming influence on her purposes, and help to keepher up to them. It is like the uniform to the soldier or the veil to thenun—a sign of separation and devotion. It is difficult in this age tokeep any historic consciousness, any proper relations to the past. In thecap and gown the girl will at least feel that she is in the line of thetraditions of pure learning. And there is also something of order anddiscipline in the uniforming of a community set apart for an unworldlypurpose. Is it believed that three or four years of the kind ofseparateness marked by this habit in the life of a girl will rob her ofany desirable womanly quality?

The cap and gown are only an emphasis of the purpose to devote a certainperiod to the higher life, and if they cannot be defended, then we maybegin to be skeptical about the seriousness of the intention of a highereducation. If the school is merely a method of passing the time until acertain event in the girl's life, she had better dress as if that eventwere the only one worth considering. But if she wishes to fit herself forthe best married life, she may not disdain the help of the cap and gownin devoting herself to the highest culture. Of course education has itsdangers, and the regalia of scholarship may increase them. While ourcap-and-gown divinity is walking in the groves of Academia, apart fromthe ways of men, her sisters outside may be dancing and dressing into theaffections of the marriageable men. But this is not the worst of it. Theuniversity girl may be educating herself out of sympathy with theordinary possible husband. But this will carry its own cure. The educatedgirl will be so much more attractive in the long-run, will have so manymore resources for making a life companionship agreeable, that she willbe more and more in demand. And the young men, even those not expectingto take up a learned profession, will see the advantage of educatingthemselves up to the cap-and-gown level. We know that it is the office ofthe university to raise the standard of the college, and of the collegeto raise the standard of the high school. It will be the inevitableresult that these young ladies, setting themselves apart for a period tothe intellectual life, will raise the standard of the young men, and ofmarried life generally. And there is nothing supercilious in theinvitation of the cap-and-gown brigade to the young men to come uphigher.

There is one humiliating objection made to the cap and gown-made bymembers of the gentle sex themselves—which cannot be passed by. It is ofsuch a delicate nature, and involves such a disparagement of the sex in avital point, that the Drawer hesitates to put it in words. It is saidthat the cap and gown will be used to cover untidiness, to conceal themakeshift of a disorderly and unsightly toilet. Undoubtedly the cap andgown are democratic, adopted probably to equalize the appearance of richand poor in the same institution, where all are on an intellectual level.Perhaps the sex is not perfect; it may be that there are slovens (it is abrutal word) in that sex which is our poetic image of purity. But a neatand self-respecting girl will no more be slovenly under a scholastic gownthan under any outward finery. If it is true that the sex would takecover in this way, and is liable to run down at the heel when it has achance, then to the "examination" will have to be added a periodic"inspection," such as the West-Pointers submit to in regard to theiruniforms. For the real idea of the cap and gown is to encouragediscipline, order, and neatness. We fancy that it is the mission of womanin this generation to show the world that the tendency of woman to anintellectual life is not, as it used to be said it was, to untidy habits.

A TENDENCY OF THE AGE

This ingenious age, when studied, seems not less remarkable for itsdivision of labor than for the disposition of people to shift labor on toothers' shoulders. Perhaps it is only another aspect of the spirit ofaltruism, a sort of backhanded vicariousness. In taking an inventory oftendencies, this demands some attention.

The notion appears to be spreading that there must be some way by whichone can get a good intellectual outfit without much personal effort.There are many schemes of education which encourage this idea. If onecould only hit upon the right "electives," he could become a scholar withvery little study, and without grappling with any of the realdifficulties in the way of an education. It is no more a short-cut wedesire, but a road of easy grades, with a locomotive that will pull ourtrain along while we sit in a palace-car at ease. The discipline to beobtained by tackling an obstacle and overcoming it we think of smallvalue. There must be some way of attaining the end of cultivation withoutmuch labor. We take readily to proprietary medicines. It is easier todose with these than to exercise ordinary prudence about our health. Andwe readily believe the doctors of learning when they assure us that wecan acquire a new language by the same method by which we can restorebodily vigor: take one small patent-right volume in six easy lessons,without even the necessity of "shaking," and without a regular doctor,and we shall know the language. Some one else has done all the work forus, and we only need to absorb. It is pleasing to see how this theory isgetting to be universally applied. All knowledge can be put into a kindof pemican, so that we can have it condensed. Everything must be choppedup, epitomized, put in short sentences, and italicized. And we haveprimers for science, for history, so that we can acquire all theinformation we need in this world in a few hasty bites. It is anadmirable saving of time-saving of time being more important in thisgeneration than the saving of ourselves.

And the age is so intellectually active, so eager to know! If we wish toknow anything, instead of digging for it ourselves, it is much easier toflock all together to some lecturer who has put all the results into anhour, and perhaps can throw them all upon a screen, so that we canacquire all we want by merely using the eyes, and bothering ourselveslittle about what is said. Reading itself is almost too much of aneffort. We hire people to read for us—to interpret, as we call it—Browning and Ibsen, even Wagner. Every one is familiar with thepleasure and profit of "recitations," of "conversations" which aremonologues. There is something fascinating in the scheme of gettingothers to do our intellectual labor for us, to attempt to fill up ourminds as if they were jars. The need of the mind for nutriment is likethe need of the body, but our theory is that it can be satisfied in adifferent way. There was an old belief that in order that we should enjoyfood, and that it should perform its function of assimilation, we mustwork for it, and that the exertion needed to earn it brought the appetitethat made it profitable to the system. We still have the idea that wemust eat for ourselves, and that we cannot delegate this performance, aswe do the filling of the mind, to some one else. We may have ceased torelish the act of eating, as we have ceased to relish the act ofstudying, but we cannot yet delegate it, even although our power ofdigesting food for the body has become almost as feeble as the power ofacquiring and digesting food for the mind.

It is beautiful to witness our reliance upon others. The house may befull of books, the libraries may be as free and as unstrained ofimpurities as city water; but if we wish to read anything or studyanything we resort to a club. We gather together a number of persons oflike capacity with ourselves. A subject which we might grapple with andrun down by a few hours of vigorous, absorbed attention in a library,gaining strength of mind by resolute encountering of difficulties, bypersonal effort, we sit around for a month or a season in a club,expecting somehow to take the information by effortless contiguity withit. A book which we could master and possess in an evening we can haveread to us in a month in the club, without the least intellectual effort.Is there nothing, then, in the exchange of ideas? Oh yes, when there areideas to exchange. Is there nothing stimulating in the conflict of mindwith mind? Oh yes, when there is any mind for a conflict. But the minddoes not grow without personal effort and conflict and struggle withitself. It is a living organism, and not at all like a jar or otherreceptacle for fluids. The physiologists say that what we eat will not dous much good unless we chew it. By analogy we may presume that the mindis not greatly benefited by what it gets without considerable exercise ofthe mind.

Still, it is a beautiful theory that we can get others to do our readingand thinking, and stuff our minds for us. It may be that psychology willyet show us how a congregate education by clubs may be the way. But justnow the method is a little crude, and lays us open to the charge—whichevery intelligent person of this scientific age will repudiate—of beingcontent with the superficial; for instance, of trusting wholly to othersfor our immortal furnishing, as many are satisfied with the review of abook for the book itself, or—a refinement on that—with a review of thereviews. The method is still crude. Perhaps we may expect a furtherdevelopment of the "slot" machine. By dropping a cent in the slot one canget his weight, his age, a piece of chewing-gum, a bit of candy, or ashock that will energize his nervous system. Why not get from a similarmachine a "good business education," or an "interpretation" of Browning,or a new language, or a knowledge of English literature? But even thiswould be crude. We have hopes of something from electricity. There oughtto be somewhere a reservoir of knowledge, connected by wires with everyhouse, and a professional switch-tender, who, upon the pressure of abutton in any house, could turn on the intellectual stream desired.—[Prophecy of the Internet of the year 2000 from 110 years ago. D.W.]—There must be discovered in time a method by which not only informationbut intellectual life can be infused into the system by an electriccurrent. It would save a world of trouble and expense. For some clubseven are a weariness, and it costs money to hire other people to read andthink for us.

A LOCOED NOVELIST

Either we have been indulging in an expensive mistake, or a great foreignnovelist who preaches the gospel of despair is locoed.

This word, which may be new to most of our readers, has long been currentin the Far West, and is likely to be adopted into the language, andbecome as indispensable as the typic words taboo and tabooed, whichHerman Melville gave us some forty years ago. There grows upon thedeserts and the cattle ranges of the Rockies a plant of the leguminosaefamily, with a purple blossom, which is called the 'loco'. It is sweet tothe taste; horses and cattle are fond of it, and when they have onceeaten it they prefer it to anything else, and often refuse other food.But the plant is poisonous, or, rather, to speak exactly, it is a weed ofinsanity. Its effect upon the horse seems to be mental quite as much asphysical. He behaves queerly, he is full of whims; one would say he was"possessed." He takes freaks, he trembles, he will not go in certainplaces, he will not pull straight, his mind is evidently affected, he ismildly insane. In point of fact, he is ruined; that is to say, he is'locoed'. Further indulgence in the plant results in death, but rarelydoes an animal recover from even one eating of the insane weed.

The shepherd on the great sheep ranges leads an absolutely isolated life.For weeks, sometimes for months together, he does not see a human being.His only companions are his dogs and the three or four thousand sheep heis herding. All day long, under the burning sun, he follows the herd overthe rainless prairie, as it nibbles here and there the short grass andslowly gathers its food. At night he drives the sheep back to the corral,and lies down alone in his hut. He speaks to no one; he almost forgetshow to speak. Day and night he hears no sound except the melancholy,monotonous bleat, bleat of the sheep. It becomes intolerable. The animalstupidity of the herd enters into him. Gradually he loses his mind. Theysay that he is locoed. The insane asylums of California contain manyshepherds.

But the word locoed has come to have a wider application than to the poorshepherds or the horses and cattle that have eaten the loco. Any one whoacts queerly, talks strangely, is visionary without being actually alunatic, who is what would be called elsewhere a "crank," is said to belocoed. It is a term describing a shade of mental obliquity and queernesssomething short of irresponsible madness, and something more thantemporarily "rattled" or bewildered for the moment. It is a good word,and needed to apply to many people who have gone off into strange ways,and behave as if they had eaten some insane plant—the insane plant beingprobably a theory in the mazes of which they have wandered until they arelost.

Perhaps the loco does not grow in Russia, and the Prophet ofDiscouragement may never have eaten of it; perhaps he is only like theshepherd, mainly withdrawn from human intercourse and sympathy in amorbid mental isolation, hearing only the bleat, bleat, bleat of the'muxhiks' in the dullness of the steppes, wandering round in his ownsated mind until he has lost all clew to life. Whatever the cause may be,clearly he is 'locoed'. All his theories have worked out to theconclusion that the world is a gigantic mistake, love is nothing butanimality, marriage is immorality; according to astronomical calculationsthis teeming globe and all its life must end some time; and why not now?There shall be no more marriage, no more children; the present populationshall wind up its affairs with decent haste, and one by one quit thescene of their failure, and avoid all the worry of a useless struggle.

This gospel of the blessedness of extinction has come too late to enableus to profit by it in our decennial enumeration. How different the censuswould have been if taken in the spirit of this new light! How muchbitterness, how much hateful rivalry would have been spared! We shouldthen have desired a reduction of the population, not an increase of it.There would have been a pious rivalry among all the towns and cities onthe way to the millennium of extinction to show the least number ofinhabitants; and those towns would have been happiest which could exhibitnot only a marked decline in numbers, but the greater number of oldpeople. Beautiful St. Paul would have held a thanksgiving service, andinvited the Minneapolis enumerators to the feast, Kansas City and St.Louis and San Francisco, and a hundred other places, would not havedesired a recount, except, perhaps, for overestimate; they would not havesaid that thousands were away at the sea or in the mountains, but, on thecontrary, that thousands who did not belong there, attracted by thesalubrity of the climate, and the desire to injure the town's reputation,had crowded in there in census time. The newspapers, instead of callingon people to send in the names of the unenumerated, would have rejoicedat the small returns, as they would have done if the census had been forthe purpose of levying the federal tax upon each place according to itspopulation. Chicago—well, perhaps the Prophet of the Steppes would havemade an exception of Chicago, and been cynically delighted to push it onits way of increase, aggregation, and ruin.

But instead of this, the strain of anxiety was universal andheart-rending. So much depended upon swelling the figures. The tensionwould have been relieved if our faces were all set towards extinction,and the speedy evacuation of this unsatisfactory globe. The writer metrecently, in the Colorado desert of Arizona, a forlorn census-taker whohad been six weeks in the saddle, roaming over the alkali plains in orderto gratify the vanity of Uncle Sam. He had lost his reckoning, and didnot know the day of the week or of the month. In all the vast territory,away up to the Utah line, over which he had wandered, he met human beings(excluding "Indians and others not taxed ") so rarely that he was indanger of being locoed. He was almost in despair when, two days before,he had a windfall, which raised his general average in the form of awoman with twenty-six children, and he was rejoicing that he should beable to turn in one hundred and fifty people. Alas, the revenue thegovernment will derive from these half-nomads will never pay the cost ofenumerating them.

And, alas again, whatever good showing we may make, we shall wish it werelarger; the more people we have the more we shall want. In this directionthere is no end, any more than there is to life. If extinction, and notlife and growth, is the better rule, what a costly mistake we have beenmaking!

By Charles Dudley Warner

CONTENTS: (28 short studies)

OUR PRESIDENTTHE NEWSPAPER-MADE MANINTERESTING GIRLSGIVE THE MEN A CHANCETHE ADVENT OF CANDORTHE AMERICAN MANTHE ELECTRIC WAYCAN A HUSBAND OPEN HIS WIFE'S LETTERS?A LEISURE CLASSWEATHER AND CHARACTERBORN WITH AN "EGO"JUVENTUS MUNDIA BEAUTIFUL OLD AGETHE ATTRACTION OF THE REPULSIVEGIVING AS A LUXURYCLIMATE AND HAPPINESSTHE NEW FEMININE RESERVEREPOSE IN ACTIVITYWOMEN—IDEAL AND REALTHE ART OF IDLENESSIS THERE ANY CONVERSATIONTHE TALL GIRLTHE DEADLY DIARYTHE WHISTLING GIRLBORN OLD AND RICHTHE "OLD SOLDIER"THE ISLAND OF BIMINIJUNE

OUR PRESIDENT

We are so much accustomed to kings and queens and other privilegedpersons of that sort in this world that it is only on reflection that wewonder how they became so. The mystery is not their continuance, but howdid they get a start? We take little help from studying the bees—originally no one could have been born a queen. There must have beennot only a selection, but an election, not by ballot, but by consent someway expressed, and the privileged persons got their positions becausethey were the strongest, or the wisest, or the most cunning. But thedescendants of these privileged persons hold the same positions when theyare neither strong, nor wise, nor very cunning. This also is a mystery.The persistence of privilege is an unexplained thing in human affairs,and the consent of mankind to be led in government and in fashion bythose to whom none of the original conditions of leadership attach is aphilosophical anomaly. How many of the living occupants of thrones,dukedoms, earldoms, and such high places are in position on their ownmerits, or would be put there by common consent? Referring their originto some sort of an election, their continuance seems to rest simply onforbearance. Here in America we are trying a new experiment; we haveadopted the principle of election, but we have supplemented it with theequally authoritative right of deposition. And it is interesting to seehow it has worked for a hundred years, for it is human nature to like tobe set up, but not to like to be set down. If in our elections we do notalways get the best—perhaps few elections ever did—we at least do notperpetuate forever in privilege our mistakes or our good hits.

The celebration in New York, in 1889, of the inauguration of Washingtonwas an instructive spectacle. How much of privilege had been gathered andperpetuated in a century? Was it not an occasion that emphasized ourrepublican democracy? Two things were conspicuous. One was that we didnot honor a family, or a dynasty, or a title, but a character; and theother was that we did not exalt any living man, but simply the office ofPresident. It was a demonstration of the power of the people to createtheir own royalty, and then to put it aside when they have done with it.It was difficult to see how greater honors could have been paid to anyman than were given to the President when he embarked at Elizabethportand advanced, through a harbor crowded with decorated vessels, to thegreat city, the wharves and roofs of which were black with human beings—a holiday city which shook with the tumult of the popular welcome.Wherever he went he drew the swarms in the streets as the moon draws thetide. Republican simplicity need not fear comparison with any royalpageant when the President was received at the Metropolitan, and, in ascene of beauty and opulence that might be the flowering of a thousandyears instead of a century, stood upon the steps of the "dais" to greetthe devoted Centennial Quadrille, which passed before him with thecourageous five, 'Imperator, morituri te salutamus'. We had done it—we,the people; that was our royalty. Nobody had imposed it on us. It was noteven selected out of four hundred. We had taken one of the common peopleand set him up there, creating for the moment also a sort of royal familyand a court for a background, in a splendor just as imposing for thepassing hour as an imperial spectacle. We like to show that we can do it,and we like to show also that we can undo it. For at the banquet, wherethe Elected ate his dinner, not only in the presence of, but with,representatives of all the people of all the States, looked down on bythe acknowledged higher power in American life, there sat also with himtwo men who had lately been in his great position, the centre only alittle while ago, as he was at the moment, of every eye in the republic,now only common citizens without a title, without any insignia of rank,able to transmit to posterity no family privilege. If our hearts swelledwith pride that we could create something just as good as royalty, thatthe republic had as many men of distinguished appearance, as much beauty,and as much brilliance of display as any traditional government, we alsofelicitated ourselves that we could sweep it all away by a vote andreproduce it with new actors next day.

It must be confessed that it was a people's affair. If at any time therewas any idea that it could be controlled only by those who representednames honored for a hundred years, or conspicuous by any socialprivilege, the idea was swamped in popular feeling. The names that hadbeen elected a hundred years ago did not stay elected unless the presentowners were able to distinguish themselves. There is nothing so to becoveted in a country as the perpetuity of honorable names, and the"centennial" showed that we are rich in those that have been honorablyborne, but it also showed that the century has gathered no privilege thatcan count upon permanence.

But there is another aspect of the situation that is quite as serious andsatisfactory. Now that the ladies of the present are coming to dress asladies dressed a hundred years ago, we can make an adequate comparison ofbeauty. Heaven forbid that we should disparage the women of theRevolutionary period! They looked as well as they could under all thecirc*mstances of a new country and the hardships of an early settlement.Some of them looked exceedingly well—there were beauties in those daysas there were giants in Old Testament times. The portraits that have comedown to us of some of them excite our admiration, and indeed we have asort of tradition of the loveliness of the women of that remote period.The gallant men of the time exalted them. Yet it must be admitted by anyone who witnessed the public and private gatherings of April, 1889, inNew York, contributed to as they were by women from every State, and whois unprejudiced by family associations, that the women of America seemvastly improved in personal appearance since the days when GeorgeWashington was a lover: that is to say, the number of beautiful women isgreater in proportion to the population, and their beauty and charm arenot inferior to those which have been so much extolled in theRevolutionary time. There is no doubt that if George Washington couldhave been at the Metropolitan ball he would have acknowledged this, andthat while he might have had misgivings about some of our politicalmethods, he would have been more proud than ever to be still acknowledgedthe Father of his Country.

THE NEWSPAPER-MADE MAN

A fair correspondent—has the phrase an old-time sound?—thinks we shouldpay more attention to men. In a revolutionary time, when great questionsare in issue, minor matters, which may nevertheless be very important,are apt to escape the consideration they deserve. We share ourcorrespondent's interest in men, but must plead the pressure ofcirc*mstances. When there are so many Woman's Journals devoted to thewants and aspirations of women alone, it is perhaps time to think ofhaving a Man's journal, which should try to keep his head above-water inthe struggle for social supremacy. When almost every number of theleading periodicals has a paper about Woman—written probably by a woman—Woman Today, Woman Yesterday, Woman Tomorrow; when the inquiry is dailymade in the press as to what is expected of woman, and the newrequirements laid upon her by reason of her opportunities, her entranceinto various occupations, her education—the impartial observer is likelyto be confused, if he is not swept away by the rising tide of femininityin modern life.

But this very superiority of interest in the future of women is a warningto man to look about him, and see where in this tide he is going to land,if he will float or go ashore, and what will be his character and hisposition in the new social order. It will not do for him to sit on thestump of one of his prerogatives that woman has felled, and say withBrahma, "They reckon ill who leave me out," for in the day of theSubjection of Man it may be little consolation that he is left in.

It must be confessed that man has had a long inning. Perhaps it is truethat he owed this to his physical strength, and that he will only keep ithereafter by intellectual superiority, by the dominance of mind. And howin this generation is he equipping himself for the future? He is themoney-making animal. That is beyond dispute. Never before were there suchbusiness men as this generation can show—Napoleons of finance,Alexanders of adventure, Shakespeares of speculation, Porsons ofaccumulation. He is great in his field, but is he leaving theintellectual province to woman? Does he read as much as she does? Is hebecoming anything but a newspaper-made person? Is his mind getting to belike the newspaper? Speaking generally of the mass of business men—andthe mass are business men in this country—have they any habit of readingbooks? They have clubs, to be sure, but of what sort? With the exceptionof a conversation club here and there, and a literary club, more or lessperfunctory, are they not mostly social clubs for comfort and idlelounging, many of them known, as other workmen are, by their "chips"?What sort of a book would a member make out of "Chips from my Workshop"?Do the young men, to any extent, join in Browning clubs and Shakespeareclubs and Dante clubs? Do they meet for the study of history, of authors,of literary periods, for reading, and discussing what they read? Do theyin concert dig in the encyclopaedias, and write papers about thecorrelation of forces, and about Savonarola, and about the Three Kings?In fact, what sort of a hand would the Three Kings suggest to them? Inthe large cities the women's clubs, pursuing literature, art, languages,botany, history, geography, geology, mythology, are innumerable. Andthere is hardly a village in the land that has not from one to six clubsof young girls who meet once a week for some intellectual purpose. Whatare the young men of the villages and the cities doing meantime? How arethey preparing to meet socially these young ladies who are cultivatingtheir minds? Are they adapting themselves to the new conditions? Or arethey counting, as they always have done, on the adaptability of women, onthe facility with which the members of the bright sex can interestthemselves in base-ball and the speed of horses and the chances of the"street"? Is it comfortable for the young man, when the talk is about thelast notable book, or the philosophy of the popular poet or novelist, tofeel that laughing eyes are sounding his ignorance?

Man is a noble creation, and he has fine and sturdy qualities whichcommand the admiration of the other sex, but how will it be when thatsex, by reason of superior acquirements, is able to look down on himintellectually? It used to be said that women are what men wish to havethem, that they endeavored to be the kind of women who would winmasculine admiration. How will it be if women have determined to makethemselves what it pleases them to be, and to cultivate their powers inthe expectation of pleasing men, if they indulge any such expectation, bytheir higher qualities only? This is not a fanciful possibility. It isone that young men will do well to ponder. It is easy to ridicule theliterary and economic and historical societies, and the naive couragewith which young women in them attack the gravest problems, and to saythat they are only a passing fashion, like decorative art and a mode ofdress. But a fashion is not to be underestimated; and when a fashioncontinues and spreads like this one, it is significant of a great changegoing on in society. And it is to be noticed that this fashion isaccompanied by other phenomena as interesting. There is scarcely anoccupation, once confined almost exclusively to men, in which women arenot now conspicuous. Never before were there so many women who aresuperior musicians, performers themselves and organizers of musicalsocieties; never before so many women who can draw well; never so manywho are successful in literature, who write stories, translate, compile,and are acceptable workers in magazines and in publishing houses; andnever before were so many women reading good books, and thinking aboutthem, and talking about them, and trying to apply the lessons in them tothe problems of their own lives, which are seen not to end with marriage.A great deal of this activity, crude much of it, is on the intellectualside, and must tell strongly by-and-by in the position of women. And theyoung men will take notice that it is the intellectual force that mustdominate in life.

INTERESTING GIRLS

It seems hardly worth while to say that this would be a more interestingcountry if there were more interesting people in it. But the remark isworth consideration in a land where things are so much estimated by whatthey cost. It is a very expensive country, especially so in the matter ofeducation, and one cannot but reflect whether the result is in proportionto the outlay. It costs a great many thousands of dollars and over fouryears of time to produce a really good base-ball player, and the time andmoney invested in the production of a society young woman are not less.No complaint is made of the cost of these schools of the highereducation; the point is whether they produce interesting people. Ofcourse all women are interesting. It has got pretty well noised about theworld that American women are, on the whole, more interesting than anyothers. This statement is not made boastfully, but simply as a marketquotation, as one might say. They are sought for; they rule high. Theyhave a "way"; they know how to be fascinating, to be agreeable; theyunite freedom of manner with modesty of behavior; they are apt to havebeauty, and if they have not, they know how to make others think theyhave. Probably the Greek girls in their highest development under Phidiaswere never so attractive as the American girls of this period; and if wehad a Phidias who could put their charms in marble, all the antiquegalleries would close up and go out of business.

But it must be understood that in regard to them, as to the dictionaries,it is necessary to "get the best." Not all women are equally interesting,and some of those on whom most educational money is lavished are theleast so. It can be said broadly that everybody is interesting up to acertain point. There is no human being from whom the inquiring mindcannot learn something. It is so with women. Some are interesting forfive minutes, some for ten, some for an hour; some are not exhausted in awhole day; and some (and this shows the signal leniency of Providence)are perennially entertaining, even in the presence of masculinestupidity. Of course the radical trouble of this world is that there arenot more people who are interesting comrades, day in and day out, for alifetime. It is greatly to the credit of American women that so many ofthem have this quality, and have developed it, unprotected, in freecompetition with all countries which have been pouring in women withoutthe least duty laid upon their grace or beauty. We, have a tariff uponknowledge—we try to shut out all of that by a duty on books; we have atariff on piety and intelligence in a duty on clergymen; we try toexclude art by a levy on it; but we have never excluded the raw materialof beauty, and the result is that we can successfully compete in themarkets of the world.

This, however, is a digression. The reader wants to know what thisquality of being interesting has to do with girls' schools. It isadmitted that if one goes into a new place he estimates the agreeablenessof it according to the number of people it contains with whom it is apleasure to converse, who have either the ability to talk well or theintelligence to listen appreciatingly even if deceivingly, whose societyhas the beguiling charm that makes even natural scenery satisfactory. Itis admitted also that in our day the burden of this end of life, makingit agreeable, is mainly thrown upon women. Men make their business anexcuse for not being entertaining, or the few who cultivate the mind(aside from the politicians, who always try to be winning) scarcely thinkit worth while to contribute anything to make society bright andengaging. Now if the girls' schools and colleges, technical and other,merely add to the number of people who have practical training andknowledge without personal charm, what becomes of social life? We areimpressed with the excellence of the schools and colleges for women—impressed also with the co-educating institutions. There is no sightmore inspiring than an assemblage of four or five hundred young womenattacking literature, science, and all the arts. The grace and courage ofthe attack alone are worth all it costs. All the arts and science andliterature are benefited, but one of the chief purposes that should be inview is unattained if the young women are not made more interesting, bothto themselves and to others. Ability to earn an independent living may beconceded to be important, health is indispensable, and beauty of face andform are desirable; knowledge is priceless, and unselfish amiability isabove the price of rubies; but how shall we set a value, so far as thepleasure of living is concerned, upon the power to be interesting? Wehear a good deal about the highly educated young woman with reverence,about the emancipated young woman with fear and trembling, but what cantake the place of the interesting woman? Anxiety is this moment agitatingthe minds of tens of thousands of mothers about the education of theirdaughters. Suppose their education should be directed to the purpose ofmaking them interesting women, what a fascinating country this would beabout the year 1900.

GIVE THE MEN A CHANCE

Give the men a chance. Upon the young women of America lies a greatresponsibility. The next generation will be pretty much what they chooseto make it; and what are they doing for the elevation of young men? It istrue that there are the colleges for men, which still perform a goodwork—though some of them run a good deal more to a top-dressing ofaccomplishments than to a sub-soiling of discipline—but these collegesreach comparatively few. There remain the great mass who are devoted tobusiness and pleasure, and only get such intellectual cultivation associety gives them or they chance to pick up in current publications. Theyoung women are the leisure class, consequently—so we hear—thecultivated class. Taking a certain large proportion of our society, thewomen in it toil not, neither do they spin; they do little or no domesticwork; they engage in no productive occupation. They are set apart for ahigh and ennobling service—the cultivation of the mind and the rescue ofsociety from materialism. They are the influence that keeps life elevatedand sweet—are they not? For what other purpose are they set apart inelegant leisure? And nobly do they climb up to the duties of theirposition. They associate together in esoteric, intellectual societies.Every one is a part of many clubs, the object of which is knowledge andthe broadening of the intellectual horizon. Science, languages,literature, are their daily food. They can speak in tongues; they cantalk about the solar spectrum; they can interpret Chaucer, criticiseShakespeare, understand Browning. There is no literature, ancient ormodern, that they do not dig up by the roots and turn over, no historythat they do not drag before the club for final judgment. In every littlevillage there is this intellectual stir and excitement; why, even in NewYork, readings interfere with the german;—['Dances', likely referring tothe productions of the Straus family in Vienna. D.W.]—and Boston! Bostonis no longer divided into wards, but into Browning "sections."

All this is mainly the work of women. The men are sometimes admitted, areeven hired to perform and be encouraged and criticised; that is, men whoare already highly cultivated, or who are in sympathy with the noblefeminization of the age. It is a glorious movement. Its professed objectis to give an intellectual lift to society. And no doubt, unless allreports are exaggerated, it is making our great leisure class of womenhighly intellectual beings. But, encouraging as this prospect is, itgives us pause. Who are these young women to associate with? with whomare they to hold high converse? For life is a two-fold affair. Andmeantime what is being done for the young men who are expected to sharein the high society of the future? Will not the young women by-and-byfind themselves in a lonesome place, cultivated away beyond their naturalcomrades? Where will they spend their evenings? This sobering thoughtsuggests a duty that the young women are neglecting. We refer to theeducation of the young men. It is all very well for them to form clubsfor their own advancement, and they ought not to incur the charge ofselfishness in so doing; but how much better would they fulfill theirmission if they would form special societies for the cultivation of youngmen!—sort of intellectual mission bands. Bring them into the literarycircle. Make it attractive for them. Women with their attractions, not tospeak of their wiles, can do anything they set out to do. They canelevate the entire present generation of young men, if they give theirminds to it, to care for the intellectual pursuits they care for. Givethe men a chance, and——

Musing along in this way we are suddenly pulled up by the reflection thatit is impossible to make an unqualified statement that is wholly trueabout anything. What chance have I, anyway? inquires the young man whothinks sometimes and occasionally wants to read. What sort ofleading-strings are these that I am getting into? Look at the drift ofthings. Is the feminization of the world a desirable thing for a vigorousfuture? Are the women, or are they not, taking all the virility out ofliterature? Answer me that. All the novels are written by, for, or aboutwomen—brought to their standard. Even Henry James, who studies the sexuntiringly, speaks about the "feminization of literature." They writemost of the newspaper correspondence—and write it for women. They areeven trying to feminize the colleges. Granted that woman is the superiorbeing; all the more, what chance is there for man if this sort of thinggoes on? Are you going to make a race of men on feminine fodder? And hereis the still more perplexing part of it. Unless all analysis of thefemale heart is a delusion, and all history false, what women like mostof all things in this world is a Man, virile, forceful, compelling, asolid rock of dependence, a substantial unfeminine being, whom it is somesatisfaction and glory and interest to govern and rule in the right way,and twist round the feminine finger. If women should succeed in reducingor raising—of course raising—men to the feminine standard, byfeminizing society, literature, the colleges, and all that, would theynot turn on their creations—for even the Bible intimates that women areuncertain and go in search of a Man? It is this sort of blind instinct ofthe young man for preserving himself in the world that makes him soinaccessible to the good he might get from the prevailing culture of theleisure class.

THE ADVENT OF CANDOR

Those who are anxious about the fate of Christmas, whether it is notbecoming too worldly and too expensive a holiday to be indulged in exceptby the very poor, mark with pleasure any indications that the true spiritof the day—brotherhood and self-abnegation and charity—is infusingitself into modern society. The sentimental Christmas of thirty years agocould not last; in time the manufactured jollity got to be more tediousand a greater strain on the feelings than any misfortune happening toone's neighbor. Even for a day it was very difficult to buzz about in thecheery manner prescribed, and the reaction put human nature in a badlight. Nor was it much better when gradually the day became one of GreatExpectations, and the sweet spirit of it was quenched in worry or souredin disappointment. It began to take on the aspect of a great lottery, inwhich one class expected to draw in reverse proportion to what it put in,and another class knew that it would only reap as it had sowed. The day,blessed in its origin, and meaningless if there is a grain of selfishnessin it, was thus likely to become a sort of Clearing-house of allobligations and assume a commercial aspect that took the heart out ofit—like the enormous receptions for paying social debts which take theplace of the old-fashioned hospitality. Everybody knew, meantime, thatthe spirit of good-will, the grace of universal sympathy, was reallygrowing in the world, and that it was only our awkwardness that, bystriving to cram it all for a year into twenty-four hours, made it seem alittle farcical. And everybody knows that when goodness becomesfashionable, goodness is likely to suffer a little. A virtue overdonefalls on t'other side. And a holiday that takes on such proportions thatthe Express companies and the Post-office cannot handle it is in dangerof a collapse. In consideration of these things, and because, as has beenpointed out year after year, Christmas is becoming a burden, the load ofwhich is looked forward to with apprehension—and back on with nervousprostration—fear has been expressed that the dearest of all holidays inChristian lands would have to go again under a sort of Puritan protest,or into a retreat for rest and purification. We are enabled to announcefor the encouragement of the single-minded in this best of all days, atthe close of a year which it is best not to characterize, that those whostand upon the social watch-towers in Europe and America begin to see alight—or, it would be better to say, to perceive a spirit—in societywhich is likely to change many things, and; among others, to work areturn of Christian simplicity. As might be expected in these days, thespirit is exhibited in the sex which is first at the wedding and last inthe hospital ward. And as might have been expected, also, this spirit isshown by the young woman of the period, in whose hands are the issues ofthe future. If she preserve her present mind long enough, Christmas willbecome a day that will satisfy every human being, for the purpose of theyoung woman will pervade it. The tendency of the young woman generally tosimplicity, of the American young woman to a certain restraint (at leastwhen abroad), to a deference to her elders, and to tradition, has beennoted. The present phenomenon is quite beyond this, and more radical. Itis, one may venture to say, an attempt to conform the inner being to theoutward simplicity. If one could suspect the young woman of taking up anyline not original, it might be guessed that the present fashion (which isbewildering the most worldly men with a new and irresistible fascination)was set by the self-revelations of Marie Bashkirtseff. Very likely,however, it was a new spirit in the world, of which Marie was the firstpublishing example. Its note is self-analysis, searching, unsparing,leaving no room for the deception of self or of the world. Its leadingfeature is extreme candor. It is not enough to tell the truth (that hasbeen told before); but one must act and tell the whole truth. One doesnot put on the shirt front and the standing collar and the knotted cravatof the other sex as a mere form; it is an act of consecration, of rigid,simple come-out-ness into the light of truth. This noble candor willsuffer no concealments. She would not have her lover even, still more thegeneral world of men, think she is better, or rather other, than she is.Not that she would like to appear a man among men, far from that; but shewishes to talk with candor and be talked to candidly, without takingadvantage of that false shelter of sex behind which women have beenaccused of dodging. If she is nothing else, she is sincere, one might saywantonly sincere. And this lucid, candid inner life is reflected in herdress. This is not only simple in its form, in its lines; it is severe.To go into the shop of a European modiste is almost to put one's selfinto a truthful and candid frame of mind. Those leave frivolous ideasbehind who enter here. The 'modiste' will tell the philosopher that it isnow the fashion to be severe; in a word, it is 'fesch'. Nothing can gobeyond that. And it symbolizes the whole life, its self-examination,earnestness, utmost candor in speech and conduct.

The statesman who is busy about his tariff and his reciprocity, and hisendeavor to raise money like potatoes, may little heed and muchundervalue this advent of candor into the world as a social force. Butthe philosopher will make no such mistake. He knows that they who buildwithout woman build in vain, and that she is the great regenerator, asshe is the great destroyer. He knows too much to disregard the gravity ofany fashionable movement. He knows that there is no power on earth thatcan prevent the return of the long skirt. And that if the young woman hasdecided to be severe and candid and frank with herself and in herintercourse with others, we must submit and thank God.

And what a gift to the world is this for the Christmas season! Theclear-eyed young woman of the future, always dear and often an anxiety,will this year be an object of enthusiasm.

THE AMERICAN MAN

The American man only develops himself and spreads himself and grows "forall he is worth" in the Great West. He is more free and limber there, andunfolds those generous peculiarities and largenesses of humanity whichnever blossomed before. The "environment" has much to do with it. Thegreat spaces over which he roams contribute to the enlargement of hismental horizon. There have been races before who roamed the illimitabledesert, but they traveled on foot or on camelback, and were limited intheir range. There was nothing continental about them, as there is aboutour railway desert travelers, who swing along through thousands of milesof sand and sage-bush with a growing contempt for time and space. Butexpansive and great as these people have become under the new conditions,we have a fancy that the development of the race has only just begun, andthat the future will show us in perfection a kind of man new to theworld. Out somewhere on the Santa Fe route, where the desert of one daywas like the desert of the day before, and the Pullman car rolls andswings over the wide waste beneath the blue sky day after day, under itsblack flag of smoke, in the early gray of morning, when the men werewaiting their turns at the ablution bowls, a slip of a boy, perhaps agedseven, stood balancing himself on his little legs, clad inknicker-bockers, biding his time, with all the nonchalance of an oldcampaigner. "How did you sleep, cap?" asked a well-meaning elderlygentleman. "Well, thank you," was the dignified response; "as I always doon a sleeping-car." Always does? Great horrors! Hardly out of hisswaddling-clothes, and yet he always sleeps well in a sleeper! Was heborn on the wheels? was he cradled in a Pullman? He has always been inmotion, probably; he was started at thirty miles an hour, no doubt, thismarvelous boy of our new era. He was not born in a house at rest, but thelocomotive snatched him along with a shriek and a roar before his eyeswere fairly open, and he was rocked in a "section," and his firstsensation of life was that of moving rapidly over vast arid spaces,through cattle ranges and along canons. The effect of quick and easylocomotion on character may have been noted before, but it seems thathere is the production of a new sort of man, the direct product of ourrailway era. It is not simply that this boy is mature, but he must be adifferent and a nobler sort of boy than one born, say, at home or on acanal-boat; for, whether he was born on the rail or not, he belongs tothe railway system of civilization. Before he gets into trousers he isold in experience, and he has discounted many of the novelties thatusually break gradually on the pilgrim in this world. He belongs to thenew expansive race that must live in motion, whose proper home is thePullman (which will probably be improved in time into a dustless,sweet-smelling, well-aired bedroom), and whose domestic life will be onthe wing, so to speak. The Inter-State Commerce Bill will pass him alongwithout friction from end to end of the Union, and perhaps a uniformdivorce law will enable him to change his marital relations at any placewhere he happens to dine. This promising lad is only a faint intimationof what we are all coming to when we fully acquire the freedom of thecontinent, and come into that expansiveness of feeling and of languagewhich characterizes the Great West. It is a burst of joyous exuberancethat comes from the sense of an illimitable horizon. It shows itself inthe tender words of a local newspaper at Bowie, Arizona, on the death ofa beloved citizen: "'Death loves a shining mark,' and she hit a dandywhen she turned loose on Jim." And also in the closing words of a NewMexico obituary, which the Kansas Magazine quotes: "Her tired spirit wasreleased from the pain-racking body and soared aloft to eternal glory at4.30 Denver time." We die, as it were, in motion, as we sleep, and thereis nowhere any boundary to our expansion. Perhaps we shall never againknow any rest as we now understand the term—rest being only change ofmotion—and we shall not be able to sleep except on the cars, and whetherwe die by Denver time or by the 90th meridian, we shall only change ourtime. Blessed be this slip of a boy who is a man before he is an infant,and teaches us what rapid transit can do for our race! The only thingthat can possibly hinder us in our progress will be second childhood; wehave abolished first.

THE ELECTRIC WAY

We are quite in the electric way. We boast that we have made electricityour slave, but the slave whom we do not understand is our master. Andbefore we know him we shall be transformed. Mr. Edison proposes to sendus over the country at the rate of one hundred miles an hour. Thispleases us, because we fancy we shall save time, and because we aretaught that the chief object in life is to "get there" quickly. We reallyhave an idea that it is a gain to annihilate distance, forgetting that asa matter of personal experience we are already too near most people. Butthis speed by rail will enable us to live in Philadelphia and do businessin New York. It will make the city of Chicago two hundred miles square.And the bigger Chicago is, the more important this world becomes. Thispleasing anticipation—that of traveling by lightning, and all beinghuddled together—is nothing to the promised universal illumination by adiffused light that shall make midnight as bright as noonday. We shallthen save all the time there is, and at the age of thirty-five have livedthe allotted seventy years, and long, if not for 'Gotterdammerung', atleast for some world where, by touching a button, we can discharge ourlimbs of electricity and take a little repose. The most restless andambitious of us can hardly conceive of Chicago as a desirable futurestate of existence.

This, however, is only the external or superficial view of the subject;at the best it is only symbolical. Mr. Edison is wasting his time inobjective experiments, while we are in the deepest ignorance as to ourelectric personality or our personal electricity. We begin to apprehendthat we are electric beings, that these outward manifestations of asubtile form are only hints of our internal state. Mr. Edison should turnhis attention from physics to humanity electrically considered in itssocial condition. We have heard a great deal about affinities. We aretold that one person is positive and another negative, and thatrepresenting socially opposite poles they should come together and makean electric harmony, that two positives or two negatives repel eachother, and if conventionally united end in divorce, and so on. We readthat such a man is magnetic, meaning that he can poll a great many votes;or that such a woman thrilled her audience, meaning probably that theywere in an electric condition to be shocked by her. Now this is what wewant to find out—to know if persons are really magnetic or sympathetic,and how to tell whether a person is positive or negative. In politics weare quite at sea. What is the good of sending a man to Washington at therate of a hundred miles an hour if we are uncertain of his electricstate? The ideal House of Representatives ought to be pretty nearlybalanced—half positive, half negative. Some Congresses seem to be madeup pretty much of negatives. The time for the electrician to test thecandidate is before he is put in nomination, not dump him into Congressas we do now, utterly ignorant of whether his currents run from his heelsto his head or from his head to his heels, uncertain, indeed, as towhether he has magnetism to run in at all. Nothing could be moreunscientific than the process and the result.

In social life it is infinitely worse. You, an electric unmarried man,enter a room full of attractive women. How are you to know who ispositive and who is negative, or who is a maiden lady in equilibrium, ifit be true, as scientists affirm, that the genus old maid is one in whomthe positive currents neutralize the negative currents? Your affinity isperhaps the plainest woman in the room. But beauty is a juggling sprite,entirely uncontrolled by electricity, and you are quite likely to make amistake. It is absurd the way we blunder on in a scientific age. We toucha button, and are married. The judge touches another button, and we aredivorced. If when we touched the first button it revealed us bothnegatives, we should start back in horror, for it is only beforeengagement that two negatives make an affirmative. That is the reasonthat some clergymen refuse to marry a divorced woman; they see that shehas made one electric mistake, and fear she will make another. It is allvery well for the officiating clergyman to ask the two intending tocommit matrimony if they have a license from the town clerk, if they areof age or have the consent of parents, and have a million; but the vitalpoint is omitted. Are they electric affinities? It should be the duty ofthe town-clerk, by a battery, or by some means to be discovered byelectricians, to find out the galvanic habit of the parties, theirprevailing electric condition. Temporarily they may seem to be inharmony, and may deceive themselves into the belief that they are atopposite poles equidistant from the equator, and certain to meet on thatimaginary line in matrimonial bliss. Dreadful will be the awakening to aninsipid life, if they find they both have the same sort of currents. Itis said that women change their minds and their dispositions, that menare fickle, and that both give way after marriage to natural inclinationsthat were suppressed while they were on the good behavior that thesupposed necessity of getting married imposes. This is so notoriouslytrue that it ought to create a public panic. But there is hope in the newlight. If we understand it, persons are born in a certain electricalcondition, and substantially continue in it, however much they mayapparently wobble about under the influence of infirm minds and acquiredwickedness. There are, of course, variations of the compass to bereckoned with, and the magnet may occasionally be bewitched by near andpowerful attracting objects. But, on the whole, the magnet remains thesame, and it is probable that a person's normal electric condition is thething in him least liable to dangerous variation. If this be true, thebest basis for matrimony is the electric, and our social life would havefewer disappointments if men and women went about labeled with theirscientifically ascertained electric qualities.

CAN A HUSBAND OPEN HIS WIFE'S LETTERS?

Can a husband open his wife's letters? That would depend, many would say,upon what kind of a husband he is. But it cannot be put aside in thatflippant manner, for it is a legal right that is in question, and it hasrecently been decided in a Paris tribunal that the husband has the, rightto open the letters addressed to his wife. Of course in America an appealwould instantly be taken from this decision, and perhaps by husbandsthemselves; for in this world rights are becoming so impartiallydistributed that this privilege granted to the husband might at once beextended to the wife, and she would read all his business correspondence,and his business is sometimes various and complicated. The Paris decisionmust be based upon the familiar formula that man and wife are one, andthat that one is the husband. If a man has the right to read all theletters written to his wife, being his property by reason of hisownership of her, why may he not have a legal right to know all that issaid to her? The question is not whether a wife ought to receive lettersthat her husband may not read, or listen to talk that he may not hear,but whether he has a sort of lordship that gives him privileges which shedoes not enjoy. In our modern notion of marriage, which is getting itselfexpressed in statute law, marriage is supposed to rest on mutual trustand mutual rights. In theory the husband and wife are still one, andthere can nothing come into the life of one that is not shared by theother; in fact, if the marriage is perfect and the trust absolute, thepersonality of each is respected by the other, and each is freely thejudge of what shall be contributed to the common confidence; and if thereare any concealments, it is well believed that they are for the mutualgood. If every one were as perfect in the marriage relation as those whoare reading these lines, the question of the wife's letters would neverarise. The man, trusting his wife, would not care to pry into any littlesecrets his wife might have, or bother himself about her correspondence;he would know, indeed, that if he had lost her real affection, asurveillance of her letters could not restore it.

Perhaps it is a modern notion that marriage is a union of trust and notof suspicion, of expectation of faithfulness the more there is freedom.At any rate, the tendency, notwithstanding the French decision, is awayfrom the common-law suspicion and tyranny towards a higher trust in anenlarged freedom. And it is certain that the rights cannot all be on oneside and the duties on the other. If the husband legally may compel hiswife to show him her letters, the courts will before long grant the sameprivilege to the wife. But, without pressing this point, we hold stronglyto the sacredness of correspondence. The letters one receives are in onesense not his own. They contain the confessions of another soul, theconfidences of another mind, that would be rudely treated if given anysort of publicity. And while husband and wife are one to each other, theyare two in the eyes of other people, and it may well happen that a friendwill desire to impart something to a discreet woman which she would notintrust to the babbling husband of that woman. Every life must have itsown privacy and its own place of retirement. The letter is of all thingsthe most personal and intimate thing. Its bloom is gone when another eyesees it before the one for which it was intended. Its aroma all escapeswhen it is first opened by another person. One might as well wearsecond-hand clothing as get a second-hand letter. Here, then, is a sacredright that ought to be respected, and can be respected without any injuryto domestic life. The habit in some families for the members of it toshow each other's letters is a most disenchanting one. It is just in thefamily, between persons most intimate, that these delicacies ofconsideration for the privacy of each ought to be most respected. No onecan estimate probably how much of the refinement, of the delicacy offeeling, has been lost to the world by the introduction of thepostal-card. Anything written on a postal-card has no personality; it isbanal, and has as little power of charming any one who receives it as anadvertisem*nt in the newspaper. It is not simply the cheapness of thecommunication that is vulgar, but the publicity of it. One may haveperhaps only a cent's worth of affection to send, but it seems worth muchmore when enclosed in an envelope. We have no doubt, then, that ongeneral principles the French decision is a mistake, and that it tendsrather to vulgarize than to retain the purity and delicacy of themarriage relation. And the judges, so long even as men only occupy thebench, will no doubt reverse it when the logical march of events forcesupon them the question whether the wife may open her husband's letters.

A LEISURE CLASS

Foreign critics have apologized for real or imagined social and literaryshortcomings in this country on the ground that the American people havelittle leisure. It is supposed that when we have a leisure class we shallnot only make a better showing in these respects, but we shall be asagreeable—having time to devote to the art of being agreeable—as theEnglish are. But we already have a considerable and increasing number ofpeople who can command their own time if we have not a leisure class, andthe sociologist might begin to study the effect of this leisurelinessupon society. Are the people who, by reason of a competence or otheraccidents of good-fortune, have most leisure, becoming more agreeable?and are they devoting themselves to the elevation of the social tone, orto the improvement of our literature? However this question is answered,a strong appeal might be made to the people of leisure to do not onlywhat is expected of them by foreign observers, but to take advantage oftheir immense opportunities. In a republic there is no room for a leisureclass that is not useful. Those who use their time merely to kill it, inimitation of those born to idleness and to no necessity of making anexertion, may be ornamental, but having no root in any establishedprivilege to sustain them, they will soon wither away in this atmosphere,as a flower would which should set up to be an orchid when it does notbelong to the orchid family. It is required here that those who areemancipated from the daily grind should vindicate their right to theirposition not only by setting an example of self-culture, but bycontributing something to the general welfare. It is thought by many thatif society here were established and settled as it is elsewhere, the richwould be less dominated by their money and less conscious of it, andhaving leisure, could devote themselves even more than they do now tointellectual and spiritual pursuits.

Whether these anticipations will ever be realized, and whether increasedleisure will make us all happy, is a subject of importance; but it issecondary, and in a manner incidental, to another and deeper matter,which may be defined as the responsibility of attractiveness. And thisresponsibility takes two forms the duty of every one to be attractive,and the danger of being too attractive. To be winning and agreeable issometimes reckoned a gift, but it is a disposition that can becultivated; and, in a world so given to grippe and misapprehension asthis is, personal attractiveness becomes a duty, if it is not an art,that might be taught in the public schools. It used to be charged againstNew Englanders that they regarded this gift as of little value, and wereinclined to hide it under a bushel, and it was said of some of theirneighbors in the Union that they exaggerated its importance, andneglected the weightier things of the law. Indeed, disputes have arisenas to what attractiveness consisted in—some holding that beauty or charmof manner (which is almost as good) and sweetness and gayety weresufficient, while others held that a little intelligence sprinkled in wasessential. But one thing is clear, that while women were held to strictresponsibility in this matter, not stress enough was laid upon the equalduty of men to be attractive in order to make the world agreeable. Henceit is, probably, that while no question has been raised as to the effectof the higher education upon the attractiveness of men, the colleges forgirls have been jealously watched as to the effect they were likely tohave upon the attractiveness of women. Whether the college years of ayoung man, during which he knows more than he will ever know again, arehis most attractive period is not considered, for he is expected todevelop what is in him later on; but it is gravely questioned whethergirls who give their minds to the highest studies are not dropping thosegraces of personal attractiveness which they will find it difficult topick up again. Of course such a question as this could never arise exceptin just such a world as this is. For in an ideal world it could be shownthat the highest intelligence and the highest personal charm are twins.If, therefore, it should turn out, which seems absurd, thatcollege-educated girls are not as attractive as other women with lessadvantages, it will have to be admitted that something is the matter withthe young ladies, which is preposterous, or that the system is stilldefective. For the postulate that everybody ought to be attractive cannotbe abandoned for the sake of any system. Decision on this system cannotbe reached without long experience, for it is always to be rememberedthat the man's point of view of attractiveness may shift, and he may cometo regard the intellectual graces as supremely attractive; while, on theother hand, the woman student may find that a winning smile is just aseffective in bringing a man to her feet, where he belongs, as alogarithm.

The danger of being too attractive, though it has historic illustration,is thought by many to be more apparent than real. Merely being tooattractive has often been confounded with a love of flirtation andconquest, unbecoming always in a man, and excused in a woman on theground of her helplessness. It could easily be shown that to use personalattractiveness recklessly to the extent of hopeless beguilement is cruel,and it may be admitted that woman ought to be held to strictresponsibility for her attractiveness. The lines are indeed hard for her.The duty is upon her in this poor world of being as attractive as shecan, and yet she is held responsible for all the mischief herattractiveness produces. As if the blazing sun should be called toaccount by people with weak eyes.

WEATHER AND CHARACTER

The month of February in all latitudes in the United States is uncertain.The birth of George Washington in it has not raised it in public esteem.In the North, it is a month to flee from; in the South, at best it is awaiting month—a month of rain and fickle skies. A good deal has beendone for it. It is the month of St. Valentine, it is distinguished by theleap-year addition of a day, and ought to be a favorite of the gentlesex; but it remains a sort of off period in the year. Its brevityrecommends it, but no one would take any notice of it were it not for itseffect upon character. A month of rigid weather is supposed to brace upthe moral nature, and a month of gentleness is supposed to soften theasperities of the disposition, but February contributes to neither ofthese ends. It is neither a tonic nor a soother; that is, in most partsof our inexplicable land. We make no complaint of this. It is probablywell to have a period in the year that tests character to the utmost, andthe person who can enter spring through the gate of February a better manor woman is likely to adorn society the rest of the year.

February, however, is merely an illustration of the effect of weatherupon the disposition. Persons differ in regard to their sensitiveness tocloudy, rainy, and gloomy days. We recognize this in a general way, butthe relation of temper and disposition to the weather has never beenscientifically studied. Our observation of the influence of climate ismostly with regard to physical infirmities. We know the effect of dampweather upon rheumatics, and of the east wind upon gouty subjects, buttoo little allowance is made for the influence of weather upon thespirits and the conduct of men. We know that a long period of gloomyweather leads to suicides, and we observe that long-continued clouds andrain beget "crossness" and ill-temper, and we are all familiar with theuniversal exhilaration of sunshine and clear air upon any company of menand women. But the point we wish to make is that neither society nor thelaw makes any allowance for the aberrations of human nature caused bydull and unpleasant weather. And this is very singular in thishumanitarian age, when excuse is found for nearly every moral delinquencyin heredity or environment, that the greatest factor of discontent andcrookedness, the weather, should be left out of consideration altogether.The relation of crime to the temperature and the humidity of theatmosphere is not taken into account. Yet crime and eccentricity ofconduct are very much the result of atmospheric conditions, since theydepend upon the temper and the spirit of the community. Many people arehabitually blue and down-hearted in sour weather; a long spell of cloudy,damp, cold weather depresses everybody, lowers hope, tends to melancholy;and people when they are not cheerful are more apt to fall into evilways, as a rule, than when they are in a normal state of good-humor. Andaside from crimes, the vexation, the friction, the domestic discontent inlife, are provoked by bad weather. We should like to have some statisticsas to incompatibility between married couples produced by damp and rawdays, and to know whether divorces are more numerous in the States thatsuffer from a fickle climate than in those where the climate is moreequable. It is true that in the Sandwich Islands and in Egypt there isgreater mental serenity, less perturbation of spirit, less worry, than inthe changeable United States. Something of this placidity and resignationto the ills inevitable in human life is due to an even climate, to theconstant sun and the dry air. We cannot hope to prevent crime andsuffering by statistics, any more than we have been able to improve ourclimate (which is rather worse now than before the scientists took it incharge) by observations and telegraphic reports; but we can, by carefultabulation of the effects of bad weather upon the spirits of a community,learn what places in the Union are favorable to the production ofcheerfulness and an equal mind. And we should lift a load of reprobationfrom some places which now have a reputation for surliness andunamiability. We find the people of one place hospitable, lighthearted,and agreeable; the people of another place cold, and morose, andunpleasant. It would be a satisfaction to know that the weather isresponsible for the difference. Observation of this sort would also teachus doubtless what places are most conducive to literary production, whatto happy homes and agreeing wives and husbands. All our territory ismapped out as to its sanitary conditions; why not have it colored as toits effect upon the spirits and the enjoyment of life? The suggestionopens a vast field of investigation.

BORN WITH AN "EGO"

There used to be a notion going round that it would be a good thing forpeople if they were more "self-centred." Perhaps there was talk of addinga course to the college curriculum, in addition to that for training theall-competent "journalist," for the self-centring of the young. To applythe term to a man or woman was considered highly complimentary. Theadvisers of this state of mind probably meant to suggest a desirableequilibrium and mental balance; but the actual effect of the self-centredtraining is illustrated by a story told of Thomas H. Benton, who had beendescribed as an egotist by some of the newspapers. Meeting Colonel FrankBlair one day, he said: "Colonel Blair, I see that the newspapers call mean egotist. I wish you would tell me frankly, as a friend, if you thinkthe charge is true." "It is a very direct question, Mr. Benton," repliedColonel Blair, "but if you want my honest opinion, I am compelled to saythat I think there is some foundation for the charge." "Well, sir," saidMr. Benton, throwing his head back and his chest forward, "the differencebetween me and these little fellows is that I have an EGO!" Mr. Bentonwas an interesting man, and it is a fair consideration if a certainamount of egotism does not add to the interest of any character, but atthe same time the self-centred conditions shut a person off from one ofthe chief enjoyments to be got out of this world, namely, a recognitionof what is admirable in others in a toleration of peculiarities. It isodd, almost amusing, to note how in this country people of one sectionapply their local standards to the judgment of people in other sections,very much as an Englishman uses his insular yardstick to measure all therest of the world. It never seems to occur to people in one locality thatthe manners and speech of those of another may be just as admirable astheir own, and they get a good deal of discomfort out of theirintercourse with strangers by reason of their inability to adaptthemselves to any ways not their own. It helps greatly to make thiscountry interesting that nearly every State has its peculiarities, andthat the inhabitants of different sections differ in manner and speech.But next to an interesting person in social value, is an agreeable one,and it would add vastly to the agreeableness of life if our widely spreadprovinces were not so self-centred in their notion that their own way isthe best, to the degree that they criticise any deviation from it as aneccentricity. It would be a very nice world in these United States if wecould all devote ourselves to finding out in communities what is likablerather than what is opposed to our experience; that is, in trying toadapt ourselves to others rather than insisting that our own standardshould measure our opinion and our enjoyment of them.

When the Kentuckian describes a man as a "high-toned gentleman" he meansexactly the same that a Bostonian means when, he says that a man is a"very good fellow," only the men described have a different culture, adifferent personal flavor; and it is fortunate that the Kentuckian is notlike the Bostonian, for each has a quality that makes intercourse withhim pleasant. In the South many people think they have said a severething when they say that a person or manner is thoroughly Yankee; andmany New Englanders intend to express a considerable lack in what isessential when they say of men and women that they are very Southern.When the Yankee is produced he may turn out a cosmopolitan person of themost interesting and agreeable sort; and the Southerner may have traitsand peculiarities, growing out of climate and social life unlike the NewEngland, which are altogether charming. We talked once with a Western manof considerable age and experience who had the placid mind that issometimes, and may more and more become, the characteristic of those wholive in flat countries of illimitable horizons, who said that NewYorkers, State and city, all had an assertive sort of smartness that wasvery disagreeable to him. And a lady of New York (a city whose dialectthe novelists are beginning to satirize) was much disturbed by theflatness of speech prevailing in Chicago, and thought something should bedone in the public schools to correct the pronunciation of English. Theredoubtless should be a common standard of distinct, rounded, melodiouspronunciation, as there is of good breeding, and it is quite as importantto cultivate the voice in speaking as in singing, but the people of theUnited States let themselves be immensely irritated by local differencesand want of toleration of sectional peculiarities. The truth is that theagreeable people are pretty evenly distributed over the country, andone's enjoyment of them is heightened not only by their differences ofmanner, but by the different, ways in which they look at life, unless heinsists upon applying everywhere the yardstick of his own locality. Ifthe Boston woman sets her eyeglasses at a critical angle towards the'laisser faire' flow of social amenity in New Orleans, and the NewOrleans woman seeks out only the prim and conventional in Boston, eachmay miss the opportunity to supplement her life by something wanting anddesirable in it, to be gained by the exercise of more openness of mindand toleration. To some people Yankee thrift is disagreeable; to others,Southern shiftlessness is intolerable. To some travelers the negro of theSouth, with his tropical nature, his capacity for picturesque attitudes,his abundant trust in Providence, is an element of restfulness; and ifthe chief object of life is happiness, the traveler may take a usefulhint from the race whose utmost desire, in a fit climate, would be fullysatisfied by a shirt and a banana-tree. But to another traveler thedusky, careless race is a continual affront.

If a person is born with an "Ego," and gets the most enjoyment out of theworld by trying to make it revolve about himself, and cannotmake-allowances for differences, we have nothing to say except to expresspity for such a self-centred condition; which shuts him out of thenever-failing pleasure there is in entering into and understanding withsympathy the almost infinite variety in American life.

JUVENTUS MUNDI

Sometimes the world seems very old. It appeared so to Bernard of Cluny inthe twelfth century, when he wrote:

"The world is very evil,
The times are waning late."

There was a general impression among the Christians of the first centuryof our era that the end was near. The world must have seemed very ancientto the Egyptians fifteen hundred years before Christ, when the Pyramid ofCheops was a relic of antiquity, when almost the whole circle of arts,sciences, and literature had been run through, when every nation withinreach had been conquered, when woman had been developed into one of themost fascinating of beings, and even reigned more absolutely thanElizabeth or Victoria has reigned since: it was a pretty tired old worldat that time. One might almost say that the further we go back the olderand more "played out" the world appears, notwithstanding that the poets,who were generally pessimists of the present, kept harping about theyouth of the world and the joyous spontaneity of human life in somegolden age before their time. In fact, the world is old in spots—inMemphis and Boston and Damascus and Salem and Ephesus. Some of theseplaces are venerable in traditions, and some of them are actually wornout and taking a rest from too much civilization—lying fallow, as thesaying is. But age is so entirely relative that to many persons thelanding of the Mayflower seems more remote than the voyage of Jason, anda Mayflower chest a more antique piece of furniture than the timbers ofthe Ark, which some believe can still be seen on top of Mount Ararat.But, speaking generally, the world is still young and growing, and aconsiderable portion of it unfinished. The oldest part, indeed, theLaurentian Hills, which were first out of water, is still only sparselysettled; and no one pretends that Florida is anything like finished, orthat the delta of the Mississippi is in anything more than the process offormation. Men are so young and lively in these days that they cannotwait for the slow processes of nature, but they fill up and bank upplaces, like Holland, where they can live; and they keep on exploring anddiscovering incongruous regions, like Alaska, where they can go andexercise their juvenile exuberance.

In many respects the world has been growing younger ever since theChristian era. A new spirit came into it then which makes youthperpetual, a spirit of living in others, which got the name of universalbrotherhood, a spirit that has had a good many discouragements andset-backs, but which, on the whole, gains ground, and generally works inharmony with the scientific spirit, breaking down the exclusive characterof the conquests of nature. What used to be the mystery and occultism ofthe few is now general knowledge, so that all the playing at occultism byconceited people now seems jejune and foolish. A little machine calledthe instantaneous photograph takes pictures as quickly and accurately asthe human eye does, and besides makes them permanent. Instead of foolingcredulous multitudes with responses from Delphi, we have a Congress whichcan enact tariff regulations susceptible of interpretations enough tosatisfy the love of mystery of the entire nation. Instead of loafinground Memnon at sunrise to catch some supernatural tones, we talk wordsinto a little contrivance which will repeat our words and tones to theremotest generation of those who shall be curious to know whether we saidthose words in jest or earnest. All these mysteries made common anddiffused certainly increase the feeling of the equality of opportunity inthe world. And day by day such wonderful things are discovered andscattered abroad that we are warranted in believing that we are only onthe threshold of turning to account the hidden forces of nature. Therewould be great danger of human presumption and conceit in this progressif the conceit were not so widely diffused, and where we are allconceited there is no one to whom it will appear unpleasant. If there wasonly one person who knew about the telephone he would be unbearable.Probably the Eiffel Tower would be stricken down as a monumentalpresumption, like that of Babel, if it had not been raised with the fullknowledge and consent of all the world.

This new spirit, with its multiform manifestations, which came into theworld nearly nineteen hundred years ago, is sometimes called the spiritof Christmas. And good reasons can be given for supposing that it is. Atany rate, those nations that have the most of it are the most prosperous,and those people who have the most of it are the most agreeable toassociate with. Know all men by these Presents, is an old legal formwhich has come to have a new meaning in this dispensation. It is by thespirit of brotherhood exhibited in giving presents that we know theChristmas proper, only we are apt to take it in too narrow a way. Thereal spirit of Christmas is the general diffusion of helpfulness andgood-will. If somebody were to discover an elixir which would make everyone truthful, he would not, in this age of the world, patent it. Indeed,the Patent Office would not let him make a corner on virtue as he does inwheat; and it is not respectable any more among the real children ofChristmas to make a corner in wheat. The world, to be sure, toleratesstill a great many things that it does not approve of, and, on the whole,Christmas, as an ameliorating and good-fellowship institution, gains alittle year by year. There is still one hitch about it, and a bad onejust now, namely, that many people think they can buy its spirit by jerksof liberality, by costly gifts. Whereas the fact is that a great many ofthe costliest gifts in this season do not count at all. Crumbs from therich man's table don't avail any more to open the pearly gates even ofpopular esteem in this world. Let us say, in fine, that a loving,sympathetic heart is better than a nickel-plated service in this world,which is surely growing young and sympathetic.

A BEAUTIFUL OLD AGE

In Autumn the thoughts lightly turn to Age. If the writer has seemed tobe interested, sometimes to the neglect of other topics, in the Americanyoung woman, it was not because she is interested in herself, but becauseshe is on the way to be one of the most agreeable objects in this lovelyworld. She may struggle against it; she may resist it by all thelegitimate arts of the coquette and the chemist; she may be convincedthat youth and beauty are inseparable allies; but she would have morepatience if she reflected that the sunset is often finer than thesunrise, commonly finer than noon, especially after a stormy day. Thesecret of a beautiful old age is as well worth seeking as that of acharming young maidenhood. For it is one of the compensations for therest of us, in the decay of this mortal life, that women, whose missionit is to allure in youth and to tinge the beginning of the world withromance, also make the end of the world more serenely satisfactory andbeautiful than the outset. And this has been done without any amendmentto the Constitution of the United States; in fact, it is possible thatthe Sixteenth Amendment would rather hinder than help this graciousprocess. We are not speaking now of what is called growing old gracefullyand regretfully, as something to be endured, but as a season to bedesired for itself, at least by those whose privilege it is to beennobled and cheered by it. And we are not speaking of wicked old women.There is a unique fascination—all the novelists recognize it—in awicked old woman; not very wicked, but a woman of abundant experience,who is perfectly frank and a little cynical, and delights in probinghuman nature and flashing her wit on its weaknesses, and who knows asmuch about life as a club man is credited with knowing. She may not be agood comrade for the young, but she is immensely more fascinating than asemi-wicked old man. Why, we do not know; that is one of the unfathomablemysteries of womanhood. No; we have in mind quite another sort of woman,of which America has so many that they are a very noticeable element inall cultivated society. And the world has nothing more lovely. For thereis a loveliness or fascination sometimes in women between the ages ofsixty and eighty that is unlike any other—a charm that woos us to regardautumn as beautiful as spring.

Perhaps these women were great beauties in their day, but scarcely soserenely beautiful as now when age has refined all that was mostattractive. Perhaps they were plain; but it does not matter, for thesubtle influence of spiritualized-intelligence has the power oftransforming plainness into the beauty of old age. Physical beauty isdoubtless a great advantage, and it is never lost if mind shines throughit (there is nothing so unlovely as a frivolous old woman fighting tokeep the skin-deep beauty of her youth); the eyes, if the life has notbeen one of physical suffering, usually retain their power of movingappeal; the lines of the face, if changed, may be refined by a certainspirituality; the gray hair gives dignity and softness and the charm ofcontrast; the low sweet voice vibrates to the same note of femininity,and the graceful and gracious are graceful and gracious still. Even intothe face and bearing of the plain woman whose mind has grown, whosethoughts have been pure, whose heart has been expanded by good deeds orby constant affection, comes a beauty winning and satisfactory in thehighest degree.

It is not that the charm of the women of whom we speak is mainly thisphysical beauty; that is only incidental, as it were. The delight intheir society has a variety of sources. Their interest in life is broaderthan it once was, more sympathetically unselfish; they have a certainphilosophical serenity that is not inconsistent with great liveliness ofmind; they have got rid of so much nonsense; they can afford to betruthful—and how much there is to be learned from a woman who istruthful! they have a most delicious courage of opinion, about men, say,and in politics, and social topics, and creeds even. They have verylittle any longer to conceal; that is, in regard to things that should bethought about and talked about at all. They are not afraid to be gay, andto have enthusiasms. At sixty and eighty a refined and well-bred woman isemancipated in the best way, and in the enjoyment of the full play of therichest qualities of her womanhood. She is as far from prudery as fromthe least note of vulgarity. Passion, perhaps, is replaced by a greatcapacity for friendliness, and she was never more a real woman than inthese mellow and reflective days. And how interesting she is—adding somuch knowledge of life to the complex interest that inheres in her sex!Knowledge of life, yes, and of affairs; for it must be said of theseladies we have in mind that they keep up with the current thought, thatthey are readers of books, even of newspapers—for even the newspaper canbe helpful and not harmful in the alembic of their minds.

Let not the purpose of this paper be misunderstood. It is not to urgeyoung women to become old or to act like old women. The independence andfrankness of age might not be becoming to them. They must stumble alongas best they can, alternately attracting and repelling, until by right ofyears they join that serene company which is altogether beautiful. Thereis a natural unfolding and maturing to the beauty of old age. The missionof woman, about which we are pretty weary of hearing, is not accomplishedby any means in her years of vernal bloom and loveliness; she has equalpower to bless and sweeten life in the autumn of her pilgrimage. But hereis an apologue: The peach, from blossom to maturity, is the mostattractive of fruits. Yet the demands of the market, competition, andfashion often cause it to be plucked and shipped while green. It nevermatures, though it may take a deceptive richness of color; it decayswithout ripening. And the last end of that peach is worse than the first.

THE ATTRACTION OF THE REPULSIVE

On one of the most charming of the many wonderfully picturesque littlebeaches on the Pacific coast, near Monterey, is the idlest if not themost disagreeable social group in the world. Just off the shore, fartherthan a stone's-throw, lies a mass of broken rocks. The surf comes leapingand laughing in, sending up, above the curving green breakers and crestsof foam, jets and spirals of water which flash like silver fountains inthe sunlight. These islets of rocks are the homes of the sea-lion. Thisloafer of the coast congregates here by the thousand. Sometimes the rocksare quite covered, the smooth rounded surface of the larger onepresenting the appearance at a distance of a knoll dotted with dirtysheep. There is generally a select knot of a dozen floating about in thestill water under the lee of the rock, bobbing up their tails andflippers very much as black driftwood might heave about in the tide.During certain parts of the day members of this community are off fishingin deep water; but what they like best to do is to crawl up on the rocksand grunt and bellow, or go to sleep in the sun. Some of them lie half inwater, their tails floating and their ungainly heads wagging. Theseuneasy ones are always wriggling out or plunging in. Some crawl to thetops of the rocks and lie like gunny bags stuffed with meal, or theyrepose on the broken surfaces like masses of jelly. When they are all athome the rocks have not room for them, and they crawl on and over eachother, and lie like piles of undressed pork. In the water they are black,but when they are dry in the sun the skin becomes a dirty light brown.Many of them are huge fellows, with a body as big as an ox. In the waterthey are repulsively graceful; on the rocks they are as ungainly asboneless cows, or hogs that have lost their shape in prosperity. Summerand winter (and it is almost always summer on this coast) these beasts,which are well fitted neither for land nor water, spend their time inabsolute indolence, except when they are compelled to cruise around inthe deep water for food. They are of no use to anybody, either for theirskin or their flesh. Nothing could be more thoroughly disgusting anduncanny than they are, and yet nothing more fascinating. One can watchthem—the irresponsible, formless lumps of intelligent flesh—for hourswithout tiring. I scarcely know what the fascination is. A small sealplaying by himself near the shore, floating on and diving under thebreakers, is not so very disagreeable, especially if he comes so nearthat you can see his pathetic eyes; but these brutes in this perpetualsummer resort are disgustingly attractive. Nearly everything about them,including their voice, is repulsive. Perhaps it is the absolute idlenessof the community that makes it so interesting. To fish, to swim, tosnooze on the rocks, that is all, for ever and ever. No past, no future.A society that lives for the laziest sort of pleasure. If they were rich,what more could they have? Is not this the ideal of a watering-placelife?

The spectacle of this happy community ought to teach us humility andcharity in judgment. Perhaps the philosophy of its attractiveness liesdeeper than its 'dolce far niente' existence. We may never haveconsidered the attraction for us of the disagreeable, the positivefascination of the uncommonly ugly. The repulsive fascination of theloathly serpent or dragon for women can hardly be explained ontheological grounds. Some cranks have maintained that the theory ofgravitation alone does not explain the universe, that repulsion is asnecessary as attraction in our economy. This may apply to society. We areall charmed with the luxuriance of a semi-tropical landscape, soviolently charmed that we become in time tired of its overpowering bloomand color. But what is the charm of the wide, treeless desert, theleagues of sand and burnt-up chaparral, the distant savage, fantasticmountains, the dry desolation as of a world burnt out? It is not contrastaltogether. For this illimitable waste has its own charm; and again andagain, when we come to a world of vegetation, where the vision is shut inby beauty, we shall have an irrepressible longing for these wind-sweptplains as wide as the sea, with the ashy and pink horizons. We shall longto be weary of it all again—its vast nakedness, its shimmering heat, itscold, star-studded nights. It seems paradoxical, but it is probably true,that a society composed altogether of agreeable people would become aterrible bore. We are a "kittle" lot, and hard to please for long. Weknow how it is in the matter of climate. Why is it that the masses of thehuman race live in the most disagreeable climates to be found on theglobe, subject to extremes of heat and cold, sudden and unprovokedchanges, frosts, fogs, malarias? In such regions they congregate, andseem to like the vicissitudes, to like the excitement of the strugglewith the weather and the patent medicines to keep alive. They hate theagreeable monotony of one genial day following another the year through.They praise this monotony, all literature is full of it; people alwayssay they are in search of the equable climate; but they continue to live,nevertheless, or try to live, in the least equable; and if they can findone spot more disagreeable than another there they build a big city. Ifman could make his ideal climate he would probably be dissatisfied withit in a month. The effect of climate upon disposition and upon mannersneeds to be considered some day; but we are now only trying to understandthe attractiveness of the disagreeable. There must be some reason for it;and that would explain a social phenomenon, why there are so manyunattractive people, and why the attractive readers of these essays couldnot get on without them.

The writer of this once traveled for days with an intelligent curmudgeon,who made himself at all points as prickly as the porcupine. There was nogetting on with him. And yet when he dropped out of the party he wassorely missed. He was more attractively repulsive than the sea-lion. Itwas such a luxury to hate him. He was such a counter-irritant, such astimulant; such a flavor he gave to life. We are always on the lookoutfor the odd, the eccentric, the whimsical. We pretend that we like theorderly, the beautiful, the pleasant. We can find them anywhere—thelittle bits of scenery that please the eye, the pleasant households, thegroup of delightful people. Why travel, then? We want the abnormal, thestrong, the ugly, the unusual at least. We wish to be startled andstirred up and repelled. And we ought to be more thankful than we arethat there are so many desolate and wearisome and fantastic places, andso many tiresome and unattractive people in this lovely world.

GIVING AS A LUXURY

There must be something very good in human nature, or people would notexperience so much pleasure in giving; there must be something very badin human nature, or more people would try the experiment of giving. Thosewho do try it become enamored of it, and get their chief pleasure in lifeout of it; and so evident is this that there is some basis for the ideathat it is ignorance rather than badness which keeps so many people frombeing generous. Of course it may become a sort of dissipation, or morethan that, a devastation, as many men who have what are called "goodwives" have reason to know, in the gradual disappearance of theirwardrobe if they chance to lay aside any of it temporarily. The amountthat a good woman can give away is only measured by her opportunity. Hermind becomes so trained in the mystery of this pleasure that sheexperiences no thrill of delight in giving away only the things herhusband does not want. Her office in life is to teach him the joy ofself-sacrifice. She and all other habitual and irreclaimable givers soonfind out that there is next to no pleasure in a gift unless it involvessome self-denial.

Let one consider seriously whether he ever gets as much satisfaction outof a gift received as out of one given. It pleases him for the moment,and if it is useful, for a long time; he turns it over, and admires it;he may value it as a token of affection, and it flatters his self-esteemthat he is the object of it. But it is a transient feeling compared withthat he has when he has made a gift. That substantially ministers to hisself-esteem. He follows the gift; he dwells upon the delight of thereceiver; his imagination plays about it; it will never wear out orbecome stale; having parted with it, it is for him a lasting possession.It is an investment as lasting as that in the debt of England. Like agood deed, it grows, and is continually satisfactory. It is something tothink of when he first wakes in the morning—a time when most people arebadly put to it for want of something pleasant to think of. This factabout giving is so incontestably true that it is a wonder thatenlightened people do not more freely indulge in giving for their owncomfort. It is, above all else, amazing that so many imagine they aregoing to get any satisfaction out of what they leave by will. They may bein a state where they will enjoy it, if the will is not fought over; butit is shocking how little gratitude there is accorded to a departed givercompared to a living giver. He couldn't take the property with him, it issaid; he was obliged to leave it to somebody. By this thought hisgenerosity is always reduced to a minimum. He may build a monument tohimself in some institution, but we do not know enough of the world towhich he has gone to know whether a tiny monument on this earth is anysatisfaction to a person who is free of the universe. Whereas everygiving or deed of real humanity done while he was living would haveentered into his character, and would be of lasting service to him—thatis, in any future which we can conceive.

Of course we are not confining our remarks to what are called Christmasgifts—commercially so called—nor would we undertake to estimate thepleasure there is in either receiving or giving these. The shrewdmanufacturers of the world have taken notice of the periodic generosityof the race, and ingeniously produce articles to serve it, that is, toanticipate the taste and to thwart all individuality or spontaneity init. There is, in short, what is called a "line of holiday goods,"fitting, it may be supposed, the periodic line of charity. When a personreceives some of these things in the blessed season of such, he is apt tobe puzzled. He wants to know what they are for, what he is to do withthem. If there are no "directions" on the articles, his gratitude issomewhat tempered. He has seen these nondescripts of ingenuity andexpense in the shop windows, but he never expected to come into personalrelations to them. He is puzzled, and he cannot escape the unpleasantfeeling that commerce has put its profit-making fingers into Christmas.Such a lot of things seem to be manufactured on purpose that people mayperform a duty that is expected of them in the holidays. The house isfull of these impossible things; they occupy the mantelpieces, they standabout on the tottering little tables, they are ingenious, they are madefor wants yet undiscovered, they tarnish, they break, they will not"work," and pretty soon they look "second-hand." Yet there must be moresatisfaction in giving these articles than in receiving them, and maybe aspice of malice—not that of course, for in the holidays nearly everygift expresses at least kindly remembrance—but if you give them you donot have to live with them. But consider how full the world is of holidaygoods—costly goods too—that are of no earthly use, and are not evenartistic, and how short life is, and how many people actually need booksand other indispensable articles, and how starved are many finedrawing-rooms, not for holiday goods, but for objects of beauty.

Christmas stands for much, and for more and more in a world that isbreaking down its barriers of race and religious intolerance, and one ofits chief offices has been supposed to be the teaching of men thepleasure there is in getting rid of some of their possessions for thebenefit of others. But this frittering away a good instinct and tendencyin conventional giving of manufactures made to suit an artificialcondition is hardly in the line of developing the spirit that shares thelast crust or gives to the thirsty companion in the desert the first pullat the canteen. Of course Christmas feeling is the life of trade and allthat, and we will be the last to discourage any sort of giving, for onecan scarcely disencumber himself of anything in his passage through thisworld and not be benefited; but the hint may not be thrown away that onewill personally get more satisfaction out of his periodic or continualbenevolence if he gives during his life the things which he wants andother people need, and reserves for a fine show in his will a collectedbut not selected mass of holiday goods.

CLIMATE AND HAPPINESS

The idea of the relation of climate to happiness is modern. It isprobably born of the telegraph and of the possibility of rapid travel,and it is more disturbing to serenity of mind than any other. Providencehad so ordered it that if we sat still in almost any region of the globeexcept the tropics we would have, in course of the year, almost all thekinds of climate that exist. The ancient societies did not troublethemselves about the matter; they froze or thawed, were hot or cold, asit pleased the gods. They did not think of fleeing from winter any morethan from the summer solstice, and consequently they enjoyed a certaincontentment of mind that is absent from modern life. We are moreintelligent, and therefore more discontented and unhappy. We are alwaystrying to escape winter when we are not trying to escape summer. We arehalf the time 'in transitu', flying hither and thither, craving thatexact adaptation of the weather to our whimsical bodies promised only tothe saints who seek a "better country." There are places, to be sure,where nature is in a sort of equilibrium, but usually those are placeswhere we can neither make money nor spend it to our satisfaction. Theylack either any stimulus to ambition or a historic association, and wesoon find that the mind insists upon being cared for quite as much as thebody.

How many wanderers in the past winter left comfortable homes in theUnited States to seek a mild climate! Did they find it in the sleet andbone-piercing cold of Paris, or anywhere in France, where the wolves wereforced to come into the villages in the hope of picking up a tenderchild? If they traveled farther, were the railway carriages anything butrefrigerators tempered by cans of cooling water? Was there a place inEurope from Spain to Greece, where the American could once be warm—really warm without effort—in or out of doors? Was it any better indivine Florence than on the chill Riviera? Northern Italy was blanketedwith snow, the Apennines were white, and through the clean streets of thebeautiful town a raw wind searched every nook and corner, penetratingthrough the thickest of English wraps, and harder to endure thaningratitude, while a frosty mist enveloped all. The traveler forgot tobring with him the contented mind of the Italian. Could he go about in along cloak and a slouch hat, curl up in doorways out of the blast, and becontent in a feeling of his own picturesqueness? Could he sit all day onthe stone pavement and hold out his chilblained hand for soldi? Could heeven deceive himself, in a palatial apartment with a frescoed ceiling, byan appearance of warmth in two sticks ignited by a pine cone set in anaperture in one end of the vast room, and giving out scarcely heat enoughto drive the swallows from the chimney? One must be born to this sort ofthing in order to enjoy it. He needs the poetic temperament which canfeel in January the breath of June. The pampered American is not adaptedto this kind of pleasure. He is very crude, not to say barbarous, yet inmany of his tastes, but he has reached one of the desirable things incivilization, and that is a thorough appreciation of physical comfort. Hehas had the ingenuity to protect himself in his own climate, but when hetravels he is at the mercy of customs and traditions in which the idea ofphysical comfort is still rudimentary. He cannot warm himself before agroup of statuary, or extract heat from a canvas by Raphael, nor keep histeeth from chattering by the exquisite view from the Boboli Gardens. Thecold American is insensible to art, and shivers in the presence of thewarmest historical associations. It is doubtful if there is a spot inEurope where he can be ordinarily warm in winter. The world, indeed, doesnot care whether he is warm or not, but it is a matter of greatimportance to him. As he wanders from palace to palace—and he cannotescape the impression that nothing is good enough for him except apalace—he cannot think of any cottage in any hamlet in America that isnot more comfortable in winter than any palace he can find. And so he isdriven on in cold and weary stretches of travel to dwell among the Frenchin Algeria, or with the Jews in Tunis, or the Moslems in Cairo. He longsfor warmth as the Crusader longed for Jerusalem, but not short of Africashall he find it. The glacial period is coming back on Europe.

The citizens of the great republic have a reputation for inordinateself-appreciation, but we are thinking that they undervalue many of theadvantages their ingenuity has won. It is admitted that they arerestless, and must always be seeking something that they have not athome. But aside from their ability to be warm in any part of their owncountry at any time of the year, where else can they travel threethousand miles on a stretch in a well-heated—too much heated—car,without change of car, without revision of tickets, without encounteringa customhouse, without the necessity of stepping outdoors either for foodor drink, for a library, for a bath—for any item, in short, that goes tothe comfort of a civilized being? And yet we are always prating of thesuperior civilization of Europe. Nay, more, the traveler steps into acar—which is as comfortable as a house—in Boston, and alights from itonly in the City of Mexico. In what other part of the world can thatachievement in comfort and convenience be approached?

But this is not all as to climate and comfort. We have climates of allsorts within easy reach, and in quantity, both good and bad, enough toexport more in fact than we need of all sorts. If heat is all we want,there are only three or four days between the zero of Maine and the 80deg. of Florida. If New England is inhospitable and New York freezing, itis only a matter of four days to the sun and the exhilarating air of NewMexico and Arizona, and only five to the oranges and roses of thatsemi-tropical kingdom by the sea, Southern California. And if this doesnot content us, a day or two more lands us, without sea-sickness, in theland of the Aztecs, where we can live in the temperate or the tropiczone, eat strange fruits, and be reminded of Egypt and Spain and Italy,and see all the colors that the ingenuity of man has been able to givehis skin. Fruits and flowers and sun in the winter-time, a climate tolounge and be happy in—all this is within easy reach, with the minimumof disturbance to our daily habits. We started out, when we turned ourbacks on the Old World, with the declaration that all men are free, andentitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of an agreeable climate. Wehave yet to learn, it seems, that we can indulge in that pursuit best onour own continent. There is no winter climate elsewhere to compare withthat found in our extreme Southwest or in Mexico, and the sooner we putthis fact into poetry and literature, and begin to make a tradition ofit, the better will it be for our peace of mind and for our children. Andif the continent does not satisfy us, there lie the West Indies within afew hours' sail, with all the luxuriance and geniality of the tropics. Weare only half emancipated yet. We are still apt to see the world throughthe imagination of England, whose literature we adopted, or of Germany.To these bleak lands Italy was a paradise, and was so sung by poets whohad no conception of a winter without frost. We have a winter climate ofanother sort from any in Europe; we have easy and comfortable access toit. The only thing we need to do now is to correct our imagination, whichhas been led astray. Our poets can at least do this for us by the help ofa quasi-international copyright.

THE NEW FEMININE RESERVE

In times past there have been expressed desire and fear that there shouldbe an American aristocracy, and the materials for its formation have beena good deal canvassed. In a political point of view it is of courseimpossible, but it has been hoped by many, and feared by more, that asocial state might be created conforming somewhat to the social order inEuropean countries. The problem has been exceedingly difficult. Anaristocracy of derived rank and inherited privilege being out of thequestion, and an aristocracy of talent never having succeeded anywhere,because enlightenment of mind tends to liberalism and democracy, therewas only left the experiment of an aristocracy of wealth. This does verywell for a time, but it tends always to disintegration, and it isimpossible to keep it exclusive. It was found, to use the slang of thedry-goods shops, that it would not wash, for there were liable to crowdinto it at any moment those who had in fact washed for a living. Anaristocracy has a slim tenure that cannot protect itself from this sortof intrusion. We have to contrive, therefore, another basis for a class(to use an un-American expression), in a sort of culture or training,which can be perpetual, and which cannot be ordered for money, like aball costume or a livery.

Perhaps the "American Girl" may be the agency to bring this about. Thischarming product of the Western world has come into great prominence oflate years in literature and in foreign life, and has attained anotoriety flattering or otherwise to the national pride. No institutionhas been better known or more marked on the Continent and in England, notexcepting the tramway and the Pullman cars. Her enterprise, her daring,her freedom from conventionality, have been the theme of the novelistsand the horror of the dowagers having marriageable daughters. Consideredas "stock," the American Girl has been quoted high, and the alliancesthat she has formed with families impecunious but noble have given hereclat as belonging to a new and conquering race in the world. But theAmerican Girl has not simply a slender figure and a fine eye and a readytongue, she is not simply an engaging and companionable person, she hasexcellent common-sense, tact, and adaptability. She has at length seen inher varied European experience that it is more profitable to have socialgood form according to local standards than a reputation for dash andbrilliancy. Consequently the American Girl of a decade ago has effacedherself. She is no longer the dazzling courageous figure. In England, inFrance, in Germany, in Italy, she takes, as one may say, the color of theland. She has retired behind her mother. She who formerly marched in thevan of the family procession, leading them—including the pantingmother—a whimsical dance, is now the timid and retiring girl, needingthe protection of a chaperon on every occasion. The satirist will find nomore abroad the American Girl of the old type whom he continues todescribe. The knowing and fascinating creature has changed her tacticsaltogether. And the change has reacted on American society. The motherhas come once more to the front, and even if she is obliged to own toforty-five years to the census-taker, she has again the position and theprivileges of the blooming woman of thirty. Her daughters walk meekly andwith downcast (if still expectant) eyes, and wait for a sign.

That this change is the deliberate work of the American Girl, no one whoknows her grace and talent will deny. In foreign travel and residence shehas been quick to learn her lesson. Dazzled at first by her own capacityand the opportunities of the foreign field, she took the situation bystorm. But she found too often that she had a barren conquest, and thatthe social traditions survived her success and became a lifelongannoyance; that is to say, it was possible to subdue foreign men, but theforeign women were impregnable in their social order. The American Girlabroad is now, therefore, with rare exceptions, as carefully chaperonedand secluded as her foreign sisters.

It is not necessary to lay too much stress upon this phase of Americanlife abroad, but the careful observer must notice its reflex action athome. The American freedom and unconventionality in the intercourse ofthe young of both sexes, which has been so much commented on ascharacteristic of American life, may not disappear, but that smallsection which calls itself "society" may attain a sort of aristocraticdistinction by the adoption of this foreign conventionality. It issufficient now to note this tendency, and to claim the credit of it forthe wise and intelligent American Girl. It would be a pity if it were tobecome nationally universal, for then it would not be the aristocraticdistinction of a few, and the American woman who longs for some sort ofcaste would be driven to some other device.

It is impossible to tell yet what form this feminine reserve andretirement will take. It is not at all likely to go so far as theOriental seclusion of women. The American Girl would never even seeminglygive up her right of initiative. If she is to stay in the background andpretend to surrender her choice to her parents, and with it all thedelights of a matrimonial campaign, she will still maintain a position ofobservation. If she seems to be influenced at present by the French andItalian examples, we may be sure that she is too intelligent and too fondof freedom to long tolerate any system of chaperonage that she cannotcontrol. She will find a way to modify the traditional conventionalitiesso as not to fetter her own free spirit. It may be her mission to showthe world a social order free from the forward independence and smartnessof which she has been accused, and yet relieved of the dull stiffness ofthe older forms. It is enough now to notice that a change is going on,due to the effect of foreign society upon American women, and to expressthe patriotic belief that whatever forms of etiquette she may bow to, theAmerican Girl will still be on earth the last and best gift of God toman.

REPOSE IN ACTIVITY

What we want is repose. We take infinite trouble and go to the ends ofthe world to get it. That is what makes us all so restless. If we couldonly find a spot where we could sit down, content to let the world go by,away from the Sunday newspapers and the chronicles of an uneasy society,we think we should be happy. Perhaps such a place is Coronado Beach—that semi-tropical flower-garden by the sea. Perhaps another is theTimeo Terrace at Taormina. There, without moving, one has the mostexquisite sea and shore far below him, so far that he has the feeling ofdomination without effort; the most picturesque crags and castle peaks;he has all classic legend under his eye without the trouble of reading,and mediaeval romance as well; ruins from the time of Theocritus toFreeman, with no responsibility of describing them; and one of theloveliest and most majestic of snow mountains, never twice the same inlight and shade, entirely revealed and satisfactory from base to summit,with no self or otherwise imposed duty of climbing it. Here are most ofthe elements of peace and calm spirit. And the town itself is quite dead,utterly exhausted after a turbulent struggle of twenty-five hundredyears, its poor inhabitants living along only from habit. The only newthings in it—the two caravansaries of the traveler—are a hotel and acemetery. One might end his days here in serene retrospection, and morecheaply than in other places of fewer attractions, for it is all Past andno Future. Probably, therefore, it would not suit the American, whoseimagination does not work so easily backward as forward, and who prefersto build his own nest rather than settle in anybody else's rookery.Perhaps the American deceives himself when he says he wants repose; whathe wants is perpetual activity and change; his peace of mind is postponeduntil he can get it in his own way. It is in feeling that he is a part ofgrowth and not of decay. Foreigners are fond of writing essays uponAmerican traits and characteristics. They touch mostly on surfaceindications. What really distinguishes the American from all others—forall peoples like more or less to roam, and the English of all others areglobe-trotters—is not so much his restlessness as his entire accord withthe spirit of "go-ahead," the result of his absolute breaking with thePast. He can repose only in the midst of intense activity. He can sitdown quietly in a town that is growing rapidly; but if it stands still,he is impelled to move his rocking-chair to one more lively. He wants theworld to move, and to move unencumbered; and Europe seems to him to carrytoo much baggage. The American is simply the most modern of men, one whohas thrown away the impedimenta of tradition. The world never saw such aspectacle before, so vast a territory informed with one uniform spirit ofenergy and progress, and people tumbling into it from all the world,eager for the fair field and free opportunity. The American delights init; in Europe he misses the swing and "go" of the new life.

This large explanation may not account for the summer restlessness thatovertakes nearly everybody. We are the annual victims of the delusionthat there exists somewhere the ideal spot where manners are simple, andmilk is pure, and lodging is cheap, where we shall fall at once intocontent. We never do. For content consists not in having all we want,nor, in not wanting everything, nor in being unable to get what we want,but in not wanting that we can get. In our summer flittings we carry ourwants with us to places where they cannot be gratified. A few people havediscovered that repose can be had at home, but this discovery is toounfashionable to find favor; we have no rest except in moving about.Looked at superficially, it seems curious that the American is, as arule, the only person who does not emigrate. The fact is that he can gonowhere else where life is so uneasy, and where, consequently, he wouldhave so little of his sort of repose. To put him in another country wouldbe like putting a nineteenth-century man back into the eighteenthcentury. The American wants to be at the head of the procession (as hefancies he is), where he can hear the band play, and be the first to seethe fireworks of the new era. He thinks that he occupies an advancedstation of observation, from which his telescope can sweep the horizonfor anything new. And with some reason he thinks so; for not seldom hetakes up a foreign idea and tires of it before it is current elsewhere.More than one great writer of England had his first popular recognitionin America. Even this season the Saturday Review is struggling withIbsen, while Boston, having had that disease, has probably gone on tosome other fad.

Far be it from us to praise the American for his lack of repose; it isenough to attempt to account for it. But from the social, or rathersociety, point of view, the subject has a disquieting aspect. If theAmerican young man and young woman get it into their heads that repose,especially of manner, is the correct thing, they will go in for it in away to astonish the world. The late cultivation of idiocy by the Americandude was unique. He carried it to an extreme impossible to the youth ofany nation less "gifted." And if the American girl goes in seriously for"repose," she will be able to give odds to any modern languidity or toany ancient marble. If what is wanted in society is cold hauteur andlanguid superciliousness or lofty immobility, we are confident that witha little practice she can sit stiller, and look more impassive, and movewith less motion, than any other created woman. We have that confidencein her ability and adaptability. It is a question whether it is worthwhile to do this; to sacrifice the vivacity and charm native to her, andthe natural impulsiveness and generous gift of herself which belong to anew race in a new land, which is walking always towards the sunrise.

In fine, although so much is said of the American lack of repose, is itnot best for the American to be content to be himself, and let thecritics adapt themselves or not, as they choose, to a new phenomenon?

Let us stick a philosophic name to it, and call it repose in activity.The American might take the candid advice given by one friend to another,who complained that it was so difficult to get into the right frame ofmind. "The best thing you can do," he said, "is to frame your mind andhang it up."

WOMEN—IDEAL AND REAL

We have not by any means got to the bottom of Realism. It matters verylittle what the novelists and critics say about it—what it is and whatit is not; the attitude of society towards it is the important thing.Even if the critic could prove that nature and art are the same thing,and that the fiction which is Real is only a copy of nature, or ifanother should prove that Reality is only to be found in the Ideal,little would be gained. Literature is well enough in its place, art is anagreeable pastime, and it is right that society should take up either inseasons when lawn-tennis and polo are impracticable and afternoon teasbecome flavorless; but the question that society is or should beinterested in is whether the young woman of the future—upon whoseformation all our social hopes depend—is going to shape herself by aRealistic or an Ideal standard. It should be said in parenthesis that theyoung woman of the passing period has inclined towards Realism in mannerand speech, if not in dress, affecting a sort of frank return to theeasy-going ways of nature itself, even to the adoption of the language ofthe stock exchange, the race-course, and the clubs—an offering ofherself on the altar of good-fellowship, with the view, no doubt, ofmaking life more agreeable to the opposite sex, forgetting the fact thatmen fall in love always, or used to in the days when they could affordthat luxury, with an ideal woman, or if not with an ideal woman, with onewhom they idealize. And at this same time the world is full of doubts andquestionings as to whether marriage is a failure. Have these questioningsanything to do with the increasing Realism of women, and a consequentloss of ideals?

Of course the reader sees that the difficulty in considering this subjectis whether woman is to be estimated as a work of nature or of art. Andhere comes in the everlasting question of what is the highest beauty, andwhat is most to be desired. The Greek artists, it seems to be wellestablished, never used a model, as our artists almost invariably do, intheir plastic and pictorial creations. The antique Greek statues, ortheir copies, which give us the highest conceptions of feminine charm andmanly beauty, were made after no woman, or man born of woman, but werecreations of the ideal raised to the highest conception by the passionatelove and long study of nature, but never by faithful copying of it. TheRomans copied the Greek art. The Greek in his best days created the idealfigure, which we love to accept as nature. Generation after generationthe Greek learned to draw and learned to observe, until he was able totransmute his knowledge into the forms of grace and beauty which satisfyus as nature at her best; just as the novelist trains all his powers bythe observation of life until he is able to transmute all the rawmaterial into a creation of fiction which satisfies us. We may be surethat if the Greek artist had employed the service of models in hisstudio, his art would have been merely a passing phase in human history.But as it is, the world has ever since been in love with his ideal woman,and still believes in her possibility.

Now the young woman of today should not be deceived into the notion of apreferable Realistic development because the novelist of today gets herto sit to him as his model. This may be no certain indication that she iseither good art or good nature. Indeed she may be quite drifting awayfrom the ideal that a woman ought to aim at if we are to have a societythat is not always tending into a realistic vulgarity and commonplace. Itis perfectly true that a woman is her own excuse for being, and in a wayshe is doing enough for the world by simply being a woman. It isdifficult to rouse her to any sense of her duty as a standard ofaspiration. And it is difficult to explain exactly what it is that she isto do. If she asks if she is expected to be a model woman, the reply mustbe that the world does not much hanker after what—is called the "modelwoman." It seems to be more a matter of tendency than anything else. Isshe sagging towards Realism or rising towards Idealism? Is she content tobe the woman that some of the novelists, and some of the painters also,say she is, or would she prefer to approach that ideal which all theworld loves? It is a question of standards.

It is natural that in these days, when the approved gospel is that it isbetter to be dead than not to be Real, society should try to approachnature by the way of the materialistically ignoble, and even go such apace of Realism as literature finds it difficult to keep up with; but itis doubtful if the young woman will get around to any desirable state ofnature by this route. We may not be able to explain why servile imitationof nature degrades art and degrades woman, but both deteriorate withoutan ideal so high that there is no earthly model for it. Would you like tomarry, perhaps, a Greek statue? says the justly contemptuous critic.

Not at all, at least not a Roman copy of one. But it would be better tomarry a woman who would rather be like a Greek statue than like some ofthese figures, without even an idea for clothing, which are lying abouton green banks in our spring exhibitions.

THE ART OF IDLENESS

Idleness seems to be the last accomplishment of civilization. To be idlegracefully and contentedly and picturesquely is an art. It is one inwhich the Americans, who do so many things well, do not excel. They havemade the excuse that they have not time, or, if they have leisure, thattheir temperament and nervous organization do not permit it. This excusewill pass for a while, for we are a new people, and probably we are morehighly and sensitively organized than any other nation—at least thephysiologists say so; but the excuse seems more and more inadequate as weaccumulate wealth, and consequently have leisure. We shall not criticisethe American colonies in Paris and Rome and Florence, and in otherContinental places where they congregate. They know whether they arerestless or contented, and what examples they set to the peoples who gettheir ideas of republican simplicity and virtue from the Americans whosojourn among them. They know whether with all their leisure they getplacidity of mind and the real rest which the older nations have learnedto enjoy. It may not be the most desirable thing for a human being to beidle, but if he will be, he should be so in a creditable manner, and withsome enjoyment to himself. It is no slander to say that we in Americahave not yet found out the secret of this. Perhaps we shall not until ourenergies are spent and we are in a state of decay. At present we put asmuch energy into our pleasure as into our work, for it is inbred in usthat laziness is a sin. This is the Puritan idea, and it must be said forit that in our experience virtue and idleness are not commonlycompanions. But this does not go to the bottom of the matter.

The Italians are industrious; they are compelled to be in order to paytheir taxes for the army and navy and get macaroni enough to live on. Butsee what a long civilization has done for them. They have the manner oflaziness, they have the air of leisure, they have worn off the angularcorners of existence, and unconsciously their life is picturesque andenjoyable. Those among them who have money take their pleasure simply andwith the least expense of physical energy. Those who have not money dothe same thing. This basis of existence is calm and unexaggerated; lifeis reckoned by centimes, not by dollars. What an ideal place is Venice!It is not only the most picturesque city in the world, rich in all thatart can invent to please the eye, but how calm it is! The vivacity whichentertains the traveler is all on the surface. The nobleman in his palaceif there be any palace that is not turned into a hotel, or a magazine ofcuriosities, or a municipal office—can live on a diet that would make anAmerican workman strike, simply because he has learned to float throughlife; and the laborer is equally happy on little because he has learnedto wait without much labor. The gliding, easy motion of the gondolaexpresses the whole situation; and the gondolier who with consummateskill urges his dreamy bark amid the throng and in the tortuous canalsfor an hour or two, and then sleeps in the sun, is a type of that rest inlabor which we do not attain. What happiness there is in a dish ofpolenta, or of a few fried fish, in a cup of coffee, and in one of thoseapologies for cigars which the government furnishes, dear at a cent—thecigar with a straw in it, as if it were a julep, which it needs fiveminutes to ignite, and then will furnish occupation for a whole evening!Is it a hard lot, that of the fishermen and the mariners of the Adriatic?The lights are burning all night long in a cafe on the Riva delSchiavoni, and the sailors and idlers of the shore sit there jabberingand singing and trying their voices in lusty hallooing till the morninglight begins to make the lagoon opalescent. The traveler who lodges nearcannot sleep, but no more can the sailors, who steal away in the dawn,wafted by painted sails. In the heat of the day, when the fish will notbite, comes the siesta. Why should the royal night be wasted in slumber?The shore of the Riva, the Grand Canal, the islands, gleam with twinklinglamps; the dark boats glide along with a star in the prow, bearing youthand beauty and sin and ugliness, all alike softened by the shadows; theelectric lights from the shores and the huge steamers shoot gleams ontowers and facades; the moon wades among the fleecy clouds; here andthere a barge with colored globes of light carries a band of singing menand women and players on the mandolin and the fiddle, and from every sidethe songs of Italy, pathetic in their worn gayety, float to the entrancedears of those who lean from balconies, or lounge in gondolas and listenwith hearts made a little heavy and wistful with so much beauty.

Can any one float in such scenes and be so contentedly idle anywhere inour happy land? Have we learned yet the simple art of easy enjoyment? Canwe buy it with money quickly, or is it a grace that comes only with longcivilization? Italy, for instance, is full of accumulated wealth, of art,even of ostentation and display, and the new generation probably havelost the power to conceive, if not the skill to execute, the great workswhich excite our admiration. Nothing can be much more meretricious thanits modern art, when anything is produced that is not an exact copy ofsomething created when there was genius there. But in one respect theItalians have entered into the fruits of the ages of trial and offailure, and that, is the capacity of being idle with much money or withnone, and getting day by day their pay for the bother of living in thisworld. It seems a difficult lesson for us to learn in country or city.Alas! when we have learned it shall we not want to emigrate, as so manyof the Italians do? Some philosophers say that men were not created to behappy. Perhaps they were not intended to be idle.

IS THERE ANY CONVERSATION

Is there any such thing as conversation? It is a delicate subject totouch, because many people understand conversation to be talk; not theexchange of ideas, but of words; and we would not like to say anything toincrease the flow of the latter. We read of times and salons in whichreal conversation existed, held by men and women. Are they altogether inthe past? We believe that men do sometimes converse. Do women ever?Perhaps so. In those hours sacred to the relaxation of undress and theback hair, in the upper penetralia of the household, where two or threeor six are gathered together on and about the cushioned frame intendedfor repose, do they converse, or indulge in that sort of chat from whichnot one idea is carried away? No one reports, fortunately, and we do notknow. But do all the women like this method of spending hour after hour,day after day-indeed, a lifetime? Is it invigorating, even restful? Thinkof the talk this past summer, the rivers and oceans of it, on piazzas andgalleries in the warm evenings or the fresher mornings, in privatehouses, on hotel verandas, in the shade of thousands of cottages by thesea and in the hills! As you recall it, what was it all about? Was themind in a vapid condition after an evening of it? And there is so much toread, and so much to think about, and the world is so interesting, if youdo think about it, and nearly every person has some peculiarity of mindthat would be worth study if you could only get at it! It is really, werepeat, such an interesting world, and most people get so little out ofit. Now there is the conversation of hens, when the hens are busy and notself-conscious; there is something fascinating about it, because theimagination may invest it with a recondite and spicy meaning; but thecommon talk of people! We infer sometimes that the hens are not sayinganything, because they do not read, and consequently their minds areempty. And perhaps we are right. As to conversation, there is no use insending the bucket into the well when the well is dry—it only makes arattling of windlass and chain. We do not wish to be understood to be anenemy of the light traffic of human speech. Deliver us from the didacticand the everlastingly improving style of thing! Conversation, in order tobe good, and intellectually inspiring, and spiritually restful, need notalways be serious. It must be alert and intelligent, and mean more by itssuggestions and allusions than is said. There is the light touch-and-goplay about topics more or less profound that is as agreeable asheat-lightning in a sultry evening. Why may not a person express thewhims and vagaries of a lambent mind (if he can get a lambent mind)without being hauled up short for it, and plunged into a heated dispute?In the freedom of real conversation the mind throws out half-thoughts,paradoxes, for which a man is not to be held strictly responsible to thevery roots of his being, and which need to be caught up and played within the same tentative spirit. The dispute and the hot argument areusually the bane of conversation and the death of originality. We like toexpress a notion, a fancy, without being called upon to defend it, thenand there, in all its possible consequences, as if it were to be anarticle in a creed or a plank in a platform. Must we be always eithervapid or serious?

We have been obliged to take notice of the extraordinary tendency ofAmerican women to cultivation, to the improvement of the mind, by meansof reading, clubs, and other intellectual exercises, and to acknowledgethat they are leaving the men behind; that is, the men not in theso-called professions. Is this intellectualization beginning to show inthe conversation of women when they are together, say in the hours ofrelaxation in the penetralia spoken of, or in general society? Is thereless talk about the fashion of dress, and the dearness or cheapness ofmaterials, and about servants, and the ways of the inchoate citizencalled the baby, and the infinitely little details of the private life ofother people? Is it true that if a group of men are talking, say aboutpolitics, or robust business, or literature, and they are joined by women(whose company is always welcome), the conversation is pretty sure totake a lower mental plane, to become more personal, more frivolous,accommodating itself to quite a different range? Do the well-read,thoughtful women, however beautiful and brilliant and capable of thegayest persiflage, prefer to talk with men, to listen to the conversationof men, rather than to converse with or listen to their own sex? If thisis true, why is it? Women, as a rule, in "society" at any rate, have moreleisure than men. In the facilities and felicities of speech theycommonly excel men, and usually they have more of that vivacious dramaticpower which is called "setting out a thing to the life." With all theseadvantages, and all the world open to them in newspapers and in books,they ought to be the leaders and stimulators of the best conversation.With them it should never drop down to the too-common flatness andbanality. Women have made this world one of the most beautiful places ofresidence to be conceived. They might make it one of the mostinteresting.

THE TALL GIRL

It is the fashion for girls to be tall. This is much more than sayingthat tall girls are the fashion. It means not only that the tall girl hascome in, but that girls are tall, and are becoming tall, because it isthe fashion, and because there is a demand for that sort of girl. Thereis no hint of stoutness, indeed the willowy pattern is preferred, butneither is leanness suggested; the women of the period have got hold ofthe poet's idea, "tall and most divinely fair," and are living up to it.Perhaps this change in fashion is more noticeable in England and on theContinent than in America, but that may be because there is less room forchange in America, our girls being always of an aspiring turn. Verymarked the phenomenon is in England; on the street, at any concert orreception, the number of tall girls is so large as to occasion remark,especially among the young girls just coming into the conspicuousness ofwomanhood. The tendency of the new generation is towards unusual heightand gracious slimness. The situation would be embarrassing to thousandsof men who have been too busy to think about growing upward, were it notfor the fact that the tall girl, who must be looked up to, is almostinvariably benignant, and bears her height with a sweet timidity thatdisarms fear. Besides, the tall girl has now come on in such force thatconfidence is infused into the growing army, and there is a sense ofsupport in this survival of the tallest that is very encouraging to theyoung.

Many theories have been put forward to account for this phenomenon. It isknown that delicate plants in dark places struggle up towards the lightin a frail slenderness, and it is said that in England, which seems tohave increasing cloudiness, and in the capital more and more months ofdeeper darkness and blackness, it is natural that the British girl shouldgrow towards the light. But this is a fanciful view of the case, for itcannot be proved that English men have proportionally increased theirstature. The English man has always seemed big to the Continentalpeoples, partly because objects generally take on gigantic dimensionswhen seen through a fog. Another theory, which has much more to commendit, is that the increased height of women is due to the aestheticmovement, which has now spent its force, but has left certain results,especially in the change of the taste in colors. The woman of theaesthetic artist was nearly always tall, usually willowy, not to sayundulating and serpentine. These forms of feminine loveliness andcommanding height have been for many years before the eyes of the womenof England in paintings and drawings, and it is unavoidable that thispattern should not have its effect upon the new and plastic generation.Never has there been another generation so open to new ideas; and if theideal of womanhood held up was that of length and gracious slenderness,it would be very odd if women should not aspire to it. We know very wellthe influence that the heroines of the novelists have had from time totime upon the women of a given period. The heroine of Scott was, nodoubt, once common in society—the delicate creature who promptly faintedon the reminiscence of the scent of a rose, but could stand any amount ofdragging by the hair through underground passages, and midnight rides onlonely moors behind mailed and black-mantled knights, and a run or two ofhair-removing typhoid fever, and come out at the end of the story asfresh as a daisy. She could not be found now, so changed are therequirements of fiction. We may assume, too, that the full-blownaesthetic girl of that recent period—the girl all soul and fadedharmonies—would be hard to find, but the fascination of the height andslenderness of that girl remains something more than a tradition, and is,no doubt, to some extent copied by the maiden just coming into herkingdom.

Those who would belittle this matter may say that the appearance of whichwe speak is due largely to the fashion of dress—the long unbroken lineswhich add to the height and encourage the appearance of slenderness. Butthis argument gives away the case. Why do women wear the presentfascinating gowns, in which the lithe figure is suggested in all itswomanly dignity? In order that they may appear to be tall. That is tosay, because it is the fashion to be tall; women born in the mode aretall, and those caught in a hereditary shortness endeavor to conform tothe stature of the come and coming woman.

There is another theory, that must be put forward with some hesitation,for the so-called emancipation of woman is a delicate subject to dealwith, for while all the sex doubtless feel the impulse of the new time,there are still many who indignantly reject the implication in thestruggle for the rights of women. To say, therefore, that women arebecoming tall as a part of their outfit for taking the place of men inthis world would be to many an affront, so that this theory can only besuggested. Yet probably physiology would bear us out in saying that thetruly emancipated woman, taking at last the place in affairs which menhave flown in the face of Providence by denying her, would be likely toexpand physically as well as mentally, and that as she is beginning tolook down upon man intellectually, she is likely to have a correspondingphysical standard.

Seriously, however, none of these theories are altogether satisfactory,and we are inclined to seek, as is best in all cases, the simplestexplanation. Women are tall and becoming tall simply because it is thefashion, and that statement never needs nor is capable of anyexplanation. Awhile ago it was the fashion to be petite and arch; it isnow the fashion to be tall and gracious, and nothing more can be saidabout it. Of course the reader, who is usually inclined to find thefacetious side of any grave topic, has already thought of the applicationof the self-denying hymn, that man wants but little here below, and wantsthat little long; but this may be only a passing sigh of the period. Weare far from expressing any preference for tall women over short women.There are creative moods of the fancy when each seems the better. We canonly chronicle, but never create.

THE DEADLY DIARY

Many people regard the keeping of a diary as a meritorious occupation.The young are urged to take up this cross; it is supposed to benefitgirls especially. Whether women should do it is to some minds not an openquestion, although there is on record the case of the Frenchman who triedto shoot himself when he heard that his wife was keeping a diary. Thisintention of suicide may have arisen from the fear that his wife waskeeping a record of his own peccadilloes rather than of her own thoughtsand emotions. Or it may have been from the fear that she was putting downthose little conjugal remarks which the husband always dislikes to havethrown up to him, and which a woman can usually quote accurately, it maybe for years, it may be forever, without the help of a diary. So we canappreciate without approving the terror of the Frenchman at living on andon in the same house with a growing diary. For it is not simply that thislittle book of judgment is there in black and white, but that the makerof it is increasing her power of minute observation and analyticexpression. In discussing the question whether a woman should keep adiary it is understood that it is not a mere memorandum of events andengagements, such as both men and women of business and affairsnecessarily keep, but the daily record which sets down feelings,emotions, and impressions, and criticises people and records opinions.But this is a question that applies to men as well as to women.

It has been assumed that the diary serves two good purposes: it is adisciplinary exercise for the keeper of it, and perhaps a moral guide;and it has great historical value. As to the first, it may be helpful toorder, method, discipline, and it may be an indulgence of spleen, whims,and unwholesome criticism and conceit. The habit of saying right out whatyou think of everybody is not a good one, and the record of such opinionsand impressions, while it is not so mischievous to the public as talkingmay be, is harmful to the recorder. And when we come to the historicalvalue of the diary, we confess to a growing suspicion of it. It is such adeadly weapon when it comes to light after the passage of years. It hasan authority which the spoken words of its keeper never had. It is 'exparte', and it cannot be cross-examined. The supposition is that beingcontemporaneous with the events spoken of, it must be true, and that itis an honest record. Now, as a matter of fact, we doubt if people are anymore honest as to themselves or others in a diary than out of it; andrumors, reported facts, and impressions set down daily in the heat andhaste of the prejudicial hour are about as likely to be wrong as right.Two diaries of the same events rarely agree. And in turning over an olddiary we never know what to allow for the personal equation. The diary isgreatly relied on by the writers of history, but it is doubtful if thereis any such liar in the world, even when the keeper of it is honest. Itis certain to be partisan, and more liable to be misinformed than anewspaper, which exercises some care in view of immediate publicity. Thewriter happens to know of two diaries which record, on the testimony ofeye-witnesses, the circ*mstances of the last hours of Garfield, and theydiffer utterly in essential particulars. One of these may turn up fiftyyears from now, and be accepted as true. An infinite amount of gossipgoes into diaries about men and women that would not stand the test of amoment's contemporary publication. But by-and-by it may all be used tosmirch or brighten unjustly some one's character. Suppose a man in theArmy of the Potomac had recorded daily all his opinions of men andevents. Reading it over now, with more light and a juster knowledge ofcharacter and of measures, is it not probable that he would find it atissue of misconceptions? Few things are actually what they seem today;they are colored both by misapprehensions and by moods. If a man writes aletter or makes report of an occurrence for immediate publication,subject to universal criticism, there is some restraint on him. In hisprivate letter, or diary especially, he is apt to set down what comesinto his head at the moment, often without much effort at verification.

We have been led to this disquisition into the fundamental nature of thisprivate record by the question put to us, whether it is a good plan for awoman to keep a diary. Speaking generally, the diary has become a sort offetich, the authority of which ought to be overthrown. It is fearful tothink how our characters are probably being lied away by innumerable penscratches in secret repositories, which may some day come to light asunimpeachable witnesses. The reader knows that he is not the sort of manwhich the diarist jotted him down to be in a single interview. The diarymay be a good thing for self-education, if the keeper could insure itsdestruction. The mental habit of diarizing may have some value, even whenit sets undue importance upon trifles. We confess that, never having seena woman's private diary (except those that have been published), we donot share the popular impression as to their tenuity implied in thequestion put to us. Taking it for granted that they are full of noblethoughts and beautiful imaginings, we doubt whether the time spent onthem could not be better employed in acquiring knowledge or takingexercise. For the diary forgotten and left to the next generation may beas dangerous as dynamite.

THE WHISTLING GIRL

The wisdom of our ancestors packed away in proverbial sayings may alwaysbe a little suspected. We have a vague respect for a popular proverb, asembodying folk-experience, and expressing not the wit of one, but thecommon thought of a race. We accept the saying unquestioning, as a sortof inspiration out of the air, true because nobody has challenged it forages, and probably for the same reason that we try to see the new moonover our left shoulder. Very likely the musty saying was the product ofthe average ignorance of an unenlightened time, and ought not to have therespect of a scientific and traveled people. In fact it will be foundthat a large proportion of the proverbial sayings which we glibly use arefallacies based on a very limited experience of the world, and probablywere set afloat by the idiocy or prejudice of one person. To examine oneof them is enough for our present purpose.

"Whistling girls and crowing hens
Always come to some bad ends."

It would be interesting to know the origin of this proverb, because it isstill much relied on as evincing a deep knowledge of human nature, and asan argument against change, that is to say, in this case, againstprogress. It would seem to have been made by a man, conservative, perhapsmalevolent, who had no appreciation of a hen, and a conservatively pooropinion of woman. His idea was to keep woman in her place—a good ideawhen not carried too far—but he did not know what her place is, and hewanted to put a sort of restraint upon her emancipation by coupling herwith an emancipated hen. He therefore launched this shaft of ridicule,and got it to pass as an arrow of wisdom shot out of a popular experiencein remote ages.

In the first place, it is not true, and probably never was true even whenhens were at their lowest. We doubts its Sanscrit antiquity. It isperhaps of Puritan origin, and rhymed in New England. It is false as tothe hen. A crowing hen was always an object of interest and distinction;she was pointed out to visitors; the owner was proud of heraccomplishment, he was naturally likely to preserve her life, andespecially if she could lay. A hen that can lay and crow is a 'raraavis'. And it should be parenthetically said here that the hen who cancrow and cannot lay is not a good example for woman. The crowing hen wasof more value than the silent hen, provided she crowed with discretion;and she was likely to be a favorite, and not at all to come to some badend. Except, indeed, where the proverb tended to work its ownfulfillment. And this is the regrettable side of most proverbs of anill-nature, that they do help to work the evil they predict. Some foolishboy, who had heard this proverb, and was sent out to the hen-coop in theevening to slay for the Thanksgiving feast, thought he was a justifiablelittle providence in wringing the neck of the crowing hen, because it wasproper (according to the saying) that she should come to some bad end.And as years went on, and that kind of boy increased and got to be a man,it became a fixed idea to kill the amusing, interesting, spirited,emancipated hen, and naturally the barn-yard became tamer and tamer, theproduction of crowing hens was discouraged (the wise old hens laid noeggs with a crow in them, according to the well-known principle ofheredity), and the man who had in his youth exterminated the hen ofprogress actually went about quoting that false couplet as an argumentagainst the higher education of woman.

As a matter of fact, also, the couplet is not true about woman; whetherit ought to be true is an ethical question that will not be consideredhere. The whistling girl does not commonly come to a bad end. Quite asoften as any other girl she learns to whistle a cradle song, low andsweet and charming, to the young voter in the cradle. She is a girl ofspirit, of independence of character, of dash and flavor; and as to lips,why, you must have some sort of presentable lips to whistle; thin oneswill not. The whistling girl does not come to a bad end at all (ifmarriage is still considered a good occupation), except a cloud may bethrown upon her exuberant young life by this rascally proverb. Even ifshe walks the lonely road of life, she has this advantage, that she canwhistle to keep her courage up. But in a larger sense, one that thispractical age can understand, it is not true that the whistling girlcomes to a bad end. Whistling pays. It has brought her money; it hasblown her name about the listening world. Scarcely has a non-whistlingwoman been more famous. She has set aside the adage. She has done so muchtowards the emancipation of her sex from the prejudice created by anill-natured proverb which never had root in fact.

But has the whistling woman come to stay? Is it well for woman towhistle? Are the majority of women likely to be whistlers? These areserious questions, not to be taken up in a light manner at the end of agrave paper. Will woman ever learn to throw a stone? There it is. Thefuture is inscrutable. We only know that whereas they did not whistlewith approval, now they do; the prejudice of generations gradually meltsaway. And woman's destiny is not linked with that of the hen, nor to becontrolled by a proverb—perhaps not by anything.

BORN OLD AND RICH

We have been remiss in not proposing a remedy for our present social andeconomic condition. Looking backward, we see this. The scheme may not bepractical, any more than the Utopian plans that have been put forward,but it is radical and interesting, and requires, as the other schemes do,a total change in human nature (which may be a good thing to bringabout), and a general recasting of the conditions of life. This is andshould be no objection to a socialistic scheme. Surface measures will notavail. The suggestion for a minor alleviation of inequality, which seemsto have been acted on, namely, that women should propose, has not had thedesired effect if it is true, as reported, that the eligible young menare taking to the woods. The workings of such a measure are as impossibleto predict in advance as the operation of the McKinley tariff. It mightbe well to legislate that people should be born equal (including equalprivileges of the sexes), but the practical difficulty is to keep themequal. Life is wrong somehow. Some are born rich and some are born poor,and this inequality makes misery, and then some lose their possessions,which others get hold of, and that makes more misery. We can put ourfingers on the two great evils of life as it now is: the first ispoverty; and the second is infirmity, which is the accompaniment ofincreasing years. Poverty, which is only the unequal distribution ofthings desired, makes strife, and is the opportunity of lawyers; andinfirmity is the excuse for doctors. Think what the world would bewithout lawyers and doctors!

We are all born young, and most of us are born poor. Youth is delightful,but we are always getting away from it. How different it would be if wewere always going towards it! Poverty is unpleasant, and the greatstruggle of life is to get rid of it; but it is the common fortune thatin proportion as wealth is attained the capacity of enjoying it departs.It seems, therefore, that our life is wrong end first. The remedysuggested is that men should be born rich and old. Instead of thenecessity of making a fortune, which is of less and less value as deathapproaches, we should have only the privilege of spending it, and itwould have its natural end in the cradle, in which we should be rockedinto eternal sleep. Born old, one would, of course, inherit experience,so that wealth could be made to contribute to happiness, and each day,instead of lessening the natural powers and increasing infirmities, wouldbring new vigor and capacity of enjoyment. It would be going from winterto autumn, from autumn to summer, from summer to spring. The joy of alife without care as to ways and means, and every morning refitted withthe pulsations of increasing youth, it is almost impossible to imagine.Of course this scheme has difficulties on the face of it. The allottingof the measure of wealth would not be difficult to the socialists,because they would insist that every person should be born with an equalamount of property. What this should be would depend upon the length oflife; and how should this be arrived at? The insurance companies mightagree, but no one else would admit that he belongs in the average.Naturally the Biblical limit of threescore and ten suggests itself; buthuman nature is very queer. With the plain fact before them that theaverage life of man is less than thirty-four years, few would be willing,if the choice were offered, to compromise on seventy. Everybody has ahope of going beyond that, so that if seventy were proposed as the yearat birth, there would no doubt be as much dissatisfaction as there is atthe present loose arrangement. Science would step in, and demonstratethat there is no reason why, with proper care of the system, it shouldnot run a hundred years. It is improbable, then, that the majority couldbe induced to vote for the limit of seventy years, or to exchange theexciting uncertainty of adding a little to the period which must beaccompanied by the weight of the grasshopper, for the certainty of onlyseventy years in this much-abused world.

But suppose a limit to be agreed on, and the rich old man and the richold woman (never now too old to marry) to start on their career towardsyouth and poverty. The imagination kindles at the idea. The money wouldhold out just as long as life lasted, and though it would all be goingdownhill, as it were, what a charming descent, without struggle, and withonly the lessening infirmities that belong to decreasing age! There wouldbe no second childhood, only the innocence and elasticity of the first.It all seems very fair, but we must not forget that this is a mortalworld, and that it is liable to various accidents. Who, for instance,could be sure that he would grow young gracefully? There would be theconstant need of fighting the hot tempers and impulses of youth, growingmore and more instead of less and less unreasonable. And then, how manywould reach youth? More than half, of course, would be cut off in theirprime, and be more and more liable to go as they fell back into thepitfalls and errors of childhood. Would people grow young together evenas harmoniously as they grow old together? It would be a pretty sight,that of the few who descended into the cradle together, but thisinversion of life would not escape the woes of mortality. And there areother considerations, unless it should turn out that a universal tax onland should absolutely change human nature. There are some who would beas idle and spendthrift going towards youth as they now are going awayfrom it, and perhaps more, so that half the race on coming to immaturitywould be in child asylums. And then others who would be stingy and greedyand avaricious, and not properly spend their allotted fortune. And weshould have the anomaly, which is so distasteful to the reformer now, ofrich babies. A few babies inordinately rich, and the rest in asylums.

Still, the plan has more to recommend it than most others for removingpoverty and equalizing conditions. We should all start rich, and thedying off of those who would never attain youth would amply providefortunes for those born old. Crime would be less also; for while therewould, doubtless, be some old sinners, the criminal class, which is verylargely under thirty, would be much smaller than it is now. Juveniledepravity would proportionally disappear, as not more people would reachnon-age than now reach over-age. And the great advantage of the scheme,one that would indeed transform the world, is that women would always begrowing younger.

THE "OLD SOLDIER"

The "old soldier" is beginning to outline himself upon the public mind asa distant character in American life. Literature has not yet got hold ofhim, and perhaps his evolution is not far enough advanced to make him asserviceable as the soldier of the Republic and the Empire, the relic ofthe Old Guard, was to Hugo and Balzac, the trooper of Italy and Egypt,the maimed hero of Borodino and Waterloo, who expected again the comingof the Little Corporal. It takes time to develop a character, and tothrow the glamour of romance over what may be essentially commonplace. Aquarter of a century has not sufficed to separate the great body of thesurviving volunteers in the war for the Union from the body of Americancitizens, notwithstanding the organization of the Grand Army of theRepublic, the encampments, the annual reunions, and the distinction ofpensions, and the segregation in Soldiers' Homes. The "old soldier"slowly eliminates himself from the mass, and begins to take, and to makeus take, a romantic view of his career. There was one event in his life,and his personality in it looms larger and larger as he recedes from it.The heroic sacrifice of it does not diminish, as it should not, in ourestimation, and he helps us to keep glowing a lively sense of it. Thepast centres about him and his great achievement, and the whole of lifeis seen in the light of it. In his retreat in the Home, and in hiswandering from one Home to another, he ruminates on it, he talks of it;he separates himself from the rest of mankind by a broad distinction, andhis point of view of life becomes as original as it is interesting. Inthe Homes the battered veterans speak mainly of one thing; and in themonotony of their spent lives develop whimseys and rights and wrongs,patriotic ardors and criticisms on their singular fate, which areoriginal in their character in our society. It is in human nature to likerest but not restriction, bounty but not charity, and the tired heroes ofthe war grow restless, though every physical want is supplied. They havea fancy that they would like to see again the homes of their youth, thefarmhouse in the hills, the cottage in the river valley, the lonesomehouse on the wide prairie, the street that ran down to the wharf wherethe fishing-smacks lay, to see again the friends whom they left there,and perhaps to take up the occupations that were laid down when theyseized the musket in 1861. Alas! it is not their home anymore; thefriends are no longer there; and what chance is there of occupation for aman who is now feeble in body and who has the habit of campaigning? Thisgeneration has passed on to other things. It looks upon the hero as anillustration in the story of the war, which it reads like history. Theveteran starts out from the shelter of the Home. One evening, towardssunset, the comfortable citizen, taking the mild air on his piazza, seesan interesting figure approach. Its dress is half military, half that ofthe wanderer whose attention to his personal appearance is onlyspasmodic.

The veteran gives the military salute, he holds himself erect, almost tooerect, and his speech is voluble and florid. It is a delightful evening;it seems to be a good growing-time; the country looks prosperous. He issorry to be any trouble or interruption, but the fact is—yes, he is onhis way to his old home in Vermont; it seems like he would like to tastesome home cooking again, and sit in the old orchard, and perhaps lay hisbones, what is left of them, in the burying-ground on the hill. He pullsout his well-worn papers as he talks; there is the honorable discharge,the permit of the Home, and the pension. Yes, Uncle Sam is generous; itis the most generous government God ever made, and he would willinglyfight for it again. Thirty dollars a month, that is what he has; he isnot a beggar; he wants for nothing. But the pension is not payable tillthe end of the month. It is entirely his own obligation, his own fault;he can fight, but he cannot lie, and nobody is to blame but himself; butlast night he fell in with some old comrades at Southdown, and, well, youknow how it is. He had plenty of money when he left the Home, and he isnot asking for anything now, but if he had a few dollars for his railroadfare to the next city, he could walk the rest of the way. Wounded? Well,if I stood out here against the light you could just see through me,that's all. Bullets? It's no use to try to get 'em out. But, sir, I'm notcomplaining. It had to be done; the country had to be saved; and I'd doit again if it were necessary. Had any hot fights? Sir, I was atGettysburg! The veteran straightens up, and his eyes flash as if he sawagain that sanguinary field. Off goes the citizen's hat. Children, comeout here; here is one of the soldiers of Gettysburg! Yes, sir; and thisknee—you see I can't bend it much—got stiffened at Chickamauga; andthis scratch here in the neck was from a bullet at Gaines Mill; and thishere, sir—thumping his chest—you notice I don't dare to cough much—after the explosion of a shell at Petersburg I found myself lying onmy-back, and the only one of my squad who was not killed outright. Was itthe imagination of the citizen or of the soldier that gave the impressionthat the hero had been in the forefront of every important action of thewar? Well, it doesn't matter much. The citizen was sitting there underhis own vine, the comfortable citizen of a free republic, because of thewounds in this cheerful and imaginative old wanderer. There, that isenough, sir, quite enough. I am no beggar. I thought perhaps you hadheard of the Ninth Vermont. Woods is my name—Sergeant Woods. I trustsome time, sir, I shall be in a position to return the compliment.Good-evening, sir; God bless your honor! and accept the blessing of anold soldier. And the dear old hero goes down the darkening avenue, not sosteady of bearing as when he withstood the charge of Pickett on CemeteryHill, and with the independence of the American citizen who deserves wellof his country, makes his way to the nearest hospitable tavern.

THE ISLAND OF BIMINI

To the northward of Hispaniola lies the island of Bimini. It may not beone of the spice islands, but it grows the best ginger to be found in theworld. In it is a fair city, and beside the city a lofty mountain, at thefoot of which is a noble spring called the 'Fons Juventutis'. Thisfountain has a sweet savor, as of all manner of spicery, and every hourof the day the water changes its savor and its smell. Whoever drinks ofthis well will be healed of whatever malady he has, and will seem alwaysyoung. It is not reported that women and men who drink of this fountainwill be always young, but that they will seem so, and probably tothemselves, which simply means, in our modern accuracy of language, thatthey will feel young. This island has never been found. Many voyages havebeen made in search of it in ships and in the imagination, and Liars havesaid they have landed on it and drunk of the water, but they never couldguide any one else thither. In the credulous centuries when these voyageswere made, other islands were discovered, and a continent much moreimportant than Bimini; but these discoveries were a disappointment,because they were not what the adventurers wanted. They did notunderstand that they had found a new land in which the world should renewits youth and begin a new career. In time the quest was given up, and menregarded it as one of the delusions which came to an end in the sixteenthcentury. In our day no one has tried to reach Bimini except Heine. Ourscientific period has a proper contempt for all such superstitions. Wenow know that the 'Fons Juventutis' is in every man, and that if actuallyjuvenility cannot be renewed, the advance of age can be arrested and thewaste of tissues be prevented, and an uncalculated length of earthlyexistence be secured, by the injection of some sort of fluid into thesystem. The right fluid has not yet been discovered by science, butmillions of people thought that it had the other day, and now confidentlyexpect it. This credulity has a scientific basis, and has no relation tothe old absurd belief in Bimini. We thank goodness that we do not live ina credulous age.

The world would be in a poor case indeed if it had not always before itsome ideal or millennial condition, some panacea, some transmutation ofbase metals into gold, some philosopher's stone, some fountain of youth,some process of turning charcoal into diamonds, some scheme foreliminating evil. But it is worth mentioning that in the historicalevolution we have always got better things than we sought or imagined,developments on a much grander scale. History is strewn with the wreck ofpopular delusions, but always in place of them have come realizationsmore astonishing than the wildest fancies of the dreamers. Florida was adisappointment as a Bimini, so were the land of the Ohio, the land of theMississippi, the Dorado of the Pacific coast. But as the illusions,pushed always westward, vanished in the light of common day, lo! acontinent gradually emerged, with millions of people animated byconquering ambition of progress in freedom; an industrial continent,covered with a network of steel, heated by steam, and lighted byelectricity. What a spectacle of youth on a grand scale is this!Christopher Columbus had not the slightest conception of what he wasdoing when he touched the button. But we are not satisfied. Quite as farfrom being so as ever. The popular imagination runs a hard race with anypossible natural development. Being in possession of so much, we nowexpect to travel in the air, to read news in the sending mind before itis sent, to create force without cost, to be transported without time,and to make everybody equal in fortune and happiness to everybody else byact of Congress. Such confidence have we in the power of a "resolution"of the people and by the people that it seems feasible to make women intomen, oblivious of the more important and imperative task that will thenarise of making men into women. Some of these expectations are onlyBiminis of the present, but when they have vanished there will be asocial and industrial world quite beyond our present conceptions, nodoubt. In the article of woman, for instance, she may not become thebeing that the convention expects, but there may appear a Woman of whomall the Aspasias and Helens were only the faintest types. And although noprogress will take the conceit out of men, there may appear a Man soamenable to ordinary reason that he will give up the notion that he canlift himself up by his bootstraps, or make one grain of wheat two bycalling it two.

One of the Biminis that have always been looked for is an AmericanLiterature. There was an impression that there must be such a thingsomewhere on a continent that has everything else. We gave the worldtobacco and the potato, perhaps the most important contributions to thecontent and the fatness of the world made by any new country, and it wasa noble ambition to give it new styles of art and literature also. Thereseems to have been an impression that a literature was somethingindigenous or ready-made, like any other purely native product, notneeding any special period of cultivation or development, and that anation would be in a mortifying position without one, even before itstaked out its cities or built any roads. Captain John Smith, if he hadever settled here and spread himself over the continent, as he wascapable of doing, might have taken the contract to furnish one, and wemay be sure that he would have left us nothing to desire in thatdirection. But the vein of romance he opened was not followed up. Otherprospectings were made. Holes, so to speak, were dug in New England, andin the middle South, and along the frontier, and such leads were foundthat again and again the certainty arose that at last the real Americanore had been discovered. Meantime a certain process called civilizationwent on, and certain ideas of breadth entered into our conceptions, andideas also of the historical development of the expression of thought inthe world, and with these a comprehension of what American really is, andthe difficulty of putting the contents of a bushel measure into a pintcup. So, while we have been expecting the American Literature to come outfrom some locality, neat and clean, like a nugget, or, to change thefigure, to bloom any day like a century-plant, in one striking, fragrantexpression of American life, behold something else has been preparing andmaturing, larger and more promising than our early anticipations. Inhistory, in biography, in science, in the essay, in the novel and story,there are coming forth a hundred expressions of the hundred aspects ofAmerican life; and they are also sung by the poets in notes as varied asthe migrating birds. The birds perhaps have the best of it thus far, butthe bird is limited to a small range of performances while he shifts hissinging-boughs through the climates of the continent, whereas the poet,though a little inclined to mistake aspiration for inspiration, andvagueness of longing for subtlety, is experimenting in a most hopefulmanner. And all these writers, while perhaps not consciously American orconsciously seeking to do more than their best in their several ways, areanimated by the free spirit of inquiry and expression that belongs to anindependent nation, and so our literature is coming to have a stamp ofits own that is unlike any other national stamp. And it will have thisstamp more authentically and be clearer and stronger as we drop theself-consciousness of the necessity of being American.

JUNE

Here is June again! It never was more welcome in these Northernlatitudes. It seems a pity that such a month cannot be twice as long. Ithas been the pet of the poets, but it is not spoiled, and is just as fullof enchantment as ever. The secret of this is that it is the month ofboth hope and fruition. It is the girl of eighteen, standing with all hercharms on the eve of womanhood, in the dress and temperament of spring.And the beauty of it is that almost every woman is young, if ever shewere young, in June. For her the roses bloom, and the red clover. It is apity the month is so short. It is as full of vigor as of beauty. Theenergy of the year is not yet spent; indeed, the world is opening on allsides; the school-girl is about to graduate into liberty; and the youngman is panting to kick or row his way into female adoration and generalnotoriety. The young men have made no mistake about the kind of educationthat is popular with women. The women like prowess and the manly virtuesof pluck and endurance. The world has not changed in this respect. It wasso with the Greeks; it was so when youth rode in tournaments and unhorsedeach other for the love of a lady. June is the knightly month. On many afield of gold and green the heroes will kick their way into fame; andbands of young women, in white, with their diplomas in their hands,star-eyed mathematicians and linguists, will come out to smile upon thevictors in that exhibition of strength that women most admire. No, theworld is not decaying or losing its juvenility. The motto still is,"Love, and may the best man win!" How jocund and immortal is woman! Now,in a hundred schools and colleges, will stand up the solemn,well-intentioned man before a row of pretty girls, and tell them aboutWomanhood and its Duties, and they will listen just as shyly as if theywere getting news, and needed to be instructed by a man on a subjectwhich has engaged their entire attention since they were five years old.In the light of science and experience the conceit of men is somethingcurious. And in June! the most blossoming, riant, feminine time of theyear. The month itself is a liberal education to him who is notinsensible to beauty and the strong sweet promise of life. The streamsrun clear then, as they do not in April; the sky is high and transparent;the world seems so large and fresh and inviting. Our houses, which sixmonths in the year in these latitudes are fortifications of defense, areopen now, and the breath of life flows through them. Even over the citythe sky is benign, and all the country is a heavenly exhibition. May wassweet and capricious. This is the maidenhood deliciousness of the year.If you were to bisect the heart of a true poet, you would find writtentherein JUNE.

By Charles Dudley Warner

CONTENTS:

A NIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF THE TUILERIESTRUTHFULNESSTHE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESSLITERATURE AND THE STAGETHE LIFE-SAVING AND LIFE PROLONGING ART"H.H." IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIASIMPLICITYTHE ENGLISH VOLUNTEERS DURING THE LATE INVASIONNATHAN HALE

A NIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF THE TUILERIES

It was in the time of the Second Empire. To be exact, it was the night ofthe 18th of June, 1868; I remember the date, because, contrary to theastronomical theory of short nights at this season, this was the longestnight I ever saw. It was the loveliest time of the year in Paris, whenone was tempted to lounge all day in the gardens and to give to sleepnone of the balmy nights in this gay capital, where the night wasilluminated like the day, and some new pleasure or delight always ledalong the sparkling hours. Any day the Garden of the Tuileries was amicrocosm repaying study. There idle Paris sunned itself; through it thepromenaders flowed from the Rue de Rivoli gate by the palace to theentrance on the Place de la Concorde, out to the Champs-Elysees and backagain; here in the north grove gathered thousands to hear the regimentalband in the afternoon; children chased butterflies about the flower-bedsand amid the tubs of orange-trees; travelers, guide-book in hand, stoodresolutely and incredulously before the groups of statuary, wonderingwhat that Infant was doing with, the snakes and why the recumbent figureof the Nile should have so many children climbing over him; or watchedthe long facade of the palace hour after hour, in the hope of catching atsome window the flutter of a royal robe; and swarthy, turbaned Zouaves,erect, lithe, insouciant, with the firm, springy step of the tiger,lounged along the allees.

Napoleon was at home—a fact attested by a reversal of the hospitablerule of democracy, no visitors being admitted to the palace when he wasat home. The private garden, close to the imperial residence, was alsoclosed to the public, who in vain looked across the sunken fence to theparterres, fountains, and statues, in the hope that the mysterious manwould come out there and publicly enjoy himself. But he never came,though I have no doubt that he looked out of the windows upon thebeautiful garden and his happy Parisians, upon the groves ofhorse-chestnuts, the needle-like fountain beyond, the Column of Luxor, upthe famous and shining vista terminated by the Arch of the Star, andreflected with Christian complacency upon the greatness of a monarch whowas the lord of such splendors and the goodness of a ruler who openedthem all to his children. Especially when the western sunshine streameddown over it all, turning even the dust of the atmosphere into gold andemblazoning the windows of the Tuileries with a sort of historic glory,his heart must have swelled within him in throbs of imperial exaltation.It is the fashion nowadays not to consider him a great man, but no onepretends to measure his goodness.

The public garden of the Tuileries was closed at dusk, no one beingpermitted to remain in it after dark. I suppose it was not safe to trustthe Parisians in the covert of its shades after nightfall, and no onecould tell what foreign fanatics and assassins might do if they werepermitted to pass the night so near the imperial residence. At any rate,everybody was drummed out before the twilight fairly began, and at themost fascinating hour for dreaming in the ancient garden. After sundownthe great door of the Pavilion de l'Horloge swung open and there issuedfrom it a drum-corps, which marched across the private garden and downthe broad allee of the public garden, drumming as if the judgment-daywere at hand, straight to the great gate of the Place de la Concorde, andreturning by a side allee, beating up every covert and filling all theair with clamor until it disappeared, still thumping, into the court ofthe palace; and all the square seemed to ache with the sound. Never wasthere such pounding since Thackeray's old Pierre, who, "just to keep uphis drumming, one day drummed down the Bastile":

At midnight I beat the tattoo,
And woke up the Pikemen of Paris
To follow the bold Barbaroux.

On the waves of this drumming the people poured out from every gate ofthe garden, until the last loiterer passed and the gendarmes closed theportals for the night. Before the lamps were lighted along the Rue deRivoli and in the great square of the Revolution, the garden was left tothe silence of its statues and its thousand memories. I often used towonder, as I looked through the iron railing at nightfall, what might goon there and whether historic shades might not flit about in the ghostlywalks.

Late in the afternoon of the 18th of June, after a long walk through thegalleries of the Louvre, and excessively weary, I sat down to rest on asecluded bench in the southern grove of the garden; hidden from view bythe tree-trunks. Where I sat I could see the old men and children in thatsunny flower-garden, La Petite Provence, and I could see the greatfountain-basin facing the Porte du Pont-Tournant. I must have heard theevening drumming, which was the signal for me to quit the garden; for Isuppose even the dead in Paris hear that and are sensitive to the throbof the glory-calling drum. But if I did hear it,—it was only like anecho of the past, and I did not heed it any more than Napoleon in histomb at the Invalides heeds, through the drawn curtain, the chanting ofthe daily mass. Overcome with fatigue, I must have slept soundly.

When I awoke it was dark under the trees. I started up and went into thebroad promenade. The garden was deserted; I could hear the plash of thefountains, but no other sound therein. Lights were gleaming from thewindows of the Tuileries, lights blazed along the Rue de Rivoli, dottedthe great Square, and glowed for miles up the Champs Elysees. There werethe steady roar of wheels and the tramping of feet without, but withinwas the stillness of death.

What should I do? I am not naturally nervous, but to be caught lurking inthe Tuileries Garden in the night would involve me in the gravest peril.The simple way would have been to have gone to the gate nearest thePavillon de Marsan, and said to the policeman on duty there that I hadinadvertently fallen asleep, that I was usually a wide-awake citizen ofthe land that Lafayette went to save, that I wanted my dinner, and wouldlike to get out. I walked down near enough to the gate to see thepoliceman, but my courage failed. Before I could stammer out half thatexplanation to him in his trifling language (which foreigners aremockingly told is the best in the world for conversation), he wouldeither have slipped his hateful rapier through my body, or have raised analarm and called out the guards of the palace to hunt me down like arabbit.

A man in the Tuileries Garden at night! an assassin! a conspirator! oneof the Carbonari, perhaps a dozen of them—who knows?—Orsini bombs,gunpowder, Greek-fire, Polish refugees, murder, emeutes, REVOLUTION!

No, I'm not going to speak to that person in the co*cked hat anddress-coat under these circ*mstances. Conversation with him out of thebest phrase-books would be uninteresting. Diplomatic row between the twocountries would be the least dreaded result of it. A suspectedconspirator against the life of Napoleon, without a chance forexplanation, I saw myself clubbed, gagged, bound, searched (my minutenotes of the Tuileries confiscated), and trundled off to theConciergerie, and hung up to the ceiling in an iron cage there, likeRavaillac.

I drew back into the shade and rapidly walked to the western gate. It wasclosed, of course. On the gate-piers stand the winged steeds of Marly,never less admired than by me at that moment. They interested me lessthan a group of the Corps d'Afrique, who lounged outside, guarding theentrance from the square, and unsuspicious that any assassin was tryingto get out. I could see the gleam of the lamps on their bayonets and heartheir soft tread. Ask them to let me out? How nimbly they would havescaled the fence and transfixed me! They like to do such things. No,no—whatever I do, I must keep away from the clutches of these cats ofAfrica.

And enough there was to do, if I had been in a mind to do it. All theseats to sit in, all the statuary to inspect, all the flowers to smell.The southern terrace overlooking the Seine was closed, or I might haveamused myself with the toy railway of the Prince Imperial that ran nearlythe whole length of it, with its switches and turnouts and houses; or Imight have passed delightful hours there watching the lights along theriver and the blazing illumination on the amusem*nt halls. But I ascendedthe familiar northern terrace and wandered amid its bowers, in companywith Hercules, Meleager, and other worthies I knew only by sight,smelling the orange-blossoms, and trying to fix the site of the oldriding-school where the National Assembly sat in 1789.

It must have been eleven o'clock when I found myself down by the privategarden next the palace. Many of the lights in the offices of thehousehold had been extinguished, but the private apartments of theEmperor in the wing south of the central pavilion were still illuminated.The Emperor evidently had not so much desire to go to bed as I had. Iknew the windows of his petit* appartements—as what good American didnot?—and I wondered if he was just then taking a little supper, if hehad bidden good-night to Eugenie, if he was alone in his room, reflectingupon his grandeur and thinking what suit he should wear on the morrow inhis ride to the Bois. Perhaps he was dictating an editorial for theofficial journal; perhaps he was according an interview to thecorrespondent of the London Glorifier; perhaps one of the Abbotts waswith him. Or was he composing one of those important love-letters ofstate to Madame Blank which have since delighted the lovers ofliterature? I am not a spy, and I scorn to look into people's windowslate at night, but I was lonesome and hungry, and all that square roundabout swarmed with imperial guards, policemen, keen-scented Zouaves, andnobody knows what other suspicious folk. If Napoleon had known that therewas a

MAN IN THE GARDEN!

I suppose he would have called up his family, waked the drum-corps, sentfor the Prefect of Police, put on the alert the 'sergents de ville,'ordered under arms a regiment of the Imperial Guards, and made itunpleasant for the Man.

All these thoughts passed through my mind, not with the rapidity oflightning, as is usual in such cases, but with the slowness ofconviction. If I should be discovered, death would only stare me in theface about a minute. If he waited five minutes, who would believe mystory of going to sleep and not hearing the drums? And if it were true,why didn't I go at once to the gate, and not lurk round there all nightlike another Clement? And then I wondered if it was not the disagreeablehabit of some night-patrol or other to beat round the garden before theSire went to bed for good, to find just such characters as I wasgradually getting to feel myself to be.

But nobody came. Twelve o'clock, one o'clock sounded from the tower ofthe church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, from whose belfry the signal wasgiven for the beginning of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew—the samebells that tolled all that dreadful night while the slaughter went on,while the effeminate Charles IX fired from the windows of the Louvre uponstray fugitives on the quay—bells the reminiscent sound of which, alegend (which I fear is not true) says, at length drove Catharine deMedici from the Tuileries.

One o'clock! The lights were going out in the Tuileries, had nearly allgone out. I wondered if the suspicious and timid and wasteful Emperorwould keep the gas burning all night in his room. The night-roar of Parisstill went on, sounding always to foreign ears like the beginning of arevolution. As I stood there, looking at the window that interested memost, the curtains were drawn, the window was opened, and a form appearedin a white robe. I had never seen the Emperor before in a night-gown, butI should have known him among a thousand. The Man of Destiny had on awhite cotton night-cap, with a peaked top and no tassel. It was the mostnatural thing in the land; he was taking a last look over his restlessParis before he turned in. What if he should see me! I respected thatlast look and withdrew into the shadow. Tired and hungry, I sat down toreflect upon the pleasures of the gay capital.

One o'clock and a half! I had presence of mind enough to wind my watch;indeed, I was not likely to forget that, for time hung heavily on myhands. It was a gay capital. Would it never put out its lights, and ceaseits uproar, and leave me to my reflections? In less than an hour thecountry legions would invade the city, the market-wagons would rumbledown the streets, the vegetable-man and the strawberry-woman, thefishmongers and the greens-venders would begin their melodious cries, andthere would be no repose for a man even in a public garden. It issecluded enough, with the gates locked, and there is plenty of room toturn over and change position; but it is a wakeful situation at the best,a haunting sort of place, and I was not sure it was not haunted.

I had often wondered as I strolled about the place in the daytime orpeered through the iron fence at dusk, if strange things did not go onhere at night, with this crowd of effigies of persons historical and moreor less mythological, in this garden peopled with the representatives ofthe dead, and no doubt by the shades of kings and queens and courtiers,'intrigantes' and panders, priests and soldiers, who live once in thisold pile—real shades, which are always invisible in the sunlight. Theyhave local attachments, I suppose. Can science tell when they departforever from the scenes of their objective intrusion into the affairs ofthis world, or how long they are permitted to revisit them? Is it truethat in certain spiritual states, say of isolation or intense nervousalertness, we can see them as they can see each other? There was I—theI catalogued in the police description—present in that garden, yet soearnestly longing to be somewhere else that would it be wonderful if my'eidolon' was somewhere else and could be seen?—though not by apoliceman, for policemen have no spiritual vision.

There were no policemen in the garden, that I was certain of; but alittle after half-past one I saw a Man, not a man I had ever seen before,clad in doublet and hose, with a short cloak and a felt cap with a whiteplume, come out of the Pavillon de Flore and turn down the quay towardsthe house I had seen that afternoon where it stood—of the beautifulGabrielle d'Estrees. I might have been mistaken but for the fact that,just at this moment, a window opened in the wing of the same pavilion,and an effeminate, boyish face, weak and cruel, with a crown on its head,appeared and looked down into the shadow of the building as if its ownersaw what I had seen. And there was nothing remarkable in this, exceptthat nowadays kings do not wear crowns at night. It occurred to me thatthere was a masquerade going on in the Tuileries, though I heard nomusic, except the tinkle of, it might be, a harp, or "the lasciviouspleasing of a lute," and I walked along down towards the centralpavilion. I was just in time to see two ladies emerge from it anddisappear, whispering together, in the shrubbery; the one old, tall, anddark, with the Italian complexion, in a black robe, and the other young,petite, extraordinarily handsome, and clad in light and bridal stuffs,yet both with the same wily look that set me thinking on poisons, andwith a grace and a subtle carriage of deceit that could be common only tomother and daughter. I didn't choose to walk any farther in the part ofthe garden they had chosen for a night promenade, and turned offabruptly.

What?

There, on the bench of the marble hemicycle in the north grove, sat a rowof graybeards, old men in the costume of the first Revolution, a sort ofserene and benignant Areopagus. In the cleared space before them were acrowd of youths and maidens, spectators and participants in the FloralGames which were about to commence; behind the old men stood attendantswho bore chaplets of flowers, the prizes in the games. The young men woreshort red tunics with copper belts, formerly worn by Roman lads at theludi, and the girls tunics of white with loosened girdles, leaving theirlimbs unrestrained for dancing, leaping, or running; their hair wasconfined only by a fillet about the head. The pipers began to play andthe dancers to move in rhythmic measures, with the slow and languid graceof those full of sweet wine and the new joy of the Spring, according tothe habits of the Golden Age, which had come again by decree in Paris.This was the beginning of the classic sports, but it is not possible fora modern pen to describe particularly the Floral Games. I remember thatthe Convention ordered the placing of these hemicycles in the garden, andthey were executed from Robespierre's designs; but I suppose I am theonly person who ever saw the games played that were expected to be playedbefore them. It was a curious coincidence that the little livid-green manwas also there, leaning against a tree and looking on with a half sneer.It seemed to me an odd classic revival, but then Paris has spasms ofthat, at the old Theatre Francais and elsewhere.

Pipes in the garden, lutes in the palace, paganism, Revolution—thesituation was becoming mixed, and I should not have been surprised at aghostly procession from the Place de la Concorde, through the westerngates, of the thousands of headless nobility, victims of the axe and thebasket; but, thank Heaven, nothing of that sort appeared to add to thewonders of the night; yet, as I turned a moment from the dancers, Ithought I saw something move in the shrubbery. The Laocoon? It could notbe. The arms moving? Yes. As I drew nearer the arms distinctly moved,putting away at length the coiling serpent, and pushing from the pedestalthe old-men boys, his comrades in agony. Laocoon shut his mouth, whichhad been stretched open for about eighteen centuries, untwisted the lastcoil of the snake, and stepped down, a free man. After this it did notsurprise me to see Spartacus also step down and approach him, and the twoancients square off for fisticuffs, as if they had done it often before,enjoying at night the release from the everlasting pillory of art. It wasthe hour of releases, and I found myself in a moment in the midst of a"classic revival," whimsical beyond description. Aeneas hastened todeposit his aged father in a heap on the gravel and ran after the SylvanNymphs; Theseus gave the Minotaur a respite; Themistocles was bendingover the dying Spartan, who was coming to life; Venus Pudica was waltzingabout the diagonal basin with Antinous; Ascanius was playing marbles withthe infant Hercules. In this unreal phantasmagoria it was a relief to meto see walking in the area of the private garden two men: the one astately person with a kingly air, a handsome face, his head covered witha huge wig that fell upon his shoulders; the other a farmer-like man,stout and ungracious, the counterpart of the pictures of the intendantColbert. He was pointing up to the palace, and seemed to be speaking ofsome alterations, to which talk the other listened impatiently. Iwondered what Napoleon, who by this time was probably dreaming of Mexico,would have said if he had looked out and seen, not one man in the garden,but dozens of men, and all the stir that I saw; if he had known, indeed,that the Great Monarch was walking under his windows.

I said it was a relief to me to see two real men, but I had no reason tocomplain of solitude thereafter till daybreak. That any one saw ornoticed me I doubt, and I soon became so reassured that I had moredelight than fear in watching the coming and going of personages I hadsupposed dead a hundred years and more; the appearance at windows offaces lovely, faces sad, faces terror-stricken; the opening of casem*ntsand the dropping of billets into the garden; the flutter of disappearingrobes; the faint sounds of revels from the interior of the palace; thehurrying of feet, the flashing of lights, the clink of steel, that toldof partings and sudden armings, and the presence of a king that will bedenied at no doors. I saw through the windows of the long Galerie deDiane the roues of the Regency at supper, and at table with them a dark,semi-barbarian little man in a coat of Russian sable, the coolest head inEurope at a drinking-bout. I saw enter the south pavilion a tall lady inblack, with the air of a royal procuress; and presently crossed thegarden and disappeared in the pavilion a young Parisian girl, and thenanother and another, a flock of innocents, and I thought instantly of thedreadful Parc aux Cerfs at Versailles.

So wrought upon was I by the sight of this infamy that I scarcely noticedthe incoming of a royal train at the southern end of the palace, andnotably in it a lady with light hair and noble mien, and the look in herface of a hunted lioness at bay. I say scarcely, for hardly had the royalcortege passed within, when there arose a great clamor in the innercourt, like the roar of an angry multitude, a scuffling of many feet,firing of guns, thrusting of pikes, followed by yells of defiance inmingled French and German, the pitching of Swiss Guards from doorways andwindows, and the flashing of flambeaux that ran hither and thither. "Oh!"I said, "Paris has come to call upon its sovereign; the pikemen of Paris,led by the bold Barbaroux."

The tumult subsided as suddenly as it had risen, hushed, I imagined, bythe jarring of cannon from the direction of St. Roch; and in the quiet Isaw a little soldier alight at the Rue de Rivoli gate—a little man whomyou might mistake for a corporal of the guard—with a wild,coarse-featured Corsican (say, rather, Basque) face, his disorderedchestnut hair darkened to black locks by the use of pomatum—a faceselfish and false, but determined as fate. So this was the beginning ofthe Napoleon "legend"; and by-and-by this coarse head will be idealizedinto the Roman Emperor type, in which I myself might have believed butfor the revelations of the night of strange adventure.

What is history? What is this drama and spectacle, that has been putforth as history, but a cover for petty intrigue, and deceit, andselfishness, and cruelty? A man shut into the Tuileries Garden begins tothink that it is all an illusion, the trick of a disordered fancy. Whowas Grand, who was Well-Beloved, who was Desired, who was the Idol of theFrench, who was worthy to be called a King of the Citizens? Oh, for thelight of day!

And it came, faint and tremulous, touching the terraces of the palace andthe Column of Luxor. But what procession was that moving along thesouthern terrace? A squad of the National Guard on horseback, a score orso of King's officers, a King on foot, walking with uncertain step, aQueen leaning on his arm, both habited in black, moved out of the westerngate. The King and the Queen paused a moment on the very spot where LouisXVI. was beheaded, and then got into a carriage drawn by one horse andwere driven rapidly along the quays in the direction of St. Cloud. Andagain Revolution, on the heels of the fugitives, poured into the oldpalace and filled it with its tatterdemalions.

Enough for me that daylight began to broaden. "Sleep on," I said, "O realPresident, real Emperor (by the grace of coup d'etat) at last, in themidst of the most virtuous court in Europe, loved of good Americans,eternally established in the hearts of your devoted Parisians! Peace tothe palace and peace to its lovely garden, of both of which I have hadquite enough for one night!"

The sun came up, and, as I looked about, all the shades and concourse ofthe night had vanished. Day had begun in the vast city, with all its roarand tumult; but the garden gates would not open till seven, and I mustnot be seen before the early stragglers should enter and give me a chanceof escape. In my circ*mstances I would rather be the first to enter thanthe first to go out in the morning, past those lynx-eyed gendarmes. Frommy covert I eagerly watched for my coming deliverers. The first to appearwas a 'chiffonnier,' who threw his sack and pick down by the basin,bathed his face, and drank from his hand. It seemed to me almost like anact of worship, and I would have embraced that rag-picker as a brother.But I knew that such a proceeding, in the name even of egalite andfraternite would have been misinterpreted; and I waited till two andthree and a dozen entered by this gate and that, and I was at fullliberty to stretch my limbs and walk out upon the quay as nonchalant asif I had been taking a morning stroll.

I have reason to believe that the police of Paris never knew where Ispent the night of the 18th of June. It must have mystified them.

TRUTHFULNESS

Truthfulness is as essential in literature as it is in conduct, infiction as it is in the report of an actual occurrence. Falsehoodvitiates a poem, a painting, exactly as it does a life. Truthfulness is aquality like simplicity. Simplicity in literature is mainly a matter ofclear vision and lucid expression, however complex the subject-matter maybe; exactly as in life, simplicity does not so much depend upon externalconditions as upon the spirit in which one lives. It may be moredifficult to maintain simplicity of living with a great fortune than inpoverty, but simplicity of spirit—that is, superiority of soul tocirc*mstance—is possible in any condition. Unfortunately the commonexpression that a certain person has wealth is not so true as it would beto say that wealth has him. The life of one with great possessions andcorresponding responsibilities may be full of complexity; the subject ofliterary art may be exceedingly complex; but we do not set complexityover against simplicity. For simplicity is a quality essential to truelife as it is to literature of the first class; it is opposed to parade,to artificiality, to obscurity.

The quality of truthfulness is not so easily defined. It also is a matterof spirit and intuition. We have no difficulty in applying the rules ofcommon morality to certain functions of writers for the public, forinstance, the duties of the newspaper reporter, or the newspapercorrespondent, or the narrator of any event in life the relation of whichowes its value to its being absolutely true. The same may be said ofhoaxes, literary or scientific, however clear they may be. The personindulging in them not only discredits his office in the eyes of thepublic, but he injures his own moral fibre, and he contracts such a habitof unveracity that he never can hope for genuine literary success. Forthere never was yet any genuine success in letters without integrity. Theclever hoax is no better than the trick of imitation, that is, consciousimitation of another, which has unveracity to one's self at the bottom ofit. Burlesque is not the highest order of intellectual performance, butit is legitimate, and if cleverly done it may be both useful and amusing,but it is not to be confounded with forgery, that is, with a compositionwhich the author attempts to pass off as the production of somebody else.The forgery may be amazingly smart, and be even popular, and get theauthor, when he is discovered, notoriety, but it is pretty certain thatwith his ingrained lack of integrity he will never accomplish anyoriginal work of value, and he will be always personally suspected. Thereis nothing so dangerous to a young writer as to begin with hoaxing; or tobegin with the invention, either as reporter or correspondent, ofstatements put forward as facts, which are untrue. This sort of facilityand smartness may get a writer employment, unfortunately for him and thepublic, but there is no satisfaction in it to one who desires anhonorable career. It is easy to recall the names of brilliant men whosefine talents have been eaten away by this habit of unveracity. This habitis the greatest danger of the newspaper press of the United States.

It is easy to define this sort of untruthfulness, and to study the moraldeterioration it works in personal character, and in the quality ofliterary work. It was illustrated in the forgeries of the marvelous boyChatterton. The talent he expended in deception might have made him anenviable reputation,—the deception vitiated whatever good there was inhis work. Fraud in literature is no better than fraud in archaeology,—Chatterton deserves no more credit than Shapiro who forged the Moabitepottery with its inscriptions. The reporter who invents an incident, orheightens the horror of a calamity by fictions is in the case of Shapiro.The habit of this sort of invention is certain to destroy the writer'squality, and if he attempts a legitimate work of the imagination, he willcarry the same unveracity into that. The quality of truthfulness cannotbe juggled with. Akin to this is the trick which has put under propersuspicion some very clever writers of our day, and cost them all publicconfidence in whatever they do,—the trick of posing for what they arenot. We do not mean only that the reader does not believe their storiesof personal adventure, and regards them personally as "frauds," but thatthis quality of deception vitiates all their work, as seen from aliterary point of view. We mean that the writer who hoaxes the public, byinventions which he publishes as facts, or in regard to his ownpersonality, not only will lose the confidence of the public but he willlose the power of doing genuine work, even in the field of fiction. Goodwork is always characterized by integrity.

These illustrations help us to understand what is meant by literaryintegrity. For the deception in the case of the correspondent who invents"news" is of the same quality as the lack of sincerity in a poem or in aprose fiction; there is a moral and probably a mental defect in both. Thestory of Robinson Crusoe is a very good illustration of veracity infiction. It is effective because it has the simple air of truth; it is anillusion that satisfies; it is possible; it is good art: but it has nomoral deception in it. In fact, looked at as literature, we can see thatit is sincere and wholesome.

What is this quality of truthfulness which we all recognize when itexists in fiction? There is much fiction, and some of it, for variousreasons, that we like and find interesting which is neverthelessinsincere if not artificial. We see that the writer has not been honestwith himself or with us in his views of human life. There may be just asmuch lying in novels as anywhere else. The novelist who offers us what hedeclares to be a figment of his own brain may be just as untrue as thereporter who sets forth a figment of his own brain which he declares tobe a real occurrence. That is, just as much faithfulness to life isrequired of the novelist as of the reporter, and in a much higher degree.The novelist must not only tell the truth about life as he sees it,material and spiritual, but he must be faithful to his own conceptions.If fortunately he has genius enough to create a character that hasreality to himself and to others, he must be faithful to that character.He must have conscience about it, and not misrepresent it, any more thanhe would misrepresent the sayings and doings of a person in real life. Ofcourse if his own conception is not clear, he will be as unjust as inwriting about a person in real life whose character he knew only byrumor. The novelist may be mistaken about his own creations and in hisviews of life, but if he have truthfulness in himself, sincerity willshow in his work.

Truthfulness is a quality that needs to be as strongly insisted on inliterature as simplicity. But when we carry the matter a step further, wesee that there cannot be truthfulness about life without knowledge. Theworld is full of novels, and their number daily increases, writtenwithout any sense of responsibility, and with very little experience,which are full of false views of human nature and of society. We canalmost always tell in a fiction when the writer passes the boundary ofhis own experience and observation—he becomes unreal, which is anothername for untruthful. And there is an absence of sincerity in such work.There seems to be a prevailing impression that any one can write a story.But it scarcely need be said that literature is an art, like painting andmusic, and that one may have knowledge of life and perfect sincerity, andyet be unable to produce a good, truthful piece of literature, or tocompose a piece of music, or to paint a picture.

Truthfulness is in no way opposed to invention or to the exercise of theimagination. When we say that the writer needs experience, we do not meanto intimate that his invention of character or plot should be literallylimited to a person he has known, or to an incident that has occurred,but that they should be true to his experience. The writer may create anideally perfect character, or an ideally bad character, and he may tryhim by a set of circ*mstances and events never before combined, and thiscreation may be so romantic as to go beyond the experience of any reader,that is to say, wholly imaginary (like a composed landscape which has nocounterpart in any one view of a natural landscape), and yet it may be soconsistent in itself, so true to an idea or an aspiration or a hope, thatit will have the element of truthfulness and subserve a very highpurpose. It may actually be truer to our sense of verity to life than anarray of undeniable, naked facts set down without art and withoutimagination.

The difficulty of telling the truth in literature is about as great as itis in real life. We know how nearly impossible it is for one person toconvey to another a correct impression of a third person. He may describethe features, the manner, mention certain traits and sayings, allliterally true, but absolutely misleading as to the total impression. Andthis is the reason why extreme, unrelieved realism is apt to give a falseimpression of persons and scenes. One can hardly help having a whimsicalnotion occasionally, seeing the miscarriages even in our own attempts attruthfulness, that it absolutely exists only in the imagination.

In a piece of fiction, especially romantic fiction, an author isabsolutely free to be truthful, and he will be if he has personal andliterary integrity. He moves freely amid his own creations andconceptions, and is not subject to the peril of the writer who admittedlyuses facts, but uses them so clumsily or with so little conscience, soout of their real relations, as to convey a false impression and anuntrue view of life. This quality of truthfulness is equally evident in"The Three Guardsmen" and in "Midsummer Night's Dream." Dumas is asconscientious about his world of adventure as Shakespeare is in hissemi-supernatural region. If Shakespeare did not respect the laws of hisimaginary country, and the creatures of his fancy, if Dumas were not trueto the characters he conceived, and the achievements possible to them,such works would fall into confusion. A recent story called "TheRefugees" set out with a certain promise of veracity, although the readerunderstood of course that it was to be a purely romantic invention. Butvery soon the author recklessly violated his own conception, and when hegot his "real" characters upon an iceberg, the fantastic position becameludicrous without being funny, and the performances of the samecharacters in the wilderness of the New World showed such lack ofknowledge in the writer that the story became an insult to theintelligence of the reader. Whereas such a romance as that of "The MS.Found in a Copper Cylinder," although it is humanly impossible andvisibly a figment of the imagination, is satisfactory to the readerbecause the author is true to his conception, and it is interesting as acurious allegorical and humorous illustration of the ruinous character inhuman affairs of extreme unselfishness. There is the same sort oftruthfulness in Hawthorne's allegory of "The Celestial Railway," inFroude's "On a Siding at a Railway Station," and in Bunyan's "Pilgrim'sProgress."

The habit of lying carried into fiction vitiates the best work, andperhaps it is easier to avoid it in pure romance than in the so-callednovels of "every-day life." And this is probably the reason why so manyof the novels of "real life" are so much more offensively untruthful tous than the wildest romances. In the former the author could perhaps"prove" every incident he narrates, and produce living every character hehas attempted to describe. But the effect is that of a lie, eitherbecause he is not a master of his art, or because he has no literaryconscience. He is like an artist who is more anxious to produce ameretricious effect than he is to be true to himself or to nature. Anauthor who creates a character assumes a great responsibility, and if hehas not integrity or knowledge enough to respect his own creation, no oneelse will respect it, and, worse than this, he will tell a falsehood tohosts of undiscriminating readers.

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

Perhaps the most curious and interesting phrase ever put into a publicdocument is "the pursuit of happiness." It is declared to be aninalienable right. It cannot be sold. It cannot be given away. It isdoubtful if it could be left by will.

The right of every man to be six feet high, and of every woman to be fivefeet four, was regarded as self-evident until women asserted theirundoubted right to be six feet high also, when some confusion wasintroduced into the interpretation of this rhetorical fragment of theeighteenth century.

But the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness has never beenquestioned since it was proclaimed as a new gospel for the New World. TheAmerican people accepted it with enthusiasm, as if it had been thediscovery of a gold-prospector, and started out in the pursuit as if thedevil were after them.

If the proclamation had been that happiness is a common right of therace, alienable or otherwise, that all men are or may be happy, historyand tradition might have interfered to raise a doubt whether even the newform of government could so change the ethical condition. But the rightto make a pursuit of happiness, given in a fundamental bill of rights,had quite a different aspect. Men had been engaged in many pursuits, mostof them disastrous, some of them highly commendable. A sect in Galileehad set up the pursuit of righteousness as the only or the highest objectof man's immortal powers. The rewards of it, however, were not alwaysimmediate. Here was a political sanction of a pursuit that everybodyacknowledged to be of a good thing.

Given a heart-aching longing in every human being for happiness, here washigh warrant for going in pursuit of it. And the curious effect of this'mot d'ordre' was that the pursuit arrested the attention as the mostessential, and the happiness was postponed, almost invariably, to somefuture season, when leisure or plethora, that is, relaxation or gorgeddesire, should induce that physical and moral glow which is commonlyaccepted as happiness. This glow of well-being is sometimes calledcontentment, but contentment was not in the programme. If it came at all,it was only to come after strenuous pursuit, that being the inalienableright.

People, to be sure, have different conceptions of happiness, but whateverthey are, it is the custom, almost universal, to postpone the thingitself. This, of course, is specially true in our American system, wherewe have a chartered right to the thing itself. Other nations who have nosuch right may take it out in occasional driblets, odd moments that come,no doubt, to men and races who have no privilege of voting, or to suchfavored places as New York city, whose government is always the same,however they vote.

We are all authorized to pursue happiness, and we do as a general thingmake a pursuit of it. Instead of simply being happy in the conditionwhere we are, getting the sweets of life in human intercourse, hour byhour, as the bees take honey from every flower that opens in the summerair, finding happiness in the well-filled and orderly mind, in the saneand enlightened spirit, in the self that has become what the self shouldbe, we say that tomorrow, next year, in ten or twenty or thirty years,when we have arrived at certain coveted possessions or situation, we willbe happy. Some philosophers dignify this postponement with the name ofhope.

Sometimes wandering in a primeval forest, in all the witchery of thewoods, besought by the kindliest solicitations of nature, wild flowers inthe trail, the call of the squirrel, the flutter of birds, the greatworld-music of the wind in the pine-tops, the flecks of sunlight on thebrown carpet and on the rough bark of immemorial trees, I find myselfunconsciously postponing my enjoyment until I shall reach a hoped-foropen place of full sun and boundless prospect.

The analogy cannot be pushed, for it is the common experience that theseopen spots in life, where leisure and space and contentment await us, areusually grown up with thickets, fuller of obstacles, to say nothing oflabors and duties and difficulties, than any part of the weary path wehave trod.

Why add the pursuit of happiness to our other inalienable worries?Perhaps there is something wrong in ourselves when we hear the complaintso often that men are pursued by disaster instead of being pursued byhappiness.

We all believe in happiness as something desirable and attainable, and Itake it that this is the underlying desire when we speak of the pursuitof wealth, the pursuit of learning, the pursuit of power in office or ininfluence, that is, that we shall come into happiness when the objectslast named are attained. No amount of failure seems to lessen thisbelief. It is matter of experience that wealth and learning and power areas likely to bring unhappiness as happiness, and yet this constant lessonof experience makes not the least impression upon human conduct. Isuppose that the reason of this unheeding of experience is that everyperson born into the world is the only one exactly of that kind that everwas or ever will be created, so that he thinks he may be exempt from thegeneral rules. At any rate, he goes at the pursuit of happiness inexactly the old way, as if it were an original undertaking. Perhaps themost melancholy spectacle offered to us in our short sojourn in thispilgrimage, where the roads are so dusty and the caravansaries so illprovided, is the credulity of this pursuit. Mind, I am not objecting tothe pursuit of wealth, or of learning, or of power, they are allexplainable, if not justifiable,—but to the blindness that does notperceive their futility as a means of attaining the end sought, which ishappiness, an end that can only be compassed by the right adjustment ofeach soul to this and to any coming state of existence. For whether thegreat scholar who is stuffed with knowledge is happier than the greatmoney-getter who is gorged with riches, or the wily politician who is aWarwick in his realm, depends entirely upon what sort of a man thispursuit has made him. There is a kind of fallacy current nowadays that avery rich man, no matter by what unscrupulous means he has gathered anundue proportion of the world into his possession, can be happy if he canturn round and make a generous and lavish distribution of it for worthypurposes. If he has preserved a remnant of conscience, this distributionmay give him much satisfaction, and justly increase his good opinion ofhis own deserts; but the fallacy is in leaving out of account the sort ofman he has become in this sort of pursuit. Has he escaped that hardeningof the nature, that drying up of the sweet springs of sympathy, whichusually attend a long-continued selfish undertaking? Has either he or thegreat politician or the great scholar cultivated the real sources ofenjoyment?

The pursuit of happiness! It is not strange that men call it an illusion.But I am well satisfied that it is not the thing itself, but the pursuit,that is an illusion. Instead of thinking of the pursuit, why not fix ourthoughts upon the moments, the hours, perhaps the days, of this divinepeace, this merriment of body and mind, that can be repeated and perhapsindefinitely extended by the simplest of all means, namely, a dispositionto make the best of whatever comes to us? Perhaps the Latin poet wasright in saying that no man can count himself happy while in this life,that is, in a continuous state of happiness; but as there is for the soulno time save the conscious moment called "now," it is quite possible tomake that "now" a happy state of existence. The point I make is that weshould not habitually postpone that season of happiness to the future.

No one, I trust, wishes to cloud the dreams of youth, or to dispel byexcess of light what are called the illusions of hope. But why should theboy be nurtured in the current notion that he is to be really happy onlywhen he has finished school, when he has got a business or profession bywhich money can be made, when he has come to manhood? The girl alsodreams that for her happiness lies ahead, in that springtime when she iscrossing the line of womanhood,—all the poets make much of this,—whenshe is married and learns the supreme lesson how to rule by obeying. Itis only when the girl and the boy look back upon the years of adolescencethat they realize how happy they might have been then if they had onlyknown they were happy, and did not need to go in pursuit of happiness.

The pitiful part of this inalienable right to the pursuit of happinessis, however, that most men interpret it to mean the pursuit of wealth,and strive for that always, postponing being happy until they get afortune, and if they are lucky in that, find at the end that thehappiness has somehow eluded them, that; in short, they have notcultivated that in themselves that alone can bring happiness. More thanthat, they have lost the power of the enjoyment of the essentialpleasures of life. I think that the woman in the Scriptures who out ofher poverty put her mite into the contribution-box got more happiness outof that driblet of generosity and self-sacrifice than some men in our dayhave experienced in founding a university.

And how fares it with the intellectual man? To be a selfish miner oflearning, for self-gratification only, is no nobler in reality than to bea miser of money. And even when the scholar is lavish of his knowledge inhelping an ignorant world, he may find that if he has made his studies asa pursuit of happiness he has missed his object. Much knowledge increasesthe possibility of enjoyment, but also the possibility of sorrow. Ifintellectual pursuits contribute to an enlightened and altogetheradmirable character, then indeed has the student found the inner springsof happiness. Otherwise one cannot say that the wise man is happier thanthe ignorant man.

In fine, and in spite of the political injunction, we need to considerthat happiness is an inner condition, not to be raced after. And what anadvance in our situation it would be if we could get it into our headshere in this land of inalienable rights that the world would turn roundjust the same if we stood still and waited for the daily coming of ourLord!

LITERATURE AND THE STAGE

Is the divorce of Literature and the Stage complete, or is it still onlypartial? As the lawyers say, is it a 'vinculo', or only a 'mensa etthoro?' And if this divorce is permanent, is it a good thing forliterature or the stage? Is the present condition of the stage adegeneration, as some say, or is it a natural evolution of an artindependent of literature?

How long is it since a play has been written and accepted and playedwhich has in it any so-called literary quality or is an addition toliterature? And what is dramatic art as at present understood andpracticed by the purveyors of plays for the public? If any one can answerthese questions, he will contribute something to the discussion about thetendency of the modern stage.

Every one recognizes in the "good old plays" which are occasionally"revived" both a quality and an intention different from anything in mostcontemporary productions. They are real dramas, the interest of whichdepends upon sentiment, upon an exhibition of human nature, upon theinteraction of varied character, and upon plot, and we recognize in thema certain literary art. They can be read with pleasure. Scenery andmechanical contrivance may heighten the effects, but they are notabsolute essentials.

In the contemporary play instead of character we have "characters,"usually exaggerations of some trait, so pushed forward as to becomecaricatures. Consistency to human nature is not insisted on in plot, butthere must be startling and unexpected incidents, mechanical devices, anda great deal of what is called "business," which clearly has as muchrelation to literature as have the steps of a farceur in a clog-dance.The composition of such plays demands literary ability in the leastdegree, but ingenuity in inventing situations and surprises; the text isnothing, the action is everything; but the text is considerably improvedif it have brightness of repartee and a lively apprehension ofcontemporary events, including the slang of the hour. These plays appearto be made up by the writer, the manager, the carpenter, the costumer. Ifthey are successful with the modern audiences, their success is probablydue to other things than any literary quality they may have, or any truthto life or to human nature.

We see how this is in the great number of plays adapted from popularnovels. In the "dramatization" of these stories, pretty much everythingis left out of the higher sort that the reader has valued in the story.The romance of "Monte Cristo" is an illustration of this. The play isvulgar melodrama, out of which has escaped altogether the refinement andthe romantic idealism of the stirring romance of Dumas. Now and then, tobe sure, we get a different result, as in "Olivia," where all the pathosand character of the "Vicar of Wakefield" are preserved, and the effectof the play depends upon passion and sentiment. But as a rule, we getonly the more obvious saliencies, the bones of the novel, fitted in orclothed with stage "business."

Of course it is true that literary men, even dramatic authors, may writeand always have written dramas not suited to actors, that could not wellbe put upon the stage. But it remains true that the greatest dramas,those that have endured from the Greek times down, have been (for theaudiences of their times) both good reading and good acting plays.

I am not competent to criticise the stage or its tendency. But I aminterested in noticing the increasing non-literary character of modernplays. It may be explained as a necessary and justifiable evolution ofthe stage. The managers may know what the audience wants, just as theeditors of some of the most sensational newspapers say that they make anewspaper to suit the public. The newspaper need not be well written, butit must startle with incident and surprise, found or invented. Anobserver must notice that the usual theatre-audience in New York orBoston today laughs at and applauds costumes, situations, innuendoes,doubtful suggestions, that it would have blushed at a few years ago. Hasthe audience been creating a theatre to suit its taste, or have themanagers been educating an audience? Has the divorce of literary art fromthe mimic art of the stage anything to do with this condition?

The stage can be amusing, but can it show life as it is without the aidof idealizing literary art? And if the stage goes on in thismaterialistic way, how long will it be before it ceases to amuseintelligent, not to say intellectual people?

THE LIFE-SAVING AND LIFE PROLONGING ART

In the minds of the public there is a mystery about the practice ofmedicine. It deals more or less with the unknown, with the occult, itappeals to the imagination. Doubtless confidence in its practitioners isstill somewhat due to the belief that they are familiar with the secretprocesses of nature, if they are not in actual alliance with thesupernatural. Investigation of the ground of the popular faith in thedoctor would lead us into metaphysics. And yet our physical condition hasmuch to do with this faith. It is apt to be weak when one is in perfecthealth; but when one is sick it grows strong. Saint and sinner both warmup to the doctor when the judgment Day heaves in view.

In the popular apprehension the doctor is still the Medicine Man. Wesmile when we hear about his antics in barbarous tribes; he dressesfantastically, he puts horns on his head, he draws circles on the ground,he dances about the patient, shaking his rattle and utteringincantations. There is nothing to laugh at. He is making an appeal to theimagination. And sometimes he cures, and sometimes he kills; in eithercase he gets his fee. What right have we to laugh? We live in anenlightened age, and yet a great proportion of the people, perhaps not amajority, still believe in incantations, have faith in ignorantpractitioners who advertise a "natural gift," or a secret process orremedy, and prefer the charlatan who is exactly on the level of theIndian Medicine Man, to the regular practitioner, and to the scientificstudent of mind and body and of the properties of the materia medica.Why, even here in Connecticut, it is impossible to get a law to protectthe community from the imposition of knavish or ignorant quacks, and torequire of a man some evidence of capacity and training and skill, beforehe is let loose to experiment upon suffering humanity. Our teachers mustpass an examination—though the examiner sometimes does not know as muchas the candidate,—for misguiding the youthful mind; the lawyer cannotpractice without study and a formal admission to the bar; and even theclergyman is not accepted in any responsible charge until he has givenevidence of some moral and intellectual fitness. But the professionaffecting directly the health and life of every human body, which needsto avail itself of the accumulated experience, knowledge, and science ofall the ages, is open to every ignorant and stupid practitioner on thecredulity of the public. Why cannot we get a law regulating theprofession which is of most vital interest to all of us, excludingignorance and quackery? Because the majority of our legislature,representing, I suppose, the majority of the public, believe in the"natural bone-setter," the herb doctor, the root doctor, the old womanwho brews a decoction of swamp medicine, the "natural gift" of somedabbler in diseases, the magnetic healer, the faith cure, the mind cure,the Christian Science cure, the efficacy of a prescription rapped out ona table by some hysterical medium,—in anything but sound knowledge,education in scientific methods, steadied by a sense of publicresponsibility. Not long ago, on a cross-country road, I came across awoman in a farmhouse, where I am sure the barn-yard drained into thewell, who was sick; she had taken a shop-full of patent medicines. Iadvised her to send for a doctor. She had no confidence in doctors, butsaid she reckoned she would get along now, for she had sent for theseventh son of a seventh son, and didn't I think he could certainly cureher? I said that combination ought to fetch any disease exceptagnosticism. That woman probably influenced a vote in the legislature.The legislature believes in incantations; it ought to have in attendancean Indian Medicine Man.

We think the world is progressing in enlightenment; I suppose it is—inchby inch. But it is not easy to name an age that has cherished moredelusions than ours, or been more superstitious, or more credulous, moreeager to run after quackery. Especially is this true in regard toremedies for diseases, and the faith in healers and quacks outside of theregular, educated professors of the medical art. Is this an exaggeration?Consider the quantity of proprietary medicines taken in this country,some of them harmless, some of them good in some cases, some of theminjurious, but generally taken without advice and in absolute ignoranceof the nature of the disease or the specific action of the remedy. Thedrug-shops are full of them, especially in country towns; and in the farWest and on the Pacific coast I have been astonished at the quantity andvariety displayed. They are found in almost every house; the country isliterally dosed to death with these manufactured nostrums andpanaceas—and that is the most popular medicine which can be used for thegreatest number of internal and external diseases and injuries. Manynewspapers are half supported by advertising them, and millions andmillions of dollars are invested in this popular industry. Needless tosay that the patented remedies most in request are those that profess asecret and unscientific origin. Those most "purely vegetable" seem mostsuitable to the wooden-heads who believe in them, but if one weresufficiently advertised as not containing a single trace of vegetablematter, avoiding thus all possible conflict of one organic life withanother organic life, it would be just as popular. The favorites arethose that have been secretly used by an East Indian fakir, oraccidentally discovered as the natural remedy, dug out of the ground byan American Indian tribe, or steeped in a kettle by an ancient coloredperson in a southern plantation, or washed ashore on the person of asailor from the South Seas, or invented by a very aged man in New Jersey,who could not read, but had spent his life roaming in the woods, andwhose capacity for discovering a "universal panacea," besides hisignorance and isolation, lay in the fact that his sands of life hadnearly run. It is the supposed secrecy or low origin of the remedy thatis its attraction. The basis of the vast proprietary medicine business ispopular ignorance and credulity. And it needs to be pretty broad tosupport a traffic of such enormous proportions.

During this generation certain branches of the life-saving andlife-prolonging art have made great advances out of empiricism onto thesolid ground of scientific knowledge. Of course I refer to surgery, andto the discovery of the causes and improvement in the treatment ofcontagious and epidemic diseases. The general practice has shared in thisscientific advance, but it is limited and always will be limited withinexperimental bounds, by the infinite variations in individualconstitutions, and the almost incalculable element of the interference ofmental with physical conditions. When we get an exact science of man, wemay expect an exact science of medicine. How far we are from this, we seewhen we attempt to make criminal anthropology the basis of criminallegislation. Man is so complex that if we were to eliminate one of hisapparently worse qualities, we might develop others still worse, or throwthe whole machine into inefficiency. By taking away what thephrenologists call combativeness, we could doubtless stop prize-fight,but we might have a springless society. The only safe way is that taughtby horticulture, to feed a fruit-tree generously, so that it has vigorenough to throw off its degenerate tendencies and its enemies, or, as thedoctors say in medical practice, bring up the general system. That is tosay, there is more hope for humanity in stimulating the good, than indirectly suppressing the evil. It is on something like this line that thegreatest advance has been made in medical practice; I mean in thedirection of prevention. This involves, of course, the exclusion of theevil, that is, of suppressing the causes that produce disease, as well asin cultivating the resistant power of the human system. In sanitation,diet, and exercise are the great fields of medical enterprise andadvance. I need not say that the physician who, in the case of thoseunder his charge, or who may possibly require his aid, contents himselfwith waiting for developed disease, is like the soldier in a besiegedcity who opens the gates and then attempts to repel the invader who haseffected a lodgment. I hope the time will come when the chief practice ofthe physician will be, first, in oversight of the sanitary condition ofhis neighborhood, and, next, in preventive attendance on people who thinkthey are well, and are all unconscious of the insidious approach of someconcealed malady.

Another great change in modern practice is specialization. Perhaps it hasnot yet reached the delicate particularity of the practice in ancientEgypt, where every minute part of the human economy had its exclusivedoctor. This is inevitable in a scientific age, and the result has beenon the whole an advance of knowledge, and improved treatment of specificailments. The danger is apparent. It is that of the moral specialist, whohas only one hobby and traces every human ill to strong liquor ortobacco, or the corset, or taxation of personal property, or denial ofuniversal suffrage, or the eating of meat, or the want of thecentralization of nearly all initiative and interest and property in thestate. The tendency of the accomplished specialist in medicine is torefer all physical trouble to the ill conduct of the organ he presidesover. He can often trace every disease to want of width in the nostrils,to a defective eye, to a sensitive throat, to shut-up pores, to anirritated stomach, to auricular defect. I suppose he is generally right,but I have a perhaps natural fear that if I happened to consult anamputationist about catarrh he would want to cut off my leg. I confess toan affection for the old-fashioned, all-round country doctor, who took ageneral view of his patient, knew his family, his constitution, all thegossip about his mental or business troubles, his affairs of the heart,disappointments in love, incompatibilities of temper, and treated thepatient, as the phrase is, for all he was worth, and gave him visiblemedicine out of good old saddle-bags—how much faith we used to have inthose saddle-bags—and not a prescription in a dead language to be put upby a dead-head clerk who occasionally mistakes arsenic for carbonate ofsoda. I do not mean, however, to say there is no sense in the retentionof the hieroglyphics which the doctors use to communicate their ideas toa druggist, for I had a prescription made in Hartford put up in Naples,and that could not have happened if it had been written in English. And Iam not sure but the mysterious symbols have some effect on the patient.

The mention of the intimate knowledge of family and constitutionalconditions possessed by the old-fashioned country doctor, whose mainstrength lay in this and in his common-sense, reminds me of another greatadvance in the modern practice, in the attempt to understand naturebetter by the scientific study of psychology and the occult relations ofmind and body. It is in the study of temper, temperament, hereditarypredispositions, that we may expect the most brilliant results inpreventive medicine.

As a layman, I cannot but notice another great advance in the medicalprofession. It is not alone in it. It is rather expected that the lawyerswill divide the oyster between them and leave the shell to thecontestants. I suppose that doctors, almost without exception, give moreof their time and skill in the way of charity than almost any otherprofession. But somebody must pay, and fees have increased with thegeneral cost of living and dying. If fees continue to increase as theyhave done in the past ten years in the great cities, like New York,nobody not a millionaire can afford to be sick. The fees will soon be aprohibitive tax. I cannot say that this will be altogether an evil, forthe cost of calling medical aid may force people to take better care ofthemselves. Still, the excessive charges are rather hard on people inmoderate circ*mstances who are compelled to seek surgical aid. And herewe touch one of the regrettable symptoms of the times, which is not byany means most conspicuous in the medical profession. I mean the tendencyto subordinate the old notion of professional duty to the greed formoney. The lawyers are almost universally accused of it; even theclergymen are often suspected of being influenced by it. The young man isapt to choose a profession on calculation of its profit. It will be a badday for science and for the progress of the usefulness of the medicalprofession when the love of money in its practice becomes stronger thanprofessional enthusiasm, than the noble ambition of distinction foradvancing the science, and the devotion to human welfare.

I do not prophesy it. Rather I expect interest in humanity, love ofscience for itself, sympathy with suffering, self-sacrifice for others,to increase in the world, and be stronger in the end than sordid love ofgain and the low ambition of rivalry in materialistic display. To thishigher life the physician is called. I often wonder that there are somany men, brilliant men, able men, with so many talents for success inany calling, willing to devote their lives to a profession which demandsso much self-sacrifice, so much hardship, so much contact with suffering,subject to the call of all the world at any hour of the day or night,involving so much personal risk, carrying so much heart-breakingresponsibility, responded to by so much constant heroism, a heroismrequiring the risk of life in a service the only glory of which is a goodname and the approval of one's conscience.

To the members of such a profession, in spite of their human infirmitiesand limitations and unworthy hangers-on, I bow with admiration and therespect which we feel for that which is best in this world.

"H.H." IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

It seems somehow more nearly an irreparable loss to us than to "H. H."that she did not live to taste her very substantial fame in SouthernCalifornia. We should have had such delight in her unaffected pleasure init, and it would have been one of those satisfactions somewhat adequateto our sense of fitness that are so seldom experienced. It was my goodfortune to see Mrs. Jackson frequently in the days in New York when shewas writing "Ramona," which was begun and perhaps finished in theBerkeley House. The theme had complete possession of her, and chapterafter chapter flowed from her pen as easily as one would write a letterto a friend; and she had an ever fresh and vigorous delight in it. I haveoften thought that no one enjoyed the sensation of living more than Mrs.Jackson, or was more alive to all the influences of nature and thecontact of mind with mind, more responsive to all that was exquisite andnoble either in nature or in society, or more sensitive to thedisagreeable. This is merely saying that she was a poet; but when shebecame interested in the Indians, and especially in the harsh fate of theMission Indians in California, all her nature was fused for the time in alofty enthusiasm of pity and indignation, and all her powers seemed to beconsecrated to one purpose. Enthusiasm and sympathy will not make anovel, but all the same they are necessary to the production of a workthat has in it real vital quality, and in this case all previousexperience and artistic training became the unconscious servants of Mrs.Jackson's heart. I know she had very little conceit about herperformance, but she had a simple consciousness that she was doing herbest work, and that if the world should care much for anything she haddone, after she was gone, it would be for "Ramona." She had put herselfinto it.

And yet I am certain that she could have had no idea what the novel wouldbe to the people of Southern California, or how it would identify hername with all that region, and make so many scenes in it places ofpilgrimage and romantic interest for her sake. I do not mean to say thatthe people in California knew personally Ramona and Alessandro, oraltogether believe in them, but that in their idealizations theyrecognize a verity and the ultimate truth of human nature, while in thescenery, in the fading sentiment of the old Spanish life, and the romanceand faith of the Missions, the author has done for the region very muchwhat Scott did for the Highlands. I hope she knows now, I presume shedoes, that more than one Indian school in the Territories is called theRamona School; that at least two villages in California are contendingfor the priority of using the name Ramona; that all the travelers andtourists (at least in the time they can spare from real-estatespeculations) go about under her guidance, are pilgrims to the shrinesshe has described, and eager searchers for the scenes she has made famousin her novel; that more than one city and more than one town claims thehonor of connection with the story; that the tourist has pointed out tohim in more than one village the very house where Ramona lived, where shewas married—indeed, that a little crop of legends has already grown upabout the story itself. I was myself shown the house in Los Angeles wherethe story was written, and so strong is the local impression that Iconfess to looking at the rose-embowered cottage with a good deal ofinterest, though I had seen the romance growing day by day in theBerkeley in New York.

The undoubted scene of the loves of Ramona and Alessandro is the Comulosrancho, on the railway from Newhall to Santa Paula, the route that onetakes now (unless he wants to have a lifelong remembrance of the groundswells of the Pacific in an uneasy little steamer) to go from Los Angelesto Santa Barbara. It is almost the only one remaining of theold-fashioned Spanish haciendas, where the old administration prevails.The new railway passes it now, and the hospitable owners have beenobliged to yield to the public curiosity and provide entertainment for acontinual stream of visitors. The place is so perfectly described in"Ramona" that I do not need to draw it over again, and I violate noconfidence and only certify to the extraordinary powers of delineation ofthe novelist, when I say that she only spent a few hours there,—not aquarter of the time we spent in identifying her picture. We knew thesituation before the train stopped by the crosses erected on theconspicuous peaks of the serrated ashy—or shall I say purple—hills thatenfold the fertile valley. It is a great domain, watered by a swiftriver, and sheltered by wonderfully picturesque mountains. The house isstrictly in the old Spanish style, of one story about a large court, withflowers and a fountain, in which are the most noisy if not musical frogsin the world, and all the interior rooms opening upon a gallery. The realfront is towards the garden, and here at the end of the gallery is theelevated room where Father Salvierderra slept when he passed a night atthe hacienda,—a pretty room which has a case of Spanish books, mostlyreligious and legal, and some quaint and cheap holy pictures. We had aletter to Signora Del Valle, the mistress, and were welcomed with a sortof formal extension of hospitality that put us back into the courtlymanners of a hundred years ago. The Signora, who is in no sense theoriginal of the mistress whom "H. H." describes, is a widow now for sevenyears, and is the vigilant administrator of all her large domain, of thestock, the grazing lands, the vineyard, the sheep ranch, and all thepeople. Rising very early in the morning, she visits every department,and no detail is too minute to escape her inspection, and no one in thegreat household but feels her authority.

It was a very lovely day on the 17th of March (indeed, I suppose it hadbeen preceded by 364 days exactly like it) as we sat upon the gallerylooking on the garden, a garden of oranges, roses, citrons, lemons,peaches—what fruit and flower was not growing there?—acres and acres ofvineyard beyond, with the tall cane and willows by the stream, and thepurple mountains against the sapphire sky. Was there ever anything moreexquisite than the peach-blossoms against that blue sky! Such a place ofpeace. A soft south wind was blowing, and all the air was drowsy with thehum of bees. In the garden is a vine-covered arbor, with seats andtables, and at the end of it is the opening into a little chapel, adomestic chapel, carpeted like a parlor, and bearing all the emblems of aloving devotion. By the garden gate hang three small bells, from some oldmission, all cracked, but serving (each has its office) to summon theworkmen or to call to prayer.

Perfect system reigns in Signora Del Valle's establishment, and even theleast child in it has its duty. At sundown a little slip of a girl wentout to the gate and struck one of the bells. "What is that for?" I askedas she returned. "It is the Angelus," she said simply. I do not know whatwould happen to her if she should neglect to strike it at the hour. Ateight o'clock the largest bell was struck, and the Signora and all herhousehold, including the house servants, went out to the little chapel inthe garden, which was suddenly lighted with candles, gleaming brilliantlythrough the orange groves. The Signora read the service, the householdresponding—a twenty minutes' service, which is as much a part of theadministration of the establishment as visiting the granaries andpresses, and the bringing home of the goats. The Signora's apartments,which she permitted us to see, were quite in the nature of an oratory,with shrines and sacred pictures and relics of the faith. By the shrineat the head of her bed hung the rosary carried by Father Junipero,—apriceless possession. From her presses and armoires, the Signora, seeingwe had a taste for such things, brought out the feminine treasures ofthree generations, the silk and embroidered dresses of last century, theribosas, the jewelry, the brilliant stuffs of China and Mexico, eacharticle with a memory and a flavor.

But I must not be betrayed into writing about Ramona's house. Howcharming indeed it was the next morning,—though the birds in the gardenwere astir a little too early,—with the thermometer set to the exactdegree of warmth without languor, the sky blue, the wind soft, the airscented with orange and jessamine. The Signora had already visited allher premises before we were up. We had seen the evening before anenclosure near the house full of cashmere goats and kids, whose anticswere sufficiently amusing—most of them had now gone afield; workmen werecoming for their orders, plowing was going on in the barley fields,traders were driving to the plantation store, the fierce eagle in a bigcage by the olive press was raging at his detention. Within the houseenclosure are an olive mill and press, a wine-press and a greatstorehouse of wine, containing now little but empty casks,—a dusky,interesting place, with pomegranates and dried bunches of grapes andoranges and pieces of jerked meat hanging from the rafters. Near by is acornhouse and a small distillery, and the corrals for sheep shearing arenot far off. The ranches for cattle and sheep are on the other side ofthe mountain.

Peace be with Comulos. It must please the author of "Ramona" to know thatit continues in the old ways; and I trust she is undisturbed by theknowledge that the rage for change will not long let it be what it nowis.

SIMPLICITY

No doubt one of the most charming creations in all poetry is Nausicaa,the white-armed daughter of King Alcinous. There is no scene, no picture,in the heroic times more pleasing than the meeting of Ulysses with thisdamsel on the wild seashore of Scheria, where the Wanderer had beentossed ashore by the tempest. The place of this classic meeting wasprobably on the west coast of Corfu, that incomparable island, to whosebeauty the legend of the exquisite maidenhood of the daughter of the kingof the Phaeacians has added an immortal bloom.

We have no difficulty in recalling it in all its distinctness: the brightmorning on which Nausicaa came forth from the palace, where her mothersat and turned the distaff loaded with a fleece dyed in sea-purple,mounted the car piled with the robes to be cleansed in the stream, and,attended by her bright-haired, laughing handmaidens, drove to the banksof the river, where out of its sweet grasses it flowed over clean sandinto the Adriatic. The team is loosed to browse the grass; the garmentsare flung into the dark water, then trampled with hasty feet in frolicrivalry, and spread upon the gravel to dry. Then the maidens bathe, givetheir limbs the delicate oil from the cruse of gold, sit by the streamand eat their meal, and, refreshed, mistress and maidens lay aside theirveils and play at ball, and Nausicaa begins a song. Though all were fair,like Diana was this spotless virgin midst her maids. A missed ball andmaidenly screams waken Ulysses from his sleep in the thicket. At theapparition of the unclad, shipwrecked sailor the maidens flee right andleft. Nausicaa alone keeps her place, secure in her unconscious modesty.To the astonished Sport of Fortune the vision of this radiant girl, inshape and stature and in noble air, is more than mortal, yet scarcelymore than woman:

"Like thee, I saw of late,
In Delos, a young palm-tree growing up
Beside Apollo's altar."

When the Wanderer has bathed, and been clad in robes from the pile on thesand, and refreshed with food and wine which the hospitable maidens putbefore him, the train sets out for the town, Ulysses following thechariot among the bright-haired women. But before that Nausicaa, in thecandor of those early days, says to her attendants:

"I would that I might call
A man like him my husband, dwelling here
And here content to dwell."

Is there any woman in history more to be desired than this sweet,pure-minded, honest-hearted girl, as she is depicted with a few swifttouches by the great poet?—the dutiful daughter in her father's house,the joyous companion of girls, the beautiful woman whose modest bearingcommands the instant homage of man. Nothing is more enduring inliterature than this girl and the scene on the—Corfu sands.

The sketch, though distinct, is slight, little more than outlines; noelaboration, no analysis; just an incident, as real as the blue sky ofScheria and the waves on the yellow sand. All the elements of the pictureare simple, human, natural, standing in as unconfused relations as anyevents in common life. I am not recalling it because it is a conspicuousinstance of the true realism that is touched with the ideality of genius,which is the immortal element in literature, but as an illustration ofthe other necessary quality in all productions of the human mind thatremain age after age, and that is simplicity. This is the stamp of allenduring work; this is what appeals to the universal understanding fromgeneration to generation. All the masterpieces that endure and become apart of our lives are characterized by it. The eye, like the mind, hatesconfusion and overcrowding. All the elements in beauty, grandeur, pathos,are simple—as simple as the lines in a Nile picture: the strong river,the yellow desert, the palms, the pyramids; hardly more than a horizontalline and a perpendicular line; only there is the sky, the atmosphere, thecolor-those need genius.

We may test contemporary literature by its confortuity to the canon ofsimplicity—that is, if it has not that, we may conclude that it lacksone essential lasting quality. It may please;—it may be ingenious—brilliant, even; it may be the fashion of the day, and a fashion thatwill hold its power of pleasing for half a century, but it will be afashion. Mannerisms of course will not deceive us, nor extravagances,eccentricities, affectations, nor the straining after effect by the useof coined or far-fetched words and prodigality in adjectives. But, style?Yes, there is such a thing as style, good and bad; and the style shouldbe the writer's own and characteristic of him, as his speech is. But themoment I admire a style for its own sake, a style that attracts myattention so constantly that I say, How good that is! I begin to besuspicious. If it is too good, too pronouncedly good, I fear I shall notlike it so well on a second reading. If it comes to stand between me andthe thought, or the personality behind the thought, I grow more and moresuspicious. Is the book a window, through which I am to see life? Then Icannot have the glass too clear. Is it to affect me like a strain ofmusic? Then I am still more disturbed by any affectations. Is it toproduce the effect of a picture? Then I know I want the simplest harmonyof color. And I have learned that the most effective word-painting, as itis called, is the simplest. This is true if it is a question only ofpresent enjoyment. But we may be sure that any piece of literature whichattracts only by some trick of style, however it may blaze up for a dayand startle the world with its flash, lacks the element of endurance. Wedo not need much experience to tell us the difference between a lamp anda Roman candle. Even in our day we have seen many reputations flare up,illuminate the sky, and then go out in utter darkness. When we take aproper historical perspective, we see that it is the universal, thesimple, that lasts.

I am not sure whether simplicity is a matter of nature or of cultivation.Barbarous nature likes display, excessive ornament; and when we havearrived at the nobly simple, the perfect proportion, we are always likelyto relapse into the confused and the complicated. The most cultivatedmen, we know, are the simplest in manners, in taste, in their style. Itis a note of some of the purest modern writers that they avoidcomparisons, similes, and even too much use of metaphor. But the mass ofmen are always relapsing into the tawdry and the over-ornamented. It is acharacteristic of youth, and it seems also to be a characteristic ofover-development. Literature, in any language, has no sooner arrived atthe highest vigor of simple expression than it begins to run intoprettiness, conceits, over-elaboration. This is a fact which may beverified by studying different periods, from classic literature to ourown day.

It is the same with architecture. The classic Greek runs into theexcessive elaboration of the Roman period, the Gothic into theflamboyant, and so on. We, have had several attacks of architecturalmeasles in this country, which have left the land spotted all over withhouses in bad taste. Instead of developing the colonial simplicity onlines of dignity and harmony to modern use, we stuck on thepseudo-classic, we broke out in the Mansard, we broke all up into thewhimsicalities of the so-called Queen Anne, without regard to climate orcomfort. The eye speedily tires of all these things. It is a positiverelief to look at an old colonial mansion, even if it is as plain as abarn. What the eye demands is simple lines, proportion, harmony in mass,dignity; above all, adaptation to use. And what we must have also isindividuality in house and in furniture; that makes the city, thevillage, picturesque and interesting. The highest thing in architecture,as in literature, is the development of individuality in simplicity.

Dress is a dangerous topic to meddle with. I myself like the attire ofthe maidens of Scheria, though Nausicaa, we must note, was "cladroyally." But climate cannot be disregarded, and the vestment that was sofitting on a Greek girl whom I saw at the Second Cataract of the Nilewould scarcely be appropriate in New York. If the maidens of one of ourcolleges for girls, say Vassar for illustration, habited like thePhaeacian girls of Scheria, went down to the Hudson to cleanse the richrobes of the house, and were surprised by the advent of a stranger fromthe city, landing from a steamboat—a wandering broker, let us say, cladin wide trousers, long topcoat, and a tall hat—I fancy that he would bemore astonished than Ulysses was at the bevy of girls that scattered athis approach. It is not that women must be all things to all men, butthat their simplicity must conform to time and circ*mstance. What I donot understand is that simplicity gets banished altogether, and thatfashion, on a dictation that no one can trace the origin of, makes thatlovely in the eyes of women today which will seem utterly abhorrent tothem tomorrow. There appears to be no line of taste running through thechanges. The only consolation to you, the woman of the moment, is thatwhile the costume your grandmother wore makes her, in the painting, a guyin your eyes, the costume you wear will give your grandchildren the sameimpression of you. And the satisfaction for you is the thought that thelatter raiment will be worse than the other two—that is to say, lesswell suited to display the shape, station, and noble air which broughtUlysses to his knees on the sands of Corfu.

Another reason why I say that I do not know whether simplicity belongs tonature or art is that fashion is as strong to pervert and disfigure insavage nations as it is in civilized. It runs to as much eccentricity inhair-dressing and ornament in the costume of the jingling belles ofNootka and the maidens of Nubia as in any court or coterie which weaspire to imitate. The only difference is that remote and unsophisticatedcommunities are more constant to a style they once adopt. There areisolated peasant communities in Europe who have kept for centuries themost uncouth and inconvenient attire, while we have run through a dozenvariations in the art of attraction by dress, from the most puffed andbulbous ballooning to the extreme of limpness and lankness. I can onlyconclude that the civilized human being is a restless creature, whosemotives in regard to costumes are utterly unfathomable.

We need, however, to go a little further in this question of simplicity.Nausicaa was "clad royally." There was a distinction, then, between herand her handmaidens. She was clad simply, according to her condition.Taste does not by any means lead to uniformity. I have read of a communein which all the women dressed alike and unbecomingly, so as todiscourage all attempt to please or attract, or to give value to thedifferent accents of beauty. The end of those women was worse than thebeginning. Simplicity is not ugliness, nor poverty, nor barrenness, nornecessarily plainness. What is simplicity for another may not be for you,for your condition, your tastes, especially for your wants. It is apersonal question. You go beyond simplicity when you attempt toappropriate more than your wants, your aspirations, whatever they are,demand—that is, to appropriate for show, for ostentation, more than yourlife can assimilate, can make thoroughly yours. There is no limit to whatyou may have, if it is necessary for you, if it is not a superfluity toyou. What would be simplicity to you may be superfluity to another. Therich robes that Nausicaa wore she wore like a goddess. The moment yourdress, your house, your house-grounds, your furniture, your scale ofliving, are beyond the rational satisfaction of your own desires—thatis, are for ostentation, for imposition upon the public—they aresuperfluous, the line of simplicity is passed. Every human being has aright to whatever can best feed his life, satisfy his legitimate desires,contribute to the growth of his soul. It is not for me to judge whetherthis is luxury or want. There is no merit in riches nor in poverty. Thereis merit in that simplicity of life which seeks to grasp no more than isnecessary for the development and enjoyment of the individual. Most ofus, in all conditions; are weighted down with superfluities or worried toacquire them. Simplicity is making the journey of this life with justbaggage enough.

The needs of every person differ from the needs of every other; we canmake no standard for wants or possessions. But the world would be greatlytransformed and much more easy to live in if everybody limited hisacquisitions to his ability to assimilate them to his life. Thedestruction of simplicity is a craving for things, not because we needthem, but because others have them. Because one man who lives in a plainlittle house, in all the restrictions of mean surroundings, would behappier in a mansion suited to his taste and his wants, is no argumentthat another man, living in a palace, in useless ostentation, would notbe better off in a dwelling which conforms to his cultivation and habits.It is so hard to learn the lesson that there is no satisfaction ingaining more than we personally want.

The matter of simplicity, then, comes into literary style, into building,into dress, into life, individualized always by one's personality. Ineach we aim at the expression of the best that is in us, not at imitationor ostentation.

The women in history, in legend, in poetry, whom we love, we do not lovebecause they are "clad royally." In our day, to be clad royally isscarcely a distinction. To have a superfluity is not a distinction. Butin those moments when we have a clear vision of life, that which seems tous most admirable and desirable is the simplicity that endears to us theidyl of Nausicaa.

THE ENGLISH VOLUNTEERS DURING THE LATE INVASION

The most painful event since the bombardment of Alexandria has been whatis called by an English writer the "invasion" of "American Literature inEngland." The hostile forces, with an advanced guard of what was regardedas an "awkward squad," had been gradually effecting a landing and alodgment not unwelcome to the unsuspicious natives. No alarm was takenwhen they threw out a skirmish-line of magazines and began to deploy anoccasional wild poet, who advanced in buckskin leggings, revolver inhand, or a stray sharp-shooting sketcher clad in the picturesque robes ofthe sunset. Put when the main body of American novelists got fairlyashore and into position the literary militia of the island rose up asone man, with the strength of a thousand, to repel the invaders and sweepthem back across the Atlantic. The spectacle had a dramatic interest. Theinvaders were not numerous, did not carry their native tomahawks, theyhad been careful to wash off the frightful paint with which they usuallygo into action, they did not utter the defiant whoop of Pogram, and eventhe militia regarded them as on the whole "amusin' young 'possums" andyet all the resources of modern and ancient warfare were brought to bearupon them. There was a crack of revolvers from the daily press, a livelyfusillade of small-arms in the astonished weeklies, a discharge ofpoint-blank blunderbusses from the monthlies; and some of the heavyquarterlies loaded up the old pieces of ordnance, that had not beencharged in forty years, with slugs and brickbats and junk-bottles, andpoured in raking broadsides. The effect on the island was somethingtremendous: it shook and trembled, and was almost hidden in the smoke ofthe conflict. What the effect is upon the invaders it is too soon todetermine. If any of them survive, it will be God's mercy to his weak andinnocent children.

It must be said that the American people—such of them as were aware ofthis uprising—took the punishment of their presumption in a sweet andforgiving spirit. If they did not feel that they deserved it, theyregarded it as a valuable contribution to the study of sociology and racecharacteristics, in which they have taken a lively interest of late. Weknow how it is ourselves, they said; we used to be thin-skinned andself-conscious and sensitive. We used to wince and cringe under Englishcriticism, and try to strike back in a blind fury. We have learned thatcriticism is good for us, and we are grateful for it from any source. Wehave learned that English criticism is dictated by love for us, by a warminterest in our intellectual development, just as English anxiety aboutour revenue laws is based upon a yearning that our down-trodden millionsshall enjoy the benefits of free-trade. We did not understand why acountry that admits our beef and grain and cheese should seem to seekprotection against a literary product which is brought into competitionwith one of the great British staples, the modern novel. It seemedinconsistent. But we are no more consistent ourselves. We cannotunderstand the action of our own Congress, which protects the Americanauthor by a round duty on foreign books and refuses to protect him bygranting a foreign copyright; or, to put it in another way, is willing tosteal the brains of the foreign author under the plea of free knowledge,but taxes free knowledge in another form. We have no defense to make ofthe state of international copyright, though we appreciate thecomplication of the matter in the conflicting interests of English andAmerican publishers.

Yes; we must insist that, under the circ*mstances, the American peoplehave borne this outburst of English criticism in an admirable spirit. Itwas as unexpected as it was sudden. Now, for many years our internationalrelations have been uncommonly smooth, oiled every few days bycomplimentary banquet speeches, and sweetened by abundance of magazineand newspaper "taffy." Something too much of "taffy" we have thought wasgiven us at times for, in getting bigger in various ways, we have grownmore modest. Though our English admirers may not believe it, we see ourown faults more clearly than we once did—thanks, partly, to the faithfulcastigations of our friends—and we sometimes find it difficult toconceal our blushes when we are over-praised. We fancied that we weregoing on, as an English writer on "Down-Easters" used to say, as "slickas ile," when this miniature tempest suddenly burst out in a revival ofthe language and methods used in the redoubtable old English periodicalsforty years ago. We were interested in seeing how exactly this sort ofcriticism that slew our literary fathers was revived now for theexecution of their degenerate children. And yet it was not exactly thesame. We used to call it "slang-whanging." One form of it was a blanksurprise at the pretensions of American authors, and a dismissal with theformula of previous ignorance of their existence. This is modified now bya modest expression of "discomfiture" on reading of American authors"whose very names, much less peculiarities, we never heard of before."This is a tribunal from which there is no appeal. Not to have been heardof by an Englishman is next door to annihilation. It is at leastdiscouraging to an author who may think he has gained some reputationover what is now conceded to be a considerable portion of the earth'ssurface, to be cast into total obscurity by the negative damnation ofEnglish ignorance. There is to us something pathetic in this and in thesurprise of the English critic, that there can be any standard ofrespectable achievement outside of a seven-miles radius turning onCharing Cross.

The pathetic aspect of the case has not, however, we are sorry to say,struck the American press, which has too often treated with unbecominglevity this unaccountable exhibition of English sensitiveness. There hasbeen little reply to it; at most, generally only an amused report of thewar, and now and then a discriminating acceptance of some of thecriticism as just, with a friendly recognition of the fact that on thewhole the critic had done very well considering the limitation of hisknowledge of the subject on which he wrote. What is certainly noticeableis an entire absence of the irritation that used to be caused by similarcomments on America thirty years ago. Perhaps the Americans are reservingtheir fire as their ancestors did at Bunker Hill, conscious, maybe, thatin the end they will be driven out of their slight literaryentrenchments. Perhaps they were disarmed by the fact that the acridcriticism in the London Quarterly Review was accompanied by a cordialappreciation of the novels that seemed to the reviewer characteristicallyAmerican. The interest in the tatter's review of our poor field must belanguid, however, for nobody has taken the trouble to remind its authorthat Brockden Brown—who is cited as a typical American writer, true tolocal character, scenery, and color—put no more flavor of American lifeand soil in his books than is to be found in "Frankenstein."

It does not, I should suppose, lie in the way of The Century, whosegeneral audience on both sides of the Atlantic takes only an amusedinterest in this singular revival of a traditional literary animosity—ananachronism in these tolerant days when the reading world cares less andless about the origin of literature that pleases it—it does not lie inthe way of The Century to do more than report this phenomenal literaryeffervescence. And yet it cannot escape a certain responsibility as animmediate though innocent occasion of this exhibition of internationalcourtesy, because its last November number contained some papers thatseem to have been irritating. In one of them Mr. Howells let fall somechance remarks on the tendency of modern fiction, without adequatelydeveloping his theory, which were largely dissented from in this country,and were like the uncorking of six vials in England. The other was anessay on England, dictated by admiration for the achievements of theforemost nation of our time, which, from the awkwardness of the eulogist,was unfortunately the uncorking of the seventh vial—an uncorking which,as we happen to know, so prostrated the writer that he resolved never toattempt to praise England again. His panic was somewhat allayed by thesoothing remark in a kindly paper in Blackwood's Magazine for January,that the writer had discussed his theme "by no means unfairly ordisrespectfully." But with a shudder he recognized what a peril he hadescaped. Great Scott!—the reference is to a local American deity who isinvoked in war, and not to the Biblical commentator—what would havehappened to him if he had spoken of England "disrespectfully"!

We gratefully acknowledge also the remark of the Blackwood writer inregard-to the claims of America in literature. "These claims," he says,"we have hitherto been very charitable to." How our life depends upon acontinual exhibition by the critics of this divine attribute of charityit would perhaps be unwise in us to confess. We can at least takecourage that it exists—who does not need it in this world ofmisunderstandings?—since we know that charity is not puffed up, vauntethnot itself, hopeth all things, endureth all things, is not easilyprovoked; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there beknowledge, it shall vanish; but charity never faileth. And when all our"dialects" on both sides of the water shall vanish, and we shall speak nomore Yorkshire or Cape Cod, or London co*ckney or "Pike" or "Cracker"vowel flatness, nor write them any more, but all use the noble simplicityof the ideal English, and not indulge in such odd-sounding phrases asthis of our critic that "the combatants on both sides were by way ofdetesting each other," though we speak with the tongues of men and ofangels—we shall still need charity.

It will occur to the charitable that the Americans are at a disadvantagein this little international "tiff." For while the offenders haveinconsiderately written over their own names, the others preserve aprivileged anonymity. Any attempt to reply to these voices out of thedark reminds one of the famous duel between the Englishman and theFrenchman which took place in a pitch-dark chamber, with the frightfulresult that when the tender-hearted Englishman discharged his revolver upthe chimney he brought down his man. One never can tell in a case of thiskind but a charitable shot might bring down a valued friend or even apeer of the realm.

In all soberness, however, and setting aside the open question, whichcountry has most diverged from the English as it was at the time of theseparation of the colonies from the motherland, we may be permitted aword or two in the hope of a better understanding. The offense in TheCentury paper on "England" seems to have been in phrases such as these:"When we began to produce something that was the product of our own soiland of our own social conditions, it was still judged by the oldstandards;" and, we are no longer irritated by "the snobbishness ofEnglish critics of a certain school," "for we see that its criticism isonly the result of ignorance simply of inability to understand."

Upon this the reviewer affects to lose his respiration, and with "a gaspof incredulity" wants to know what the writer means, "and what standardshe proposes to himself when he has given up the English ones?" Thereviewer makes a more serious case than the writer intended, or than afair construction of the context of his phrases warrants. It is thecriticism of "a certain school" only that was said to be the result ofignorance. It is not the English language nor its body of enduringliterature—the noblest monument of our common civilization—that thewriter objected to as a standard of our performances. The standardobjected to is the narrow insular one (the term "insular" is used purelyas a geographical one) that measures life, social conditions, feeling,temperament, and national idiosyncrasies expressed in our literature bycertain fixed notions prevalent in England. Probably also the expressionof national peculiarities would diverge somewhat from the "oldstandards." All we thought of asking was that allowance should be madefor this expression and these peculiarities, as it would be made in caseof other literatures and peoples. It might have occurred to our critics,we used to think, to ask themselves whether the English literature is notelastic enough to permit the play of forces in it which are foreign totheir experience. Genuine literature is the expression, we take it, oflife-and truth to that is the standard of its success. Reference wasintended to this, and not to the common canons of literary art. But wehave given up the expectation that the English critic "of a certainschool" will take this view of it, and this is the plain reason—notintended to be offensive—why much of the English criticism has ceased tobe highly valued in this country, and why it has ceased to annoy. At thesame time, it ought to be added, English opinion, when it is seen to bebased upon knowledge, is as highly respected as ever. And nobody inAmerica, so far as we know, entertains, or ever entertained, the idea ofsetting aside as standards the master-minds in British literature. Inregard to the "inability to understand," we can, perhaps, make ourselvesmore clearly understood, for the Blackwood's reviewer has kindlyfurnished us an illustration in this very paper, when he passes inpatronizing review the novels of Mr. Howells. In discussing the characterof Lydia Blood, in "The Lady of the Aroostook," he is exceedingly puzzledby the fact that a girl from rural New England, brought up amidsurroundings homely in the extreme, should have been considered a lady.He says:

"The really 'American thing' in it is, we think, quite undiscoveredeither by the author or his heroes, and that is the curious confusion ofclasses which attributes to a girl brought up on the humblest level allthe prejudices and necessities of the highest society. Granting thatthere was anything dreadful in it, the daughter of a homely small farmerin England is not guarded and accompanied like a young lady on herjourneys from one place to another. Probably her mother at home would bedisturbed, like Lydia's aunt, at the thought that there was no woman onboard, in case her child should be ill or lonely; but, as for anyimpropriety, would never think twice on that subject. The difference isthat the English girl would not be a young lady. She would find hersweetheart among the sailors, and would have nothing to say to thegentlemen. This difference is far more curious than the misadventure,which might have happened anywhere, and far more remarkable than the factthat the gentlemen did behave to her like gentlemen, and did their bestto set her at ease, which we hope would have happened anywhere else. Butit is, we think, exclusively American, and very curious and interesting,that this young woman, with her antecedents so distinctly set before us,should be represented as a lady, not at all out of place among hercultivated companions, and 'ready to become an ornament of society themoment she lands in Venice."

Reams of writing could not more clearly explain what is meant by"inability to understand" American conditions and to judge fairly theliterature growing out of them; and reams of writing would be wasted inthe attempt to make our curious critic comprehend the situation. There isnothing in his experience of "farmers' daughters" to give him the key toit. We might tell him that his notion of a farmer's daughters in Englanddoes not apply to New England. We might tell him of a sort of society ofwhich he has no conception and can have none, of farmers' daughters andfarmers' wives in New England—more numerous, let us confess, thirty orforty years ago than now—who lived in homely conditions, dressed withplainness, and followed the fashions afar off; did their own householdwork, even the menial parts of it; cooked the meals for the "men folks"and the "hired help," made the butter and cheese, and performed theirhalf of the labor that wrung an honest but not luxurious living from thereluctant soil. And yet those women—the sweet and gracious ornaments ofa self-respecting society—were full of spirit, of modest pride in theirposition, were familiar with much good literature, could converse withpiquancy and understanding on subjects of general interest, were trainedin the subtleties of a solid theology, and bore themselves in any companywith that traditional breeding which we associate with the name of lady.Such strong native sense had they, such innate refinement and courtesytheproduct, it used to be said, of plain living and high thinking—that,ignorant as they might be of civic ways, they would, upon beingintroduced to them, need only a brief space of time to "orient"themselves to the new circ*mstances. Much more of this sort might be saidwithout exaggeration. To us there is nothing incongruous in thesupposition that Lydia Blood was "ready to become an ornament to societythe moment she lands in Venice."

But we lack the missionary spirit necessary to the exertion to make ourinterested critic comprehend such a social condition, and we prefer toleave ourselves to his charity, in the hope of the continuance of whichwe rest in serenity.

NATHAN HALE—1887

In a Memorial Day address at New Haven in 1881, the Hon. Richard D.Hubbard suggested the erection of a statue to Nathan Hale in the StateCapitol. With the exception of the monument in Coventry no memorial ofthe young hero existed. The suggestion was acted on by the Hon. E. S.Cleveland, who introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives inthe session of 1883, appropriating money for the purpose. The proprietyof this was urged before a committee of the Legislature by GovernorHubbard, in a speech of characteristic grace and eloquence, seconded bythe Hon. Henry C. Robinson and the Hon. Stephen W. Kellogg. TheLegislature appropriated the sum of five thousand dollars for a statue inbronze, and a committee was appointed to procure it. They opened a publiccompetition, and, after considerable delay, during which the commissionwas changed by death and by absence,—indeed four successive governors,Hubbard, Waller, Harrison, and Lounsbury have served on it,—the workwas awarded to Karl Gerhardt, a young sculptor who began his career inthis city. It was finished in clay, and accepted in October, 1886, put inplaster, and immediately sent to the foundry of Melzar Masman inChicopee, Massachusetts.

Today in all its artistic perfection and beauty it stands here to berevealed to the public gaze. It is proper that the citizens ofConnecticut should know how much of this result they owe to theintelligent zeal of Mr. Cleveland, the mover of the resolution in theLegislature, who in the commission, and before he became a member of it,has spared neither time nor effort to procure a memorial worthy of thehero and of the State. And I am sure that I speak the unanimous sentimentof the commission in the regret that the originator of this statue couldnot have seen the consummation of his idea, and could not have crowned itwith the one thing lacking on this occasion, the silver words ofeloquence we always heard from his lips, that compact, nervous speech,the perfect union of strength and grace; for who so fitly as the lamentedHubbard could have portrayed the moral heroism of the Martyr-Spy?

This is not a portrait statue. There is no likeness of Nathan Haleextant. The only known miniature of his face, in the possession of thelady to whom he was betrothed at the time of his death, disappeared manyyears ago. The artist was obliged, therefore, to create an ideal figure,aided by a few fragmentary descriptions of Hale's personal appearance.His object has been to represent an American youth of the period, anAmerican patriot and scholar, whose manly beauty and grace traditionloves to recall, to represent in face and in bearing the moral elevationof character that made him conspicuous among his fellows, and to showforth, if possible, the deed that made him immortal. For it is the deedand the memorable last words we think of when we think of Hale. I knowthat by one of the canons of art it is held that sculpture should rarelyfix a momentary action; but if this can be pardoned in the Laocoon, wheresuffering could not otherwise be depicted to excite the sympathy of thespectator, surely it can be justified in this case, where, as one maysay, the immortality of the subject rests upon a single act, upon aphrase, upon the attitude of the moment. For all the man's life, all hischaracter, flowered and blossomed into immortal beauty in this onesupreme moment of self-sacrifice, triumph, defiance. The ladder of thegallows-tree on which the deserted boy stood, amidst the enemies of hiscountry, when he uttered those last words which all human annals do notparallel in simple patriotism,—the ladder I am sure ran up to heaven,and if angels were not seen ascending and descending it in that graymorning, there stood the embodiment of American courage, unconquerable,American faith, invincible, American love of country, unquenchable, a newdemocratic manhood in the world, visible there for all men to take noteof, crowned already with the halo of victory in the Revolutionary dawn.Oh, my Lord Howe! it seemed a trifling incident to you and to yourbloodhound, Provost Marshal Cunningham, but those winged last words wereworth ten thousand men to the drooping patriot army. Oh, your Majesty,King George the Third! here was a spirit, could you but have known it,that would cost you an empire, here was an ignominious death that wouldgrow in the estimation of mankind, increasing in nobility above thefading pageantry of kings.

On the 21st of April, 1775, a messenger, riding express from Boston toNew York with the tidings of Lexington and Concord, reached New London.The news created intense excitement. A public meeting was called in thecourt-house at twilight, and among the speakers who exhorted the peopleto take up arms at once, was one, a youth not yet twenty years of age,who said, "Let us march immediately, and never lay down our arms until wehave obtained our independence,"—one of the first, perhaps the first, ofthe public declarations of the purpose of independence. It was NathanHale, already a person of some note in the colony, of a family then notunknown and destined in various ways to distinction in the Republic. Akinsman of the same name lost his life in the Louisburg fight. He hadbeen for a year the preceptor of the Union Grammar School at New London.The morning after the meeting he was enrolled as a volunteer, and soonmarched away with his company to Cambridge.

Nathan Hale, descended from Robert Hale who settled in Charlestown in1632, a scion of the Hales of Kent, England, was born in Coventry,Connecticut, on the 6th of June, 1755, the sixth child of Richard Haleand his wife Elizabeth Strong, persons of strong intellect and thehighest moral character, and Puritans of the strictest observances.Brought up in this atmosphere, in which duty and moral rectitude were theunquestioned obligations in life, he came to manhood with a characterthat enabled him to face death or obloquy without flinching, when dutycalled, so that his behavior at the last was not an excitement of themoment, but the result of ancestry, training, and principle. Feeblephysically in infancy, he developed into a robust boy, strong in mind andbody, a lively, sweet-tempered, beautiful youth, and into a young manhoodendowed with every admirable quality. In feats of strength and agility herecalls the traditions of Washington; he early showed a remarkableavidity for knowledge, which was so sought that he became before he wasof age one of the best educated young men of his time in the colonies. Hewas not only a classical scholar, with the limitations of those days;but, what was then rare, he made scientific attainments which greatlyimpressed those capable of judging, and he had a taste for art and aremarkable talent as an artist. His father intended him for the ministry.He received his preparatory education from Dr. Joseph Huntington, aclassical scholar and the pastor of the church in Coventry, entered YaleCollege at the age of sixteen, and graduated with high honors in a classof sixty, in September, 1773. At the time of his graduation his personalappearance was notable. Dr. Enos Monro of New Haven, who knew him well inthe last year at Yale, said of him

"He was almost six feet in height, perfectly proportioned, and in figure and deportment he was the most manly man I have ever met. His chest was broad; his muscles were firm; his face wore a most benign expression; his complexion was roseate; his eyes were light blue and beamed with intelligence; his hair was soft and light brown in color, and his speech was rather low, sweet, and musical. His personal beauty and grace of manner were most charming. Why, all the girls in New Haven fell in love with him," said Dr. Munro, "and wept tears of real sorrow when they heard of his sad fate. In dress he was always neat; he was quick to lend a hand to a being in distress, brute or human; was overflowing with good humor, and was the idol of all his acquaintances."

Dr. Jared Sparks, who knew several of Hale's intimate friends, writes ofhim:

"Possessing genius, taste, and order, he became distinguished as a scholar; and endowed in an eminent degree with those graces and gifts of Nature which add a charm to youthful excellence, he gained universal esteem and confidence. To high moral worth and irreproachable habits were joined gentleness of manner, an ingenuous disposition, and vigor of understanding. No young man of his years put forth a fairer promise of future usefulness and celebrity; the fortunes of none were fostered more sincerely by the generous good wishes of his superiors."

It was remembered at Yale that he was a brilliant debater as well asscholar. At his graduation he engaged in a debate on the question,"Whether the education of daughters be not, without any just reason, moreneglected than that of the sons." "In this debate," wrote JamesHillhouse, one of his classmates, "he was the champion of the daughters,and most ably advocated their cause. You may be sure that he received theplaudits of the ladies present."

Hale seems to have had an irresistible charm for everybody. He was afavorite in society; he had the manners and the qualities that made him aleader among men and gained him the admiration of women. He was alwaysintelligently busy, and had the Yankee ingenuity,—he "could do anythingbut spin," he used to say to the girls of Coventry, laughing over thespinning wheel. There is a universal testimony to his alert intelligence,vivacity, manliness, sincerity, and winningness.

It is probable that while still an under-graduate at Yale, he was engagedto Alice Adams, who was born in Canterbury, a young lady distinguishedthen as she was afterwards for great beauty and intelligence. AfterHale's death she married Mr. Eleazer Ripley, and was left a widow at theage of eighteen, with one child, who survived its father only one year.She married, the second time, William Lawrence, Esq., of Hartford, anddied in this city, greatly respected and admired, in 1845, agedeighty-eight. It is a touching note of the hold the memory of her younghero had upon her admiration that her last words, murmured as life wasebbing, were, "Write to Nathan."

Hale's short career in the American army need not detain us. After hisflying visit as a volunteer to Cambridge, he returned to New London,joined a company with the rank of lieutenant, participated in the siegeof Boston, was commissioned a captain in the Nineteenth ConnecticutRegiment in January, 1776, performed the duties of a soldier withvigilance, bravery, and patience, and was noted for the discipline of hiscompany. In the last dispiriting days of 1775, when the terms of his menhad expired, he offered to give them his month's pay if they would remaina month longer. He accompanied the army to New York, and shared itsfortunes in that discouraging spring and summer. Shortly after hisarrival Captain Hale distinguished himself by the brilliant exploit ofcutting out a British sloop, laden with provisions, from under the gunsof the man-of-war "Asia," sixty-four, lying in the East River, andbringing her triumphantly into slip. During the summer he suffered asevere illness.

The condition of the American army and cause on the 1st of September,1776, after the retreat from Long Island, was critical. The army wasdemoralized, clamoring in vain for pay, and deserting by companies andregiments; one-third of the men were without tents, one-fourth of themwere on the sick list. On the 7th, Washington called a council of war,and anxiously inquired what should be done. On the 12th it was determinedto abandon the city and take possession of Harlem Heights. The Britisharmy, twenty-five thousand strong, admirably equipped, and supported by apowerful naval force, threatened to envelop our poor force, and finishthe war in a stroke. Washington was unable to penetrate the designs ofthe British commander, or to obtain any trusty information of theintentions or the movements of the British army. Information wasimperatively necessary to save us from destruction, and it could only beobtained by one skilled in military and scientific knowledge and a gooddraughtsman, a man of quick eye, cool head, tact, sagacity, and courage,and one whose judgment and fidelity could be trusted. Washington appliedto Lieutenant-Colonel Knowlton, who summoned a conference of officers inthe name of the commander-in-chief, and laid the matter before them. Noone was willing to undertake the dangerous and ignominious mission.Knowlton was in despair, and late in the conference was repeating thenecessity, when a young officer, pale from recent illness, entered theroom and said, "I will undertake it." It was Captain Nathan Hale.Everybody was astonished. His friends besought him not to attempt it. Invain. Hale was under no illusion. He silenced all remonstrances by sayingthat he thought he owed his country the accomplishment of an object soimportant and so much desired by the commander-in-chief, and he knew noway to obtain the information except by going into the enemy's camp indisguise. "I wish to be useful," he said; "and every kind of servicenecessary for the public good becomes honorable by being necessary. Ifthe exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service, its claims to theperformance of that service are imperious."

The tale is well known. Hale crossed over from Norwalk to Huntington Coveon Long Island. In the disguise of a schoolmaster, he penetrated theBritish lines and the city, made accurate drawings of the fortifications,and memoranda in Latin of all that he observed, which he concealedbetween the soles of his shoes, and returned to the point on the shorewhere he had first landed. He expected to be met by a boat and to crossthe Sound to Norwalk the next morning. The next morning he was captured,no doubt by Tory treachery, and taken to Howe's headquarters, the mansionof James Beekman, situated at (the present) Fiftieth Street and FirstAvenue. That was on the 21st of September. Without trial and upon theevidence found on his person, Howe condemned him to be hanged as a spyearly next morning. Indeed Hale made no attempt at defense. He franklyowned his mission, and expressed regret that he could not serve hiscountry better. His open, manly bearing and high spirit commanded therespect of his captors. Mercy he did not expect, and pity was not shownhim. The British were irritated by a conflagration which had that morninglaid almost a third of the city in ashes, and which they attributed toincendiary efforts to deprive them of agreeable winter quarters. Hale wasat first locked up in the Beekman greenhouse. Whether he remained thereall night is not known, and the place of his execution has been disputed;but the best evidence seems to be that it took place on the farm ofColonel Rutger, on the west side, in the orchard in the vicinity of thepresent East Broadway and Market Street, and that he was hanged to thelimb of an apple-tree.

It was a lovely Sunday morning, before the break of day, that he wasmarched to the place of execution, September 22d. While awaiting thenecessary preparations, a courteous young officer permitted him to sit inhis tent. He asked for the presence of a chaplain; the request wasrefused. He asked for a Bible; it was denied. But at the solicitation ofthe young officer he was furnished with writing materials, and wrotebriefly to his mother, his sister, and his betrothed. When the infamousCunningham, to whom Howe had delivered him, read what was written, he wasfurious at the noble and dauntless spirit shown, and with foul oaths torethe letters into shreds, saying afterwards "that the rebels should neverknow that they had a man who could die with such firmness." As Hale stoodupon the fatal ladder, Cunningham taunted him, and tauntingly demandedhis "last dying speech and confession." The hero did not heed the wordsof the brute, but, looking calmly upon the spectators, said in a clearvoice, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."And the ladder was snatched from under him.

My friends, we are not honoring today a lad who appears for a moment in aheroic light, but one of the most worthy of the citizens of Connecticut,who has by his lofty character long honored her, wherever patriotism isnot a mere name, and where Christian manhood is respected. We have hadmany heroes, many youths of promise, and men of note, whose names are ouronly great and enduring riches; but no one of them all betterillustrated, short as was his career, the virtues we desire for all oursons. We have long delayed this tribute to his character and his deeds,but in spite of our neglect his fame has grown year by year, as war andpolitics have taught us what is really admirable in a human being; and weare now sure that we are not erecting a monument to an ephemeralreputation. It is fit that it should stand here, one of the chiefdistinctions of our splendid Capitol, here in the political centre of theState, here in the city where first in all the world was proclaimed andput into a political charter the fundamental idea of democracy, that"government rests upon the consent of the people," here in the city whereby the action of these self existing towns was formed the model, the townand the commonwealth, the bi-cameral legislature, of our constitutionalfederal union. If the soul of Nathan Hale, immortal in youth in the airof heaven, can behold today this scene, as doubtless it can, in the midstof a State whose prosperity the young colonist could not have imagined inhis wildest dreams for his country, he must feel anew the truth thatthere is nothing too sacred for a man to give for his native land.

Governor Lounsbury, the labor of the commission is finished. On theirbehalf I present this work of art to the State of Connecticut.

Let the statue speak for itself.

FASHIONS IN LITERATURE

By Charles Dudley Warner

INTRODUCTION

Thirty years ago and more those who read and valued good books in thiscountry made the acquaintance of Mr. Warner, and since the publication of"My Summer In a Garden" no work of his has needed any other introductionthan the presence of his name on the title-page; and now that reputationhas mellowed into memory, even the word of interpretation seemssuperfluous. Mr. Warner wrote out of a clear, as well as a full mind, andlucidity of style was part of that harmonious charm of sincerity andurbanity which made him one of the most intelligible and companionable ofour writers.

It is a pleasure, however, to recall him as, not long ago, we saw himmove and heard him speak in the ripeness of years which brought him thefull flavor of maturity without any loss of freshness from his humor orserenity from his thought. He shared with Lowell, Longfellow, and Curtisa harmony of nature and art, a unity of ideal and achievement, which makehim a welcome figure, not only for what he said, but for what he was; oneof those friends whose coming is hailed with joy because they seem alwaysat their best, and minister to rather than draw upon our own capital ofmoral vitality.

Mr. Warner was the most undogmatic of idealists, the most winning ofteachers. He had always some thing to say to the ethical sense, a wordfor the conscience; but his approach was always through the mind, and hisenforcement of the moral lesson was by suggestion rather than bycommandment. There was nothing ascetic about him, no easy solution of thedifficulties of life by ignoring or evading them; nor, on the other hand,was there any confusion of moral standards as the result of a confusionof ideas touching the nature and functions of art. He saw clearly, hefelt deeply, and he thought straight; hence the rectitude of his mind,the sanity of his spirit, the justice of his dealings with the thingswhich make for life and art. He used the essay as Addison used it, notfor sermonic effect, but as a form of art which permitted a man to dealwith serious things in a spirit of gayety, and with that lightness oftouch which conveys influence without employing force. He was as deeplyenamored as George William Curtis with the highest ideals of life forAmerica, and, like Curtis, his expression caught the grace anddistinction of those ideals.

It is a pleasure to hear his voice once more, because its very accentssuggest the most interesting, high-minded, and captivating ideals ofliving; he brings with him that air of fine breeding which is diffused bythe men who, in mind as in manners, have been, in a distinctive sense,gentlemen; who have lived so constantly and habitually on intimate termswith the highest things in thought and character that the tone of thisreally best society has become theirs. Among men of talent there areplebeians as well as patricians; even genius, which is never vulgar, issometimes unable to hide the vulgarity of the aims and ideas which itclothes with beauty without concealing their essential nature. Mr. Warnerwas a patrician; the most democratic of men, he was one of the mostfastidious in his intellectual companionships and affiliations. Thesubjects about which he speaks with his oldtime directness and charm inthis volume make us aware of the serious temper of his mind, of his deepinterest in the life of his time and people, and of the easy and naturalgrace with which he insisted on facing the fact and bringing it to thetest of the highest standards. In his discussion of "Fashions inLiterature" he deftly brings before us the significance of literature andthe signs which it always wears, while he seems bent upon consideringsome interesting aspects of contemporary writing.

And how admirably he has described his own work in his definition ofqualities which are common to all literature of a high order: simplicity,knowledge of human nature, agreeable personality. It would be impossiblein briefer or more comprehensive phrase to sum up and express the secretof his influence and of the pleasure he gives us. It is to suggest thisapplication of his words to himself that this preparatory comment iswritten.

When "My Summer In a Garden" appeared, it won a host of friends who didnot stop to ask whether it was a piece of excellent journalism or a bitof real literature. It was so natural, so informal, so intimate thatreaders accepted it as matter of course, as they accepted the blooming offlowers and the flitting of birds. It was simply a report of certainthings which had happened out of doors, made by an observing neighbor,whose talk seemed to be of a piece with the diffused fragrance and lightand life of the old-fashioned garden. This easy approach, along naturallines of interest, by quietly putting himself on common ground with hisreader, Mr. Warner never abandoned; he was so delightful a companion thatuntil he ceased to walk beside them, many of his friends of the mind didnot realize how much he had enriched them by the way. This charmingsimplicity, which made it possible for him to put himself on intimateterms with his readers, was the result of his sincerity, his clearness ofthought, and his ripe culture: that knowledge of the best which rids aman forever of faith in devices, dexterities, obscurities, and all othersubstitutes for the lucid realities of thinking and of character.

To his love of reality and his sincere interest in men, Mr. Warner addednatural shrewdness and long observation of the psychology of men andwomen under the stress and strain of experience. His knowledge of humannature did not lessen his geniality, but it kept the edge of his mindkeen, and gave his work the variety not only of humor but of satire. Hecared deeply for people, but they did not impose on him; he loved hiscountry with a passion which was the more genuine because it was exactingand, at times, sharply critical. There runs through all his work, as acritic of manners and men, as well as of art, a wisdom of life born ofwide and keen observation; put not into the form of aphorisms, but ofshrewd comment, of keen criticism, of nice discrimination between themanifold shadings of insincerity, of insight into the action and reactionof conditions, surroundings, social and ethical aims on men and women.The stories written in his later years are full of the evidences of aknowledge of human nature which was singularly trustworthy andpenetrating.

When all has been said, however, it remains true of him, as of so many ofthe writers whom we read and love and love as we read, that the secret ofhis charm lay in an agreeable personality. At the end of the analysis, ifthe work is worth while, there is always a man, and the man is theexplanation of the work. This is pre-eminently true of those writerswhose charm lies less in distinctively intellectual qualities than intemperament, atmosphere, humor-writers of the quality of Steele,Goldsmith, Lamb, Irving. It is not only, therefore, a pleasure to recallMr. Warner; it is a necessity if one would discover the secret of hischarm, the source of his authority.

He was a New Englander by birth and by long residence, but he was also aman of the world in the true sense of the phrase; one whose ethicaljudgment had been broadened without being lowered; who had learned thattruth, though often strenuously enforced, is never so convincing as whenstated in terms of beauty; and to whom it had been revealed that to livenaturally, sanely, and productively one must live humanly, with dueregard to the earthly as well as to heavenly, with ease as well asearnestness of spirit, through play no less than through work, in thelarge resources of art, society, and humor, as well as with the ancientand well-tested rectitudes of the fathers.

The harmonious play of his whole nature, the breadth of his interests andthe sanity of his spirit made Mr. Warner a delightful companion, and keptto the very end the freshness of his mind and the spontaneity of hishumor; life never lost its savor for him, nor did his style part with itsdiffused but thoroughly individual humor. This latest collection of hispapers, dealing with a wide range of subjects from the "Education of theNegro" to "Literature and the Stage," with characteristic comments on"Truthfulness" and "The Pursuit of Happiness," shows him at the end ofhis long and tireless career as a writer still deeply interested incontemporary events, responsive to the appeal of the questions of thehour, and sensitive to all things which affected the dignity andauthority of literature. In his interests, his bearing, his relations tothe public life of the country, no less than in his work, he held fast tothe best traditions of literature, and he has taken his place among therepresentative American men of Letters.

HAMILTON W. MABIE.

If you examine a collection of prints of costumes of differentgenerations, you are commonly amused by the ludicrous appearance of mostof them, especially of those that are not familiar to you in your owndecade. They are not only inappropriate and inconvenient to your eye, butthey offend your taste. You cannot believe that they were ever thoughtbeautiful and becoming. If your memory does not fail you, however, andyou retain a little honesty of mind, you can recall the fact that acostume which seems to you ridiculous today had your warm approval tenyears ago. You wonder, indeed, how you could ever have tolerated acostume which has not one graceful line, and has no more relation to thehuman figure than Mambrino's helmet had to a crown of glory. You cannotimagine how you ever approved the vast balloon skirt that gave yoursweetheart the appearance of the great bell of Moscow, or that youyourself could have been complacent in a coat the tails of which reachedyour heels, and the buttons of which, a rudimentary survival, werebetween your shoulder-blades—you who are now devoted to a female figurethat resembles an old-fashioned churn surmounted by an isoscelestriangle.

These vagaries of taste, which disfigure or destroy correct proportionsor hide deformities, are nowhere more evident than in the illustrationsof works of fiction. The artist who collaborates with the contemporarynovelist has a hard fate. If he is faithful to the fashions of the day,he earns the repute of artistic depravity in the eyes of the nextgeneration. The novel may become a classic, because it represents humannature, or even the whimsicalities of a period; but the illustrations ofthe artist only provoke a smile, because he has represented merely theunessential and the fleeting. The interest in his work is archaeological,not artistic. The genius of the great portrait-painter may to some extentovercome the disadvantages of contemporary costume, but if the costume ofhis period is hideous and lacks the essential lines of beauty, his workis liable to need the apology of quaintness. The Greek artist and theMediaeval painter, when the costumes were really picturesque and made usforget the lack of simplicity in a noble sumptuousness, had never thisposthumous difficulty to contend with.

In the examination of costumes of different races and different ages, weare also struck by the fact that with primitive or isolated peoplescostumes vary little from age to age, and fashion and the fashions areunrecognized, and a habit of dress which is dictated by climate, or hasbeen proved to be comfortable, is adhered to from one generation toanother; while nations that we call highly civilized, meaning commonlynot only Occidental peoples, but peoples called progressive, are subjectto the most frequent and violent changes of fashions, not in generationsonly, but in decades and years of a generation, as if the mass had nomind or taste of its own, but submitted to the irresponsible ukase oftailors and modistes, who are in alliance with enterprising manufacturersof novelties. In this higher civilization a costume which is artistic andbecoming has no more chance of permanence than one which is ugly andinconvenient. It might be inferred that this higher civilization producesno better taste and discrimination, no more independent judgment, indress than it does in literature. The vagaries in dress of the Westernnations for a thousand years past, to go back no further, are certainlyhighly amusing, and would be humiliating to people who regarded taste andart as essentials of civilization. But when we speak of civilization, wecannot but notice that some of the great civilizations; the longestpermanent and most notable for highest achievement in learning, science,art, or in the graces or comforts of life, the Egyptian, the Saracenic,the Chinese, were subject to no such vagaries in costume, but adhered tothat which taste, climate, experience had determined to be the mostuseful and appropriate. And it is a singular comment upon our modernconceit that we make our own vagaries and changeableness, and not anyfixed principles of art or of utility, the criterion of judgment, onother races and other times.

The more important result of the study of past fashions, in engravingsand paintings, remains to be spoken of. It is that in all theillustrations, from the simplicity of Athens, through the artificialityof Louis XIV and the monstrosities of Elizabeth, down to the undescribedmodistic inventions of the first McKinley, there is discoverable aradical and primitive law of beauty. We acknowledge it among the Greeks,we encounter it in one age and another. I mean a style of dress that isartistic as well as picturesque, that satisfies our love of beauty, thataccords with the grace of the perfect human figure, and that gives asperfect satisfaction to the cultivated taste as a drawing by Raphael.While all the other illustrations of the human ingenuity in making thehuman race appear fantastic or ridiculous amuse us or offend our taste,—except the tailor fashion-plates of the week that is now,—these fewexceptions, classic or modern, give us permanent delight, and arerecognized as following the eternal law of beauty and utility. And weknow, notwithstanding the temporary triumph of bad taste and the publiclack of any taste, that there is a standard, artistic and imperishable.

The student of manners might find an interesting field in noting how, inour Occidental civilizations, fluctuations of opinions, of morals, and ofliterary style have been accompanied by more or less significantexhibitions of costumes. He will note in the Precieux of France and theEuphuist of England a corresponding effeminacy in dress; in the frankpaganism of the French Revolution the affectation of Greek and Romanapparel, passing into the Directoire style in the Citizen and theCitizeness; in the Calvinistic cut of the Puritan of Geneva and of NewEngland the grim severity of their theology and morals. These examplesare interesting as showing an inclination to express an inner conditionby the outward apparel, as the Quakers indicate an inward peace by anexternal drabness, and the American Indian a bellicose disposition by redand yellow paint; just as we express by red stripes our desire to killmen with artillery, or by yellow stripes to kill them with cavalry. It isnot possible to say whether these external displays are relics ofbarbarism or are enduring necessities of human nature.

The fickleness of men in costume in a manner burlesques their shifty anduncertain taste in literature. A book or a certain fashion in letterswill have a run like a garment, and, like that, will pass away before itwaxes old. It seems incredible, as we look back over the literary historyof the past three centuries only, what prevailing styles and moods ofexpression, affectations, and prettinesses, each in turn, have pleasedreasonably cultivated people. What tedious and vapid things they read andliked to read! Think of the French, who had once had a Villon,intoxicating themselves with somnolent draughts of Richardson. But, then,the French could match the paste euphuisms of Lyly with the novels ofScudery. Every modern literature has been subject to these epidemics anddiseases. It is needless to dwell upon them in detail. Since the greatdiffusion of printing, these literary crazes have been more frequent andof shorter duration. We need go back no further than a generation to findabundant examples of eccentricities of style and expression, of crazesover some author or some book, as unaccountable on principles of art asmany of the fashions in social life.—The more violent the attack, thesooner it is over. Readers of middle age can recall the furor overTupper, the extravagant expectations as to the brilliant essayistGilfillan, the soon-extinguished hopes of the poet Alexander Smith. Forthe moment the world waited in the belief of the rising of new stars, andas suddenly realized that it had been deceived. Sometimes we likeruggedness, and again we like things made easy. Within a few years adistinguished Scotch clergyman made a fortune by diluting a paragraphwritten by Saint Paul. It is in our memory how at one time all the boystried to write like Macaulay, and then like Carlyle, and then likeRuskin, and we have lived to see the day when all the girls would like towrite like Heine.

In less than twenty years we have seen wonderful changes in public tasteand in the efforts of writers to meet it or to create it. We saw theeverlastingly revived conflict between realism and romanticism. We sawthe realist run into the naturalist, the naturalist into the animalist,the psychologist into the sexualist, and the sudden reaction to romance,in the form of what is called the historic novel, the receipt for whichcan be prescribed by any competent pharmacist. The one essential in theingredients is that the hero shall be mainly got out of one hole bydropping him into a deeper one, until—the proper serial length beingattained—he is miraculously dropped out into daylight, and stands toreceive the plaudits of a tenderhearted world, that is fond of nothing somuch as of fighting.

The extraordinary vogue of certain recent stories is not so much to bewondered at when we consider the millions that have been added to thereaders of English during the past twenty-five years. The wonder is thata new book does not sell more largely, or it would be a wonder if theability to buy kept pace with the ability to read, and if discriminationhad accompanied the appetite for reading. The critics term thesesuccesses of some recent fictions "crazes," but they are really sustainedby some desirable qualities—they are cleverly written, and they are forthe moment undoubtedly entertaining. Some of them as undoubtedly appealto innate vulgarity or to cultivated depravity. I will call no names,because that would be to indict the public taste. This recent phenomenonof sales of stories by the hundred thousand is not, however, wholly dueto quality. Another element has come in since the publishers haveawakened to the fact that literature can be treated like merchandise. Touse their own phrase, they "handle" books as they would "handle" patentmedicines, that is, the popular patent medicines that are desired becauseof the amount of alcohol they contain; indeed, they are sold along withdry-goods and fancy notions. I am not objecting to this great and widedistribution any more than I am to the haste of fruit-dealers to markettheir products before they decay. The wary critic will be very carefulabout dogmatizing over the nature and distribution of literary products.It is no certain sign that a book is good because it is popular, nor isit any more certain that it is good because it has a very limited sale.Yet we cannot help seeing that many of the books that are the subject ofcrazes utterly disappear in a very short time, while many others,approved by only a judicious few, continue in the market and slowlybecome standards, considered as good stock by the booksellers andcontinually in a limited demand.

The English essayists have spent a good deal of time lately in discussingthe question whether it is possible to tell a good contemporary book froma bad one. Their hesitation is justified by a study of English criticismof new books in the quarterly, monthly, and weekly periodicals from thelatter part of the eighteenth century to the last quarter of thenineteenth; or, to name a definite period, from the verse of the Lakepoets, from Shelley and Byron, down to Tennyson, there is scarcely a poetwho has attained world-wide assent to his position in the first or secondrank who was not at the hands of the reviewers the subject of mockery andbitter detraction. To be original in any degree was to be damned. Andthere is scarcely one who was at first ranked as a great light duringthis period who is now known out of the biographical dictionary. Nothingin modern literature is more amazing than the bulk of English criticismin the last three-quarters of a century, so far as it concernedindividual writers, both in poetry and prose. The literary rancor shownrose to the dignity almost of theological vituperation.

Is there any way to tell a good book from a bad one? Yes. As certainly asyou can tell a good picture from a bad one, or a good egg from a bad one.Because there are hosts who do not discriminate as to the eggs or thebutter they eat, it does not follow that a normal taste should not knowthe difference.

Because there is a highly artistic nation that welcomes the flavor ofgarlic in everything, and another which claims to be the most civilizedin the world that cannot tell coffee from chicory, or because the ancientChinese love rancid sesame oil, or the Esquimaux like spoiled blubber andtainted fish, it does not follow that there is not in the world awholesome taste for things natural and pure.

It is clear that the critic of contemporary literature is quite as likelyto be wrong as right. He is, for one thing, inevitably affected by theprevailing fashion of his little day. And, worse still, he is apt to makehis own tastes and prejudices the standard of his judgment. His view iscommonly provincial instead of cosmopolitan. In the English period justreferred to it is easy to see that most of the critical opinion wasdetermined by political or theological animosity and prejudice. The rulewas for a Tory to hit a Whig or a Whig to hit a Tory, under whateverliterary guise he appeared. If the new writer was not orthodox in theview of his political or theological critic, he was not to be toleratedas poet or historian, Dr. Johnson had said everything he could sayagainst an author when he declared that he was a vile Whig. Macaulay, aWhig, always consulted his prejudices for his judgment, equally when hewas reviewing Croker's Boswell or the impeachment of Warren Hastings. Hehated Croker,—a hateful man, to be sure,—and when the latter publishedhis edition of Boswell, Macaulay saw his opportunity, and exclaimedbefore he had looked at the book, as you will remember, "Now I will dusthis jacket." The standard of criticism does not lie with the individualin literature any more than it does in different periods as to fashionsand manners. The world is pretty well agreed, and always has been, as tothe qualities that make a gentleman. And yet there was a time when thevilest and perhaps the most contemptible man who ever occupied theEnglish throne,—and that is saying a great deal,—George IV, wasuniversally called the "First Gentleman of Europe." The reproach might besomewhat lightened by the fact that George was a foreigner, but for thewider fact that no person of English stock has been on the throne sinceSaxon Harold, the chosen and imposed rulers of England having beenFrench, Welsh, Scotch, and Dutch, many of them being guiltless of theEnglish language, and many of them also of the English middle-classmorality. The impartial old Wraxall, the memorialist of the times ofGeorge III, having described a noble as a gambler, a drunkard, asmuggler, an appropriator of public money, who always cheated histradesmen, who was one and sometimes all of them together, and aprofligate generally, commonly adds, "But he was a perfect gentleman."And yet there has always been a standard that excludes George IV from therank of gentleman, as it excludes Tupper from the rank of poet.

The standard of literary judgment, then, is not in the individual,—thatis, in the taste and prejudice of the individual,—any more than it is inthe immediate contemporary opinion, which is always in flux and refluxfrom one extreme to another; but it is in certain immutable principlesand qualities which have been slowly evolved during the long historicperiods of literary criticism. But how shall we ascertain what theseprinciples are, so as to apply them to new circ*mstances and newcreations, holding on to the essentials and disregarding contemporarytastes; prejudices, and appearances? We all admit that certain pieces ofliterature have become classic; by general consent there is no disputeabout them. How they have become so we cannot exactly explain. Some sayby a mysterious settling of universal opinion, the operation of whichcannot be exactly defined. Others say that the highly developed criticaljudgment of a few persons, from time to time, has established foreverwhat we agree to call masterpieces. But this discussion is immaterial,since these supreme examples of literary excellence exist in all kinds ofcomposition,—poetry, fable, romance, ethical teaching, prophecy,interpretation, history, humor, satire, devotional flight into thespiritual and supernatural, everything in which the human mind hasexercised itself,—from the days of the Egyptian moralist and the OldTestament annalist and poet down to our scientific age. Thesemasterpieces exist from many periods and in many languages, and they allhave qualities in common which have insured their persistence. Todiscover what these qualities are that have insured permanence andpromise indefinite continuance is to have a means of judging with anapproach to scientific accuracy our contemporary literature. There is nothing of beauty that does not conform to a law of order and beauty—poem,story, costume, picture, statue, all fall into an ascertainable law ofart. Nothing of man's making is perfect, but any creation approximatesperfection in the measure that it conforms to inevitable law.

To ascertain this law, and apply it, in art or in literature, to thechanging conditions of our progressive life, is the business of theartist. It is the business of the critic to mark how the performanceconforms to or departs from the law evolved and transmitted in thelong-experience of the race. True criticism, then, is not a matter ofcaprice or of individual liking or disliking, nor of conformity to aprevailing and generally temporary popular judgment. Individual judgmentmay be very interesting and have its value, depending upon the capacityof the judge. It was my good fortune once to fall in with a person whohad been moved, by I know not what inspiration, to project himself out ofhis safe local conditions into France, Greece, Italy, Cairo, andJerusalem. He assured me that he had seen nothing anywhere in the wideworld of nature and art to compare with the beauty of Nebraska.

What are the qualities common to all the masterpieces of literature, or,let us say, to those that have endured in spite of imperfections andlocal provincialisms?

First of all I should name simplicity, which includes lucidity ofexpression, the clear thought in fitting, luminous words. And this istrue when the thought is profound and the subject is as complex as lifeitself. This quality is strikingly exhibited for us in Jowett'stranslation of Plato—which is as modern in feeling and phrase asanything done in Boston—in the naif and direct Herodotus, and, aboveall, in the King James vernacular translation of the Bible, which is thegreat text-book of all modern literature.

The second quality is knowledge of human nature. We can put up with theimprobable in invention, because the improbable is always happening inlife, but we cannot tolerate the so-called psychological juggling withthe human mind, the perversion of the laws of the mind, the forcing ofcharacter to fit the eccentricities of plot. Whatever excursions thewriter makes in fancy, we require fundamental consistency with humannature. And this is the reason why psychological studies of the abnormal,or biographies of criminal lunatics, are only interesting to pathologistsand never become classics in literature.

A third quality common to all masterpieces is what we call charm, amatter more or less of style, and which may be defined as the agreeablepersonality of the writer. This is indispensable. It is this personalitywhich gives the final value to every work of art as well as ofliterature. It is not enough to copy nature or to copy, even accurately,the incidents of life. Only by digestion and transmutation throughpersonality does any work attain the dignity of art. The great works ofarchitecture, even, which are somewhat determined by mathematical rule,owe their charm to the personal genius of their creators. For this reasonour imitations of Greek architecture are commonly failures. To speaktechnically, the masterpiece of literature is characterized by the sameknowledge of proportion and perspective as the masterpiece in art.

If there is a standard of literary excellence, as there is a law ofbeauty—and it seems to me that to doubt this in the intellectual worldis to doubt the prevalence of order that exists in the natural—it iscertainly possible to ascertain whether a new production conforms, andhow far it conforms, to the universally accepted canons of art. To workby this rule in literary criticism is to substitute something definitefor the individual tastes, moods, and local bias of the critic. It istrue that the vast body of that which we read is ephemeral, and justifiesits existence by its obvious use for information, recreation, andentertainment. But to permit the impression to prevail that anunenlightened popular preference for a book, however many may hold it, isto be taken as a measure of its excellence, is like claiming that adebased Austrian coin, because it circulates, is as good as a gold staterof Alexander. The case is infinitely worse than this; for a slovenlyliterature, unrebuked and uncorrected, begets slovenly thought anddebases our entire intellectual life.

It should be remembered, however, that the creative faculty in man hasnot ceased, nor has puny man drawn all there is to be drawn out of theeternal wisdom. We are probably only in the beginning of our evolution,and something new may always be expected, that is, new and freshapplications of universal law. The critic of literature needs to be in anexpectant and receptive frame of mind. Many critics approach a book withhostile intent, and seem to fancy that their business is to look for whatis bad in it, and not for what is good. It seems to me that the firstduty of the critic is to try to understand the author, to give him a fairchance by coming to his perusal with an open mind. Whatever book youread, or sermon or lecture you hear, give yourself for the timeabsolutely to its influence. This is just to the author, fair to thepublic, and, above all, valuable to the intellectual sanity of the critichimself. It is a very bad thing for the memory and the judgment to getinto a habit of reading carelessly or listening with distractedattention. I know of nothing so harmful to the strength of the mind asthis habit. There is a valuable mental training in closely following adiscourse that is valueless in itself. After the reader has unreservedlysurrendered himself to the influence of the book, and let his mindsettle, as we say, and resume its own judgment, he is in a position tolook at it objectively and to compare it with other facts of life and ofliterature dispassionately. He can then compare it as to form, substance,tone, with the enduring literature that has come down to us from all theages. It is a phenomenon known to all of us that we may for the moment becarried away by a book which upon cool reflection we find is false inethics and weak in construction. We find this because we have standardsoutside ourselves.

I am not concerned to define here what is meant by literature. A greatmass of it has been accumulated in the progress of mankind, and,fortunately for different wants and temperaments, it is as varied as thevarious minds that produced it. The main thing to be considered is thatthis great stream of thought is the highest achievement and the mostvaluable possession of mankind. It is not only that literature is thesource of inspiration to youth and the solace of age, but it is what anational language is to a nation, the highest expression of its being.Whatever we acquire of science, of art, in discovery, in the applicationof natural laws in industries, is an enlargement of our horizon, and acontribution to the highest needs of man, his intellectual life. Thecontroversy between the claims of the practical life and the intellectualis as idle as the so-called conflict between science and religion. Andthe highest and final expression of this life of man, his thought, hisemotion, his feeling, his aspiration, whatever you choose to call it, isin the enduring literature he creates. He certainly misses half hisopportunity on this planet who considers only the physical or what iscalled the practical. He is a man only half developed. I can conceive nomore dreary existence than that of a man who is past the period ofbusiness activity, and who cannot, for his entertainment, his happiness,draw upon the great reservoir of literature. For what did I come intothis world if I am to be like a stake planted in a fence, and not like atree visited by all the winds of heaven and the birds of the air?

Those who concern themselves with the printed matter in books andperiodicals are often in despair over the volume of it, and their actualinability to keep up with current literature. They need not worry. If allthat appears in books, under the pressure of publishers and the ambitionof experimenters in writing, were uniformly excellent, no reader would beunder any more obligation to read it than he is to see every individualflower and blossoming shrub. Specimens of the varieties would suffice.But a vast proportion of it is the product of immature minds, and of ayearning for experience rather than a knowledge of life. There is no moreobligation on the part of the person who would be well informed andcultivated to read all this than there is to read all the coloredincidents, personal gossip, accidents, and crimes repeated daily, withsameness of effect, in the newspapers, some of the most widely circulatedof which are a composite of the police gazette and the comic almanac. Agreat deal of the reading done is mere contagion, one form or another ofcommunicated grippe, and it is consoling and even surprising to know thatif you escape the run of it for a season, you have lost nothingappreciable. Some people, it has been often said, make it a rule never toread a book until it is from one to five years old, By this simple devicethey escape the necessity of reading most of them, but this is only apart of their gain. Considering the fact that the world is full of booksof the highest value for cultivation, entertainment, and information,which the utmost leisure we can spare from other pressing avocations doesnot suffice to give us knowledge of, it does seem to be little less thana moral and intellectual sin to flounder about blindly in the flood ofnew publications. I am speaking, of course, of the general mass ofreaders, and not of the specialists who must follow their subjects withceaseless inquisition. But for most of us who belong to the stillcomparatively few who, really read books, the main object of life is notto keep up with the printing-press, any more than it is the main objectof sensible people to follow all the extremes and whims of fashion indress. When a fashion in literature has passed, we are surprised that itshould ever have seemed worth the trouble of studying or imitating. Whenthe special craze has passed, we notice another thing, and that is thatthe author, not being of the first rank or of the second, has generallycontributed to the world all that he has to give in one book, and ourtime has been wasted on his other books; and also that in a special kindof writing in a given period—let us say, for example, thehistorico-romantic—we perceive that it all has a common character, isconstructed on the same lines of adventure and with a prevailing type ofhero and heroine, according to the pattern set by the first one or twostories of the sort which became popular, and we see its more or lessmechanical construction, and how easily it degenerates into commercialbook-making. Now while some of this writing has an individual flavor thatmakes it entertaining and profitable in this way, we may be excused fromattempting to follow it all merely because it happens to be talked aboutfor the moment, and generally talked about in a very undiscriminatingmanner. We need not in any company be ashamed if we have not read it all,especially if we are ashamed that, considering the time at our disposal,we have not made the acquaintance of the great and small masterpieces ofliterature. It is said that the fashion of this world passeth away, andso does the mere fashion in literature, the fashion that does not followthe eternal law of beauty and symmetry, and contribute to theintellectual and spiritual part of man. Otherwise it is only a waiting ina material existence, like the lovers, in the words of the Arabianstory-teller, "till there came to them the Destroyer of Delights and theSunderer of Companies, he who layeth waste the palaces and peopleth thetombs."

Without special anxiety, then, to keep pace with all the ephemeral inliterature, lest we should miss for the moment something that ispermanent, we can rest content in the vast accumulation of the tried andgenuine that the ages have given us. Anything that really belongs toliterature today we shall certainly find awaiting us tomorrow.

The better part of the life of man is in and by the imagination. This isnot generally believed, because it is not generally believed that thechief end of man is the accumulation of intellectual and spiritualmaterial. Hence it is that what is called a practical education is setabove the mere enlargement and enrichment of the mind; and the possessionof the material is valued, and the intellectual life is undervalued. Butit should be remembered that the best preparation for a practical anduseful life is in the high development of the powers of the mind, andthat, commonly, by a culture that is not considered practical. Thenotable fact about the group of great parliamentary orators in the daysof George III is the exhibition of their intellectual resources in theentire world of letters, the classics, and ancient and modern history.Yet all of them owed their development to a strictly classical trainingin the schools. And most of them had not only the gift of the imaginationnecessary to great eloquence, but also were so mentally disciplined bythe classics that they handled the practical questions upon which theylegislated with clearness and precision. The great masters of financewere the classically trained orators William Pitt and Charles James Fox.

In fine, to return to our knowledge of the short life of fashions thatare for the moment striking, why should we waste precious time in chasingmeteoric appearances, when we can be warmed and invigorated in thesunshine of the great literatures?

THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER

By Charles Dudley Warner

Our theme for the hour is the American Newspaper. It is a subject inwhich everybody is interested, and about which it is not polite to saythat anybody is not well informed; for, although there are scatteredthrough the land many persons, I am sorry to say, unable to pay for anewspaper, I have never yet heard of anybody unable to edit one.

The topic has many points of view, and invites various study and comment.In our limited time we must select one only. We have heard a great dealabout the power, the opportunity, the duty, the "mission," of the press.The time has come for a more philosophical treatment of it, for aninquiry into its relations to our complex civilization, for some ethicalaccount of it as one of the developments of our day, and for somediscussion of the effect it is producing, and likely to produce, on theeducation of the people. Has the time come, or is it near at hand, whenwe can point to a person who is alert, superficial, ready and shallow,self-confident and half-informed, and say, "There is a product of theAmerican newspaper"? The newspaper is not a willful creation, nor anisolated phenomenon, but the legitimate outcome of our age, as much asour system of popular education. And I trust that some competent observerwill make, perhaps for this association, a philosophical study of it. Mytask here is a much humbler one. I have thought that it may not beunprofitable to treat the newspaper from a practical and even somewhatmechanical point of view.

The newspaper is a private enterprise. Its object is to make money forits owner. Whatever motive may be given out for starting a newspaper,expectation of profit by it is the real one, whether the newspaper isreligious, political, scientific, or literary. The exceptional cases ofnewspapers devoted to ideas or "causes" without regard to profit are sofew as not to affect the rule. Commonly, the cause, the sect, the party,the trade, the delusion, the idea, gets its newspaper, its organ, itsadvocate, only when some individual thinks he can see a pecuniary returnin establishing it.

This motive is not lower than that which leads people into any otheroccupation or profession. To make a living, and to have a career, is theoriginal incentive in all cases. Even in purely philanthropicalenterprises the driving-wheel that keeps them in motion for any length oftime is the salary paid the working members. So powerful is thisincentive that sometimes the wheel will continue to turn round when thereis no grist to grind. It sometimes happens that the friction of thephilanthropic machinery is so great that but very little power istransmitted to the object for which the machinery was made. I knew adevoted agent of the American Colonization Society, who, for severalyears, collected in Connecticut just enough, for the cause, to buy hisclothes, and pay his board at a good hotel.

It is scarcely necessary to say, except to prevent a possiblemisapprehension, that the editor who has no high ideals, no intention ofbenefiting his fellow-men by his newspaper, and uses it unscrupulously asa means of money-making only, sinks to the level of the physician and thelawyer who have no higher conception of their callings than that theyoffer opportunities for getting money by appeals to credulity, and byassisting in evasions of the law.

If the excellence of a newspaper is not always measured by itsprofitableness, it is generally true that, if it does not pay its owner,it is valueless to the public. Not all newspapers which make money aregood, for some succeed by catering to the lowest tastes of respectablepeople, and to the prejudice, ignorance, and passion of the lowest class;but, as a rule, the successful journal pecuniarily is the best journal.The reasons for this are on the surface. The impecunious newspaper cannotgive its readers promptly the news, nor able discussion of the news, and,still worse, it cannot be independent. The political journal that reliesfor support upon drippings of party favor or patronage, the generalnewspaper that finds it necessary to existence to manipulate stockreports, the religious weekly that draws precarious support from puffingdoubtful enterprises, the literary paper that depends upon the approvalof publishers, are poor affairs, and, in the long run or short run, cometo grief. Some newspapers do succeed by sensationalism, as some preachersdo; by a kind of quackery, as some doctors do; by trimming and shiftingto any momentary popular prejudice, as some politicians do; by becomingthe paid advocate of a personal ambition or a corporate enterprise, assome lawyers do: but the newspaper only becomes a real power when it isable, on the basis of pecuniary independence, to free itself from allsuch entanglements. An editor who stands with hat in hand has the respectaccorded to any other beggar.

The recognition of the fact that the newspaper is a private and purelybusiness enterprise will help to define the mutual relations of theeditor and the public. His claim upon the public is exactly that of anymanufacturer or dealer. It is that of the man who makes cloth, or thegrocer who opens a shop—neither has a right to complain if the publicdoes not buy of him. If the buyer does not like a cloth half shoddy, orcoffee half-chicory, he will go elsewhere. If the subscriber does notlike one newspaper, he takes another, or none. The appeal for newspapersupport on the ground that such a journal ought to be sustained by anenlightened community, or on any other ground than that it is a goodarticle that people want,—or would want if they knew its value,—ispurely childish in this age of the world. If any person wants to start aperiodical devoted to decorated teapots, with the noble view of inducingthe people to live up to his idea of a teapot, very good; but he has noright to complain if he fails.

On the other hand, the public has no rights in the newspaper except whatit pays for; even the "old subscriber" has none, except to drop the paperif it ceases to please him. The notion that the subscriber has a right tointerfere in the conduct of the paper, or the reader to direct itsopinions, is based on a misconception of what the newspaper is. The claimof the public to have its communications printed in the paper is equallybaseless. Whether they shall be printed or not rests in the discretion ofthe editor, having reference to his own private interest, and to hisapprehension of the public good. Nor is he bound to give any reason forhis refusal. It is purely in his discretion whether he will admit a replyto any thing that has appeared in his columns. No one has a right todemand it. Courtesy and policy may grant it; but the right to it does notexist. If any one is injured, he may seek his remedy at law; and I shouldlike to see the law of libel such and so administered that any personinjured by a libel in the newspaper, as well as by slander out of it,could be sure of prompt redress. While the subscribes acquires no rightto dictate to the newspaper, we can imagine an extreme case when heshould have his money back which had been paid in advance, if thenewspaper totally changed its character. If he had contracted with adealer to supply him with hard coal during the winter, he might have aremedy if the dealer delivered only charcoal in the coldest weather; andso if he paid for a Roman Catholic journal which suddenly became an organof the spiritists.

The advertiser acquires no more rights in the newspaper than thesubscriber. He is entitled to use the space for which he pays by theinsertion of such material as is approved by the editor. He gains nointerest in any other part of the paper, and has no more claim to anyspace in the editorial columns, than any other one of the public. To givehim such space would be unbusiness-like, and the extension of apreference which would be unjust to the rest of the public. Nothing morequickly destroys the character of a journal, begets distrust of it, andso reduces its value, than the well-founded suspicion that its editorialcolumns are the property of advertisers. Even a religious journal will,after a while, be injured by this.

Yet it must be confessed that here is one of the greatest difficulties ofmodern journalism. The newspaper must be cheap. It is, considering theimmense cost to produce it, the cheapest product ever offered to man.Most newspapers cost more than they sell for; they could not live bysubscriptions; for any profits, they certainly depend uponadvertisem*nts. The advertisem*nts depend upon the circulation; thecirculation is likely to dwindle if too much space is occupied byadvertisem*nts, or if it is evident that the paper belongs to its favoredadvertisers. The counting-room desires to conciliate the advertisers; theeditor looks to making a paper satisfactory to his readers. Between thissee-saw of the necessary subscriber and the necessary advertiser, a goodmany newspapers go down. This difficulty would be measurably removed bythe admission of the truth that the newspaper is a strictly businessenterprise, depending for success upon a 'quid pro quo' between allparties connected with it, and upon integrity in its management.

Akin to the false notion that the newspaper is a sort of open channelthat the public may use as it chooses, is the conception of it as acharitable institution. The newspaper, which is the property of a privateperson as much as a drug-shop is, is expected to perform for nothingservices which would be asked of no other private person. There isscarcely a charitable enterprise to which it is not asked to contributeof its space, which is money, ten times more than other persons in thecommunity, who are ten times as able as the owner of the newspaper,contribute. The journal is considered "mean" if it will not surrender itscolumns freely to notices and announcements of this sort. If a managerhas a new hen-coop or a new singer he wishes to introduce to the public,he comes to the newspaper, expecting to have his enterprise extolled fornothing, and probably never thinks that it would be just as proper forhim to go to one of the regular advertisers in the paper and ask him togive up his space. Anything, from a church picnic to a brass-band concertfor the benefit of the widow of the triangles, asks the newspaper tocontribute. The party in politics, whose principles the editor advocates,has no doubt of its rightful claim upon him, not only upon the editorialcolumns, but upon the whole newspaper. It asks without hesitation thatthe newspaper should take up its valuable space by printing hundreds andoften thousands of dollars' worth of political announcements in thecourse of a protracted campaign, when it never would think of getting itshalls, its speakers, and its brass bands, free of expense. Churches, aswell as parties, expect this sort of charity. I have known rich churches,to whose members it was a convenience to have their Sunday and otherservices announced, withdraw the announcements when the editor declinedany longer to contribute a weekly fifty-cents' worth of space. No privatepersons contribute so much to charity, in proportion to ability, as thenewspaper. Perhaps it will get credit for this in the next world: itcertainly never does in this.

The chief function of the newspaper is to collect and print the news.Upon the kind of news that should be gathered and published, we shallremark farther on. The second function is to elucidate the news, andcomment on it, and show its relations. A third function is to furnishreading-matter to the general public.

Nothing is so difficult for the manager as to know what news is: theinstinct for it is a sort of sixth sense. To discern out of the mass ofmaterials collected not only what is most likely to interest the public,but what phase and aspect of it will attract most attention, and therelative importance of it; to tell the day before or at midnight what theworld will be talking about in the morning, and what it will want thefullest details of, and to meet that want in advance,—requires apeculiar talent. There is always some topic on which the public wantsinstant information. It is easy enough when the news is developed, andeverybody is discussing it, for the editor to fall in; but the success ofthe news printed depends upon a pre-apprehension of all this. Somepapers, which nevertheless print all the news, are always a day behind,do not appreciate the popular drift till it has gone to something else,and err as much by clinging to a subject after it is dead as by nottaking it up before it was fairly born. The public craves eagerly foronly one thing at a time, and soon wearies of that; and it is to thenewspaper's profit to seize the exact point of a debate, the thrillingmoment of an accident, the pith of an important discourse; to throwitself into it as if life depended on it, and for the hour to flood thepopular curiosity with it as an engine deluges a fire.

Scarcely less important than promptly seizing and printing the news isthe attractive arrangement of it, its effective presentation to the eye.Two papers may have exactly the same important intelligence, identicallythe same despatches: the one will be called bright, attractive, "newsy";the other, dull and stupid.

We have said nothing yet about that, which, to most people, is the mostimportant aspect of the newspaper,—the editor's responsibility to thepublic for its contents. It is sufficient briefly to say here, that it isexactly the responsibility of every other person in society,—the fullresponsibility of his opportunity. He has voluntarily taken a position inwhich he can do a great deal of good or a great deal of evil, and he,should be held and judged by his opportunity: it is greater than that ofthe preacher, the teacher, the congressman, the physician. He occupiesthe loftiest pulpit; he is in his teacher's desk seven days in the week;his voice can be heard farther than that of the most lusty fog-hornpolitician; and often, I am sorry to say, his columns outshine theshelves of the druggist in display of proprietary medicines. Nothing elseever invented has the public attention as the newspaper has, or is aninfluence so constant and universal. It is this large opportunity thathas given the impression that the newspaper is a public rather than aprivate enterprise.

It was a nebulous but suggestive remark that the newspaper occupies theborderland between literature and common sense. Literature it certainlyis not, and in the popular apprehension it seems often too erratic andvariable to be credited with the balance-wheel of sense; but it must havesomething of the charm of the one, and the steadiness and sagacity of theother, or it will fail to please. The model editor, I believe, has yet toappear. Notwithstanding the traditional reputation of certain editors inthe past, they could not be called great editors by our standards; forthe elements of modern journalism did not exist in their time. The oldnewspaper was a broadside of stale news, with a moral essay attached.Perhaps Benjamin Franklin, with our facilities, would have been very nearthe ideal editor. There was nothing he did not wish to know; and no oneexcelled him in the ability to communicate what he found out to theaverage mind. He came as near as anybody ever did to marrying commonsense to literature: he had it in him to make it sufficient forjournalistic purposes. He was what somebody said Carlyle was, and whatthe American editor ought to be,—a vernacular man.

The assertion has been made recently, publicly, and with evidenceadduced, that the American newspaper is the best in the world. It is likethe assertion that the American government is the best in the world; nodoubt it is, for the American people.

Judged by broad standards, it may safely be admitted that the Americannewspaper is susceptible of some improvement, and that it has somethingto learn from the journals of other nations. We shall be better employedin correcting its weaknesses than in complacently contemplating itsexcellences.

Let us examine it in its three departments already named,—its news,editorials, and miscellaneous reading-matter.

In particularity and comprehensiveness of news-collecting, it may beadmitted that the American newspapers for a time led the world. I mean inthe picking-up of local intelligence, and the use of the telegraph tomake it general. And with this arose the odd notion that news is madeimportant by the mere fact of its rapid transmission over the wire. TheEnglish journals followed, speedily overtook, and some of the wealthierones perhaps surpassed, the American in the use of the telegraph, and inthe presentation of some sorts of local news; not of casualties, andsmall city and neighborhood events, and social gossip (until veryrecently), but certainly in the business of the law courts, and thecrimes and mishaps that come within police and legal supervision. Theleading papers of the German press, though strong in correspondence andin discussion of affairs, are far less comprehensive in their news thanthe American or the English. The French journals, we are accustomed tosay, are not newspapers at all. And this is true as we use the word.Until recently, nothing has been of importance to the Frenchman excepthimself; and what happened outside of France, not directly affecting hisglory, his profit, or his pleasure, did not interest him: hence, onecould nowhere so securely intrench himself against the news of the worldas behind the barricade of the Paris journals. But let us not make amistake in this matter. We may have more to learn from the Paris journalsthan from any others. If they do not give what we call news—local news,events, casualties, the happenings of the day,—they do give ideas,opinions; they do discuss politics, the social drift; they give theintellectual ferment of Paris; they supply the material that Paris likesto talk over, the badinage of the boulevard, the wit of the salon, thesensation of the stage, the new movement in literature and in politics.This may be important, or it may be trivial: it is commonly moreinteresting than much of that which we call news.

Our very facility and enterprise in news-gathering have overwhelmed ournewspapers, and it may be remarked that editorial discrimination has notkept pace with the facilities. We are overpowered with a mass ofundigested intelligence, collected for the mast part without regard tovalue. The force of the newspaper is expended in extending thesefacilities, with little regard to discriminating selection. The burden isalready too heavy for the newspaper, and wearisome to the public.

The publication of the news is the most important function of the paper.How is it gathered? We must confess that it is gathered very much bychance. A drag-net is thrown out, and whatever comes is taken. Anexamination into the process of collecting shows what sort of news we arelikely to get, and that nine-tenths of that printed is collected withoutmuch intelligence exercised in selection. The alliance of the associatedpress with the telegraph company is a fruitful source of news of aninferior quality. Of course, it is for the interest of the telegraphcompany to swell the volume to be transmitted. It is impossible for theassociated press to have an agent in every place to which the telegraphpenetrates: therefore the telegraphic operators often act as itspurveyors. It is for their interest to send something; and their judgmentof what is important is not only biased, but is formed by purely localstandards. Our news, therefore, is largely set in motion by telegraphicoperators, by agents trained to regard only the accidental, thestartling, the abnormal, as news; it is picked up by sharp prowlers abouttown, whose pay depends upon finding something, who are looking forsomething spicy and sensational, or which may be dressed up andexaggerated to satisfy an appetite for novelty and high flavor, and whor*gard casualties as the chief news. Our newspapers every day are loadedwith accidents, casualties, and crimes concerning people of whom we neverheard before and never shall hear again, the reading of which is of noearthly use to any human being.

What is news? What is it that an intelligent public should care to hearof and talk about? Run your eye down the columns of your journal. Therewas a drunken squabble last night in a New York groggery; there is apetty but carefully elaborated village scandal about a foolish girl; awoman accidentally dropped her baby out of a fourth-story window inMaine; in Connecticut, a wife, by mistake, got into the same railwaytrain with another woman's husband; a child fell into a well in NewJersey; there is a column about a peripatetic horse-race, which exhibits,like a circus, from city to city; a laborer in a remote town inPennsylvania had a sunstroke; there is an edifying dying speech of amurderer, the love-letter of a suicide, the set-to of a couple ofcongressmen; and there are columns about a gigantic war of half a dozenpoliticians over the appointment of a sugar-gauger. Granted that thispabulum is desired by the reader, why not save the expense oftransmission by having several columns of it stereotyped, to bereproduced at proper intervals? With the date changed, it would always,have its original value, and perfectly satisfy the demand, if a demandexists, for this sort of news.

This is not, as you see, a description of your journal: it is adescription of only one portion of it. It is a complex and wonderfulcreation. Every morning it is a mirror of the world, more or lessdistorted and imperfect, but such a mirror as it never had held up to itbefore. But consider how much space is taken up with mere trivialitiesand vulgarities under the name of news. And this evil is likely tocontinue and increase until news-gatherers learn that more important thanthe reports of accidents and casualties is the intelligence of opinionsand thoughts, the moral and intellectual movements of modern life. Ahorrible assassination in India is instantly telegraphed; but theprogress of such a vast movement as that of the Wahabee revival in Islam,which may change the destiny of great provinces, never gets itself putupon the wires. We hear promptly of a landslide in Switzerland, but onlyvery slowly of a political agitation that is changing the constitution ofthe republic. It should be said, however, that the daily newspaper is notalone responsible for this: it is what the age and the community where itis published make it. So far as I have observed, the majority of thereaders in America peruses eagerly three columns about a mill between anEnglish and a naturalized American prize-fighter, but will only glance ata column report of a debate in the English parliament which involves aradical change in the whole policy of England; and devours a page aboutthe Chantilly races, while it ignores a paragraph concerning thesuppression of the Jesuit schools.

Our newspapers are overwhelmed with material that is of no importance.The obvious remedy for this would be more intelligent direction in thecollection of news, and more careful sifting and supervision of it whengathered. It becomes every day more apparent to every manager that suchdiscrimination is more necessary. There is no limit to the variousintelligence and gossip that our complex life offers—no paper is bigenough to contain it; no reader has time enough to read it. And thejournal must cease to be a sort of waste-basket at the end of a telegraphwire, into which any reporter, telegraph operator, or gossip-monger candump whatever he pleases. We must get rid of the superstition that valueis given to an unimportant "item" by sending it a thousand miles over awire.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the American newspaper, especiallyof the country weekly, is its enormous development of local andneighborhood news. It is of recent date. Horace Greeley used to advisethe country editors to give small space to the general news of the world,but to cultivate assiduously the home field, to glean every possibledetail of private life in the circuit of the county, and print it. Theadvice was shrewd for a metropolitan editor, and it was not without itsprofit to the country editor. It was founded on a deep knowledge of humannature; namely, upon the fact that people read most eagerly that whichthey already know, if it is about themselves or their neighbors, if it isa report of something they have been concerned in, a lecture they haveheard, a fair, or festival, or wedding, or funeral, or barn-raising theyhave attended. The result is column after column of short paragraphs ofgossip and trivialities, chips, chips, chips. Mr. Sales is contemplatingerecting a new counter in his store; his rival opposite has a new sign;Miss Bumps of Gath is visiting her cousin, Miss Smith of Bozrah; thesheriff has painted his fence; Farmer Brown has lost his cow; the eminentmember from Neopolis has put an ell on one end of his mansion, and amortgage on the other.

On the face of it nothing is so vapid and profitless as column aftercolumn of this reading. These "items" have very little interest, exceptto those who already know the facts; but those concerned like to see themin print, and take the newspaper on that account. This sort of inanitytakes the place of reading-matter that might be of benefit, and itseffect must be to belittle and contract the mind. But this is not themost serious objection to the publication of these worthless details. Itcultivates self-consciousness in the community, and love of notoriety; itdevelops vanity and self-importance, and elevates the trivial in lifeabove the essential.

And this brings me to speak of the mania in this age, and especially inAmerica, for notoriety in social life as well as in politics. Thenewspapers are the vehicle of it, sometimes the occasion, but not thecause. The newspaper may have fostered—it has not created—this hungerfor publicity. Almost everybody talks about the violation of decency andthe sanctity of private life by the newspaper in the publication ofpersonalities and the gossip of society; and the very people who makethese strictures are often those who regard the paper as withoutenterprise and dull, if it does not report in detail their weddings,their balls and parties, the distinguished persons present, the dress ofthe ladies, the sumptuousness of the entertainment, if it does notcelebrate their church services and festivities, their social meetings,their new house, their distinguished arrivals at this or thatwatering-place. I believe every newspaper manager will bear me out insaying that there is a constant pressure on him to print much more ofsuch private matter than his judgment and taste permit or approve, andthat the gossip which is brought to his notice, with the hope that hewill violate the sensitiveness of social life by printing it, is far awaylarger in amount than all that he publishes.

To return for a moment to the subject of general news. The characteristicof our modern civilization is sensitiveness, or, as the doctors say,nervousness. Perhaps the philanthropist would term it sympathy. No doubtan exciting cause of it is the adaptation of electricity to thetransmission of facts and ideas. The telegraph, we say, has put us insympathy with all the world. And we reckon this enlargement of nervecontact somehow a gain. Our bared nerves are played upon by a thousandwires. Nature, no doubt, has a method of hardening or deadening them tothese shocks; but nevertheless, every person who reads is a focus for theexcitements, the ills, the troubles, of all the world. In addition to hislocal pleasures and annoyances, he is in a manner compelled to be asharer in the universal uneasiness. It might be worth while to inquirewhat effect this exciting accumulation of the news of the world upon anindividual or a community has upon happiness and upon character. Is theNew England man any better able to bear or deal with his extraordinaryclimate by the daily knowledge of the weather all over the globe? Is aman happier, or improved in character, by the woful tale of a world'sdistress and apprehension that greets him every morning at breakfast?Knowledge, we know, increases sorrow; but I suppose the offset to thatis, that strength only comes through suffering. But this is a digression.

Not second in importance to any department of the journal is thereporting; that is, the special reporting as distinguished from the moregeneral news-gathering. I mean the reports of proceedings in Congress, inconventions, assemblies, and conferences, public conversations, lectures,sermons, investigations, law trials, and occurrences of all sorts thatrise into general importance. These reports are the basis of ourknowledge and opinions. If they are false or exaggerated, we are ignorantof what is taking place, and misled. It is of infinitely more importancethat they should be absolutely trustworthy than that the editorialcomments should be sound and wise. If the reports on affairs can bedepended on, the public can form its own opinion, and act intelligently.And; if the public has a right to demand anything of a newspaper, it isthat its reports of what occurs shall be faithfully accurate,unprejudiced, and colorless. They ought not, to be editorials, or thevehicles of personal opinion and feeling. The interpretation of, thefacts they give should be left to the editor and the public. There shouldbe a sharp line drawn between the report and the editorial.

I am inclined to think that the reporting department is the weakest inthe American newspaper, and that there is just ground for the admittedpublic distrust of it. Too often, if a person would know what has takenplace in a given case, he must read the reports in half a dozen journals,then strike a general average of probabilities, allowing for the personalequation, and then—suspend his judgment. Of course, there is muchexcellent reporting, and there are many able men engaged in it whor*flect the highest honor upon their occupation. And the press of noother country shows more occasional brilliant feats in reporting thanours: these are on occasions when the newspapers make special efforts.Take the last two national party conventions. The fullness, the accuracy,the vividness, with which their proceedings were reported in the leadingjournals, were marvelous triumphs of knowledge, skill, and expense. Theconventions were so photographed by hundreds of pens, that the publicoutside saw them almost as distinctly as the crowd in attendance. Thisresult was attained because the editors determined that it should be,sent able men to report, and demanded the best work. But take an oppositeand a daily illustration of reporting, that of the debates andproceedings in Congress. I do not refer to the specials of variousjournals which are good, bad, or indifferent, as the case may be, andcommonly colored by partisan considerations, but the regular synopsissent to the country at large. Now, for some years it has been inadequate,frequently unintelligible, often grossly misleading, failing wholly togive the real spirit and meaning of the most important discussions; andit is as dry as chips besides. To be both stupid and inaccurate is theunpardonable sin in journalism. Contrast these reports with the livelyand faithful pictures of the French Assembly which are served to theParis papers.

Before speaking of the reasons for the public distrust in reports, it isproper to put in one qualification. The public itself, and not thenewspapers, is the great factory of baseless rumors and untruths.Although the newspaper unavoidably gives currency to some of these, it isthe great corrector of popular rumors. Concerning any event, a hundreddifferent versions and conflicting accounts are instantly set afloat.These would run on, and become settled but unfounded beliefs, as privatewhispered scandals do run, if the newspaper did not intervene. It is thebusiness of the newspaper, on every occurrence of moment, to chase downthe rumors, and to find out the facts and print them, and set the publicmind at rest. The newspaper publishes them under a sense ofresponsibility for its statements. It is not by any means always correct;but I know that it is the aim of most newspapers to discharge thisimportant public function faithfully. When this country had fewnewspapers it was ten times more the prey of false reports and delusionsthan it is now.

Reporting requires as high ability as editorial writing; perhaps of adifferent kind, though in the history of American journalism the bestreporters have often become the best editors. Talent of this kind must beadequately paid; and it happens that in America the reporting field is sovast that few journals can afford to make the reporting departmentcorrespond in ability to the editorial, and I doubt if the importance ofdoing so is yet fully realized. An intelligent and representativesynopsis of a lecture or other public performance is rare. The ability tograsp a speaker's meaning, or to follow a long discourse, and reproduceeither in spirit, and fairly, in a short space, is not common. When thepublic which has been present reads the inaccurate report, it losesconfidence in the newspaper.

Its confidence is again undermined when it learns that an "interview"which it has read with interest was manufactured; that the report of themovements and sayings of a distinguished stranger was a pure piece ofingenious invention; that a thrilling adventure alongshore, or in aballoon, or in a horse-car, was what is called a sensational article,concocted by some brilliant genius, and spun out by the yard according tohis necessities. These reports are entertaining, and often more readablethan anything else in the newspaper; and, if they were put into adepartment with an appropriate heading, the public would be lesssuspicious that all the news in the journal was colored and heightened bya lively imagination.

Intelligent and honest reporting of whatever interests the public is thesound basis of all journalism. And yet so careless have editors been ofall this that a reporter has been sent to attend the sessions of aphilological convention who had not the least linguistic knowledge,having always been employed on marine disasters. Another reporter, whowas assigned to inform the public of the results of a difficultarcheological investigation, frankly confessed his inability tounderstand what was going on; for his ordinary business, he said, wascattle. A story is told of a metropolitan journal, which illustratesanother difficulty the public has in keeping up its confidence innewspaper infallibility. It may not be true for history, but answers foran illustration. The annual November meteors were expected on a certainnight. The journal prepared an elaborate article, several columns inlength, on meteoric displays in general, and on the display of that nightin particular, giving in detail the appearance of the heavens from themetropolitan roofs in various parts of the city, the shooting of themeteors amid the blazing constellations, the size and times of flight ofthe fiery bodies; in short, a most vivid and scientific account of thelofty fireworks. Unfortunately the night was cloudy. The article was intype and ready; but the clouds would not break. The last moment for goingto press arrived: there was a probability that the clouds would liftbefore daylight and the manager took the risk. The article that appearedwas very interesting; but its scientific value was impaired by the factthat the heavens were obscured the whole night, and the meteors, if anyarrived, were invisible. The reasonable excuse of the editor would bethat he could not control the elements.

If the reporting department needs strengthening and reduction to order inthe American journal, we may also query whether the department ofcorrespondence sustains the boast that the American, newspaper is thebest in the world. We have a good deal of excellent correspondence, bothforeign and domestic; and our "specials" have won distinction, at leastfor liveliness and enterprise. I cannot dwell upon this feature; but Isuggest a comparison with the correspondence of some of the German, andwith that especially of the London journals, from the various capitals ofEurope, and from the occasional seats of war. How surpassing able much ofit is!

How full of information, of philosophic observation, of accurateknowledge! It appears to be written by men of trained intellect and ofexperience,—educated men of the world, who, by reason of their positionand character, have access to the highest sources of information.

The editorials of our journals seem to me better than formerly, improvedin tone, in courtesy, in self-respect,—though you may not have to go faror search long for the provincial note and the easy grace of thefrontier,—and they are better written. This is because the newspaper hasbecome more profitable, and is able to pay for talent, and has attractedto it educated young men. There is a sort of editorial ability, offacility, of force, that can only be acquired by practice and in thenewspaper office: no school can ever teach it; but the young editor whohas a broad basis of general education, of information in history,political economy, the classics, and polite literature, has an immenseadvantage over the man who has merely practical experience. For theeditorial, if it is to hold its place, must be more and more the productof information, culture, and reflection, as well as of sagacity andalertness. Ignorance of foreign affairs, and of economic science, theAmerican people have in times past winked at; but they will not alwayswink at it.

It is the belief of some shrewd observers that editorials, the longeditorials, are not much read, except by editors themselves. A cynic saysthat, if you have a secret you are very anxious to keep from the femaleportion of the population, the safest place to put it is in an editorial.It seems to me that editorials are not conned as attentively as they oncewere; and I am sure they have not so much influence as formerly. Peopleare not so easily or so visibly led; that is to say, the editorialinfluence is not so dogmatic and direct. The editor does not expect toform public opinion so much by arguments and appeals as by the news hepresents and his manner of presenting it, by the iteration of an ideauntil it becomes familiar, by the reading-matter selected, and by thequotations of opinions as news, and not professedly to influence thereader. And this influence is all the more potent because it is indirect,and not perceived-by the reader.

There is an editorial tradition—it might almost be termed asuperstition—which I think will have to be abandoned. It is that acertain space in the journal must be filled with editorial, and that someof the editorials must be long, without any reference to the news or thenecessity of comment on it, or the capacity of the editor at the momentto fill the space with original matter that is readable. There is thesacred space, and it must be filled. The London journals are perfecttypes of this custom. The result is often a wearisome page of words andrhetoric. It may be good rhetoric; but life is too short for so much ofit. The necessity of filling this space causes the writer, instead ofstating his idea in the shortest compass in which it can be madeperspicuous and telling, to beat it out thin, and make it cover as muchground as possible. This, also, is vanity. In the economy of room, whichour journals will more and more be compelled to cultivate, I venture tosay that this tradition will be set aside. I think that we may fairlyclaim a superiority in our journals over the English dailies in our habitof making brief, pointed editorial paragraphs. They are the life of theeditorial page. A cultivation of these until they are as finished andpregnant as the paragraphs of "The London Spectator" and "The New-YorkNation," the printing of long editorials only when the elucidation of asubject demands length, and the use of the space thus saved for moreinteresting reading, is probably the line of our editorial evolution.

To continue the comparison of our journals as a class, with the Englishas a class, ours are more lively, also more flippant, and less restrainedby a sense of responsibility or by the laws of libel. We furnish, now andagain, as good editorial writing for its purpose; but it commonly lacksthe dignity, the thoroughness, the wide sweep and knowledge, thatcharacterizes the best English discussion of political and social topics.

The third department of the newspaper is that of miscellaneousreading-matter. Whether this is the survival of the period when the papercontained little else except "selections," and other printed matter wasscarce, or whether it is only the beginning of a development that shallsupply the public nearly all its literature, I do not know. Far as ournewspapers have already gone in this direction, I am inclined to thinkthat in their evolution they must drop this adjunct, and print simply thenews of the day. Some of the leading journals of the world already dothis.

In America I am sure the papers are printing too much miscellaneousreading. The perusal of this smattering of everything, these scraps ofinformation and snatches of literature, this infinite variety and medley,in which no subject is adequately treated, is distracting anddebilitating to the mind. It prevents the reading of anything in full,and its satisfactory assimilation. It is said that the majority ofAmericans read nothing except the paper. If they read that thoroughly,they have time for nothing else. What is its reader to do when hisjournal thrusts upon him every day the amount contained in a fair-sizedduodecimo volume, and on Sundays the amount of two of them? Granted thatthis miscellaneous hodge-podge is the cream of current literature, is itprofitable to the reader? Is it a means of anything but superficialculture and fragmentary information? Besides, it stimulates an unnaturalappetite, a liking for the striking, the brilliant, the sensational only;for our selections from current literature are, usually the "plums"; andplums are not a wholesome-diet for anybody. A person accustomed to thisfinds it difficult to sit down patiently to the mastery of a book or asubject, to the study of history, the perusal of extended biography, orto acquire that intellectual development and strength which comes fromthorough reading and reflection.

The subject has another aspect. Nobody chooses his own reading; and awhole community perusing substantially the same material tends to amental uniformity. The editor has the more than royal power of selectingthe intellectual food of a large public. It is a responsibilityinfinitely greater than that of the compiler of schoolbooks, great asthat is. The taste of the editor, or of some assistant who uses thescissors, is in a manner forced upon thousands of people, who see littleother printed matter than that which he gives them. Suppose his tasteruns to murders and abnormal crimes, and to the sensational inliterature: what will be the moral effect upon a community of readingthis year after year?

If this excess of daily miscellany is deleterious to the public, I doubtif it will be, in the long run, profitable to the newspaper, which has afield broad enough in reporting and commenting upon the movement of theworld, without attempting to absorb the whole reading field.

I should like to say a word, if time permitted, upon the form of thejournal, and about advertisem*nts. I look to see advertisem*nts shorter,printed with less display, and more numerous. In addition to the use nowmade of the newspaper by the classes called "advertisers," I expect it tobecome the handy medium of the entire public, the means of readycommunication in regard to all wants and exchanges.

Several years ago, the attention of the publishers of American newspaperswas called to the convenient form of certain daily journals in SouthGermany, which were made up in small pages, the number of which variedfrom day to day, according to the pressure of news or of advertisem*nts.The suggestion as to form has been adopted bit many of our religious,literary, and special weeklies, to the great convenience of the readers,and I doubt not of the publishers also. Nothing is more unwieldy than ourbig blanket-sheets: they are awkward to handle, inconvenient to read,unhandy to bind and preserve. It is difficult to classify matter in them.In dull seasons they are too large; in times of brisk advertising, and inthe sudden access of important news, they are too small. To enlarge themfor the occasion, resort is had to a troublesome fly-sheet, or, if theyare doubled, there is more space to be filled than is needed. It seems tome that the inevitable remedy is a newspaper of small pages or forms,indefinite in number, that can at any hour be increased or diminishedaccording to necessity, to be folded, stitched, and cut by machinery.

We have thus rapidly run over a prolific field, touching only upon someof the relations of the newspaper to our civilization, and omitting manyof the more important and grave. The truth is that the development of themodern journal has been so sudden and marvelous that its conductors findthemselves in possession of a machine that they scarcely know how tomanage or direct. The change in the newspaper caused by the telegraph,the cable, and by a public demand for news created by wars, bydiscoveries, and by a new outburst of the spirit of doubt and inquiry, isenormous. The public mind is confused about it, and alternatelyoverestimates and underestimates the press, failing to see how integraland representative a part it is of modern life.

"The power of the press," as something to be feared or admired, is afavorite theme of dinner-table orators and clergymen. One would think itwas some compactly wielded energy, like that of an organized religiousorder, with a possible danger in it to the public welfare. Discriminationis not made between the power of the printed word—which islimitless—and the influence that a newspaper, as such, exerts. The powerof the press is in its facility for making public opinions and events. Ishould say it is a medium of force rather than force itself. I confessthat I am oftener impressed with the powerlessness of the press thanotherwise, its slight influence in bringing about any reform, or ininducing the public to do what is for its own good and what it isdisinclined to do. Talk about the power of the press, say, in alegislature, when once the members are suspicious that somebody is tryingto influence them, and see how the press will retire, with what grace itcan, before an invincible and virtuous lobby. The fear of the combinationof the press for any improper purpose, or long for any proper purpose, ischimerical. Whomever the newspapers agree with, they do not agree witheach other. The public itself never takes so many conflicting views ofany topic or event as the ingenious rival journals are certain todiscover. It is impossible, in their nature, for them to combine. Ishould as soon expect agreement among doctors in their empiricalprofession. And there is scarcely ever a cause, or an opinion, or a man,that does not get somewhere in the press a hearer and a defender. We willdrop the subject with one remark for the benefit of whom it may concern.With all its faults, I believe the moral tone of the American newspaperis higher, as a rule, than that of the community in which it ispublished.

CERTAIN DIVERSITIES OF AMERICAN LIFE

By Charles Dudley Warner

This is a very interesting age. Within the memory of men not yet come tomiddle life the time of the trotting horse has been reduced from twominutes forty seconds to two minutes eight and a quarter seconds. Duringthe past fifteen years a universal and wholesome pastime of boys has beendeveloped into a great national industry, thoroughly organized and almostaltogether relegated to professional hands, no longer the exercise of themillion but a spectacle for the million, and a game which rivals theStock Exchange as a means of winning money on the difference of opinionas to the skill of contending operators.

The newspapers of the country—pretty accurate and sad indicators of thepopular taste—devote more daily columns in a week's time to chroniclingthe news about base-ball than to any other topic that interests theAmerican mind, and the most skillful player, the pitcher, often collegebred, whose entire prowess is devoted to not doing what he seems to bedoing, and who has become the hero of the American girl as the Olympianwrestler was of the Greek maiden and as the matador is of the Spanishsenorita, receives a larger salary for a few hours' exertion each weekthan any college president is paid for a year's intellectual toil. Suchhas been the progress in the interest in education during this periodthat the larger bulk of the news, and that most looked for, printed aboutthe colleges and universities, is that relating to the training, theprospects and achievements of the boat crews and the teams of base-balland foot-ball, and the victory of any crew or team is a better means ofattracting students to its college, a better advertisem*nt, than successin any scholastic contest. A few years ago a tournament was organized inthe North between several colleges for competition in oratory andscholarship; it had a couple of contests and then died of inanition andwant of public interest.

During the period I am speaking of there has been an enormous advance intechnical education, resulting in the establishment of splendid specialschools, essential to the development of our national resources; a growthof the popular idea that education should be practical,—that is, such aneducation as can be immediately applied to earning a living and acquiringwealth speedily,—and an increasing extension of the elective system incolleges,—based almost solely on the notion, having in view, of course,the practical education, that the inclinations of a young man of eighteenare a better guide as to what is best for his mental development andequipment for life than all the experience of his predecessors.

In this period, which you will note is more distinguished by the desirefor the accumulation of money than far the general production of wealth,the standard of a fortune has shifted from a fair competence to that ofmillions of money, so that he is no longer rich who has a hundredthousand dollars, but he only who possesses property valued at manymillions, and the men most widely known the country through, most talkedabout, whose doings and sayings are most chronicled in the journals,whose example is most attractive and stimulating to the minds of youth,are not the scholars, the scientists, the men of, letters, not even theorators and statesmen, but those who, by any means, have amassed enormousfortunes. We judge the future of a generation by its ideals.

Regarding education from the point of view of its equipment of a man tomake money, and enjoy the luxury which money can command, it must be moreand more practical, that is, it must be adapted not even to the higheraim of increasing the general wealth of the world, by increasingproduction and diminishing waste both of labor and capital, but to thelower aim of getting personal possession of it; so that a striking socialfeature of the period is that one-half—that is hardly an overestimate—one-half of the activity in America of which we speak with so muchenthusiasm, is not directed to the production of wealth, to increasingits volume, but to getting the money of other people away from them. Inbarbarous ages this object was accomplished by violence; it is nowattained by skill and adroitness. We still punish those who gain propertyby violence; those who get it by smartness and cleverness, we try toimitate, and sometimes we reward them with public office.

It appears, therefore, that speed,-the ability to move rapidly from placeto place,—a disproportionate reward of physical over intellectualscience, an intense desire to be rich, which is strong enough to compeleven education to grind in the mill of the Philistines, and an inordinateelevation in public consideration of rich men simply because they arerich, are characteristics of this little point of time on which we stand.They are not the only characteristics; in a reasonably optimistic view,the age is distinguished for unexampled achievements, and foropportunities for the well-being of humanity never before in all historyattainable. But these characteristics are so prominent as to beget thefear that we are losing the sense of the relative value of things in thislife.

Few persons come to middle life without some conception of these relativevalues. It is in the heat and struggle that we fail to appreciate what inthe attainment will be most satisfactory to us. After it is over we areapt to see that our possessions do not bring the happiness we expected;or that we have neglected to cultivate the powers and tastes that canmake life enjoyable. We come to know, to use a truism, that a person'shighest satisfaction depends not upon his exterior acquisitions, but uponwhat he himself is. There is no escape from this conclusion. The physicalsatisfactions are limited and fallacious, the intellectual and moralsatisfactions are unlimited. In the last analysis, a man has to live withhimself, to be his own companion, and in the last resort the question is,what can he get out of himself. In the end, his life is worth just whathe has become. And I need not say that the mistake commonly made is as torelative values,—that the things of sense are as important as the thingsof the mind. You make that mistake when you devote your best energies toyour possession of material substance, and neglect the enlargement, thetraining, the enrichment of the mind. You make the same mistake in a lessdegree, when you bend to the popular ignorance and conceit so far as todirect your college education to sordid ends. The certain end of yieldingto this so-called practical spirit was expressed by a member of aNorthern State legislature who said, "We don't want colleges, we wantworkshops." It was expressed in another way by a representative of thelower house in Washington who said, "The average ignorance of the countryhas a right to be represented here." It is not for me to say whether itis represented there. Naturally, I say, we ought by the time of middlelife to come to a conception of what sort of things are of most value. Byanalogy, in the continual growth of the Republic, we ought to have aperception of what we have accomplished and acquired, and some clear viewof our tendencies. We take justifiable pride in the glittering figures ofour extension of territory, our numerical growth, in the increase ofwealth, and in our rise to the potential position of almost the firstnation in the world. A more pertinent inquiry is, what sort of peoplehave we become? What are we intellectually and morally? For after all theman is the thing, the production of the right sort of men and women isall that gives a nation value. When I read of the establishment of agreat industrial centre in which twenty thousand people are employed inthe increase of the amount of steel in the world, before I decide whetherit would be a good thing for the Republic to create another industrialcity of the same sort, I want to know what sort of people the twentythousand are, how they live, what their morals are, what intellectuallife they have, what their enjoyment of life is, what they talk about andthink about, and what chance they have of getting into any higher life.It does not seem to me a sufficient gain in this situation that we areimmensely increasing the amount of steel in the world, or that twentymore people are enabled on account of this to indulge in an unexampled,unintellectual luxury. We want more steel, no doubt, but haven't we witenough to get that and at the same time to increase among the producersof it the number of men and women whose horizons are extended, who arecompanionable, intelligent beings, adding something to the intellectualand moral force upon which the real progress of the Republic depends?

There is no place where I would choose to speak more plainly of ournational situation today than in the South, and at the University of theSouth; in the South, because it is more plainly in a transition state,and at the University of the South, because it is here and in similarinstitutions that the question of the higher or lower plane of life inthe South is to be determined.

To a philosophical observer of the Republic, at the end of the hundredyears, I should say that the important facts are not its industrialenergy, its wealth, or its population, but the stability of the federalpower, and the integrity of the individual States. That is to say, thatstress and trial have welded us into an indestructible nation; and not ofless consequence is the fact that the life of the Union is in the life ofthe States. The next most encouraging augury for a great future is themarvelous diversity among the members of this republican body. If nothingwould be more speedily fatal to our plan of government than increasingcentralization, nothing would be more hopeless in our development thanincreasing monotony, the certain end of which is mediocrity.

Speaking as one whose highest pride it is to be a citizen of a great andinvincible Republic to those whose minds kindle with a like patriotism, Ican say that I am glad there are East and North and South, and West,Middle, Northwest, and Southwest, with as many diversities of climate,temperament, habits, idiosyncrasies, genius, as these names imply. ThankHeaven we are not all alike; and so long as we have a common purpose inthe Union, and mutual toleration, respect, and sympathy, the greater willbe our achievement and the nobler our total development, if every sectionis true to the evolution of its local traits. The superficial foreignobserver finds sameness in our different States, tiresome family likenessin our cities, hideous monotony in our villages, and a certain commonatmosphere of life, which increasing facility of communication tends toincrease. This is a view from a railway train. But as soon as you observeclosely, you find in each city a peculiar physiognomy, and a peculiarspirit remarkable considering the freedom of movement and intercourse,and you find the organized action of each State sui generis to a degreesurprising considering the general similarity of our laws andinstitutions. In each section differences of speech, of habits ofthought, of temperament prevail. Massachusetts is unlike Louisiana,Florida unlike Tennessee, Georgia is unlike California, Pennsylvania isunlike Minnesota, and so on, and the unlikeness is not alone or chieflyin physical features. By the different style of living I can tell when Icross the line between Connecticut and New York as certainly as when Icross the line between Vermont and Canada. The Virginian expanded inKentucky is not the same man he was at home, and the New England Yankeelet loose in the West takes on proportions that would astonish hisgrandfather. Everywhere there is a variety in local sentiment, action,and development. Sit down in the seats of the State governments and studythe methods of treatment of essentially the common institutions ofgovernment, of charity and discipline, and you will be impressed with thevariety of local spirit and performance in the Union. And this, diversityis so important, this contribution of diverse elements is so necessary tothe complex strength and prosperity of the whole, that one must view withalarm all federal interference and tendency to greater centralization.

And not less to be dreaded than monotony from the governmental point ofview, is the obliteration of variety in social life and in literarydevelopment. It is not enough for a nation to be great and strong, itmust be interesting, and interesting it cannot be without cultivation oflocal variety. Better obtrusive peculiarities than universal sameness. Itis out of variety as well as complexity in American life, and not inhom*ogeneity and imitation, that we are to expect a civilizationnoteworthy in the progress of the human race.

Let us come a little closer to our subject in details. For a hundredyears the South was developed on its own lines, with astonishingly littleexterior bias. This comparative isolation was due partly to theinstitution of slavery, partly to devotion to the production of two orthree great staples. While its commercial connection with the North wasintimate and vital, its literary relation with the North was slight. Withfew exceptions Northern authors were not read in the South, and theliterary movement of its neighbors, such as it was, from 1820 to 1860,scarcely affected it. With the exception of Louisiana, which wasabsolutely ignorant of American literature and drew its inspiration andassumed its critical point of view almost wholly from the French, theSouth was English, but mainly English of the time of Walter Scott andGeorge the Third. While Scott was read at the North for his knowledge ofhuman nature, as he always will be read, the chivalric age which moves inhis pages was taken more seriously at the South, as if it were ofcontinuing importance in life. In any of its rich private libraries youfind yourself in the age of Pope and Dryden, and the classics werepursued in the spirit of Oxford and Cambridge in the time of Johnson. Itwas little disturbed by the intellectual and ethical agitation of modernEngland or of modern New England. During this period, while the Southexcelled in the production of statesmen, orators, trained politicians,great judges, and brilliant lawyers, it produced almost no literature,that is, no indigenous literature, except a few poems and—a few humorouscharacter-sketches; its general writing was ornately classic, and itsfiction romantic on the lines of the foreign romances.

From this isolation one thing was developed, and another thing might indue time be expected. The thing developed was a social life, in thefavored class, which has an almost unique charm, a power of beingagreeable, a sympathetic cordiality, an impulsive warmth, a frankness inthe expression of emotion, and that delightful quality of manner whichputs the world at ease and makes life pleasant. The Southerners are nomore sincere than the Northerners, but they have less reserve, and in thesocial traits that charm all who come in contact with them, they have anelement of immense value in the variety of American life.

The thing that might have been expected in due time, and when the callcame—and it is curious to note that the call and cause of anyrenaissance are always from the outside—was a literary expression freshand indigenous. This expectation, in a brief period since the war, hasbeen realized by a remarkable performance and is now stimulated by aremarkable promise. The acclaim with which the Southern literature hasbeen received is partly due to its novelty, the new life it exhibited,but more to the recognition in it of a fresh flavor, a literary qualitydistinctly original and of permanent importance. This production, thefirst fruits of which are so engaging in quality, cannot grow and broadeninto a stable, varied literature without scholarship and hard work, andwithout a sympathetic local audience. But the momentary concern is thatit should develop on its own lines and in its own spirit, and not underthe influence of London or Boston or New York. I do not mean by this thatit should continue to attract attention by peculiarities of dialect-whichis only an incidental, temporary phenomenon, that speedily becomeswearisome, whether "cracker" or negro or Yankee—but by being true to theessential spirit and temperament of Southern life.

During this period there was at the North, and especially in the East,great intellectual activity and agitation, and agitation ethical andmoral as well as intellectual. There was awakening, investigation,questioning, doubt. There was a great deal of froth thrown to thesurface. In the free action of individual thought and expression greweccentricities of belief and of practice, and a crop of so-called "isms,"more or less temporary, unprofitable, and pernicious. Public opinionattained an astonishing degree of freedom,—I never heard of anycommunity that was altogether free of its tyranny. At least extraordinarylatitude was permitted in the development of extreme ideas, new,fantastic, radical, or conservative. For instance, slavery was attackedand slavery was defended on the same platform, with almost equal freedom.Indeed, for many years, if there was any exception to the generaltoleration it was in the social ostracism of those who held and expressedextreme opinions in regard to immediate emancipation, and werestigmatized as abolitionists. There was a general ferment of new ideas,not always fruitful in the direction taken, but hopeful in view of thefact that growth and movement are better than stagnation and decay. Youcan do something with a ship that has headway; it will drift upon therocks if it has not. With much foam and froth, sure to attend agitation,there was immense vital energy, intense life.

Out of this stir and agitation came the aggressive, conquering spiritthat carried civilization straight across the continent, that built upcities and States, that developed wealth, and by invention, ingenuity,and energy performed miracles in the way of the subjugation of nature andthe assimilation of societies. Out of this free agitation sprang aliterary product, great in quantity and to some degree distinguished inquality, groups of historians, poets, novelists, essayists, biographers,scientific writers. A conspicuous agency of the period was the lectureplatform, which did something in the spread and popularization ofinformation, but much more in the stimulation of independent thought andthe awakening of the mind to use its own powers.

Along with this and out of this went on the movement of popular educationand of the high and specialized education. More remarkable than theachievements of the common schools has been the development of thecolleges, both in the departments of the humanities and of science. If Iwere writing of education generally, I might have something to say of themeasurable disappointment of the results of the common schools as atpresent conducted, both as to the diffusion of information and as to thediscipline of the mind and the inculcation of ethical principles; whichsimply means that they need improvement. But the higher education hasbeen transformed, and mainly by the application of scientific methods,and of the philosophic spirit, to the study of history, economics, andthe classics. When we are called to defend the pursuit of metaphysics orthe study of the classics, either as indispensable to the discipline orto the enlargement of the mind, we are not called on to defend themethods of a generation ago. The study of Greek is no longer an exercisein the study of linguistics or the inspection of specimens of an obsoleteliterature, but the acquaintance with historic thought, habits, andpolity, with a portion of the continuous history of the human mind, whichhas a vital relation to our own life.

However much or little there may be of permanent value in the vastproduction of northern literature, judged by continental or even Englishstandards, the time has came when American scholarship in science, inlanguage, in occidental or oriental letters, in philosophic andhistorical methods, can court comparison with any other. In some branchesof research the peers of our scholars must be sought not in England butin Germany. So that in one of the best fruits of a period of intellectualagitation, scholarship, the restless movement has thoroughly vindicateditself.

I have called your attention to this movement in order to say that it wasneither accidental nor isolated. It was in the historic line, it was fedand stimulated by all that had gone before, and by all contemporaryactivity everywhere. New England, for instance, was alert and progressivebecause it kept its doors and windows open. It was hospitable in itsintellectual freedom, both of trial and debate, to new ideas. It was intouch with the universal movement of humanity and of human thought andspeculation. You lose some quiet by this attitude, some repose that ispleasant and even desirable perhaps, you entertain many errors, you maytry many useless experiments, but you gain life and are in the way ofbetter things. New England, whatever else we may say about it, was in theworld. There was no stir of thought, of investigation, of research, ofthe recasting of old ideas into new forms of life, in Germany, in France,in Italy, in England, anywhere, that did not touch it and to which it didnot respond with the sympathy that common humanity has in the universalprogress. It kept this touch not only in the evolution and expression ofthought and emotion which we call literature (whether original orimitative), but in the application of philosophic methods to education,in the attempted regeneration of society and the amelioration of itsconditions by schemes of reform and discipline, relating to theinstitutions of benevolence and to the control of the vicious andcriminal. With all these efforts go along always much falsesentimentality and pseudo-philanthropy, but little by little gain is madethat could not be made in a state of isolation and stagnation.

In fact there is one historic stream of human thought, aspiration, andprogress; it is practically continuous, and with all its diversity oflocal color and movement it is a unit. If you are in it, you move; if youare out of it, you are in an eddy. The eddy may have a provincialcurrent, but it is not in the great stream, and when it has gone roundand round for a century, it is still an eddy, and will not carry youanywhere in particular. The value of the modern method of teaching andstudy is that it teaches the solidarity of human history, the continuanceof human thought, in literature, government, philosophy, the unity of thedivine purpose, and that nothing that has anywhere befallen the humanrace is alien to us.

I am not undervaluing the part, the important part, played byconservatism, the conservatism that holds on to what has been gained ifit is good, that insists on discipline and heed to the plain teaching ofexperience, that refuses to go into hysterics of enthusiasm over everyflighty suggestion, or to follow every leader simply because he proposessomething new and strange—I do not mean the conservatism that refuses totry anything simply because it is new, and prefers to energetic life thestagnation that inevitably leads to decay. Isolation from the greathistoric stream of thought and agitation is stagnation. While this istrue, and always has been true in history, it is also true, in regard tothe beneficent diversity of American life, which is composed of so manyelements and forces, as I have often thought and said, that what has beencalled the Southern conservatism in respect to beliefs and certain socialproblems, may have a very important part to play in the development ofthe life of the Republic.

I shall not be misunderstood here, where the claims of the higher lifeare insisted on and the necessity of pure, accurate scholarship isrecognized, in saying that this expectation in regard to the Southdepends upon the cultivation and diffusion of the highest scholarship inall its historic consciousness and critical precision. This sort ofscholarship, of widely apprehending intellectual activity, keeping stepwith modern ideas so far as they are historically grounded, is of thefirst importance. Everywhere indeed, in our industrial age,—in a societyinclined to materialism, scholarship, pure and simple scholarship for itsown sake, no less in Ohio than in Tennessee, is the thing to be insistedon. If I may refer to an institution, which used to be midway between theNorth and the South, and which I may speak of without suspicion of bias,an institution where the studies of metaphysics, the philosophy ofhistory, the classics and pure science are as much insisted on as thestudy of applied sciences, the College of New Jersey at Princeton, thequestion in regard to a candidate for a professorship or instructorship,is not whether he was born North or South, whether he served in one armyor another or in neither, whether he is a Democrat or a Republican or aMugwump, what religious denomination he belongs to, but is he a scholarand has he a high character? There is no provincialism in scholarship.

We are not now considering the matter of the agreeableness of one societyor another, whether life is on the whole pleasanter in certain conditionsat the North or at the South, whether there is not a charm sometimes inisolation and even in provincialism. It is a fair question to ask, whateffect upon individual lives and character is produced by an industrialand commercial spirit, and by one less restless and more domestic. Butthe South is now face to face with certain problems which relate her,inevitably, to the moving forces of the world. One of these is thedevelopment of her natural resources and the change and diversity of herindustries. On the industrial side there is pressing need of institutionsof technology, of schools of applied science, for the diffusion oftechnical information and skill in regard to mining and manufacturing,and also to agriculture, so that worn-out lands may be reclaimed and goodlands be kept up to the highest point of production. Neither mines,forests, quarries, water-ways, nor textile fabrics can be handled to bestadvantage without scientific knowledge and skilled labor. The South iseverywhere demanding these aids to her industrial development. But justin the proportion that she gets them, and because she has them, will bethe need of higher education. The only safety against the influence of arolling mill is a college, the only safety against the practical andmaterializing tendency of an industrial school is the increased study ofwhatever contributes to the higher and non-sordid life of the mind. TheSouth would make a poor exchange for her former condition in any amountof industrial success without a corresponding development of the highestintellectual life.

But, besides the industrial problem, there is the race problem. It is themost serious in the conditions under which it is presented that ever inall history confronted a free people. Whichever way you regard it, it isthe nearest insoluble. Under the Constitution it is wisely left to theaction of the individual States. The heavy responsibility is with them.In the nature of things it is a matter of the deepest concern to thewhole Republic, for the prosperity of every part is vital to theprosperity of the whole. In working it out you are entitled, from theoutside, to the most impartial attempt to understand its real nature, tothe utmost patience with the facts of human nature, to the most profoundand most helpful sympathy. It is monstrous to me that the situationshould be made on either side a political occasion for private ambitionor for party ends.

I would speak of this subject with the utmost frankness if I knew what tosay. It is not much of a confession to say that I do not. The more Istudy it the less I know, and those among you who give it the mostanxious thought are the most perplexed, the subject has so manyconflicting aspects. In the first place there is the evolution of anundeveloped race. Every race has a right to fair play in the world and tomake the most of its capacities, and to the help of the more favored inthe attempt. If the suggestion recently made of a wholesale migration toMexico were carried out, the South would be relieved in many ways, thoughthe labor problem would be a serious one for a long time, but the"elevation" would be lost sight of or relegated to a foreign missionaryenterprise; and as for results to the colored people themselves, there isthe example of Hayti. If another suggestion, that of abandoning certainStates to this race, were carried out, there is the example of Haytiagain, and, besides, an anomaly introduced into the Republic foreign toits traditions, spirit, aspirations, and process of assimilation, aliento the entire historic movement of the Aryan races, and infinitely moredangerous to the idea of the Republic than if solid Ireland were dumpeddown in the Mississippi valley as an independent State.

On the other hand, there rests upon you the responsibility of maintaininga civilization—the civilization of America, not of Hayti or of Guatemalawhich we have so hardly won. It is neither to be expected nor desiredthat you should be ruled by an undeveloped race, ignorant of law,letters, history, politics, political economy. There is no right anywherein numbers or unintelligence to rule intelligence. It is a travesty ofcivilization. No Northern State that I know of would submit to be ruledby an undeveloped race. And human nature is exactly in the South what itis in the North. That is one impregnable fact, to be taken as the basisof all our calculations; the whites of the South will not, cannot, bedominated, as matters now stand, by the colored race.

But, then, there is the suffrage, the universal, unqualified suffrage.And here is the dilemma. Suffrage once given, cannot be suppressed ordenied, perverted by chicane or bribery without incalculable damage tothe whole political body. Irregular methods once indulged in for onepurpose, and towards one class, so sap the moral sense that they come tobe used for all purposes. The danger is ultimately as great to those whosuppress or pervert as it is to the suppressed and corrupted. It is thedemoralization of all sound political action and life. I know whereof Ispeak. In the North, bribery in elections and intimidation are fatal topublic morality. The legislature elected by bribery is a bribable body.

I believe that the fathers were right in making government depend uponthe consent of the governed. I believe there has been as yet discoveredno other basis of government so safe, so stable as popular suffrage, butthe fathers never contemplated a suffrage without intelligence. It is acontradiction of terms. A proletariat without any political rights in arepublic is no more dangerous than an unintelligent mob which can be usedin elections by demagogues. Universal suffrage is not a universalpanacea; it may be the best device attainable, but it is certain of abusewithout safeguards. One of the absolutely necessary safeguards is aneducational qualification. No one ought anywhere to exercise it whocannot read and write, and if I had my way, no one should cast a ballotwho had not a fair conception of the effect of it, shown by a higher testof intelligence than the mere fact of ability to scrawl his name and tospell out a line or two in the Constitution. This much the State for itsown protection is bound to require, for suffrage is an expediency, not aright belonging to universal humanity regardless of intelligence or ofcharacter.

The charge is, with regard to this universal suffrage, that you take thefruits of increased representation produced by it, and then deny it to aportion of the voters whose action was expected to produce a differentpolitical result. I cannot but regard it as a blunder in statesmanship togive suffrage without an educational qualification, and to deem itpossible to put ignorance over intelligence. You are not, responsible forthe situation, but you are none the less in an illogical position beforethe law. Now, would you not gain more in a rectification of your positionthan you would lose in other ways, by making suffrage depend upon aneducational qualification? I do not mean gain party-wise, but inpolitical morals and general prosperity. Time would certainly be gainedby this, and it is possible in this shifting world, in the growth ofindustries and the flow of populations, that before the question ofsupremacy was again upon you, foreign and industrial immigration wouldrestore the race balance.

We come now to education. The colored race being here, I assume that itseducation, with the probabilities this involves of its elevation, is aduty as well as a necessity. I speak both of the inherent justice thereis in giving every human being the chance of bettering his condition andincreasing his happiness that lies in education—unless our whole theoryof modern life is wrong—and also of the political and social dangerthere is in a degraded class numerically strong. Granted integralmembership in a body politic, education is a necessity. I am aware of thedanger of half education, of that smattering of knowledge which onlybreeds conceit, adroitness, and a consciousness of physical power,without due responsibility and moral restraint. Education makes a racemore powerful both for evil and for good. I see the danger that manyapprehend. And the outlook, with any amount of education, would behopeless, not only as regards the negro and those in neighborhoodrelations with him, if education should not bring with it thrift, senseof responsibility as a citizen, and virtue. What the negro race under themost favorable conditions is capable of remains to be shown; history doesnot help us much to determine thus far. It has always been a long pullfor any race to rise out of primitive conditions; but I am sure for itsown sake, and for the sake of the republic where it dwells, everythoughtful person must desire the most speedy intellectual and moraldevelopment possible of the African race. And I mean as a race.

Some distinguished English writers have suggested, with approval, thatthe solution of the race problem in this country is fusion, and I haveeven heard discouraged Southerners accept it as a possibility. The resultof their observation of the amalgamation of races and colors in Egypt, inSyria, and Mexico, must be very different from mine. When races ofdifferent color mingle there is almost invariably loss of physicalstamina, and the lower moral qualities of each are developed in thecombination. No race that regards its own future would desire it. Theabsorption theory as applied to America is, it seems to me, chimerical.

But to return to education. It should always be fitted to the stage ofdevelopment. It should always mean discipline, the training of the powersand capacities. The early pioneers who planted civilization on theWatauga, the Holston, the Kentucky, the Cumberland, had not much broadlearning—they would not have been worse if they had had more but theyhad courage, they were trained in self-reliance, virile common sense, andgood judgment, they had inherited the instinct and capacity ofself-government, they were religious, with all their coarseness they hadthe fundamental elements of nobility, the domestic virtues, and thepublic spirit needed in the foundation of states. Their education in allthe manly arts and crafts of the backwoodsman fitted them very well forthe work they had to do. I should say that the education of the coloredrace in America should be fundamental. I have not much confidence in anornamental top-dressing of philosophy, theology, and classic learningupon the foundation of an unformed and unstable mental and moralcondition. Somehow, character must be built up, and character dependsupon industry, upon thrift, upon morals, upon correct ethicalperceptions. To have control of one's powers, to have skill in labor, sothat work in any occupation shall be intelligent, to have self-respect,which commonly comes from trained capacity, to know how to live, to havea clean, orderly house, to be grounded in honesty and the domesticvirtues,—these are the essentials of progress. I suppose that theeducation to produce these must be an elemental and practical one, onethat fits for the duties of life and not for some imaginary sphere abovethem.

To put it in a word, and not denying that there must be schools forteaching the teachers, with the understanding that the teachers should beable to teach what the mass most needs to know—what the race needs forits own good today, are industrial and manual training schools, with thevaried and practical discipline and arts of life which they impart.

What then? What of the 'modus vivendi' of the two races occupying thesame soil? As I said before, I do not know. Providence works slowly. Timeand patience only solve such enigmas. The impossible is not expected ofman, only that he shall do today the duty nearest to him. It is easy, yousay, for an outsider to preach waiting, patience, forbearance, sympathy,helpfulness. Well, these are the important lessons we get out of history.We struggle, and fume, and fret, and accomplish little in our brief hour,but somehow the world gets on. Fortunately for us, we cannot do today thework of tomorrow. All the gospel in the world can be boiled down into asingle precept. Do right now. I have observed that the boy who starts inthe morning with a determination to behave himself till bedtime, usuallygets through the day without a thrashing.

But of one thing I am sure. In the rush of industries, in the raceproblem, it is more and more incumbent upon such institutions as theUniversity of the South to maintain the highest standard of purescholarship, to increase the number of men and women devoted to theintellectual life. Long ago, in the middle of the seventeenth century,John Ward of Stratford-on-Avon, clergyman and physician, wrote in hisdiary: "The wealth of a nation depends upon its populousness, and itspopulousness depends upon the liberty of conscience that is granted toit, for this calls in strangers and promotes trading." Great is theattraction of a benign climate and of a fruitful soil, but a greaterattraction is an intelligent people, that values the best things in life,a society hospitable, companionable, instinct with intellectual life,awake to the great ideas that make life interesting.

As I travel through the South and become acquainted with its magnificentresources and opportunities, and know better and love more the admirablequalities of its people, I cannot but muse in a fond prophecy upon thebrilliant part it is to play in the diversified life and the great futureof the American Republic. But, North and South, we have a hard fight withmaterializing tendencies. God bless the University of the South!

THE PILGRIM, AND THE AMERICAN OF TODAY—1892

By Charles Dudley Warner

This December evening, the imagination, by a law of contrast, recallsanother December night two hundred and seventy years ago. The circle ofdarkness is drawn about a little group of Pilgrims who have come ashoreon a sandy and inhospitable coast. On one side is a vexed and wintry sea,three thousand miles of tossing waves and tempest, beyond which lie thehome, the hedgerows and cottages, the church towers, the libraries anduniversities, the habits and associations of an old civilization, thestrongest and dearest ties that can entwine around a human heart,abandoned now definitely and forever by these wanderers; on the otherside a wintry forest of unknown extent, without highways, the lair ofwild beasts, impenetrable except by trails known only to the savages,whose sudden appearance and disappearance adds mystery and terror to theimpression the imagination has conjured up of the wilderness.

This darkness is symbolic. It stands for a vaster obscurity. This is anencampment on the edge of a continent, the proportions of which areunknown, the form of which is only conjectured. Behind this screen offorest are there hills, great streams, with broad valleys, ranges ofmountains perhaps, vast plains, lakes, other wildernesses of illimitableextent? The adventurers on the James hoped they could follow the streamto highlands that looked off upon the South Sea, a new route to India andthe Spice Islands. This unknown continent is attacked, it is true, inmore than one place. The Dutch are at the mouth of the Hudson; there is aLondon company on the James; the Spaniards have been long in Florida, andhave carried religion and civilization into the deserts of New Mexico.Nevertheless, the continent, vaster and more varied than was guessed, ispractically undiscovered, untrodden. How inadequate to the subjection ofany considerable portion of it seems this little band of ill-equippedadventurers, who cannot without peril of life stray a league from the baywhere the "Mayflower" lies.

It is not to be supposed that the Pilgrims had an adequate conception ofthe continent, or of the magnitude of their mission on it, or of thenation to come of which they were laying the foundations. They did theduty that lay nearest to them; and the duty done today, perhaps withoutprescience of its consequences, becomes a permanent stone in the edificeof the future. They sought a home in a fresh wilderness, where they mightbe undisturbed by superior human authority; they had no doctrinariannotions of equality, nor of the inequality which is the only possiblecondition of liberty; the idea of toleration was not born in their age;they did not project a republic; they established a theocracy, a churchwhich assumed all the functions of a state, recognizing one SupremePower, whose will in human conduct they were to interpret. Already,however, in the first moment, with a true instinct of self-government,they drew together in the cabin of the "Mayflower" in an association—tocarry out the divine will in society. But, behold how speedily theirideas expanded beyond the Jewish conception, necessarily expanded withopportunity and the practical self-dependence of colonies cut off fromthe aid of tradition, and brought face to face with the problems ofcommunities left to themselves. Only a few years later, on the banks ofthe Connecticut, Thomas Hooker, the first American Democrat, proclaimedthat "the foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of thepeople," that "the choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people,by God's own allowance," that it is the right of the people not only tochoose but to limit the power of their rulers, and he exhorted, "as Godhas given us liberty to take it." There, at that moment, in Hartford,American democracy was born; and in the republican union of the threetowns of the Connecticut colony, Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield, wasthe germ of the American federal system, which was adopted into thefederal constitution and known at the time as the "ConnecticutCompromise."

It were not worth while for me to come a thousand miles to say this, orto draw over again for the hundredth time the character of the NewEngland Pilgrim, nor to sketch his achievement on this continent. But itis pertinent to recall his spirit, his attitude toward life, and toinquire what he would probably do in the circ*mstances in which we findourselves.

It is another December night, before the dawn of a new year. And thisnight still symbolizes the future. You have subdued a continent, and itstands in the daylight radiant with a material splendor of which thePilgrims never dreamed. Yet a continent as dark, as unknown, exists. Itis yourselves, your future, your national life. The other continent wasmade, you had only to discover it, to uncover it. This you must makeyourselves.

We have finished the outline sketch of a magnificent nation. Theterritory is ample; it includes every variety of climate, in the changingseasons, every variety of physical conformation, every kind of productionsuited to the wants, almost everything desired in the imagination, ofman. It comes nearer than any empire in history to being self-sufficient,physically independent of the rest of the globe. That is to say, if itwere shut off from the rest of the world, it has in itself the materialfor great comfort and civilization. And it has the elements of motion, ofa*gitation, of life, because the vast territory is filling up with arapidity unexampled in history. I am not saying that isolated it couldattain the highest civilization, or that if it did touch a high one itcould long hold it in a living growth, cut off from the rest of theworld. I do not believe it. For no state, however large, is sufficientunto itself. No state is really alive in the highest sense whosereceptivity is not equal to its power to contribute to the world withwhich its destiny is bound up. It is only at its best when it is a partof the vital current of movement, of sympathy, of hope, of enthusiasm ofthe world at large. There is no doctrine so belittling, so withering toour national life, as that which conceives our destiny to be a life ofexclusion of the affairs and interests of the whole globe, hemmed in tothe selfish development of our material wealth and strength, surroundedby a Chinese wall built of strata of prejudice on the outside and ofignorance on the inside. Fortunately it is a conception impossible to berealized.

There is something captivating to the imagination in being a citizen of agreat nation, one powerful enough to command respect everywhere, and sojust as not to excite fear anywhere. This proud feeling of citizenship isa substantial part of a man's enjoyment of life; and there is a certaincompensation for hardships, for privations, for self-sacrifice, in theglory of one's own country. It is not a delusion that one can afford todie for it. But what in the last analysis is the object of a government?What is the essential thing, without which even the glory of a nationpasses into shame, and the vastness of empire becomes a mockery? I willnot say that it is the well-being of every individual, because the termwell-being—the 'bien etre' of the philosophers of the eighteenthcentury—has mainly a materialistic interpretation, and may be attainedby a compromise of the higher life to comfort, and even of patriotism toselfish enjoyment.

That is the best government in which the people, and all the people, getthe most out of life; for the object of being in this world is notprimarily to build up a government, a monarchy, an aristocracy, ademocracy, or a republic, or to make a nation, but to live the best sortof life that can be lived.

We think that our form of government is the one best calculated to attainthis end. It is of all others yet tried in this world the one least feltby the people, least felt as an interference in the affairs of privatelife, in opinion, in conscience, in our freedom to attain position, tomake money, to move from place to place, and to follow any career that isopen to our ability. In order to maintain this freedom of action, thisnon-interference, we are bound to resist centralization of power; for acentral power in a republic, grasped and administered by bosses, is nomore tolerable than central power in a despotism, grasped andadministered by a hereditary aristocrat. Let us not be deceived by names.Government by the consent of the people is the best government, but it isnot government by the people when it is in the hands of political bosses,who juggle with the theory of majority rule. What republics have most tofear is the rule of the boss, who is a tyrant without responsibility. Hemakes the nominations, he dickers and trades for the elections, and atthe end he divides the spoils. The operation is more uncertain than ahorse race, which is not decided by the speed of the horses, but by thestate of the wagers and the manipulation of the jockeys. We strikedirectly at his power for mischief when we organize the entire civilservice of the nation and of the States on capacity, integrity,experience, and not on political power.

And if we look further, considering the danger of concentration of powerin irresponsible hands, we see a new cause for alarm in undue federalmastery and interference. This we can only resist by the constantassertion of the rights, the power, the dignity of the individual State,all that it has not surrendered in the fundamental constitution of theRepublic. This means the full weight of the State, as a State, as apolitical unit, in the election of President; and the full weight of theState, as a State, as a political unit, without regard to its population,in the senate of the United States. The senate, as it stands, as it wasmeant to be in the Constitution, is the strongest safeguard which thefundamental law established against centralization, against the tyrannyof mere majorities, against the destruction of liberty, in such adiversity of climates and conditions as we have in our vast continent. Itis not a mere check upon hasty legislation; like some second chambers inEurope, it is the representative of powers whose preservation in theirdignity is essential to the preservation of the form of our governmentit*elf.

We pursue the same distribution of power and responsibility when we passto the States. The federal government is not to interfere in what theState can do and ought to do for itself; the State is not to meddle withwhat the county can best do for itself; nor the county in the affairsbest administered by the town and the municipality. And so we come to theindividual citizen. He cannot delegate his responsibility. The governmenteven of the smallest community must be, at least is, run by parties andby party machinery. But if he wants good government, he must pay ascareful attention to the machinery,—call it caucus, primary, convention,town-meeting,—as he does to the machinery of his own business. If hehands it over to bosses, who make politics a trade for their ownlivelihood, he will find himself in the condition of stockholders of abank whose directors are mere dummies, when some day the cashier packsthe assets and goes on a foreign journey for his health. When the citizensimply does his duty in the place where he stands, the boss will beeliminated, in the nation, in the State, in the town, and we shall have,what by courtesy we say we have now, a government by the people. Then allthe way down from the capital to the city ward, we shall have vitalpopular government, free action, discussion, agitation, life. What ananomaly it is, that a free people, reputed shrewd and intelligent, shouldintrust their most vital interests, the making of their laws, the layingof their taxes, the spending of their money, even their education and themanagement of their public institutions, into the keeping of politicalbosses, whom they would not trust to manage the least of their businessaffairs, nor to arbitrate on what is called a trial of speed at anagricultural fair.

But a good government, the best government, is only an opportunity.However vast the country may become in wealth and population, it cannotrise in quality above the average of the majority of its citizens; andits goodness will be tested in history by its value to the average man,not by its bigness, not by its power, but by its adaptability to thepeople governed, so as to develop the best that is in them. It isincidental and imperative that the country should be an agreeable one tolive in; but it must be more than that, it must be favorable to thegrowth of the higher life. The Puritan community of Massachusetts Bay,whose spirit we may happily contrast with that of the Pilgrims whoseanniversary we celebrate, must have been as disagreeable to live in asany that history records; not only were the physical conditions of lifehard, but its inquisitorial intolerance overmatched that which it escapedin England. It was a theocratic despotism, untempered by recreation oramusem*nt, and repressive not only of freedom of expression but offreedom of thought. But it had an unconquerable will, a mighty sense ofduty, a faith in God, which not only established its grip upon thecontinent but carried its influence from one ocean to the other. It didnot conquer by its bigotry, by its intolerance, its cruel persecutingspirit, but by its higher mental and spiritual stamina. These lower andbaser qualities of the age of the Puritans leave a stain upon a greatachievement; it took Massachusetts almost two centuries to cast them offand come into a wholesome freedom, but the vital energy and therecognition of the essential verities inhuman life carried all theinstitutions of the Puritans that were life-giving over the continent.

Here in the West you are near the centre of a vast empire, you feel itsmighty pulse, the throb and heartbeat of its immense and growingstrength. Some of you have seen this great civilization actually grow onthe vacant prairies, in the unoccupied wilderness, on the sandy shores ofthe inland seas. You have seen the trails of the Indian and the deerreplaced by highways of steel, and upon the spots where the firstimmigrants corralled their wagons, and the voyagers dragged their canoesupon the reedy shore, you have seen arise great cities, centres ofindustry, of commerce, of art, attaining in a generation the proportionsand the world-wide fame of cities that were already famous before thediscovery of America.

Naturally the country is proud of this achievement. Naturally we magnifyour material prosperity. But in this age of science and invention thisdevelopment may be said to be inevitable, and besides it is the necessaryoutlet of the energy of a free people. There must be growth of cities,extension of railways, improvement of agriculture, development ofmanufactures, amassing of wealth, concentration of capital, beautifyingof homes, splendid public buildings, private palaces, luxury, display.Without reservoirs of wealth there would be no great universities,schools of science, museums, galleries of art, libraries, solidinstitutions of charity, and perhaps not the wide diffusion of culturewhich is the avowed aim of modern civilization.

But this in its kind is an old story. It is an experiment that has beenrepeated over and over. History is the record of the rise of splendidcivilizations, many of which have flowered into the most gloriousproducts of learning and of art, and have left monuments of the proudestmaterial achievements. Except in the rapidity with which steam andelectricity have enabled us to move to our object, and in the discoveriesof science which enable us to relieve suffering and prolong human life,there is nothing new in our experiment. We are pursuing substantially theold ends of material success and display. And the ends are not differentbecause we have more people in a nation, or bigger cities with tallerbuildings, or more miles of railway, or grow more corn and cotton, ormake more plows and threshing-machines, or have a greater variety ofproducts than any nation ever had before. I fancy that a pleased visitorfrom another planet the other day at Chicago, who was shown an assemblymuch larger than ever before met under one roof, might have beeninterested to know that it was also the wisest, the most cultivated, themost weighty in character of any assembly ever gathered under one roof.Our experiment on this continent was intended to be something more thanthe creation of a nation on the old pattern, that should become big andstrong, and rich and luxurious, divided into classes of the very wealthyand the very poor, of the enlightened and the illiterate. It was intendedto be a nation in which the welfare of the people is the supreme object,and whatever its show among nations it fails if it does not become this.This welfare is an individual matter, and it means many things. Itincludes in the first place physical comfort for every person willing anddeserving to be physically comfortable, decent lodging, good food,sufficient clothing. It means, in the second place, that this shall be anagreeable country to live in, by reason of its impartial laws, socialamenities, and a fair chance to enjoy the gifts of nature and Providence.And it means, again, the opportunity to develop talents, aptitudes forcultivation and enjoyment, in short, freedom to make the most possibleout of our lives. This is what Jefferson meant by the "pursuit ofhappiness"; it was what the Constitution meant by the "general welfare,"and what it tried to secure in States, safe-guarded enough to secureindependence in the play of local ambition and home rule, and in afederal republic strong enough to protect the whole from foreigninterference. We are in no vain chase of an equality which wouldeliminate all individual initiative, and check all progress, by ignoringdifferences of capacity and strength, and rating muscles equal to brains.But we are in pursuit of equal laws, and a fairer chance of leading happylives than humanity in general ever had yet. And this fairer chance wouldnot, for instance, permit any man to become a millionaire by somanipulating railways that the subscribing towns and private stockholdersshould lose their investments; nor would it assume that any Gentile orJew has the right to grow rich by the chance of compelling poor women tomake shirts for six cents apiece. The public opinion which sustains thesedeeds is as un-American, and as guilty as their doers. While abuses likethese exist, tolerated by the majority that not only make public opinion,but make the laws, this is not a government for the people, any more thana government of bosses is a government by the people.

The Pilgrims of Plymouth could see no way of shaping their lives inaccordance with the higher law except by separating themselves from theworld. We have their problem, how to make the most of our lives, but theconditions have changed. Ours is an age of scientific aggression, fiercecompetition, and the widest toleration. The horizon of humanity isenlarged. To live the life now is to be no more isolated or separate, butto throw ourselves into the great movement of thought, and feeling, andachievement. Therefore we are altruists in charity, missionaries ofhumanity, patriots at home. Therefore we have a justifiable pride in thegrowth, the wealth, the power of the nation, the state, the city. But thestream cannot rise above its source. The nation is what the majority ofits citizens are. It is to be judged by the condition of its humblestmembers. We shall gain nothing over other experiments in government,although we have money enough to buy peace from the rest of the world, orarms enough to conquer it, although we rear upon our material prosperitya structure of scientific achievement, of art, of literatureunparalleled, if the common people are not sharers in this greatprosperity, and are not fuller of hope and of the enjoyment of life thancommon people ever were before.

And we are all common people when it comes to that. Whatever thegreatness of the nation, whatever the accumulation of wealth, the worthof the world to us is exactly the worth of our individual lives. Themagnificent opportunity in this Republic is that we may make the mostpossible out of our lives, and it will continue only as we adhere to theoriginal conception of the Republic. Politics without virtue,money-making without conscience, may result in great splendor, but assuch an experiment is not new, its end can be predicted. An agreeablehome for a vast, and a free, and a happy people is quite another thing.It expects thrift, it expects prosperity, but its foundations are in themoral and spiritual life.

Therefore I say that we are still to make the continent we havediscovered and occupied, and that the scope and quality of our nationallife are still to be determined. If they are determined not by the narrowtenets of the Pilgrims, but by their high sense of duty, and of the valueof the human soul, it will be a nation that will call the world up to ahigher plane of action than it ever attained before, and it will bring ina new era of humanity. If they are determined by the vulgar successes ofa mere material civilization, it is an experiment not worth making. Itwould have been better to have left the Indians in possession, to see ifthey could not have evolved out of their barbarism some new line ofaction.

The Pilgrims were poor, and they built their huts on a shore which gavesuch nigg*rdly returns for labor that the utmost thrift was required tosecure the necessaries of life. Out of this struggle with nature andsavage life was no doubt evolved the hardihood, the endurance, thatbuilds states and wins the favors of fortune. But poverty is not commonlya nurse of virtue, long continued, it is a degeneration. It is almost asdifficult for the very poor man to be virtuous as for the very rich man;and very good and very rich at the same time, says Socrates, a man cannotbe. It is a great people that can withstand great prosperity. Thecondition of comfort without extremes is that which makes a happy life. Iknow a village of old-fashioned houses and broad elm-shaded streets inNew England, indeed more than one, where no one is inordinately rich, andno one is very poor, where paupers are so scarce that it is difficult tofind beneficiaries for the small traditionary contribution for the churchpoor; where the homes are centres of intelligence, of interest in books,in the news of the world, in the church, in the school, in politics;whence go young men and women to the colleges, teachers to the illiterateparts of the land, missionaries to the city slums. Multiply such villagesall over the country, and we have one of the chief requisites for anideal republic.

This has been the longing of humanity. Poets have sung of it; prophetshave had visions of it; statesmen have striven for it; patriots have diedfor it. There must be somewhere, some time, a fruitage of so muchsuffering, so much sacrifice, a land of equal laws and equalopportunities, a government of all the people for the benefit of all thepeople; where the conditions of living will be so adjusted that every onecan make the most out of his life, neither waste it in hopeless slaverynor in selfish tyranny, where poverty and crime will not be hereditarygeneration after generation, where great fortunes will not be for vulgarostentation, but for the service of humanity and the glory of the State,where the privileges of freemen will be so valued that no one will bemean enough to sell his vote nor corrupt enough to attempt to buy a vote,where the truth will at last be recognized, that the society is notprosperous when half its members are lucky, and half are miserable, andthat that nation can only be truly great that takes its orders from theGreat Teacher of Humanity.

And, lo! at last here is a great continent, virgin, fertile, a land ofsun and shower and bloom, discovered, organized into a great nation, witha government flexible in a distributed home rule, stiff as steel in acentral power, already rich, already powerful. It is a land of promise.The materials are all here. Will you repeat the old experiment of amaterial success and a moral and spiritual failure? Or will you make itwhat humanity has passionately longed for? Only good individual lives cando that.

SOME CAUSES OF THE PREVAILING DISCONTENT

By Charles Dudley Warner

The Declaration of Independence opens with the statement of a great andfruitful political truth. But if it had said:—"We hold these truths tobe self-evident: that all men are created unequal; that they are endowedby their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these arelife, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," it would also have statedthe truth; and if it had added, "All men are born in society with certainduties which cannot be disregarded without danger to the social state,"it would have laid down a necessary corollary to the first declaration.No doubt those who signed the document understood that the second clauselimited the first, and that men are created equal only in respect tocertain rights. But the first part of the clause has been taken alone asthe statement of a self-evident truth, and the attempt to make thisunlimited phrase a reality has caused a great deal of misery. Inconnection with the neglect of the idea that the recognition of certainduties is as important as the recognition of rights in the political andsocial state—that is, in connection with the doctrine of laissez faire—this popular notion of equality is one of the most disastrous forces inmodern society.

Doubtless men might have been created equal to each other in everyrespect, with the same mental capacity, the same physical ability, withlike inheritances of good or bad qualities, and born into exactly similarconditions, and not dependent on each other. But men never were socreated and born, so far as we have any record of them, and by analogy wehave no reason to suppose that they ever will be. Inequality is the moststriking fact in life. Absolute equality might be better, but so far aswe can see, the law of the universe is infinite diversity in unity; andvariety in condition is the essential of what we call progress—it is, infact, life. The great doctrine of the Christian era—the brotherhood ofman and the duty of the strong to the weak—is in sharp contrast withthis doctrinarian notion of equality. The Christian religion neverproposed to remove the inequalities of life or its suffering, but by theincoming of charity and contentment and a high mind to give individualmen a power to be superior to their conditions.

It cannot, however, be denied that the spirit of Christianity hasameliorated the condition of civilized peoples, cooperating in this withbeneficent inventions. Never were the mass of the people so well fed, sowell clad, so well housed, as today in the United States. Their ordinarydaily comforts and privileges were the luxuries of a former age, oftenindeed unknown and unattainable to the most fortunate and privilegedclasses. Nowhere else is it or was it so easy for a man to change hiscondition, to satisfy his wants, nowhere else has he or had he suchadvantages of education, such facilities of travel, such an opportunityto find an environment to suit himself. As a rule the mass of mankindhave been spot where they were born. A mighty change has taken place inregard to liberty, freedom of personal action, the possibility of cominginto contact with varied life and an enlarged participation in thebounties of nature and the inventions of genius. The whole world is inmotion, and at liberty to be so. Everywhere that civilization has gonethere is an immense improvement in material conditions during the lastone hundred years.

And yet men were never so discontented, nor did they ever find so manyways of expressing their discontent. In view of the general ameliorationof the conditions of life this seems unreasonable and illogical, but itmay seem less so when we reflect that human nature is unchanged, and thatwhich has to be satisfied in this world is the mind. And there are someexceptions to this general material prosperity, in its result to theworking classes. Manufacturing England is an exception. There is nothingso pitiful, so hopeless in the record of man, not in the Middle Ages, notin rural France just before the Revolution, as the physical and mentalcondition of the operators in the great manufacturing cities and in thevast reeking slums of London. The political economists have made Englandthe world's great workshop, on the theory that wealth is the greatestgood in life, and that with the golden streams flowing into England froma tributary world, wages would rise, food be cheap, employment constant.The horrible result to humanity is one of the exceptions to the generaluplift of the race, not paralleled as yet by anything in this country,but to be taken note of as a possible outcome of any materialcivilization, and fit to set us thinking whether we have not got on awrong track. Mr. Froude, fresh from a sight of the misery of industrialEngland, and borne straight on toward Australia over a vast ocean,through calm and storm, by a great steamer,—horses of fire yoked to asea-chariot,—exclaims: "What, after all, have these wonderfulachievements done to elevate human nature? Human nature remains as itwas. Science grows, but morality is stationary, and art is vulgarized.Not here lie the 'things necessary to salvation,' not the things whichcan give to human life grace, or beauty, or dignity."

In the United States, with its open opportunities, abundant land, wherethe condition of the laboring class is better actually and in possibilitythan it ever was in history, and where there is little poverty exceptthat which is inevitably the accompaniment of human weakness and crime,the prevailing discontent seems groundless. But of course an agitation sowidespread, so much in earnest, so capable of evoking sacrifice, even tothe verge of starvation and the risk of life, must have some reason inhuman nature. Even an illusion—and men are as ready to die for anillusion as for a reality—cannot exist without a cause.

Now, content does not depend so much upon a man's actual as his relativecondition. Often it is not so much what I need, as what others have thatdisturbs me. I should be content to walk from Boston to New York, and bea fortnight on the way, if everybody else was obliged to walk who madethat journey. It becomes a hardship when my neighbor is whisked over theroute in six hours and I have to walk. It would still be a hardship if heattained the ability to go in an hour, when I was only able to accomplishthe distance in six hours. While there has been a tremendous uplift allalong the line of material conditions, and the laboring man who is soberand industrious has comforts and privileges in his daily life which therich man who was sober and industrious did not enjoy a hundred years ago,the relative position of the rich man and the poor man has not greatlychanged. It is true, especially in the United States, that the poor havebecome rich and the rich poor, but inequality of condition is about asmarked as it was before the invention of labor-saving machinery, andthough workingmen are better off in many ways, the accumulation of vastfortunes, acquired often in brutal disregard of humanity, marks thecontrast of conditions perhaps more emphatically than it ever appearedbefore. That this inequality should continue in an era of universaleducation, universal suffrage, universal locomotion, universalemancipation from nearly all tradition, is a surprise, and a perfectlycomprehensible cause of discontent. It is axiomatic that all men arecreated equal. But, somehow, the problem does not work out in the desiredactual equality of conditions. Perhaps it can be forced to the rightconclusion by violence.

It ought to be said, as to the United States, that a very considerablepart of the discontent is imported, it is not native, nor based on anyactual state of things existing here. Agitation has become a business. Agreat many men and some women, to whom work of any sort is distasteful,live by it. Some of them are refugees from military or politicaldespotism, some are refugees from justice, some from the lowestconditions of industrial slavery. When they come here, they assume thatthe hardships they have come away to escape exist here, and they beginagitating against them. Their business is to so mix the real wrongs ofour social life with imaginary hardships, and to heighten the whole withillusory and often debasing theories, that discontent will be engendered.For it is by means of that only that they live. It requires usually agreat deal of labor, of organization, of oratory to work up thisdiscontent so that it is profitable. The solid workingmen of America whoknow the value of industry and thrift, and have confidence in the reliefto be obtained from all relievable wrongs by legitimate political orother sedate action, have no time to give to the leadership of agitationswhich require them to quit work, and destroy industries, and attack thesocial order upon which they depend. The whole case, you may remember,was embodied thousands of years ago in a parable, which Jotham, standingon the top of Mount Gerizim, spoke to the men of Shechem:

"The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they saidunto the olive-tree, 'Reign thou over us.'

"But the olive-tree said unto them, 'Should I leave my fatness wherewithby me they honor God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?'

"And the trees said to the fig-tree, 'Come thou and reign over us.'

"But the fig-tree said unto them, 'Should I forsake my sweetness and mygood fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees?'

"Then said the trees unto the vine, 'Come thou and reign over us.'

"And the vine said unto them, 'Should I leave my wine, which cheereth Godand man, and go to be promoted over the trees?'

"Then said the trees unto the bramble, 'Come thou and reign over us.'

"And the bramble said to the trees, 'If in truth ye anoint me king overyou, then come and put your trust in my shadow; and if not, let fire comeout of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon.'"

In our day a conflagration of the cedars of Lebanon has been the onlyresult of the kingship of the bramble.

In the opinion of many, our universal education is one of the chiefcauses of the discontent. This might be true and not be an argumentagainst education, for a certain amount of discontent is essential toself-development and if, as we believe, the development of the bestpowers of every human being is a good in itself, education ought not tobe held responsible for the evils attending a transitional period. Yet wecannot ignore the danger, in the present stage, of an education that isnecessarily superficial, that engenders conceit of knowledge and power,rather than real knowledge and power, and that breeds in two-thirds ofthose who have it a distaste for useful labor. We believe in education;but there must be something wrong in an education that sets so manypeople at odds with the facts of life, and, above all, does not furnishthem with any protection against the wildest illusions. There issomething wanting in the education that only half educates people.

Whether there is the relation of cause and effect between the two I donot pretend to say, but universal and superficial education in thiscountry has been accompanied with the most extraordinary delusions andthe evolution of the wildest theories. It is only necessary to refer, byway of illustration, to the greenback illusion, and to the whole group ofspiritualistic disturbances and psychological epidemics. It sometimesseems as if half the American people were losing the power to applylogical processes to the ordinary affairs of life.

In studying the discontent in this country which takes the form of alabor movement, one is at first struck by its illogical aspects. So faras it is an organized attempt to better the condition of men byassociation of interests it is consistent. But it seems strange that thedoctrine of individualism should so speedily have an outcome in apersonal slavery, only better in the sense that it is voluntary, thanthat which it protested against. The revolt from authority, the assertionof the right of private judgment, has been pushed forward into asocialism which destroys individual liberty of action, or to a state ofanarchy in which the weak would have no protection. I do not imagine thatthe leaders who preach socialism, who live by agitation and not by labor,really desire to overturn the social order and bring chaos. If socialchaos came, their occupation would be gone, for if all men were reducedto a level, they would be compelled to scratch about with the rest for aliving. They live by agitation, and they are confident that governmentwill be strong enough to hold things together, so that they can continueagitation.

The strange thing is that their followers who live by labor and expect tolive by it, and believe in the doctrine of individualism, and loveliberty of action, should be willing to surrender their discretion to anarbitrary committee, and should expect that liberty of action would bepreserved if all property were handed over to the State, which shouldundertake to regulate every man's time, occupation, wages, and so on. Thecentral committee or authority, or whatever it might be called, would bean extraordinary despotism, tempered only by the idea that it could beoverturned every twenty-four hours. But what security would there be forany calculations in life in a state of things in expectation of arevolution any moment? Compared with the freedom of action in such agovernment as ours, any form of communism is an iniquitous and meddlesomedespotism. In a less degree an association to which a man surrenders theright to say when, where, and for how much he shall work, is a despotism,and when it goes further and attempts to put a pressure on all menoutside of the association, so that they are free neither to work nor tohire the workmen they choose, it is an extraordinary tyranny. It almostputs in the shade Mexican or Russian personal government. A demand ismade upon a railway company that it shall discharge a certain workmanbecause and only because he is not a member of the union. The companyrefuses. Then a distant committee orders a strike on that road, whichthrows business far and wide into confusion, and is the cause of heavyloss to tens of thousands who have no interest in any association ofcapital or labor, many of whom are ruined by this violence. Some of theresults of this surrender of personal liberty are as illegal asillogical.

The boycott is a conspiracy to injure another person, and as suchindictable at common law. A strike, if a conspiracy only to raise wagesor to reduce hours of labor, may not be indictable, if its object cannotbe shown to be the injury of another, though that may be incidentally itseffect. But in its incidents, such as violence, intimidation, and in somecases injury to the public welfare, it often becomes an indictableoffense. The law of conspiracy is the most ill-defined branch ofjurisprudence, but it is safe to say of the boycott and the strike thatthey both introduce an insupportable element of tyranny, of dictation, ofinterference, into private life. If they could be maintained, societywould be at the mercy of an, irresponsible and even secret tribunal.

The strike is illogical. Take the recent experience in this country. Wehave had a long season of depression, in which many earned very littleand labor sought employment in vain. In the latter part of winter theprospect brightened, business revived, orders for goods poured in to allthe factories in the country, and everybody believed that we were on theeve of a very prosperous season. This was the time taken to orderstrikes, and they were enforced in perhaps a majority of cases againstthe wishes of those who obeyed the order, and who complained of noimmediate grievance. What men chiefly wanted was the opportunity to work.The result has been to throw us all back into the condition of stagnationand depression. Many people are ruined, an immense amount of capitalwhich ventured into enterprises is lost, but of course the greatestsufferers are the workingmen themselves.

The methods of violence suggested by the communists and anarchists arenot remedial. Real difficulties exist, but these do not reach them. Thefact is that people in any relations incur mutual obligations, and theworld cannot go on without a recognition of duties as well as rights. Weall agree that every man has a right to work for whom he pleases, and toquit the work if it does not or the wages do not suit him. On the otherhand, a man has a right to hire whom he pleases, pay such wages as hethinks he can afford, and discharge men who do not suit him. But when mencome together in the relation of employer and employed, otherconsiderations arise. A man has capital which, instead of loaning atinterest or locking up in real estate or bonds, he puts into a factory.In other words, he unlocks it for the benefit partly of men who wantwages. He has the expectation of making money, of making more than hecould by lending his money. Perhaps he will be disappointed, for a commonexperience is the loss of capital thus invested. He hires workmen atcertain wages. On the strength of this arrangement, he accepts orders andmakes contracts for the delivery of goods. He may make money one year andlose the next. It is better for the workman that he should prosper, forthe fund of capital accumulated is that upon which they depend to givethem wages in a dull time. But some day when he is in a corner withorders, and his rivals are competing for the market, and labor is scarce,his men strike on him.

Conversely, take the workman settled down to work in the mill, at thebest wages attainable at the time. He has a house and family. He hasgiven pledges to society. His employer has incurred certain duties inregard to him by the very nature of their relations. Suppose the workmanand his family cannot live in any comfort on the wages he receives. Theemployer is morally bound to increase the wages if he can. But if,instead of sympathizing with the situation of his workman, he forms acombination with all the mills of his sort, and reduces wages merely toincrease his gains, he is guilty of an act as worthy of indictment as thestrike. I do not see why a conspiracy against labor is not as illegal asa conspiracy against capital. The truth is, the possession of power bymen or associations makes them selfish and generally cruel. Few employersconsider anything but the arithmetic of supply and demand in fixingwages, and workingmen who have the power, tend to act as selfishly as themale printers used to act in striking in an establishment which dared togive employment to women typesetters. It is of course sentimental to sayit, but I do not expect we shall ever get on with less friction than wehave now, until men recognize their duties as well as their rights intheir relations with each other.

In running over some of the reasons for the present discontent, and theoften illogical expression of it, I am far from saying anything againstlegitimate associations for securing justice and fair play. Disassociatedlabor has generally been powerless against accumulated capital. Ofcourse, organized labor, getting power will use its power (as power isalways used) unjustly and tyrannically. It will make mistakes, it willoften injure itself while inflicting general damage. But with all itsinjustice, with all its surrender of personal liberty, it seeks to callthe attention of the world to certain hideous wrongs, to which the worldis likely to continue selfishly indifferent unless rudely shaken out ofits sense of security. Some of the objects proposed by these associationsare chimerical, but the agitation will doubtless go on until anotherelement is introduced into work and wages than mere supply and demand. Ibelieve that some time it will be impossible that a woman shall be forcedto make shirts at six cents apiece, with the gaunt figures of starvationor a life of shame waiting at the door. I talked recently with the driverof a street-car in a large city. He received a dollar and sixty cents aday. He went on to his platform at eight in the morning, and left it attwelve at night, sixteen hours of continuous labor every day in the week.He had no rest for meals, only snatched what he could eat as he drovealong, or at intervals of five or eight minutes at the end of routes. Hehad no Sunday, no holiday in the year.

Between twelve o'clock at night and eight the next morning he must washand clean his car. Thus his hours of sleep were abridged. He was obligedto keep an eye on the passengers to see that they put their fares in thebox, to be always, responsible for them, that they got on and off withoutaccident, to watch that the rules were enforced, and that collisions andcommon street dangers were avoided. This mental and physical strain forsixteen consecutive hours, with scant sleep, so demoralized him that hewas obliged once in two or three months to hire a substitute and go awayto sleep. This is treating a human being with less consideration than thehorses receive. He is powerless against the great corporation; if hecomplains, his place is instantly filled; the public does not care.

Now what I want to say about this case, and that of the woman who makes ashirt for six cents (and these are only types of disregard of human soulsand bodies that we are all familiar with), is that if society remainsindifferent it must expect that organizations will attempt to right them,and the like wrongs, by ways violent and destructive of the innocent andguilty alike. It is human nature, it is the lesson of history, that realwrongs, unredressed, grow into preposterous demands. Men are much likenature in action; a little disturbance of atmospheric equilibrium becomesa cyclone, a slight break in the levee 'a crevasse with immensedestructive power.

In considering the growth of discontent, and of a natural disregard ofduties between employers and employed, it is to be noted that while wagesin nearly all trades are high, the service rendered deteriorates, lessconscience is put into the work, less care to give a fair day's work fora fair day's wages, and that pride in good work is vanishing. This may bein the nature of retaliation for the indifference to humanity taught by acertain school of political economists, but it is, nevertheless, one ofthe most alarming features of these times. How to cultivate the sympathyof the employers with the employed as men, and how to interest theemployed in their work beyond the mere wages they receive, is the doubleproblem.

As the intention of this paper was not to suggest remedies, but only toreview some of the causes of discontent, I will only say, as to thisdouble problem, that I see no remedy so long as the popular notionprevails that the greatest good of life is to make money rapidly, andwhile it is denied that all men who contribute to prosperity ought toshare equitably in it. The employed must recognize the necessity of anaccumulated fund of capital, and on the other hand the employer must beas anxious to have about him a contented, prosperous community, as toheap up money beyond any reasonable use for it. The demand seems to bereasonable that the employer in a prosperous year ought to share with theworkmen the profits beyond a limit that capital, risk, enterprise, andsuperior skill can legitimately claim; and that on the other hand theworkmen should stand by the employer in hard times.

Discontent, then, arises from absurd notions of equality, from naturalconditions of inequality, from false notions of education, and from thevery patent fact, in this age, that men have been educated into wantsmuch more rapidly than social conditions have been adjusted, or perhapsever can be adjusted, to satisfy those wants. Beyond all the actualhardship and suffering, there is an immense mental discontent which hasto be reckoned with.

This leads me to what I chiefly wanted to say in this paper, to the causeof discontent which seems to me altogether the most serious, altogetherthe most difficult to deal with. We may arrive at some conception of it,if we consider what it is that the well-to-do, the prosperous, the rich,the educated and cultivated portions of society, most value just now.

If, to take an illustration which is sufficiently remote to give us thenecessary perspective, if the political economists, the manufacturers,the traders and aristocracy of England had had chiefly in mind thedevelopment of the laboring people of England into a fine type of men andwomen, full of health and physical vigor, with minds capable of expansionand enjoyment, the creation of decent, happy, and contented homes, wouldthey have reared the industrial fabric we now see there? If they had notput the accumulation of wealth above the good of individual humanity,would they have turned England into a grimy and smoky workshop,commanding the markets of the world by cheap labor, condemning the massof the people to unrelieved toil and the most squalid and degradedconditions of life in towns, while the land is more and more set apartfor the parks and pleasure grounds of the rich? The policy pursued hasmade England the richest of countries, a land of the highest refinementand luxury for the upper classes, and of the most misery for the greatmass of common people. On this point we have but to read the testimony ofEnglish writers themselves. It is not necessary to suppose that thepolitical economists were inhuman. They no doubt believed that if Englandattained this commanding position, the accumulated wealth would raise allclasses into better conditions. Their mistake is that of all peoples whohave made money their first object. Looked at merely on the materialside, you would think that what a philanthropic statesman would desire,who wished a vigorous, prosperous nation, would be a strong and virilepopulation, thrifty and industrious, and not mere slaves of mines andmills, degenerating in their children, year by year, physically andmorally. But apparently they have gone upon the theory that it is money,not man, that makes a state.

In the United States, under totally different conditions, and under aneconomic theory that, whatever its defects on paper, has neverthelessinsisted more upon the worth of the individual man, we have had, all thesame, a distinctly material development. When foreign critics havecommented upon this, upon our superficiality, our commonplaceness, whatthey are pleased to call the weary level of our mediocrity, upon theraging unrest and race for fortune, and upon the tremendous pace ofAmerican life, we have said that this is incident to a new country andthe necessity of controlling physical conditions, and of fitting ourheterogeneous population to their environment. It is hardly to beexpected, we have said, until, we have the leisure that comes from easycirc*mstances and accumulated wealth, that we should show the graces ofthe highest civilization, in intellectual pursuits. Much of thiscriticism is ignorant, and to say the best of it, ungracious, consideringwhat we have done in the way of substantial appliances for education, inthe field of science, in vast charities, and missionary enterprises, andwhat we have to show in the diffused refinements of life.

We are already wealthy; we have greater resources and higher credit thanany other nation; we have more wealth than any save one; we have vastaccumulations of fortune, in private hands and in enormous corporations.There exists already, what could not be said to exist a quarter of acentury ago, a class who have leisure. Now what is the object in life ofthis great, growing class that has money and leisure, what does itchiefly care for? In your experience of society, what is it that itpursues and desires? Is it things of the mind or things of the senses?What is it that interests women, men of fortune, club-men, merchants, andprofessional men whose incomes give them leisure to follow theirinclinations, the young men who have inherited money? Is it politicalduties, the affairs of state, economic problems, some adjustment of ourrelations that shall lighten and relieve the wrongs and misery everywhereapparent; is the interest in intellectual pursuits and art (except in adilettante way dictated for a season by fashion) in books, in the widerange of mental pleasures which make men superior to the accidents offortune? Or is the interest of this class, for the most part, with somenoble exceptions, rather in things grossly material, in what is calledpleasure? To come to somewhat vulgar details, is not the growing desirefor equipages, for epicurean entertainments, for display, either refinedor ostentatious, rivalry in profusion and expense, new methods forkilling time, for every imaginable luxury, which is enjoyed partlybecause it pleases the senses, and partly because it satisfies an ignoblecraving for class distinction?

I am not referring to these things as a moralist at all, but simply intheir relation to popular discontent. The astonishing growth of luxuryand the habit of sensual indulgence are seen everywhere in this country,but are most striking in the city of New York, since the fashion andwealth of the whole country meet there for display and indulgence,—NewYork, which rivals London and outdoes Paris in sumptuousness. Therecongregate more than elsewhere idlers, men and women of leisure who havenothing to do except to observe or to act in the spectacle of VanityFair. Aside from the display of luxury in the shops, in the streets, inprivate houses, one is impressed by the number of idle young men andwomen of fashion.

It is impossible that a workingman who stands upon a metropolitan streetcorner and observes this Bacchanalian revel and prodigality of expense,should not be embittered by a sense of the inequality of the conditionsof life. But this is not the most mischievous effect of the spectacle. Itis the example of what these people care for. With all their wealth andopportunities, it seems to him that these select people have no higherobject than the pleasures of the senses, and he is taught daily byreiterated example that this is the end and aim of life. When he sees thevalue the intelligent and the well-to-do set upon material things, andtheir small regard for intellectual things and the pleasures of the mind,why should he not most passionately desire those things which his morefortunate neighbors put foremost? It is not the sight of a Peter Cooperand his wealth that discontents him, nor the intellectual pursuits of thescholar who uses the leisure his fortune gives him for the higherpleasures of the mind. But when society daily dins upon his senses thelesson that not manhood and high thinking and a contented spirit are themost desirable things, whether one is rich or poor, is he to be blamedfor having a wrong notion of what will or should satisfy him? What thewell-to-do, the prosperous, are seen to value most in life will be thethings most desired by the less fortunate in accumulation. It is not somuch the accumulation of money that is mischievous in this country, forthe most stupid can see that fortunes are constantly shifting hands, butit is the use that is made of the leisure and opportunity that moneybrings.

Another observation, which makes men discontented with very slowaccumulation, is that apparently, in the public estimation it does notmake much difference whether a man acquires wealth justly or unjustly. Ifhe only secures enough, he is a power, he has social position, he graspsthe high honors and places in the state. The fact is that the tolerationof men who secure wealth by well known dishonest and sharp practices is achief cause of the demoralization of the public conscience.

However the lines social and political may be drawn, we have to keep inmind that nothing in one class can be foreign to any other, and thatpractically one philosophy underlies all the movements of an age. If ourphilosophy is material, resulting in selfish ethics, all our energieswill have a materialistic tendency. It is not to be wondered at,therefore, that, in a time when making money is the chief object, if itis not reckoned the chief good, our education should all tend to what iscalled practical, that is, to that which can be immediately serviceablein some profitable occupation of life, to the neglect of those studieswhich are only of use in training the intellect and cultivating andbroadening the higher intelligence. To this purely material andutilitarian idea of life, the higher colleges and universities everywhereare urged to conform themselves. Thus is the utilitarian spirit eatingaway the foundations of a higher intellectual life, applying toeverything a material measure. In proportion as scholars yield to it,they are lowering the standard of what is most to be desired in humanlife, acting in perfect concert with that spirit which exalts moneymaking as the chief good, which makes science itself the slave of theavaricious and greedy, and fills all the world with discontented andignoble longing. We do not need to be told that if we neglect purescience for the pursuit of applied science only, applied science willspeedily be degraded and unfruitful; and it is just as true that if wepursue knowledge only for the sake of gain, and not for its own sake,knowledge will lose the power it has of satisfying the higher needs ofthe human soul. If we are seen to put only a money value on the highereducation, why should not the workingman, who regards it only as adistinction of class or privilege, estimate it by what he can see of itspractical results in making men richer, or bringing him more pleasure ofthe senses?

The world is ruled by ideas, by abstract thought. Society, literature,art, politics, in any given age are what the prevailing system ofphilosophy makes them. We recognize this clearly in studying any pastperiod. We see, for instance, how all the currents of human life changedupon the adoption of the inductive method; no science, no literature, noart, practical or fine, no person, inquiring scholar, day laborer,trader, sailor, fine lady or humblest housekeeper, escaped the influence.Even though the prevailing ethics may teach that every man's highest dutyis to himself, we cannot escape community of sympathy and destiny in thiscold-blooded philosophy.

No social or political movement stands by itself. If we inquire, we shallfind one preponderating cause underlying every movement of the age. Ifthe utilitarian spirit is abroad, it accounts for the devotion to theproduction of wealth, and to the consequent separation of classes and thediscontent, and it accounts also for the demand that all education shallbe immediately useful. I was talking the other day with a lady who wasdoubting what sort of an education to give her daughter, a young girl ofexceedingly fine mental capacity. If she pursued a classical course, shewould, at the age of twenty-one, know very little of the sciences. And Isaid, why not make her an intellectual woman? At twenty-one, with atrained mind, all knowledges are at one's feet.

If anything can correct the evils of devotion to money, it seems to methat it is the production of intellectual men and women, who will findother satisfactions in life than those of the senses. And when labor seeswhat it is that is really most to be valued, its discontent will be of anobler kind.

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO

By Charles Dudley Warner

At the close of the war for the Union about five millions of negroes wereadded to the citizenship of the United States. By the census of 1890 thisnumber had become over seven and a half millions. I use the word negrobecause the descriptive term black or colored is not determinative. Thereare many varieties of negroes among the African tribes, but all of themagree in certain physiological if not psychological characteristics,which separate them from all other races of mankind; whereas there aremany races, black or colored, like the Abyssinian, which have no othernegro traits.

It is also a matter of observation that the negro traits persist inrecognizable manifestations, to the extent of occasional reversions,whatever may be the mixture of a white race. In a certain degree thispersistence is true of all races not come from an historic common stock.

In the political reconstruction the negro was given the ballot withoutany requirements of education or property. This was partly a measure ofparty balance of power; and partly from a concern that the negro wouldnot be secure in his rights as a citizen without it, and also upon thetheory that the ballot is an educating influence.

This sudden transition and shifting of power was resented at the South,resisted at first, and finally it has generally been evaded. This was dueto a variety of reasons or prejudices, not all of them creditable to agenerous desire for the universal elevation of mankind, but one of themthe historian will judge adequate to produce the result. Indeed, it mighthave been foreseen from the beginning. This reconstruction measure was anattempt to put the superior part of the community under the control ofthe inferior, these parts separated by all the prejudices of race, and bytraditions of mastership on the one side and of servitude on the other. Iventure to say that it was an experiment that would have failed in anycommunity in the United States, whether it was presented as a piece ofphilanthropy or of punishment.

A necessary sequence to the enfranchisem*nt of the negro was hiseducation. However limited our idea of a proper common education may be,it is a fundamental requisite in our form of government that every votershould be able to read and write. A recognition of this truth led to theestablishment in the South of public schools for the whites and blacks,in short, of a public school system. We are not to question the sincerityand generousness of this movement, however it may have halted and lostenthusiasm in many localities.

This opportunity of education (found also in private schools) was hailedby the negroes, certainly, with enthusiasm. It cannot be doubted that atthe close of the war there was a general desire among the freedmen to beinstructed in the rudiments of knowledge at least. Many parents,especially women, made great sacrifices to obtain for their children thisadvantage which had been denied to themselves. Many youths, both boys andgirls, entered into it with a genuine thirst for knowledge which it waspathetic to see.

But it may be questioned, from developments that speedily followed,whether the mass of negroes did not really desire this advantage as asign of freedom, rather than from a wish for knowledge, and covet itbecause it had formerly been the privilege of their masters, and marked abroad distinction between the races. It was natural that this should beso, when they had been excluded from this privilege by pains andpenalties, when in some States it was one of the gravest offenses toteach a negro to read and write. This prohibition was accounted for bythe peculiar sort of property that slavery created, which would becomeinsecure if intelligent, for the alphabet is a terrible disturber of allfalse relations in society.

But the effort at education went further than the common school and theprimary essential instruction. It introduced the higher education.Colleges usually called universities—for negroes were established inmany Southern States, created and stimulated by the generosity ofNorthern men and societies, and often aided by the liberality of theStates where they existed. The curriculum in these was that in collegesgenerally,—the classics, the higher mathematics, science, philosophy,the modern languages, and in some instances a certain technicalinstruction, which was being tried in some Northern colleges. Theemphasis, however, was laid on liberal culture. This higher education wasoffered to the mass that still lacked the rudiments of intellectualtraining, in the belief that education—the education of the moment, theeducation of superimposed information, can realize the theory ofuniversal equality.

This experiment has now been in operation long enough to enable us tojudge something of its results and its promises for the future. Theseresults are of a nature to lead us seriously to inquire whether oureffort was founded upon an adequate knowledge of the negro, of hispresent development, of the requirements for his personal welfare andevolution in the scale of civilization, and for his training in usefuland honorable citizenship. I am speaking of the majority, the mass to beconsidered in any general scheme, and not of the exceptional individuals—exceptions that will rapidly increase as the mass is lifted—who arecapable of taking advantage to the utmost of all means of cultivation,and who must always be provided with all the opportunities needed.

Millions of dollars have been invested in the higher education of thenegro, while this primary education has been, taking the whole mass,wholly inadequate to his needs. This has been upon the supposition thatthe higher would compel the rise of the lower with the undeveloped negrorace as it does with the more highly developed white race. An examinationof the soundness of this expectation will not lead us far astray from oursubject.

The evolution of a race, distinguishing it from the formation of anation, is a slow process. We recognize a race by certain peculiartraits, and by characteristics which slowly change. They are acquiredlittle by little in an evolution which, historically, it is oftendifficult to trace. They are due to the environment, to the discipline oflife, and to what is technically called education. These work together tomake what is called character, race character, and it is this which istransmitted from generation to generation. Acquirements are nothereditary, like habits and peculiarities, physical or mental. A man doesnot transmit to his descendants his learning, though he may transmit theaptitude for it. This is illustrated in factories where skilled labor ishanded down and fixed in the same families, that is, where the same kindof labor is continued from one generation to another. The child, put towork, has not the knowledge of the parent, but a special aptitude in hisskill and dexterity. Both body and mind have acquired certaintransmissible traits. The same thing is seen on a larger scale in a wholenation, like the Japanese, who have been trained into what seems an artinstinct.

It is this character, quality, habit, the result of a slow educationalprocess, which distinguishes one race from another. It is this that therace transmits, and not the more or less accidental education of a decadeor an era. The Brahmins carry this idea into the next life, and say thatthe departing spirit carries with him nothing except this individualcharacter, no acquirements or information or extraneous culture. It wasperhaps in the same spirit that the sad preacher in Ecclesiastes saidthere is no "knowledge nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest."

It is by this character that we classify civilized and evensemi-civilized races; by this slowly developed fibre, this slowaccumulation of inherent quality in the evolution of the human being fromlower to higher, that continues to exist notwithstanding the powerfulinfluence of governments and religions. We are understood when we speakof the French, the Italian, the Pole, the Spanish, the English, theGerman, the Arab race, the Japanese, and so on. It is what a foreignwriter calls, not inaptly, a collective race soul. As it is slow inevolution, it is persistent in enduring.

Further, we recognize it as a stage of progress, historically necessaryin the development of man into a civilized adaptation to his situation inthis world. It is a process that cannot be much hurried, and a resultthat cannot be leaped to out of barbarism by any superimposition ofknowledge or even quickly by any change of environment. We may be rightin our modern notion that education has a magical virtue that can workany kind of transformation; but we are certainly not right in supposingthat it can do this instantly, or that it can work this effect upon abarbarous race in the same period of time that it can upon one moredeveloped, one that has acquired at least a race consciousness.

Before going further, and in order to avoid misunderstanding, it isproper to say that I have the firmest belief in the ultimate developmentof all mankind into a higher plane than it occupies now. I shouldotherwise be in despair. This faith will never desist in the effort tobring about the end desired.

But, if we work with Providence, we must work in the reasonable ways of
Providence, and add to our faith patience.

It seems to be the rule in all history that the elevation of a lower raceis effected only by contact with one higher in civilization. Both reformand progress come from exterior influences. This is axiomatic, andapplies to the fields of government, religion, ethics, art, and letters.

We have been taught to regard Africa as a dark, stolid continent,unawakened, unvisited by the agencies and influences that havetransformed the world from age to age. Yet it was in northern andnortheastern Africa that within historic periods three of the mostpowerful and brilliant civilizations were developed,—the Egyptian, theCarthaginian, the Saracenic. That these civilizations had more than asurface contact with the interior, we know. To take the most ancient ofthem, and that which longest endured, the Egyptian, the Pharaohs carriedtheir conquests and their power deep into Africa. In the story of theirinvasions and occupancy of the interior, told in pictures on templewalls, we find the negro figuring as captive and slave. This contact maynot have been a fruitful one for the elevation of the negro, but itproves that for ages he was in one way or another in contact with asuperior civilization. In later days we find little trace of it in thehome of the negro, but in Egypt the negro has left his impress in themixed blood of the Nile valley.

The most striking example of the contact of the negro with a highercivilization is in the powerful medieval empire of Songhay, establishedin the heart of the negro country. The vast strip of Africa lying northof the equator and south of the twentieth parallel and west of the upperNile was then, as it is now, the territory of tribes distinctly describedas Negro. The river Niger, running northward from below Jenne to nearTimbuctoo, and then turning west and south to the Gulf of Guinea, flowsthrough one of the richest valleys in the world. In richness it iscomparable to that of the Nile and, like that of the Nile, its fertilitydepends upon the water of the central stream. Here arose in early timesthe powerful empire of Songhay, which disintegrated and fell into tribalconfusion about the middle of the seventeenth century. For a long timethe seat of its power was the city of Jenne; in later days it wasTimbuctoo.

This is not the place to enlarge upon this extraordinary piece ofhistory. The best account of the empire of Songhay is to be found in thepages of Barth, the German traveler, who had access to what seemed to hima credible Arab history. Considerable light is thrown upon it by a recentvolume on Timbuctoo by M. Dubois, a French traveler. M. Dubois findsreason to believe that the founders of the Songhese empire came fromYemen, and sought refuge from Moslem fanaticism in Central Africa somehundred and fifty years after the Hejira. The origin of the empire isobscure, but the development was not indigenous. It seems probable thatthe settlers, following traders, penetrated to the Niger valley from thevalley of the Nile as early as the third or fourth century of our era. Anevidence of this early influence, which strengthened from century tocentury, Dubois finds in the architecture of Jenne and Timbuctoo. It isnot Roman or Saracenic or Gothic, it is distinctly Pharaonic. Butwhatever the origin of the Songhay empire, it became in time Mohammedan,and so continued to the end. Mohammedanism seems, however, to have beenimposed. Powerful as the empire was, it was never free from tribalinsurrection and internal troubles. The highest mark of negro capacitydeveloped in this history is, according to the record examined by Barth,that one of the emperors was a negro.

From all that can be gathered in the records, the mass of the negroes,which constituted the body of this empire, remained pagan, did notbecome, except in outward conformity, Mohammedan and did not take theMoslem civilization as it was developed elsewhere, and that thedisintegration of the empire left the negro races practically where theywere before in point of development. This fact, if it is not overturnedby further search, is open to the explanation that the Moslemcivilization is not fitted to the development of the African negro.

Contact, such as it has been, with higher civilizations, has not in allthese ages which have witnessed the wonderful rise and development ofother races, much affected or changed the negro. He is much as he wouldbe if he had been left to himself. And left to himself, even in such afavorable environment as America, he is slow to change. In Africa therehas been no progress in organization, government, art.

No negro tribe has ever invented a written language. In his exhaustivework on the History of Mankind, Professor Frederick Ratzel, havingstudied thoroughly the negro belt of Africa, says "of writing properly socalled, neither do the modern negroes show any trace, nor have traces ofolder writing been found in negro countries."

From this outline review we come back to the situation in the UnitedStates, where a great mass of negroes—possibly over nine millions ofmany shades of colors—is for the first time brought into contact withChristian civilization. This mass is here to make or mar our nationallife, and the problem of its destiny has to be met with our own. What canwe do, what ought we to do, for his own good and for our peace andnational welfare?

In the first place, it is impossible to escape the profound impressionthat we have made a mistake in our estimate of his evolution as a race,in attempting to apply to him the same treatment for the development ofcharacter that we would apply to a race more highly organized. Has hedeveloped the race consciousness, the race soul, as I said before, acollective soul, which so strongly marks other races more or lesscivilized according to our standards? Do we find in him, as a mass(individuals always excepted), that slow deposit of training andeducation called "character," any firm basis of order, initiative ofaction, the capacity of going alone, any sure foundation of morality? Ithas been said that a race may attain a good degree of standing in theworld without the refinement of culture, but never without virtue, eitherin the Roman or the modern meaning of that word.

The African, now the American negro, has come in the United States into amore favorable position for development than he has ever before hadoffered. He has come to it through hardship, and his severeapprenticeship is not ended. It is possible that the historians centurieshence, looking back over the rough road that all races have traveled intheir evolution, may reckon slavery and the forced transportation to thenew world a necessary step in the training of the negro. We do not know.The ways of Providence are not measurable by our foot rules. We see thatslavery was unjust, uneconomic, and the worst training for citizenship insuch a government as ours. It stifled a number of germs that might haveproduced a better development, such as individuality, responsibility, andthrift,—germs absolutely necessary to the well-being of a race. It laidno foundation of morality, but in place of morality saw cultivated asuperstitious, emotional, hysterical religion. It is true that it taughta savage race subordination and obedience. Nor did it stifle certaininherent temperamental virtues, faithfulness, often highly developed, andfrequently cheerfulness and philosophic contentment in a situation thatwould have broken the spirit of a more sensitive race. In short, underall the disadvantages of slavery the race showed certain fine traits,qualities of humor and good humor, and capacity for devotion, which wereabundantly testified to by southerners during the progress of the CivilWar. It has, as a race, traits wholly distinct from those of the whites,which are not only interesting, but might be a valuable contribution to acosmopolitan civilization; gifts also, such as the love of music, andtemperamental gayety, mixed with a note of sadness, as in the Hungarians.

But slavery brought about one result, and that the most difficult in thedevelopment of a race from savagery, and especially a tropical race, arace that has always been idle in the luxuriance of a nature thatsupplied its physical needs with little labor. It taught the negro towork, it transformed him, by compulsion it is true, into an industrialbeing, and held him in the habit of industry for several generations.Perhaps only force could do this, for it was a radical transformation. Iam glad to see that this result of slavery is recognized by Mr. BookerWashington, the ablest and most clear-sighted leader the negro race hasever had.

But something more was done under this pressure, something more thancreation of a habit of physical exertion to productive ends. Skill wasdeveloped. Skilled labor, which needs brains, was carried to a highdegree of performance. On almost all the Southern plantations, and in thecities also, negro mechanics were bred, excellent blacksmiths, goodcarpenters, and house-builders capable of executing plans of higharchitectural merit. Everywhere were negroes skilled in trades, andcompetent in various mechanical industries.

The opportunity and the disposition to labor make the basis of all ourcivilization. The negro was taught to work, to be an agriculturist, amechanic, a material producer of something useful. He was taught thisfundamental thing. Our higher education, applied to him in his presentdevelopment, operates in exactly the opposite direction.

This is a serious assertion. Its truth or falsehood cannot be establishedby statistics, but it is an opinion gradually formed by experience, andthe observation of men competent to judge, who have studied the problemclose at hand. Among the witnesses to the failure of the result expectedfrom the establishment of colleges and universities for the negro areheard, from time to time, and more frequently as time goes on, practicalmen from the North, railway men, manufacturers, who have initiatedbusiness enterprises at the South. Their testimony coincides with that ofcareful students of the economic and social conditions.

There was reason to assume, from our theory and experience of the highereducation in its effect upon white races, that the result would bedifferent from what it is. When the negro colleges first opened, therewas a glow of enthusiasm, an eagerness of study, a facility ofacquirement, and a good order that promised everything for the future. Itseemed as if the light then kindled would not only continue to burn, butwould penetrate all the dark and stolid communities. It was my fortune tosee many of these institutions in their early days, and to believe thatthey were full of the greatest promise for the race. I have no intentionof criticising the generosity and the noble self-sacrifice that producedthem, nor the aspirations of their inmates. There is no doubt that theyfurnish shining examples of emancipation from ignorance, and of usefullives. But a few years have thrown much light upon the careers andcharacters of a great proportion of the graduates, and their effect uponthe communities of which they form a part, I mean, of course, with regardto the industrial and moral condition of those communities. Have thesecolleges, as a whole,—[This sentence should have been further qualifiedby acknowledging the excellent work done by the colleges at Atlanta andNashville, which, under exceptionally good management, have sent outmuch-needed teachers. I believe that their success, however, is largelyowing to their practical features.—C.D.W.]—stimulated industry,thrift, the inclination to settle down to the necessary hard work of theworld, or have they bred idleness, indisposition to work, a vaporousambition in politics, and that sort of conceit of gentility of which theworld has already enough? If any one is in doubt about this he cansatisfy himself by a sojourn in different localities in the South. Thecondition of New Orleans and its negro universities is often cited. It isa favorable example, because the ambition of the negro has been aidedthere by influence outside of the schools. The federal government hasimposed upon the intelligent and sensitive population negro officials inhigh positions, because they were negroes and not because they werespecially fitted for those positions by character or ability. It is mybelief that the condition of the race in New Orleans is lower than it wasseveral years ago, and that the influence of the higher education hasbeen in the wrong direction.

This is not saying that the higher education is responsible for thepresent condition of the negro.

Other influences have retarded his elevation and the development ofproper character, and most important means have been neglected. I onlysay that we have been disappointed in our extravagant expectations ofwhat this education could do for a race undeveloped, and so wanting incertain elements of character, and that the millions of money devoted toit might have been much better applied.

We face a grave national situation. It cannot be successfully dealt withsentimentally. It should be faced with knowledge and candor. We mustadmit our mistakes, both social and political, and set about the solutionof our problem with intelligent resolution and a large charity. It is notsimply a Southern question. It is a Northern question as well. For thetruth of this I have only to appeal to the consciousness of all Northerncommunities in which there are negroes in any considerable numbers. Havethe negroes improved, as a rule (always remembering the exceptions), inthrift, truthfulness, morality, in the elements of industriouscitizenship, even in States and towns where there has been the leastprejudice against their education? In a paper read at the last session ofthis Association, Professor W. F. Willcox of Cornell University showed bystatistics that in proportion to population there were more negrocriminals in the North than in the South. "The negro prisoners in theSouthern States to ten thousand negroes increased between 1880 and 1890twenty-nine per cent., while the white prisoners to ten thousand whitesincreased only eight per cent." "In the States where slavery was neverestablished, the white prisoners increased seven per cent. faster thanthe white population, while the negro prisoners no less than thirty-nineper cent. faster than the negro population. Thus the increase of negrocriminality, so far as it is reflected in the number of prisoners,exceeded the increase of white criminality more in the North than it didin the South."

This statement was surprising. It cannot be accounted for by colorprejudice at the North; it is related to the known shiftlessness andirresponsibility of a great portion of the negro population. If it couldbe believed that this shiftlessness is due to the late state of slavery,the explanation would not do away with the existing conditions. Schoolsat the North have for a long time been open to the negro; though colorprejudice exists, he has not been on the whole in an unfriendlyatmosphere, and willing hands have been stretched out to help him in hisambition to rise. It is no doubt true, as has been often said lately,that the negro at the North has been crowded out of many occupations bymore vigorous races, newly come to this country, crowded out not only offactory industries and agricultural, but of the positions of servants,waiters, barbers, and other minor ways of earning a living. The generalverdict is that this loss of position is due to lack of stamina andtrustworthiness. Wherever a negro has shown himself able, honest,attentive to the moral and economic duties of a citizen, eithersuccessful in accumulating property or filling honorably his station inlife, he has gained respect and consideration in the community in whichhe is known; and this is as true at the South as at the North,notwithstanding the race antagonism is more accentuated by reason of thepreponderance of negro population there and the more recent presence ofslavery. Upon this ugly race antagonism it is not necessary to enlargehere in discussing the problem of education, and I will leave it with thesingle observation that I have heard intelligent negroes, who werehonestly at work, accumulating property and disposed to postpone activepolitics to a more convenient season, say that they had nothing to fearfrom the intelligent white population, but only from the envy of theignorant.

The whole situation is much aggravated by the fact that there is aconsiderable infusion of white blood in the negro race in the UnitedStates, leading to complications and social aspirations that areinfinitely pathetic. Time only and no present contrivance of ours canameliorate this condition.

I have made this outline of our negro problem in no spirit of pessimismor of prejudice, but in the belief that the only way to remedy an evil ora difficulty is candidly and fundamentally to understand it. Two thingsare evident: First, the negro population is certain to increase in theUnited States, in a ratio at least equal to that of the whites. Second,the South needs its labor. Its deportation is an idle dream. The onlyvisible solution is for the negro to become an integral and anintelligent part of the industrial community. The way may be long, but hemust work his way up. Sympathetic aid may do much, but the salvation ofthe negro is in his own hands, in the development of individual characterand a race soul. This is fully understood by his wisest leaders. Hisworst enemy is the demagogue who flatters him with the delusion that allhe needs for his elevation is freedom and certain privileges that weredenied him in slavery.

In all the Northern cities heroic efforts are made to assimilate theforeign population by education and instruction in Americanism. In theSouth, in the city and on plantation, the same effort is necessary forthe negro, but it must be more radical and fundamental. The common schoolmust be as fully sustained and as far reaching as it is in the North,reaching the lowest in the city slums and the most ignorant in theagricultural districts, but to its strictly elemental teaching must beadded moral instructions, and training in industries and in habits ofindustry. Only by such rudimentary and industrial training can the massof the negro race in the United States be expected to improve incharacter and position. A top-dressing of culture on a field with nodepth of soil may for a moment stimulate the promise of vegetation, butno fruit will be produced. It is a gigantic task, and generations mayelapse before it can in any degree be relaxed.

Why attempt it? Why not let things drift as they are? Why attempt tocivilize the race within our doors, while there are so many distant andalien races to whom we ought to turn our civilizing attention? The answeris simple and does not need elaboration. A growing ignorant mass in ourbody politic, inevitably cherishing bitterness of feeling, is anincreasing peril to the public.

In order to remove this peril, by transforming the negro into anindustrial, law-abiding citizen, identified with the prosperity of hiscountry, the cordial assistance of the Southern white population isabsolutely essential. It can only be accomplished by regarding him as aman, with the natural right to the development of his capacity and tocontentment in a secure social state. The effort for his elevation mustbe fundamental. The opportunity of the common school must be universal,and attendance in it compulsory. Beyond this, training in the decenciesof life, in conduct, and in all the industries, must be offered in suchindustrial institutions as that of Tuskegee. For the exceptional cases ahigher education can be easily provided for those who show themselvesworthy of it, but not offered as an indiscriminate panacea.

The question at once arises as to the kind of teachers for these schoolsof various grades. It is one of the most difficult in the whole problem.As a rule, there is little gain, either in instruction or in elevation ofcharacter, if the teacher is not the superior of the taught. The learnersmust respect the attainments and the authority of the teacher. It is atoo frequent fault of our common-school system that, owing to inadequatepay and ignorant selections, the teachers are not competent to theirresponsible task. The highest skill and attainment are needed to evokethe powers of the common mind, even in a community called enlightened.Much more are they needed when the community is only slightly developedmentally and morally. The process of educating teachers of this race, fitto promote its elevation, must be a slow one. Teachers of variousindustries, such as agriculture and the mechanic arts, will be morereadily trained than teachers of the rudiments of learning in the commonschools. It is a very grave question whether, with some exceptions, theschool and moral training of the race should not be for a considerabletime to come in the control of the white race. But it must be kept inmind that instructors cheap in character, attainments, and breeding willdo more harm than good. If we give ourselves to this work, we must giveof our best.

Without the cordial concurrence in this effort of all parties, black andwhite, local and national, it will not be fruitful in fundamental andpermanent good. Each race must accept the present situation and build onit. To this end it is indispensable that one great evil, which wasinherent in the reconstruction measures and is still persisted in, shallbe eliminated. The party allegiance of the negro was bid for by thetemptation of office and position for which he was in no sense fit. Nopermanent, righteous adjustment of relations can come till this policy iswholly abandoned. Politicians must cease to make the negro a pawn in thegame of politics.

Let us admit that we have made a mistake. We seem to have expected thatwe could accomplish suddenly and by artificial Contrivances a developmentwhich historically has always taken a long time. Without abatement ofeffort or loss of patience, let us put ourselves in the common-sense, thescientific, the historic line. It is a gigantic task, only to beaccomplished by long labor in accord with the Divine purpose.

"Thou wilt not leave us in the dust;
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him; thou art just.

"Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood.

"That nothing walks with aimless feet,
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete."

THE INDETERMINATE SENTENCE—WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH THE CRIMINAL CLASS?

By Charles Dudley Warner

The problem of dealing with the criminal class seems insolvable, and itundoubtedly is with present methods. It has never been attempted on afully scientific basis, with due regard to the protection of society andto the interests of the criminal.

It is purely an economic and educational problem, and must rest upon thesame principles that govern in any successful industry, or in education,and that we recognize in the conduct of life. That little progress hasbeen made is due to public indifference to a vital question and to theaction of sentimentalists, who, in their philanthropic zeal; fancy that aradical reform can come without radical discipline. We are largelywasting our energies in petty contrivances instead of striking at theroot of the evil.

What do we mean by the criminal class? It is necessary to define thiswith some precision, in order to discuss intelligently the means ofdestroying this class. A criminal is one who violates a statute law, or,as we say, commits a crime. The human law takes cognizance of crime andnot of sin. But all men who commit crime are not necessarily in thecriminal class. Speaking technically, we put in that class those whosesole occupation is crime, who live by it as a profession, and who have noother permanent industry. They prey upon society. They are by their actsat war upon it, and are outlaws.

The State is to a certain extent responsible for this class, for it hastrained most of them, from youth up, through successive detentions inlock-ups, city prisons, county jails, and in State prisons, andpenitentiaries on relatively short sentences, under influences which tendto educate them as criminals and confirm them in a bad life. That is tosay, if a man once violates the law and is caught, he is put into amachine from which it is very difficult for him to escape without furtherdeterioration. It is not simply that the State puts a brand on him in theeyes of the community, but it takes away his self-respect without givinghim an opportunity to recover it. Once recognized as in the criminalclass, he has no further concern about the State than that of evading itspenalties so far as is consistent with pursuing his occupation of crime.

To avoid misunderstanding as to the subject of this paper, it isnecessary to say that it is not dealing with the question of prisonreform in its whole extent. It attempts to consider only a pretty welldefined class. But in doing this it does not say that other aspects ofour public peril from crime are not as important as this. We cannot relaxour efforts in regard to the relations of poverty, drink, and unsanitaryconditions, as leading to crime. We have still to take care of theexposed children, of those with parentage and surroundings inclining tocrime, of the degenerate and the unfortunate. We have to keep up thewarfare all along the line against the demoralization of society. But wehave hereto deal with a specific manifestation; we have to capture astronghold, the possession of which will put us in much better positionto treat in detail the general evil.

Why should we tolerate any longer a professional criminal class? It isnot large. It is contemptibly small compared with our seventy millions ofpeople. If I am not mistaken, a late estimate gave us less than fiftythousand persons in our State prisons and penitentiaries. If we add tothem those at large who have served one or two terms, and are generallyknown to the police, we shall not have probably more than eighty thousandof the criminal class. But call it a hundred thousand. It is a body thatseventy millions of people ought to take care of with little difficulty.And we certainly ought to stop its increase. But we do not. The classgrows every day. Those who watch the criminal reports are alarmed by thefact that an increasing number of those arrested for felonies aredischarged convicts. This is an unmistakable evidence of the growth ofthe outlaw classes.

But this is not all. Our taxes are greatly increased on account of thisclass. We require more police to watch those who are at large and preyingon society. We expend more yearly for apprehending and trying thosecaught, for the machinery of criminal justice, and for the recurringfarce of imprisoning on short sentences and discharging those felons togo on with their work of swindling and robbing. It would be good economyfor the public, considered as a taxpayer, to pay for the perpetual keepof these felons in secure confinement.

And still this is not the worst. We are all living in abject terror ofthese licensed robbers. We fear robbery night and day; we live behindbolts and bars (which should be reserved for the criminal) and we are inhourly peril of life and property in our homes and on the highways. Butthe evil does not stop here. By our conduct we are encouraging the growthof the criminal class, and we are inviting disregard of law, anddiffusing a spirit of demoralization throughout the country.

I have spoken of the criminal class as very limited; that is, the classthat lives by the industry of crime alone. But it is not isolated, and ithas widespread relations. There is a large portion of our population nottechnically criminals, which is interested in maintaining this criminalclass. Every felon is a part of a vast network of criminality. He has hisdependents, his allies, his society of vice, all the various machinery oftemptation and indulgence.

It happens, therefore, that there is great sympathy with the career ofthe lawbreakers, many people are hanging on them for support, and amongthem the so-called criminal lawyers. Any legislation likely to interfereseriously with the occupation of the criminal class or with its increaseis certain to meet with the opposition of a large body of voters. Withthis active opposition of those interested, and the astonishingindifference of the general public, it is easy to see why so little isdone to relieve us of this intolerable burden. The fact is, we go onincreasing our expenses for police, for criminal procedure, for jails andprisons, and we go on increasing the criminal class and those affiliatedwith it.

And what do we gain by our present method? We do not gain the protectionof society, and we do not gain the reformation of the criminal. These twostatements do not admit of contradiction. Even those who cling to theantiquated notion that the business of society is to punish the offendermust confess that in this game society is getting the worst of it.Society suffers all the time, and the professional criminal goes on withhis occupation, interrupted only by periods of seclusion, during which heis comfortably housed and fed. The punishment he most fears is beingcompelled to relinquish his criminal career. The object of punishment forviolation of statute law is not vengeance, it is not to inflict injuryfor injury. Only a few persons now hold to that. They say now that if itdoes little good to the offender, it is deterrent as to others. Now, isour present system deterrent? The statute law, no doubt, prevents manypersons from committing crime, but our method of administering itcertainly does not lessen the criminal class, and it does not adequatelyprotect society. Is it not time we tried, radically, a scientific, adisciplinary, a really humanitarian method?

The proposed method is the indeterminate sentence. This strikes directlyat the criminal class. It puts that class beyond the power of continuingits depredations upon society. It is truly deterrent, because it is anotification to any one intending to enter upon that method of livingthat his career ends with his first felony. As to the general effects ofthe indeterminate sentence, I will repeat here what I recently wrote forthe Yale Law Journal:

It is unnecessary to say in a law journal that the indeterminate sentence is a measure as yet untried. The phrase has passed into current speech, and a considerable portion of the public is under the impression that an experiment of the indeterminate sentence is actually being made. It is, however, still a theory, not adopted in any legislation or in practice anywhere in the world.

The misconception in regard to this has arisen from the fact that under certain regulations paroles are granted before the expiration of the statutory sentence.

An indeterminate sentence is a commitment to prison without any limit. It is exactly such a commitment as the court makes to an asylum of a man who is proved to be insane, and it is paralleled by the practice of sending a sick man to the hospital until he is cured.

The introduction of the indeterminate sentence into our criminal procedure would be a radical change in our criminal legislation and practice. The original conception was that the offender against the law should be punished, and that the punishment should be made to fit the crime, an 'opera bouffe' conception which has been abandoned in reasoning though not in practice. Under this conception the criminal code was arbitrarily constructed, so much punishment being set down opposite each criminal offense, without the least regard to the actual guilt of the man as an individual sinner.

Within the present century considerable advance has been made in regard to prison reform, especially with reference to the sanitary condition of places of confinement. And besides this, efforts of various kinds have been made with regard to the treatment of convicts, which show that the idea was gaining ground that criminals should be treated as individuals. The application of the English ticket-of-leave system was one of these efforts; it was based upon the notion that, if any criminal showed sufficient evidence of a wish to lead a different life, he should be conditionally released before the expiration of his sentence. The parole system in the United States was an attempt to carry out the same experiment, and with it went along the practice which enabled the prisoner to shorten the time of his confinement by good behavior. In some of the States reformatories have been established to which convicts have been sent under a sort of sliding sentence; that is, with the privilege given to the authorities of the reformatory to retain the offender to the full statutory term for which he might have been sentenced to State prison, unless he had evidently reformed before the expiration of that period. That is to say, if a penal offense entitled the judge to sentence the prisoner for any period from two to fifteen years, he could be kept in the reformatory at the discretion of the authorities for the full statutory term. It is from this law that the public notion of an indeterminate sentence is derived. It is, in fact, determinate, because the statute prescribes its limit.

The introduction of the ticket-of-leave and the parole systems, and the earning of time by good behavior were philanthropic suggestions and promising experiments which have not been justified by the results. It is not necessary at this time to argue that no human discretion is adequate to mete out just punishment for crimes; and it has come to be admitted generally, by men enlightened on this subject, that the real basis for dealing with the criminal rests, firstly, upon the right of society to secure itself against the attacks of the vicious, and secondly, upon the duty imposed upon society, to reform the criminal if that is possible. It is patent to the most superficial observation that our present method does not protect society, and does not lessen the number of the criminal class, either by deterrent methods or by reformatory processes, except in a very limited way.

Our present method is neither economic nor scientific nor philanthropic. If we consider the well-defined criminal class alone, it can be said that our taxes and expenses for police and the whole criminal court machinery, for dealing with those who are apprehended, and watching those who are preying upon society, yearly increase, while all private citizens in their own houses or in the streets live inconstant terror of the depredations of this class. Considered from the scientific point of view, our method is absolutely crude, and but little advance upon mediaeval conditions; and while it has its sentimental aspects, it is not real philanthropy, because comparatively few of the criminal class are permanently rescued.

The indeterminate sentence has two distinct objects: one is the absolute protection of society from the outlaws whose only business in life is to prey upon society; and the second is the placing of these offenders in a position where they can be kept long enough for scientific treatment as decadent human beings, in the belief that their lives can be changed in their purpose. No specific time can be predicted in which a man by discipline can be expected to lay aside his bad habits and put on good habits, because no two human beings are alike, and it is therefore necessary that an indefinite time in each case should be allowed for the experiment of reformation.

We have now gone far enough to see that the ticket-of-leave system, the parole system as we administer it in the State prisons (I except now some of the reformatories), and the good conduct method are substantially failures, and must continue to be so until they rest upon the absolute indeterminate sentence. They are worse than failures now, because the public mind is lulled into a false security by them, and efforts at genuine prison reform are defeated.

It is very significant that the criminal class adapted itself readily to the parole system with its sliding scale. It was natural that this should be so, for it fits in perfectly well with their scheme of life. This is to them a sort of business career, interrupted now and then only by occasional limited periods of seclusion. Any device that shall shorten those periods is welcome to them. As a matter of fact, we see in the State prisons that the men most likely to shorten their time by good behavior, and to get released on parole before the expiration of their sentence, are the men who make crime their career. They accept this discipline as a part of their lot in life, and it does not interfere with their business any more than the occasional bankruptcy of a merchant interferes with his pursuits.

It follows, therefore, that society is not likely to get security for itself, and the criminal class is not likely to be reduced essentially or reformed, without such a radical measure as the indeterminate sentence, which, accompanied, of course, by scientific treatment, would compel the convict to change his course of life, or to stay perpetually in confinement.

Of course, the indeterminate sentence would radically change our criminal jurisprudence and our statutory provisions in regard to criminals. It goes without saying that it is opposed by the entire criminal class, and by that very considerable portion of the population which is dependent on or affiliated with the criminal class, which seeks to evade the law and escape its penalties. It is also opposed by a small portion of the legal profession which gets its living out of the criminal class, and it is sure to meet the objection of the sentimentalists who have peculiar notions about depriving a man of his liberty, and it also has to overcome the objections of many who are guided by precedents, and who think the indeterminate sentence would be an infringement of the judicial prerogative.

It is well to consider this latter a little further. Our criminal code, artificial and indiscriminating as it is, is the growth of ages and is the result of the notion that society ought to take vengeance upon the criminal, at least that it ought to punish him, and that the judge, the interpreter of the criminal law, was not only the proper person to determine the guilt of the accused, by the aid of the jury, but was the sole person to judge of the amount of punishment he should receive for his crime. Now two functions are involved here: one is the determination that the accused has broken the law, the other is gauging within the rules of the code the punishment that, each individual should receive. It is a theological notion that the divine punishment for sin is somehow delegated to man for the punishment of crime, but it does not need any argument to show that no tribunal is able with justice to mete out punishment in any individual case, for probably the same degree of guilt does not attach to two men in the violation of the same statute, and while, in the rough view of the criminal law, even, one ought to have a severe penalty, the other should be treated with more leniency. All that the judge can do under the indiscriminating provisions of the statute is to make a fair guess at what the man should suffer.

Under the present enlightened opinion which sees that not punishment but the protection of society and the good of the criminal are the things to be aimed at, the judge's office would naturally be reduced to the task of determining the guilt of the man on trial, and then the care of him would be turned over to expert treatment, exactly as in a case when the judge determines the fact of a man's insanity.

If objection is made to the indeterminate sentence on the ground that it is an unusual or cruel punishment, it may be admitted that it is unusual, but that commitment to detention cannot be called cruel when the convict is given the key to the house in which he is confined. It is for him to choose whether he will become a decent man and go back into society, or whether he will remain a bad man and stay in confinement. For the criminal who is, as we might say, an accidental criminal, or for the criminal who is susceptible to good influences, the term of imprisonment under the indeterminate sentence would be shorter than it would be safe to make it for criminals under the statute. The incorrigible offender, however, would be cut off at once and forever from his occupation, which is, as we said, varied by periodic residence in the comfortable houses belonging to the State.

A necessary corollary of the indeterminate sentence is that every State prison and penitentiary should be a reformatory, in the modern meaning of that term. It would be against the interest of society, all its instincts of justice, and the height of cruelty to an individual criminal to put him in prison without limit unless all the opportunities were afforded him for changing his habits radically. It may be said in passing that the indeterminate sentence would be in itself to any man a great stimulus to reform, because his reformation would be the only means of his terminating that sentence. At the same time a man left to himself, even in the best ordered of our State prisons which is not a reformatory, would be scarcely likely to make much improvement.

I have not space in this article to consider the character of the reformatory; that subject is fortunately engaging the attention of scientific people as one of the most interesting of our modern problems. To take a decadent human being, a wreck physically and morally, and try to make a man of him, that is an attempt worthy of a people who claim to be civilized. An illustration of what can be done in this direction is furnished by the Elmira Reformatory, where the experiment is being made with most encouraging results, which, of course, would be still better if the indeterminate sentence were brought to its aid.

When the indeterminate sentence has been spoken of with a view to legislation, the question has been raised whether it should be applied to prisoners on the first, second, or third conviction of a penal offense. Legislation in regard to the parole system has also considered whether a man should be considered in the criminal class on his first conviction for a penal offense. Without entering upon this question at length, I will suggest that the convict should, for his own sake, have the indeterminate sentence applied to him upon conviction of his first penal offense. He is much more likely to reform then than he would be after he had had a term in the State prison and was again convicted, and the chance of his reformation would be lessened by each subsequent experience of this kind. The great object of the indeterminate sentence, so far as the security of society is concerned, is to diminish the number of the criminal class, and this will be done when it is seen that the first felony a man commits is likely to be his last, and that for a young criminal contemplating this career there is in this direction "no thoroughfare."

By his very first violation of the statute he walks into confinement, to stay there until he has given up the purpose of such a career.

In the limits of this paper I have been obliged to confine myself to remarks upon the indeterminate sentence itself, without going into the question of the proper organization of reformatory agencies to be applied to the convict, and without consideration of the means of testing the reformation of a man in any given case. I will only add that the methods at Elmira have passed far beyond the experimental stage in this matter.

The necessary effect of the adoption of the indeterminate sentence forfelonies is that every State prison and penitentiary must be areformatory. The convict goes into it for the term of a year at least(since the criminal law, according to ancient precedent, might requirethat, and because the discipline of the reformatory would require it as apractical rule), and he stays there until, in the judgment of competentauthority, he is fit to be trusted at large.

If he is incapable of reform, he must stay there for his natural life. Heis a free agent. He can decide to lead an honest life and have hisliberty, or he can elect to work for the State all his life in criminalconfinement.

When I say that every State prison is to be a reformatory, I except, ofcourse, from its operation, those sentenced for life for murder, or othercapital offenses, and those who have proved themselves incorrigible byrepeated violations of their parole.

It is necessary now to consider the treatment in the reformatory. Only abrief outline of it can be given here, with a general statement of theunderlying principles. The practical application of these principles canbe studied in the Elmira Reformatory of New York, the only prison forfelons where the proposed system is carried out with the neededdisciplinary severity. In studying Elmira, however, it must be borne inmind that the best effects cannot be obtained there, owing to the lack ofthe indeterminate sentence. In this institution the convict can only bedetained for the maximum term provided in the statute for his offense.When that is reached, the prisoner is released, whether he is reformed ornot.

The system of reform under the indeterminate sentence, which forconvenience may be called the Elmira system, is scientific, and it mustbe administered entirely by trained men and by specialists; the same sortof training for the educational and industrial work as is required in acollege or an industrial school, and the special fitness required for analienist in an insane asylum. The discipline of the establishment must beequal to that of a military school.

We have so far advanced in civilization that we no longer think ofturning the insane, the sick, the feebleminded, over to the care of menwithout training chosen by the chance of politics. They are put underspecialists for treatment. It is as necessary that convicts should beunder the care of specialists, for they are the most difficult andinteresting subjects for scientific treatment. If not criminals byheredity, they are largely made so by environment; they are eitherphysical degenerates or they are brutalized by vice. They have lost thepower of distinguishing right from wrong; they commonly lack will-power,and so are incapable of changing their habits without external influence.In short, the ordinary criminal is unsound and diseased in mind and body.

To deal with this sort of human decadent is, therefore, the mostinteresting problem that can be offered to the psychologist, to thephysiologist, to the educator, to the believer in the immortality of thesoul. He is still a man, not altogether a mere animal, and there isalways a possibility that he may be made a decent man, and a law-abiding,productive member of society.

Here, indeed, is a problem worthy of the application of all our knowledgeof mind and of matter, of our highest scientific attainments. But it isthe same problem that we have in all our education, be it the training ofthe mind, the development of the body, or the use of both to good ends.And it goes without saying that its successful solution, in a reformatoryfor criminals, depends upon the character of the man who administers theinstitution. There must be at the head of it a man of character, ofintellectual force, of administrative ability, and all his subordinateofficers must be fitted for their special task, exactly as they should befor a hospital, or a military establishment, for a college, or for aschool of practical industries. And when such men are demanded, they willbe forthcoming, just as they are in any department in life, when abusiness is to be developed, a great engineering project to beundertaken, or an army to be organized and disciplined.

The development of our railroad system produced a race of great railroadmen. The protection of society by the removal and reform of the criminalclass, when the public determines upon it, will call into the service aclass of men fitted for the great work. We know this is so becausealready, since the discussion of this question has been current, and haspassed into actual experiment, a race of workers and prisonsuperintendents all over the country have come to the front who areentirely capable of administering the reform system under theindeterminate sentence. It is in this respect, and not in the erection ofmodel prisons, that the great advance in penology has been made in thelast twenty years. Men of scientific attainment are more and more givingtheir attention to this problem as the most important in ourcivilization. And science is ready to take up this problem when thepublic is tired and ashamed of being any longer harried and bullied andterrorized over by the criminal class.

The note of this reform is discipline, and its success rests upon the lawof habit. We are all creatures of habit, physical and mental. Habit isformed by repetition of any action. Many of our physical habits havebecome automatic. Without entering into a physiological argument, we knowthat repetition produces habit, and that, if this is long continued, thehabit becomes inveterate. We know also that there is a habit, physicaland moral, of doing right as well as doing wrong. The criminal has thehabit of doing wrong. We propose to submit him to influences that willchange that habit. We also know that this is not accomplished bysuppressing that habit, but by putting a good one in its place.

It is true in this case that nature does not like a vacuum. The thoughtsof men are not changed by leaving them to themselves, they are changed bysubstituting other thoughts.

The whole theory of the Elmira system is to keep men long enough under astrict discipline to change their habits. This discipline is administeredin three ways. They are put to school; they are put at work; they areprescribed minute and severe rules of conduct, and in the latter trainingis included military drill.

The school and the workshop are both primarily for discipline and theformation of new habits. Only incidentally are the school and theworkshop intended to fit a man for an occupation outside of the prison.The whole discipline is to put a man in possession of his faculties, togive him self-respect, to get him in the way of leading a normal andnatural life. But it is true that what he acquires by the discipline ofstudy and the discipline of work will be available in his earning anhonest living. Keep a man long enough in this three-ply discipline, andhe will form permanent habits of well-doing. If he cannot and will notform such habits, his place is in confinement, where he cannot prey uponsociety.

There is not space here to give the details of the practices at Elmira.They are easily attainable. But I will notice one or two objections thathave been made. One is that in the congregate system men necessarilylearn evil from each other. This is, of course, an evil. It is here,however, partially overcome by the fact that the inmates are kept so busyin the variety of discipline applied to them that they have little or notime for anything else. They study hard, and are under constantsupervision as to conduct. And then their prospect of parole dependsentirely upon the daily record they make, and upon their radical changeof intention. At night they are separated in their cells. During the daythey are associated in class, in the workshop, and in drill, and thisassociation is absolutely necessary to their training. In separation fromtheir fellows, they could not be trained. Fear is expressed that men willdeceive their keepers and the board which is to pass upon them, andobtain parole when they do not deserve it. As a matter of fact, men underthis discipline cannot successfully play the hypocrite to the experts whowatch them. It is only in the ordinary prison where the parole is in usewith no adequate discipline, and without the indefinite sentence, thatdeception can be practiced. But suppose a man does play the hypocrite soas to deceive the officers, who know him as well as any employer knowshis workmen or any teacher knows his scholars, and deceives theindependent board so as to get a parole. If he violates that parole, hecan be remanded to the reformatory, and it will be exceedingly difficultfor him to get another parole. And, if he should again violate hisparole, he would be considered incorrigible and be placed in a lifeprison.

We have tried all other means of protecting society, of lessening thecriminal class, of reforming the criminal. The proposed indeterminatesentence, with reformatory discipline, is the only one that promises torelieve society of the insolent domination and the terrorism of thecriminal class; is the only one that can deter men from making a careerof crime; is the only one that offers a fair prospect for the reformationof the criminal offender.

Why not try it? Why not put the whole system of criminal jurisprudenceand procedure for the suppression of crime upon a sensible and scientificbasis?

LITERARY COPYRIGHT

By Charles Dudley Warner

This is the first public meeting of the National Institute of Arts andLetters. The original members were selected by an invitation from theAmerican Social Science Association, which acted under the power of itscharter from the Congress of the United States. The members thusselected, who joined the Social Science Association, were given thealternative of organizing as an independent institute or as a branch ofthe Social Science Association.

At the annual meeting of the Social Science Association on September 4,1899, at Saratoga Springs, the members of the Institute voted to organizeindependently. They formally adopted the revised constitution, which hadbeen agreed upon at the first meeting, in New York in the precedingJanuary, and elected officers as prescribed by the constitution.

The object is declared to be the advancement of art and literature, andthe qualification shall be notable achievements in art or letters. Thenumber of active members will probably be ultimately fixed at onehundred. The society may elect honorary and associate members withoutlimit. By the terms of agreement between the American Social ScienceAssociation and the National Institute, the members of each are 'ipsofacto' associate members of the other.

It is believed that the advancement of art and literature in this countrywill be promoted by the organization of the producers of literature andart. This is in strict analogy with the action of other professions andof almost all the industries. No one doubts that literature and art areor should be leading interests in our civilization, and their dignitywill be enhanced in the public estimation by a visible organization oftheir representatives, who are seriously determined upon raising thestandards by which the work of writers and artists is judged. Theassociation of persons having this common aim cannot but stimulateeffort, soften unworthy rivalry into generous competition, and promoteenthusiasm and good fellowship in their work. The mere coming together tocompare views and discuss interests and tendencies and problems whichconcern both the workers and the great public, cannot fail to be ofbenefit to both.

In no other way so well as by association of this sort can be created thefeeling of solidarity in our literature, and the recognition of itspower. It is not expected to raise any standard of perfection, or in anyway to hamper individual development, but a body of concentrated opinionmay raise the standard by promoting healthful and helpful criticism, bydiscouraging mediocrity and meretricious smartness, by keeping alive thetraditions of good literature, while it is hospitable to all discoverersof new worlds. A safe motto for any such society would be Tradition andFreedom—'Traditio et Libertas'.

It is generally conceded that what literature in America needs at thismoment is honest, competent, sound criticism. This is not likely to beattained by sporadic efforts, especially in a democracy of letters wherethe critics are not always superior to the criticised, where the man infront of the book is not always a better marksman than the man behind thebook. It may not be attained even by an organization of men united uponcertain standards of excellence. I do not like to use the word authority,but it is not unreasonable to suppose that the public will be influencedby a body devoted to the advancement of art and literature, whosesincerity and discernment it has learned to respect, and admission intowhose ranks will, I hope, be considered a distinction to be sought for bygood work. The fashion of the day is rarely the judgment of posterity.You will recall what Byron wrote to Coleridge: "I trust you do not permityourself to be depressed by the temporary partiality of what is called'the public' for the favorites of the moment; all experience is againstthe permanency of such impressions. You must have lived to see many ofthese pass away, and will survive many more."

The chief concern of the National Institute is with the production ofworks of art and of literature, and with their distribution. In theremarks following I shall confine myself to the production anddistribution of literature. In the limits of this brief address I canonly in outline speak of certain tendencies and practices which areaffecting this production and this distribution. The interests involvedare, first, those of the author; second, those of the publisher; third,those of the public. As to all good literature, the interests of thesethree are identical if the relations of the three are on the properbasis. For the author, a good book is of more pecuniary value than a poorone, setting aside the question of fame; to the publisher, the right ofpublishing a good book is solid capital,—an established house, in thelong run, makes more money on "Standards" than on "Catchpennies"; and tothe public the possession of the best literature is the breath of life,as that of the bad and mediocre is moral and intellectual decadence. Butin practice the interests of the three do not harmonize. The author, evensupposing his efforts are stimulated by the highest aspirations forexcellence and not by any commercial instinct, is compelled by hiscirc*mstances to get the best price for his production; the publisherwishes to get the utmost return for his capital and his energy; and thepublic wants the best going for the least money.

Consider first the author, and I mean the author, and not the merecraftsman who manufactures books for a recognized market. His solecapital is his talent. His brain may be likened to a mine, gold, silver,copper, iron, or tin, which looks like silver when new. Whatever it is,the vein of valuable ore is limited, in most cases it is slight. When itis worked out, the man is at the end of his resources. Has he expended orproduced capital? I say he has produced it, and contributed to the wealthof the world, and that he is as truly entitled to the usufruct of it asthe miner who takes gold or silver out of the earth. For how long? I willspeak of that later on. The copyright of a book is not analogous to thepatent right of an invention, which may become of universal necessity tothe world. Nor should the greater share of this usufruct be absorbed bythe manufacturer and publisher of the book. The publisher has a clearright to guard himself against risks, as he has the right of refusal toassume them. But there is an injustice somewhere, when for many a book,valued and even profitable to somebody, the author does not receive theprice of a laborer's day wages for the time spent on it—to say nothingof the long years of its gestation.

The relation between author and publisher ought to be neither complicatednor peculiar. The author may sell his product outright, or he may sellhimself by an agreement similar to that which an employee in amanufacturing establishment makes with his master to give to theestablishment all his inventions. Either of these methods is fair andbusinesslike, though it may not be wise. A method that prevailed in theearly years of this century was both fair and wise. The author agreedthat the publisher should have the exclusive right to publish his bookfor a certain term, or to make and sell a certain number of copies. Whenthose conditions were fulfilled, the control of the property reverted tothe author. The continuance of these relations between the two depended,as it should depend, upon mutual advantage and mutual good-will. By thepresent common method the author makes over the use of his property tothe will of the publisher. It is true that he parts with the use only ofthe property and not with the property itself, and the publisher in lawacquires no other title, nor does he acquire any sort of interest in thefuture products of the author's brain. But the author loses all controlof his property, and its profit to him may depend upon his continuing tomake over his books to the same publisher. In this continuance he isliable to the temptation to work for a market, instead of following thefree impulses of his own genius. As to any special book, the publisher isthe sole judge whether to push it or to let it sink into the stagnationof unadvertised goods.

The situation is full of complications. Theoretically it is the interestof both parties to sell as many books as possible. But the author has aninterest in one book, the publisher in a hundred. And it is natural andreasonable that the man who risks his money should be the judge of thepolicy best for his whole establishment. I cannot but think that thissituation would be on a juster footing all round if the author returnedto the old practice of limiting the use of his property by the publisher.I say this in full recognition of the fact that the publishers might beunwilling to make temporary investments, or to take risks. What then?Fewer books might be published. Less vanity might be gratified. Lessmoney might be risked in experiments upon the public, and more might bemade by distributing good literature. Would the public be injured? It isan idea already discredited that the world owes a living to everybody whothinks he can write, and it is a superstition already fading that capitalwhich exploits literature as a trade acquires any special privileges.

The present international copyright, which primarily concerns itself withthe manufacture of books, rests upon an unintelligible protective tariffbasis. It should rest primarily upon an acknowledgment of the author'sright of property in his own work, the same universal right that he hasin any other personal property. The author's international copyrightshould be no more hampered by restrictions and encumbrances than hisnational copyright. Whatever regulations the government may make for theprotection of manufactures, or trade industries, or for purposes ofrevenue on importations, they should not be confounded with the author'sright of property. They have no business in an international copyrightact, agreement, or treaty. The United States copyright for native authorscontains no manufacturing restrictions. All we ask is that foreignauthors shall enjoy the same privileges we have under our law, and thatforeign nations shall give our authors the privileges of their localcopyright laws. I do not know any American author of any standing who hasever asked or desired protection against foreign authors.

This subject is so important that I may be permitted to enlarge upon it,in order to make clear suggestions already made, and to array againarguments more or less familiar. I do this in the view of bringing beforethe institute work worthy of its best efforts, which if successful willentitle this body to the gratitude and respect of the country. I refer tothe speedy revision of our confused and wholly inadequate Americancopyright laws, and later on to a readjustment of our internationalrelations.

In the first place let me bring to your attention what is, to the vastbody of authors, a subject of vital interest, which it is not too much tosay has never received that treatment from authors themselves which itsimportance demands. I refer to the property of authors in theirproductions. In this brief space and time I cannot enter fully upon thisgreat subject, but must be content to offer certain suggestions for yourconsideration.

The property of an author in the product of his mental labor ought to beas absolute and unlimited as his property in the product of his physicallabor. It seems to me idle to say that the two kinds of labor productsare so dissimilar that the ownership cannot be protected by like laws. Inthis age of enlightenment such a proposition is absurd. The history ofcopyright law seems to show that the treatment of property in brainproduct has been based on this erroneous idea. To steal the paper onwhich an author has put his brain work into visible, tangible form is inall lands a crime, larceny, but to steal the brain work is not a crime.The utmost extent to which our enlightened American legislators, atalmost the end of the nineteenth century, have gone in protectingproducts of the brain has been to give the author power to sue in civilcourts, at large expense, the offender who has taken and sold hisproperty.

And what gross absurdity is the copyright law which limits even this poordefense of author's property to a brief term of years, after theexpiration of which he or his children and heirs have no defense, norecognized property whatever in his products.

And for some inexplicable reason this term of years in which he may besaid to own his property is divided into two terms, so that at the end ofthe first he is compelled to re-assert his ownership by renewing hiscopyright, or he must lose all ownership at the end of the short term.

It is manifest to all honest minds that if an author is entitled to ownhis work for a term of years, it is equally the duty of his government tomake that ownership perpetual. He can own and protect and leave to hischildren and his children's children by will the manuscript paper onwhich he has written, and he should have equal right to leave to themthat mental product which constitutes the true money value of his labor.It is unnecessary to say that the mental product is always as easy to beidentified as the physical product. Its identification is absolutelycertain to the intelligence of judges and juries. And it is apparent thatthe interests of assignees, who are commonly publishers, are equal withthose of authors, in making absolute and perpetual this property in whichboth are dealers.

Another consideration follows here. Why should the ownership of a bushelof wheat, a piece of silk goods, a watch, or a handkerchief in thepossession of an American carried or sent to England, or brought thenceto this country, be absolute and unlimited, while the ownership of hisown products as an author or as a purchaser from an author is madedependent on his nationality? Why should the property of the manufacturerof cloths, carpets, satins, and any and every description of goods, beable to send his products all over the world, subject only to the tarifflaws of the various countries, while the author (alone of all knownproducers) is forbidden to do so? The existing law of our country says tothe foreign author, "You can have property in your book only if youmanufacture it into salable form in this country." What would be said ofthe wisdom or wild folly of a law which sought to protect other Americanindustries by forbidding the importation of all foreign manufactures?

No question of tariff protection is here involved. What duty shall beimposed upon foreign products or foreign manufactures is a question ofpolitical economy. The wrong against which authors should protest is inannexing to their terms of ownership of their property a protectivetariff revision. For, be it observed, this is a subject of abstractjustice, moral right, and it matters nothing whether the author beAmerican, English, German, French, Hindoo, or Chinese,—and it is verycertain that when America shall enact a simple, just, copyright law,giving to every human being the same protection of law to his property inhis mental products as in the work of his hands, every civilized nationon earth will follow the noble example.

As it now stands, authors who annually produce the raw material formanufacturing purposes to an amount in value of millions, supporting vastpopulations of people, authors whose mental produce rivals and exceeds incommercial value many of the great staple products of our fields, are theonly producers who have no distinct property in their products, who arenot protected in holding on to the feeble tenure the law gives them, andwhose quasi-property in their works, flimsy as it is, is limited to a fewyears, and cannot with certainty be handed down to their children. Itwill be said, it is said, that it is impossible for the author to obtainan acknowledgment of absolute right of property in his brain work. In ourcivilization we have not yet arrived at this state of justice. It may beso. Indeed some authors have declared that this justice would be againstpublic policy. I trust they are sustained by the lofty thought that inthis view they are rising above the petty realm of literature into thebroad field of statesmanship.

But I think there will be a general agreement that in the needed revisalof our local copyright law we can attain some measure of justice. Some ofthe most obvious hardships can be removed. There is no reason why anauthor should pay for the privilege of a long life by the loss of hiscopyrights, and that his old age should be embittered by poverty becausehe cannot have the results of the labor of his vigorous years. There isno reason why if he dies young he should leave those dependent on himwithout support, for the public has really no more right to appropriatehis book than it would have to take his house from his widow andchildren. His income at best is small after he has divided with thepublishers.

No, there can certainly be no valid argument against extending thecopyright of the author to his own lifetime, with the addition of fortyor fifty years for the benefit of his heirs. I will not leave thisportion of the topic without saying that a perfectly harmonious relationbetween authors and publishers is most earnestly to be desired, norwithout the frank acknowledgment that, in literary tradition and in thepresent experience, many of the most noble friendships and the mostgenerous and helpful relations have subsisted, as they ought always tosubsist, between the producers and the distributors of literature,especially when the publisher has a love for literature, and the authoris a reasonable being and takes pains to inform himself about thepublishing business.

One aspect of the publishing business which has become increasinglyprominent during the last fifteen years cannot be overlooked, for it iscertain to affect seriously the production of literature as to quality,and its distribution. Capital has discovered that literature is a productout of which money can be made, in the same way that it can be made incotton, wheat, or iron. Never before in history has so much money beeninvested in publishing, with the single purpose of creating and supplyingthe market with manufactured goods. Never before has there been such anappeal to the reading public, or such a study of its tastes, or supposedtastes, wants, likes and dislikes, coupled also with the same shrewdanxiety to ascertain a future demand that governs the purveyors of springand fall styles in millinery and dressmaking. Not only the contents ofthe books and periodicals, but the covers, must be made to catch thefleeting fancy. Will the public next season wear its hose dotted orstriped?

Another branch of this activity is the so-called syndicating of theauthor's products in the control of one salesman, in which good work andinferior work are coupled together at a common selling price and incommon notoriety. This insures a wider distribution, but what is itseffect upon the quality of literature? Is it your observation that thewriter for a syndicate, on solicitation for a price or an order for acertain kind of work, produces as good quality as when he worksindependently, uninfluenced by the spirit of commercialism? The questionis a serious one for the future of literature.

The consolidation of capital in great publishing establishments has itsadvantages and its disadvantages. It increases vastly the yearly outputof books. The presses must be kept running, printers, papermakers, andmachinists are interested in this. The maw of the press must be fed. Thecapital must earn its money. One advantage of this is that when new andusable material is not forthcoming, the "standards" and the bestliterature must be reproduced in countless editions, and the bestliterature is broadcast over the world at prices to suit all purses, eventhe leanest. The disadvantage is that products, in the eagerness ofcompetition for a market, are accepted which are of a character to harmand not help the development of the contemporary mind in moral andintellectual strength. The public expresses its fear of this in thephrase it has invented—"the spawn of the press." The author who writessimply to supply this press, and in constant view of a market, is certainto deteriorate in his quality, nay more, as a beginner he is satisfied ifhe can produce something that will sell without regard to its quality. Isit extravagant to speak of a tendency to make the author merely anadjunct of the publishing house? Take as an illustration the publicationsin books and magazines relating to the late Spanish-American war. Howmany of them were ordered to meet a supposed market, and how many of themwere the spontaneous and natural productions of writers who had somethingto say? I am not quarreling, you see, with the newspapers who do thissort of thing; I am speaking of the tendency of what we have beenaccustomed to call literature to take on the transient and hastycharacter of the newspaper.

In another respect, in method if not in quality, this literatureapproaches the newspaper. It is the habit of some publishing houses, notof all, let me distinctly say, to seek always notoriety, not to nurse andkeep before the public mind the best that has been evolved from time totime, but to offer always something new. The year's flooring is threshedoff and the floor swept to make room for a fresh batch. Effort eventuallyceases for the old and approved, and is concentrated on experiments. Thisis like the conduct of a newspaper. It is assumed that the public must bestartled all the time.

I speak of this freely because I think it as bad policy for the publisheras it is harmful to the public of readers. The same effort used tointroduce a novelty will be much better remunerated by pushing the saleof an acknowledged good piece of literature.

Literature depends, like every other product bought by the people, uponadvertising, and it needs much effort usually to arrest the attention ofour hurrying public upon what it would most enjoy if it were brought toits knowledge.

It would not be easy to fix the limit in this vast country to thecirculation of a good book if it were properly kept before the public.Day by day, year by year, new readers are coming forward with curiosityand intellectual wants. The generation that now is should not be deprivedof the best in the last generation. Nay more, one publication, in anyform, reaches only a comparatively small portion of the public that wouldbe interested in it. A novel, for instance, may have a large circulationin a magazine; it may then appear in a book; it may reach other readersserially again in the columns of a newspaper; it may be offered again inall the by-ways by subscription, and yet not nearly exhaust itslegitimate running power. This is not a supposition but a fact proved bytrial. Nor is it to be wondered at, when we consider that we have anunequaled hom*ogeneous population with a similar common-school education.In looking over publishers' lists I am constantly coming across goodbooks out of print, which are practically unknown to this generation, andyet are more profitable, truer to life and character, more entertainingand amusing, than most of those fresh from the press month by month.

Of the effect upon the literary product of writing to order, in obedienceto a merely commercial instinct, I need not enlarge to a company ofauthors, any more than to a company of artists I need to enlarge upon theeffect of a like commercial instinct upon art.

I am aware that the evolution of literature or art in any period, inrelation to the literature and art of the world, cannot be accuratelyjudged by contemporaries and participants, nor can it be predicted. But Ihave great expectations of the product of both in this country, and I amsure that both will be affected by the conduct of persons now living. Itis for this reason that I have spoken.

THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE

By Charles Dudley Warner

CONTENTS:

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY.THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

The county of Franklin in Northwestern Massachusetts, if not rivaling incertain ways the adjoining Berkshire, has still a romantic beauty of itsown. In the former half of the nineteenth century its population waslargely given up to the pursuit of agriculture, though not underaltogether favorable conditions. Manufactures had not yet invaded theregion either to add to its wealth or to defile its streams. The villageswere small, the roads pretty generally wretched save in summer, and frommany of the fields the most abundant crop that could be gathered was thatof stones.

The character of the people conformed in many ways to that of the soil.The houses which lined the opposite sides of the single street, of whichthe petty places largely consisted, as well as the dwellings which dottedthe country, were the homes of men who possessed in fullness many of thefeatures, good and bad, that characterized the Puritan stock to whichthey belonged. There was a good deal of religion in these ruralcommunities and occasionally some culture. Still, as a rule, it must beconfessed, there would be found in them much more of plain living than ofhigh thinking. Broad thinking could hardly be said to exist at all. Bythe dwellers in that region Easter had scarcely even been heard of;Christmas was tolerated after a fashion, but was nevertheless looked uponwith a good deal of suspicion as a Popish invention. In the beliefs ofthese men several sins not mentioned in the decalogue took really, ifunconsciously, precedence of those which chanced to be found in thatlist. Dancing was distinctly immoral; card-playing led directly togambling with all its attendant evils; theatre-going characterized theconduct of the more disreputable denizens of great cities. Fiction wasnot absolutely forbidden; but the most lenient regarded it as a greatwaste of time, and the boy who desired its solace on any large scale wasunder the frequent necessity of seeking the seclusion of the haymow.

But however rigid and stern the beliefs of men might be, nature was therealways charming, not only in her summer beauty, but even in her wildestwinter moods. Narrow, too, as might be the views of the members of thesecommunities about the conduct of life, there was ever before the minds ofthe best of them an ideal of devotion to duty, an earnest all-pervadingmoral purpose which implanted the feeling that neither personal successnor pleasure of any sort could ever afford even remotely compensation forthe neglect of the least obligation which their situation imposed. It wasno misfortune for any one, who was later to be transported to a broaderhorizon and more genial air, to have struck the roots of his being in asoil where men felt the full sense of moral responsibility for everythingsaid or done, and where the conscience was almost as sensitive to thesuggestion of sin as to its actual accomplishment.

It was amidst such surroundings that Charles Dudley Warner was born onthe 12th of September, 1829. His birthplace was the hill town ofPlainfield, over two thousand feet above the level of the sea. Hisfather, a farmer, was a man of cultivation, though not college-bred. Hedied when his eldest son had reached the age of five, leaving to hiswidow the care of two children. Three years longer the family continuedto remain on the farm. But however delightful the scenery of the countrymight be, its aesthetic attractions did not sufficiently counterbalanceits agricultural disadvantages. Furthermore, while the summers werebeautiful on this high table land, the winters were long and dreary inthe enforced solitude of a thinly settled region. In consequence, thefarm was sold after the death of the grandfather, and the home broken up.The mother with her two children, went to the neighboring village ofCharlemont on the banks of the Deerfield. There the elder son took up hisresidence with his guardian and relative, a man of position and influencein the community, who was the owner of a large farm. With him he stayeduntil he was twelve years old, enjoying all the pleasures and doing allthe miscellaneous jobs of the kind which fall to the lot of a boy broughtup in an agricultural community.

The story of this particular period of his life was given by Warner in awork which was published about forty years later. It is the volumeentitled "Being a Boy." Nowhere has there been drawn a truer or morevivid picture of rural New England. Nowhere else can there be found sucha portrayal of the sights and sounds, the pains and pleasures of life ona farm as seen from the point of view of a boy. Here we have them allgraphically represented: the daily "chores" that must be looked after;the driving of cows to and from the pasture; the clearing up of fieldswhere vegetation struggled with difficulty against the prevailing stones;the climbing of lofty trees and the swaying back and forth in the wind ontheir topmost boughs; the hunting of woodchucks; the nutting excursionsof November days, culminating in the glories of Thanksgiving; the romanceof school life, over which vacations, far from being welcomed withdelight, cast a gloom as involving extra work; the cold days of winterwith its deep or drifting snows, the mercury of the thermometer clingingwith fondness to zero, even when the sun was shining brilliantly; thelong chilling nights in which the frost carved fantastic structures onthe window-panes; the eager watching for the time when the sap wouldbegin to run in the sugar-maples; the evenings given up to reading, withthe inevitable inward discontent at being sent to bed too early; thelonging for the mild days of spring to come, when the heavy cowhide bootscould be discarded, and the boy could rejoice at last in the covering forhis feet which the Lord had provided. These and scores of similardescriptions fill up the picture of the life furnished here. It wasnature's own school wherein was to be gained the fullest intimacy withher spirit. While there was much which she could not teach, there wasalso much which she alone could teach. From his communion with her theboy learned lessons which the streets of crowded cities could never haveimparted.

At the age of twelve this portion of his education came to an end. Thefamily then moved to Cazenovia in Madison county in Central New York,from which place Warner's mother had come, and where her immediaterelatives then resided. Until he went to college this was his home. Therehe attended a preparatory school under the direction of the MethodistEpiscopal Church, which was styled the Oneida Conference Seminary. It wasat this institution that he fitted mainly for college; for to college ithad been his father's dying wish that he should go, and the boy himselfdid not need the spur of this parting injunction. A college near his homewas the excellent one of Hamilton in the not distant town of Clinton inthe adjoining county of Oneida. Thither he repaired in 1848, and as hehad made the best use of his advantages, he was enabled to enter thesophom*ore class. He was graduated in 1851.

But while fond of study he had all these years been doing somethingbesides studying. The means of the family were limited, and to secure theeducation he desired, not only was it necessary to husband the resourceshe possessed, but to increase them in every possible way. Warner had allthe American boy's willingness to undertake any occupation not in itselfdiscreditable. Hence to him fell a full share of those experiences whichhave diversified the early years of so many men who have achievedsuccess. He set up type in a printing office; he acted as an assistant ina bookstore; he served as clerk in a post-office. He was thus earlybrought into direct contact with persons of all classes and conditions oflife.

The experience gave to his keenly observant mind an insight into thenature of men which was to be of special service to him in later years.Further, it imparted to him a familiarity with their opinions and hopesand aspirations which enabled him to understand and sympathize withfeelings in which he did not always share.

During the years which immediately followed his departure from college,Warner led the somewhat desultory and apparently aimless life of manyAmerican graduates whose future depends upon their own exertions andwhose choice of a career is mainly determined by circ*mstances. From thevery earliest period of his life he had been fond of reading. It was aninherited taste. The few books he found in his childhood's home wouldhave been almost swept out of sight in the torrent, largely of trash,which pours now in a steady stream into the humblest household. But thebooks, though few, were of a high quality; and because they were few theywere read much, and their contents became an integral part of hisintellectual equipment. Furthermore, these works of the great masters,with which he became familiar, set for him a standard by which to testthe value of whatever he read, and saved him even in his earliest yearsfrom having his taste impaired and his judgment misled by the vogue ofmeretricious productions which every now and then gain popularity for thetime. They gave him also a distinct bent towards making literature hisprofession. But literature, however pleasant and occasionally profitableas an avocation, was not to be thought of as a vocation. Few there are atany period who have succeeded in finding it a substantial and permanentsupport; at that time and in this country such a prospect was practicallyhopeless for any one. It is no matter of surprise, therefore, thatWarner, though often deviating from the direct path, steadily gravitatedtoward the profession of law.

Still, even in those early days his natural inclination manifesteditself. The Knickerbocker Magazine was then the chosen organ to which allyoung literary aspirants sent their productions. To it even in hiscollege days Warner contributed to some extent, though it would doubtlessbe possible now to gather out of this collection but few pieces which,lacking his own identification, could be assigned to him positively. At alater period he contributed articles to Putnam's Magazine, which beganits existence in 1853. Warner himself at one time, in that period ofstruggle and uncertainty, expected to become an editor of a monthly whichwas to be started in Detroit. But before the magazine was actually set onfoot the inability of the person who projected it to supply the necessarymeans for carrying it on prevented the failure which would inevitablyhave befallen a venture of that sort, undertaken at that time and in thatplace. Yet he showed in a way the native bent of his mind by bringing outtwo years after his graduation from college a volume of selections fromEnglish and American authors entitled "The Book of Eloquence." This worka publisher many years afterward took advantage of his later reputationto reprint.

This unsettled period of his life lasted for several years. He wasresident for a while in various places. Part of the time he seems to havebeen in Cazenovia; part of the time in New York; part of the time in theWest. One thing in particular there was which stood in the way of fixingdefinitely his choice of a profession. This was the precarious state ofhis health, far poorer then than it was in subsequent years. Warner,however, was never at any period of his life what is called robust. Itwas his exceeding temperance in all things which enabled him to ventureupon the assumption and succeed in the accomplishment of tasks which men,physically far stronger than he, would have shrunk from under-taking,even had they been possessed of the same abilities. But his condition,part of that time, was such that it led him to take a course of treatmentat the sanatorium in Clifton Springs. It became apparent, however, thatlife in the open air, for a while at least, was the one thing essential.Under the pressure of this necessity he secured a position as one of anengineering party engaged in the survey of a railway in Missouri. In thatoccupation he spent a large part of 1853 and 1854. He came back from thisexpedition restored to health. With that result accomplished, the duty ofsettling definitely upon what he was to do became more urgent. Amongother things he did, while living for a while with his uncle inBinghamton, N. Y., he studied law in the office of Daniel S. Dickinson.

In the Christmas season of 1854 he went with a friend on a visit toPhiladelphia and stayed at the house of Philip M. Price, a prominentcitizen of that place who was engaged, among other things, in theconveyancing of real estate. It will not be surprising to any one whoknew the charm of his society in later life to be told that he became atonce a favorite with the older man. The latter was advanced in years, hewas anxious to retire from active business. Acting under his advice,Warner was induced to come to Philadelphia in 1855 and join him, and toform subsequently a partnership in legal conveyancing with another youngman who had been employed in Mr. Price's office. Thus came into being thefirm of Barton and Warner. Their headquarters were first in Spring GardenStreet and later in Walnut Street. The future soon became sufficientlyassured to justify Warner in marriage, and in October, 1856, he waswedded to Susan Lee, daughter of William Elliott Lee of New York City.

But though in a business allied to the law, Warner was not yet a lawyer.His occupation indeed was only in his eyes a temporary makeshift while hewas preparing himself for what was to be his real work in life.Therefore, while supporting himself by carrying on the business ofconveyancing, he attended the courses of study at the law department ofthe University of Pennsylvania, during the academic years of 1856-57 and1857-58. From that institution he received the degree of bachelor of lawin 1858—often misstated 1856—and was ready to begin the practice ofhis, profession.

In those days every young man of ability and ambition was counseled to goWest and grow up with the country, and was not unfrequently disposed totake that course of his own accord. Warner felt the general impulse. Hehad contemplated entering, in fact had pretty definitely made up his mindto enter, into a law partnership with a friend in one of the smallerplaces in that region. But on a tour, somewhat of exploration, he stoppedat Chicago. There he met another friend, and after talking over thesituation with him he decided to take up his residence in that city. Soin 1858 the law-firm of Davenport and Warner came into being. It lasteduntil 1860. It was not exactly a favorable time for young men to enterupon the practice of this profession. The country was just beginning torecover from the depression which had followed the disastrous panic of1857; but confidence was as yet far from being restored. The new firm dida fairly good business; but while there was sufficient work to do, therewas but little money to pay for it. Still Warner would doubtless havecontinued in the profession had he not received an offer, the acceptanceof which determined his future and changed entirely his career.

Hawley, now United States Senator from Connecticut, was Warner's seniorby a few years. He had preceded him as a student at the Oneida ConferenceSeminary and at Hamilton College. Practicing law in Hartford, he hadstarted in 1857, in conjunction with other leading citizens, a papercalled the Evening Press. It was devoted to the advocacy of theprinciples of the Republican party, which was at that time still in whatmay be called the formative state of its existence. This was a period inwhich for some years the dissolution had been going on of the two oldparties which had divided the country. Men were changing sides and werealigning themselves anew according to their views on questions which wereevery day assuming greater prominence in the minds of all. There wasreally but one great subject talked about or thought about. It split intoopposing sections the whole land over which was lowering the grim, thoughas yet unrecognizable, shadow of civil war. The Republican party had beenin existence but a very few years, but in that short time it hadattracted to its ranks the young and enthusiastic spirits of the North,just as to the other side were impelled the members of the same class inthe South. The intellectual contest which preceded the physical wasstirring the hearts of all men. Hawley, who was well aware of Warner'speculiar ability, was anxious to secure his co-operation and assistance.He urged him to come East and join him in the conduct of the newenterprise he had undertaken.

Warner always considered that he derived great benefit from hiscomparatively limited study and practice of law; and that the little timehe had given up to it had been far from being misspent. But the openingwhich now presented itself introduced him to a field of activity muchmore suited to his talents and his tastes. He liked the study of lawbetter than its practice; for his early training had not been of a kindto reconcile him to standing up strongly for clients and causes that hehonestly believed to be in the wrong. Furthermore, his heart, as has beensaid, had always been in literature; and though journalism could hardlybe called much more than a half-sister, the one could provide the supportwhich the other could never promise with certainty. So in 1860 Warnerremoved to Hartford and joined his friend as associate editor of thenewspaper he had founded. The next year the war broke out. Hawley at onceentered the army and took part in the four years' struggle. His departureleft Warner in editorial charge of the paper, into the conduct of whichhe threw himself with all the earnestness and energy of his nature, andthe ability, both political and literary, displayed in its columns gaveit at once a high position which it never lost.

At this point it may be well to give briefly the few further salientfacts of Warner's connection with journalism proper. In 1867 the ownersof the Press purchased the Courant, the well-known morning paper whichhad been founded more than a century before, and consolidated the Presswith it. Of this journal, Hawley and Warner, now in part proprietors,were the editorial writers. The former, who had been mustered out of thearmy with the rank of brevet Major-General, was soon diverted fromjournalism by other employments. He was elected Governor, he became amember of Congress, serving successively in both branches. The maineditorial responsibility for the conduct of the paper devolved inconsequence upon Warner, and to it he gave up for years nearly all histhought and attention. Once only during that early period was his laborinterrupted for any considerable length of time. In May, 1868, he set outon the first of his five trips across the Atlantic. He was absent nearlya year. Yet even then he cannot be said to have neglected his specialwork. Articles were sent weekly from the other side, describing what hesaw and experienced abroad. His active connection with the paper he nevergave up absolutely, nor did his interest in it ever cease. But after hebecame connected with the editorial staff of Harpers Magazine thecontributions he made to his journal were only occasional and what may becalled accidental.

When 1870 came, forty years of Warner's life had gone by, and nearlytwenty years since he had left college. During the latter ten years ofthis period he had been a most effective and forcible leader-writer onpolitical and social questions, never more so than during the storm andstress of the Civil War. Outside of these topics he had devoted a greatdeal of attention to matters connected with literature and art. Hisvaried abilities were fully recognized by the readers of the journal heedited.

But as yet there was little or no recognition outside. It is no easymatter to tell what are the influences, what the circ*mstances, whichdetermine the success of a particular writer or of a particular work.Hitherto Warner's repute was mainly confined to the inhabitants of aprovincial capital and its outlying and dependent towns. Howevercultivated the class to which his writings appealed—and as a class itwas distinctly cultivated—their number was necessarily not great. To thecountry at large what he did or what he was capable of doing was notknown at all. Some slight efforts he had occasionally put forth to securethe publication of matter he had prepared. He experienced the usual fateof authors who seek to introduce into the market literary wares of a newand better sort. His productions did not follow conventional lines.Publishers were ready to examine what he offered, and were just as readyto declare that these new wares were of a nature in which they were notinclined to deal.

But during 1870 a series of humorous articles appeared in the HartfordCourant, detailing his experiences in the cultivation of a garden. Warnerhad become the owner of a small place then almost on the outskirts of thecity. With the dwelling-house went the possession of three acres of land.The opportunity thus presented itself of turning into a blessing theprimeval curse of tilling the soil, in this instance not with a hoe, butwith a pen. These articles detailing his experiences excited so muchamusem*nt and so much admiration that a general desire was manifestedthat they should receive a more permanent life than that accorded toarticles appearing in the columns of newspapers, and should reach acircle larger than that to be found in the society of the Connecticutcapital. Warner's previous experience had not disposed him to try hisfortunes with the members of the publishing fraternity. In fact he didnot lay so much stress upon the articles as did his readers and friends.He always insisted that he had previously written other articles which inhis eyes certainly were just as good as they, if not better.

It so chanced that about this time Henry Ward Beecher came to Hartford tovisit his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Warner was invited to meet him.In the course of the conversation the articles just mentioned werereferred to by some one of those present. Beecher's curiosity was arousedand he expressed a desire to see them. To him they were accordingly sentfor perusal. No sooner had he run through them than he recognized in themthe presence of a rare and delicate humor which struck a distinctly newnote in American literature. It was something he felt which should not beconfined to the knowledge of any limited circle. He wrote at once to thepublisher James T. Fields, urging the production of these articles inbook form. Beecher's recommendation in those days was sufficient toinsure the acceptance of any book by any publisher. Mr. Fields agreed tobring out the work, provided the great preacher would prefix anintroduction. This he promised to do and did; though in place of thesomewhat more formal piece he was asked to write, he sent what he calledan introductory letter.

The series of papers published under the title of "My Summer in a Garden"came out at the very end of 1870, with the date of 1871 on thetitle-page. The volume met with instantaneous success. It was the subjectof comment and conversation everywhere and passed rapidly through severaleditions. There was a general feeling that a new writer had suddenlyappeared, with a wit and wisdom peculiarly his own, precisely like whichnothing had previously existed in our literature. To the later editionsof the work was added an account of a cat which had been presented to theauthor by the Stowes. For that reason it was given from the Christianname of the husband of the novelist the title of Calvin. To this John wassometimes prefixed, as betokening from the purely animal point of view acertain resemblance to the imputed grimness and earnestness of the greatreformer. There was nothing in the least exaggerated in the account whichWarner gave of the character and conduct of this really remarkable memberof the feline race. No biography was ever truer; no appreciation was evermore sympathetic; and in the long line of cats none was ever more worthyto have his story truly and sympathetically told. All who had the fortuneto see Calvin in the flesh will recognize the accuracy with which hisportrait was drawn. All who read the account of him, though not havingseen him, will find it one of the most charming of descriptions. It hasthe fullest right to be termed a cat classic.

With the publication of "My Summer in a Garden" Warner was launched upona career of authorship which lasted without cessation during the thirtyyears that remained of his life. It covered a wide field. His interestswere varied and his activity was unremitting. Literature, art, and thatvast diversity of topics which are loosely embraced under the generalname of social science—upon all these he had something fresh to say, andhe said it invariably with attractiveness and effect. It mattered littlewhat he set out to talk about, the talk was sure to be full both ofinstruction and entertainment. No sooner had the unequivocal success ofhis first published work brought his name before the public than he wasbesieged for contributions by conductors of periodicals of all sorts; andas he had ideas of his own upon all sorts of subjects, he was constantlyfurnishing matter of the most diverse kind for the most diverseaudiences.

As a result, the volumes here gathered together represent but a limitedportion of the work he accomplished. All his life, indeed, Warner was notonly an omnivorous consumer of the writings of others, but a constantproducer. The manifestation of it took place in ways frequently known tobut few. It was not merely the fact that as an editor of a daily paper hewrote regularly articles on topics of current interest to which he neverexpected to pay any further attention; but after his name became widelyknown and his services were in request everywhere, he produced scores ofarticles, some long, some short, some signed, some unsigned, of which hemade no account whatever. One looking through the pages of contemporaryperiodical literature is apt at any moment to light upon pieces, andsometimes upon series of them, which the author never took the trouble tocollect. Many of those to which his name was not attached can no longerbe identified with any approach to certainty. About the preservation ofmuch that he did—and some of it belonged distinctly to his best and mostcharacteristic work—he was singularly careless, or it may be better tosay, singularly indifferent.

If I may be permitted to indulge in the recital of a personal experience,there is one incident I recall which will bring out this trait in amarked manner. Once on a visit to him I accompanied him to the office ofhis paper. While waiting for him to discharge certain duties there, andemploying myself in looking over the exchanges, I chanced to light upon aleading article on the editorial page of one of the most prominent of theNew York dailies. It was devoted to the consideration of some recentutterances of a noted orator who, after the actual mission of his lifehad been accomplished, was employing the decline of it in theexploitation of every political and economic vagary which it had enteredinto the addled brains of men to evolve. The article struck me as one ofthe most brilliant and entertaining of its kind I had ever read; it wasnot long indeed before it appeared that the same view of it was taken bymany others throughout the country. The peculiar wit of the comment, thekeenness of the satire made so much of an impression upon me that Icalled Warner away from his work to look at it. At my request he hastilyglanced over it, but somewhat to my chagrin failed to evince anyenthusiasm about it. On our way home I again spoke of it and was a gooddeal nettled at the indifference towards it which he manifested. Itseemed to imply that my critical judgment was of little value; andhowever true might be his conclusion on that point, one does not enjoyhaving the fact thrust too forcibly upon the attention in the familiarityof conversation. Resenting therefore the tone he had assumed, I tookoccasion not only to reiterate my previously expressed opinion somewhatmore aggressively, but also went on to insinuate that he was himselfdistinctly lacking in any real appreciation of what was excellent. Hebore with me patiently for a while. "Well, sonny," he said at last,"since you seem to take the matter so much to heart, I will tell you inconfidence that I wrote the piece myself." I found that this was not onlytrue in the case just specified, but that while engaged in preparingarticles for his own paper he occasionally prepared them for otherjournals. No one besides himself and those immediately concerned, everknew anything about the matter. He never asserted any right to thesepieces, he never sought to collect them, though some of them exhibitedhis happiest vein of humor. Unclaimed, unidentified, they are swept intothat wallet of oblivion in which time stows the best as well as the worstof newspaper production.

The next volume of Warner's writings that made its appearance wasentitled "Saunterings." It was the first and, though good of its kind,was by no means the best of a class of productions in which he was toexhibit signal excellence. It will be observed that of the various workscomprised in this collective edition, no small number consist of what bya wide extension of the phrase may be termed books of travel. There aretwo or three which fall strictly under that designation. Most of them,however, can be more properly called records of personal experience andadventure in different places and regions, with the comments on life andcharacter to which they gave rise.

Books of travel, if they are expected to live, are peculiarly hard towrite. If they come out at a period when curiosity about the regiondescribed is predominant, they are fairly certain, no matter howwretched, to achieve temporary success. But there is no kind of literaryproduction to which, by the very law of its being, it is more difficultto impart vitality. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is perfectly true thatthe greatest hinderance to their permanent interest is the informationthey furnish. The more full, specific and even accurate that is, the morerapidly does the work containing it lose its value. The fresher knowledgeconveyed by a new, and it may be much inferior book, crowds out ofcirculation those which have gone before. The changed or changingconditions in the region traversed renders the information previouslyfurnished out of date and even misleading. Hence the older works come intime to have only an antiquarian interest. Their pages are consulted onlyby that very limited number of persons who are anxious to learn what hasbeen and view with stolid indifference what actually is. Something ofthis transitory nature belongs to all sketches of travel. It is the onegreat reason why so very few of the countless number of such works,written, and sometimes written by men of highest ability, are hardlyheard of a few years after publication. Travels form a species ofliterary production in which great classics are exceedingly rare.

From this fatal characteristic, threatening the enduring life of suchworks, most of Warner's writings of this sort were saved by the method ofprocedure he followed. He made it his main object not to give facts butimpressions. All details of exact information, everything calculated togratify the statistical mind or to quench the thirst of the seeker forpurely useful information, he was careful, whether consciously orunconsciously, to banish from those volumes of his in which he followedhis own bent and felt himself under no obligation to say anything butwhat he chose. Hence these books are mainly a record of views of men andmanners made by an acute observer on the spot, and put down at the momentwhen the impression created was most vivid, not deferred till familiarityhad dulled the sense of it or custom had caused it to be disregarded.Take as an illustration the little book entitled "Baddeck," one of theslightest of his productions in this field. It purports to be and isnothing more than an account of a two weeks' tour made to a Cape Bretonlocality in company with the delightful companion to whom it wasdedicated. You take it up with the notion that you are going to acquireinformation about the whole country journeyed over, you are beguiled attimes with the fancy that you are getting it. In the best sense it may besaid that you do get it; for it is the general impression of the variousscenes through which the expedition leads the travelers that is left uponthe mind, not those accurate details of a single one of them which thelapse of a year might render inaccurate. It is to the credit of the worktherefore than one gains from it little specific knowledge. In its placeare the reflections both wise and witty upon life, upon the characters ofthe men that are met, upon the nature of the sights that are seen.

This is what constitutes the enduring charm of the best of these picturesof travel which Warner produced. It is perhaps misleading to assert thatthey do not furnish a good deal of information. Still it is not the sortof information which the ordinary tourist gives and which the cultivatedreader resents and is careful not to remember. Their dominant note israther the quiet humor of a delightful story-teller, who cannot fail tosay something of interest because he has seen so much; and who out of hiswide and varied observation selects for recital certain sights he haswitnessed, certain experiences he has gone through, and so relates themthat the way the thing is told is even more interesting than the thingtold. The chief value of these works does not accordingly depend upon theaccidental, which passes. Inns change and become better or worse.Facilities for transportation increase or decrease. Scenery itself altersto some extent under the operation of agencies brought to bear upon itfor its own improvement or for the improvement of something else. Butman's nature remains a constant quantity. Traits seen here and now aresure to be met with somewhere else, and even in ages to come. Hence worksof this nature, embodying descriptions of men and manners, always retainsomething of the freshness which characterized them on the day of theirappearance.

Of these productions in which the personal element predominates, andwhere the necessity of intruding information is not felt as a burden,those of Warner's works which deal with the Orient take the first rank.The two—"My Winter on the Nile" and "In the Levant"—constitute therecord of a visit to the East during the years 1875 and 1876.

They would naturally have of themselves the most permanent value,inasmuch as the countries described have for most educated men an abidinginterest. The lifelike representation and graphic characterization whichWarner was apt to display in his traveling sketches were here seen attheir best, because nowhere else did he find the task of description morecongenial. Alike the gorgeousness and the squalor of the Orient appealedto his artistic sympathies. Egypt in particular had for him always aspecial fascination. Twice he visited it—at the time just mentioned andagain in the winter of 1881-82. He rejoiced in every effort made todispel the obscurity which hung over its early history. No one, outsideof the men most immediately concerned, took a deeper interest than he inthe work of the Egyptian Exploration Society, of which he was one of theAmerican vice-presidents. To promoting its success he gave no small shareof time and attention. Everything connected with either the past or thepresent of the country had for him an attraction. A civilization whichhad been flourishing for centuries, when the founder of Israel was awandering sheik on the Syrian plains or in the hill-country of Canaan;the slow unraveling of records of dynasties of forgotten kings; thememorials of Egypt's vanished greatness and the vision of her futureprosperity these and things similar to these made this country, sopeculiarly the gift of the Nile, of fascinating interest to the moderntraveler who saw the same sights which had met the eyes of Herodotusnearly twenty-five hundred years before.

To the general public the volume which followed—"In the Levant"—wasperhaps of even deeper interest. At all events it dealt with scenes andmemories with which every reader, educated or uneducated, hadassociations. The region through which the founder of Christianitywandered, the places he visited, the words he said in them, the acts hedid, have never lost their hold over the hearts of men, not even duringthe periods when the precepts of Christianity have had the leastinfluence over the conduct of those who professed to it their allegiance.In the Levant, too, were seen the beginnings of commerce, of art, ofletters, in the forms in which the modern world best knows them. These,therefore, have always made the lands about the eastern Mediterranean anattraction to cultivated men and the interest of the subject accordinglyreinforced the skill of the writer.

There are two or three of these works which can not be included in theclass just described. They were written for the specific purpose ofgiving exact information at the time. Of these the most noticeable arethe volumes entitled "South and West" and the account of SouthernCalifornia which goes under the name of "Our Italy." They are the outcomeof journeys made expressly with the intent of investigating and reportingupon the actual situation and apparent prospects of the places andregions described. As they were written to serve an immediate purpose,much of the information contained in them tends to grow more and more outof date as time goes on; and though of value to the student of history,these volumes must necessarily become of steadily diminishing interest tothe ordinary reader. Yet it is to be said of them that while the pill ofuseful information is there, it has at least been sugar-coated. Nor canwe afford to lose sight of the fact that the widely-circulated articles,collected under the title of "South and West," by the spirit pervadingthem as well as by the information they gave, had a marked effect inbringing the various sections of the country into a better understandingof one another, and in imparting to all a fuller sense of the communitythey possessed in profit and loss, in honor and dishonor.

It is a somewhat singular fact that these sketches of travel led Warnerincidentally to enter into an entirely new field of literary exertion.This was novel-writing. Something of this nature he had attempted inconjunction with Mark Twain in the composition of "The Gilded Age," whichappeared in 1873. The result, however, was unsatisfactory to both thecollaborators. Each had humor, but the humor of each was fundamentallydifferent. But the magazine with which Warner had become connected wasdesirous that he should prepare for it an account of some of theprincipal watering-places and summer resorts of the country. Each was tobe visited in turn and its salient features were to be described. It wasfinally suggested that this could be done most effectively by weavinginto a love story occurrences that might happen at a number of theseplaces which were made the subjects of description. The principalcharacters were to take their tours under the personal conduct of thenovelist. They were to go to the particular spots selected North andSouth, according to the varying seasons of the year. It was a somewhatnovel way of, visiting resorts of this nature; there are those to whom itwill seem altogether more agreeable than would be the visiting of them inperson. Hence appeared in 1886 the articles which were collected later inthe volume entitled "Their Pilgrimage."

Warner executed the task which had been assigned him with his wontedskill. The completed work met with success—with so much success indeedthat he was led later to try his fortune further in the same field andbring out the trilogy of novels which go under the names respectively of"A Little Journey in the World," "The Golden House," and "That Fortune."Each of these is complete in itself, each can be read by itself; but theeffect of each and of the whole series can be best secured by readingthem in succession. In the first it is the story of how a great fortunewas made in the stock market; in the second, how it was fraudulentlydiverted from the object for which it was intended; and in the third, howit was most beneficially and satisfactorily lost. The scene of the lastnovel was laid in part in Warner's early home in Charlemont. These workswere produced with considerable intervals of time between theirrespective appearances, the first coming out in 1889 and the third tenyears later. This detracted to some extent from the popularity which theywould have attained had the different members followed one anotherrapidly. Still, they met with distinct success, though it has always beena question whether this success was due so much to the story as to theshrewd observation and caustic wit which were brought to bear upon whatwas essentially a serious study of one side of American social life.

The work with which Warner himself was least satisfied was his life ofCaptain John Smith, which came out in 18881. It was originally intendedto be one of a series of biographies of noted men, which were to give thefacts accurately but to treat them humorously. History and comedy,however, have never been blended successfully, though desperate attemptshave occasionally been made to achieve that result. Warner had not longbeen engaged in the task before he recognized its hopelessness. For itspreparation it required a special study of the man and the period, andthe more time he spent upon the preliminary work, the more the humorouselement tended to recede. Thus acted on by two impulses, one of a lightand one of a grave nature, he moved for a while in a sort of diagonalbetween the two to nowhere in particular; but finally ended in treatingthe subject seriously.

In giving himself up to a biography in which he had no special interest,Warner felt conscious that he could not interest others. His forebodingswere realized. The work, though made from a careful study of originalsources, did not please him, nor did it attract the public. The attemptwas all the more unfortunate because the time and toil he spent upon itdiverted him from carrying out a scheme which had then taken fullpossession of his thoughts. This was the production of a series of essaysto be entitled "Conversations on Horseback." Had it been worked up as hesketched it in his mind, it would have been the outdoor counterpart ofhis "Backlog Studies." Though in a measure based upon a horseback ridewhich he took in Pennsylvania in 1880, the incidents of travel as heoutlined its intended treatment would have barely furnished the slightestof backgrounds. Captain John Smith, however, interfered with a projectspecially suited to his abilities and congenial to his tastes. That hedid so possibly led the author of his life to exhibit a somewhat hostileattitude towards his hero. When the biography was finished, otherengagements were pressing upon his attention. The opportunity of takingup and completing the projected series of essays never presented itself,though the subject lay in his mind for a long time and he himselfbelieved that it would have turned out one of the best pieces of work heever did.

It was unfortunate. For to me—and very likely to many others if not tomost—Warner's strength lay above all in essay-writing. What heaccomplished in this line was almost invariably pervaded by that genialgrace which makes work of the kind attractive, and he exhibitedeverywhere in it the delicate but sure touch which preserves the justmean between saying too much and too little. The essay was in his nature,and his occupation as a journalist had developed the tendency towardsthis form of literary activity, as well as skill in its manipulation.Whether he wrote sketches of travel, or whether he wrote fiction, thescene depicted was from the point of view of the essayist rather thanfrom that of the tourist or of the novelist. It is this characteristicwhich gives to his work in the former field its enduring interest. Againin his novels, it was not so much the story that was in his thoughts asthe opportunity the varying scenes afforded for amusing observations uponmanners, for comments upon life, sometimes good-natured, sometimessevere, but always entertaining, and above all, for serious study of thesocial problems which present themselves on every side for examination.This is distinctly the province of the essayist, and in it Warner alwaysdisplayed his fullest strength.

We have seen that his first purely humorous publication of this naturewas the one which made him known to the general public. It was speedilyfollowed, however, by one of a somewhat graver character, which became atthe time and has since remained a special favorite of cultivated readers.This is the volume entitled "Backlog Studies." The attractiveness of thiswork is as much due to the suggestive social and literary discussionswith which it abounds as to the delicate and refined humor with which theideas are expressed. Something of the same characteristics was displayedin the two little volumes of short pieces dealing with social topics,which came out later under the respective titles of "As We Were Saying,"and "As We Go." But there was a deeper and more serious side of hisnature which found utterance in several of his essays, particularly insome which were given in the form of addresses delivered at variousinstitutions of learning. They exhibit the charm which belongs to all hiswritings; but his feelings were too profoundly interested in the subjectsconsidered to allow him to give more than occasional play to his humor.Essays contained in such a volume, for instance, as "The Relation ofLiterature to Life" will not appeal to him whose main object in readingis amusem*nt. Into them Warner put his deepest and most earnestconvictions. The subject from which the book just mentioned derived itstitle lay near to his heart. No one felt more strongly than he theimportance of art of all kinds, but especially of literary art, for theuplifting of a nation. No one saw more distinctly the absolute necessityof its fullest recognition in a moneymaking age and in a money-makingland, if the spread of the dry rot of moral deterioration were to beprevented. The ampler horizon it presented, the loftier ideals it set up,the counteracting agency it supplied to the sordidness of motive and actwhich, left unchecked, was certain to overwhelm the national spirit—allthese were enforced by him again and again with clearness andeffectiveness. His essays of this kind will never be popular in the sensein which are his other writings. But no thoughtful man will rise up fromreading them without having gained a vivid conception of the part whichliterature plays in the life of even the humblest, and without a deeperconviction of its necessity to any healthy development of the characterof a people.

During the early part of his purely literary career a large proportion ofWarner's collected writings, which then appeared, were first published inthe Atlantic Monthly. But about fourteen years before his death he becameclosely connected with Harper's Magazine. From May, 1886, to March, 1892,he conducted the Editor's Drawer of that periodical. The month followingthis last date he succeeded William Dean Howells as the contributor ofthe Editor's Study. This position he held until July, 1898. The scope ofthis department was largely expanded after the death of George WilliamCurtis in the summer of 1892, and the consequent discontinuance of theEditor's Easy Chair. Comments upon other topics than those to which hisdepartment was originally devoted, especially upon social questions, weremade a distinct feature. His editorial connection with the magazinenaturally led to his contributing to it numerous articles besides thosewhich were demanded by the requirements of the position he held. Nearlyall these, as well as those which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, areindicated in the bibliographical notes prefixed to the separate works.

There were, however, other literary enterprises in which he wasconcerned; for the calls upon him were numerous, his own appetite forwork was insatiable, and his activity was indefatigable. In 1881 heassumed the editorship of the American Men of Letters series. This heopened with his own biography of Washington Irving, the resemblancebetween whom and himself has been made the subject of frequent remark.Later he became the editor-in-chief of the thirty odd volumes which makeup the collection entitled "The World's Best Literature." To this hecontributed several articles of his own and carefully allotted andsupervised the preparation of a large number of others. The labor he putupon the editing of this collection occupied him a great deal of the timefrom 1895 to 1898.

But literature, though in it lay his chief interest, was but one of thesubjects which employed his many-sided activity. He was constantly calledupon for the discharge of civic duties. The confidence felt by hisfellow-citizens in his judgment and taste was almost equal to theabsolute trust reposed in his integrity. The man who establishes areputation for the possession of these qualities can never escape frombearing the burdens which a good character always imposes. If any work ofart was ordered by the state, Warner was fairly certain to be chosen amember of the commission selected to decide upon the person who was to doit and upon the way it was to be done. By his fellow-townsmen he was madea member of the Park Commission. Such were some of the duties imposed;there were others voluntarily undertaken. During the latter years of hislife he became increasingly interested in social questions, some of whichpartook of a semi-political character. One of the subjects which engagedhis attention was the best method to be adopted for elevating thecharacter and conduct of the negro population of the country. Herecognized the gravity of the problem with which the nation had to dealand the difficulties attending its solution. One essay on the subject wasprepared for the meeting held at Washington in May, 1900, of the AmericanSocial Science Association, of which he was president. He was not able tobe there in person. The disease which was ultimately to strike him downhad already made its preliminary attack. His address was accordingly readfor him. It was a subject of special regret that he could not be presentto set forth more fully his views; for the debate, which followed thepresentation of his paper, was by no means confined to the meeting, butextended to the press of the whole country. Whether the conclusions hereached were right or wrong, they were in no case adopted hastily norindeed without the fullest consideration.

But a more special interest of his lay in prison reform. The subject hadengaged his attention long before he published anything in connectionwith it. Later one of the earliest articles he wrote for Harper'sMagazine was devoted to it. It was in his thoughts just before his death.He was a member of the Connecticut commission on prisons, of the NationalPrison Association, and a vice-president of the New York Association forPrison Reform. A strong advocate of the doctrine of the indeterminatesentence, he had little patience with many of the judicial outgivings onthat subject. To him they seemed opinions inherited, not formed, and inmost cases were nothing more than the result of prejudice working uponignorance. This particular question was one which he purposed to make thesubject of his address as president of the Social Science Association, atit* annual meeting in 1901. He never lived to complete what he had inmind.

During his later years the rigor of the Northern winter had been toosevere for Warner's health. He had accordingly found it advisable tospend as much of this season as he could in warmer regions. He visited atvarious times parts of the South, Mexico, and California. He passed thewinter of 1892-93 at Florence; but he found the air of the valley of theArno no perceptible improvement upon that of the valley of theConnecticut. In truth, neither disease nor death entertains a prejudiceagainst any particular locality. This fact he was to learn by personalexperience. In the spring of 1899, while at New Orleans, he was strickenby pneumonia which nearly brought him to the grave. He recovered, but itis probable that the strength of his system was permanently impaired, andwith it his power of resisting disease. Still his condition was not suchas to prevent him from going on with various projects he had beencontemplating or from forming new ones. The first distinct warning of theapproaching end was the facial paralysis which suddenly attacked him inApril, 1900, while on a visit to Norfolk, Va. Yet even from that heseemed to be apparently on the full road to recovery during the followingsummer.

It was in the second week of October, 1900, that Warner paid me a visitof two or three days. He was purposing to spend the winter in SouthernCalifornia, coming back to the East in ample time to attend the annualmeeting of the Social Science Association. His thoughts were even thenbusy with the subject of the address which, as president, he was todeliver on that occasion. It seemed to me that I had never seen him whenhis mind was more active or more vigorous. I was not only struck by theclearness of his views—some of which were distinctly novel, at least tome—but by the felicity and effectiveness with which they were put.

Never, too, had I been more impressed with the suavity, theagreeableness, the general charm of his manner. He had determined duringthe coming winter to learn to ride the wheel, and we then and thereplanned to take a bicycle trip during the following summer, as we hadpreviously made excursions together on horseback. When we parted, it waswith the agreement that we should meet the next spring in Washington andfix definitely upon the time and region of our intended ride. It was on aSaturday morning that I bade him good-by, apparently in the best ofhealth and spirits. It was on the evening of the following Saturday—October 20th—that the condensed, passionless, relentless message whichthe telegraph transmits, informed me that he had died that afternoon.

That very day he had lunched at a friend's, where were gathered severalof his special associates who had chanced to come together at the samehouse, and then had gone to the office of the Hartford Courant. There wasnot the slightest indication apparent of the end that was so near. Afterthe company broke up, he started out to pay a visit to one of the cityparks, of which he was a commissioner. On his way thither, feeling acertain faintness, he turned aside into a small house whose occupants heknew, and asked to sit down for a brief rest, and then, as the faintnessincreased, to lie undisturbed on the lounge for a few minutes. The fewminutes passed, and with them his life. In the strictest sense of thewords, he had fallen asleep. From one point of view it was an ideal wayto die. To the individual, death coming so gently, so suddenly, is shornof all its terrors. It is only those who live to remember and to lamentthat the suffering comes which has been spared the victim. Even to them,however, is the consolation that though they may have been fully preparedfor the coming of the inevitable event, it would have been none the lesspainful when it actually came.

Warner as a writer we all know. The various and varying opinionsentertained about the quality and value of his work do not require noticehere. Future times will assign him his exact position in the roll ofAmerican authors, and we need not trouble ourselves to anticipate, as weshall certainly not be able to influence, its verdict. But to only acomparatively few of those who knew him as a writer was it given to knowhim as a man; to still fewer to know him in that familiarity of intimacywhich reveals all that is fine or ignoble in a man's personality. Scantyis the number of those who will come out of that severest of ordeals sosuccessfully as he. The same conclusion would be reached, whether we wereto consider him in his private relations or in his career as a man ofletters. Among the irritable race of authors no one was freer from pettyenvy or jealousy. During many years of close intercourse, in which heconstantly gave utterance to his views both of men and things withabsolute unreserve, I recall no disparaging opinion ever expressed of anywriter with whom he had been compared either for praise or blame. He hadunquestionably definite and decided opinions. He would point out thatsuch or such a work was above or below its author's ordinary level; butthere was never any ill-nature in his comment, no depreciation fordepreciation's sake. Never in truth was any one more loyal to hisfriends. If his literary conscience would not permit him to say anythingin favor of something which they had done, he usually contented himselfwith saying nothing. Whatever failing there was on his critical side wasdue to this somewhat uncritical attitude; for it is from his particularfriends that the writer is apt to get the most dispassionateconsideration and sometimes the coldest commendation. It was a part ofWarner's generous recognition of others that he was in all sinceritydisposed to attribute to those he admired and to whom he was attached anability of which some of them at least were much inclined to doubt theirown possession.

Were I indeed compelled to select any one word which would best give theimpression, both social and literary, of Warner's personality, I shouldbe disposed to designate it as urbanity. That seems to indicate best theone trait which most distinguished him either in conversation or writing.Whatever it was, it was innate, not assumed. It was the genuine outcomeof the kindliness and broad-mindedness of his nature and led him tosympathize with men of all positions in life and of all kinds of ability.It manifested itself in his attitude towards every one with whom he camein contact. It led him to treat with fullest consideration all who werein the least degree under his direction, and converted in consequence thetoil of subordinates into a pleasure. It impelled him to do unsoughteverything which lay in his power for the success of those in whom hefelt interest. Many a young writer will recall his words of encouragementat some period in his own career when the quiet appreciation of one meantmore to him than did later the loud applause of many. As it was inpublic, so it was in private life. The generosity of his spirit, thegeniality and high-bred courtesy of his manner, rendered a visit to hishome as much a social delight as his wide knowledge of literature and hisappreciation of what was best in it made it an intellectualentertainment.

THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY.

This paper was prepared and delivered at several of our universities asintroductory to a course of five lectures which insisted on the value ofliterature in common life—some hearers thought with an exaggeratedemphasis—and attempted to maintain the thesis that all genuine, enduringliterature is the outcome of the time that produces it, is responsive tothe general sentiment of its time; that this close relation to human lifeinsures its welcome ever after as a true representation of human nature;and that consequently the most remunerative method of studying aliterature is to study the people for whom it was produced. Illustrationsof this were drawn from the Greek, the French, and the Englishliteratures. This study always throws a flood of light upon the meaningof the text of an old author, the same light that the readerunconsciously has upon contemporary pages dealing with the life withwhich he is familiar. The reader can test this by taking up hisShakespeare after a thorough investigation of the customs, manners, andpopular life of the Elizabethan period. Of course the converse is truethat good literature is an open door into the life and mode of thought ofthe time and place where it originated.

THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE

I hade a vision once—you may all have had a like one—of the stream oftime flowing through a limitless land. Along its banks sprang up insuccession the generations of man. They did not move with the stream-theylived their lives and sank away; and always below them new generationsappeared, to play their brief parts in what is called history—thesequence of human actions. The stream flowed on, opening for itselfforever a way through the land. I saw that these successive dwellers onthe stream were busy in constructing and setting afloat vessels ofvarious size and form and rig—arks, galleys, galleons, sloops, brigs,boats propelled by oars, by sails, by steam. I saw the anxiety with whicheach builder launched his venture, and watched its performance andprogress. The anxiety was to invent and launch something that shouldfloat on to the generations to come, and carry the name of the builderand the fame of his generation. It was almost pathetic, these punyefforts, because faith always sprang afresh in the success of each newventure. Many of the vessels could scarcely be said to be launched atall; they sank like lead, close to the shore. Others floated out for atime, and then, struck by a flaw in the wind, heeled over anddisappeared. Some, not well put together, broke into fragments in thebufleting of the waves. Others danced on the flood, taking the sun ontheir sails, and went away with good promise of a long voyage. But only afew floated for any length of time, and still fewer were ever seen by thegeneration succeeding that which launched them. The shores of the streamwere strewn with wrecks; there lay bleaching in the sand the ribs of manya once gallant craft.

Innumerable were the devices of the builders to keep their inventionsafloat. Some paid great attention to the form of the hull, others to thekind of cargo and the loading of it, while others—and these seemed themajority—trusted more to some new sort of sail, or new fashion ofrudder, or new application of propelling power. And it was wonderful tosee what these new ingenuities did for a time, and how each generationwas deceived into the belief that its products would sail on forever. Butone fate practically came to the most of them. They were too heavy, theywere too light, they were built of old material, and they went to thebottom, they went ashore, they broke up and floated in fragments. Andespecially did the crafts built in imitation of something that hadfloated down from a previous generation come to quick disaster. I sawonly here and there a vessel, beaten by weather and blackened by time—so old, perhaps, that the name of the maker was no longer legible; orsome fragments of antique wood that had evidently come from far up thestream. When such a vessel appeared there was sure to arise great disputeabout it, and from time to time expeditions were organized to ascend theriver and discover the place and circ*mstances of its origin. Along thebanks, at intervals, whole fleets of boats and fragments had gone ashore,and were piled up in bays, like the driftwood of a subsided freshet.Efforts were made to dislodge these from time to time and set them afloatagain, newly christened, with fresh paint and sails, as if they stood abetter chance of the voyage than any new ones. Indeed, I saw that a largepart of the commerce of this river was, in fact, the old hulks andstranded wrecks that each generation had set afloat again. As I saw it inthis foolish vision, how pathetic this labor was from generation togeneration; so many vessels launched; so few making a voyage even for alifetime; so many builders confident of immortality; so many livesoutlasting this coveted reputation! And still the generations, each withtouching hopefulness, busied themselves with this child's play on thebanks of the stream; and still the river flowed on, whelming and wreckingthe most of that so confidently committed to it, and bearing only hereand there, on its swift, wide tide, a ship, a boat, a shingle.

These hosts of men whom I saw thus occupied since history began wereauthors; these vessels were books; these heaps of refuse in the bays weregreat libraries. The allegory admits of any amount of ingeniousparallelism. It is nevertheless misleading; it is the illusion of an idlefancy. I have introduced it because it expresses, with some whimsicalexaggeration—not much more than that of "The Vision of Mirza"—thepopular notion about literature and its relation to human life. In thepopular conception, literature is as much a thing apart from life asthese boats on the stream of time were from the existence, the struggle,the decay of the generations along the shore. I say in the popularconception, for literature is wholly different from this, not only in itseffect upon individual lives, but upon the procession of lives upon thisearth; it is not only an integral part of all of them, but, with itssister arts, it is the one unceasing continuity in history. Literatureand art are not only the records and monuments made by the successiveraces of men, not only the local expressions of thought and emotion, butthey are, to change the figure, the streams that flow on, enduring, amidthe passing show of men, reviving, transforming, ennobling the fleetinggenerations. Without this continuity of thought and emotion, historywould present us only a succession of meaningless experiments. Theexperiments fail, the experiments succeed—at any rate, they end—andwhat remains for transmission, for the sustenance of succeeding peoples?Nothing but the thought and emotion evolved and expressed. It is truethat every era, each generation, seems to have its peculiar work to do;it is to subdue the intractable earth, to repel or to civilize thebarbarians, to settle society in order, to build cities, to amass wealthin centres, to make deserts bloom, to construct edifices such as werenever made before, to bring all men within speaking distance of eachother—lucky if they have anything to say when that is accomplished—toextend the information of the few among the many, or to multiply themeans of easy and luxurious living. Age after age the world labors forthese things with the busy absorption of a colony of ants in its castleof sand. And we must confess that the process, such, for instance, asthat now going on here—this onset of many peoples, which is transformingthe continent of America—is a spectacle to excite the imagination in thehighest degree. If there were any poet capable of putting into an epicthe spirit of this achievement, what an epic would be his! Can it be thatthere is anything of more consequence in life than the great business inhand, which absorbs the vitality and genius of this age? Surely, we say,it is better to go by steam than to go afoot, because we reach ourdestination sooner—getting there quickly being a supreme object. It iswell to force the soil to yield a hundred-fold, to congregate men inmasses so that all their energies shall be taxed to bring food tothemselves, to stimulate industries, drag coal and metal from the bowelsof the earth, cover its surface with rails for swift-running carriages,to build ever larger palaces, warehouses, ships. This giganticachievement strikes the imagination.

If the world in which you live happens to be the world of books, if yourpursuit is to know what has been done and said in the world, to the endthat your own conception of the value of life may be enlarged, and thatbetter things may be done and said hereafter, this world and this pursuitassume supreme importance in your mind. But you can in a moment placeyourself in relations—you have not to go far, perhaps only to speak toyour next neighbor—where the very existence of your world is scarcelyrecognized. All that has seemed to you of supreme importance is ignored.You have entered a world that is called practical, where the things thatwe have been speaking of are done; you have interest in it and sympathywith it, because your scheme of life embraces the development of ideasinto actions; but these men of realities have only the smallestconception of the world that seems to you of the highest importance; and,further, they have no idea that they owe anything to it, that it has everinfluenced their lives or can add anything to them. And it may chancethat you have, for the moment, a sense of insignificance in the smallpart you are playing in the drama going forward. Go out of your library,out of the small circle of people who talk of books, who are engaged inresearch, whose liveliest interest is in the progress of ideas, in theexpression of thought and emotion that is in literature; go out of thisatmosphere into a region where it does not exist, it may be into a placegiven up to commerce and exchange, or to manufacturing, or to thedevelopment of certain other industries, such as mining, or the pursuitof office—which is sometimes called politics. You will speedily be awarehow completely apart from human life literature is held to be, how fewpeople regard it seriously as a necessary element in life, as anythingmore than an amusem*nt or a vexation. I have in mind a mountain district,stripped, scarred, and blackened by the ruthless lumbermen, ravished ofits forest wealth; divested of its beauty, which has recently become thefield of vast coal-mining operations. Remote from communication, it wasyesterday an exhausted, wounded, deserted country. Today audaciousrailways are entering it, crawling up its mountain slopes, rounding itsdizzy precipices, spanning its valleys on iron cobwebs, piercing itshills with tunnels. Drifts are opened in its coal seams, to which irontracks shoot away from the main line; in the woods is seen the gleam ofthe engineer's level, is heard the rattle of heavily-laden wagons on thenewly-made roads; tents are pitched, uncouth shanties have sprung up,great stables, boarding-houses, stores, workshops; the miner, theblacksmith, the mason, the carpenter have arrived; households have beenset up in temporary barracks, children are already there who need aschool, women who must have a church and society; the stagnation hasgiven place to excitement, money has flowed in, and everywhere are thehum of industry and the swish of the goad of American life. On thishillside, which in June was covered with oaks, is already in October atown; the stately trees have been felled; streets are laid out and gradedand named; there are a hundred dwellings, there are a store, apost-office, an inn; the telegraph has reached it, and the telephone andthe electric light; in a few weeks more it will be in size a city, withthousands of people—a town made out of hand by drawing men and womenfrom other towns, civilized men and women, who have voluntarily putthemselves in a position where they must be civilized over again.

This is a marvelous exhibition of what energy and capital can do. Youacknowledge as much to the creators of it. You remember that not far backin history such a transformation as this could not have been wrought in ahundred years. This is really life, this is doing something in the world,and in the presence of it you can see why the creators of it regard yourworld, which seemed to you so important, the world whose business is theevolution and expression of thought and emotion, as insignificant. Hereis a material addition to the business and wealth of the race, hereemployment for men who need it, here is industry replacing stagnation,here is the pleasure of overcoming difficulties and conquering obstacles.Why encounter these difficulties? In order that more coal may be procuredto operate more railway trains at higher speed, to supply more factories,to add to the industrial stir of modern life. The men who projected andare pushing on this enterprise, with an executive ability that wouldmaintain and manoeuvre an army in a campaign, are not, however,consciously philanthropists, moved by the charitable purpose of givingemployment to men, or finding satisfaction in making two blades of grassgrow where one grew before. They enjoy no doubt the sense of power inbringing things to pass, the feeling of leadership and the consequencederived from its recognition; but they embark in this enterprise in orderthat they may have the position and the luxury that increased wealth willbring, the object being, in most cases, simply materialadvantages—sumptuous houses, furnished with all the luxuries which arethe signs of wealth, including, of course, libraries and pictures andstatuary and curiosities, the most showy equipages and troops ofservants; the object being that their wives shall dress magnificently,glitter in diamonds and velvets, and never need to put their feet to theground; that they may command the best stalls in the church, the bestpews in the theatre, the choicest rooms in the inn, and—a considerationthat Plato does not mention, because his world was not our world—thatthey may impress and reduce to obsequious deference the hotel clerk.

This life—for this enterprise and its objects are types of aconsiderable portion of life—is not without its ideal, its hero, itshighest expression, its consummate flower. It is expressed in a wordwhich I use without any sense of its personality, as the French use theword Barnum—for our crude young nation has the distinction of adding averb to the French language, the verb to barnum—it is expressed in thewell-known name Croesus. This is a standard—impossible to be reachedperhaps, but a standard. If one may say so, the country is sown withseeds of Croesus, and the crop is forward and promising. The interest tous now in the observation of this phase of modern life is not in theleast for purposes of satire or of reform. We are inquiring how whollythis conception of life is divorced from the desire to learn what hasbeen done and said to the end that better things may be done and saidhereafter, in order that we may understand the popular conception of theinsignificant value of literature in human affairs. But it is not asidefrom our subject, rather right in its path, to take heed of what thephilosophers say of the effect in other respects of the pursuit ofwealth.

One cause of the decay of the power of defense in a state, says theAthenian Stranger in Plato's Laws—one cause is the love of wealth, whichwholly absorbs men and never for a moment allows them to think ofanything but their private possessions; on this the soul of every citizenhangs suspended, and can attend to nothing but his daily gain; mankindare ready to learn any branch of knowledge and to follow any pursuitwhich tends to this end, and they laugh at any other; that is the reasonwhy a city will not be in earnest about war or any other good andhonorable pursuit.

The accumulation of gold in the treasury of private individuals, saysSocrates, in the Republic, is the ruin of democracy. They invent illegalmodes of expenditure; and what do they or their wives care about the law?

"And then one, seeing another's display, proposes to rival him, and thusthe whole body of citizens acquires a similar character.

"After that they get on in a trade, and the more they think of making afortune, the less they think of virtue; for when riches and virtue areplaced together in the balance, the one always rises as the other falls.

"And in proportion as riches and rich men are honored in the state,virtue and the virtuous are dishonored.

"And what is honored is cultivated, and that which has no honor isneglected.

"And so at last, instead of loving contention and glory, men becomelovers of trade and money, and they honor and reverence the rich man andmake a ruler of him, and dishonor the poor man.

"They do so."

The object of a reasonable statesman (it is Plato who is really speakingin the Laws) is not that the state should be as great and rich aspossible, should possess gold and silver, and have the greatest empire bysea and land.

The citizen must, indeed, be happy and good, and the legislator will seekto make him so; but very rich and very good at the same time he cannotbe; not at least in the sense in which many speak of riches. For theydescribe by the term "rich" the few who have the most valuablepossessions, though the owner of them be a rogue. And if this is true, Ican never assent to the doctrine that the rich man will be happy: he mustbe good as well as rich. And good in a high degree and rich in a highdegree at the same time he cannot be. Some one will ask, Why not? And weshall answer, Because acquisitions which come from sources which are justand unjust indifferently are more than double those which come from justsources only; and the sums which are expended neither honorably nordisgracefully are only half as great as those which are expendedhonorably and on honorable purposes. Thus if one acquires double andspends half, the other, who is in the opposite case and is a good man,cannot possibly be wealthier than he. The first (I am speaking of thesaver, and not of the spender) is not always bad; he may indeed in somecases be utterly bad, but as I was saying, a good man he never is. For hewho receives money unjustly as well as justly, and spends neither justlynor unjustly, will be a rich man if he be also thrifty. On the otherhand, the utterly bad man is generally profligate, and therefore poor;while he who spends on noble objects, and acquires wealth by just meansonly, can hardly be remarkable for riches any more than he can be verypoor. The argument, then, is right in declaring that the very rich arenot good, and if they are not good they are not happy.

And the conclusion of Plato is that we ought not to pursue any occupationto the neglect of that for which riches exist—"I mean," he says, "souland body, which without gymnastics and without education will never beworth anything; and therefore, as we have said not once but many times,the care of riches should have the last place in our thoughts."

Men cannot be happy unless they are good, and they cannot be good unlessthe care of the soul occupies the first place in their thoughts. That isthe first interest of man; the interest in the body is midway; and lastof all, when rightly regarded, is the interest about money.

The majority of mankind reverses this order of interests, and thereforeit sets literature to one side as of no practical account in human life.More than this, it not only drops it out of mind, but it has noconception of its influence and power in the very affairs from which itseems to be excluded. It is my purpose to show not only the closerelation of literature to ordinary life, but its eminent position inlife, and its saving power in lives which do not suspect its influence orvalue. Just as it is virtue that saves the state, if it be saved,although the majority do not recognize it and attribute the salvation ofthe state to energy, and to obedience to the laws of political economy,and to discoveries in science, and to financial contrivances; so it isthat in the life of generations of men, considered from an ethical andnot from a religious point of view, the most potent and lasting influencefor a civilization that is worth anything, a civilization that does notby its own nature work its decay, is that which I call literature. It istime to define what we mean by literature. We may arrive at the meaningby the definition of exclusion. We do not mean all books, but some books;not all that is written and published, but only a small part of it. We donot mean books of law, of theology, of politics, of science, of medicine,and not necessarily books of travel, or adventure, or biography, orfiction even. These may all be ephemeral in their nature. The termbelles-lettres does not fully express it, for it is too narrow. In booksof law, theology, politics, medicine, science, travel, adventure,biography, philosophy, and fiction there may be passages that possess, orthe whole contents may possess, that quality which comes within ourmeaning of literature. It must have in it something of the enduring andthe universal. When we use the term art, we do not mean the arts; we areindicating a quality that may be in any of the arts. In art andliterature we require not only an expression of the facts in nature andin human life, but of feeling, thought, emotion. There must be an appealto the universal in the race. It is, for example, impossible for aChristian today to understand what the religious system of the Egyptiansof three thousand years ago was to the Egyptian mind, or to grasp theidea conveyed to a Chinaman's thought in the phrase, "the worship of theprinciple of heaven"; but the Christian of today comprehends perfectlythe letters of an Egyptian scribe in the time of Thotmes III., whodescribed the comical miseries of his campaign with as clear an appeal touniversal human nature as Horace used in his 'Iter Brundusium;' and themaxims of Confucius are as comprehensible as the bitter-sweetness ofThomas a Kempis. De Quincey distinguishes between the literature ofknowledge and the literature of power. The definition is not exact; butwe may say that the one is a statement of what is known, the other is anemanation from the man himself; or that one may add to the sum of humanknowledge, and the other addresses itself to a higher want in humannature than the want of knowledge. We select and set aside as literaturethat which is original, the product of what we call genius. As I havesaid, the subject of a production does not always determine the desiredquality which makes it literature. A biography may contain all the factsin regard to a man and his character, arranged in an orderly andcomprehensible manner, and yet not be literature; but it may be sowritten, like Plutarch's Lives or Defoe's account of Robinson Crusoe,that it is literature, and of imperishable value as a picture of humanlife, as a satisfaction to the want of the human mind which is higherthan the want of knowledge. And this contribution, which I desire to beunderstood to mean when I speak of literature, is precisely the thing ofmost value in the lives of the majority of men, whether they are aware ofit or not. It may be weighty and profound; it may be light, as light asthe fall of a leaf or a bird's song on the shore; it may be the thoughtof Plato when he discourses of the character necessary in a perfectstate, or of Socrates, who, out of the theorem of an absolute beauty,goodness, greatness, and the like, deduces the immortality of the soul;or it may be the lovesong of a Scotch plowman: but it has this onequality of answering to a need in human nature higher than a need forfacts, for knowledge, for wealth.

In noticing the remoteness in the popular conception of the relation ofliterature to life, we must not neglect to take into account what may becalled the arrogance of culture, an arrogance that has been emphasized,in these days of reaction from the old attitude of literaryobsequiousness, by harsh distinctions and hard words, which are paid backby equally emphasized contempt. The apostles of light regard the rest ofmankind as barbarians and Philistines, and the world retorts that theseself-constituted apostles are idle word-mongers, without any sympathywith humanity, critics and jeerers who do nothing to make the conditionsof life easier. It is natural that every man should magnify the circle ofthe world in which he is active and imagine that all outside of it iscomparatively unimportant. Everybody who is not a drone has hissufficient world. To the lawyer it is his cases and the body of law, itis the legal relation of men that is of supreme importance; to themerchant and manufacturer all the world consists in buying and selling,in the production and exchange of products; to the physician all theworld is diseased and in need of remedies; to the clergyman speculationand the discussion of dogmas and historical theology assume immenseimportance; the politician has his world, the artist his also, and theman of books and letters a realm still apart from all others. And to eachof these persons what is outside of his world seems of secondaryimportance; he is absorbed in his own, which seems to him all-embracing.To the lawyer everybody is or ought to be a litigant; to the grocer theworld is that which eats, and pays—with more or less regularity; to thescholar the world is in books and ideas. One realizes how possessed he iswith his own little world only when by chance he changes his professionor occupation and looks back upon the law, or politics, or journalism,and sees in its true proportion what it was that once absorbed him andseemed to him so large. When Socrates discusses with Gorgias the value ofrhetoric, the use of which, the latter asserts, relates to the greatestand best of human things, Socrates says: I dare say you have heard mensinging—at feasts the old drinking-song, in which the singers enumeratethe goods of life-first, health; beauty next; thirdly, wealth honestlyacquired. The producers of these things—the physician, the trainer, themoney-maker—each in turn contends that his art produces the greatestgood. Surely, says the physician, health is the greatest good; there ismore good in my art, says the trainer, for my business is to make menbeautiful and strong in body; and consider, says the money-maker, whetherany one can produce a greater good than wealth. But, insists Gorgias, thegreatest good of men, of which I am the creator, is that which gives menfreedom in their persons, and the power of ruling over others in theirseveral states—that is, the word which persuades the judge in the court,or the senators in the council, or the citizens in the assembly: if youhave the power of uttering this word, you will have the physician yourslave, and the trainer your slave, and the moneymaker of whom you talkwill be found to gather treasures, not for himself, but for those who areable to speak and persuade the multitude.

What we call life is divided into occupations and interest, and thehorizons of mankind are bounded by them. It happens naturally enough,therefore, that there should be a want of sympathy in regard to thesepursuits among men, the politician despising the scholar, and the scholarlooking down upon the politician, and the man of affairs, the man ofindustries, not caring to conceal his contempt for both the others. Andstill more reasonable does the division appear between all the worldwhich is devoted to material life, and the few who live in and for theexpression of thought and emotion. It is a pity that this should be so,for it can be shown that life would not be worth living divorced from thegracious and ennobling influence of literature, and that literaturesuffers atrophy when it does not concern itself with the facts andfeelings of men.

If the poet lives in a world apart from the vulgar, the most lenientapprehension of him is that his is a sort of fool's paradise. One of themost curious features in the relation of literature to life is this, thatwhile poetry, the production of the poet, is as necessary to universalman as the atmosphere, and as acceptable, the poet is regarded with thatmingling of compassion and undervaluation, and perhaps awe, which onceattached to the weak-minded and insane, and which is sometimes expressedby the term "inspired idiot." However the poet may have been petted andcrowned, however his name may have been diffused among peoples, I doubtnot that the popular estimate of him has always been substantially whatit is today. And we all know that it is true, true in our individualconsciousness, that if a man be known as a poet and nothing else, if hischaracter is sustained by no other achievement than the production ofpoetry, he suffers in our opinion a loss of respect. And this is onlyrecovered for him after he is dead, and his poetry is left alone to speakfor his name. However fond my lord and lady were of the ballad, the placeof the minstrel was at the lower end of the hall. If we are pushed to saywhy this is, why this happens to the poet and not to the producers ofanything else that excites the admiration of mankind, we are forced toadmit that there is something in the poet to sustain the popular judgmentof his in utility. In all the occupations and professions of life thereis a sign put up, invisible—but none the less real, and expressing analmost universal feeling—"No poet need apply." And this is not becausethere are so many poor poets; for there are poor lawyers, poor soldiers,poor statesmen, incompetent business men; but none of the personaldisparagement attaches to them that is affixed to the poet. This popularestimate of the poet extends also, possibly in less degree, to all theproducers of the literature that does not concern itself with knowledge.It is not our care to inquire further why this is so, but to repeat thatit is strange that it should be so when poetry is, and has been at alltimes, the universal solace of all peoples who have emerged out ofbarbarism, the one thing not supernatural and yet akin to thesupernatural, that makes the world, in its hard and sordid conditions,tolerable to the race. For poetry is not merely the comfort of therefined and the delight of the educated; it is the alleviator of poverty,the pleasure-ground of the ignorant, the bright spot in the most drearypilgrimage. We cannot conceive the abject animal condition of our racewere poetry abstracted; and we do not wonder that this should be so whenwe reflect that it supplies a want higher than the need for food, forraiment, or ease of living, and that the mind needs support as much asthe body. The majority of mankind live largely in the imagination, theoffice or use of which is to lift them in spirit out of the bare physicalconditions in which the majority exist. There are races, which we maycall the poetical races, in which this is strikingly exemplified. Itwould be difficult to find poverty more complete, physical wants lessgratified, the conditions of life more bare than among the Orientalpeoples from the Nile to the Ganges and from the Indian Ocean to thesteppes of Siberia. But there are perhaps none among the more favoredraces who live so much in the world of imagination fed by poetry andromance. Watch the throng seated about an Arab or Indian or Persianstory-teller and poet, men and women with all the marks of want, hungry,almost naked, without any prospect in life of ever bettering their sordidcondition; see their eyes kindle, their breathing suspended, their tenseabsorption; see their tears, hear their laughter, note their excitementas the magician unfolds to them a realm of the imagination in which theyare free for the hour to wander, tasting a keen and deep enjoyment thatall the wealth of Croesus cannot purchase for his disciples. Measure, ifyou can, what poetry is to them, what their lives would be without it. Tothe millions and millions of men who are in this condition, the bard, thestory-teller, the creator of what we are considering as literature, comeswith the one thing that can lift them out of poverty, suffering—all thewoe of which nature is so heedless.

It is not alone of the poetical nations of the East that this is true,nor is this desire for the higher enjoyment always wanting in the savagetribes of the West. When the Jesuit Fathers in 1768 landed upon thealmost untouched and unexplored southern Pacific coast, they found in theSan Gabriel Valley in Lower California that the Indians had games andfeasts at which they decked themselves in flower garlands that reached totheir feet, and that at these games there were song contests whichsometimes lasted for three days. This contest of the poets was an oldcustom with them. And we remember how the ignorant Icelanders, who hadnever seen a written character, created the splendid Saga, and handed itdown from father to son. We shall scarcely find in Europe a peasantrywhose abject poverty is not in some measure alleviated by this powerwhich literature gives them to live outside it. Through our sacredScriptures, through the ancient storytellers, through the tradition whichin literature made, as I said, the chief continuity in the stream oftime, we all live a considerable, perhaps the better, portion of ourlives in the Orient. But I am not sure that the Scotch peasant, thecrofter in his Highland cabin, the operative in his squalidtenement-house, in the hopelessness of poverty, in the grime of a lifemade twice as hard as that of the Arab by an inimical climate, does notowe more to literature than the man of culture, whose materialsurroundings are heaven in the imagination of the poor. Think what hiswretched life would be, in its naked deformity, without the popularballads, without the romances of Scott, which have invested his land forhim, as for us, with enduring charm; and especially without the songs ofBurns, which keep alive in him the feeling that he is a man, which impartto his blunted sensibility the delicious throb of spring-songs thatenable him to hear the birds, to see the bits of blue sky-songs that makehim tender of the wee bit daisy at his feet—songs that hearten him whenhis heart is fit to break with misery. Perhaps the English peasant, theEnglish operative, is less susceptible to such influences than the Scotchor the Irish; but over him, sordid as his conditions are, close kin as heis to the clod, the light of poetry is diffused; there filters into hislife, also, something of that divine stream of which we have spoken, adialect poem that touches him, the leaf of a psalm, some bit ofimagination, some tale of pathos, set afloat by a poor writer so long agothat it has become the common stock of human tradition-maybe fromPalestine, maybe from the Ganges, perhaps from Athens—some expression ofreal emotion, some creation, we say, that makes for him a world, vagueand dimly apprehended, that is not at all the actual world in which hesins and suffers. The poor woman, in a hut with an earth floor, a reekingroof, a smoky chimney, barren of comfort, so indecent that a gentlemanwould not stable his horse in it, sits and sews upon a coarse garment,while she rocks the cradle of an infant about whom she cherishes noillusions that his lot will be other than that of his father before him.As she sits forlorn, it is not the wretched hovel that she sees, norother hovels like it—rows of tenements of hopeless poverty, theale-house, the gin-shop, the coal-pit, and the choking factory—but:

"Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dressed in living green"

for her, thanks to the poet. But, alas for the poet there is not apeasant nor a wretched operative of them all who will not shake his headand tap his forehead with his forefinger when the poor poet chap passesby. The peasant has the same opinion of him that the physician, thetrainer, and the money-lender had of the rhetorician.

The hard conditions of the lonely New England life, with its religioustheories as sombre as its forests, its rigid notions of duty as difficultto make bloom into sweetness and beauty as the stony soil, would havebeen unendurable if they had not been touched with the ideal created bythe poet. There was in creed and purpose the virility that creates astate, and, as Menander says, the country which is cultivated withdifficulty produces brave men; but we leave out an important element inthe lives of the Pilgrims if we overlook the means they had of livingabove their barren circ*mstances. I do not speak only of the culturewhich many of them brought from the universities, of the Greek and Romanclassics, and what unworldly literature they could glean from theproductive age of Elizabeth and James, but of another source, moreuniversally resorted to, and more powerful in exciting imagination andemotion, and filling the want in human nature of which we have spoken.They had the Bible, and it was more to them, much more, than a book ofreligion, than a revelation of religious truth, a rule for the conduct oflife, or a guide to heaven. It supplied the place to them of theMahabharata to the Hindoo, of the story-teller to the Arab. It opened tothem a boundless realm of poetry and imagination.

What is the Bible? It might have sufficed, accepted as a book ofrevelation, for all the purposes of moral guidance, spiritualconsolation, and systematized authority, if it had been a collection ofprecepts, a dry code of morals, an arsenal of judgments, and a treasuryof promises. We are accustomed to think of the Pilgrims as training theirintellectual faculties in the knottiest problems of human responsibilityand destiny, toughening their mental fibre in wrestling with dogmas andthe decrees of Providence, forgetting what else they drew out of theBible: what else it was to them in a degree it has been to few peoplesmany age. For the Bible is the unequaled record of thought and emotion,the reservoir of poetry, traditions, stories, parables, exaltations,consolations, great imaginative adventure, for which the spirit of man isalways longing. It might have been, in warning examples and commands,all-sufficient to enable men to make a decent pilgrimage on earth andreach a better country; but it would have been a very different book tomankind if it had been only a volume of statutes, and if it lacked itswonderful literary quality. It might have enabled men to reach a bettercountry, but not, while on earth, to rise into and live in that bettercountry, or to live in a region above the sordidness of actual life. For,apart from its religious intention and sacred character, the book is sowritten that it has supremely in its history, poetry, prophecies,promises, stories, that clear literary quality that supplies, ascertainly no other single book does, the want in the human mind which ishigher than the want of facts or knowledge.

The Bible is the best illustration of the literature of power, for italways concerns itself with life, it touches it at all points. And thisis the test of any piece of literature—its universal appeal to humannature. When I consider the narrow limitations of the Pilgrim households,the absence of luxury, the presence of danger and hardship, the harshlaws—only less severe than the contemporary laws of England andVirginia—the weary drudgery, the few pleasures, the curb upon theexpression of emotion and of tenderness, the ascetic repression ofworldly thought, the absence of poetry in the routine occupations andconditions, I can feel what the Bible must have been to them. It was anopen door into a world where emotion is expressed, where imagination canrange, where love and longing find a language, where imagery is given toevery noble and suppressed passion of the soul, where every aspirationfinds wings. It was history, or, as Thucydides said, philosophy teachingby example; it was the romance of real life; it was entertainmentunfailing; the wonder-book of childhood, the volume of sweet sentiment tothe shy maiden, the sword to the soldier, the inciter of the youth toheroic enduring of hardness, it was the refuge of the aged in failingactivity. Perhaps we can nowhere find a better illustration of the truerelation of literature to life than in this example.

Let us consider the comparative value of literature to mankind. Bycomparative value I mean its worth to men in comparison with other thingsof acknowledged importance, such as the creation of industries, thegovernment of States, the manipulation of the politics of an age, theachievements in war and discovery, and the lives of admirable men. Itneeds a certain perspective to judge of this aright, for the near and theimmediate always assume importance. The work that an age has on hand,whether it be discovery, conquest, the wars that determine boundaries orare fought for policies, the industries that develop a country or affectthe character of a people, the wielding of power, the accumulation offortunes, the various activities of any given civilization or period,assume such enormous proportions to those engaged in them that such amodest thing as the literary product seems insignificant in comparison;and hence it is that the man of action always holds in slight esteem theman of thought, and especially the expresser of feeling and emotion, thepoet and the humorist. It is only when we look back over the ages, whencivilizations have passed or changed, over the rivalries of States, theambitions and enmities of men, the shining deeds and the base deeds thatmake up history, that we are enabled to see what remains, what ispermanent. Perhaps the chief result left to the world out of a period ofheroic exertion, of passion and struggle and accumulation, is a sheaf ofpoems, or the record by a man of letters of some admirable character.Spain filled a large place in the world in the sixteenth century, and itsinfluence upon history is by no means spent yet; but we have inheritedout of that period nothing, I dare say, that is of more value than theromance of Don Quixote. It is true that the best heritage of generationfrom generation is the character of great men; but we always owe itstransmission to the poet and the writer. Without Plato there would be noSocrates. There is no influence comparable in human life to thepersonality of a powerful man, so long as he is present to hisgeneration, or lives in the memory of those who felt his influence. Butafter time has passed, will the world, will human life, that isessentially the same in all changing conditions, be more affected by whatBismarck did or by what Goethe said?

We may without impropriety take for an illustration of the comparativevalue of literature to human needs the career of a man now living. In theopinion of many, Mr. Gladstone is the greatest Englishman of this age.What would be the position of the British empire, what would be thetendency of English politics and society without him, is a matter forspeculation. He has not played such a role for England and its neighborsas Bismarck has played for Germany and the Continent, but he has been oneof the most powerful influences in molding English action. He is theforemost teacher. Rarely in history has a nation depended more upon asingle man, at times, than the English upon Gladstone, upon his will, hisability, and especially his character. In certain recent crises thethought of losing him produced something like a panic in the Englishmind, justifying in regard to him, the hyperbole of Choate upon the deathof Webster, that the sailor on the distant sea would feel less safe—asif a protecting providence had been withdrawn from the world. His masteryof finance and of economic problems, his skill in debate, his marvelousachievements in oratory, have extorted the admiration of his enemies.There is scarcely a province in government, letters, art, or research inwhich the mind can win triumphs that he has not invaded and displayed hispower in; scarcely a question in politics, reform, letters, religion,archaeology, sociology, which he has not discussed with ability. He is ascholar, critic, parliamentarian, orator, voluminous writer. He seemsequally at home in every field of human activity—a man of prodigiouscapacity and enormous acquirements. He can take up, with a turn of thehand, and always with vigor, the cause of the Greeks, Papal power,education, theology, the influence of Egypt on Homer, the effect ofEnglish legislation on King O'Brien, contributing something noteworthy toall the discussions of the day. But I am not aware that he has everproduced a single page of literature. Whatever space he has filled in hisown country, whatever and however enduring the impression he has madeupon English life and society, does it seem likely that the sum total ofhis immense activity in so many fields, after the passage of so manyyears, will be worth to the world as much as the simple story of Rab andhis Friends? Already in America I doubt if it is. The illustration mighthave more weight with some minds if I contrasted the work of this greatman—as to its answering to a deep want in human nature—with a novellike 'Henry Esmond' or a poem like 'In Memoriam'; but I think it issufficient to rest it upon so slight a performance as the sketch by Dr.John Brown, of Edinburgh. For the truth is that a little page ofliterature, nothing more than a sheet of paper with a poem written on it,may have that vitality, that enduring quality, that adaptation to life,that make it of more consequence to all who inherit it than everymaterial achievement of the age that produced it. It was nothing but asheet of paper with a poem on it, carried to the door of his Londonpatron, for which the poet received a guinea, and perhaps a seat at thefoot of my lord's table. What was that scrap compared to my lord'sbusiness, his great establishment, his equipages in the Park, hisposition in society, his weight in the House of Lords, his influence inEurope? And yet that scrap of paper has gone the world over; it has beensung in the camp, wept over in the lonely cottage; it has gone with themarching regiments, with the explorers—with mankind, in short, on itsway down the ages, brightening, consoling, elevating life; and my lord,who regarded as scarcely above a menial the poet to whom he tossed theguinea—my lord, with all his pageantry and power, has utterly gone andleft no witness.

"EQUALITY"

By Charles Dudley Warner

In accordance with the advice of Diogenes of Apollonia in the beginningof his treatise on Natural Philosophy—"It appears to me to be well forevery one who commences any sort of philosophical treatise to lay downsome undeniable principle to start with"—we offer this:

All men are created unequal.

It would be a most interesting study to trace the growth in the world ofthe doctrine of "equality." That is not the purpose of this essay, anyfurther than is necessary for definition. We use the term in its popularsense, in the meaning, somewhat vague, it is true, which it has had sincethe middle of the eighteenth century. In the popular apprehension it isapt to be confounded with uniformity; and this not without reason, sincein many applications of the theory the tendency is to produce likeness oruniformity. Nature, with equal laws, tends always to diversity; anddoubtless the just notion of equality in human affairs consists withunlikeness. Our purpose is to note some of the tendencies of the dogma asit is at present understood by a considerable portion of mankind.

We regard the formulated doctrine as modern. It would be too much to saythat some notion of the "equality of men" did not underlie thesocialistic and communistic ideas which prevailed from time to time inthe ancient world, and broke out with volcanic violence in the Grecianand Roman communities. But those popular movements seem to us ratherblind struggles against physical evils, and to be distinguished fromthose more intelligent actions based upon the theory which began to stirEurope prior to the Reformation.

It is sufficient for our purpose to take the well-defined theory ofmodern times. Whether the ideal republic of Plato was merely a convenientform for philosophical speculation, or whether, as the greatest authorityon political economy in Germany, Dr. William Roscher, thinks, it "was nomere fancy"; whether Plato's notion of the identity of man and the Stateis compatible with the theory of equality, or whether it is, as manycommunists say, indispensable to it, we need not here discuss. It is truethat in his Republic almost all the social theories which have beendeduced from the modern proclamation of equality are elaborated. Therewas to be a community of property, and also a community of wives andchildren. The equality of the sexes was insisted on to the extent ofliving in common, identical education and pursuits, equal share in alllabors, in occupations, and in government. Between the sexes there wasallowed only one ultimate difference. The Greeks, as Professor Jowettsays, had noble conceptions of womanhood; but Plato's ideal for the sexeshad no counterpart in their actual life, nor could they have understoodthe sort of equality upon which he insisted. The same is true of theRomans throughout their history.

More than any other Oriental peoples the Egyptians of the Ancient Empireentertained the idea of the equality of the sexes; but the equality ofman was not conceived by them. Still less did any notion of it exist inthe Jewish state. It was the fashion with the socialists of 1793, as ithas been with the international assemblages at Geneva in our own day, totrace the genesis of their notions back to the first Christian age. Thefar-reaching influence of the new gospel in the liberation of the humanmind and in promoting just and divinely-ordered relations among men isadmitted; its origination of the social and political dogma we areconsidering is denied. We do not find that Christ himself anywhereexpressed it or acted on it. He associated with the lowly, the vile, theoutcast; he taught that all men, irrespective of rank or possessions, aresinners, and in equal need of help. But he attempted no change in theconditions of society. The "communism" of the early Christians was thetemporary relation of a persecuted and isolated sect, drawn together bycommon necessities and dangers, and by the new enthusiasm ofself-surrender. ["The community of goods of the first Christians atJerusalem, so frequently cited and extolled, was only a community of use,not of ownership (Acts iv. 32), and throughout a voluntary act of love,not a duty (v. 4); least of all, a right which the poorer might assert.Spite of all this, that community of goods produced a chronic state ofpoverty in the church of Jerusalem." (Principles of Political Economy. ByWilliam Roscher. Note to Section LXXXI. English translation. New York:Henry Holt & Co. 1878.)]—Paul announced the universal brotherhood ofman, but he as clearly recognized the subordination of society, in theduties of ruler and subject, master and slave, and in all the domesticrelations; and although his gospel may be interpreted to contain theelements of revolution, it is not probable that he undertook toinculcate, by the proclamation of "universal brotherhood," anything morethan the duty of universal sympathy between all peoples and classes associety then existed.

If Christianity has been and is the force in promoting and shapingcivilization that we regard it, we may be sure that it is not as apolitical agent, or an annuller of the inequalities of life, that we areto expect aid from it. Its office, or rather one of its chief offices onearth, is to diffuse through the world, regardless of condition orpossessions or talent or opportunity, sympathy and a recognition of thevalue of manhood underlying every lot and every diversity—a value notmeasured by earthly accidents, but by heavenly standards. This weunderstand to be "Christian equality." Of course it consists withinequalities of condition, with subordination, discipline, obedience; toobey and serve is as honorable as to command and to be served.

If the religion of Christ should ever be acclimated on earth, the resultwould not be the removal of hardships and suffering, or of the necessityof self-sacrifice; but the bitterness and discontent at unequalconditions would measurably disappear. At the bar of Christianity thepoor man is the equal of the rich, and the learned of the unlearned,since intellectual acquisition is no guarantee of moral worth. Thecontent that Christianity would bring to our perturbed society would comefrom the practical recognition of the truth that all conditions may beequally honorable. The assertion of the dignity of man and of labor is,we imagine, the sum and substance of the equality and communism of theNew Testament. But we are to remember that this is not merely a "gospelfor the poor."

Whatever the theories of the ancient world were, the development ofdemocratic ideas is sufficiently marked in the fifteenth century, andeven in the fourteenth, to rob the eighteenth of the credit oforiginating the doctrine of equality. To mention only one of the earlywriters,—[For copious references to authorities on the spread ofcommunistic and socialistic ideas and libertine community of goods andwomen in four periods of the world's history—namely, at the time of thedecline of Greece, in the degeneration of the Roman republic, among themoderns in the age of the Reformation, and again in our own day—seeRoscher's Political Economy, notes to Section LXXIX., et seq.]—Marsilio, a physician of Padua, in 1324, said that the laws ought to bemade by all the citizens; and he based this sovereignty of the peopleupon the greater likelihood of laws being better obeyed, and also beinggood laws, when they were made by the whole body of the persons affected.

In 1750 and 1753, J. J. Rousseau published his two discourses onquestions proposed by the Academy of Dijon: "Has the Restoration ofSciences Contributed to Purify or to Corrupt Manners?" and "What is theOrigin of Inequality among Men, and is it Authorized by Natural Law?"These questions show the direction and the advance of thinking on socialtopics in the middle of the eighteenth century. Rousseau's Contrat-Socialand the novel Emile were published in 1761.

But almost three-quarters of a century before, in 1690, John Lockepublished his two treatises on government. Rousseau was familiar withthem. Mr. John Morley, in his admirable study of Rousseau, [Rousseau. ByJohn Morley. London: Chapman & Hall. 1873—I have used it freely in theglance at this period.]—fully discusses the latter's obligation toLocke; and the exposition leaves Rousseau little credit for originality,but considerable for illogical misconception. He was, in fact, the mostillogical of great men, and the most inconsistent even of geniuses. TheContrat-Social is a reaction in many things from the discourses, andEmile is almost an entire reaction, especially in the theory ofeducation, from both.

His central doctrine of popular sovereignty was taken from Locke. TheEnglish philosopher said, in his second treatise, "To understandpolitical power aright and derive it from its original, we must considerwhat state all men are naturally in; and that is a state of perfectfreedom to order their actions and dispose of their persons andpossessions as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature,without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man—a statealso of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal,no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident thanthat creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to allthe advantages of nature and the use of the same faculties, should alsobe equal one amongst another, without subordination or subjection, unlessthe Lord and Master of them all should by any manifest declaration of Hiswill set one above another, and confer on him by an evident and clearappointment an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty." But a stateof liberty is not a state of license. We cannot exceed our own rightswithout assailing the rights of others. There is no such subordination asauthorizes us to destroy one another. As every one is bound to preservehimself, so he is bound to preserve the rest of mankind, and except to dojustice upon an offender we may not impair the life, liberty, health, orgoods of another. Here Locke deduces the power that one man may have overanother; community could not exist if transgressors were not punished.Every wrongdoer places himself in "a state of war." Here is thedifference between the state of nature and the state of war, which men,says Locke, have confounded—alluding probably to Hobbes's notion of thelawlessness of human society in the original condition.

The portion of Locke's treatise which was not accepted by the Frenchtheorists was that relating to property. Property in lands or goods isdue wholly and only to the labor man has put into it. By labor he hasremoved it from the common state in which nature has placed it, andannexed something to it that excludes the common rights of other men.

Rousseau borrowed from Hobbes as well as from Locke in his conception ofpopular sovereignty; but this was not his only lack of originality. Hisdiscourse on primitive society, his unscientific and unhistoric notionsabout the original condition of man, were those common in the middle ofthe eighteenth century. All the thinkers and philosophers and fine ladiesand gentlemen assumed a certain state of nature, and built upon it, outof words and phrases, an airy and easy reconstruction of society, withouta thought of investigating the past, or inquiring into the development ofmankind. Every one talked of "the state of nature" as if he knew allabout it. "The conditions of primitive man," says Mr. Morley, "werediscussed by very incompetent ladies and gentlemen at convivialsupper-parties, and settled with complete assurance." That was the agewhen solitary Frenchmen plunged into the wilderness of North America,confidently expecting to recover the golden age under the shelter of awigwam and in the society of a squaw.

The state of nature of Rousseau was a state in which inequality did notexist, and with a fervid rhetoric he tried to persuade his readers thatit was the happier state. He recognized inequality, it is true, as a wordof two different meanings: first, physical inequality, difference of age,strength, health, and of intelligence and character; second, moral andpolitical inequality, difference of privileges which some enjoy to thedetriment of others-such as riches, honor, power. The first difference isestablished by nature, the second by man. So long, however, as the stateof nature endures, no disadvantages flow from the natural inequalities.

In Rousseau's account of the means by which equality was lost, theincoming of the ideas of property is prominent. From property arose civilsociety. With property came in inequality. His exposition of inequalityis confused, and it is not possible always to tell whether he meansinequality of possessions or of political rights. His contemporary,Morelly, who published the Basileade in 1753, was troubled by no suchambiguity. He accepts the doctrine that men are formed by laws, but holdsthat they are by nature good, and that laws, by establishing a divisionof the products of nature, broke up the sociability of men, and that allpolitical and moral evils are the result of private property. Politicalinequality is an accident of inequality of possessions, and therenovation of the latter lies in the abolition of the former.

The opening sentence of the Contrat-Social is, "Man is born free, andeverywhere he is a slave," a statement which it is difficult to reconcilewith the fact that every human being is born helpless, dependent, andinto conditions of subjection, conditions that we have no reason tosuppose were ever absent from the race. But Rousseau never said, "All menare born equal." He recognized, as we have seen, natural inequality. Whathe held was that the artificial differences springing from the socialunion were disproportionate to the capacities springing from the originalconstitution; and that society, as now organized, tends to make the gulfwider between those who have privileges and those who have none.

The well-known theory upon which Rousseau's superstructure rests is thatsociety is the result of a compact, a partnership between men. They havenot made an agreement to submit their individual sovereignty to somesuperior power, but they have made a covenant of brotherhood. It is acontract of association. Men were, and ought to be, equal cooperators,not only in politics, but in industries and all the affairs of life. Allthe citizens are participants in the sovereign authority. Theirsovereignty is inalienable; power may be transmitted, but not will; ifthe people promise to obey, it dissolves itself by the very act—if thereis a master, there is no longer a people. Sovereignty is alsoindivisible; it cannot be split up into legislative, judiciary, andexecutive power.

Society being the result of a compact made by men, it followed that thepartners could at any time remake it, their sovereignty beinginalienable. And this the French socialists, misled by a priori notions,attempted to do, on the theory of the Contrat-Social, as if they had atabula rasa, without regarding the existing constituents of society, ortraditions, or historical growths.

Equality, as a phrase, having done duty as a dissolvent, was pressed intoservice as a constructor. As this is not so much an essay on the natureof equality is an attempt to indicate some of the modern tendencies tocarry out what is illusory in the dogma, perhaps enough has been said ofthis period. Mr. Morley very well remarks that the doctrine of equalityas a demand for a fair chance in the world is unanswerable; but that itis false when it puts him who uses his chance well on the same level withhim who uses it ill. There is no doubt that when Condorcet said, "Notonly equality of right, but equality of fact, is the goal of the socialart," he uttered the sentiments of the socialists of the Revolution.

The next authoritative announcement of equality, to which it is necessaryto refer, is in the American Declaration of Independence, in these words:"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal;that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that tosecure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving theirjust power from the consent of the governed." And the Declaration goeson, in temperate and guarded language, to assert the right of a people tochange their form of government when it becomes destructive of the endsnamed.

Although the genesis of these sentiments seems to be French rather thanEnglish, and equality is not defined, and critics have differed as towhether the equality clause is independent or qualified by what follows,it is not necessary to suppose that Thomas Jefferson meant anythinginconsistent with the admitted facts of nature and of history. It isimportant to bear in mind that the statesmen of our Revolution wereinaugurating a political and not a social revolution, and that thegravamen of their protest was against the authority of a distant crown.Nevertheless, these dogmas, independent of the circ*mstances in whichthey were uttered, have exercised and do exercise a very powerfulinfluence upon the thinking of mankind on social and political topics,and are being applied without limitations, and without recognition of thefact that if they are true, in the sense meant by their originators, theyare not the whole truth. It is to be noticed that rights are mentioned,but not duties, and that if political rights only are meant, politicalduties are not inculcated as of equal moment. It is not announced thatpolitical power is a function to be discharged for the good of the wholebody, and not a mere right to be enjoyed for the advantage of thepossessor; and it is to be noted also that this idea did not enter intothe conception of Rousseau.

The dogma that "government derives its just power from the consent of thegoverned" is entirely consonant with the book theories of the eighteenthcentury, and needs to be confronted, and practically is confronted, withthe equally good dogma that "governments derive their just power fromconformity with the principles of justice." We are not to imagine, forinstance, that the framers of the Declaration really contemplated theexclusion from political organization of all higher law than that in the"consent of the governed," or the application of the theory, let us say,to a colony composed for the most part of outcasts, murderers, thieves,and prostitutes, or to such states as today exist in the Orient. TheDeclaration was framed for a highly intelligent and virtuous society.

Many writers, and some of them English, have expressed curiosity, if notwonder, at the different fortunes which attended the doctrine of equalityin America and in France. The explanation is on the surface, and need notbe sought in the fact of a difference of social and political level inthe two countries at the start, nor even in the further fact that thecolonies were already accustomed to self-government.

The simple truth is that the dogmas of the Declaration were not put intothe fundamental law. The Constitution is the most practical statedocument ever made. It announces no dogmas, proclaims no theories. Itaccepted society as it was, with its habits and traditions; raising noabstract questions whether men are born free or equal, or how societyought to be organized. It is simply a working compact, made by "thepeople," to promote union, establish justice, and secure the blessings ofliberty; and the equality is in the assumption of the right of "thepeople of the United States" to do this. And yet, in a recent number ofBlackwood's Magazine, a writer makes the amusing statement, "I have nevermet an American who could deny that, while firmly maintaining that thetheory was sound which, in the beautiful language of the Constitution,proclaims that all men were born equal, he was," etc.

An enlightening commentary on the meaning of the Declaration, in theminds of the American statesmen of the period, is furnished by theopinions which some of them expressed upon the French Revolution while itwas in progress. Gouverneur Morris, minister to France in 1789, was aconservative republican; Thomas Jefferson was a radical democrat. Both ofthem had a warm sympathy with the French "people" in the Revolution; bothhoped for a republic; both recognized, we may reasonably infer, thesufficient cause of the Revolution in the long-continued corruption ofcourt and nobility, and the intolerable sufferings of the lower orders;and both, we have equal reason to believe, thought that a fairaccommodation, short of a dissolution of society, was defeated by theimbecility of the king and the treachery and malignity of a considerableportion of the nobility. The Revolution was not caused by theories,however much it may have been excited or guided by them. But both Morrisand Jefferson saw the futility of the application of the abstract dogmaof equality and the theories of the Social Contract to the reconstructionof government and the reorganization of society in France.

If the aristocracy were malignant—though numbers of them were far frombeing so—there was also a malignant prejudice aroused against them, andM. Taine is not far wrong when he says of this prejudice, "Its hard, drykernel consists of the abstract idea of equality."—[The FrenchRevolution. By H. A. Taine. Vol. i., bk. ii., chap. ii., sec. iii.Translation. New York: Henry Holt & Co.]—Taine's French Revolution iscynical, and, with all its accumulation of material, omits some factsnecessary to a philosophical history; but a passage following that quotedis worth reproducing in this connection: "The treatment of the nobles ofthe Assembly is the same as the treatment of the Protestants by LouisXIV. . . . One hundred thousand Frenchmen driven out at the end of theseventeenth century, and one hundred thousand driven out at the end ofthe eighteenth! Mark how an intolerant democracy completes the work of anintolerant monarchy! The moral aristocracy was mowed down in the name ofuniformity; the social aristocracy is mowed down in the name of equality.For the second time an abstract principle, and with the same effect,buries its blade in the heart of a living society."

Notwithstanding the world-wide advertisem*nt of the French experiment, ithas taken almost a century for the dogma of equality, at least outside ofFrance, to filter down from the speculative thinkers into a generalpopular acceptance, as an active principle to be used in the shaping ofaffairs, and to become more potent in the popular mind than tradition orhabit. The attempt is made to apply it to society with a brutal logic;and we might despair as to the result, if we did not know that the worldis not ruled by logic. Nothing is so fascinating in the hands of thehalf-informed as a neat dogma; it seems the perfect key to alldifficulties. The formula is applied in contempt and ignorance of thepast, as if building up were as easy as pulling down, and as if societywere a machine to be moved by mechanical appliances, and not a livingorganism composed of distinct and sensitive beings. Along with the spreadof a belief in the uniformity of natural law has unfortunately gone asuggestion of parallelism of the moral law to it, and a notion that if wecan discover the right formula, human society and government can beorganized with a mathematical justice to all the parts. By many the dogmaof equality is held to be that formula, and relief from the greater evilsof the social state is expected from its logical extension.

Let us now consider some of the present movements and tendencies that arerelated, more or less, to this belief:

I. Absolute equality is seen to depend upon absolute supremacy of thestate. Professor Henry Fawcett says, "Excessive dependence on the stateis the most prominent characteristic of modern socialism." "Theseproposals to prohibit inheritance, to abolish private property, and tomake the state the owner of all the capital and the administrator of theentire industry of the country are put forward as representing socialismin its ultimate and highest development."—["Socialism in Germany and theUnited States," Fortnightly Review, November, 1878.]

Society and government should be recast till they conform to the theory,or, let us say, to its exaggerations. Men can unmake what they have made.There is no higher authority anywhere than the will of the majority, nomatter what the majority is in intellect and morals. Fifty-one ignorantmen have a natural right to legislate for the one hundred, as againstforty-nine intelligent men.

All men being equal, one man is as fit to legislate and execute asanother. A recently elected Congressman from Maine vehemently repudiatedin a public address, as a slander, the accusation that he was educated.The theory was that, uneducated, he was the proper representative of theaverage ignorance of his district, and that ignorance ought to berepresented in the legislature in kind. The ignorant know better whatthey want than the educated know for them. "Their education [that ofcollege men] destroys natural perception and judgment; so that cultivatedpeople are one-sided, and their judgment is often inferior to that of theworking people." "Cultured people have made up their minds, and are hardto move." "No lawyer should be elected to a place in any legislativebody."—[Opinions of working-men, reported in "The Nationals, theirOrigin and their Aims," The Atlantic Monthly, November, 1878.]

Experience is of no account, neither is history, nor tradition, nor theaccumulated wisdom of ages. On all questions of political economy,finance, morals, the ignorant man stands on a par with the best informedas a legislator. We might cite any number of the results of theseillusions. A member of a recent House of Representatives declared that we"can repair the losses of the war by the issue of a sufficient amount ofpaper money." An intelligent mechanic of our acquaintance, a leader amongthe Nationals, urging the theory of his party, that banks should bedestroyed, and that the government should issue to the people as much"paper money" as they need, denied the right of banks or of anyindividuals to charge interest on money. Yet he would take rent for thehouse he owns.

Laws must be the direct expression of the will of the majority, and bealtered solely on its will. It would be well, therefore, to have acontinuous election, so that, any day, the electors can change theirrepresentative for a new man. "If my caprice be the source of law, thenmy enjoyment may be the source of the division of the nation'sresources."—[Stahl's Rechtsphilosophie, quoted by Roscher.]

Property is the creator of inequality, and this factor in our artificialstate can be eliminated only by absorption. It is the duty of thegovernment to provide for all the people, and the sovereign people willsee to it that it does. The election franchise is a natural right—aman's weapon to protect himself. It may be asked, If it is just this, andnot a sacred trust accorded to be exercised for the benefit of society,why may not a man sell it, if it is for his interest to do so?

What is there illogical in these positions from the premise given?"Communism," says Roscher, [Political Economy, bk. i., ch. v., 78.]—isthe logically not inconsistent exaggeration of the principle of equality.Men who hear themselves designated as the sovereign people, and theirwelfare as the supreme law of the state, are more apt than others to feelmore keenly the distance which separates their own misery from thesuperabundance of others. And, indeed, to what an extent our physicalwants are determined by our intellectual mold!"

The tendency of the exaggeration of man's will as the foundation ofgovernment is distinctly materialistic; it is a self-sufficiency thatshuts out God and the higher law.—["And, indeed, if the will of man isall-powerful, if states are to be distinguished from one another only bytheir boundaries, if everything may be changed like the scenery in a playby a flourish of the magic wand of a system, if man may arbitrarily makethe right, if nations can be put through evolutions like regiments oftroops, what a field would the world present for attempts at therealizations of the wildest dreams, and what a temptation would beoffered to take possession, by main force, of the government of humanaffairs, to destroy the rights of property and the rights of capital, togratify ardent longings without trouble, and to provide the much-covetedmeans of enjoyment! The Titans have tried to scale the heavens, and havefallen into the most degrading materialism. Purely speculative dogmatismsinks into materialism." (M. Wolowski's Essay on the Historical Method,prefixed to his translation of Roscher's Political Economy.)]—We need toremember that the Creator of man, and not man himself, formed society andinstituted government; that God is always behind human society andsustains it; that marriage and the family and all social relations aredivinely established; that man's duty, coinciding with his right, is, bythe light of history, by experience, by observation of men, and by theaid of revelation, to find out and make operative, as well as he can, thedivine law in human affairs. And it may be added that the sovereignty ofthe people, as a divine trust, may be as logically deduced from thedivine institution of government as the old divine right of kings.Government, by whatever name it is called, is a matter of experience andexpediency. If we submit to the will of the majority, it is because it ismore convenient to do so; and if the republic or the democracy vindicateitself, it is because it works best, on the whole, for a particularpeople. But it needs no prophet to say that it will not work long if Godis shut out from it, and man, in a full-blown socialism, is consideredthe ultimate authority.

II. Equality of education. In our American system there is, not onlytheoretically but practically, an equality of opportunity in the publicschools, which are free to all children, and rise by gradations from theprimaries to the high-schools, in which the curriculum in most respectsequals, and in variety exceeds, that of many third-class "colleges." Inthese schools nearly the whole round of learning, in languages, science,and art, is touched. The system has seemed to be the best that could bedevised for a free society, where all take part in the government, andwhere so much depends upon the intelligence of the electors. Certainobjections, however, have been made to it. As this essay is intended onlyto be tentative, we shall state some of them, without indulging inlengthy comments.

( 1. ) The first charge is superficiality—a necessary consequence ofattempting too much—and a want of adequate preparation for specialpursuits in life.

( 2. ) A uniformity in mediocrity is alleged from the use of the sametext-books and methods in all schools, for all grades and capacities.This is one of the most common criticisms on our social state by acertain class of writers in England, who take an unflagging interest inour development. One answer to it is this: There is more reason to expectvariety of development and character in a generally educated than in anignorant community; there is no such uniformity as the dull level ofignorance.

( 3. ) It is said that secular education—and the general schools open toall in a community of mixed religions must be secular—is training therising generation to be materialists and socialists.

( 4. ) Perhaps a better-founded charge is that a system of equaleducation, with its superficiality, creates discontent with the conditionin which a majority of men must be—that of labor—a distaste for tradesand for hand-work, an idea that what is called intellectual labor (let ussay, casting up accounts in a shop, or writing trashy stories for asensational newspaper) is more honorable than physical labor; andencourages the false notion that "the elevation of the working classes"implies the removal of men and women from those classes.

We should hesitate to draw adverse conclusions in regard to a system yetso young that its results cannot be fairly estimated. Only after two orthree generations can its effects upon the character of a great people bemeasured: Observations differ, and testimony is difficult to obtain. Wethink it safe to say that those states are most prosperous which have thebest free schools. But if the philosopher inquires as to the generaleffect upon the national character in respect to the objections named, hemust wait for a reply.

III. The pursuit of the chimera of social equality, from the belief thatit should logically follow political equality; resulting in extravagance,misapplication of natural capacities, a notion that physical labor isdishonorable, or that the state should compel all to labor alike, and inefforts to remove inequalities of condition by legislation.

IV. The equality of the sexes. The stir in the middle of the eighteenthcentury gave a great impetus to the emancipation of woman; though,curiously enough, Rousseau, in unfolding his plan of education forSophie, in Emile, inculcates an almost Oriental subjection of woman—hereducation simply that she may please man. The true enfranchisem*nt ofwoman—that is, the recognition (by herself as well as by man) of herreal place in the economy of the world, in the full development of hercapacities—is the greatest gain to civilization since the Christian era.The movement has its excesses, and the gain has not been without loss."When we turn to modern literature," writes Mr. Money, "from the pages inwhich Fenelon speaks of the education of girls, who does not feel thatthe world has lost a sacred accent—that some ineffable essence haspassed out from our hearts?"

How far the expectation has been realized that women, in fiction, forinstance, would be more accurately described, better understood, andappear as nobler and lovelier beings when women wrote the novels, this isnot the place to inquire. The movement has results which are unavoidablein a period of transition, and probably only temporary. The education ofwoman and the development of her powers hold the greatest promise for theregeneration of society. But this development, yet in its infancy, andpursued with much crudeness and misconception of the end, is not enough.Woman would not only be equal with man, but would be like him; that is,perform in society the functions he now performs. Here, again, the notionof equality is pushed towards uniformity. The reformers admit structuraldifferences in the sexes, though these, they say, are greatly exaggeratedby subjection; but the functional differences are mainly to beeliminated. Women ought to mingle in all the occupations of men, as ifthe physical differences did not exist. The movement goes to obliterate,as far as possible, the distinction between sexes. Nature is, no doubt,amused at this attempt. A recent writer—["Biology and Woman's Rights,"Quarterly Journal of Science, November, 1878.]—, says: "The 'femmelibre' [free woman] of the new social order may, indeed, escape thecharge of neglecting her family and her household by contending that itis not her vocation to become a wife and a mother! Why, then, we ask, isshe constituted a woman at all? Merely that she may become a sort ofsecond-rate man?"

The truth is that this movement, based always upon a misconception ofequality, so far as it would change the duties of the sexes, is aretrograde.—["It has been frequently observed that among decliningnations the social differences between the two sexes are firstobliterated, and afterwards even the intellectual differences. The moremasculine the women become, the more effeminate become the men. It is nogood symptom when there are almost as many female writers and femalerulers as there are male. Such was the case, for instance, in theHellenistic kingdoms, and in the age of the Caesars. What today is calledby many the emancipation of woman would ultimately end in the dissolutionof the family, and, if carried out, render poor service to the majorityof women. If man and woman were placed entirely on the same level, and ifin the competition between the two sexes nothing but an actualsuperiority should decide, it is to be feared that woman would soon berelegated to a condition as hard as that in which she is found among allbarbarous nations. It is precisely family life and higher civilizationthat have emancipated woman. Those theorizers who, led astray by the darkside of higher civilization, preach a community of goods, generallycontemplate in their simultaneous recommendation of the emancipation ofwoman a more or less developed form of a community of wives. The groundsof the two institutions are very similar." (Roscher's Political Economy,p. 250.) Note also that difference in costumes of the sexes is leastapparent among lowly civilized peoples.]—One of the most strikingfeatures in our progress from barbarism to civilization is the properadjustment of the work for men and women. One test of a civilization isthe difference of this work. This is a question not merely of division oflabor, but of differentiation with regard to sex. It not only takes intoaccount structural differences and physiological disadvantages, but itrecognizes the finer and higher use of woman in society.

The attainable, not to say the ideal, society requires an increase ratherthan a decrease of the differences between the sexes. The differences maybe due to physical organization, but the structural divergence is but afaint type of deeper separation in mental and spiritual constitution.That which makes the charm and power of woman, that for which she iscreated, is as distinctly feminine as that which makes the charm andpower of men is masculine. Progress requires constant differentiation,and the line of this is the development of each sex in its specialfunctions, each being true to the highest ideal for itself, which is notthat the woman should be a man, or the man a woman. The enjoyment ofsocial life rests very largely upon the encounter and play of the subtlepeculiarities which mark the two sexes; and society, in the limited senseof the word, not less than the whole structure of our civilization,requires the development of these peculiarities. It is in diversity, andnot in an equality tending to uniformity, that we are to expect the bestresults from the race.

V. Equality of races; or rather a removal of the inequalities, social andpolitical, arising in the contact of different races by intermarriage.

Perhaps equality is hardly the word to use here, since uniformity is thething aimed at; but the root of the proposal is in the dogma we areconsidering. The tendency of the age is to uniformity. The facilities oftravel and communication, the new inventions and the use of machinery inmanufacturing, bring men into close and uniform relations, and induce thedisappearance of national characteristics and of race peculiarities. Men,the world over, are getting to dress alike, eat alike, and disbelieve inthe same things: It is the sentimental complaint of the traveler that hissearch for the picturesque is ever more difficult, that race distinctionsand habits are in a way to be improved off the face of the earth, andthat a most uninteresting monotony is supervening. The complaint is notwholly sentimental, and has a deeper philosophical reason than the merepleasure in variety on this planet.

We find a striking illustration of the equalizing, not to say leveling,tendency of the age in an able paper by Canon George Rawlinson, of theUniversity of Oxford, contributed recently to an American periodical of ahigh class and conservative character.—["Duties of Higher towards LowerRaces." By George Rawlinson. Princeton Re-view. November, 1878. NewYork.]—This paper proposes, as a remedy for the social and politicalevils caused by the negro element in our population, the miscegenation ofthe white and black races, to the end that the black race may be whollyabsorbed in the white—an absorption of four millions by thirty-sixmillions, which he thinks might reasonably be expected in about acentury, when the lower type would disappear altogether.

Perhaps the pleasure of being absorbed is not equal to the pleasure ofabsorbing, and we cannot say how this proposal will commend itself to thevictims of the euthanasia. The results of miscegenation on thiscontinent—black with red, and white with black—the results morally,intellectually, and physically, are not such as to make it attractive tothe American people.

It is not, however, upon sentimental grounds that we oppose thisextension of the exaggerated dogma of equality. Our objection is deeper.Race distinctions ought to be maintained for the sake of the bestdevelopment of the race, and for the continuance of that mutual reactionand play of peculiar forces between races which promise the highestdevelopment for the whole. It is not for nothing, we may suppose, thatdifferentiation has gone on in the world; and we doubt that eitherbenevolence or self-interest requires this age to attempt to restore anassumed lost uniformity, and fuse the race traits in a tiresomehom*ogeneity.

Life consists in an exchange of relations, and the more varied therelations interchanged the higher the life. We want not only differentraces, but different civilizations in different parts of the globe.

A much more philosophical view of the African problem and the properdestiny of the negro race than that of Canon Rawlinson is given by arecent colored writer,—["Africa and the Africans." By Edmund W. Blyden.Eraser's Magazine, August, 1878.]—an official in the government ofLiberia. We are mistaken, says this excellent observer, in regardingAfrica as a land of a hom*ogeneous population, and in confounding thetribes in a promiscuous manner. There are negroes and negroes. "Thenumerous tribes inhabiting the vast continent of Africa can no more beregarded as in every respect equal than the numerous peoples of Asia orEurope can be so regarded;" and we are not to expect the civilization ofAfrica to be under one government, but in a great variety of States,developed according to tribal and race affinities. A still greatermistake is this:

"The mistake which Europeans often make in considering questions of negroimprovement and the future of Africa is in supposing that the negro isthe European in embryo, in the undeveloped stage, and that when,by-and-by, he shall enjoy the advantages of civilization and culture, hewill become like the European; in other words, that the negro is on thesame line of progress, in the same groove, with the European, butinfinitely in the rear . . . . This view proceeds upon the assumptionthat the two races are called to the same work, and are alike inpotentiality and ultimate development, the negro only needing the elementof time, under certain circ*mstances, to become European. But to our mindit is not a question between the two races of inferiority or superiority.There is no absolute or essential superiority on the one side, orabsolute or essential inferiority on the other side. It is a question ofdifference of endowment and difference of destiny. No amount of trainingor culture will make the negro a European. On the other hand, no lack oftraining or deficiency of culture will make the European a negro. The tworaces are not moving in the same groove, with an immeasurable distancebetween them, but on parallel lines. They will never meet in the plane oftheir activities so as to coincide in capacity or performance. They arenot identical, as some think, but unequal; they are distinct, butequal—an idea that is in no way incompatible with the Scripture truththat God hath made of one blood all nations of men."

The writer goes on, in a strain that is not mere fancy, but that involvesone of the truths of inequality, to say that each race is endowed withpeculiar talents; that the negro has aptitudes and capacities which theworld needs, and will lack until he is normally trained. In the grandsymphony of the universe, "there are several sounds not yet brought out,and the feeblest of all is that hitherto produced by the negro; but healone can furnish it."—"When the African shall come forward with hispeculiar gifts, they will fill a place never before occupied." In short,the African must be civilized in the line of his capacities. "The presentpractice of the friends of Africa is to frame laws according to their ownnotions for the government and improvement of this people, whereas Godhas already enacted the laws for the government of their affairs, whichlaws should be carefully ascertained, interpreted, and applied; for untilthey are found out and conformed to, all labor will be ineffective andresultless."

We have thus passed in review some of the tendencies of the age. We haveonly touched the edges of a vast subject, and shall be quite satisfied ifwe have suggested thought in the direction indicated. But in this limitedview of our complex human problem it is time to ask if we have not pushedthe dogma of equality far enough. Is it not time to look the factssquarely in the face, and conform to them in our efforts for social andpolitical amelioration?

Inequality appears to be the divine order; it always has existed;undoubtedly it will continue; all our theories and 'a priori'speculations will not change the nature of things. Even inequality ofcondition is the basis of progress, the incentive to exertion.Fortunately, if today we could make every man white, every woman as likeman as nature permits, give to every human being the same opportunity ofeducation, and divide equally among all the accumulated wealth of theworld, tomorrow differences, unequal possession, and differentiationwould begin again. We are attempting the regeneration of society with amisleading phrase; we are wasting our time with a theory that does notfit the facts.

There is an equality, but it is not of outward show; it is independent ofcondition; it does not destroy property, nor ignore the difference ofsex, nor obliterate race traits. It is the equality of men before God, ofmen before the law; it is the equal honor of all honorable labor. No morepernicious notion ever obtained lodgment in society than the common onethat to "rise in the world" is necessarily to change the "condition." Letthere be content with condition; discontent with individual ignorance andimperfection. "We want," says Emerson, "not a farmer, but a man on afarm." What a mischievous idea is that which has grown, even in theUnited States, that manual labor is discreditable! There is surely somedefect in the theory of equality in our society which makes domesticservice to be shunned as if it were a disgrace.

It must be observed, further, that the dogma of equality is not satisfiedby the usual admission that one is in favor of an equality of rights andopportunities, but is against the sweeping application of the theory madeby the socialists and communists. The obvious reply is that equal rightsand a fair chance are not possible without equality of condition, andthat property and the whole artificial constitution of societynecessitate inequality of condition. The damage from the currentexaggeration of equality is that the attempt to realize the dogma infact—and the attempt is everywhere on foot—can lead only to mischiefand disappointment.

It would be considered a humorous suggestion to advocate inequality as atheory or as a working dogma. Let us recognize it, however, as a fact,and shape the efforts for the improvement of the race in accordance withit, encouraging it in some directions, restraining it from injustice inothers. Working by this recognition, we shall save the race from manyfailures and bitter disappointments, and spare the world the spectacle ofrepublics ending in despotism and experiments in government ending inanarchy.

WHAT IS YOUR CULTURE TO ME?

By Charles Dudley Warner

Delivered before the Alumni of Hamilton College, Clinton, N. Y.,
Wednesday, June 26, 1872

Twenty-one years ago in this house I heard a voice calling me to ascendthe platform, and there to stand and deliver. The voice was the voice ofPresident North; the language was an excellent imitation of that used byCicero and Julius Caesar. I remember the flattering invitation—it is theclassic tag that clings to the graduate long after he has forgotten thegender of the nouns that end in 'um—orator proximus', the grateful voicesaid, 'ascendat, videlicet,' and so forth. To be proclaimed an orator,and an ascending orator, in such a sonorous tongue, in the face of aworld waiting for orators, stirred one's blood like the herald's trumpetwhen the lists are thrown open. Alas! for most of us, who crowded soeagerly into the arena, it was the last appearance as orators on anystage.

The facility of the world for swallowing up orators, and company aftercompany of educated young men, has been remarked. But it is almostincredible to me now that the class of 1851, with its classic sympathiesand its many revolutionary ideas, disappeared in the flood of the worldso soon and so silently, causing scarcely a ripple in the smoothlyflowing stream. I suppose the phenomenon has been repeated for twentyyears. Do the young gentlemen at Hamilton, I wonder, still carry on theirordinary conversation in the Latin tongue, and their familiar vacationcorrespondence in the language of Aristophanes? I hope so. I hope theyare more proficient in such exercises than the young gentlemen of twentyyears ago were, for I have still great faith in a culture that is so farfrom any sordid aspirations as to approach the ideal; although the younggraduate is not long in learning that there is an indifference in thepublic mind with regard to the first aorist that amounts nearly toapathy, and that millions of his fellow-creatures will probably live anddie without the consolations of the second aorist. It is a melancholyfact that, after a thousand years of missionary effort, the vast majorityof civilized men do not know that gerunds are found only in the singularnumber.

I confess that this failure of the annual graduating class to make itsexpected impression on the world has its pathetic side. Youth iscredulous—as it always ought to be—and full of hope—else the worldwere dead already—and the graduate steps out into life with an ingenuousself-confidence in his resources. It is to him an event, thisturning-point in the career of what he feels to be an important andimmortal being. His entrance is public and with some dignity of display.For a day the world stops to see it; the newspapers spread abroad areport of it, and the modest scholar feels that the eyes of mankind arefixed on him in expectation and desire. Though modest, he is notinsensible to the responsibility of his position. He has only packed awayin his mind the wisdom of the ages, and he does not intend to be stingyabout communicating it to the world which is awaiting his graduation.Fresh from the communion with great thoughts in great literatures, he isin haste to give mankind the benefit of them, and lead it on into newenthusiasm and new conquests.

The world, however, is not very much excited. The birth of a child is initself marvelous, but it is so common. Over and over again, for hundredsof years, these young gentlemen have been coming forward with theirspecimens of learning, tied up in neat little parcels, all ready toadminister, and warranted to be of the purest materials. The world is notunkind, it is not even indifferent, but it must be confessed that it doesnot act any longer as if it expected to be enlightened. It is generallyso busy that it does not even ask the young gentlemen what they can do,but leaves them standing with their little parcels, wondering when theperson will pass by who requires one of them, and when there will happena little opening in the procession into which they can fall. Theyexpected that way would be made for them with shouts of welcome, but theyfind themselves before long struggling to get even a standing-place inthe crowd—it is only kings, and the nobility, and those fortunates whodwell in the tropics, where bread grows on trees and clothing isunnecessary, who have reserved seats in this world.

To the majority of men I fancy that literature is very much the same thathistory is; and history is presented as a museum of antiquities andcuriosities, classified, arranged, and labeled. One may walk through itas he does through the Hotel de Cluny; he feels that he ought to beinterested in it, but it is very tiresome. Learning is regarded in likemanner as an accumulation of literature, gathered into great storehousescalled libraries—the thought of which excites great respect in mostminds, but is ineffably tedious. Year after year and age after age itaccumulates—this evidence and monument of intellectual activity—pilingitself up in vast collections, which it needs a lifetime even tocatalogue, and through which the uncultured walk as the idle do throughthe British Museum, with no very strong indignation against Omar whoburned the library at Alexandria.

To the popular mind this vast accumulation of learning in libraries, orin brains that do not visibly apply it, is much the same thing. Thebusiness of the scholar appears to be this sort of accumulation; and theyoung student, who comes to the world with a little portion of thistreasure dug out of some classic tomb or mediaeval museum, is receivedwith little more enthusiasm than is the miraculous handkerchief of St.Veronica by the crowd of Protestants to whom it is exhibited on Holy Weekin St. Peter's. The historian must make his museum live again; thescholar must vivify his learning with a present purpose.

It is unnecessary for me to say that all this is only from theunsympathetic and worldly side. I should think myself a criminal if Isaid anything to chill the enthusiasm of the young scholar, or to dashwith any skepticism his longing and his hope. He has chosen the highest.His beautiful faith and his aspiration are the light of life. Without hisfresh enthusiasm and his gallant devotion to learning, to art, toculture, the world would be dreary enough. Through him comes theever-springing inspiration in affairs. Baffled at every turn and drivendefeated from a hundred fields, he carries victory in himself. He belongsto a great and immortal army. Let him not be discouraged at his apparentlittle influence, even though every sally of every young life may seemlike a forlorn hope. No man can see the whole of the battle. It mustneeds be that regiment after regiment, trained, accomplished, gay, andhigh with hope, shall be sent into the field, marching on, into thesmoke, into the fire, and be swept away. The battle swallows them, oneafter the other, and the foe is yet unyielding, and the ever-remorselesstrumpet calls for more and more. But not in vain, for some day, and everyday, along the line, there is a cry, "They fly! they fly!" and the wholearmy advances, and the flag is planted on an ancient fortress where itnever waved before. And, even if you never see this, better thaninglorious camp-following is it to go in with the wasting regiment; tocarry the colors up the slope of the enemy's works, though the nextmoment you fall and find a grave at the foot of the glacis.

What are the relations of culture to common life, of the scholar to theday-laborer? What is the value of this vast accumulation of higherlearning, what is its point of contact with the mass of humanity, thattoils and eats and sleeps and reproduces itself and dies, generationafter generation, in an unvarying round, on an unvarying level? We havehad discussed lately the relation of culture to religion. Mr. Froude,with a singular, reactionary ingenuity, has sought to prove that theprogress of the century, so-called, with all its material alleviations,has done little in regard to a happy life, to the pleasure of existence,for the average individual Englishman. Into neither of these inquiries doI purpose to enter; but we may not unprofitably turn our attention to asubject closely connected with both of them.

It has not escaped your attention that there are indications everywhereof what may be called a ground-swell. There is not simply an inquiry asto the value of classic culture, a certain jealousy of the schools whereit is obtained, a rough popular contempt for the graces of learning, afailure to see any connection between the first aorist and the rolling ofsteel rails, but there is arising an angry protest against the conditionsof a life which make one free of the serene heights of thought and givehim range of all intellectual countries, and keep another at the spadeand the loom, year after year, that he may earn food for the day andlodging for the night. In our day the demand here hinted at has takenmore definite form and determinate aim, and goes on, visible to all men,to unsettle society and change social and political relations. The greatmovement of labor, extravagant and preposterous as are some of itsdemands, demagogic as are most of its leaders, fantastic as are many ofits theories, is nevertheless real, and gigantic, and full of a certainprimeval force, and with a certain justice in it that never sleeps inhuman affairs, but moves on, blindly often and destructively often, amovement cruel at once and credulous, deceived and betrayed, andrevenging itself on friends and foes alike. Its strength is in the factthat it is natural and human; it might have been predicted from a mereknowledge of human nature, which is always restless in any relations itis possible to establish, which is always like the sea, seeking a level,and never so discontented as when anything like a level is approximated.

What is the relation of the scholar to the present phase of thismovement? What is the relation of culture to it? By scholar I mean theman who has had the advantages of such an institution as this. By cultureI mean that fine product of opportunity and scholarship which is to mereknowledge what manners are to the gentleman. The world has a growingbelief in the profit of knowledge, of information, but it has a suspicionof culture. There is a lingering notion in matters religious thatsomething is lost by refinement—at least, that there is danger that theplain, blunt, essential truths will be lost in aesthetic graces. Thelaborer is getting to consent that his son shall go to school, and learnhow to build an undershot wheel or to assay metals; but why plant in hismind those principles of taste which will make him as sensitive to beautyas to pain, why open to him those realms of imagination with theillimitable horizons, the contours and colors of which can but fill himwith indefinite longing?

It is not necessary for me in this presence to dwell upon the value ofculture. I wish rather to have you notice the gulf that exists betweenwhat the majority want to know and that fine fruit of knowledgeconcerning which there is so widespread an infidelity. Will culture aid aminister in a "protracted meeting"? Will the ability to read Chaucerassist a shop-keeper? Will the politician add to the "sweetness andlight" of his lovely career if he can read the "Battle of the Frogs andthe Mice" in the original? What has the farmer to do with the "RoseGarden of Saadi"?

I suppose it is not altogether the fault of the majority that the truerelation of culture to common life is so misunderstood. The scholar islargely responsible for it; he is largely responsible for the isolationof his position, and the want of sympathy it begets. No man can influencehis fellows with any power who retires into his own selfishness, andgives himself to a self-culture which has no further object. What is hethat he should absorb the sweets of the universe, that he should hold allthe claims of humanity second to the perfecting of himself? This effortto save his own soul was common to Goethe and Francis of Assisi; underdifferent manifestations it was the same regard for self. And where it isan intellectual and not a spiritual greediness, I suppose it is what anold writer calls "laying up treasures in hell."

It is not an unreasonable demand of the majority that the few who havethe advantages of the training of college and university should exhibitthe breadth and sweetness of a generous culture, and should shedeverywhere that light which ennobles common things, and without whichlife is like one of the old landscapes in which the artist forgot to putsunlight. One of the reasons why the college-bred man does not meet thisreasonable expectation is that his training, too often, has not beenthorough and conscientious, it has not been of himself; he has acquired,but he is not educated. Another is that, if he is educated, he is notimpressed with the intimacy of his relation to that which is below him aswell as that which is above him, and his culture is out of sympathy withthe great mass that needs it, and must have it, or it will remain a blindforce in the world, the lever of demagogues who preach social anarchy andmisname it progress. There is no culture so high, no taste so fastidious,no grace of learning so delicate, no refinement of art so exquisite, thatit cannot at this hour find full play for itself in the broadest fieldsof humanity; since it is all needed to soften the attritions of commonlife, and guide to nobler aspirations the strong materialistic influencesof our restless society.

One reason, as I said, for the gulf between the majority and the selectfew to be educated is, that the college does not seldom disappoint thereasonable expectation concerning it. The graduate of the carpenter'sshop knows how to use his tools—or used to in days before superficialtraining in trades became the rule. Does the college graduate know how touse his tools? Or has he to set about fitting himself for someemployment, and gaining that culture, that training of himself, thatutilization of his information which will make him necessary in theworld? There has been a great deal of discussion whether a boy should betrained in the classics or mathematics or sciences or modern languages. Ifeel like saying "yes" to all the various propositions. For Heaven's saketrain him in something, so that he can handle himself, and have free andconfident use of his powers. There isn't a more helpless creature in theuniverse than a scholar with a vast amount of information over which hehas no control. He is like a man with a load of hay so badly put upon hiscart that it all slides off before he can get to market. The influence ofa man on the world is generally proportioned to his ability to dosomething. When Abraham Lincoln was running for the Legislature the firsttime, on the platform of the improvement of the navigation of theSangamon River, he went to secure the votes of thirty men who werecradling a wheat field. They asked no questions about internalimprovements, but only seemed curious whether Abraham had muscle enoughto represent them in the Legislature. The obliging man took up a cradleand led the gang round the field. The whole thirty voted for him.

What is scholarship? The learned Hindu can repeat I do not know how manythousands of lines from the Vedas, and perhaps backwards as well asforwards. I heard of an excellent old lady who had counted how many timesthe letter A occurs in the Holy Scriptures. The Chinese students whoaspire to honors spend years in verbally memorizing the classics—Confucius and Mencius—and receive degrees and public advancement uponability to transcribe from memory without the error of a point, ormisplacement of a single tea-chest character, the whole of some books ofmorals. You do not wonder that China is today more like an herbarium thananything else. Learning is a kind of fetish, and it has no influencewhatever upon the great inert mass of Chinese humanity.

I suppose it is possible for a young gentleman to be able to read—justthink of it, after ten years of grammar and lexicon, not to know Greekliterature and have flexible command of all its richness and beauty, butto read it!—it is possible, I suppose, for the graduate of college to beable to read all the Greek authors, and yet to have gone, in regard tohis own culture, very little deeper than a surface reading of them; toknow very little of that perfect architecture and what it expressed; norof that marvelous sculpture and the conditions of its immortal beauty;nor of that artistic development which made the Acropolis to bud andbloom under the blue sky like the final flower of a perfect nature; norof that philosophy, that politics, that society, nor of the life of thatpolished, crafty, joyous race, the springs of it and the far-reaching,still unexpended effects of it.

Yet as surely as that nothing perishes, that the Providence of God is nota patchwork of uncontinued efforts, but a plan and a progress, as surelyas the Pilgrim embarkation at Delfshaven has a relation to the battle ofGettysburg, and to the civil rights bill giving the colored manpermission to ride in a public conveyance and to be buried in a publiccemetery, so surely has the Parthenon some connection with your new Statecapitol at Albany, and the daily life of the vine-dresser of thePeloponnesus some lesson for the American day-laborer. The scholar issaid to be the torch-bearer, transmitting the increasing light fromgeneration to generation, so that the feet of all, the humblest and theloveliest, may walk in the radiance and not stumble. But he very oftencarries a dark lantern.

Not what is the use of Greek, of any culture in art or literature, butwhat is the good to me of your knowing Greek, is the latest question ofthe ditch-digger to the scholar—what better off am I for your learning?And the question, in view of the interdependence of all members ofsociety, is one that cannot be put away as idle. One reason why thescholar does not make the world of the past, the world of books, real tohis fellows and serviceable to them, is that it is not real to himself,but a mere unsubstantial place of intellectual idleness, where he dalliessome years before he begins his task in life. And another reason is that,while it may be real to him, while he is actually cultured and trained,he fails to see or to feel that his culture is not a thing apart, andthat all the world has a right to share its blessed influence. Failing tosee this, he is isolated, and, wanting his sympathy, the untutored worldmocks at his super-fineness and takes its own rough way to rougher ends.Greek art was for the people, Greek poetry was for the people; Raphaelpainted his immortal frescoes where throngs could be lifted in thoughtand feeling by them; Michael Angelo hung the dome over St. Peter's sothat the far-off peasant on the Campagna could see it, and the maidenkneeling by the shrine in the Alban hills. Do we often stop to think whatinfluence, direct or other, the scholar, the man of high culture, hastoday upon the great mass of our people? Why do they ask, what is the useof your learning and your art?

The artist, in the retirement of his studio, finishes a charming,suggestive, historical picture. The rich man buys it and hangs it in hislibrary, where the privileged few can see it. I do not deny that theaverage rich man needs all the refining influence the picture can exerton him, and that the picture is doing missionary work in his house; butit is nevertheless an example of an educating influence withdrawn andappropriated to narrow uses. But the engraver comes, and, by hismediating art, transfers it to a thousand sheets, and scatters its sweetinfluence far abroad. All the world, in its toil, its hunger, itssordidness, pauses a moment to look on it—that gray seacoast, thereceding Mayflower, the two young Pilgrims in the foreground regardingit, with tender thoughts of the far home—all the world looks on itperhaps for a moment thoughtfully, perhaps tearfully, and is touched withthe sentiment of it, is kindled into a glow of nobleness by the sight ofthat faith and love and resolute devotion which have tinged our earlyhistory with the faint light of romance. So art is no longer theenjoyment of the few, but the help and solace of the many.

The scholar who is cultured by books, reflection, travel, by a refinedsociety, consorts with his kind, and more and more removes himself fromthe sympathies of common life. I know how almost inevitable this is, howalmost impossible it is to resist the segregation of classes according tothe affinities of taste. But by what mediation shall the culture that isnow the possession of the few be made to leaven the world and to elevateand sweeten ordinary life? By books? Yes. By the newspaper? Yes. By thediffusion of works of art? Yes. But when all is done that can be done bysuch letters-missive from one class to another, there remains the need ofmore personal contact, of a human sympathy, diffused and living. Theworld has had enough of charities. It wants respect and consideration. Wedesire no longer to be legislated for, it says; we want to be legislatedwith. Why do you never come to see me but you bring me something? asksthe sensitive and poor seamstress. Do you always give some charity toyour friends? I want companionship, and not cold pieces; I want to betreated like a human being who has nerves and feelings, and tears too,and as much interest in the sunset, and in the birth of Christ, perhapsas you. And the mass of uncared-for ignorance and brutality, finding avoice at length, bitterly repels the condescensions of charity; you haveyour culture, your libraries, your fine houses, your church, yourreligion, and your God, too; let us alone, we want none of them. In thebear-pit at Berne, the occupants, who are the wards of the city, have hadmeat thrown to them daily for I know not how long, but they are not tamedby this charity, and would probably eat up any careless person who fellinto their clutches, without apology.

Do not impute to me quixotic notions with regard to the duties of men andwomen of culture, or think that I undervalue the difficulties in the way,the fastidiousness on the one side, or the jealousies on the other. It isby no means easy to an active participant to define the drift of his ownage; but I seem to see plainly that unless the culture of the age findsmeans to diffuse itself, working downward and reconciling antagonisms bya commonness of thought and feeling and aim in life, society must moreand more separate itself into jarring classes, with mutualmisunderstandings and hatred and war. To suggest remedies is much moredifficult than to see evils; but the comprehension of dangers is thefirst step towards mastering them. The problem of our own time—thereconciliation of the interests of classes—is as yet very ill defined.This great movement of labor, for instance, does not know definitely whatit wants, and those who are spectators do not know what their relationsare to it. The first thing to be done is for them to try to understandeach other. One class sees that the other has lighter or at leastdifferent labor, opportunities of travel, a more liberal supply of theluxuries of life, a higher enjoyment and a keener relish of thebeautiful, the immaterial. Looking only at external conditions, itconcludes that all it needs to come into this better place is wealth, andso it organizes war upon the rich, and it makes demands of freedom fromtoil and of compensation which it is in no man's power to give it, andwhich would not, if granted over and over again, lift it into thatcondition it desires. It is a tale in the Gulistan, that a king placedhis son with a preceptor, and said, "This is your son; educate him in thesame manner as your own." The preceptor took pains with him for a year,but without success, whilst his own sons were completed in learning andaccomplishments. The king reproved the preceptor, and said, "You havebroken your promise, and not acted faithfully."

He replied, "O king, the education was the same, but the capacities aredifferent. Although silver and gold are produced from a stone, yet thesemetals are not to be found in every stone. The star Canopus shines allover the world, but the scented leather comes only from Yemen." "'Tis anabsolute, and, as it were, a divine perfection," says Montaigne, "for aman to know how loyally to enjoy his being. We seek other conditions, byreason we do not understand the use of our own; and go out of ourselves,because we know not how there to reside."

But nevertheless it becomes a necessity for us to understand the wishesof those who demand a change of condition, and it is necessary that theyshould understand the compensations as well as the limitations of everycondition. The dervish congratulated himself that although the onlymonument of his grave would be a brick, he should at the last day arriveat and enter the gate of Paradise before the king had got from under theheavy stones of his costly tomb. Nothing will bring us into thisdesirable mutual understanding except sympathy and personal contact. Lawswill not do it; institutions of charity and relief will not do it.

We must believe, for one thing, that the graces of culture will not bethrown away if exercised among the humblest and the least cultured; it isfound out that flowers are often more welcome in the squalidtenement-houses of Boston than loaves of bread. It is difficult to sayexactly how culture can extend its influence into places uncongenial andto people indifferent to it, but I will try and illustrate what I mean byan example or two.

Criminals in this country, when the law took hold of them, used to beturned over to the care of men who often had more sympathy with the crimethan with the criminal, or at least to those who were almost as coarse infeeling and as brutal in speech as their charges. There have been somechanges of late years in the care of criminals, but does public opinionyet everywhere demand that jailers and prison-keepers and executioners ofthe penal law should be men of refinement, of high character, of anydegree of culture? I do not know any class more needing the best directpersonal influence of the best civilization than the criminal. Theproblem of its proper treatment and reformation is one of the mostpressing, and it needs practically the aid of our best men and women. Ishould have great hope of any prison establishment at the head of whichwas a gentleman of fine education, the purest tastes, the most elevatedmorality and lively sympathy with men as such, provided he had also willand the power of command. I do not know what might not be done for theviciously inclined and the transgressors, if they could come under theinfluence of refined men and women. And yet you know that a boy or a girlmay be arrested for crime, and pass from officer to keeper, and jailer towarden, and spend years in a career of vice and imprisonment, and neveronce see any man or woman, officially, who has tastes, or sympathies, oraspirations much above that vulgar level whence the criminals came.Anybody who is honest and vigilant is considered good enough to takecharge of prison birds.

The age is merciful and abounds in charities-houses of refuge for poorwomen, societies for the conservation of the exposed and the reclamationof the lost. It is willing to pay liberally for their support, and tohire ministers and distributors of its benefactions. But it is beginningto see that it cannot hire the distribution of love, nor buy brotherlyfeeling. The most encouraging thing I have seen lately is an experimentin one of our cities. In the thick of the town the ladies of the cityhave furnished and opened a reading-room, sewing-room, conversation-room,or what not, where young girls, who work for a living and have noopportunity for any culture, at home or elsewhere, may spend theirevenings. They meet there always some of the ladies I have spoken of,whose unostentatious duty and pleasure it is to pass the evening withthem, in reading or music or the use of the needle, and the exchange ofthe courtesies of life in conversation. Whatever grace and kindness andrefinement of manner they carry there, I do not suppose are wasted. Theseare some of the ways in which culture can serve men. And I take it thatone of the chief evidences of our progress in this century is therecognition of the truth that there is no selfishness so supreme—noteven that in the possession of wealth—as that which retires into itselfwith all the accomplishments of liberal learning and rare opportunities,and looks upon the intellectual poverty of the world without a wish torelieve it. "As often as I have been among men," says Seneca, "I havereturned less a man." And Thomas a Kempis declared that "the greatestsaints avoided the company of men as much as they could, and chose tolive to God in secret." The Christian philosophy was no improvement uponthe pagan in this respect, and was exactly at variance with the teachingand practice of Jesus of Nazareth.

The American scholar cannot afford to live for himself, nor merely forscholarship and the delights of learning. He must make himself more feltin the material life of this country. I am aware that it is said that theculture of the age is itself materialistic, and that its refinements aresensual; that there is little to choose between the coarse excesses ofpoverty and the polished and more decorous animality of the morefortunate. Without entering directly upon the consideration of thismuch-talked-of tendency, I should like to notice the influence upon ourpresent and probable future of the bounty, fertility, and extraordinaryopportunities of this still new land.

The American grows and develops himself with few restraints. Foreignersused to describe him as a lean, hungry, nervous animal, gaunt,inquisitive, inventive, restless, and certain to shrivel into physicalinferiority in his dry and highly oxygenated atmosphere. Thisapprehension is not well founded. It is quieted by his achievements thecontinent over, his virile enterprises, his endurance in war and in themost difficult explorations, his resistance of the influence of greatcities towards effeminacy and loss of physical vigor. If ever man tooklarge and eager hold of earthly things and appropriated them to his ownuse, it is the American. We are gross eaters, we are great drinkers. Weshall excel the English when we have as long practice as they. I amfilled with a kind of dismay when I see the great stock-yards of Chicagoand Cincinnati, through which flow the vast herds and droves of theprairies, marching straight down the throats of Eastern people. Thousandsare always sowing and reaping and brewing and distilling, to slake theimmortal thirst of the country. We take, indeed, strong hold of theearth; we absorb its fatness. When Leicester entertained Elizabeth atKenilworth, the clock in the great tower was set perpetually at twelve,the hour of feasting. It is always dinner-time in America. I do not knowhow much land it takes to raise an average citizen, but I should say aquarter section. He spreads himself abroad, he riots in abundance; aboveall things he must have profusion, and he wants things that are solid andstrong. On the Sorrentine promontory, and on the island of Capri, thehardy husbandman and fisherman draws his subsistence from the sea andfrom a scant patch of ground. One may feast on a fish and a handful ofolives. The dinner of the laborer is a dish of polenta, a few figs, somecheese, a glass of thin wine. His wants are few and easily supplied. Heis not overfed, his diet is not stimulating; I should say that he wouldpay little to the physician, that familiar of other countries whosefamily office is to counteract the effects of over-eating. He istemperate, frugal, content, and apparently draws not more of his lifefrom the earth or the sea than from the genial sky. He would never builda Pacific Railway, nor write a hundred volumes of commentary on theScriptures; but he is an example of how little a man actually needs ofthe gross products of the earth.

I suppose that life was never fuller in certain ways than it is here inAmerica. If a civilization is judged by its wants, we are certainlyhighly civilized. We cannot get land enough, nor clothes enough, norhouses enough, nor food enough. A Bedouin tribe would fare sumptuously onwhat one American family consumes and wastes. The revenue required forthe wardrobe of one woman of fashion would suffice to convert theinhabitants of I know not how many square miles in Africa. It absorbs theincome of a province to bring up a baby. We riot in prodigality, we viewith each other in material accumulation and expense. Our thoughts aremainly on how to increase the products of the world; and get them intoour own possession.

I think this gross material tendency is strong in America, and morelikely to get the mastery over the spiritual and the intellectual herethan elsewhere, because of our exhaustless resources. Let us not mistakethe nature of a real civilization, nor suppose we have it because we canconvert crude iron into the most delicate mechanism, or transportourselves sixty miles an hour, or even if we shall refine our carnaltastes so as to be satisfied at dinner with the tongues of ortolans andthe breasts of singing-birds.

Plato banished the musicians from his feasts because he would not havethe charms of conversation interfered with. By comparison, music was tohim a sensuous enjoyment. In any society the ideal must be the banishmentof the more sensuous; the refinement of it will only repeat the continuedexperiment of history—the end of a civilization in a polishedmaterialism, and its speedy fall from that into grossness.

I am sure that the scholar, trained to "plain living and high thinking,"knows that the prosperous life consists in the culture of the man, andnot in the refinement and accumulation of the material. The word cultureis often used to signify that dainty intellectualism which is merely asensuous pampering of the mind, as distinguishable from the healthytraining of the mind as is the education of the body in athleticexercises from the petting of it by luxurious baths and unguents. Cultureis the blossom of knowledge, but it is a fruit blossom, the ornament ofthe age but the seed of the future. The so-called culture, a merefastidiousness of taste, is a barren flower.

You would expect spurious culture to stand aloof from common life, as itdoes, to extend its charities at the end of a pole, to make of religion amere 'cultus,' to construct for its heaven a sort of Paris, where all theinhabitants dress becomingly, and where there are no Communists. Culture,like fine manners, is not always the result of wealth or position. Whenmonseigneur the archbishop makes his rare tour through the Swissmountains, the simple peasants do not crowd upon him with boorishimpudence, but strew his stony path with flowers, and receive him withjoyous but modest sincerity. When the Russian prince made his landing inAmerica the determined staring of a bevy of accomplished American womennearly swept the young man off the deck of the vessel. One cannot butrespect that tremulous sensitiveness which caused the maiden lady toshrink from staring at the moon when she heard there was a man in it.

The materialistic drift of this age—that is, its devotion to materialdevelopment—is frequently deplored. I suppose it is like all other agesin that respect, but there appears to be a more determined demand forchange of condition than ever before, and a deeper movement forequalization. Here in America this is, in great part, a movement formerely physical or material equalization. The idea seems to be well-nighuniversal that the millennium is to come by a great deal less work and agreat deal more pay. It seems to me that the millennium is to come by aninfusion into all society of a truer culture, which is neither of povertynor of wealth, but is the beautiful fruit of the development of thehigher part of man's nature.

And the thought I wish to leave with you, as scholars and men who cancommand the best culture, is that it is all needed to shape and controlthe strong growth of material development here, to guide the blindinstincts of the mass of men who are struggling for a freer place and abreath of fresh air; that you cannot stand aloof in a class isolation;that your power is in a personal sympathy with the humanity which isignorant but discontented; and that the question which the man with thespade asks about the use of your culture to him is a menace.

MODERN FICTION

By Charles Dudley Warner

One of the worst characteristics of modern fiction is its so-called truthto nature. For fiction is an art, as painting is, as sculpture is, asacting is. A photograph of a natural object is not art; nor is theplaster cast of a man's face, nor is the bare setting on the stage of anactual occurrence. Art requires an idealization of nature. The amateur,though she may be a lady, who attempts to represent upon the stage thelady of the drawing-room, usually fails to convey to the spectators theimpression of a lady. She lacks the art by which the trained actress, whomay not be a lady, succeeds. The actual transfer to the stage of thedrawing-room and its occupants, with the behavior common in well-bredsociety, would no doubt fail of the intended dramatic effect, and thespectators would declare the representation unnatural.

However our jargon of criticism may confound terms, we do not need to bereminded that art and nature are distinct; that art, though dependent onnature, is a separate creation; that art is selection and idealization,with a view to impressing the mind with human, or even higher than human,sentiments and ideas. We may not agree whether the perfect man and womanever existed, but we do know that the highest representations of them inform—that in the old Greek sculptures—were the result of artisticselection of parts of many living figures.

When we praise our recent fiction for its photographic fidelity to naturewe condemn it, for we deny to it the art which would give it value. Weforget that the creation of the novel should be, to a certain extent, asynthetic process, and impart to human actions that ideal quality whichwe demand in painting. Heine regards Cervantes as the originator of themodern novel. The older novels sprang from the poetry of the Middle Ages;their themes were knightly adventure, their personages were the nobility;the common people did not figure in them. These romances, which haddegenerated into absurdities, Cervantes overthrew by "Don Quixote." Butin putting an end to the old romances he created a new school of fiction,called the modern novel, by introducing into his romance ofpseudo-knighthood a faithful description of the lower classes, andintermingling the phases of popular life. But he had no one-sidedtendency to portray the vulgar only; he brought together the higher andthe lower in society, to serve as light and shade, and the aristocraticelement was as prominent as the popular. This noble and chivalrouselement disappears in the novels of the English who imitated Cervantes."These English novelists since Richardson's reign," says Heine, "areprosaic natures; to the prudish spirit of their time even pithydescriptions of the life of the common people are repugnant, and we seeon yonder side of the Channel those bourgeoisie novels arise, wherein thepetty humdrum life of the middle classes is depicted." But Scottappeared, and effected a restoration of the balance in fiction. AsCervantes had introduced the democratic element into romances, so Scottreplaced the aristocratic element, when it had disappeared, and only aprosaic, bourgeoisie fiction existed. He restored to romances thesymmetry which we admire in "Don Quixote." The characteristic feature ofScott's historical romances, in the opinion of the great German critic,is the harmony between the artistocratic and democratic elements.

This is true, but is it the last analysis of the subject? Is it asufficient account of the genius of Cervantes and Scott that theycombined in their romances a representation of the higher and lowerclasses? Is it not of more importance how they represented them? It isonly a part of the achievement of Cervantes that he introduced the commonpeople into fiction; it is his higher glory that he idealized hismaterial; and it is Scott's distinction also that he elevated intoartistic creations both nobility and commonalty. In short, the essentialof fiction is not diversity of social life, but artistic treatment ofwhatever is depicted. The novel may deal wholly with an aristocracy, orwholly with another class, but it must idealize the nature it touchesinto art. The fault of the bourgeoisie novels, of which Heine complains,is not that they treated of one class only, and excluded a higher socialrange, but that they treated it without art and without ideality. Innature there is nothing vulgar to the poet, and in human life there isnothing uninteresting to the artist; but nature and human life, for thepurposes of fiction, need a creative genius. The importation into thenovel of the vulgar, sordid, and ignoble in life is always unbearable,unless genius first fuses the raw material in its alembic.

When, therefore, we say that one of the worst characteristics of modernfiction is its so-called truth to nature, we mean that it disregards thehigher laws of art, and attempts to give us unidealized pictures of life.The failure is not that vulgar themes are treated, but that the treatmentis vulgar; not that common life is treated, but that the treatment iscommon; not that care is taken with details, but that no selection ismade, and everything is photographed regardless of its artistic value. Iam sure that no one ever felt any repugnance on being introduced byCervantes to the muleteers, contrabandistas, servants and serving-maids,and idle vagabonds of Spain, any more than to an acquaintance with thebeggar-boys and street gamins on the canvases of Murillo. And I believethat the philosophic reason of the disgust of Heine and of every criticwith the English bourgeoisie novels, describing the petty, humdrum lifeof the middle classes, was simply the want of art in the writers; thefailure on their part to see that a literal transcript of nature is poorstuff in literature. We do not need to go back to Richardson's time forillustrations of that truth. Every week the English press—which is evena greater sinner in this respect than the American—turns out a score ofnovels which are mediocre, not from their subjects, but from their utterlack of the artistic quality. It matters not whether they treat ofmiddle-class life, of low, slum life, or of drawing-room life and lordsand ladies; they are equally flat and dreary. Perhaps the most inanething ever put forth in the name of literature is the so-called domesticnovel, an indigestible, culinary sort of product, that might be named thedoughnut of fiction. The usual apology for it is that it depicts familylife with fidelity. Its characters are supposed to act and talk as peopleact and talk at home and in society. I trust this is a libel, but, forthe sake of the argument, suppose they do. Was ever produced so insipid aresult? They are called moral; in the higher sense they are immoral, forthey tend to lower the moral tone and stamina of every reader. It needsgenius to import into literature ordinary conversation, petty domesticdetails, and the commonplace and vulgar phases of life. A report ofordinary talk, which appears as dialogue in domestic novels, may be trueto nature; if it is, it is not worth writing or worth reading. I cannotsee that it serves any good purpose whatever. Fortunately, we have in ourday illustrations of a different treatment of the vulgar. I do not knowany more truly realistic pictures of certain aspects of New England lifethan are to be found in Judd's "Margaret," wherein are depictedexceedingly pinched and ignoble social conditions. Yet the characters andthe life are drawn with the artistic purity of Flaxman's illustrations ofHomer. Another example is Thomas Hardy's "Far from the Madding Crowd."Every character in it is of the lower class in England. But what anexquisite creation it is! You have to turn back to Shakespeare for anytalk of peasants and clowns and shepherds to compare with theconversations in this novel, so racy are they of the soil, and yet sotouched with the finest art, the enduring art. Here is not the realism ofthe photograph, but of the artist; that is to say, it is natureidealized.

When we criticise our recent fiction it is obvious that we ought toremember that it only conforms to the tendencies of our social life, ourprevailing ethics, and to the art conditions of our time. Literature isnever in any age an isolated product. It is closely related to thedevelopment or retrogression of the time in all departments of life. Theliterary production of our day seems, and no doubt is, more various thanthat of any other, and it is not easy to fix upon its leading tendency.It is claimed for its fiction, however, that it is analytic andrealistic, and that much of it has certain other qualities that make it anew school in art. These aspects of it I wish to consider in this paper.

It is scarcely possible to touch upon our recent fiction, any more thanupon our recent poetry, without taking into account what is called theEsthetic movement—a movement more prominent in England than elsewhere. Aslight contemplation of this reveals its resemblance to the Romanticmovement in Germany, of which the brothers Schlegel were apostles, in thelatter part of the last century. The movements are alike in this: thatthey both sought inspiration in mediaevalism, in feudalism, in thesymbols of a Christianity that ran to mysticism, in the quaint, strictlypre-Raphael art which was supposed to be the result of a simple faith. Inthe one case, the artless and childlike remains of old German picturesand statuary were exhumed and set up as worthy of imitation; in theother, we have carried out in art, in costume, and in domestic life, sofar as possible, what has been wittily and accurately described as"stained-glass attitudes." With all its peculiar vagaries, the Englishschool is essentially a copy of the German, in its return tomediaevalism. The two movements have a further likeness, in that they arefound accompanied by a highly symbolized religious revival. Englishaestheticism would probably disown any religious intention, although ithas been accused of a refined interest in Pan and Venus; but in all itsfeudal sympathies it goes along with the religious art and vestmentrevival, the return to symbolic ceremonies, monastic vigils, andsisterhoods. Years ago, an acute writer in the Catholic World claimedDante Gabriel Rossetti as a Catholic writer, from the internal evidenceof his poems. The German Romanticism, which was fostered by the Romishpriesthood, ended, or its disciples ended, in the bosom of the RomanCatholic Church. It will be interesting to note in what ritualisticharbor the aestheticism of our day will finally moor. That two similarrevivals should come so near together in time makes us feel that theworld moves onward—if it does move onward—in circular figures of veryshort radii. There seems to be only one thing certain in our Christianera, and that is a periodic return to classic models; the only stablestandards of resort seem to be Greek art and literature.

The characteristics which are prominent, when we think of our recentfiction, are a wholly unidealized view of human society, which has gotthe name of realism; a delight in representing the worst phases of sociallife; an extreme analysis of persons and motives; the sacrifice of actionto psychological study; the substitution of studies of character foranything like a story; a notion that it is not artistic, and that it isuntrue to nature, to bring any novel to a definite consummation, andespecially to end it happily; and a despondent tone about society,politics, and the whole drift of modern life. Judged by our fiction, weare in an irredeemably bad way. There is little beauty, joy, orlight-heartedness in living; the spontaneity and charm of life areanalyzed out of existence; sweet girls, made to love and be loved, areextinct; melancholy Jaques never meets a Rosalind in the forest of Arden,and if he sees her in the drawing-room he poisons his pleasure with thethought that she is scheming and artificial; there are no happy marriages—indeed, marriage itself is almost too inartistic to be permitted by ournovelists, unless it can be supplemented by a divorce, and art issupposed to deny any happy consummation of true love. In short, modernsociety is going to the dogs, notwithstanding money is only three and ahalf per cent. It is a gloomy business life, at the best. Two learned butdespondent university professors met, not long ago, at an afternoon"coffee," and drew sympathetically together in a corner. "What a worldthis would be," said one, "without coffee!" "Yes," replied the other,stirring the fragrant cup in a dejected aspect "yes; but what a hell of aworld it is with coffee!"

The analytic method in fiction is interesting, when used by a master ofdissection, but it has this fatal defect in a novel—it destroysillusion. We want to think that the characters in a story are realpersons. We cannot do this if we see the author set them up as if theywere marionettes, and take them to pieces every few pages, and show theirinterior structure, and the machinery by which they are moved. Not onlyis the illusion gone, but the movement of the story, if there is a story,is retarded, till the reader loses all enjoyment in impatience andweariness. You find yourself saying, perhaps, What a very clever fellowthe author is! What an ingenious creation this character is! How brightlythe author makes his people talk! This is high praise, but by no meansthe highest, and when we reflect we see how immeasurably inferior, infiction, the analytic method is to the dramatic. In the dramatic methodthe characters appear, and show what they are by what they do and say;the reader studies their motives, and a part of his enjoyment is inanalyzing them, and his vanity is flattered by the trust reposed in hisperspicacity. We realize how unnecessary minute analysis of character andlong descriptions are in reading a drama by Shakespeare, in which thecharacters are so vividly presented to us in action and speech, withoutthe least interference of the author in description, that we regard themas persons with whom we might have real relations, and not as bundles oftraits and qualities. True, the conditions of dramatic art and the art ofthe novel are different, in that the drama can dispense withdelineations, for its characters are intended to be presented to the eye;but all the same, a good drama will explain itself without the aid ofactors, and there is no doubt that it is the higher art in the novel,when once the characters are introduced, to treat them dramatically, andlet them work out their own destiny according to their characters. It isa truism to say that when the reader perceives that the author can compelhis characters to do what he pleases all interest in them as real personsis gone. In a novel of mere action and adventure, a lower order offiction, where all the interest centres in the unraveling of a plot, ofcourse this does not so much matter.

Not long ago, in Edinburgh, I amused myself in looking up some of thelocalities made famous in Scott's romances, which are as real in the mindas any historical places. Afterwards I read "The Heart of Midlothian." Iwas surprised to find that, as a work of art, it was inferior to myrecollection of it. Its style is open to the charge of prolixity, andeven of slovenliness in some parts; and it does not move on withincreasing momentum and concentration to a climax, as many of Scott'snovels do; the story drags along in the disposition of one characterafter another. Yet, when I had finished the book and put it away, asingular thing happened. It suddenly came to me that in reading it I hadnot once thought of Scott as the maker; it had never occurred to me thathe had created the people in whose fortunes I had been so intenselyabsorbed; and I never once had felt how clever the novelist was in thenaturally dramatic dialogues of the characters. In short, it had notentered my mind to doubt the existence of Jeanie and Effie Deans, andtheir father, and Reuben Butler, and the others, who seem as real ashistorical persons in Scotch history. And when I came to think of itafterwards, reflecting upon the assumptions of the modern realisticschool, I found that some scenes, notably the night attack on the oldTolbooth, were as real to me as if I had read them in a police report ofa newspaper of the day. Was Scott, then, only a reporter? Far from it, asyou would speedily see if he had thrown into the novel a police report ofthe occurrences at the Tolbooth before art had shorn it of itsirrelevancies, magnified its effective and salient points, given eventstheir proper perspective, and the whole picture due light and shade.

The sacrifice of action to some extent to psychological evolution inmodern fiction may be an advance in the art as an intellectualentertainment, if the writer does not make that evolution his end, anddoes not forget that the indispensable thing in a novel is the story. Thenovel of mere adventure or mere plot, it need not be urged, is of a lowerorder than that in which the evolution of characters and theirinteraction make the story. The highest fiction is that which embodiesboth; that is, the story in which action is the result of mental andspiritual forces in play. And we protest against the notion that thenovel of the future is to be, or should be, merely a study of, or anessay or a series of analytic essays on, certain phases of social life.

It is not true that civilization or cultivation has bred out of the worldthe liking for a story. In this the most highly educated Londoner and theEgyptian fellah meet on common human ground. The passion for a story hasno more died out than curiosity, or than the passion of love. The truthis not that stories are not demanded, but that the born raconteur andstory-teller is a rare person. The faculty of telling a story is a muchrarer gift than the ability to analyze character and even than theability truly to draw character. It may be a higher or a lower power, butit is rarer. It is a natural gift, and it seems that no amount of culturecan attain it, any more than learning can make a poet. Nor is thecomplaint well founded that the stories have all been told, the possibleplots all been used, and the combinations of circ*mstances exhausted. Itis no doubt our individual experience that we hear almost every day—andwe hear nothing so eagerly—some new story, better or worse, but new inits exhibition of human character, and in the combination of events. Andthe strange, eventful histories of human life will no more be exhaustedthan the possible arrangements of mathematical numbers. We might as wellsay that there are no more good pictures to be painted as that there areno more good stories to be told.

Equally baseless is the assumption that it is inartistic and untrue tonature to bring a novel to a definite consummation, and especially to endit happily. Life, we are told, is full of incompletion, of brokendestinies, of failures, of romances that begin but do not end, ofambitions and purposes frustrated, of love crossed, of unhappy issues, ora resultless play of influences. Well, but life is full, also, ofendings, of the results in concrete action of character, of completeddramas. And we expect and give, in the stories we hear and tell inordinary intercourse, some point, some outcome, an end of some sort. Ifyou interest me in the preparations of two persons who are starting on ajourney, and expend all your ingenuity in describing their outfit andtheir characters, and do not tell me where they went or what befell themafterwards, I do not call that a story. Nor am I any better satisfiedwhen you describe two persons whom you know, whose characters areinteresting, and who become involved in all manner of entanglements, andthen stop your narration; and when I ask, say you have not the least ideawhether they got out of their difficulties, or what became of them. Inreal life we do not call that a story where everything is leftunconcluded and in the air. In point of fact, romances are dailybeginning and daily ending, well or otherwise, under our observation.

Should they always end well in the novel? I am very far from saying that.Tragedy and the pathos of failure have their places in literature as wellas in life. I only say that, artistically, a good ending is as proper asa bad ending. Yet the main object of the novel is to entertain, and thebest entertainment is that which lifts the imagination and quickens thespirit; to lighten the burdens of life by taking us for a time out of ourhumdrum and perhaps sordid conditions, so that we can see familiar lifesomewhat idealized, and probably see it all the more truly from anartistic point of view. For the majority of the race, in its hard lines,fiction is an inestimable boon. Incidentally the novel may teach,encourage, refine, elevate. Even for these purposes, that novel is thebest which shows us the best possibilities of our lives—the novel whichgives hope and cheer instead of discouragement and gloom. Familiaritywith vice and sordidness in fiction is a low entertainment, and ofdoubtful moral value, and their introduction is unbearable if it is notdone with the idealizing touch of the artist.

Do not misunderstand me to mean that common and low life are not fitsubjects of fiction, or that vice is not to be lashed by the satirist, orthat the evils of a social state are never to be exposed in the novel.For this, also, is an office of the novel, as it is of the drama, to holdthe mirror up to nature, and to human nature as it exhibits itself. Butwhen the mirror shows nothing but vice and social disorder, leaving outthe saving qualities that keep society on the whole, and family life as arule, as sweet and good as they are, the mirror is not held up to nature,but more likely reflects a morbid mind. Still it must be added that thestudy of unfortunate social conditions is a legitimate one for the authorto make; and that we may be in no state to judge justly of his exposurewhile the punishment is being inflicted, or while the irritation isfresh. For, no doubt, the reader winces often because the novel revealsto himself certain possible baseness, selfishness, and meanness. Of this,however, I (speaking for myself) may be sure: that the artist who sorepresents vulgar life that I am more in love with my kind, the satiristwho so depicts vice and villainy that I am strengthened in my moralfibre, has vindicated his choice of material. On the contrary, thosenovelists are not justified whose forte it seems to be to so set forthgoodness as to make it unattractive.

But we come back to the general proposition that the indispensablecondition of the novel is that it shall entertain. And for this purposethe world is not ashamed to own that it wants, and always will want, astory—a story that has an ending; and if not a good ending, then onethat in noble tragedy lifts up our nature into a high plane of sacrificeand pathos. In proof of this we have only to refer to the masterpieces offiction which the world cherishes and loves to recur to.

I confess that I am harassed with the incomplete romances, that leave me,when the book is closed, as one might be on a waste plain at midnight,abandoned by his conductor, and without a lantern. I am tired ofaccompanying people for hours through disaster and perplexity andmisunderstanding, only to see them lost in a thick mist at last. I amweary of going to funerals, which are not my funerals, however chatty andamusing the undertaker may be. I confess that I should like to see againthe lovely heroine, the sweet woman, capable of a great passion and agreat sacrifice; and I do not object if the novelist tries her to theverge of endurance, in agonies of mind and in perils, subjecting her towasting sicknesses even, if he only brings her out at the end in ablissful compensation of her troubles, and endued with a new and sweetercharm. No doubt it is better for us all, and better art, that in thenovel of society the destiny should be decided by character. What anartistic and righteous consummation it is when we meet the shrewd andwicked old Baroness Bernstein at Continental gaming-tables, and feel thatthere was no other logical end for the worldly and fascinating Beatrix ofHenry Esmond! It is one of the great privileges of fiction to right thewrongs of life, to do justice to the deserving and the vicious. It iswholesome for us to contemplate the justice, even if we do not often seeit in society. It is true that hypocrisy and vulgar self-seeking oftensucceed in life, occupying high places, and make their exit in thepageantry of honored obsequies. Yet always the man is conscious of thehollowness of his triumph, and the world takes a pretty accurate measureof it. It is the privilege of the novelist, without introducing into sucha career what is called disaster, to satisfy our innate love of justiceby letting us see the true nature of such prosperity. The unscrupulousman amasses wealth, lives in luxury and splendor, and dies in the odor ofrespectability. His poor and honest neighbor, whom he has wronged anddefrauded, lives in misery, and dies in disappointment and penury. Thenovelist cannot reverse the facts without such a shock to our experienceas shall destroy for us the artistic value of his fiction, and bring uponhis work the deserved reproach of indiscriminately "rewarding the goodand punishing the bad." But we have a right to ask that he shall revealthe real heart and character of this passing show of life; for not to dothis, to content himself merely with exterior appearances, is for themajority of his readers to efface the lines between virtue and vice. Andwe ask this not for the sake of the moral lesson, but because not to doit is, to our deep consciousness, inartistic and untrue to our judgmentof life as it goes on. Thackeray used to say that all his talent was inhis eyes; meaning that he was only an observer and reporter of what hesaw, and not a Providence to rectify human affairs. The great artistundervalued his genius. He reported what he saw as Raphael and Murilloreported what they saw. With his touch of genius he assigned toeverything its true value, moving us to tenderness, to pity, to scorn, torighteous indignation, to sympathy with humanity. I find in him thehighest art, and not that indifference to the great facts and deepcurrents and destinies of human life, that want of enthusiasm andsympathy, which has got the name of "art for art's sake." Literaryfiction is a barren product if it wants sympathy and love for men. "Artfor art's sake" is a good and defensible phrase, if our definition of artincludes the ideal, and not otherwise.

I do not know how it has come about that in so large a proportion ofrecent fiction it is held to be artistic to look almost altogether uponthe shady and the seamy side of life, giving to this view the name of"realism"; to select the disagreeable, the vicious, the unwholesome; togive us for our companions, in our hours of leisure and relaxation, onlythe silly and the weak-minded woman, the fast and slangy girl, theintrigante and the "shady"—to borrow the language of the society sheseeks—the hero of irresolution, the prig, the vulgar, and the vicious;to serve us only with the foibles of the fashionable, the low tone of thegay, the gilded riffraff of our social state; to drag us forever alongthe dizzy, half-fractured precipice of the seventh commandment; to bringus into relations only with the sordid and the common; to force us to supwith unwholesome company on misery and sensuousness, in tales so utterlyunpleasant that we are ready to welcome any disaster as a relief; andthen—the latest and finest touch of modern art—to leave the wholeweltering mass in a chaos, without conclusion and without possible issue.And this is called a picture of real life! Heavens! Is it true that inEngland, where a great proportion of the fiction we describe and loatheis produced; is it true that in our New England society there is nothingbut frivolity, sordidness, decay of purity and faith, ignoble ambitionand ignoble living? Is there no charm in social life—no self-sacrifice,devotion, courage to stem materialistic conditions, and live above them?Are there no noble women, sensible, beautiful, winning, with the gracethat all the world loves, albeit with the feminine weaknesses that makeall the world hope? Is there no manliness left? Are there no homes wherethe tempter does not live with the tempted in a mush of sentimentalaffinity? Or is it, in fact, more artistic to ignore all these, and paintonly the feeble and the repulsive in our social state? The feeble, thesordid, and the repulsive in our social state nobody denies, nor doesanybody deny the exceeding cleverness with which our social disorders arereproduced in fiction by a few masters of their art; but is it not timethat it should be considered good art to show something of the clean andbright side?

This is pre-eminently the age of the novel. The development of variety offiction since the days of Scott and Cooper is prodigious. The prejudiceagainst novel-reading is quite broken down, since fiction has taken allfields for its province; everybody reads novels. Three-quarters of thebooks taken from the circulating library are stories; they make up halfthe library of the Sunday-schools. If a writer has anything to say, orthinks he has, he knows that he can most certainly reach the ear of thepublic by the medium of a story. So we have novels for children; novelsreligious, scientific, historical, archaeological, psychological,pathological, total-abstinence; novels of travel, of adventure andexploration; novels domestic, and the perpetual spawn of books callednovels of society. Not only is everything turned into a story, real or socalled, but there must be a story in everything. The stump-speaker holdshis audience by well-worn stories; the preacher wakes up his congregationby a graphic narrative; and the Sunday-school teacher leads his childreninto all goodness by the entertaining path of romance; we even had aPresident who governed the country nearly by anecdotes. The result ofthis universal demand for fiction is necessarily an enormous supply, andas everybody writes, without reference to gifts, the product is mainlytrash, and trash of a deleterious sort; for bad art in literature is badmorals. I am not sure but the so-called domestic, the diluted, the"goody," namby-pamby, unrobust stories, which are so largely read byschool-girls, young ladies, and women, do more harm than the "knowing,"audacious, wicked ones,—also, it is reported, read by them, and writtenlargely by their own sex. For minds enfeebled and relaxed by storieslacking even intellectual fibre are in a poor condition to meet theperils of life. This is not the place for discussing the stories writtenfor the young and for the Sunday-school. It seems impossible to check theflow of them, now that so much capital is invested in this industry; butI think that healthy public sentiment is beginning to recognize the truththat the excessive reading of this class of literature by the young isweakening to the mind, besides being a serious hindrance to study and toattention to the literature that has substance.

In his account of the Romantic School in Germany, Heine says, "In thebreast of a nation's authors there always lies the image of its future,and the critic who, with a knife of sufficient keenness, dissects a newpoet can easily prophesy, as from the entrails of a sacrificial animal,what shape matters will assume in Germany." Now if all the poets andnovelists of England and America today were cut up into little pieces(and we might sacrifice a few for the sake of the experiment), there isno inspecting augur who could divine therefrom our literary future. Thediverse indications would puzzle the most acute dissector. Lost in thevariety, the multiplicity of minute details, the refinements of analysisand introspection, he would miss any leading indications. For with allits variety, it seems to me that one characteristic of recent fiction isits narrowness—narrowness of vision and of treatment. It deals withlives rather than with life. Lacking ideality, it fails of broadperception. We are accustomed to think that with the advent of thegenuine novel of society, in the first part of this century, a great stepforward was taken in fiction. And so there was. If the artist did not usea big canvas, he adopted a broad treatment. But the tendency now is topush analysis of individual peculiarities to an extreme, and tosubstitute a study of traits for a representation of human life.

It scarcely need be said that it is not multitude of figures on aliterary canvas that secures breadth of treatment. The novel may benarrow, though it swarms with a hundred personages. It may be as wide aslife, as high as imagination can lift itself; it may image to us a wholesocial state, though it pats in motion no more persons than we made theacquaintance of in one of the romances of Hawthorne. Consider for amoment how Thackeray produced his marvelous results. We follow with him,in one of his novels of society, the fortunes of a very few people. Theyare so vividly portrayed that we are convinced the author must have knownthem in that great world with which he was so familiar; we should not besurprised to meet any of them in the streets of London. When we visit theCharterhouse School, and see the old forms where the boys sat nearly acentury ago, we have in our minds Colonel Newcome as really as we haveCharles Lamb and Coleridge and De Quincey. We are absorbed, as we read,in the evolution of the characters of perhaps only half a dozen people;and yet all the world, all great, roaring, struggling London, is in thestory, and Clive, and Philip, and Ethel, and Becky Sharpe, and CaptainCostigan are a part of life. It is the flowery month of May; the scent ofthe hawthorn is in the air, and the tender flush of the new springsuffuses the Park, where the tide of fashion and pleasure and idlenesssurges up and down-the sauntering throng, the splendid equipages, theendless cavalcade in Rotten Row, in which Clive descries afar off thewhite plume of his ladylove dancing on the waves of an unattainablesociety; the club windows are all occupied; Parliament is in session,with its nightly echoes of imperial politics; the thronged streets roarwith life from morn till nearly morn again; the drawing-rooms hum andsparkle in the crush of a London season; as you walk the midnightpavement, through the swinging doors of the cider-cellars comes the burstof bacchanalian song. Here is the world of the press and of letters; hereare institutions, an army, a navy, commerce, glimpses of great shipsgoing to and fro on distant seas, of India, of Australia. This one bookis an epitome of English life, almost of the empire itself. We areconscious of all this, so much breadth and atmosphere has the artistgiven his little history of half a dozen people in this struggling world.

But this background of a great city, of an empire, is not essential tothe breadth of treatment upon which we insist in fiction, to broadcharacterization, to the play of imagination about common things whichtransfigures them into the immortal beauty of artistic creations. What asimple idyl in itself is Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea"! It is thecreation of a few master-touches, using only common material. Yet it hasin it the breadth of life itself, the depth and passion of all our humanstruggle in the world-a little story with a vast horizon.

It is constantly said that the conditions in America are unfavorable tothe higher fiction; that our society is unformed, without centre, withoutthe definition of classes, which give the light and shade that Heinespeaks of in "Don Quixote"; that it lacks types and customs that can bewidely recognized and accepted as national and characteristic; that wehave no past; that we want both romantic and historic background; that weare in a shifting, flowing, forming period which fiction cannot seize on;that we are in diversity and confusion that baffle artistic treatment; inshort, that American life is too vast, varied, and crude for the purposeof the novelist.

These excuses might be accepted as fully accounting for our failure—orshall we say our delay?—if it were not for two or three of our literaryperformances. It is true that no novel has been written, and we dare sayno novel will be written, that is, or will be, an epitome of the manifolddiversities of American life, unless it be in the form of one of WaltWhitman's catalogues. But we are not without peculiar types; not withoutcharacters, not without incidents, stories, heroisms, inequalities; notwithout the charms of nature in infinite variety; and human nature is thesame here that it is in Spain, France, and England. Out of thesematerials Cooper wrote romances, narratives stamped with the distinctcharacteristics of American life and scenery, that were and are eagerlyread by all civilized peoples, and which secured the universal verdictwhich only breadth of treatment commands. Out of these materials, also,Hawthorne, child-endowed with a creative imagination, wove thosetragedies of interior life, those novels of our provincial New England,which rank among the great masterpieces of the novelist's art. The masterartist can idealize even our crude material, and make it serve. Theseexceptions to a rule do not go to prove the general assertion of apoverty of material for fiction here; the simple truth probably is that,for reasons incident to the development of a new region of the earth,creative genius has been turned in other directions than that offictitious literature. Nor do I think that we need to take shelter behindthe wellworn and convenient observation, the truth of which stands inmuch doubt, that literature is the final flower of a nation'scivilization.

However, this is somewhat a digression. We are speaking of the tendencyof recent fiction, very much the same everywhere that novels are written,which we have imperfectly sketched. It is probably of no more use toprotest against it than it is to protest against the vulgar realism inpictorial art, which holds ugliness and beauty in equal esteem; oragainst aestheticism gone to seed in languid affectations; or against theenthusiasm of a social life which wreaks its religion on the color of avestment, or sighs out its divine soul over an ancient pewter mug. Mostof our fiction, in its extreme analysis, introspection andself-consciousness, in its devotion to details, in its disregard of theideal, in its selection as well as in its treatment of nature, is simplyof a piece with a good deal else that passes for genuine art. Much of itis admirable in workmanship, and exhibits a cleverness in details and asubtlety in the observation of traits which many great novels lack. But Ishould be sorry to think that the historian will judge our social life byit, and I doubt not that most of us are ready for a more ideal, that isto say, a more artistic, view of our performances in this bright andpathetic world.

THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY MR. FROUDE'S "PROGRESS"

By Charles Dudley Warner

To revisit this earth, some ages after their departure from it, is acommon wish among men. We frequently hear men say that they would give somany months or years of their lives in exchange for a less number on theglobe one or two or three centuries from now. Merely to see the worldfrom some remote sphere, like the distant spectator of a play whichpasses in dumb show, would not suffice. They would like to be of theworld again, and enter into its feelings, passions, hopes; to feel thesweep of its current, and so to comprehend what it has become.

I suppose that we all who are thoroughly interested in this world havethis desire. There are some select souls who sit apart in calm endurance,waiting to be translated out of a world they are almost tired ofpatronizing, to whom the whole thing seems, doubtless, like a cheapperformance. They sit on the fence of criticism, and cannot for the lifeof them see what the vulgar crowd make such a toil and sweat about. Theprizes are the same dreary, old, fading bay wreaths. As for the soldiersmarching past, their uniforms are torn, their hats are shocking, theirshoes are dusty, they do not appear (to a man sitting on the fence) tomarch with any kind of spirit, their flags are old and tattered, thedrums they beat are barbarous; and, besides, it is not probable that theyare going anywhere; they will merely come round again, the same people,like the marching chorus in the "Beggar's Opera." Such critics, ofcourse, would not care to see the vulgar show over again; it is enoughfor them to put on record their protest against it in the weekly"Judgment Days" which they edit, and by-and-by withdraw out of theirprivate boxes, with pity for a world in the creation of which they werenot consulted.

The desire to revisit this earth is, I think, based upon a belief,well-nigh universal, that the world is to make some progress, and that itwill be more interesting in the future than it is now. I believe that thehuman mind, whenever it is developed enough to comprehend its own action,rests, and has always rested, in this expectation. I do not know anyperiod of time in which the civilized mind has not had expectation ofsomething better for the race in the future. This expectation issometimes stronger than it is at others; and, again, there are alwaysthose who say that the Golden Age is behind them. It is always behind orbefore us; the poor present alone has no friends; the present, in theminds of many, is only the car that is carrying us away from an age ofvirtue and of happiness, or that is perhaps bearing us on to a time ofease and comfort and security.

Perhaps it is worth while, in view of certain recent discussions, andespecially of some free criticisms of this country, to consider whetherthere is any intention of progress in this world, and whether thatintention is discoverable in the age in which we live.

If it is an old question, it is not a settled one; the practicaldisbelief in any such progress is widely entertained. Not long ago Mr.James Anthony Froude published an essay on Progress, in which he examinedsome of the evidences upon which we rely to prove that we live in an "eraof progress." It is a melancholy essay, for its tone is that of profoundskepticism as to certain influences and means of progress upon which wein this country most rely. With the illustrative arguments of Mr.Froude's essay I do not purpose specially to meddle; I recall it to theattention of the reader as a representative type of skepticism regardingprogress which is somewhat common among intellectual men, and is notconfined to England. It is not exactly an acceptance of Rousseau's notionthat civilization is a mistake, and that it would be better for us all toreturn to a state of nature—though in John Ruskin's case it nearlyamounts to this; but it is a hostility in its last analysis to what weunderstand by the education of the people, and to the government of thepeople by themselves. If Mr. Froude's essay is anything but an exhibitionof the scholarly weapons of criticism, it is the expression of a profounddisbelief in the intellectual education of the masses of the people. Mr.Ruskin goes further. He makes his open proclamation against anyemancipation from hand-toil. Steam is the devil himself let loose fromthe pit, and all labor-saving machinery is his own invention. Mr. Ruskinis the bull that stands upon the track and threatens with annihilationthe on-coming locomotive; and I think that any spectator who sees hismenacing attitude and hears his roaring cannot but have fears for thelocomotive.

There are two sorts of infidelity concerning humanity, and I do not knowwhich is the more withering in its effects. One is that which regardsthis world as only a waste and a desert, across the sands of which we aremerely fugitives, fleeing from the wrath to come. The other is that doubtof any divine intention in development, in history, which we callprogress from age to age.

In the eyes of this latter infidelity history is not a procession or aprogression, but only a series of disconnected pictures, each little erarounded with its own growth, fruitage, and decay, a series of incidentsor experiments, without even the string of a far-reaching purpose toconnect them. There is no intention of progress in it all. The race isbarbarous, and then it changes to civilized; in the one case the strongrob the weak by brute force; in the other the crafty rob the unwary byfinesse. The latter is a more agreeable state of things; but it comes toabout the same. The robber used to knock us down and take away oursheepskins; he now administers chloroform and relieves us of our watches.It is a gentlemanly proceeding, and scientific, and we call itcivilization. Meantime human nature remains the same, and the whole thingis a weary round that has no advance in it.

If this is true the succession of men and of races is no better than avegetable succession; and Mr. Froude is quite right in doubting ifeducation of the brain will do the English agricultural laborer any good;and Mr. Ruskin ought to be aided in his crusade against machinery, whichturns the world upside down. The best that can be done with a man is thebest that can be done with a plant-set him out in some favorablelocality, or leave him where he happened to strike root, and there lethim grow and mature in measure and quiet—especially quiet—as he may inGod's sun and rain. If he happens to be a cabbage, in Heaven's name don'ttry to make a rose of him, and do not disturb the vegetable maturing ofhis head by grafting ideas upon his stock.

The most serious difficulty in the way of those who maintain that thereis an intention of progress in this world from century to century, fromage to age—a discernible growth, a universal development—is the factthat all nations do not make progress at the same time or in the sameratio; that nations reach a certain development, and then fall away andeven retrograde; that while one may be advancing into high civilization,another is lapsing into deeper barbarism, and that nations appear to havea limit of growth. If there were a law of progress, an intention of it inall the world, ought not all peoples and tribes to advance pari passu, orat least ought there not to be discernible a general movement, historicaland contemporary? There is no such general movement which can becomputed, the law of which can be discovered—therefore it does notexist. In a kind of despair, we are apt to run over in our minds empiresand pre-eminent civilizations that have existed, and then to doubtwhether life in this world is intended to be anything more than a seriesof experiments. There is the German nation of our day, the mostaggressive in various fields of intellectual activity, a Hercules ofscholarship, the most thoroughly trained and powerful—though itscivilization marches to the noise of the hateful and barbarous drum. Inwhat points is it better than the Greek nation of the age of itssuperlative artists, philosophers, poets—the age of the most joyous,elastic human souls in the most perfect human bodies?

Again, it is perhaps a fanciful notion that the Atlantis of Plato was thenorthern part of the South American continent, projecting out towardsAfrica, and that the Antilles are the peaks and headlands of its sunkenbulk. But there are evidences enough that the shores of the Gulf ofMexico and the Caribbean Sea were within historic periods the seat of avery considerable civilization—the seat of cities, of commerce, oftrade, of palaces and pleasure—gardens—faint images, perhaps, of theluxurious civilization of Baia! and Pozzuoli and Capri in the mostprofligate period of the Roman empire. It is not more difficult tobelieve that there was a great material development here than to believeit of the African shore of the Mediterranean. Not to multiply instancesthat will occur to all, we see as many retrograde as advance movements,and we see, also, that while one spot of the earth at one time seems tobe the chosen theatre of progress, other portions of the globe areabsolutely dead and without the least leaven of advancing life, and wecannot understand how this can be if there is any such thing as anall-pervading and animating intention or law of progress. And then we arereminded that the individual human mind long ago attained its height ofpower and capacity. It is enough to recall the names of Moses, Buddha,Confucius, Socrates, Paul, Homer, David.

No doubt it has seemed to other periods and other nations, as it now doesto the present civilized races, that they were the chosen times andpeoples of an extraordinary and limitless development. It must haveseemed so to the Jews who overran Palestine and set their shining citieson all the hills of heathendom. It must have seemed so to the Babylonishconquerors who swept over Palestine in turn, on their way to greaterconquests in Egypt. It must have seemed so to Greece when the Acropoliswas to the outlying world what the imperial calla is to the marsh inwhich it lifts its superb flower. It must have seemed so to Rome when itssolid roads of stone ran to all parts of a tributary world—the highwaysof the legions, her ministers, and of the wealth that poured into hertreasury. It must have seemed so to followers of Mahomet, when thecrescent knew no pause in its march up the Arabian peninsula to theBosporus, to India, along the Mediterranean shores to Spain, where in theeighth century it flowered into a culture, a learning, a refinement inart and manners, to which the Christian world of that day was a stranger.It must have seemed so in the awakening of the sixteenth century, whenEurope, Spain leading, began that great movement of discovery andaggrandizement which has, in the end, been profitable only to a portionof the adventurers. And what shall we say of a nation as old, if notolder than any of these we have mentioned, slowly building up meantime acivilization and perfecting a system of government and a social economywhich should outlast them all, and remain to our day almost the solemonument of permanence and stability in a shifting world?

How many times has the face of Europe been changed—and parts of Africa,and Asia Minor too, for that matter—by conquests and crusades, and therise and fall of civilizations as well as dynasties? while China hasendured, almost undisturbed, under a system of law, administration,morality, as old as the Pyramids probably—existed a coherent nation,highly developed in certain essentials, meeting and mastering, so far aswe can see, the great problem of an over-populated territory, living in agood degree of peace and social order, of respect for age and law, andmaking a continuous history, the mere record of which is printed in athousand bulky volumes. Yet we speak of the Chinese empire as an instanceof arrested growth, for which there is no salvation, except it shallcatch the spirit of progress abroad in the world. What is this progress,and where does it come from?

Think for a moment of this significant situation. For thousands of years,empires, systems of society, systems of civilization—Egyptian, Jewish,Greek, Roman, Moslem, Feudal—have flourished and fallen, grown to acertain height and passed away; great organized fabrics have gone down,and, if there has been any progress, it has been as often defeated asrenewed. And here is an empire, apart from this scene of alternatesuccess and disaster, which has existed in a certain continuity andstability, and yet, now that it is uncovered and stands face to face withthe rest of the world, it finds that it has little to teach us, andalmost everything to learn from us. The old empire sends its students tolearn of us, the newest child of civilization; and through us they learnall the great past, its literature, law, science, out of which we sprang.It appears, then, that progress has, after all, been with the shiftingworld, that has been all this time going to pieces, rather than with theworld that has been permanent and unshaken.

When we speak of progress we may mean two things. We may mean a liftingof the races as a whole by reason of more power over the material world,by reason of what we call the conquest of nature and a practical use ofits forces; or we may mean a higher development of the individual man, sothat he shall be better and happier. If from age to age it isdiscoverable that the earth is better adapted to man as a dwelling-place,and he is on the whole fitted to get more out of it for his own growth,is not that progress, and is it not evidence of an intention of progress?

Now, it is sometimes said that Providence, in the economy of this world,cares nothing for the individual, but works out its ideas and purposesthrough the races, and in certain periods, slowly bringing in, by greatagencies and by processes destructive to individuals and to millions ofhelpless human beings, truths and principles; so laying stepping-stonesonward to a great consummation. I do not care to dwell upon this thought,but let us see if we can find any evidence in history of the presence inthis world of an intention of progress.

It is common to say that, if the world makes progress at all, it is byits great men, and when anything important for the race is to be done, agreat man is raised up to do it. Yet another way to look at it is, thatthe doing of something at the appointed time makes the man who does itgreat, or at least celebrated. The man often appears to be only a favoredinstrument of communication. As we glance back we recognize the truththat, at this and that period, the time had come for certain discoveries.Intelligence seemed pressing in from the invisible. Many minds were onthe alert to apprehend it. We believe, for instance, that if Gutenberghad not invented movable types, somebody else would have given them tothe world about that time. Ideas, at certain times, throng for admissioninto the world; and we are all familiar with the fact that the sameimportant idea (never before revealed in all the ages) occurs to separateand widely distinct minds at about the same time. The invention of theelectric telegraph seemed to burst upon the world simultaneously frommany quarters—not perfect, perhaps, but the time for the idea hadcome—and happy was it for the man who entertained it. We have agreed tocall Columbus the discoverer of America, but I suppose there is no doubtthat America had been visited by European, and probably Asiatic, peopleages before Columbus; that four or five centuries before him people fromnorthern Europe had settlements here; he was fortunate, however, in"discovering" it in the fullness of time, when the world, in itsprogress, was ready for it. If the Greeks had had gunpowder,electro-magnetism, the printing press, history would need to berewritten. Why the inquisitive Greek mind did not find out these thingsis a mystery upon any other theory than the one we are considering.

And it is as mysterious that China, having gunpowder and the art ofprinting, is not today like Germany.

There seems to me to be a progress, or an intention of progress, in theworld, independent of individual men. Things get on by all sorts ofinstruments, and sometimes by very poor ones. There are times when newthoughts or applications of known principles seem to throng from theinvisible for expression through human media, and there is hardly ever animportant invention set free in the world that men do not appear to beready cordially to receive it. Often we should be justified in sayingthat there was a widespread expectation of it. Almost all the greatinventions and the ingenious application of principles have manyclaimants for the honor of priority.

On any other theory than this, that there is present in the world anintention of progress which outlasts individuals, and even races, Icannot account for the fact that, while civilizations decay and passaway, and human systems go to pieces, ideas remain and accumulate. We,the latest age, are the inheritors of all the foregoing ages. I do notbelieve that anything of importance has been lost to the world. TheJewish civilization was torn up root and branch, but whatever wasvaluable in the Jewish polity is ours now. We may say the same of thecivilizations of Athens and of Rome; though the entire organization ofthe ancient world, to use Mr. Froude's figure, collapsed into a heap ofincoherent sand, the ideas remained, and Greek art and Roman law are partof the world's solid possessions.

Even those who question the value to the individual of what we callprogress, admit, I suppose, the increase of knowledge in the world fromage to age, and not only its increase, but its diffusion. The intelligentschoolboy today knows more than the ancient sages knew—more about thevisible heavens, more of the secrets of the earth, more of the humanbody. The rudiments of his education, the common experiences of hiseveryday life, were, at the best, the guesses and speculations of aremote age. There is certainly an accumulation of facts, ideas,knowledge. Whether this makes men better, wiser, happier, is indeeddisputed.

In order to maintain the notion of a general and intended progress, it isnot necessary to show that no preceding age has excelled ours in somespecial, development. Phidias has had no rival in sculpture, we mayadmit. It is possible that glass was once made as flexible as leather,and that copper could be hardened like steel. But I do not take muchstock in the "lost arts," the wondering theme of the lyceums. Theknowledge of the natural world, and of materials, was never, I believe,so extensive and exact as it is today. It is possible that there aretricks of chemistry, ingenious processes, secrets of color, of which weare ignorant; but I do not believe there was ever an ancient alchemistwho could not be taught something in a modern laboratory. The vastengineering works of the ancient Egyptians, the remains of their templesand pyramids, excite our wonder; but I have no doubt that PresidentGrant, if he becomes the tyrant they say he is becoming, and commands thelabor of forty millions of slaves—a large proportion of them office—holders—could build a Karnak, or erect a string of pyramids across NewJersey.

Mr. Froude runs lightly over a list of subjects upon which the believerin progress relies for his belief, and then says of them that the worldcalls this progress—he calls it only change. I suppose he means by thistwo things: that these great movements of our modern life are not anyevidence of a permanent advance, and that our whole structure may tumbleinto a heap of incoherent sand, as systems of society have done before;and, again, that it is questionable if, in what we call a stride incivilization, the individual citizen is becoming any purer or more just,or if his intelligence is directed towards learning and doing what isright, or only to the means of more extended pleasures.

It is, perhaps, idle to speculate upon the first of these points—thepermanence of our advance, if it is an advance. But we may be encouragedby one thing that distinguishes this period—say from the middle of theeighteenth century—from any that has preceded it. I mean theintroduction of machinery, applied to the multiplication of man's powerin a hundred directions—to manufacturing, to locomotion, to thediffusion of thought and of knowledge. I need not dwell upon thisfamiliar topic. Since this period began there has been, so far as I know,no retrograde movement anywhere, but, besides the material, anintellectual and spiritual kindling the world over, for which history hasno sort of parallel. Truth is always the same, and will make its way, butthis subject might be illustrated by a study of the relation ofChristianity and of the brotherhood of men to machinery. The theme woulddemand an essay by itself. I leave it with the one remark, that thisgreat change now being wrought in the world by the multiplicity ofmachinery is not more a material than it is an intellectual one, and thatwe have no instance in history of a catastrophe widespread enough andadequate to sweep away its results. That is to say, none of thecatastrophes, not even the corruptions, which brought to ruin the ancientcivilizations, would work anything like the same disaster in an age whichhas the use of machinery that this age has.

For instance: Gibbon selects the period between the accession of Trajanand the death of Marcus Aurelius as the time in which the human raceenjoyed more general happiness than they had ever known before, or hadsince known. Yet, says Mr. Froude, in the midst of this prosperity theheart of the empire was dying out of it; luxury and selfishness wereeating away the principle that held society together, and the ancientworld was on the point of collapsing into a heap of incoherent sand. Now,it is impossible to conceive that the catastrophe which did happen tothat civilization could have happened if the world had then possessed thesteam-engine, the printing-press, and the electric telegraph. The Romanpower might have gone down, and the face of the world been recast; butsuch universal chaos and such a relapse for the individual people wouldseem impossible.

If we turn from these general considerations to the evidences that thisis an "era of progress" in the condition of individual men, we are met bymore specific denials. Granted, it is said, all your facilities fortravel and communication, for cheap and easy manufacture, for thedistribution of cheap literature and news, your cheap education, betterhomes, and all the comforts and luxuries of your machine civilization, isthe average man, the agriculturist, the machinist, the laborer any betterfor it all? Are there more purity, more honest, fair dealing, genuinework, fear and honor of God? Are the proceeds of labor more evenlydistributed? These, it is said, are the criteria of progress; all else ismisleading.

Now, it is true that the ultimate end of any system of government orcivilization should be the improvement of the individual man. And yetthis truth, as Mr. Froude puts it, is only a half-truth, so that thissingle test of any system may not do for a given time and a limited area.Other and wider considerations come in. Disturbances, which for a whileunsettle society and do not bring good results to individuals, may,nevertheless, be necessary, and may be a sign of progress. Take thefavorite illustration of Mr. Froude and Mr. Ruskin—the condition of theagricultural laborer of England. If I understand them, the civilizationof the last century has not helped his position as a man. If I understandthem, he was a better man, in a better condition of earthly happiness,and with a better chance of heaven, fifty years ago than now, before the"era of progress" found him out. (It ought to be noticed here, that thereport of the Parliamentary Commission on the condition of the Englishagricultural laborer does not sustain Mr. Froude's assumptions. On thecontrary, the report shows that his condition is in almost all respectsvastly better than it was fifty years ago.) Mr. Ruskin would remove thesteam-engine and all its devilish works from his vicinity; he wouldabolish factories, speedy travel by rail, new-fangled instruments ofa*griculture, our patent education, and remit him to his ancientcondition—tied for life to a bit of ground, which should supply all hissimple wants; his wife should weave the clothes for the family; hischildren should learn nothing but the catechism and to speak the truth;he should take his religion without question from the hearty, fox-huntingparson, and live and die undisturbed by ideas. Now, it seems to me thatif Mr. Ruskin could realize in some isolated nation this idea of apastoral, simple existence, under a paternal government, he would have intime an ignorant, stupid, brutal community in a great deal worse casethan the agricultural laborers of England are at present. Three-fourthsof the crime in the kingdom of Bavaria is committed in the Ultramontaneregion of the Tyrol, where the conditions of popular education are aboutthose that Mr. Ruskin seems to regret as swept away by the presentmovement in England—a stagnant state of things, in which any wind ofheaven would be a blessing, even if it were a tornado. Education of themodern sort unsettles the peasant, renders him unfit for labor, and givesus a half-educated idler in place of a conscientious workman. The disuseof the apprentice system is not made good by the present system ofeducation, because no one learns a trade well, and the consequence ispoor work, and a sham civilization generally. There is some truth inthese complaints. But the way out is not backward, but forward. The faultis not with education, though it may be with the kind of education. Theeducation must go forward; the man must not be half but wholly educated.It is only half-knowledge like half-training in a trade that isdangerous.

But what I wish to say is, that notwithstanding certain unfavorablethings in the condition of the English laborer and mechanic, his chanceis better in the main than it was fifty years ago. The world is a betterworld for him. He has the opportunity to be more of a man. His world iswider, and it is all open to him to go where he will. Mr. Ruskin may notso easily find his ideal, contented peasant, but the man himself beginsto apprehend that this is a world of ideas as well as of food andclothes, and I think, if he were consulted, he would have no desire toreturn to the condition of his ancestors. In fact, the most hopefulsymptom in the condition of the English peasant is his discontent. For,as skepticism is in one sense the handmaid of truth, discontent is themother of progress. The man is comparatively of little use in the worldwho is contented.

There is another thought pertinent here. It is this: that no man, howeverhumble, can live a full life if he lives to himself alone. He is more ofa man, he lives in a higher plane of thought and of enjoyment, the morehis communications are extended with his fellows and the wider hissympathies are. I count it a great thing for the English peasant, a solidaddition to his life, that he is every day being put into more intimaterelations with every other man on the globe.

I know it is said that these are only vague and sentimental notions ofprogress—notions of a "salvation by machinery." Let us pass to somethingthat may be less vague, even if it be more sentimental. For a hundredyears we have reckoned it progress, that the people were taking part ingovernment. We have had a good deal of faith in the proposition put forthat Philadelphia a century ago, that men are, in effect, equal inpolitical rights. Out of this simple proposition springs logically theextension of suffrage, and a universal education, in order that thisimportant function of a government by the people may be exercisedintelligently.

Now we are told by the most accomplished English essayists that this is amistake, that it is change, but no progress. Indeed, there arephilosophers in America who think so. At least I infer so from the factthat Mr. Froude fathers one of his definitions of our condition upon anAmerican. When a block of printer's type is by accident broken up anddisintegrated, it falls into what is called "pi." The "pi," a mere chaos,is afterwards sorted and distributed, preparatory to being built up intofresh combinations. "A distinguished American friend," says Mr. Froude,"describes Democracy as making pi." It is so witty a sarcasm that Ialmost think Mr. Froude manufactured it himself. Well, we have beenmaking this "pi" for a hundred years; it seems to be a national dish inconsiderable favor with the rest of the world—even such ancient nationsas China and Japan want a piece of it.

Now, of course, no form of human government is perfect, or anything likeit, but I should be willing to submit the question to an English travelereven, whether, on the whole, the people of the United States do not haveas fair a chance in life and feel as little the oppression of governmentas any other in the world; whether anywhere the burdens are more liftedoff men's shoulders.

This infidelity to popular government and unbelief in any good results tocome from it are not, unfortunately, confined to the English essayists. Iam not sure but the notion is growing in what is called the intellectualclass, that it is a mistake to intrust the government to the ignorantmany, and that it can only be lodged safely in the hands of the wise few.We hear the corruptions of the times attributed to universal suffrage.Yet these corruptions certainly are not peculiar to the United States: Itis also said here, as it is in England, that our diffused and somewhatsuperficial education is merely unfitting the mass of men, who must belaborers, for any useful occupation.

This argument, reduced to plain terms, is simply this: that the mass ofmankind are unfit to decide properly their own political and socialcondition; and that for the mass of mankind any but a very limited mentaldevelopment is to be deprecated. It would be enough to say of this, thatclass government and popular ignorance have been tried for so many ages,and always with disaster and failure in the end, that I should thinkphilanthropical historians would be tired of recommending them. But thereis more to be said.

I feel that as a resident on earth, part owner of it for a time,unavoidably a member of society, I have a right to a voice in determiningwhat my condition and what my chance in life shall be. I may be ignorant,I should be a very poor ruler of other people, but I am better capable ofdeciding some things that touch me nearly than another is. By what logiccan I say that I should have a part in the conduct of this world and thatmy neighbor should not? Who is to decide what degree of intelligenceshall fit a man for a share in the government? How are we to select thefew capable men that are to rule all the rest? As a matter of fact, menhave been rulers who had neither the average intelligence nor virtue ofthe people they governed. And, as a matter of historical experience, aclass in power has always sought its own benefit rather than that of thewhole people. Lunacy, extraordinary stupidity, and crime aside, a man isthe best guardian of his own liberty and rights.

The English critics, who say we have taken the government from thecapable few and given it to the people, speak of universal suffrage as aquack panacea of this "era of progress." But it is not the manufacturedpanacea of any theorist or philosopher whatever. It is the natural resultof a diffused knowledge of human rights and of increasing intelligence.It is nothing against it that Napoleon III. used a mockery of it togovern France. It is not a device of the closet, but a method ofgovernment, which has naturally suggested itself to men as they havegrown into a feeling of self-reliance and a consciousness that they havesome right in the decision of their own destiny in the world. It is truethat suffrage peculiarly fits a people virtuous and intelligent. Butthere has not yet been invented any government in which a people wouldthrive who were ignorant and vicious.

Our foreign critics seem to regard our "American system," by the way, asa sort of invention or patent right, upon which we are experimenting;forgetting that it is as legitimate a growth out of our circ*mstances asthe English system is out of its antecedents. Our system is not theproduct of theorists or closet philosophers; but it was ordained insubstance and inevitable from the day the first "town meeting" assembledin New England, and it was not in the power of Hamilton or any one elseto make it otherwise.

So you must have education, now you have the ballot, say the critics ofthis era of progress; and this is another of your cheap inventions. Notthat we undervalue book knowledge. Oh, no! but it really seems to us thata good trade, with the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments back of it,would be the best thing for most of you. You must work for a livinganyway; and why, now, should you unsettle your minds?

This is such an astounding view of human life and destiny that I do notknow what to say to it. Did it occur to Mr. Froude to ask the man whetherhe would be contented with a good trade and the Ten Commandments? Perhapsthe man would like eleven commandments? And, if he gets hold of theeleventh, he may want to know something more about his fellow-men, alittle geography maybe, and some of Mr. Froude's history, and thus he maybe led off into literature, and the Lord knows where.

The inference is that education—book fashion—will unfit the man foruseful work. Mr. Froude here again stops at a half-truth. As a generalthing, intelligence is useful in any position a man occupies. But it istrue that there is a superficial and misdirected sort of education, socalled, which makes the man who receives it despise labor; and it is alsotrue that in the present educational revival there has been a neglect oftraining in the direction of skilled labor, and we all suffer more orless from cheap and dishonest work. But the way out of this, again, isforward, and not backward. It is a good sign, and not a stigma upon thisera of progress, that people desire education. But this education must beof the whole man; he must be taught to work as well as to read, and heis, indeed, poorly educated if he is not fitted to do his work in theworld. We certainly shall not have better workmen by having ignorantworkmen. I need not say that the real education is that which will bestfit a man for performing well his duties in life. If Mr. Froude, insteadof his plaint over the scarcity of good mechanics, and of the TenCommandments in England, had recommended the establishment of industrialschools, he would have spoken more to the purpose.

I should say that the fashionable skepticism of today, here and inEngland, is in regard to universal suffrage and the capacity of thepeople to govern themselves. The whole system is the sharp invention ofThomas Jefferson and others, by which crafty demagogues can rule. Insteadof being, as we have patriotically supposed, a real progress in humandevelopment, it is only a fetich, which is becoming rapidly a failure.Now, there is a great deal of truth in the assertion that, whatever theform of government, the ablest men, or the strongest, or the most cunningin the nation, will rule. And yet it is true that in a populargovernment, like this, the humblest citizen, if he is wronged oroppressed, has in his hands a readier instrument of redress than he hasever had in any form of government. And it must not be forgotten that theballot in the hands of all is perhaps the only safeguard against thetyranny of wealth in the hands of the few. It is true that bad men canband together and be destructive; but so they can in any government.Revolution by ballot is much safer than revolution by violence; and,granting that human nature is selfish, when the whole people are thegovernment selfishness is on the side of the government. Can you mentionany class in this country whose interest it is to overturn thegovernment? And, then, as to the wisdom of the popular decisions by theballot in this country. Look carefully at all the Presidential electionsfrom Washington's down, and say, in the light of history, if the populardecision has not, every time, been the best for the country. It may nothave seemed so to some of us at the time, but I think it is true, and avery significant fact.

Of course, in this affirmation of belief that one hundred years ofpopular government in this country is a real progress for humanity, andnot merely a change from the rule of the fit to the rule of the cunning,we cannot forget that men are pretty much everywhere the same, and thatwe have abundant reason for national humility. We are pretty well awarethat ours is not an ideal state of society, and should be so, even if theEnglish who pass by did not revile us, wagging their heads. We mightdiffer with them about the causes of our disorders. Doubtless, extendedsuffrage has produced certain results. It seems, strangely enough, tohave escaped the observation of our English friends that to suffrage wasdue the late horse disease. No one can discover any other cause for it.But there is a cause for the various phenomena of this period of shoddy,of inflated speculation, of disturbance of all values, social, moral,political, and material, quite sufficient in the light of history toaccount for them. It is not suffrage; it is an irredeemable papercurrency. It has borne its usual fruit with us, and neither foreign norhome critics can shift the responsibility of it upon our system ofgovernment. Yes, it is true, we have contrived to fill the world with ourscandals of late. I might refer to a loose commercial and politicalmorality; to betrayals of popular trust in politics; to corruptions inlegislatures and in corporations; to an abuse of power in the publicpress, which has hardly yet got itself adjusted to its sudden accessionof enormous influence. We complain of its injustice to individualssometimes. We might imagine that something like this would occur.

A newspaper one day says: "We are exceedingly pained to hear that theHon. Mr. Blank, who is running for Congress in the First District, haspermitted his aged grandmother to go to the town poorhouse. What rendersthis conduct inexplicable is the fact that Mr. Blank is a man of largefortune."

The next day the newspaper says: "The Hon. Mr. Blank has not seen fit todeny the damaging accusation in regard to the treatment of hisgrandmother."

The next day the newspaper says: "Mr. Blank is still silent. He isprobably aware that he cannot afford to rest under this grave charge."

The next day the newspaper asks: "Where's Blank? Has he fled?"

At last, goaded by these remarks, and most unfortunately for himself, Mr.Blank writes to the newspaper and most indignantly denies the charge; henever sent his grandmother to the poorhouse.

Thereupon the newspaper says: "Of course a rich man who would put his owngrandmother in the poorhouse would deny it. Our informant was a gentlemanof character. Mr. Blank rests the matter on his unsupported word. It is aquestion of veracity."

Or, perhaps, Mr. Blank, more unfortunately for himself, begins by makingan affidavit, wherein he swears that he never sent his grandmother to thepoorhouse, and that, in point of fact, he has not any grandmotherwhatever.

The newspaper then, in language that is now classical, "goes for" Mr.Blank. It says: "Mr. Blank resorts to the common device of the rogue—the affidavit. If he had been conscious of rectitude, would he not haverelied upon his simple denial?"

Now, if an extreme case like this could occur, it would be bad enough.But, in our free society, the remedy would be at hand. The constituentsof Mr. Blank would elect him in triumph. The newspaper would lose publicconfidence and support and learn to use its position more justly. What Imean to indicate by such an extreme instance as this is, that in our verylicense of individual freedom there is finally a correcting power.

We might pursue this general subject of progress by a comparison of thesociety of this country now with that of fifty years ago. I have no doubtthat in every essential this is better than that, in manners, inmorality, in charity and toleration, in education and religion. I knowthe standard of morality is higher. I know the churches are purer. Notfifty years ago, in a New England town, a distinguished doctor ofdivinity, the pastor of a leading church, was part owner in a distillery.He was a great light in his denomination, but he was an extravagantliver, and, being unable to pay his debts, he was arrested and put intojail, with the liberty of the "limits." In order not to interrupt hisministerial work, the jail limits were made to include his house and hischurch, so that he could still go in and out before his people. I do notthink that could occur anywhere in the United States today.

I will close these fragmentary suggestions by saying that I, for one,should like to see this country a century from now. Those who live thenwill doubtless say of this period that it was crude, and ratherdisorderly, and fermenting with a great many new projects; but I havegreat faith that they will also say that the present extending notion,that the best government is for the people, by the people, was in theline of sound progress. I should expect to find faith in humanity greaterand not less than it is now, and I should not expect to find that Mr.Froude's mournful expectation had been realized, and that the belief in alife beyond the grave had been withdrawn.

ENGLAND

By Charles Dudley Warner

England has played a part in modern history altogether out of proportionto its size. The whole of Great Britain, including Ireland, has onlyeleven thousand more square miles than Italy; and England and Wales aloneare not half so large as Italy. England alone is about the size of NorthCarolina. It is, as Franklin, in 1763, wrote to Mary Stevenson in London,"that petty island which, compared to America, is but a stepping-stone ina brook, scarce enough of it above water to keep one's shoes dry."

A considerable portion of it is under water, or water-soaked a good partof the year, and I suppose it has more acres for breeding frogs than anyother northern land, except Holland. Old Harrison says that the NorthBritons when overcome by hunger used to creep into the marshes till thewater was up to their chins and there remain a long time, "onlie toqualifie the heats of their stomachs by violence, which otherwise wouldhave wrought and beene readie to oppresse them for hunger and want ofsustinance." It lies so far north—the latitude of Labrador—that thewinters are long and the climate inhospitable. It would be severely coldif the Gulf Stream did not make it always damp and curtain it withclouds. In some parts the soil is heavy with water, in others it is onlya thin stratum above the chalk; in fact, agricultural production couldscarcely be said to exist there until fortunes made in India and in otherforeign adventure enabled the owners of the land to pile it knee-deepwith fertilizers from Peru and elsewhere. Thanks to accumulated wealthand the Gulf Stream, its turf is green and soft; figs, which will notmature with us north of the capes of Virginia, ripen in sheltered nooksin Oxford, and the large and unfrequent strawberry sometimes appears uponthe dinner-table in such profusion that the guests can indulge in oneapiece.

Yet this small, originally infertile island has been for two centuries,and is today, the most vital influence on the globe. Cast your eye overthe world upon her possessions, insular and continental, into any one ofwhich, almost, England might be dropped, with slight disturbance, as youwould transfer a hanging garden. For any parallel to her power andpossessions you must go back to ancient Rome. Egypt under Thotmes andSeti overran the then known world and took tribute of it; but it was atemporary wave of conquest and not an assimilation. Rome sent her lawsand her roads to the end of the earth, and made an empire of it; but itwas an empire of barbarians largely, of dynasties rather than of peoples.The dynasties fought, the dynasties submitted, and the dynasties paid thetribute. The modern "people" did not exist. One battle decided the fateof half the world—it might be lost or won for a woman's eyes; the flightof a chieftain might settle the fate of a province; a campaign mightdetermine the allegiance of half Asia. There was but one compact,disciplined, law-ordered nation, and that had its seat on the Tiber.

Under what different circ*mstances did England win her position! Beforeshe came to the front, Venice controlled, and almost monopolized, thetrade of the Orient. When she entered upon her career Spain was almostomnipotent in Europe, and was in possession of more than half the Westernworld; and besides Spain, England had, wherever she went, to contend fora foothold with Portugal, skilled in trade and adventure; and withHolland, rich, and powerful on the sea. That is to say, she meteverywhere civilizations old and technically her superior. Of the rulingpowers, she was the least in arts and arms. If you will take time to fillout this picture, you will have some conception of the marvelousachievements of England, say since the abdication of the Emperor CharlesV.

This little island is today the centre of the wealth, of the solidcivilization, of the world. I will not say of art, of music, of thelighter social graces that make life agreeable; but I will say of themoral forces that make progress possible and worth while. Of this islandthe centre is London; of London the heart is "the City," and in the Cityyou can put your finger on one spot where the pulse of the world isdistinctly felt to beat. The Moslem regards the Kaaba at Mecca as thecentre of the universe; but that is only a theological phrase. The centreof the world is the Bank of England in Leadenhall Street. There is not anoccurrence, not a conquest or a defeat, a revolution, a panic, a famine,an abundance, not a change in value of money or material, no depressionor stoppage in trade, no recovery, no political, and scarcely any greatreligious movement—say the civil deposition of the Pope or the Wahhabeerevival in Arabia and India—that does not report itself instantly atthis sensitive spot. Other capitals feel a local influence; this feelsall the local influences. Put your ear at the door of the Bank or theStock Exchange near by, and you hear the roar of the world.

But this is not all, nor the most striking thing, nor the greatestcontrast to the empires of Rome and of Spain. The civilization that hasgone forth from England is a self-sustaining one, vital to grow where itis planted, in vast communities, in an order that does not depend, asthat of the Roman world did, upon edicts and legions from the capital.And it must be remembered that if the land empire of England is not sovast as that of Rome, England has for two centuries been mistress of theseas, with all the consequences of that opportunity—consequences totrade beyond computation. And we must add to all this that anintellectual and moral power has been put forth from England clear roundthe globe, and felt beyond the limits of the English tongue.

How is it that England has attained this supremacy—a supremacy in vaindisputed on land and on sea by France, but now threatened by an equippedand disciplined Germany, by an unformed Colossus—a Slav and Tartarconglomerate; and perhaps by one of her own children, the United States?I will mention some of the things that have determined England'sextraordinary career; and they will help us to consider her prospects. Iname:

I. The Race. It is a mixed race, but with certain dominant qualities,which we call, loosely, Teutonic; certainly the most aggressive, tough,and vigorous people the world has seen. It does not shrink from anyclimate, from any exposure, from any geographic condition; yet its choiceof migration and of residence has mainly been on the grass belt of theglobe, where soil and moisture produce good turf, where a changing andunequal climate, with extremes of heat and cold, calls out the physicalresources, stimulates invention, and requires an aggressive and defensiveattitude of mind and body. The early history of this people is marked bytwo things:

( 1 ) Town and village organizations, nurseries of law, order, andself-dependence, nuclei of power, capable of indefinite expansion,leading directly to a free and a strong government, the breeders of civilliberty.

( 2 ) Individualism in religion, Protestantism in the widest sense: Imean by this, cultivation of the individual conscience as againstauthority. This trait was as marked in this sturdy people in CatholicEngland as it is in Protestant England. It is in the blood. England neverdid submit to Rome, not even as France did, though the Gallic Church heldout well. Take the struggle of Henry II. and the hierarchy. Read thefight with prerogative all along. The English Church never could submit.It is a shallow reading of history to attribute the final break with Rometo the unbridled passion of Henry VIII.; that was an occasion only: if ithad not been that, it would have been something else.

Here we have the two necessary traits in the character of a great people:the love and the habit of civil liberty and religious conviction andindependence. Allied to these is another trait—truthfulness. To speakthe truth in word and action, to the verge of bluntness and offense—andwith more relish sometimes because it is individually obnoxious andunlovely—is an English trait, clearly to be traced in the character ofthis people, notwithstanding the equivocations of Elizabethan diplomacy,the proverbial lying of English shopkeepers, and the fraudulentadulteration of English manufactures. Not to lie is perhaps as much amatter of insular pride as of morals; to lie is unbecoming an Englishman.When Captain Burnaby was on his way to Khiva he would tolerate noOriental exaggeration of his army rank, although a higher title wouldhave smoothed his way and added to his consideration. An English officialwho was a captive at Bokhara (or Khiva) was offered his life by the Khanif he would abjure the Christian faith and say he was a Moslem; but hepreferred death rather than the advantage of a temporary equivocation. Ido not suppose that he was a specially pious man at home or that he was amartyr to religious principle, but for the moment Christianity stood forEngland and English honor and civilization. I can believe that a roughEnglish sailor, who had not used a sacred name, except in vain, since hesaid his prayer at his mother's knee, accepted death under likecirc*mstances rather than say he was not a Christian.

The next determining cause in England's career is:

II. The insular position. Poor as the island was, this was theopportunity. See what came of it:

( 1 ) Maritime opportunity. The irregular coastlines, the bays andharbors, the near islands and mainlands invited to the sea. The nationbecame, per force, sailors—as the ancient Greeks were and the modernGreeks are: adventurers, discoverers—hardy, ambitious, seeking food fromthe sea and wealth from every side.

( 2 ) Their position protected them. What they got they could keep;wealth could accumulate. Invasion was difficult and practicallyimpossible to their neighbors. And yet they were in the bustling world,close to the continent, commanding the most important of the navigableseas. The wealth of Holland was on the one hand, the wealth of France onthe other. They held the keys.

( 3 ) The insular position and their free institutions invited refugeesfrom all the Continent, artisans and skilled laborers of all kinds.Hence, the beginning of their great industries, which made England richin proportion as her authority and chance of trade expanded over distantislands and continents. But this would not have been possible without thethird advantage which I shall mention, and that is:

III. Coal. England's power and wealth rested upon her coal-beds. In thisbounty nature was more liberal to the tight little island than to anyother spot in Western Europe, and England took early advantage of it. Tobe sure, her coal-field is small compared with that of the UnitedStates—an area of only 11,900 square miles to our 192,000. But Germanyhas only 1,770; Belgium, 510; France, 2,086; and Russia only in herexpansion of territory leads Europe in this respect, and has now 30,000square miles of coal-beds. But see the use England makes of thismaterial: in 1877, she took out of the ground 134,179,968 tons. TheUnited States the same year took out 50,000,000 tons; Germany,48,000,000; France, 16,000,000; Belgium, 14,000,000. This tells the storyof the heavy industries.

We have considered as elements of national greatness the race itself, thefavorable position, and the material to work with. I need not enlargeupon the might and the possessions of England, nor the generalbeneficence of her occupation wherever she has established fort, factory,or colony. With her flag go much injustice, domineering, and cruelty;but, on the whole, the best elements of civilization.

The intellectual domination of England has been as striking as thephysical. It is stamped upon all her colonies; it has by no meansdisappeared in the United States. For more than fifty years after ourindependence we imported our intellectual food—with the exception ofpolitics, and theology in certain forms—and largely our ethical guidancefrom England. We read English books, or imitations of the English way oflooking at things; we even accepted the English caricatures of our ownlife as genuine—notably in the case of the so-called typical Yankee. Itis only recently that our writers have begun to describe our own life asit is, and that readers begin to feel that our society may be asinteresting in print as that English society which they have been alltheir lives accustomed to read about. The reading-books of children inschools were filled with English essays, stories, English views of life;it was the English heroines over whose woes the girls wept; it was of theEnglish heroes that the boys declaimed. I do not know how much theimagination has to do in shaping the national character, but for half acentury English writers, by poems and novels, controlled the imaginationof this country. The principal reading then, as now—and perhaps morethen than now—was fiction, and nearly all of this England supplied. Wetook in with it, it will be noticed, not only the romance and gilding ofchivalry and legitimacy, such as Scott gives us, but constant instructionin a society of ranks and degrees, orders of nobility and commonalty, afixed social status, a well-ordered, and often attractive, permanentsocial inequality, a state of life and relations based upon lingeringfeudal conditions and prejudices. The background of all English fictionis monarchical; however liberal it may be, it must be projected upon theexisting order of things. We have not been examining these foreign socialconditions with that simple curiosity which leads us to look into thesocial life of Russia as it is depicted in Russian novels; we have, onthe contrary, absorbed them generation after generation as part of ourintellectual development, so that the novels and the other Englishliterature must have had a vast influence in molding our mentalcharacter, in shaping our thinking upon the political as well as thesocial constitution of states.

For a long time the one American counteraction, almost the only, to thisEnglish influence was the newspaper, which has always kept alive anddiffused a distinctly American spirit—not always lovely or modest, butnational. The establishment of periodicals which could afford to pay forfiction written about our society and from the American point of view hashad a great effect on our literary emancipation. The wise men whom weelect to make our laws—and who represent us intellectually and morally agood deal better than we sometimes like to admit—have always gone uponthe theory, with regard to the reading for the American people, that thechief requisite of it was cheapness, with no regard to its character sofar as it is a shaper of notions about government and social life. Whateducating influence English fiction was having upon American life theyhave not inquired, so long as it was furnished cheap, and its authorswere cheated out of any copyright on it.

At the North, thanks to a free press and periodicals, to a dozen reformagitations, and to the intellectual stir generally accompanyingindustries and commerce, we have been developing an immense intellectualactivity, a portion of which has found expression in fiction, in poetry,in essays, that are instinct with American life and aspiration; so thatnow for over thirty years, in the field of literature, we have had avigorous offset to the English intellectual domination of which I spoke.How far this has in the past molded American thought and sentiment, inwhat degree it should be held responsible for the infidelity in regard toour "American experiment," I will not undertake to say. The Southfurnishes a very interesting illustration in this connection. When thecivil war broke down the barriers of intellectual non-intercourse behindwhich the South had ensconced itself, it was found to be in a colonialcondition. Its libraries were English libraries, mostly composed of oldEnglish literature. Its literary growth stopped with the reign of GeorgeIII. Its latest news was the Spectator and the Tatler. The social orderit covered was that of monarchical England, undisturbed by the fieryphilippics of Byron or Shelley or the radicalism of a manufacturing age.Its chivalry was an imitation of the antiquated age of lords and ladies,and tournaments, and buckram courtesies, when men were as touchy tofight, at the lift of an eyelid or the drop of the glove, as Brian deBois-Guilbert, and as ready for a drinking-bout as Christopher North. Theintellectual stir of the North, with its disorganizing radicalism, wasrigorously excluded, and with it all the new life pouring out of itspresses. The South was tied to a republic, but it was not republican,either in its politics or its social order. It was, in its mentalconstitution, in its prejudices, in its tastes, exactly what you wouldexpect a people to be, excluded from the circulation of free ideas by itssystem of slavery, and fed on the English literature of a century ago. Idare say that a majority of its reading public, at any time, would havepreferred a monarchical system and a hierarchy of rank.

To return to England. I have said that English domination usually carriesthe best elements of civilization. Yet it must be owned that England haspursued her magnificent career in a policy often insolent and brutal, andgenerally selfish. Scarcely any considerations have stood in the way ofher trade and profit. I will not dwell upon her opium culture in India,which is a proximate cause of famine in district after district, nor uponher forcing the drug upon China—a policy disgraceful to a Christianqueen and people. We have only just got rid of slavery, sustained so longby Biblical and official sanction, and may not yet set up as critics. ButI will refer to a case with which all are familiar—England's treatmentof her American colonies. In 1760 and onward, when Franklin, the agent ofthe colonies of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, was cooling his heels inlords' waiting-rooms in London, America was treated exactly as Irelandwas—that is, discriminated against in every way; not allowed tomanufacture; not permitted to trade with other nations, except under themost vexatious restrictions; and the effort was continued to make her amere agricultural producer and a dependent. All that England cared for uswas that we should be a market for her manufactures. This sameselfishness has been the keynote of her policy down to the present day,except as the force of circ*mstances has modified it. Steadily pursued,it has contributed largely to make England the monetary and industrialmaster of the world.

With this outline I pass to her present condition and outlook. Thedictatorial and selfish policy has been forced to give way somewhat inregard to the colonies. The spirit of the age and the strength of thecolonies forbid its exercise; they cannot be held by the old policy.Australia boldly adopts a protective tariff, and her parliament is onlynominally controlled by the crown. Canada exacts duties on English goods,and England cannot help herself. Even with these concessions, can Englandkeep her great colonies? They are still loyal in word. They still affectEnglish manners and English speech, and draw their intellectual suppliesfrom England. On the prospect of a war with Russia they nearly alloffered volunteers. But everybody knows that allegiance is on thecondition of local autonomy. If united Canada asks to go, she will go. Sowith Australia. It may be safely predicted that England will never fightagain to hold the sovereignty of her new-world possessions against theirpresent occupants. And, in the judgment of many good observers, adissolution of the empire, so far as the Western colonies are concerned,is inevitable, unless Great Britain, adopting the plan urged by Franklin,becomes an imperial federation, with parliaments distinct andindependent, the crown the only bond of union—the crown, and not theEnglish parliament, being the titular and actual sovereign. Sovereignpower over America in the parliament Franklin never would admit. His ideawas that all the inhabitants of the empire must be citizens, not some ofthem subjects ruled by the home citizens. The two great political partiesof England are really formed on lines constructed after the passage ofthe Reform Bill of 1832. The Tories had been long in power. They had mademany changes and popular concessions, but they resisted parliamentaryreform. The great Whig lords, who had tried to govern England without thepeople and in opposition to the crown in the days of George III., hadlearned to seek popular support. The Reform Bill, which was ultimatelyforced through by popular pressure and threat of civil war, abolished therotten boroughs, gave representation to the large manufacturing towns andincreased representation to the counties, and the suffrage to all men whohad 'paid ten pounds a year rent in boroughs, or in the counties ownedland worth ten pounds a year or paid fifty pounds rent. The immediateresult of this was to put power into the hands of the middle classes andto give the lower classes high hopes, so that, in 1839, the Chartistmovement began, one demand of which was universal suffrage. The old partynames of Whig and Tory had been dropped and the two parties had assumedtheir present appellations of Conservatives and Liberals. Both partieshad, however, learned that there was no rest for any ruling party excepta popular basis, and the Conservative party had the good sense tostrengthen itself in 1867 by carrying through Mr. Disraeli's bill, whichgave the franchise in boroughs to all householders paying rates, and incounties to all occupiers of property rated at fifteen pounds a year.This broadening of the suffrage places the power irrevocably in the handsof the people, against whose judgment neither crown nor ministry canventure on any important step.

In general terms it may be said that of these two great parties theConservative wishes to preserve existing institutions, and latterly hasleaned to the prerogatives of the crown, and the Liberal is inclined toprogress and reform, and to respond to changes demanded by the people.Both parties, however, like parties elsewhere, propose and opposemeasures and movements, and accept or reject policies, simply to getoffice or keep office. The Conservative party of late years, principallybecause it has the simple task of holding back, has been better able todefine its lines and preserve a compact organization. The Liberals, witha multitude of reformatory projects, have, of course, a less hom*ogeneousorganization, and for some years have been without well-defined issues.The Conservative aristocracy seemed to form a secure alliance with thefarmers and the great agricultural interests, and at the same time tohave a strong hold upon the lower classes. In what his opponents calledhis "policy of adventure," Lord Beaconsfield had the support of the lowerpopulace. The Liberal party is an incongruous host. On one wing are theWhig lords and great landowners, who cannot be expected to take kindly toa land reform that would reform them out of territorial power; and on theother wing are the Radicals, who would abolish the present land systemand the crown itself, and institute the rule of a democracy. Betweenthese two is the great body of the middle class, a considerable portionof the educated and university trained, the majorities of themanufacturing towns, and perhaps, we may say, generally theNonconformists. There are some curious analogies in these two parties toour own parties before the war. It is, perhaps, not fanciful to supposethat the Conservative lords resemble our own aristocratic leaders ofdemocracy, who contrived to keep near the people and had affiliationsthat secured them the vote of the least educated portion of the voters;while the great Liberal lords are not unlike our old aristocratic Whigs,of the cotton order, who have either little sympathy with the people orlittle faculty of showing it. It is a curious fact that during our civilwar respect for authority gained us as much sympathy from theConservatives, as love for freedom (hampered by the greed of trade andrivalry in manufactures) gained us from the Liberals.

To return to the question of empire. The bulk of the Conservative partywould hold the colonies if possible, and pursue an imperial policy; whilecertainly a large portion of the Liberals—not all, by any means—wouldlet the colonies go, and, with the Manchester school, hope to holdEngland's place by free-trade and active competition. The imperial policymay be said to have two branches, in regard to which parties will notsharply divide: one is the relations to be held towards the Westerncolonies, and the other in the policy to be pursued in the East inreference to India and to the development of the Indian empire, and alsothe policy of aggression and subjection in South Africa.

An imperial policy does not necessarily imply such vagaries as theforcible detention of the forcibly annexed Boer republic. But everybodysees that the time is near when England must say definitely as to theimperial policy generally whether it will pursue it or abandon it. And itmay be remarked in passing that the Gladstone government, thus far,though pursuing this policy more moderately than the Beaconsfieldgovernment, shows no intention of abandoning it. Almost everybody admitsthat if it is abandoned England must sink to the position of a third-ratepower like Holland. For what does abandonment mean? It means to have noweight, except that of moral example, in Continental affairs: torelinquish her advantages in the Mediterranean; to let Turkey be absorbedby Russia; to become so weak in India as to risk rebellion of all theprovinces, and probable attack from Russia and her Central Asian allies.But this is not all. Lost control in Asia is lost trade; this is evidentin every foot of control Russia has gained in the Caucasus, about theCaspian Sea, in Persia. There Russian manufactures supplant the English;and so in another quarter: in order to enjoy the vast opening trade ofAfrica, England must be on hand with an exhibition of power. We mightshow by a hundred examples that the imperial idea in England does notrest on pride alone, on national glory altogether, though that is a largeelement in it, but on trade instincts. "Trade follows the flag" is awell-known motto; and that means that the lines of commerce follow thelimits of empire.

Take India as an illustration. Why should England care to keep India? Inthe last forty years the total revenue from India, set down up to 1880 asL 1,517,000,000, has been L 53,000,000 less than the expenditure. Itvaries with the years, and occasionally the balance is favorable, as in1879, when the expenditure was L 63,400,000 and the revenue was L64,400,000. But to offset this average deficit the very profitable tradeof India, which is mostly in British hands, swells the national wealth;and this trade would not be so largely in British hands if the flag wereaway.

But this is not the only value of India. Grasp on India is part of thevast Oriental network of English trade and commerce, the carrying trade,the supply of cotton and iron goods. This largely depends upon Englishprestige in the Orient, and to lose India is to lose the grip. Onpractically the same string with India are Egypt, Central Africa, and theEuphrates valley. A vast empire of trade opens out. To sink the imperialpolicy is to shut this vision. With Russia pressing on one side andAmerica competing on the other, England cannot afford to lose hermilitary lines, her control of the sea, her prestige.

Again, India offers to the young and the adventurous a career, military,civil, or commercial. This is of great weight—great social weight. Oneof the chief wants of England today is careers and professions for hersons. The population of the United Kingdom in 1876 was estimated at nearthirty-four millions; in the last few decades the decennial increase hadbeen considerably over two millions; at that rate the population in 1900would be near forty millions. How can they live in their narrow limits?They must emigrate, go for good, or seek employment and means of wealthin some such vast field as India. Take away India now, and you cut offthe career of hundreds of thousands of young Englishmen, and the hope oftens of thousands of households.

There is another aspect of the case which it would be unfair to ignore.Opportunity is the measure of a nation's responsibility. I have no doubtthat Mr. Thomas Hughes spoke for a very respectable portion of ChristianEngland, in 1861, when he wrote Mr. James Russell Lowell, in a prefatorynote to "Tom Brown at Oxford," these words:

"The great tasks of the world are only laid on the strongest shoulders. We, who have India to guide and train, who have for our task the educating of her wretched people into free men, who feel that the work cannot be shifted from ourselves, and must be done as God would have it done, at the peril of England's own life, can and do feel for you."

It is safe, we think, to say that if the British Empire is to bedissolved, disintegration cannot be permitted to begin at home. Irelandhas always been a thorn in the side of England. And the policy towards itcould not have been much worse, either to impress it with a respect forauthority or to win it by conciliation; it has been a strange mixture ofuntimely concession and untimely cruelty. The problem, in fact, hasphysical and race elements that make it almost insolvable. A water-loggedcountry, of which nothing can surely be predicted but the uncertainty ofits harvests, inhabited by a people of most peculiar mental constitution,alien in race, temperament, and religion, having scarcely one point ofsympathy with the English. But geography settles some things in thisworld, and the act of union that bound Ireland to the United Kingdom in1800 was as much a necessity of the situation as the act of union thatobliterated the boundary line between Scotland and England in 1707. TheIrish parliament was confessedly a failure, and it is scarcely within thepossibilities that the experiment will be tried again. Irishindependence, so far as English consent is concerned, and until England'spower is utterly broken, is a dream. Great changes will doubtless be madein the tenure and transfer of land, and these changes will react uponEngland to the ultimate abasem*nt of the landed aristocracy; but thisequalization of conditions would work no consent to separation. Theundeniable growth of the democratic spirit in England can no more berelied on to bring it about, when we remember what renewed executivevigor and cohesion existed with the Commonwealth and the fiery foreignpolicy of the first republic of France. For three years past we have seenthe British Empire in peril on all sides, with the addition of depressionand incipient rebellion at home, but her horizon is not as dark as it wasin 1780, when, with a failing cause in America, England had the whole ofEurope against her.

In any estimate of the prospects of England we must take into account therecent marked changes in the social condition. Mr. Escott has aninstructive chapter on this in his excellent book on England. He noticesthat the English character is losing its insularity, is more accessibleto foreign influences, and is adopting foreign, especially French, modesof living. Country life is losing its charm; domestic life is changed;people live in "flats" more and more, and the idea of home is not what itwas; marriage is not exactly what it was; the increased free andindependent relations of the sexes are somewhat demoralizing; women are alittle intoxicated with their newly-acquired freedom; social scandals aremore frequent. It should be said, however, that perhaps the presentperils are due not to the new system, but to the fact that it is new;when the novelty is worn off the peril may cease.

Mr. Escott notices primogeniture as one of the stable and, curiousenough, one of the democratic institutions of society. It is owing toprimogeniture that while there is a nobility in England there is nonoblesse. If titles and lands went to all the children there would be themultitudinous noblesse of the Continent. Now, by primogeniture, enough isretained for a small nobility, but all the younger sons must go into theworld and make a living. The three respectable professions no longeroffer sufficient inducement, and they crowd more and more into trade.Thus the middle class is constantly recruited from the upper. Besides,the upper is all the time recruited from the wealthy middle; the union ofaristocracy and plutocracy may be said to be complete. But merit makesits way continually from even the lower ranks upward, in the professions,in the army, the law, the church, in letters, in trade, and, what Mr.Escott does not mention, in the reformed civil service, newly opened tothe humblest lad in the land. Thus there is constant movement up and downin social England, approaching, except in the traditional nobility, thefreedom of movement in our own country. This is all wholesome and sound.Even the nobility itself, driven by ennui, or a loss of former politicalcontrol, or by the necessity of more money to support inherited estates,goes into business, into journalism, writes books, enters theprofessions.

What are the symptoms of decay in England? Unless the accumulation ofwealth is a symptom of decay, I do not see many. I look at the peoplethemselves. It seems to me that never in their history were they morefull of vigor. See what travelers, explorers, adventurers they are. Seewhat sportsmen, in every part of the globe, how much they endure, and howhale and jolly they are—women as well as men. The race, certainly, hasnot decayed. And look at letters. It may be said that this is not the ageof pure literature—and I'm sure I hope the English patent for producingmachine novels will not be infringed—but the English language was neverbefore written so vigorously, so clearly, and to such purpose. And thisis shown even in the excessive refinement and elaboration of trifles, theminutia of reflection, the keenness of analysis, the unrelenting pursuitof every social topic into subtleties untouched by the older essayists.And there is still more vigor, without affectation, in scientificinvestigation, in the daily conquests made in the realm of socialeconomy, the best methods of living and getting the most out of life. Artalso keeps pace with luxury, and shows abundant life and promise for thefuture.

I believe, from these and other considerations, that this vigorous peoplewill find a way out of its present embarrassment, and a way out withoutretreating. For myself, I like to see the English sort of civilizationspreading over the world rather than the Russian or the French. I hopeEngland will hang on to the East, and not give it over to the havoc ofsquabbling tribes, with a dozen religions and five hundred dialects, orto the military despotism of an empire whose morality is only matched bythe superstition of its religion.

The relations of England and the United States are naturally of the firstinterest to us. Our love and our hatred have always been that of truerelatives. For three-quarters of a century our 'amour propre' wasconstantly kept raw by the most supercilious patronage. During the pastdecade, when the quality of England's regard has become more and more amatter of indifference to us, we have been the subject of a moreintelligent curiosity, of increased respect, accompanied with a sinceredesire to understand us. In the diplomatic scale Washington still ranksbelow the Sublime Porte, but this anomaly is due to tradition, and doesnot represent England's real estimate of the status of the republic.There is, and must be, a good deal of selfishness mingled in ourfriendship—patriotism itself being a form of selfishness—but our ideasof civilization so nearly coincide, and we have so many commonaspirations for humanity that we must draw nearer together,notwithstanding old grudges and present differences in social structure.Our intercourse is likely to be closer, our business relations willbecome more inseparable. I can conceive of nothing so lamentable for theprogress of the world as a quarrel between these two English-speakingpeoples.

But, in one respect, we are likely to diverge. I refer to literature; inthat, assimilation is neither probable nor desirable. We were brought upon the literature of England; our first efforts were imitations of it; wewere criticised—we criticised ourselves on its standards. We comparedevery new aspirant in letters to some English writer. We were patted onthe back if we resembled the English models; we were stared at or sneeredat if we did not. When we began to produce something that was the productof our own soil and our own social conditions, it was still judged by theold standards, or, if it was too original for that, it was only acceptedbecause it was curious or bizarre, interesting for its oddity. Thecriticism that we received for our best was evidently founded on suchindifference or toleration that it was galling. At first we weresurprised; then we were grieved; then we were indignant. We have long agoceased to be either surprised, grieved, or indignant at anything theEnglish critics say of us. We have recovered our balance. We know thatsince Gulliver there has been no piece of original humor produced inEngland equal to "Knickerbocker's New York"; that not in this century hasany English writer equaled the wit and satire of the "Biglow Papers." Weused to be irritated at what we called the snobbishness of Englishcritics of a certain school; we are so no longer, for we see that itscriticism is only the result of ignorance—simply of inability tounderstand.

And we the more readily pardon it, because of the inability we have tounderstand English conditions, and the English dialect, which has moreand more diverged from the language as it was at the time of theseparation. We have so constantly read English literature, and keptourselves so well informed of their social life, as it is exhibited innovels and essays, that we are not so much in the dark with regard tothem as they are with regard to us; still we are more and more botheredby the insular dialect. I do not propose to criticise it; it is ourmisfortune, perhaps our fault, that we do not understand it; and I onlyrefer to it to say that we should not be too hard on the Saturday Reviewcritic when he is complaining of the American dialect in the English thatMr. Howells writes. How can the Englishman be expected to come intosympathy with the fiction that has New England for its subject—fromHawthorne's down to that of our present novelists—when he is ignorant ofthe whole background on which it is cast; when all the social conditionsare an enigma to him; when, if he has, historically, some conception ofPuritan society, he cannot have a glimmer of comprehension of the subtlemodifications and changes it has undergone in a century? When he visitsAmerica and sees it, it is a puzzle to him. How, then, can he be expectedto comprehend it when it is depicted to the life in books?

No, we must expect a continual divergence in our literatures. And it isbest that there should be. There can be no development of a nation'sliterature worth anything that is not on its own lines, out of its ownnative materials. We must not expect that the English will understandthat literature that expresses our national life, character, conditions,any better than they understand that of the French or of the Germans.And, on our part, the day has come when we receive their literary effortswith the same respectful desire to be pleased with them that we have tolike their dress and their speech.

THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL

By Charles Dudley Warner

There has been a great improvement in the physical condition of thepeople of the United States within two generations. This is morenoticeable in the West than in the East, but it is marked everywhere; andthe foreign traveler who once detected a race deterioration, which heattributed to a dry and stimulating atmosphere and to a feverish anxiety,which was evident in all classes, for a rapid change of condition, findsvery little now to sustain his theory. Although the restless energycontinues, the mixed race in America has certainly changed physically forthe better. Speaking generally, the contours of face and form are morerounded. The change is most marked in regions once noted for leanness,angularity, and sallowness of complexion, but throughout the country thetypes of physical manhood are more numerous; and if women of rare andexceptional beauty are not more numerous, no doubt the average ofcomeliness and beauty has been raised. Thus far, the increase of beautydue to better development has not been at the expense of delicacy ofcomplexion and of line, as it has been in some European countries.Physical well-being is almost entirely a matter of nutrition. Somethingis due in our case to the accumulation of money, to the decrease in anincreasing number of our population of the daily anxiety about food andclothes, to more leisure; but abundant and better-prepared food is thedirect agency in our physical change. Good food is not only more abundantand more widely distributed than it was two generations ago, but it is tobe had in immeasurably greater variety. No other people existing, or thatever did exist, could command such a variety of edible products for dailyconsumption as the mass of the American people habitually use today. Inconsequence they have the opportunity of being better nourished than anyother people ever were. If they are not better nourished, it is becausetheir food is badly prepared. Whenever we find, either in New England orin the South, a community ill-favored, dyspeptic, lean, and faded incomplexion, we may be perfectly sure that its cooking is bad, and that itis too ignorant of the laws of health to procure that variety of foodwhich is so easily obtainable. People who still diet on sodden pie andthe products of the frying-pan of the pioneer, and then, in order topromote digestion, attempt to imitate the patient cow by masticating someelastic and fragrant gum, are doing very little to bring in thatuniversal physical health or beauty which is the natural heritage of ouropportunity.

Now, what is the relation of our intellectual development to thisphysical improvement? It will be said that the general intelligence israised, that the habit of reading is much more widespread, and that theincrease of books, periodicals, and newspapers shows a greater mentalactivity than existed formerly. It will also be said that the opportunityfor education was never before so nearly universal. If it is not yet trueeverywhere that all children must go to school, it is true that all maygo to school free of cost. Without doubt, also, great advance has beenmade in American scholarship, in specialized learning and investigation;that is to say, the proportion of scholars of the first rank inliterature and in science is much larger to the population than ageneration ago.

But what is the relation of our general intellectual life to populareducation? Or, in other words, what effect is popular education havingupon the general intellectual habit and taste? There are two ways oftesting this. One is by observing whether the mass of minds is bettertrained and disciplined than formerly, less liable to delusions, betterable to detect fallacies, more logical, and less likely to be led away bynovelties in speculation, or by theories that are unsupported by historicevidence or that are contradicted by a knowledge of human nature. If wewere tempted to pursue this test, we should be forced to note the seeminganomaly of a scientific age peculiarly credulous; the ease with which anycharlatan finds followers; the common readiness to fall in with anytheory of progress which appeals to the sympathies, and to accept thewildest notions of social reorganization. We should be obliged to notealso, among scientific men themselves, a disposition to come toconclusions on inadequate evidence—a disposition usually due toone-sided education which lacks metaphysical training and the philosophichabit. Multitudes of fairly intelligent people are afloat without anybase-line of thought to which they can refer new suggestions; just asmany politicians are floundering about for want of an apprehension of theConstitution of the United States and of the historic development ofsociety. An honest acceptance of the law of gravitation would banish manypopular delusions; a comprehension that something cannot be made out ofnothing would dispose of others; and the application of the ordinaryprinciples of evidence, such as men require to establish a title toproperty, would end most of the remaining. How far is our populareducation, which we have now enjoyed for two full generations,responsible for this state of mind? If it has not encouraged it, has itdone much to correct it?

The other test of popular education is in the kind of reading sought andenjoyed by the majority of the American people. As the greater part ofthis reading is admitted to be fiction, we have before us the relation ofthe novel to the common school. As the common school is our universalmethod of education, and the novels most in demand are those least worthyto be read, we may consider this subject in two aspects: theencouragement, by neglect or by teaching, of the taste that demands thiskind of fiction, and the tendency of the novel to become what this tastedemands.

Before considering the common school, however, we have to notice aphenomenon in letters—namely, the evolution of the modern newspaper as avehicle for general reading-matter. Not content with giving the news, oreven with creating news and increasing its sensational character, itgrasps at the wider field of supplying reading material for the million,usurping the place of books and to a large extent of periodicals. Theeffect of this new departure in journalism is beginning to attractattention. An increasing number of people read nothing except thenewspapers. Consequently, they get little except scraps and bits; nosubject is considered thoroughly or exhaustively; and they are furnishedwith not much more than the small change for superficial conversation.The habit of excessive newspaper reading, in which a great variety oftopics is inadequately treated, has a curious effect on the mind. Itbecomes demoralized, gradually loses the power of concentration or ofcontinuous thought, and even loses the inclination to read the longarticles which the newspaper prints. The eye catches a thousand things,but is detained by no one. Variety, which in limitations is wholesome inliterary as well as in physical diet, creates dyspepsia when it isexcessive, and when the literary viands are badly cooked and badly servedthe evil is increased. The mind loses the power of discrimination, thetaste is lowered, and the appetite becomes diseased. The effect of thisscrappy, desultory reading is bad enough when the hashed compoundselected is tolerably good. It becomes a very serious matter when thereading itself is vapid, frivolous, or bad. The responsibility ofselecting the mental food for millions of people is serious. When, in thelast century, in England, the Society for the Diffusion of UsefulInformation, which accomplished so much good, was organized, thisresponsibility was felt, and competent hands prepared the popular booksand pamphlets that were cheap in price and widely diffused. Now, ithappens that a hundred thousand people, perhaps a million in some cases,surrender the right of the all-important selection of the food for theirminds to some unknown and irresponsible person whose business it is tochoose the miscellaneous reading-matter for a particular newspaper. Hisor her taste may be good, or it may be immature and vicious; it may beused simply to create a sensation; and yet the million of readers getnothing except what this one person chooses they shall read. It is anastonishing abdication of individual preference. Day after day, Sundayafter Sunday, they read only what this unknown person selects for them.Instead of going to the library and cultivating their own tastes, andpursuing some subject that will increase their mental vigor and add totheir permanent stock of thought, they fritter away their time upon ahash of literature chopped up for them by a person possibly very unfiteven to make good hash. The mere statement of this surrender of one'sjudgment of what shall be his intellectual life is alarming.

But the modern newspaper is no doubt a natural evolution in our sociallife. As everything has a cause, it would be worth while to inquirewhether the encyclopaedic newspaper is in response to a demand, to ataste created by our common schools. Or, to put the question in anotherform, does the system of education in our common schools give the pupilsa taste for good literature or much power of discrimination? Do they comeout of school with the habit of continuous reading, of reading books, oronly of picking up scraps in the newspapers, as they might snatch a hastymeal at a lunch-counter? What, in short, do the schools contribute to thecreation of a taste for good literature?

Great anxiety is felt in many quarters about the modern novel. It isfeared that it will not be realistic enough, that it will be toorealistic, that it will be insincere as to the common aspects of life,that it will not sufficiently idealize life to keep itself within thelimits of true art. But while the critics are busy saying what the novelshould be, and attacking or defending the fiction of the previous age,the novel obeys pretty well the laws of its era, and in many ways,especially in the variety of its development, represents the time.Regarded simply as a work of art, it may be said that the novel should bean expression of the genius of its writer conscientiously applied to astudy of the facts of life and of human nature, with little reference tothe audience. Perhaps the great works of art that have endured have beenso composed. We may say, for example, that "Don Quixote" had to createits sympathetic audience. But, on the other hand, works of art worthy thename are sometimes produced to suit a demand and to please a tastealready created. A great deal of what passes for literature in these daysis in this category of supply to suit the demand, and perhaps it can besaid of this generation more fitly than of any other that the novel seeksto hit the popular taste; having become a means of livelihood, it mustsell in order to be profitable to the producer, and in order to sell itmust be what the reading public want. The demand and sale are widelytaken as the criterion of excellence, or they are at least sufficientencouragement of further work on the line of the success. This criterionis accepted by the publisher, whose business it is to supply a demand.The conscientious publisher asks two questions: Is the book good? andWill it sell? The publisher without a conscience asks only one question:Will the book sell? The reflex influence of this upon authors isimmediately felt.

The novel, mediocre, banal, merely sensational, and worthless for anypurpose of intellectual stimulus or elevation of the ideal, is thusencouraged in this age as it never was before. The making of novels hasbecome a process of manufacture. Usually, after the fashion of thesilk-weavers of Lyons, they are made for the central establishment onindividual looms at home; but if demand for the sort of goods furnishedat present continues, there is no reason why they should not be produced,even more cheaply than they are now, in great factories, where there canbe division of labor and economy of talent. The shoal of English novelsconscientiously reviewed every seventh day in the London weeklies wouldpreserve their present character and gain in firmness of texture if theywere made by machinery. One has only to mark what sort of novels reachthe largest sale and are most called for in the circulating libraries, togauge pretty accurately the public taste, and to measure the influence ofthis taste upon modern production. With the exception of the novel nowand then which touches some religious problem or some socialisticspeculation or uneasiness, or is a special freak of sensationalism, thenovels which suit the greatest number of readers are those which move ina plane of absolute mediocrity, and have the slightest claim to beconsidered works of art. They represent the chromo stage of development.

They must be cheap. The almost universal habit of reading is a mark ofthis age—nowhere else so conspicuous as in America; and considering thetraining of this comparatively new reading public, it is natural that itshould insist upon cheapness of material, and that it should requirequality less than quantity. It is a note of our general intellectualdevelopment that cheapness in literature is almost as much insisted on bythe rich as by the poor. The taste for a good book has not kept pace withthe taste for a good dinner, and multitudes who have commendable judgmentabout the table would think it a piece of extravagance to pay as much fora book as for a dinner, and would be ashamed to smoke a cigar that costless than a novel. Indeed, we seem to be as yet far away from theappreciation of the truth that what we put into the mind is as importantto our well-being as what we put into the stomach.

No doubt there are more people capable of appreciating a good book, andthere are more good books read, in this age, than in any previous, thoughthe ratio of good judges to the number who read is less; but we areconsidering the vast mass of the reading public and its tastes. I say itstastes, and probably this is not unfair, although this traveling,restless, reading public meekly takes, as in the case of the readingselected in the newspapers, what is most persistently thrust upon itsattention by the great news agencies, which find it most profitable todeal in that which is cheap and ephemeral. The houses which publish booksof merit are at a disadvantage with the distributing agencies.

Criticism which condemns the common-school system as a nurse ofsuperficiality, mediocrity, and conceit does not need serious attention,any more than does the criticism that the universal opportunity ofindividual welfare offered by a republic fails to make a perfectgovernment. But this is not saying that the common school does all thatit can do, and that its results answer to the theories about it. It mustbe partly due to the want of proper training in the public schools thatthere are so few readers of discrimination, and that the general taste,judged by the sort of books now read, is so mediocre. Most of the publicschools teach reading, or have taught it, so poorly that the scholars whocome from them cannot read easily; hence they must have spice, and blood,and vice to stimulate them, just as a man who has lost taste peppers hisfood. We need not agree with those who say that there is no meritwhatever in the mere ability to read; nor, on the other hand, can we jointhose who say that the art of reading will pretty surely encourage ataste for the nobler kind of reading, and that the habit of reading trashwill by-and-by lead the reader to better things. As a matter ofexperience, the reader of the namby-pamby does not acquire an appetitefor anything more virile, and the reader of the sensational requiresconstantly more highly flavored viands. Nor is it reasonable to expectgood taste to be recovered by an indulgence in bad taste.

What, then, does the common school usually do for literary taste?Generally there is no thought about it. It is not in the minds of themajority of teachers, even if they possess it themselves. The business isto teach the pupils to read; how they shall use the art of reading islittle considered. If we examine the reading-books from the lowest gradeto the highest, we shall find that their object is to teach words, notliterature. The lower-grade books are commonly inane (I will not saychildish, for that is a libel on the open minds of children) beyonddescription. There is an impression that advanced readers have improvedmuch in quality within a few years, and doubtless some of them do containspecimens of better literature than their predecessors. But they are onthe old plan, which must be radically modified or entirely cast aside,and doubtless will be when the new method is comprehended, and teachersare well enough furnished to cut loose from the machine. We may say thatto learn how to read, and not what to read, is confessedly the object ofthese books; but even this object is not attained. There is an endeavorto teach how to call the words of a reading-book, but not to teach how toread; for reading involves, certainly for the older scholars, thecombination of known words to form new ideas. This is lacking. The tastefor good literature is not developed; the habit of continuous pursuit ofa subject, with comprehension of its relations, is not acquired; and noconception is gained of the entirety of literature or its importance tohuman life. Consequently, there is no power of judgment or faculty ofdiscrimination.

Now, this radical defect can be easily remedied if the school authoritiesonly clearly apprehend one truth, and that is that the minds of childrenof tender age can be as readily interested and permanently interested ingood literature as in the dreary feebleness of the juvenile reader. Themind of the ordinary child should not be judged by the mind that producesstuff of this sort: "Little Jimmy had a little white pig." "Did thelittle pig know Jimmy?" "Yes, the little pig knew Jimmy, and would comewhen he called." "How did little Jimmy know his pig from the other littlepigs?" "By the twist in his tail." ("Children," asks the teacher, "whatis the meaning of 'twist'?") "Jimmy liked to stride the little pig'sback." "Would the little pig let him?" "Yes, when he was absorbed eatinghis dinner." ("Children, what is the meaning of 'absorbed'?") And so on.

This intellectual exercise is, perhaps, read to children who have not gotfar enough in "word-building" to read themselves about little Jimmy andhis absorbed pig. It may be continued, together with word-learning, untilthe children are able to say (is it reading?) the entire volume of thisprecious stuff. To what end? The children are only languidly interested;their minds are not awakened; the imagination is not appealed to; theyhave learned nothing, except probably some new words, which are learnedas signs. Often children have only one book even of this sort, at whichthey are kept until they learn it through by heart, and they have beenheard to "read" it with the book bottom side up or shut! All these bookscultivate inattention and intellectual vacancy. They are—the best ofthem—only reading exercises; and reading is not perceived to have anysort of value. The child is not taught to think, and not a step is takenin informing him of his relation to the world about him. His education isnot begun.

Now it happens that children go on with this sort of reading and theordinary text-books through the grades of the district school into thehigh school, and come to the ages of seventeen and eighteen without theleast conception of literature, or of art, or of the continuity of therelations of history; are ignorant of the great names which illuminatethe ages; have never heard of Socrates, or of Phidias, or of Titian; donot know whether Franklin was an Englishman or an American; would bepuzzled to say whether it was Ben Franklin or Ben Jonson who inventedlightning—think it was Ben Somebody; cannot tell whether they livedbefore or after Christ, and indeed never have thought that anythinghappened before the time of Christ; do not know who was on the throne ofSpain when Columbus discovered America—and so on. These are not imaginedinstances. The children referred to are in good circ*mstances and havehad fairly intelligent associations, but their education has beenintrusted to the schools. They know nothing except their text-books, andthey know these simply for the purpose of examination. Such pupils cometo the age of eighteen with not only no taste for the best reading, forthe reading of books, but without the ability to be interested even infiction of the first class, because it is full of allusions that conveynothing to their minds. The stories they read, if they read at all—thenovels, so called, that they have been brought up on—are the diluted andfeeble fictions that flood the country, and that scarcely rise above theintellectual level of Jimmy and the absorbed pig.

It has been demonstrated by experiment that it is as easy to begin withgood literature as with the sort of reading described. It makes littledifference where the beginning is made. Any good book, any real book, isan open door into the wide field of literature; that is to say, ofhistory—that is to say, of interest in the entire human race. Read tochildren of tender years, the same day, the story of Jimmy and a Greekmyth, or an episode from the "Odyssey," or any genuine bit of humannature and life; and ask the children next day which they wish to hearagain. Almost all of them will call for the repetition of the real thing,the verity of which they recognize, and which has appealed to theirimaginations. But this is not all. If the subject is a Greek myth, theyspeedily come to comprehend its meaning, and by the aid of the teacher totrace its development elsewhere, to understand its historic significance,to have the mind filled with images of beauty, and wonder. Is it theHomeric story of Nausicaa? What a picture! How speedily Greek historyopens to the mind! How readily the children acquire knowledge of thegreat historic names, and see how their deeds and their thoughts arerelated to our deeds and our thoughts! It is as easy to know aboutSocrates as about Franklin and General Grant. Having the mind open toother times and to the significance of great men in history, how muchmore clearly they comprehend Franklin and Grant and Lincoln! Nor is thisall. The young mind is open to noble thoughts, to high conceptions; itfollows by association easily along the historic and literary line; andnot only do great names and fine pieces of literature become familiar,but the meaning of the continual life in the world begins to beapprehended. This is not at all a fancy sketch. The writer has seen thewhole assembly of pupils in a school of six hundred, of all the eightgrades, intelligently interested in a talk which contained classical andliterary allusions that would have been incomprehensible to an ordinaryschool brought up on the ordinary readers and text-books.

But the reading need not be confined to the classics nor to themaster-pieces of literature. Natural history—generally the mostfascinating of subjects—can be taught; interest in flowers and trees andbirds and the habits of animals can be awakened by reading the essays ofliterary men on these topics as they never can be by the dry text-books.The point I wish to make is that real literature for the young,literature which is almost absolutely neglected in the public schools,except in a scrappy way as a reading exercise, is the best open door tothe development of the mind and to knowledge of all sorts. The unfoldingof a Greek myth leads directly to art, to love of beauty, to knowledge ofhistory, to an understanding of ourselves. But whatever the beginning is,whether a classic myth, a Homeric epic, a play of Sophocles, the story ofthe life and death of Socrates, a mediaeval legend, or any genuine pieceof literature from the time of Virgil down to our own, it may not so muchmatter (except that it is better to begin with the ancients in order togain a proper perspective) whatever the beginning is, it should be thebest literature. The best is not too good for the youngest child.Simplicity, which commonly characterizes greatness, is of courseessential. But never was a greater mistake made than in thinking that ayouthful mind needs watering with the slops ordinarily fed to it. Evenchildren in the kindergarten are eager for Whittier's "Barefoot Boy" andLongfellow's "Hiawatha." It requires, I repeat, little more pains tocreate a good taste in reading than a bad taste.

It would seem that in the complete organization of the public schools alleducation of the pupil is turned over to them as it was not formerly, andit is possible that in the stress of text-book education there is no timefor reading at home. The competent teachers contend not merely with thedifficulty of the lack of books and the deficiencies of those in use, butwith the more serious difficulty of the erroneous ideas of the functionof text-books. They will cease to be a commercial commodity of so muchvalue as now when teachers teach. If it is true that there is no time forreading at home, we can account for the deplorable lack of taste in thegreat mass of the reading public educated at the common schools; and wecan see exactly what the remedy should be—namely, the teaching of theliterature at the beginning of school life, and following it up broadlyand intelligently during the whole school period. It will not crowd outanything else, because it underlies everything. After many years ofperversion and neglect, to take up the study of literature in acomprehensive text-book, as if it were to be learned—like arithmetic, isa ludicrous proceeding. This, is not teaching literature nor giving thescholar a love of good reading. It is merely stuffing the mind with namesand dates, which are not seen to have any relation to present life, andwhich speedily fade out of the mind. The love of literature is not to beattained in this way, nor in any way except by reading the bestliterature.

The notion that literature can be taken up as a branch of education, andlearned at the proper time and when studies permit, is one of the mostfarcical in our scheme of education. It is only matched in absurdity bythe other current idea, that literature is something separate and apartfrom general knowledge. Here is the whole body of accumulated thought andexperience of all the ages, which indeed forms our present life andexplains it, existing partly in tradition and training, but more largelyin books; and most teachers think, and most pupils are led to believe,that this most important former of the mind, maker of character, andguide to action can be acquired in a certain number of lessons out of atextbook! Because this is so, young men and young women come up tocollege almost absolutely ignorant of the history of their race and ofthe ideas that have made our civilization. Some of them have never read abook, except the text-books on the specialties in which they haveprepared themselves for examination. We have a saying concerning peoplewhose minds appear to be made up of dry, isolated facts, that they haveno atmosphere. Well, literature is the atmosphere. In it we live, andmove, and have our being, intellectually. The first lesson read to, orread by, the child should begin to put him in relation with the world andthe thought of the world. This cannot be done except by the livingteacher. No text-book, no one reading-book or series of reading-books,will do it. If the teacher is only the text-book orally delivered, theteacher is an uninspired machine. We must revise our notions of thefunction of the teacher for the beginners. The teacher is to presentevidence of truth, beauty, art. Where will he or she find it? Why, inexperimental science, if you please, in history, but, in short, in goodliterature, using the word in its broadest sense. The object in selectingreading for children is to make it impossible for them to see anyevidence except the best. That is the teacher's business, and how fewunderstand their business! How few are educated! In the best literaturewe find truth about the world, about human nature; and hence, if childrenread that, they read what their experience will verify. I am told thatpublishers are largely at fault for the quality of the reading used inschools—that schools would gladly receive the good literature if theycould get it. But I do not know, in this case, how much the demand has todo with the supply. I am certain, however, that educated teachers woulduse only the best means for forming the minds and enlightening theunderstanding of their pupils. It must be kept in mind that reading,silent reading done by the scholar, is not learning signs and callingwords; it is getting thought. If children are to get thought, they shouldbe served with the best—that which will not only be true, but appeal sonaturally to their minds that they will prefer it to all meaner stuff. Ifit is true that children cannot acquire this taste at home—and it istrue for the vast majority of American children—then it must be given inthe public schools. To give it is not to interrupt the acquisition ofother knowledge; it is literally to open the door to all knowledge.

When this truth is recognized in the common schools, and literature isgiven its proper place, not only for the development of the mind, but asthe most easily-opened door to history, art, science, generalintelligence, we shall see the taste of the reading public in the UnitedStates undergo a mighty change: It will not care for the fiction it likesat present, and which does little more than enfeeble its powers; and thenthere can be no doubt that fiction will rise to supply the demand forsomething better. When the trash does not sell, the trash will not beproduced, and those who are only capable of supplying the present demandwill perhaps find a more useful occupation. It will be again evident thatliterature is not a trade, but an art requiring peculiar powers andpatient training. When people know how to read, authors will need to knowhow to write.

In all other pursuits we carefully study the relation of supply todemand. Why not in literature? Formerly, when readers were comparativelyfew, and were of a class that had leisure and the opportunity ofcultivating the taste, books were generally written for this class, andaimed at its real or supposed capacities. If the age was coarse in speechor specially affected in manner, the books followed the lead given by thedemand; but, coarse or affected, they had the quality of art demanded bythe best existing cultivation. Naturally, when the art of reading isacquired by the great mass of the people, whose taste has not beencultivated, the supply for this increased demand will, more or less,follow the level of its intelligence. After our civil war there was apatriotic desire to commemorate the heroic sacrifices of our soldiers inmonuments, and the deeds of our great captains in statues. This nobledesire was not usually accompanied by artistic discrimination, and theland is filled with monuments and statues which express the gratitude ofthe people. The coming age may wish to replace them by images andstructures which will express gratitude and patriotism in a higherbecause more artistic form. In the matter of art the development isdistinctly reflex. The exhibition of works of genius will slowly instructand elevate the popular taste, and in time the cultivated popular tastewill reject mediocrity and demand better things. Only a little while agofew people in the United States knew how to draw, and only a few couldtell good drawing from bad. To realize the change that has taken place,we have only to recall the illustrations in books, magazines, and comicnewspapers of less than a quarter of a century ago. Foreign travel,foreign study, and the importation of works of art (still blindlyrestricted by the American Congress) were the lessons that began to worka change. Now, in all our large towns, and even in hundreds of villages,there are well-established art schools; in the greater cities, unions andassociations, under the guidance of skillful artists, where five or sixhundred young men and women are diligently, day and night, learning therudiments of art. The result is already apparent. Excellent drawing isseen in illustrations for books and magazines, in the satirical and comicpublications, even in the advertisem*nts and theatrical posters. At ourpresent rate of progress, the drawings in all our amusing weeklies willsoon be as good as those in the 'Fliegende Blatter.' The change ismarvelous; and the popular taste has so improved that it would not beprofitable to go back to the ill-drawn illustrations of twenty years ago.But as to fiction, even if the writers of it were all trained in it as anart, it is not so easy to lift the public taste to their artistic level.The best supply in this case will only very slowly affect the quality ofthe demand. When the poor novel sells vastly better than the good novel,the poor will be produced to supply the demand, the general taste will bestill further lowered, and the power of discrimination fade out more andmore. What is true of the novel is true of all other literature. Tastefor it must be cultivated in childhood. The common schools must do forliterature what the art schools are doing for art. Not every one canbecome an artist, not every one can become a writer—though this iscontrary to general opinion; but knowledge to distinguish good drawingfrom bad can be acquired by most people, and there are probably few mindsthat cannot, by right methods applied early, be led to prefer goodliterature, and to have an enjoyment in it in proportion to itssincerity, naturalness, verity, and truth to life.

It is, perhaps, too much to say that all the American novel needs for itsdevelopment is an audience, but it is safe to say that an audience wouldgreatly assist it. Evidence is on all sides of a fresh, new, wonderfulartistic development in America in drawing, painting, sculpture, ininstrumental music and singing, and in literature. The promise of this isnot only in the climate, the free republican opportunity, the mixed racesblending the traditions and aptitudes of so many civilizations, but it isin a certain temperament which we already recognize as American. It is anartistic tendency. This was first most noticeable in American women, towhom the art of dress seemed to come by nature, and the art of beingagreeable to be easily acquired.

Already writers have arisen who illustrate this artistic tendency innovels, and especially in short stories. They have not appeared to owetheir origin to any special literary centre; they have come forward inthe South, the West, the East. Their writings have to a great degree(considering our pupilage to the literature of Great Britain, which isprolonged by the lack of an international copyright) the stamp oforiginality, of naturalness, of sincerity, of an attempt to give thefacts of life with a sense of their artistic value. Their affiliation israther with the new literatures of France, of Russia, of Spain, than withthe modern fiction of England. They have to compete in the market withthe uncopyrighted literature of all other lands, good and bad, especiallybad, which is sold for little more than the cost of the paper it isprinted on, and badly printed at that. But besides this fact, and owingto a public taste not cultivated or not corrected in the public schools,their books do not sell in anything like the quantity that the inferior,mediocre, other home novels sell. Indeed, but for the intervention of themagazines, few of the best writers of novels and short stories could earnas much as the day laborer earns. In sixty millions of people, all ofwhom are, or have been, in reach of the common school, it must beconfessed that their audience is small.

This relation between the fiction that is, and that which is to be, andthe common school is not fanciful. The lack in the general readingpublic, in the novels read by the greater number of people, and in thecommon school is the same—the lack of inspiration and ideality. Thecommon school does not cultivate the literary sense, the general publiclacks literary discrimination, and the stories and tales either producedby or addressed to those who have little ideality simply respond to thedemand of the times.

It is already evident, both in positive and negative results, both in theschools and the general public taste, that literature cannot be set asidein the scheme of education; nay, that it is of the first importance. Theteacher must be able to inspire the pupil; not only to awaken eagernessto know, but to kindle the imagination. The value of the Hindoo or theGreek myth, of the Roman story, of the mediaeval legend, of the heroicepic, of the lyric poem, of the classic biography, of any genuine pieceof literature, ancient or modern, is not in the knowledge of it as we mayknow the rules of grammar and arithmetic or the formulas of a science,but in the enlargement of the mind to a conception of the life anddevelopment of the race, to a study of the motives of human action, to acomprehension of history; so that the mind is not simply enriched, butbecomes discriminating, and able to estimate the value of events andopinions. This office for the mind acquaintance with literature can aloneperform. So that, in school, literature is not only, as I have said, theeasiest open door to all else desirable, the best literature is not onlythe best means of awakening the young mind, the stimulus most congenial,but it is the best foundation for broad and generous culture. Indeed,without its co-ordinating influence the education of the common school isa thing of shreds and patches. Besides, the mind aroused to historicconsciousness, kindled in itself by the best that has been said and donein all ages, is more apt in the pursuit, intelligently, of any specialty;so that the shortest road to the practical education so much insisted onin these days begins in the awakening of the faculties in the mannerdescribed. There is no doubt of the value of manual training as an aid ingiving definiteness, directness, exactness to the mind, but meretechnical training alone will be barren of those results, in generaldiscriminating culture, which we hope to see in America.

The common school is a machine of incalculable value. It is not, however,automatic. If it is a mere machine, it will do little more to lift thenation than the mere ability to read will lift it. It can easily be madeto inculcate a taste for good literature; it can be a powerful influencein teaching the American people what to read; and upon a broadened,elevated, discriminating public taste depends the fate of American art,of American fiction.

It is not an inappropriate corollary to be drawn from this that anelevated public taste will bring about a truer estimate of the value of agenuine literary product. An invention which increases or cheapens theconveniences or comforts of life may be a fortune to its originator. Abook which amuses, or consoles, or inspires; which contributes to thehighest intellectual enjoyment of hundreds of thousands of people; whichfurnishes substance for thought or for conversation; which dispels thecares and lightens the burdens of life; which is a friend when friendsfail, a companion when other intercourse wearies or is impossible, for ayear, for a decade, for a generation perhaps, in a world which has aproper sense of values, will bring a like competence to its author.(1890.)

THE PEOPLE FOR WHOM SHAKESPEARE WROTE

By Charles Dudley Warner

Queen Elizabeth being dead about ten o'clock in the morning, March 24,1603, Sir Robert Cary posted away, unsent, to King James of Scotland toinform him of the "accident," and got made a baron of the realm for hisride. On his way down to take possession of his new kingdom the kingdistributed the honor of knighthood right and left liberally; atTheobald's he created eight-and-twenty knights, of whom Sir RichardBaker, afterwards the author of "A Chronicle of the Kings of England,"was one. "God knows how many hundreds he made the first year," says thechronicler, "but it was indeed fit to give vent to the passage of Honour,which during Queen Elizabeth's reign had been so stopped that scarce anycounty of England had knights enow to make a jury."

Sir Richard Baker was born in 1568, and died in 1645; his "Chronicle"appeared in 1641. It was brought down to the death of James in 1625,when, he having written the introduction to the life of Charles I, thestorm of the season caused him to "break off in amazement," for he hadthought the race of "Stewards" likely to continue to the "world's end";and he never resumed his pen. In the reign of James two things lost theirlustre—the exercise of tilting, which Elizabeth made a specialsolemnity, and the band of Yeomen of the Guard, choicest persons both forstature and other good parts, who graced the court of Elizabeth; James"was so intentive to Realities that he little regarded shows," and in histime these came utterly to be neglected. The virgin queen was the lastruler who seriously regarded the pomps and splendors of feudalism.

It was characteristic of the age that the death of James, which occurredin his fifty-ninth year, should have been by rumor attributed to"poyson"; but "being dead, and his body opened, there was no sign at allof poyson, his inward parts being all sound, but that his Spleen was alittle faulty, which might be cause enough to cast him into an Ague: theordinary high-way, especially in old bo'dies, to a natural death."

The chronicler records among the men of note of James's time Sir FrancisVere, "who as another Hannibal, with his one eye, could see more in theMartial Discipline than common men can do with two"; Sir Edward co*ke; SirFrancis Bacon, "who besides his profounder book, of Novum Organum, hathwritten the reign of King Henry the Seventh, in so sweet a style, thatlike Manna, it pleaseth the tast of all palats"; William Camden, whoseDescription of Britain "seems to keep Queen Elizabeth alive after death";"and to speak it in a word, the Trojan Horse was not fuller of HeroickGrecians, than King James his Reign was full of men excellent in allkindes of Learning." Among these was an old university acquaintance ofBaker's, "Mr. John Dunne, who leaving Oxford, lived at the Innes ofCourt, not dissolute, but very neat; a great Visitor of Ladies, a greatfrequenter of Playes, a great writer of conceited Verses; until suchtimes as King James taking notice of the pregnancy of his Wit, was ameans that he betook him to the study of Divinity, and thereuponproceeding Doctor, was made Dean of Pauls; and became so rare a Preacher,that he was not only commended, but even admired by all who heard him."

The times of Elizabeth and James were visited by some awful casualtiesand portents. From December, 1602, to the December following, the plaguedestroyed 30,518 persons in London; the same disease that in the sixthyear of Elizabeth killed 20,500, and in the thirty-sixth year 17,890,besides the lord mayor and three aldermen. In January, 1606, a mightywhale came up the Thames within eight miles of London, whose body, seendivers times above water, was judged to be longer than the largest shipon the river; "but when she tasted the fresh water and scented the Land,she returned into the sea." Not so fortunate was a vast whale cast uponthe Isle of Thanet, in Kent, in 1575, which was "twenty Ells long, andthirteen foot broad from the belly to the backbone, and eleven footbetween the eyes. One of his eyes being taken out of his head was morethan a cart with six horses could draw; the Oyl being boyled out of hishead was Parmacittee." Nor the monstrous fish cast ashore in Lincolnshirein 1564, which measured six yards between the eyes and had a tail fifteenfeet broad; "twelve men stood upright in his mouth to get the Oyl." In1612 a comet appeared, which in the opinion of Dr. Bainbridge, the greatmathematician of Oxford, was as far above the moon as the moon is abovethe earth, and the sequel of it was that infinite slaughters anddevastations followed it both in Germany and other countries. In 1613, inStandish, in Lancashire, a maiden child was born having four legs, fourarms, and one head with two faces—the one before, the other behind, likethe picture of Janus. (One thinks of the prodigies that presaged thebirth of Glendower.) Also, the same year, in Hampshire, a carpenter,lying in bed with his wife and a young child, "was himself and the childeboth burned to death with a sudden lightning, no fire appearing outwardlyupon him, and yet lay burning for the space of almost three days till hewas quite consumed to ashes." This year the Globe playhouse, on theBankside, was burned, and the year following the new playhouse, theFortune, in Golding Lane, "was by negligence of a candle, clean burneddown to the ground." In this year also, 1614, the town ofStratford-on-Avon was burned. One of the strangest events, however,happened in the first year of Elizabeth (1558), when "dyed Sir ThomasCheney, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, of whom it is reported for acertain, that his pulse did beat more than three quarters of an hourafter he was dead, as strongly as if he had been still alive." In 1580 astrange apparition happened in Somersetshire—three score personages allclothed in black, a furlong in distance from those that beheld them; "andafter their appearing, and a little while tarrying, they vanished away,but immediately another strange company, in like manner, color, andnumber appeared in the same place, and they encountered one another andso vanished away. And the third time appeared that number again, all inbright armour, and encountered one another, and so vanished away. Thiswas examined before Sir George Norton, and sworn by four honest men thatsaw it, to be true." Equally well substantiated, probably, was whathappened in Herefordshire in 1571: "A field of three acres, in Blackmore,with the Trees and Fences, moved from its place and passed over anotherfield, traveling in the highway that goeth to Herne, and there stayed."Herefordshire was a favorite place for this sort of exercise of nature.In 1575 the little town of Kinnaston was visited by an earthquake: "Onthe seventeenth of February at six o'clock of the evening, the earthbegan to open and a Hill with a Rock under it (making at first a greatbellowing noise, which was heard a great way off) lifted itself up agreat height, and began to travel, bearing along with it the Trees thatgrew upon it, the Sheep-folds, and Flocks of Sheep abiding there at thesame time. In the place from whence it was first moved, it left a gapingdistance forty foot broad, and fourscore Ells long; the whole Field wasabout twenty Acres. Passing along, it overthrew a Chappell standing inthe way, removed an Ewe-Tree planted in the Churchyard, from the Westinto the East; with the like force it thrust before it High-wayes,Sheep-folds, Hedges, and Trees, made Tilled ground Pasture, and againturned Pasture into Tillage. Having walked in this sort from Saturday inthe evening, till Monday noon, it then stood still." It seems notimprobable that Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane.

It was for an age of faith, for a people whose credulity was fed on suchprodigies and whose imagination glowed at such wonderful portents, thatShakespeare wrote, weaving into the realities of sense those awfulmysteries of the supernatural which hovered not far away from everyEnglishman of his time.

Shakespeare was born in 1564, when Elizabeth had been six years on thethrone, and he died in 1616, nine years before James I., of the faultyspleen, was carried to the royal chapel in Westminster, "with greatsolemnity, but with greater lamentation." Old Baker, who says of himselfthat he was the unworthiest of the knights made at Theobald's,condescends to mention William Shakespeare at the tail end of the men ofnote of Elizabeth's time. The ocean is not more boundless, he affirms,than the number of men of note of her time; and after he has finishedwith the statesmen ("an exquisite statesman for his own ends was RobertEarl of Leicester, and for his Countries good, Sir William Cecill, LordBurleigh"), the seamen, the great commanders, the learned gentlemen andwriters (among them Roger Askam, who had sometime been schoolmaster toQueen Elizabeth, but, taking too great delight in gaming andco*ck-fighting, lived and died in mean estate), the learned divines andpreachers, he concludes: "After such men, it might be thought ridiculousto speak of Stage-players; but seeing excellency in the meanest thingsdeserve remembring, and Roscius the Comedian is recorded in History withsuch commendation, it may be allowed us to do the like with some of ourNation. Richard Bourbidge and Edward Allen, two such actors as no agemust ever look to see the like; and to make their Comedies compleat,Richard Tarleton, who for the Part called the Clowns Part, never had hismatch, never will have. For Writers of Playes, and such as have beenplayers themselves, William Shakespeare and Benjamin Johnson haveespecially left their Names recommended to posterity."

Richard Bourbidge (or Burbadge) was the first of the great English tragicactors, and was the original of the greater number of Shakespeare'sheroes—Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Shylock, Macbeth, Richard III., Romeo,Brutus, etc. Dick Tarleton, one of the privileged scapegraces of sociallife, was regarded by his contemporaries as the most witty of clowns andcomedians. The clown was a permitted character in the old theatres, andintruded not only between the acts, but even into the play itself, withhis quips and antics. It is probable that he played the part of clown,grave-digger, etc., in Shakespeare's comedies, and no doubt tookliberties with his parts. It is thought that part of Hamlet's advice tothe players—"and let those that play your clowns speak no more than isset down for them," etc.—was leveled at Tarleton.

The question is often asked, but I consider it an idle one, whetherShakespeare was appreciated in his own day as he is now. That the age,was unable to separate him from itself, and see his great stature, isprobable; that it enjoyed him with a sympathy to which we are strangersthere is no doubt. To us he is inexhaustible. The more we study him, themore are we astonished at his multiform genius. In our complexcivilization, there is no development of passion, or character, or traitof human nature, no social evolution, that does not find expressionsomewhere in those marvelous plays; and yet it is impossible for us toenter into a full, sympathetic enjoyment of those plays unless we can insome measure recreate for ourselves the atmosphere in which they werewritten. To superficial observation great geniuses come into the world atrare intervals in history, in a manner independent of what we call theprogress of the race. It may be so; but the form the genius shall take isalways determined by the age in which it appears, and its expression isshaped by the environments. Acquaintance with the Bedouin desert life oftoday, which has changed little for three thousand years, illumines thebook of Job like an electric light. Modern research into Hellenic andAsiatic life has given a new meaning to the Iliad and the Odyssey, andgreatly enhanced our enjoyment of them. A fair comprehension of theDivina Commedia is impossible without some knowledge of the factions thatrent Florence; of the wars of Guelf and Ghibelline; of the spirit thatbanished Dante, and gave him an humble tomb in Ravenna instead of asepulchre in the pantheon of Santa Croce. Shakespeare was a child of hisage; it had long been preparing for him; its expression culminated inhim. It was essentially a dramatic age. He used the accumulated materialsof centuries. He was playwright as well as poet. His variety andmultiform genius cannot otherwise be accounted for. He called in thecoinage of many generations, and reissued it purified and unalloyed,stamped in his own mint. There was a Hamlet probably, there werecertainly Romeos and Juliets, on the stage before Shakespeare. In himwere received the imaginations, the inventions, the aspirations, thesuperstitions, the humors, the supernatural intimations; in him met theconverging rays of the genius of his age, as in a lens, to be sent onwardthenceforth in an ever-broadening stream of light.

It was his fortune to live not only in a dramatic age, but in atransition age, when feudalism was passing away, but while its shows andsplendors could still be seriously comprehended. The dignity that dothhedge a king was so far abated that royalty could be put upon the stageas a player's spectacle; but the reality of kings and queens and courtpageantry was not so far past that it did not appeal powerfully to theimaginations of the frequenters of the Globe, the Rose, and the Fortune.They had no such feeling as we have in regard to the pasteboard kings andqueens who strut their brief hour before us in anachronic absurdity. But,besides that he wrote in the spirit of his age, Shakespeare wrote in thelanguage and the literary methods of his time. This is not more evidentin the contemporary poets than in the chroniclers of that day. They alldelighted in ingenuities of phrase, in neat turns and conceits; it was acompliment then to be called a "conceited" writer.

Of all the guides to Shakespeare's time, there is none more profitable orentertaining than William Harrison, who wrote for Holinshed's chronicle"The Description of England," as it fell under his eyes from 1577 to1587. Harrison's England is an unfailing mine of information for all thehistorians of the sixteenth century; and in the edition published by theNew Shakespeare Society, and edited, with a wealth of notes andcontemporary references, by Mr. Frederick J. Furnivall, it is a newrevelation of Shakespeare's England to the general reader.

Harrison himself is an interesting character, and trustworthy above thegeneral race of chroniclers. He was born in 1534, or, to use hisexactness of statement, "upon the 18th of April, hora ii, minut 4,Secunde 56, at London, in Cordwainer streete, otherwise calledbowe-lane." This year was also remarkable as that in which "King Henry 8polleth his head; after whom his household and nobility, with the rest ofhis subjects do the like." It was the year before Anne Boleyn, haled awayto the Tower, accused, condemned, and executed in the space of fourteendays, "with sigheing teares" said to the rough Duke of Norfolk, "Hither Icame once my lord, to fetch a crown imperial; but now to receive, I hope,a crown immortal." In 1544, the boy was at St. Paul's school; the litanyin the English tongue, by the king's command, was that year sung openlyin St. Paul's, and we have a glimpse of Harrison with the other children,enforced to buy those books, walking in general procession, as wasappointed, before the king went to Boulogne. Harrison was a student atboth Oxford and Cambridge, taking the degree of bachelor of divinity atthe latter in 1569, when he had been an Oxford M.A. of seven years'standing. Before this he was household chaplain to Sir William Brooke,Lord Cobham, who gave him, in 1588-89, the rectory of Radwinter, inEssex, which he held till his death, in 1593. In 1586 he was installedcanon of Windsor. Between 1559 and 1571 he married Marion Isebrande,—ofwhom he said in his will, referring to the sometime supposed unlawfulnessof priests' marriages, "by the laws of God I take and repute in allrespects for my true and lawful wife." At Radwinter, the old parson,working in his garden, collected Roman coins, wrote his chronicles, andexpressed his mind about the rascally lawyers of Essex, to whom flowedall the wealth of the land. The lawyers in those days stirred upcontentions, and then reaped the profits. "Of all that ever I knew inEssex," says Harrison, "Denis and Mainford excelled, till John of Ludlow,alias Mason, came in place, unto whom in comparison these two were butchildren." This last did so harry a client for four years that thelatter, still called upon for new fees, "went to bed, and within fourdays made an end of his woeful life, even with care and pensiveness." Andafter his death the lawyer so handled his son "that there was never sheepshorn in May, so near clipped of his fleece present, as he was of many tocome." The Welsh were the most litigious people. A Welshman would walk upto London bare-legged, carrying his hose on his neck, to save wear andbecause he had no change, importune his countrymen till he got half adozen writs, with which he would return to molest his neighbors, thoughno one of his quarrels was worth the money he paid for a single writ.

The humblest mechanic of England today has comforts and convenienceswhich the richest nobles lacked in Harrison's day, but it wasnevertheless an age of great luxury and extravagance; of brave apparel,costly and showy beyond that of any Continental people, though wanting inrefined taste; and of mighty banquets, with service of massive plate,troops of attendants, and a surfeit of rich food and strong drink.

In this luxury the clergy of Harrison's rank did not share. Harrison waspoor on forty pounds a year. He complains that the clergy were taxed morethan ever, the church having become "an ass whereon every man is to rideto market and cast his wallet." They paid tenths and first-fruits andsubsidies, so that out of twenty pounds of a benefice the incumbent didnot reserve more than L 13 6s. 8d. for himself and his family. They hadto pay for both prince and laity, and both grumbled at and slanderedthem. Harrison gives a good account of the higher clergy; he says thebishops were loved for their painful diligence in their calling, and thatthe clergy of England were reputed on the Continent as learned divines,skillful in Greek and Hebrew and in the Latin tongue.

There was, however, a scarcity of preachers and ministers in Elizabeth'stime, and their character was not generally high. What could be expectedwhen covetous patrons canceled their debts to their servants by bestowingadvowsons of benefices upon their bakers, butlers, cooks, grooms, pages,and lackeys—when even in the universities there was cheating atelections for scholarships and fellowships, and gifts were for sale! Themorals of the clergy were, however, improved by frequent conferences, atwhich the good were praised and the bad reproved; and these conferenceswere "a notable spur unto all the ministers, whereby to apply theirbooks, which otherwise (as in times past) would give themselves tohawking, hunting, tables, cards, dice, tipling at the ale house,shooting, and other like vanities." The clergy held a social rank withtradespeople; their sons learned trades, and their daughters might go outto service. Jewell says many of them were the "basest sort of people"unlearned, fiddlers, pipers, and what not. "Not a few," says Harrison,"find fault with our threadbare gowns, as if not our patrons but ourwives were the causes of our woe." He thinks the ministers will be betterwhen the patrons are better, and he defends the right of the clergy tomarry and to leave their goods, if they have any, to their widows andchildren instead of to the church, or to some school or almshouse. Whatif their wives are fond, after the decease of their husbands, to bestowthemselves not so advisedly as their calling requireth; do not duch*esses,countesses, and knights' wives offend in the like fully so often as they?And Eve, remarks the old philosopher of Radwinter—"Eve will be Eve,though Adam would say nay."

The apparel of the clergy, at any rate, was more comely and decent thanit ever was in the popish church, when the priests "went either in diverscolors like players, or in garments of light hue, as yellow, red, green,etc.; with their shoes piked, their hair crisped, their girdles armedwith silver; their shoes, spurs, bridles, etc., buckled with like metal;their apparel (for the most part) of silk, and richly furred; their capslaced and buttoned with gold; so that to meet a priest, in those days,was to behold a peaco*ck that spreadeth his tail when he danceth beforethe hen."

Hospitality among the clergy was never better used, and it was increasedby their marriage; for the meat and drink were prepared more orderly andfrugally, the household was better looked to, and the poor oftener fed.There was perhaps less feasting of the rich in bishops' houses, and "itis thought much peradventure, that some bishops in our time do come shortof the ancient gluttony and prodigality of their predecessors;" but thisis owing to the curtailing of their livings, and the excessive priceswhereunto things are grown.

Harrison spoke his mind about dignitaries. He makes a passing referenceto Thomas a Becket as "the old co*cke of Canturburie," who did crow inbehalf of the see of Rome, and the "young co*ckerels of other sees didimitate his demeanour." He is glad that images, shrines, and tabernaclesare removed out of churches. The stories in glass windows remain onlybecause of the cost of replacing them with white panes. He would like tostop the wakes, guilds, paternities, church-ales, and brides-ales, withall their rioting, and he thinks they could get on very well without thefeasts of apostles, evangelists, martyrs, the holy-days after Christmas,Easter, and Whitsuntide, and those of the Virgin Mary, with the rest. "Itis a world to see," he wrote of 1552, "how ready the Catholicks are tocast the communion tables out of their churches, which in derision theycall Oysterboards, and to set up altars whereon to say mass." And hetells with sinful gravity this tale of a sacrilegious sow: "Upon the 23rdof August, the high altar of Christ Church in Oxford was trimly decked upafter the popish manner and about the middest of evensong, a sow comethinto the quire, and pulled all to the ground; for which heinous fact, itis said she was afterwards beheaded; but to that I am not privy." Thinkof the condition of Oxford when pigs went to mass! Four years after thisthere was a sickness in England, of which a third part of the people didtaste, and many clergymen, who had prayed not to live after the death ofQueen Mary, had their desire, the Lord hearing their prayer, saysHarrison, "and intending thereby to give his church a breathing time."

There were four classes in England—gentlemen, citizens, yeomen, andartificers or laborers. Besides the nobles, any one can call himself agentleman who can live without work and buy a coat of arms—though someof them "bear a bigger sail than his boat is able to sustain." Thecomplaint of sending abroad youth to be educated is an old one; Harrisonsays the sons of gentlemen went into Italy, and brought nothing home butmere atheism, infidelity, vicious conversation, and ambitious, proudbehavior, and retained neither religion nor patriotism. Among citizenswere the merchants, of whom Harrison thought there were too many; for,like the lawyers, they were no furtherance to the commonwealth, butraised the price of all commodities. In former, free-trade times, sugarwas sixpence a pound, now it is two shillings sixpence; raisins were onepenny, and now sixpence. Not content with the old European trade, theyhave sought out the East and West Indies, and likewise Cathay andTartary, whence they pretend, from their now and then suspicious voyages,they bring home great commodities. But Harrison cannot see that pricesare one whit abated by this enormity, and certainly they carry out ofEngland the best of its wares.

The yeomen are the stable, free men, who for the most part stay in oneplace, working the farms of gentlemen, are diligent, sometimes buy theland of unthrifty gentlemen, educate their sons to the schools and thelaw courts, and leave them money to live without labor. These are the menthat made France afraid. Below these are the laborers and men who work attrades, who have no voice in the commonwealth, and crowds of youngserving-men who become old beggars, highway-robbers, idle fellows, andspreaders of all vices. There was a complaint then, as now, that in manytrades men scamped their work, but, on the whole, husbandmen andartificers had never been so good; only there were too many of them, toomany handicrafts of which the country had no need. It appears to be afault all along in history that there are too many of almost every sortof people.

In Harrison's time the greater part of the building in cities and townswas of timber, only a few of the houses of the commonalty being of stone.In an old plate giving a view of the north side of Cheapside, London, in1638, we see little but quaint gable ends and rows of small windows setclose together. The houses are of wood and plaster, each storyoverhanging the other, terminating in sharp pediments; the roofsprojecting on cantilevers, and the windows occupying the whole front ofeach of the lower stories. They presented a lively and gay appearance onholidays, when the pentices of the shop fronts were hung with coloreddraperies, and the balconies were crowded with spectators, and every paneof glass showed a face. In the open country, where timber was scarce, thehouses were, between studs, impaneled with clay-red, white, or blue. Oneof the Spaniards who came over in the suite of Philip remarked the largediet in these homely cottages: "These English," quoth he, "have theirhouses made of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonly so well as theking." "Whereby it appeareth," comments Harrison, "that he liked betterof our good fare in such coarse cabins, than of their own thin diet intheir prince-like habitations and palaces." The timber houses werecovered with tiles; the other sort with straw or reeds. The fairesthouses were ceiled within with mortar and covered with plaster, thewhiteness and evenness of which excited Harrison's admiration. The wallswere hung with tapestry, arras-work, or painted cloth, whereon weredivers histories, or herbs, or birds, or else ceiled with oak. Stoves hadjust begun to be used, and only in some houses of the gentry, "who buildthem not to work and feed in, as in Germany and elsewhere, but now andthen to sweat in, as occasion and need shall require." Glass in windows,which was then good and cheap, and made even in England, had generallytaken the place of the lattices and of the horn, and of the beryl whichnoblemen formerly used in windows. Gentlemen were beginning to buildtheir houses of brick and stone, in stately and magnificent fashion. Thefurniture of the houses had also grown in a manner "passing delicacy,"and not of the nobility and gentry only, but of the lowest sort. Innoblemen's houses there was abundance of arras, rich hangings oftapestry, and silver vessels, plate often to the value of one thousandand two thousand pounds. The knights, gentlemen, and merchants had greatprovision of tapestry, Turkie work, pewter, brass, fine linen, andcupboards of plate worth perhaps a thousand pounds. Even the inferiorartificers and many farmers had learned also to garnish their cupboardswith plate, their joined beds with silk hangings, and their tables withfine linen—evidences of wealth for which Harrison thanks God andreproaches no man, though he cannot see how it is brought about, when allthings are grown to such excessive prices.

Old men of Radwinter noted three things marvelously altered in Englandwithin their remembrance. The first was the multitude of chimneys latelyerected; whereas in their young days there were not, always except thosein the religious and manor houses, above two or three chimneys in mostupland towns of the realm; each one made his fire against a reredos inthe hall, where he dined and dressed his meat. The second was theamendment in lodging. In their youth they lay upon hard straw palletscovered only with a sheet, and mayhap a dogswain coverlet over them, anda good round log for pillow. If in seven years after marriage a man couldbuy a mattress and a sack of chaff to rest his head on, he thoughthimself as well lodged as a lord. Pillows were thought meet only for sickwomen. As for servants, they were lucky if they had a sheet over them,for there was nothing under them to keep the straw from pricking theirhardened hides. The third notable thing was the exchange of treene(wooden) platters into pewter, and wooden spoons into silver or tin.Wooden stuff was plenty, but a good farmer would not have above fourpieces of pewter in his house; with all his frugality, he was unable topay his rent of four pounds without selling a cow or horse. It was a timeof idleness, and if a farmer at an alehouse, in a bravery to show what hehad, slapped down his purse with six shillings in it, all the resttogether could not match it. But now, says Harrison, though the rent offour pounds has improved to forty, the farmer has six or seven years'rent, lying by him, to purchase a new term, garnish his cupboard withpewter, buy three or four feather-beds, coverlets, carpets of tapestry, asilver salt, a nest of bowls for wine, and a dozen spoons. All thesethings speak of the growing wealth and luxury of the age. Only a littlebefore this date, in 1568, Lord Buckhurst, who had been ordered toentertain the Cardinal de Chatillon in Queen Elizabeth's palace at Sheen,complains of the meanness of the furniture of his rooms. He showed theofficers who preceded the cardinal such furniture and stuff as he had,but it did not please them. They wanted plate, he had none; such glassvessels as he had they thought too base. They wanted damask for longtables, and he had only linen for a square table, and they refused hissquare table. He gave the cardinal his only unoccupied tester andbedstead, and assigned to the bishop the bedstead upon which his wife'swaiting-women did lie, and laid them on the ground. He lent the cardinalhis own basin and ewer, candlesticks from his own table,drinking-glasses, small cushions, and pots for the kitchen. My Lord ofLeicester sent down two pair of fine sheets for the cardinal and one pairfor the bishop.

Harrison laments three things in his day: the enhancing of rents, thedaily oppression of poor tenants by the lords of manors, and the practiceof usury—a trade brought in by the Jews, but now practiced by almostevery Christian, so that he is accounted a fool that doth lend his moneyfor nothing. He prays the reader to help him, in a lawful manner, to hangup all those that take cent. per cent. for money. Another grievance, andmost sorrowful of all, is that many gentlemen, men of good port andcountenance, to the injury of the farmers and commonalty, actually turnBraziers, butchers, tanners, sheep-masters, and woodmen. Harrison alsonotes the absorption of lands by the rich; the decay of houses in thecountry, which comes of the eating up of the poor by the rich; theincrease of poverty; the difficulty a poor man had to live on an acre ofground; his forced contentment with bread made of oats and barley, andthe divers places that formerly had good tenants and now were vacant,hop-yards and gardens.

Harrison says it is not for him to describe the palaces of QueenElizabeth; he dare hardly peep in at her gates. Her houses are of brickand stone, neat and well situated, but in good masonry not to be comparedto those of Henry VIII's building; they are rather curious to the eye,like paper-works, than substantial for continuance. Her court is moremagnificent than any other in Europe, whether you regard the rich andinfinite furniture of the household, the number of officers, or thesumptuous entertainments. And the honest chronicler is so struck withadmiration of the virtuous beauty of the maids of honor that he cannottell whether to award preeminence to their amiable countenances or totheir costliness of attire, between which there is daily conflict andcontention. The courtiers of both sexes have the use of sundry languagesand an excellent vein of writing. Would to God the rest of their livesand conversation corresponded with these gifts! But the courtiers, themost learned, are the worst men when they come abroad that any man shallhear or read of. Many of the gentlewomen have sound knowledge of Greekand Latin, and are skillful in Spanish, Italian, and French; and thenoblemen even surpass them. The old ladies of the court avoid idleness byneedlework, spinning of silk, or continual reading of the Holy Scripturesor of histories, and writing diverse volumes of their own, or translatingforeign works into English or Latin; and the young ladies, when they arenot waiting on her majesty, "in the mean time apply their lutes,citherns, pricksong, and all kinds of music." The elders are skillful insurgery and the distillation of waters, and sundry other artificialpractices pertaining to the ornature and commendation of their bodies;and when they are at home they go into the kitchen and supply a number ofdelicate dishes of their own devising, mostly after Portuguese receipts;and they prepare bills of fare (a trick lately taken up) to give a briefrehearsal of all the dishes of every course. I do not know whether thiswas called the "higher education of women" at the time.

In every office of the palaces is a Bible, or book of acts of the church,or chronicle, for the use of whoever comes in, so that the court looksmore like a university than a palace. Would to God the houses of thenobles were ruled like the queen's! The nobility are followed by greattroops of serving-men in showy liveries; and it is a goodly sight to seethem muster at court, which, being filled with them, "is made like to theshow of a peaco*ck's tail in the full beauty, or of some meadow garnishedwith infinite kinds and diversity of pleasant flowers." Such was thediscipline of Elizabeth's court that any man who struck another within ithad his right hand chopped off by the executioner in a most horriblemanner.

The English have always had a passion for gardens and orchards. In theRoman time grapes abounded and wine was plenty, but the culturedisappeared after the Conquest. From the time of Henry IV. to Henry VIII.vegetables were little used, but in Harrison's day the use of melons,pompions, radishes, cucumbers, cabbages, turnips, and the like wasrevived. They had beautiful flower-gardens annexed to the houses, whereinwere grown also rare and medicinal herbs; it was a wonder to see how manystrange herbs, plants, and fruits were daily brought from the Indies,America and the Canaries. Every rich man had great store of flowers, andin one garden might be seen from three hundred to four hundred medicinalherbs. Men extol the foreign herbs to the neglect of the native, andespecially tobacco, "which is not found of so great efficacy as theywrite." In the orchards were plums, apples, pears, walnuts, filberts; andin noblemen's orchards store of strange fruit-apricots, almonds, peaches,figs, and even in some oranges, lemons, and capers. Grafters also were atwork with their artificial mixtures, "dallying, as it were, with natureand her course, as if her whole trade were perfectly known unto them: ofhard fruits they will make soft, of sour sweet, of sweet yet moredelicate; bereaving also some of their kernels, others of their cores,and finally endowing them with the flavor of musk, amber, or sweet spicesat their pleasure." Gardeners turn annual into perpetual herbs, and suchpains are they at that they even used dish-water for plants. The Gardensof Hesperides are surely not equal to these. Pliny tells of a rose thathad sixty leaves on one bud, but in 1585 there was a rose in Antwerp thathad one hundred and eighty leaves; and Harrison might have had a slip ofit for ten pounds, but he thought it a "tickle hazard." In his own littlegarden, of not above three hundred square feet, he had near three hundredsamples, and not one of them of the common, or usually to be had.

Our kin beyond sea have always been stout eaters of solid food, and inElizabeth's time their tables were more plentifully laden than those ofany other nation. Harrison scientifically accounts for their inordinateappetite. "The situation of our region," he says, "lying near unto thenorth, does cause the heat of our stomachs to be of somewhat greaterforce; therefore our bodies do crave a little more ample nourishment thanthe inhabitants of the hotter regions are accustomed withal, whosedigestive force is not altogether so vehement, because their internalheat is not so strong as ours, which is kept in by the coldness of theair, that from time to time (specially in winter) doth environ ourbodies." The north Britons in old times were accustomed often to greatabstinence, and lived when in the woods on roots and herbs. They usedsometimes a confection, "whereof so much as a bean would qualify theirhunger above common expectation"; but when they had nothing to qualify itwith, they crept into the marsh water up to their chins, and thereremained a long time, "only to qualify the heat of their stomachs byviolence."

In Harrison's day the abstemious Welsh had learned to eat like theEnglish, and the Scotch exceeded the latter in "over much anddistemperate gormandize." The English eat all they can buy, there beingno restraint of any meat for religion's sake or for public order. Thewhite meats—milk, butter, and cheese—though very dear, are reputed asgood for inferior people, but the more wealthy feed upon the flesh of allsorts of cattle and all kinds of fish. The nobility ("whose cooks are forthe most part musical-headed Frenchmen and strangers ") exceed in numberof dishes and change of meat. Every day at dinner there is beef, mutton,veal, lamb, kid, pork, conie, capon, pig, or as many of these as theseason yielded, besides deer and wildfowl, and fish, and sundrydelicacies "wherein the sweet hand of the seafaring Portingale is notwanting." The food was brought in commonly in silver vessels at tables ofthe degree of barons, bishops, and upwards, and referred first to theprincipal personage, from whom it passed to the lower end of the table,the guests not eating of all, but choosing what each liked; and nobodystuffed himself. The dishes were then sent to the servants, and theremains of the feast went to the poor, who lay waiting at the gates ingreat numbers.

Drink was served in pots, goblets, jugs, and bowls of silver innoblemen's houses, and also in Venice glasses. It was not set upon thetable, but the cup was brought to each one who thirsted; he called forsuch a cup of drink as he wished, and delivered it again to one of theby-standers, who made it clean by pouring out what remained, and restoredit to the sideboard. This device was to prevent great drinking, whichmight ensue if the full pot stood always at the elbow. But this order wasnot used in noblemen's halls, nor in any order under the degree of knightor squire of great revenue. It was a world to see how the noblespreferred to gold and silver, which abounded, the new Venice glass,whence a great trade sprang up with Murano that made many rich. Thepoorest even would have glass, but home-made—a foolish expense, for theglass soon went to bits, and the pieces turned to no profit. Harrisonwanted the philosopher's stone to mix with this molten glass and toughenit.

There were multitudes of dependents fed at the great houses, andeverywhere, according to means, a wide-open hospitality was maintained.Froude gives a notion of the style of living in earlier times by citingthe details of a feast given when George Neville, brother of Warwick theking-maker, was made archbishop of York. There were present, includingservants, thirty-five hundred persons. These are a few of the things usedat the banquet: three hundred quarters of wheat, three hundred tuns ofale, one hundred and four tuns of wine, eighty oxen, three thousandgeese, two thousand pigs,—four thousand conies, four thousandheronshaws, four thousand venison pasties cold and five hundred hot, fourthousand cold tarts, four thousand cold custards, eight seals, fourporpoises, and so on.

The merchants and gentlemen kept much the same tables as the nobles,especially at feasts, but when alone were content with a few dishes. Theyalso desired the dearest food, and would have no meat from the butcher'sbut the most delicate, while their list of fruits, cakes, Gates, andoutlandish confections is as long as that at any modern banquet. Wine ranin excess. There were used fifty-six kinds of light wines, like theFrench, and thirty of the strong sorts, like the Italian and Eastern. Thestronger the wine, the better it was liked. The strongest and best was inold times called theologicum, because it was had from the clergy andreligious men, to whose houses the laity sent their bottles to be filled,sure that the religious would neither drink nor be served with the worst;for the merchant would have thought his soul should have gone straightwayto the devil if he had sent them any but the best. The beer served atnoblemen's tables was commonly a year old, and sometimes two, but thisage was not usual. In households generally it was not under a month old,for beer was liked stale if it were not sour, while bread was desired asnew as possible so that it was not hot.

The husbandman and artificer ate such meat as they could easiest come byand have most quickly ready; yet the banquets of the trades in Londonwere not inferior to those of the nobility. The husbandmen, however,exceed in profusion, and it is incredible to tell what meat is consumedat bridals, purifications, and such like odd meetings; but each guestbrought his own provision, so that the master of the house had only toprovide bread, drink, houseroom, and fire. These lower classes Harrisonfound very friendly at their tables—merry without malice, plain withoutItalian or French subtlety—so that it would do a man good to be incompany among them; but if they happen to stumble upon a piece of venisonor a cup of wine or very strong beer, they do not stick to comparethemselves with the lord-mayor—and there is no public man in any city ofEurope that may compare with him in port and countenance during the termof his office.

Harrison commends the great silence used at the tables of the wiser sort,and generally throughout the realm, and likewise the moderate eating anddrinking. But the poorer countrymen do babble somewhat at table, andmistake ribaldry and loquacity for wit and wisdom, and occasionally arecup-shotten; and what wonder, when they who have hard diet and smalldrink at home come to such opportunities at a banquet! The wealthier sortin the country entertain their visitors from afar, however long theystay, with as hearty a welcome the last day as the first; and thecountrymen contrast this hospitality with that of their London cousins,who joyfully receive them the first day, tolerate them the second, wearyof them the third, and wish 'em at the devil after four days.

The gentry usually ate wheat bread, of which there were four kinds, andthe poor generally bread made of rye, barley, and even oats and acorns.Corn was getting so dear, owing to the forestallers and middlemen, that,says the historian, "if the world last a while after this rate, wheat andrye will be no grain for poor men to feed on; and some catterpillers[two-legged speculators] there are that can say so much already."

The great drink of the realm was, of course, beer (and it is to be notedthat a great access of drunkenness came into England with the importationmuch later of Holland gin) made from barley, hops, and water, and uponthe brewing of it Harrison dwells lovingly, and devotes many pages to adescription of the process, especially as "once in a month practiced bymy wife and her maid servants." They ground eight bushels of malt, addedhalf a bushel of wheat meal, half a bushel of oat meal, poured in eightygallons of water, then eighty gallons more, and a third eighty gallons,and boiled with a couple of pounds of hops. This, with a few spicesthrown in, made three hogsheads of good beer, meet for a poor man who hadonly forty pounds a year. This two hundred gallons of beer costaltogether twenty shillings; but although he says his wife brewed it"once in a month," whether it lasted a whole month the parson does notsay. He was particular about the water used: the Thames is best, themarsh worst, and clear spring water next worst; "the fattest standingwater is always the best." Cider and perry were made in some parts ofEngland, and a delicate sort of drink in Wales, called metheglin; butthere was a kind of "swish-swash" made in Essex from honey-combs andwater, called mead, which differed from the metheglin as chalk fromcheese.

In Shakespeare's day much less time was spent in eating and drinking thanformerly, when, besides breakfast in the forenoon and dinners, there were"beverages" or "nuntion" after dinner, and supper before going to bed—"a toie brought in by hardie Canutus," who was a gross feeder.Generally there were, except for the young who could not fast tilldinnertime, only two meals daily, dinner and supper. Yet the Normans hadbrought in the habit of sitting long at the table—a custom not yetaltogether abated, since the great people, especially at banquets, sittill two or three o'clock in the afternoon; so that it is a hard matterto rise and go to evening prayers and return in time for supper.

Harrison does not make much account of the early meal called "breakfast";but Froude says that in Elizabeth's time the common hour of rising, inthe country, was four o'clock, summer and winter, and that breakfast wasat five, after which the laborers went to work and the gentlemen tobusiness. The Earl and Countess of Northumberland breakfasted togetherand alone at seven. The meal consisted of a quart of ale, a quart ofwine, and a chine of beef; a loaf of bread is not mentioned, but we hope(says Froude) it may be presumed. The gentry dined at eleven and suppedat five. The merchants took dinner at noon, and, in London, supped atsix. The university scholars out of term ate dinner at ten. Thehusbandmen dined at high noon, and took supper at seven or eight. As forthe poorer sort, it is needless to talk of their order of repast, forthey dined and supped when they could. The English usually began mealswith the grossest food and ended with the most delicate, taking first themild wines and ending with the hottest; but the prudent Scot didotherwise, making his entrance with the best, so that he might leave theworse to the menials.

I will close this portion of our sketch of English manners with anextract from the travels of Hentzner, who visited England in 1598, andsaw the great queen go in state to chapel at Greenwich, and afterwardswitnessed the laying of the table for her dinner. It was on Sunday. Thequeen was then in her sixty-fifth year, and "very majestic," as shewalked in the splendid procession of barons, earls, and knights of thegarter: "her face, oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her eyes small, yet blackand pleasant; her nose a little hooked; her lips narrow, and her teethblack (a defect the English seem subject to from their great use ofsugar). She had in her ears two pearls with very rich drops; she worefalse hair, and that red; upon her head she had a small crown, reportedto be made of some of the gold of the celebrated Lunebourg table. Herbosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it till they marry;and she had on a necklace of exceeding fine jewels; her hands were small,her fingers long, and her stature neither small nor low; her air wasstately, her manner of speaking mild and obliging. That day she wasdressed in white silk, bordered with pearls of the size of beans, andover it a mantle of black silk, shot with silver threads; her train wasvery long, and the end of it borne by a marchioness; instead of a chainshe had an oblong collar of gold and jewels." As she swept on in thismagnificence, she spoke graciously first to one, then to another, andalways in the language of any foreigner she addressed; whoever spoke toher kneeled, and wherever she turned her face, as she was going along,everybody fell down on his knees. When she pulled off her glove to giveher hand to be kissed, it was seen to be sparkling with rings and jewels.The ladies of the court, handsome and well shaped, followed, dressed forthe most part in white; and on either side she was guarded by fiftygentlemen pensioners with gilt battle-axes. In the ante-chapel, where shegraciously received petitions, there was an acclaim of "Long live QueenElizabeth!" to which she answered, "I thank you, my good people." Themusic in the chapel was excellent, and the whole service was over in halfan hour. This is Hentzner's description of the setting out of her table:

"A gentleman entered the room bearing a rod, and along with him anotherwho had a table-cloth, which, after they had both kneeled three times, hespread upon the table; and after kneeling again they both retired. Thencame two others, one with the rod again, the other with a salt-cellar, aplate, and bread; and when they had kneeled as the others had done, andplaced what was brought upon the table, they two retired with the sameceremonies performed by the first. At last came an unmarried lady (wewere told she was a countess) and along with her a married one, bearing atasting-knife; the former was dressed in white silk, who, when she hadprostrated herself three times, in the most graceful manner approachedthe table, and rubbed the plates with bread and salt, with as much awe asif the Queen had been present. When they had waited there a little whilethe Yeomen of the Guard entered, bare-headed, clothed in scarlet, with agolden rose upon their backs, bringing in at each turn a course oftwenty-four dishes, served in plate, most of it gilt; these dishes werereceived by a gentleman in the same order they were brought, and placedupon the table, while the Lady Taster gave to each of the guard amouthful to eat, of the particular dish he had brought, for fear of, anypoison. During the time that this guard, which consists of the tallestand stoutest men that can be found in all England, being carefullyselected for this service, were bringing dinner, twelve trumpets and twokettle-drums made the hall ring for half an hour together. At the end ofall this ceremonial, a number of unmarried ladies appeared, who withparticular solemnity lifted the meat off the table and conveyed it intothe Queen's inner and more private chamber, where, after she had chosenfor herself, the rest goes to the Ladies of the court."

The queen dined and supped alone, with very few attendants.
II

We now approach perhaps the most important matter in this world, namely,dress. In nothing were the increasing wealth and extravagance of theperiod more shown than in apparel. And in it we are able to study theorigin of the present English taste for the juxtaposition of striking anduncomplementary colors. In Coryat's "Crudities," 1611, we have anEnglishman's contrast of the dress of the Venetians and the English. TheVenetians adhered, without change, to their decent fashion, a thousandyears old, wearing usually black: the slender doublet made close to thebody, without much quilting; the long hose plain, the jerkin alsoblack—but all of the most costly stuffs Christendom can furnish, satinand taffetas, garnished with the best lace. Gravity and good tastecharacterized their apparel. "In both these things," says Coryat, "theydiffer much from us Englishmen. For whereas they have but one color, weuse many more than are in the rainbow, all the most light, garish, andunseemly colors that are in the world. Also for fashion we are muchinferior to them. For we wear more fantastical fashions than any nationunder the sun doth, the French only excepted." On festival days, inprocessions, the senators wore crimson damask gowns, with flaps ofcrimson velvet cast over their left shoulders; and the Venetian knightsdiffered from the other gentlemen, for under their black damask gowns,with long sleeves, they wore red apparel, red silk stockings, and redpantofles.

Andrew Boord, in 1547, attempting to describe the fashions of hiscountrymen, gave up the effort in sheer despair over the variety andfickleness of costume, and drew a naked man with a pair of shears in onehand and a piece of cloth in the other, to the end that he should shapehis apparel as he himself liked; and this he called an Englishman. Eventhe gentle Harrison, who gives Boord the too harsh character of a lewdpopish hypocrite and ungracious priest, admits that he was not void ofjudgment in this; and he finds it easier to inveigh against the enormity,the fickleness, and the fantasticality of the English attire than todescribe it. So unstable is the fashion, he says, that today the Spanishguise is in favor; tomorrow the French toys are most fine and delectable;then the high German apparel is the go; next the Turkish manner is bestliked, the Morisco gowns, the Barbary sleeves, and the short Frenchbreeches; in a word, "except it were a dog in a doublet, you shall notsee any so disguised as are my countrymen in England."

This fantastical folly was in all degrees, from the courtier down to thetarter. "It is a world to see the costliness and the curiosity, theexcess and the vanity, the pomp and the bravery, the change and thevariety, and finally the fickleness and the folly that is in all degrees;insomuch that nothing is more constant in England than inconstancy ofattire. So much cost upon the body, so little upon souls; how many suitsof apparel hath the one, or how little furniture hath the other!" "Andhow men and women worry the poor tailors, with endless fittings andsending back of garments, and trying on!" "Then must the long seams ofour hose be set with a plumb line, then we puff, then we blow, andfinally sweat till we drop, that our clothes may stand well upon us."

The barbers were as cunning in variety as the tailors. Sometimes the headwas polled; sometimes the hair was curled, and then suffered to grow longlike a woman's locks, and many times cut off, above or under the ears,round as by a wooden dish. And so with the beards: some shaved from thechin, like the Turks; some cut short, like the beard of the Marquis Otto;some made round, like a rubbing-brush; some peaked, others grown long. Ifa man have a lean face, the Marquis Otto's cut makes it broad; if it beplatterlike, the long, slender beard makes it seem narrow; "if he beweasel-beaked, then much hair left on the cheeks will make the owner lookbig like a bowdled hen, and so grim as a goose." Some courageousgentlemen wore in their ears rings of gold and stones, to improve God'swork, which was otherwise set off by monstrous quilted and stuffeddoublets, that puffed out the figure like a barrel.

There is some consolation, though I don't know why, in the knowledge thatwriters have always found fault with women's fashions, as they do today.Harrison says that the women do far exceed the lightness of the men;"such staring attire as in time past was supposed meet for lighthousewives only is now become an habit for chaste and sober matrons." Andhe knows not what to say of their doublets, with pendant pieces on thebreast full of jags and cuts; their "galligascons," to make their dressesstand out plumb round; their farthingales and divers colored stockings."I have met," he says, "with some of these trulls in London so disguisedthat it hath passed my skill to determine whether they were men orwomen." Of all classes the merchants were most to be commended for richbut sober attire; "but the younger sort of their wives, both in attireand costly housekeeping, cannot tell when and how to make an end, asbeing women indeed in whom all kind of curiosity is to be found andseen." Elizabeth's time, like our own, was distinguished by newfashionable colors, among which are mentioned a queer greenish-yellow, apease-porridge-tawny, a popinjay of blue, a lusty gallant, and the "devilin the hedge." These may be favorites still, for aught I know.

Mr. Furnivall quotes a description of a costume of the period, from themanuscript of Orazio Busino's "Anglipotrida." Busino was the chaplain ofPiero Contarina, the Venetian ambassador to James I, in 1617. Thechaplain was one day stunned with grief over the death of the butler ofthe embassy; and as the Italians sleep away grief, the French sing, theGermans drink, and the English go to plays to be rid of it, theVenetians, by advice, sought consolation at the Fortune Theatre; andthere a trick was played upon old Busino, by placing him among a bevy ofyoung women, while the concealed ambassador and the secretary enjoyed thejoke. "These theatres," says Busino, "are frequented by a number ofrespectable and handsome ladies, who come freely and seat themselvesamong the men without the slightest hesitation . . . . Scarcely was Iseated ere a very elegant dame, but in a mask, came and placed herselfbeside me . . . . She asked me for my address both in French and English;and, on my turning a deaf ear, she determined to honor me by showing mesome fine diamonds on her fingers, repeatedly taking off no fewer thanthree gloves, which were worn one over the other . . . . This lady'sbodice was of yellow satin, richly embroidered, her petticoat—[It is atrifle in human progress, perhaps scarcely worth noting, that the "roundgown," that is, an entire skirt, not open in front and parting to showthe under petticoat, did not come into fashion till near the close of theeighteenth century.]—of gold tissue with stripes, her robe of red velvetwith a raised pile, lined with yellow muslin with broad stripes of puregold. She wore an apron of point lace of various patterns; her headtirewas highly perfumed, and the collar of white satin beneath the delicatelywrought ruff struck me as exceedingly pretty." It was quite in keepingwith the manners of the day for a lady of rank to have lent herself tothis hoax of the chaplain.

Van Meteren, a Netherlander, 1575, speaks also of the astonishing changeor changeableness in English fashions, but says the women are welldressed and modest, and they go about the streets without any covering ofmantle, hood, or veil; only the married women wear a hat in the streetand in the house; the unmarried go without a hat; but ladies ofdistinction have lately learned to cover their faces with silken masks orvizards, and to wear feathers. The English, he notes, change theirfashions every year, and when they go abroad riding or traveling they dontheir best clothes, contrary to the practice of other nations. Anotherforeigner, Jacob Rathgeb, 1592, says the English go dressed in exceedingfine clothes, and some will even wear velvet in the street, when theyhave not at home perhaps a piece of dry bread. "The lords and pages ofthe royal court have a stately, noble air, but dress more after theFrench fashion, only they wear short cloaks and sometimes Spanish caps."

Harrison's arraignment of the English fashions of his day may beconsidered as almost commendative beside the diatribes of the old PuritanPhilip Stubbes, in "The Anatomie of Abuses," 1583. The English languageis strained for words hot and rude enough to express his indignation,contempt, and fearful expectation of speedy judgments. The men escape hishands with scarcely less damage than the women. First he wreaks hisindignation upon the divers kinds of hats, stuck full of feathers, ofvarious colors, "ensigns of vanity," "fluttering sails and featheredflags of defiance to virtue"; then upon the monstrous ruffs that standout a quarter of a yard from the neck. "As the devil, in the fullness ofhis malice, first invented these ruffs, so has he found out two stays tobear up this his great kingdom of ruffs—one is a kind of liquid matterthey call starch; the other is a device made of wires, for anunder-propper. Then there are shirts of cambric, holland, and lawn,wrought with fine needle-work of silk and curiously stitched, costingsometimes as much as five pounds. Worse still are the monstrous doublets,reaching down to the middle of the thighs, so hard quilted, stuffed,bombasted, and sewed that the wearer can hardly stoop down in them. Belowthese are the gally-hose of silk, velvet, satin, and damask, reachingbelow the knees. So costly are these that "now it is a small matter tobestow twenty nobles, ten pound, twenty pound, fortie pound, yea ahundred pound of one pair of Breeches. (God be merciful unto us!)" Tothese gay hose they add nether-socks, curiously knit with open seams downthe leg, with quirks and clocks about the ankles, and sometimesinterlaced with gold and silver thread as is wonderful to behold. Timehas been when a man could clothe his whole body for the price of thesenether-socks." Satan was further let loose in the land by reason of corkshoes and fine slippers, of all colors, carved, cut, and stitched withsilk, and laced on with gold and silver, which went flipping and flappingup and down in the dirt. The jerkins and cloaks are of all colors andfashions; some short, reaching to the knee; others dragging on theground; red, white, black, violet, yellow, guarded, laced, and faced;hanged with points and tassels of gold, silver, and silk. The hilts ofdaggers, rapiers, and swords are gilt thrice over, and have scabbards ofvelvet. And all this while the poor lie in London streets upon pallets ofstraw, or else in the mire and dirt, and die like dogs!"

Stubbes was a stout old Puritan, bent upon hewing his way to heaventhrough all the allurements of this world, and suspecting a devil inevery fair show. I fear that he looked upon woman as only a vain andtrifling image, a delusive toy, away from whom a man must set his face.Shakespeare, who was country-bred when he came up to London, and livedprobably on the roystering South Side, near the theatres andbear-gardens, seems to have been impressed with the painted faces of thewomen. It is probable that only town-bred women painted. Stubbes declaresthat the women of England color their faces with oils, liquors, unguents,and waters made to that end, thinking to make themselves fairer than Godmade them—a presumptuous audacity to make God untrue in his word; and heheaps vehement curses upon the immodest practice. To this follows thetrimming and tricking of their heads, the laying out their hair to show,which is curled, crisped, and laid out on wreaths and borders from ear toear. Lest it should fall down it is under-propped with forks, wires, andwhat not. On the edges of their bolstered hair (for it standeth crestedround about their frontiers, and hanging over their faces like pendiceswith glass windows on every side) is laid great wreaths of gold andsilver curiously wrought. But this is not the worst nor the tenth part,for no pen is able to describe the wickedness. "The women use great ruffsand neckerchers of holland, lawn, camerick, and such cloth, as thegreatest thread shall not be so big as the least hair that is: then, lestthey should fall down, they are smeared and starched in the Devil'sliquor, I mean Starch; after that dried with great diligence, streaked,patted and rubbed very nicely, and so applied to their goodly necks, and,withall, under-propped with supportasses, the stately arches of pride;beyond all this they have a further fetch, nothing inferior to the rest;as, namely, three or four degrees of minor ruffs, placed gradatim, stepby step, one beneath another, and all under the Master devil ruff. Theskirts, then, of these great ruffs are long and side every way, pletedand crested full curiously, God wot."

Time will not serve us to follow old Stubbes into his particularinquisition of every article of woman's attire, and his hearty damnationof them all and several. He cannot even abide their carrying of nosegaysand posies of flowers to smell at, since the palpable odors and fumes ofthese do enter the brain to degenerate the spirit and allure to vice.They must needs carry looking-glasses with them; "and good reason," saysStubbes, savagely, "for else how could they see the devil in them? for nodoubt they are the devil's spectacles [these women] to allure us to prideand consequently to destruction forever." And, as if it were not enoughto be women, and the devil's aids, they do also have doublets andjerkins, buttoned up the breast, and made with wings, welts, and pinionson the shoulder points, as man's apparel is, for all the world. We takereluctant leave of this entertaining woman-hater, and only stay to quotefrom him a "fearful judgment of God, shewed upon a gentlewoman of Antwerpof late, even the 27th of May, 1582," which may be as profitable to readnow as it was then: "This gentlewoman being a very rich Merchant man'sdaughter: upon a time was invited to a bridal, or wedding, which wassolemnized in that Toune, against which day she made great preparation,for the pluming herself in gorgeous array, that as her body was mostbeautiful, fair, and proper, so her attire in every respect might becorrespondent to the same. For the accomplishment whereof she curled herhair, she dyed her locks, and laid them out after the best manner, shecolored her face with waters and Ointments: But in no case could she getany (so curious and dainty she was) that could starch, and set her Ruffsand Neckerchers to her mind wherefore she sent for a couple ofLaundresses, who did the best they could to please her humors, but in anywise they could not. Then fell she to swear and tear, to curse and damn,casting the Ruffs under feet, and wishing that the Devil might take herwhen she wear any of those Neckerchers again. In the meantime (throughthe sufference of God) the Devil transforming himself into the form of ayoung man, as brave and proper as she in every point of outwardappearance, came in, feigning himself to be a wooer or suitor unto her.And seeing her thus agonized, and in such a pelting chase, he demanded ofher the cause thereof, who straightway told him (as women can concealnothing that lieth upon their stomachs) how she was abused in the settingof her Ruffs, which thing being heard of him, he promised to please hermind, and thereto took in hand the setting of her Ruffs, which heperformed to her great contentation and liking, in so much as she lookingherself in a glass (as the Devil bade her) became greatly enamoured ofhim. This done, the young man kissed her, in the doing whereof she writheher neck in, sunder, so she died miserably, her body being metamorphosedinto black and blue colors, most ugglesome to behold, and her face (whichbefore was so amorous) became most deformed, and fearful to look upon.This being known, preparence was made for her burial, a rich coffin wasprovided, and her fearful body was laid therein, and it covered verysumptuously. Four men immediately assayed to lift up the corpse, butcould not move it; then six attempted the like, but could not once stirit from the place where it stood. Whereat the standers-by marveling,caused the coffin to be opened to see the cause thereof. Where they foundthe body to be taken away, and a black Cat very lean and deformed sittingin the coffin, setting of great Ruffs, and frizzling of hair, to thegreat fear and wonder of all beholders."

Better than this pride which forerunneth destruction, in the opinion ofStubbes, is the habit of the Brazilian women, who "esteem so little ofapparel" that they rather choose to go naked than be thought to be proud.

As I read the times of Elizabeth, there was then greater prosperity andenjoyment of life among the common people than fifty or a hundred yearslater. Into the question of the prices of labor and of food, which Mr.Froude considers so fully in the first chapter of his history, I shallnot enter any further than to remark that the hardness of the laborer'slot, who got, mayhap, only twopence a day, is mitigated by the fact thatfor a penny he could buy a pound of meat which now costs a shilling. Intwo respects England has greatly changed for the traveler, from thesixteenth to the eighteenth century—in its inns and its roads.

In the beginning of Elizabeth's reign travelers had no choice but to rideon horseback or to walk. Goods were transported on strings ofpack-horses. When Elizabeth rode into the city from her residence atGreenwich, she placed herself behind her lord chancellor, on a pillion.The first improvement made was in the construction of a rude wagon a cartwithout springs, the body resting solidly on the axles. In such a vehicleElizabeth rode to the opening of her fifth Parliament. In 1583, on acertain day, Sir Harry Sydney entered Shrewsbury in his wagon, "with histrompeter blowynge, verey joyfull to behold and see." Even suchconveyances fared hard on the execrable roads of the period. Down to theend of the seventeenth century most of the country roads were merelybroad ditches, water-worn and strewn with loose stones. In 1640 QueenHenrietta was four weary days dragging over the road from Dover toLondon, the best in England. Not till the close of the sixteenth centurywas the wagon used, and then rarely. Fifty years later stage-wagons ran,with some regularity, between London and Liverpool; and before the closeof the seventeenth century the stagecoach, a wonderful invention, whichhad been used in and about London since 1650, was placed on threeprincipal roads of the kingdom. It averaged two to three miles an hour.In the reign of Charles II. a Frenchman who landed at Dover was drawn upto London in a wagon with six horses in a line, one after the other. OurVenetian, Busino, who went to Oxford in the coach with the ambassador in1617, was six days in going one hundred and fifty miles, as the coachoften stuck in the mud, and once broke down. So bad were the mainthoroughfares, even, that markets were sometimes inaccessible for monthstogether, and the fruits of the earth rotted in one place, while therewas scarcity not many miles distant.

But this difficulty of travel and liability to be detained long on theroad were cheered by good inns, such as did not exist in the worldelsewhere. All the literature of the period reflects lovingly thehomelike delights of these comfortable houses of entertainment. Everylittle village boasted an excellent inn, and in the towns on the greatthoroughfares were sumptuous houses that would accommodate from two tothree hundred guests with their horses. The landlords were not tyrants,as on the Continent, but servants of their guests; and it was, saysHarrison, a world to see how they did contend for the entertainment oftheir guests—as about fineness and change of linen, furniture ofbedding, beauty of rooms, service at the table, costliness of plate,strength of drink, variety of wines, or well-using of horses. Thegorgeous signs at their doors sometimes cost forty pounds. The inns werecheap too, and the landlord let no one depart dissatisfied with his bill.The worst inns were in London, and the tradition has been handed down.But the ostlers, Harrison confesses, did sometimes cheat in the feed, andthey with the tapsters and chamberlains were in league (and the landlordwas not always above suspicion) with highwaymen outside, to ascertain ifthe traveler carried any valuables; so that when he left the hospitableinn he was quite likely to be stopped on the highway and relieved of hismoney. The highwayman was a conspicuous character. One of the mostromantic of these gentry at one time was a woman named Mary Frith, bornin 1585, and known as Moll Cut-Purse. She dressed in male attire, was anadroit fencer, a bold rider, and a staunch royalist; she once took twohundred gold jacobuses from the Parliamentary General Fairfax on HounslowHeath. She is the chief character in Middleton's play of the "RoaringGirl"; and after a varied life as a thief, cutpurse, pickpocket,highwayman, trainer of animals, and keeper of a thieves' fence, she diedin peace at the age of seventy. To return to the inns, Fyner Morrison, atraveler in 1617, sustains all that Harrison says of the inns as the bestand cheapest in the world, where the guest shall have his own pleasure.No sooner does he arrive than the servants run to him—one takes hishorse, another shows him his chamber and lights his fire, a third pullsoff his boots. Then come the host and hostess to inquire what meat hewill choose, and he may have their company if he like. He shall beoffered music while he eats, and if he be solitary the musicians willgive him good-day with music in the morning. In short, "a man cannot morefreely command at home, in his own house, than he may do in his inn."

The amusem*nts of the age were often rough, but certainly more moral thanthey were later; and although the theatres were denounced by suchreformers as Stubbes as seminaries of vice, and disapproved by Harrison;they were better than after the Restoration, when the plays ofShakespeare were out of fashion. The Londoners went for amusem*nt to theBankside, or South Side of the Thames, where were the famous ParisGardens, much used as a rendezvous by gallants; and there were the placesfor bear and bull baiting; and there were the theatres—the ParisGardens, the Swan, the Rose, the Hope, and the Globe. Thepleasure-seekers went over usually in boats, of which there were said tobe four thousand plying between banks; for there was only one bridge, andthat was crowded with houses. All distinguished visitors were taken overto see the gardens and the bears baited by dogs; the queen herself went,and perhaps on Sunday, for Sunday was the great day, and Elizabeth issaid to have encouraged Sunday sports, she had been (we read) so muchhunted on account of religion! These sports are too brutal to think of;but there are amusing accounts of lion-baiting both by bears and dogs, inwhich the beast who figures so nobly on the escutcheon nearly alwaysproved himself an arrant coward, and escaped away as soon as he couldinto his den, with his tail between his legs. The spectators were oncemuch disgusted when a lion and lioness, with the dog that pursued them,all ran into the den, and, like good friends, stood very peaceablytogether looking out at the people.

The famous Globe Theatre, which was built in 1599, was burned in 1613,and in the fire it is supposed were consumed Shakespeare's manuscripts ofhis plays. It was of wood (for use in summer only), octagon shaped, witha thatched roof, open in the centre. The daily performance here, as inall theatres, was at three o'clock in the afternoon, and boys outsideheld the horses of the gentlemen who went in to the play. When theatreswere restrained, in 1600, only two were allowed, the Globe and theFortune, which was on the north side, on Golden Lane. The Fortune wasfifty feet square within, and three stories high, with galleries, builtof wood on a brick foundation, and with a roof of tiles. The stage wasforty-three feet wide, and projected into the middle of the yard (as thepit was called), where the groundlings stood. To one of the galleriesadmission was only twopence. The young gallants used to go into the yardsand spy about the galleries and boxes for their acquaintances. In thesetheatres there was a drop-curtain, but little or no scenery. Spectatorshad boxes looking on the stage behind the curtain, and they often satupon the stage with the actors; sometimes the actors all remained uponthe stage during the whole play. There seems to have been greatfamiliarity between the audience and the actors. Fruits in season,apples, pears, and nuts, with wine and beer, were carried about to besold, and pipes were smoked. There was neither any prudery in the playsor the players, and the audiences in behavior were no better than theplays.

The actors were all men. The female parts were taken usually by boys, butfrequently by grown men, and when Juliet or Desdemona was announced, agiant would stride upon the stage. There is a story that Kynaston, ahandsome fellow, famous in female characters, and petted by ladies ofrank, once kept Charles I. waiting while he was being shaved beforeappearing as Evadne in "The Maid's Tragedy." The innovation of women onthe stage was first introduced by a French company in 1629, but theaudiences would not tolerate it, and hissed and pelted the actresses offthe stage. But thirty years later women took the place they have eversince held; when the populace had once experienced the charm of a femaleJuliet and Ophelia, they would have no other, and the rage for actressesran to such excess at one time that it was a fashion for women to takethe male parts as well. But that was in the abandoned days of Charles II.Pepys could not control his delight at the appearance of Nell Gwynne,especially "when she comes like a young gallant, and hath the motions andcarriage of a spark the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes me, Iconfess, admire her." The acting of Shakespeare himself is only a fainttradition. He played the ghost in "Hamlet," and Adam in "As You Like It."William Oldys says (Oldys was an antiquarian who was pottering about inthe first part of the eighteenth century, picking up gossip incoffee-houses, and making memoranda on scraps of paper in book-shops)Shakespeare's brother Charles, who lived past the middle of theseventeenth century, was much inquired of by actors about thecirc*mstances of Shakespeare's playing. But Charles was so old and weakin mind that he could recall nothing except the faint impression that hehad once seen "Will" act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein,being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appearedso weak and drooping and unable to walk that he was forced to besupported and carried by another person to a table, at which he wasseated among some company who were eating, and one of them sang a song.And that was Shakespeare!

The whole Bankside, with its taverns, play-houses, and worse, its bearpits and gardens, was the scene of roystering and coarse amusem*nt. Andit is surprising that plays of such sustained moral greatness asShakespeare's should have been welcome.

The more private amusem*nts of the great may well be illustrated by anaccount given by Busino of a masque (it was Ben Jonson's "PleasureReconciled to Virtue") performed at Whitehall on Twelfthnight, 1617.During the play, twelve cavaliers in masks, the central figure of whomwas Prince Charles, chose partners, and danced every kind of dance, untilthey got tired and began to flag; whereupon King James, "who is naturallycholeric, got impatient, and shouted aloud, 'Why don't they dance? Whatdid you make me come here for? Devil take you all, dance!' On hearingthis, the Marquis of Buckingham, his majesty's most favored minion,immediately sprang forward, cutting a score of lofty and very minutecapers, with so much grace and agility that he not only appeased the ireof his angry sovereign, but moreover rendered himself the admiration anddelight of everybody. The other masquers, being thus encouraged,continued successively exhibiting their powers with various ladies,finishing in like manner with capers, and by lifting their goddesses fromthe ground . . . . The prince, however, excelled them all in bowing,being very exact in making his obeisance both to the king and hispartner; nor did we ever see him make one single step out of time—acompliment which can scarcely be paid to his companions. Owing to hisyouth, he has not much wind as yet, but he nevertheless cut a few capersvery gracefully." The prince then went and kissed the hand of his sereneparent, who embraced and kissed him tenderly. When such capers were cutat Whitehall, we may imagine what the revelry was in the Banksidetaverns.

The punishments of the age were not more tender than the amusem*nts wererefined. Busino saw a lad of fifteen led to execution for stealing a bagof currants. At the end of every month, besides special executions, asmany as twenty-five people at a time rode through London streets inTyburn carts, singing ribald songs, and carrying sprigs of rosemary intheir hands. Everywhere in the streets the machines of justice werevisible-pillories for the neck and hands, stocks for the feet, and chainsto stretch across, in case of need, and stop a mob. In the suburbs wereoak cages for nocturnal offenders. At the church doors might now and thenbe seen women enveloped in sheets, doing penance for their evil deeds. Abridle, something like a bit for a restive horse, was in use for thecurbing of scolds; but this was a later invention than the cucking-stool,or ducking-stool. There is an old print of one of these machines standingon the Thames' bank: on a wheeled platform is an upright post with aswinging beam across the top, on one end of which the chair is suspendedover the river, while the other is worked up and down by a rope; in it isseated a light sister of the Bankside, being dipped into the unsavoryflood. But this was not so hated by the women as a similardiscipline—being dragged in the river by a rope after a boat.

Hanging was the common punishment for felony, but traitors and many otheroffenders were drawn, hanged, boweled, and quartered; nobles who weretraitors usually escaped with having their heads chopped off only.Torture was not practiced; for, says Harrison, our people despise death,yet abhor to be tormented, being of frank and open minds. And "this isone cause why our condemned persons do go so cheerfully to their deaths,for our nation is free, stout, hearty, and prodigal of life and blood,and cannot in any wise digest to be used as villains and slaves." Felonycovered a wide range of petty crimes—breach of prison, hunting by nightwith painted or masked faces, stealing above forty shillings, stealinghawks' eggs, conjuring, prophesying upon arms and badges, stealing deerby night, cutting purses, counterfeiting coin, etc. Death was the penaltyfor all these offenses. For poisoning her husband a woman was burnedalive; a man poisoning another was boiled to death in water or oil;heretics were burned alive; some murderers were hanged in chains;perjurers were branded on the forehead with the letter P; rogues wereburned through the ears; suicides were buried in a field with a stakedriven through their bodies; witches were burned or hanged; in Halifaxthieves were beheaded by a machine almost exactly like the modernguillotine; scolds were ducked; pirates were hanged on the seashore atlow-water mark, and left till three tides overwashed them; those who letthe sea-walls decay were staked out in the breach of the banks, and leftthere as parcel of the foundation of the new wall. Of rogues-that is,tramps and petty thieves-the gallows devoured three to four hundredannually, in one place or another; and Henry VIII. in his time did hangup as many as seventy-two thousand rogues. Any parish which let a thiefescape was fined. Still the supply held out.

The legislation against vagabonds, tramps, and sturdy beggars, and theirpunishment by whipping, branding, etc., are too well known to needcomment. But considerable provision was made for the unfortunate anddeserving poor—poorhouses were built for them, and collections taken up.Only sixty years before Harrison wrote there were few beggars, but in hisday he numbers them at ten thousand; and most of them were rogues, whocounterfeited sores and wounds, and were mere thieves and caterpillars onthe commonwealth. He names twenty-three different sorts of vagabondsknown by cant names, such as "ruffers," "uprightmen," "priggers,""fraters," "palliards," "Abrams," "dummerers "; and of women, "demandersfor glimmer or fire," "mortes," "walking mortes," "doxes," "kinchingcoves."

London was esteemed by its inhabitants and by many foreigners as therichest and most magnificent city in Christendom. The cities of Londonand Westminster lay along the north bank in what seemed an endlessstretch; on the south side of the Thames the houses were more scattered.But the town was mostly of wood, and its rapid growth was a matter ofanxiety. Both Elizabeth and James again and again attempted to restrictit by forbidding the erection of any new buildings within the town, orfor a mile outside; and to this attempt was doubtless due the crowdedrookeries in the city. They especially forbade the use of wood inhouse-fronts and windows, both on account of the danger from fire, andbecause all the timber in the kingdom, which was needed for shipping andother purposes, was being used up in building. They even ordered thepulling down of new houses in London, Westminster, and for three milesaround. But all efforts to stop the growth of the city were vain.

London, according to the Venetian Busino, was extremely dirty. He did notadmire the wooden architecture; the houses were damp and cold, thestaircases spiral and inconvenient, the apartments "sorry and illconnected." The wretched windows, without shutters, he could neither openby day nor close by night. The streets were little better than gutters,and were never put in order except for some great parade. Hentzner,however, thought the streets handsome and clean. When it rained it musthave been otherwise. There was no provision for conducting away thewater; it poured off the roofs upon the people below, who had not as yetheard of the Oriental umbrella; and the countryman, staring at the sightsof the town, knocked about by the carts, and run over by the horsem*n,was often surprised by a douche from a conduit down his back. And,besides, people had a habit of throwing water and slops out of thewindows, regardless of passers-by.

The shops were small, open in front, when the shutters were down, muchlike those in a Cairo bazaar, and all the goods were in sight. Theshopkeepers stood in front and cried their wares, and besought customers.Until 1568 there were but few silk shops in London, and all those werekept by women. It was not till about that time that citizens' wivesceased to wear white knit woolen caps, and three-square Minever caps withpeaks. In the beginning of Elizabeth's reign the apprentices (aconspicuous class) wore blue cloaks in winter and blue gowns in summer;unless men were threescore years old, it was not lawful to wear gownslower than the calves of the legs, but the length of cloaks was notlimited. The journeymen and apprentices wore long daggers in the daytimeat their backs or sides. When the apprentices attended their masters andmistresses in the night they carried lanterns and candles, and a greatlong club on the neck. These apprentices were apt to lounge with theirclubs about the fronts of shops, ready to take a hand in any excitement—to run down a witch, or raid an objectionable house, or tear down atavern of evil repute, or spoil a playhouse. The high-streets, especiallyin winter-time, were annoyed by hourly frays of sword and buckler-men;but these were suddenly suppressed when the more deadly fight with rapierand dagger came in. The streets were entirely unlighted and dangerous atnight, and for this reason the plays at the theatres were given at threein the afternoon.

About Shakespeare's time many new inventions and luxuries came in: masks,muffs, fans, periwigs, shoe-roses, love-handkerchiefs (tokens given bymaids and gentlewomen to their favorites), heath-brooms for hair-brushes,scarfs, garters, waistcoats, flat-caps; also hops, turkeys, apricots,Venice glass, tobacco. In 1524, and for years after, was used this rhyme

"Turkeys, Carpes, Hops: Piccarel, and beers,
Came into England: all in one year."

There were no coffee-houses as yet, for neither tea nor coffee wasintroduced till about 1661. Tobacco was first made known in England bySir John Hawkins in 1565, though not commonly used by men and women tillsome years after. It was urged as a great medicine for many ills.Harrison says, 1573, "In these days the taking in of the smoke of theIndian herb called 'Tabaco,' by an instrument formed like a little ladle,whereby it passeth from the mouth into the head and stomach, is greatlytaken up and used in England, against Rewmes and some other diseasesengendered in the lungs and inward parts, and not without effect." It'suse spread rapidly, to the disgust of James I. and others, who doubtedthat it was good for cold, aches, humors, and rheums. In 1614 it was saidthat seven thousand houses lived by this trade, and that L 399,375 a yearwas spent in smoke. Tobacco was even taken on the stage. Every base groommust have his pipe; it was sold in all inns and ale-houses, and the shopsof apothecaries, grocers, and chandlers were almost never, from morningtill night, without company still taking of tobacco.

There was a saying on the Continent that "England is a paradise forwomen, a prison for servants, and a hell or purgatory for horses." Thesociety was very simple compared with the complex condition of ours, andyet it had more striking contrasts, and was a singular mixture ofdownrightness and artificiality; plainness and rudeness of speech wentwith the utmost artificiality of dress and manner. It is curious to notethe insular, not to say provincial, character of the people even threecenturies ago. When the Londoners saw a foreigner very well made orparticularly handsome, they were accustomed to say, "It is a pity he isnot an ENGLISHMAN." It is pleasant, I say, to trace this "certaincondescension" in the good old times. Jacob Rathgeb (1592) says theEnglish are magnificently dressed, and extremely proud and overbearing;the merchants, who seldom go unto other countries, scoff at foreigners,who are liable to be ill-used by street boys and apprentices, who collectin immense crowds and stop the way. Of course Cassandra Stubbes, whosemind was set upon a better country, has little good to say of hiscountrymen.

"As concerning the nature, propertie, and disposition of the people theybe desirous of new fangles, praising things past, contemning thingspresent, and coveting after things to come. Ambitious, proud, light, andunstable, ready to be carried away with every blast of wind." The Frenchpaid back with scorn the traditional hatred of the English for theFrench. Perlin (1558) finds the people "proud and seditious, with badconsciences and unfaithful to their word in war unfortunate, in peaceunfaithful"; and there was a Spanish or Italian proverb: "England, goodland, bad people." But even Perlin likes the appearance of the people:"The men are handsome, rosy, large, and dexterous, usually fair-skinned;the women are esteemed the most beautiful in the world, white asalabaster, and give place neither to Italian, Flemish, nor German; theyare joyous, courteous, and hospitable (de bon recueil)." He thinks theirmanners, however, little civilized: for one thing, they have anunpleasant habit of eructation at the table (car iceux routent a la tablesans honte & ignominie); which recalls Chaucer's description of theTrumpington miller's wife and daughter:

"Men might her rowtyng hearen a forlong,
The wenche routeth eek par companye."

Another inference as to the table manners of the period is found inCoryat's "Crudities" (1611). He saw in Italy generally a curious customof using a little fork for meat, and whoever should take the meat out ofthe dish with his fingers—would give offense. And he accounts for thispeculiarity quite naturally: "The reason of this their curiosity is,because the Italian cannot by any means indure to have his dish touchedwith fingers, seeing all men's fingers are not alike cleane." Coryat foundthe use of the fork nowhere else in Christendom, and when he returned,and, oftentimes in England, imitated the Italian fashion, his exploit wasregarded in a humorous light. Busino says that fruits were seldom servedat dessert, but that the whole population were munching them in thestreets all day long, and in the places of amusem*nt; and it was anamusem*nt to go out into the orchards and eat fruit on the spot, in asort of competition of gormandize between the city belles and theiradmirers. And he avers that one young woman devoured twenty pounds ofcherries, beating her opponent by two pounds and a half.

All foreigners were struck with the English love of music and drink, ofbanqueting and good cheer. Perlin notes a pleasant custom at table:during the feast you hear more than a hundred times, "Drink iou" (heloves to air his English), that is to say, "Je m'en vois boyre a toy."You respond, in their language, "Iplaigiu"; that is to say, "Je vousplege." If you thank them, they say in their language, "God tanqueartelay"; that is, "Je vous remercie de bon coeur." And then, says theartless Frenchman, still improving on his English, you should respondthus: "Bigod, sol drink iou agoud oin." At the great and princelybanquets, when the pledge went round and the heart's desire of lastinghealth, says the chronicler, "the same was straight wayes knowne, bysound of Drumme and Trumpet, and the cannon's loudest voyce." It was soin Hamlet's day:

"And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge."

According to Hentzner (1598), the English are serious, like the Germans,and love show and to be followed by troops of servants wearing the armsof their masters; they excel in music and dancing, for they are livelyand active, though thicker of make than the French; they cut their hairclose in the middle of the head, letting it grow on either side; "theyare good sailors, and better pyrates, cunning, treacherous, andthievish;" and, he adds, with a touch of satisfaction, "above threehundred are said to be hanged annually in London." They put a good dealof sugar in their drink; they are vastly fond of great noises, firing ofcannon, beating of drums, and ringing of bells, and when they have aglass in their heads they go up into some belfry, and ring the bells forhours together, for the sake of exercise. Perlin's comment is that menare hung for a trifle in England, and that you will not find many lordswhose parents have not had their heads chopped off.

It is a pleasure to turn to the simple and hearty admiration excited inthe breasts of all susceptible foreigners by the English women of thetime. Van Meteren, as we said, calls the women beautiful, fair, welldressed, and modest. To be sure, the wives are, their lives onlyexcepted, entirely in the power of their husbands, yet they have greatliberty; go where they please; are shown the greatest honor at banquets,where they sit at the upper end of the table and are first served; arefond of dress and gossip and of taking it easy; and like to sit beforetheir doors, decked out in fine clothes, in order to see and be seen bythe passers-by. Rathgeb also agrees that the women have much more libertythan in any other place. When old Busino went to the Masque at Whitehall,his colleagues kept exclaiming, "Oh, do look at this one—oh, do seethat! Whose wife is this?—and that pretty one near her, whose daughteris she?" There was some chaff mixed in, he allows, some shriveled skinsand devotees of S. Carlo Borromeo, but the beauties greatly predominated.

In the great street pageants, it was the beauty and winsomeness of theLondon ladies, looking on, that nearly drove the foreigners wild. In1606, upon the entry of the king of Denmark, the chronicler celebrates"the unimaginable number of gallant ladies, beauteous virgins, and otherdelicate dames, filling the windows of every house with kind aspect." Andin 1638, when Cheapside was all alive with the pageant of the entry ofthe queen mother, "this miserable old queen," as Lilly calls Marie de'Medicis (Mr. Furnivall reproduces an old cut of the scene), M. de laSerre does not try to restrain his admiration for the pretty women onview: only the most fecund imagination can represent the content one hasin admiring the infinite number of beautiful women, each different fromthe other, and each distinguished by some sweetness or grace to ravishthe heart and take captive one's liberty. No sooner has he determined toyield to one than a new object of admiration makes him repent theprecipitation of his judgment.

And all the other foreigners were in the like case of "goneness."Kiechel, writing in 1585, says, "Item, the women there are charming, andby nature so mighty pretty as I have scarcely ever beheld, for they donot falsify, paint, or bedaub themselves as in Italy or other places;"yet he confesses (and here is another tradition preserved) "they aresomewhat awkward in their style of dress." His second "item" of gratitudeis a Netherland custom that pleased him—whenever a foreigner or aninhabitant went to a citizen's house on business, or as a guest, he wasreceived by the master, the lady, or the daughter, and "welcomed" (as itis termed in their language); "he has a right to take them by the arm andto kiss them, which is the custom of the country; and if any one does notdo so, it is regarded and imputed as ignorance and ill-breeding on hispart." Even the grave Erasmus, when he visited England, fell easily intothis pretty practice, and wrote with untheological fervor of the "girlswith angel faces," who were "so kind and obliging." "Wherever you come,"he says, "you are received with a kiss by all; when you take your leaveyou are dismissed with kisses; you return, kisses are repeated. They cometo visit you, kisses again; they leave you, you kiss them all round.Should they meet you anywhere, kisses in abundance in fine, wherever youmove there is nothing but kisses"—a custom, says this reformer, who hasnot the fear of Stubbes before his eyes, "never to be sufficientlycommended."

We shall find no more convenient opportunity to end this part of thesocial study of the age of Shakespeare than with this naive picture ofthe sex which most adorned it. Some of the details appear trivial; butgrave history which concerns itself only with the actions of conspicuouspersons, with the manoeuvres of armies, the schemes of politics, thebattles of theologies, fails signally to give us the real life of thepeople by which we judge the character of an age.

III

When we turn from France to England in, the latter part of the sixteenthand the beginning of the seventeenth century, we are in anotheratmosphere; we encounter a literature that smacks of the soil, that is asvaried, as racy, often as rude, as human life itself, and which cannot beadequately appreciated except by a study of the popular mind and thehistory of the time which produced it.

"Voltaire," says M. Guizot, "was the first person in France who spoke ofShakespeare's genius; and although he spoke of him merely as a barbariangenius, the French public were of the opinion that he had said too muchin his favor. Indeed, they thought it nothing less than profanation toapply the words genius and glory to dramas which they considered as crudeas they were coarse."

Guizot was one of the first of his nation to approach Shakespeare in theright spirit—that is, in the spirit in which he could hope for anyenlightenment; and in his admirable essay on "Shakespeare and His Times,"he pointed out the exact way in which any piece or period of literatureshould be studied, that is worth studying at all. He inquired intoEnglish civilization, into the habits, manners, and modes of thought ofthe people for whom Shakespeare wrote. This method, this inquiry intopopular sources, has been carried much further since Guizot wrote, and itis now considered the most remunerative method, whether the object ofstudy is literature or politics. By it not only is the literature of aperiod for the first time understood, but it is given its just place asan exponent of human life and a monument of human action.

The student who takes up Shakespeare's plays for the purpose of eitheramusem*nt or cultivation, I would recommend to throw aside the whole loadof commentary, and speculation, and disquisition, and devote himself totrying to find out first what was the London and the England ofShakespeare's day, what were the usages of all classes of society, whatwere the manners and the character of the people who crowded to hear hisplays, or who denounced them as the works of the devil and the allies ofsin. I say again to the student that by this means Shakespeare willbecome a new thing to him, his mind will be enlarged to the purpose andscope of the great dramatist, and more illumination will be cast upon theplays than is received from the whole race of inquisitors into hisphrases and critics of his genius. In the light of contemporary life, itsvisions of empire, its spirit of adventure, its piracy, exploration, andwarlike turmoil, its credulity and superstitious wonder at naturalphenomena, its implicit belief in the supernatural, its faith, itsvirility of daring, coarseness of speech, bluntness of manner, luxury ofapparel, and ostentation of wealth, the mobility of its shifting society,these dramas glow with a new meaning, and awaken a profounder admirationof the poet's knowledge of human life.

The experiences of the poet began with the rude and rural life ofEngland, and when he passed into the presence of the court and into thebustle of great London in an age of amazing agitation, he felt still inhis veins the throb of the popular blood. There were classic affectationsin England, there were masks and mummeries and classic puerilities atcourt and in noble houses—Elizabeth's court would well have liked to beclassical, remarks Guizot—but Shakespeare was not fettered by classicconventionalities, nor did he obey the unities, nor attempt to separateon the stage the tragedy and comedy of life—"immense and living stage,"says the writer I like to quote because he is French, upon which allthings are represented, as it were, in their solid form, and in the placewhich they occupied in a stormy and complicated civilization. In thesedramas the comic element is introduced whenever its character of realitygives it the right of admission and the advantage of opportuneappearance. Falstaff appears in the train of Henry V., and DollTear-Sheet in the train of Falstaff; the people surround the kings, andthe soldiers crowd around their generals; all conditions of society, allthe phases of human destiny appear by turns in juxtaposition, with thenature which properly belongs to them, and in the position which theynaturally occupy. . . .

"Thus we find the entire world, the whole of human realities, reproducedby Shakespeare in tragedy, which, in his eyes, was the universal theatreof life and truth."

It is possible to make a brutal picture of the England of Shakespeare'sday by telling nothing that is not true, and by leaving out much that istrue. M. Taine, who has a theory to sustain, does it by a graphiccatalogue of details and traits that cannot be denied; only there is agreat deal in English society that he does not include, perhaps does notapprehend. Nature, he thinks, was never so completely acted out. Theserobust men give rein to all their passions, delight in the strength oftheir limbs like Carmen, indulge in coarse language, undisguisedsensuality, enjoy gross jests, brutal buffooneries. Humanity is as muchlacking as decency. Blood, suffering, does not move them. The courtfrequents bull and bear baitings; Elizabeth beats her maids, spits upon acourtier's fringed coat, boxes Essex's ears; great ladies beat theirchildren and their servants. "The sixteenth century," he says, "is like aden of lions. Amid passions so strong as these there is not one lacking.Nature appears here in all its violence, but also in all its fullness. Ifnothing has been softened, nothing has been mutilated. It is the entireman who is displayed, heart, mind, body, senses, with his noblest andfinest aspirations, as with his most bestial and savage appetites,without the preponderance of any dominant passion to cast him altogetherin one direction, to exalt or degrade him. He has not become rigid as hewill under Puritanism. He is not uncrowned as in the Restoration." He hasentered like a young man into all the lusty experiences of life, everyallurement is known, the sweetness and novelty of things are strong withhim. He plunges into all sensations. "Such were the men of this time,Raleigh, Essex, Elizabeth, Henry VIII himself, excessive and inconstant,ready for devotion and for crime, violent in good and evil, heroic withstrange weaknesses, humble with sudden changes of mood, never vile withpremeditation like the roisterers of the Restoration, never rigid onprinciple like the Puritans of the Revolution, capable of weeping likechildren, and of dying like men, often base courtiers, more than oncetrue knights, displaying constantly, amidst all these contradictions ofbearing, only the overflowing of nature. Thus prepared, they could takein everything, sanguinary ferocity and refined generosity, the brutalityof shameless debauchery, and the most divine innocence of love, acceptall the characters, wantons and virgins, princes and mountebanks, passquickly from trivial buffoonery to lyrical sublimities, listenalternately to the quibbles of clowns and the songs of lovers. The dramaeven, in order to satisfy the prolixity of their nature, must take alltongues, pompous, inflated verse, loaded with imagery, and side by sidewith this vulgar prose; more than this, it must distort its natural styleand limits, put songs, poetical devices in the discourse of courtiers andthe speeches of statesmen; bring on the stage the fairy world of opera,as Middleton says, gnomes, nymphs of the land and sea, with their grovesand meadows; compel the gods to descend upon the stage, and hell itselfto furnish its world of marvels. No other theatre is so complicated, fornowhere else do we find men so complete."

M. Taine heightens this picture in generalizations splashed withinnumerable blood-red details of English life and character. The Englishis the most warlike race in Europe, most redoubtable in battle, mostimpatient of slavery. "English savages" is what Cellini calls them; andthe great shins of beef with which they fill themselves nourish the forceand ferocity of their instincts. To harden them thoroughly, institutionswork in the same groove as nature. The nation is armed. Every man is asoldier, bound to have arms according to his condition, to exercisehimself on Sundays and holidays. The State resembles an army; punishmentsmust inspire terror; the idea of war is ever present. Such instincts,such a history, raises before them with tragic severity the idea of life;death is at hand, wounds, blood, tortures. The fine purple cloaks, theholiday garments, elsewhere signs of gayety of mind, are stained withblood and bordered with black. Throughout a stern discipline, the axeready for every suspicion of treason; "great men, bishops, a chancellor,princes, the king's relations, queens, a protector kneeling in the straw,sprinkled the Tower with their blood; one after the other they marchedpast, stretched out their necks; the Duke of Buckingham, Queen AnneBoleyn, Queen Catherine Howard, the Earl of Surrey, Admiral Seymour, theDuke of Somerset, Lady Jane Grey and her husband, the Duke ofNorthumberland, the Earl of Essex, all on the throne, or on the steps ofthe throne, in the highest ranks of honor, beauty, youth, genius; of thebright procession nothing is left but senseless trunks, marred by thetender mercies of the executioner."

The gibbet stands by the highways, heads of traitors and criminals grinon the city gates. Mournful legends multiply, church-yard ghosts, walkingspirits. In the evening, before bedtime, in the vast country houses, inthe poor cottages, people talk of the coach which is seen drawn byheadless horses, with headless postilions and coachmen. All this, withunbounded luxury, unbridled debauchery, gloom, and revelry hand in hand."A threatening and sombre fog veils their mind like their sky, and joy,like the sun, pierces through it and upon them strongly and atintervals." All this riot of passion and frenzy of vigorous life, thismadness and sorrow, in which life is a phantom and destiny drives soremorselessly, Taine finds on the stage and in the literature of theperiod.

To do him justice, he finds something else, something that might give hima hint of the innate soundness of English life in its thousands of sweethomes, something of that great force of moral stability, in the midst ofall violence and excess of passion and performance, which makes a nationnoble. "Opposed to this band of tragic figures," which M. Taine arraysfrom the dramas, "with their contorted features, brazen fronts, combativeattitudes, is a troop (he says) of timid figures, tender beforeeverything, the most graceful and love-worthy whom it has been given toman to depict. In Shakespeare you will meet them in Miranda, Juliet,Desdemona, Virginia, Ophelia, Cordelia, Imogen; but they abound also inthe others; and it is a characteristic of the race to have furnishedthem, as it is of the drama to have represented them. By a singularcoincidence the women are more of women, the men more of men, here thanelsewhere. The two natures go to its extreme—in the one to boldness, thespirit of enterprise and resistance, the warlike, imperious, andunpolished character; in the other to sweetness, devotion, patience,inextinguishable affection (hence the happiness and strength of themarriage tie), a thing unknown in distant lands, and in France especiallya woman here gives herself without drawing back, and places her glory andduty in obedience, forgiveness, adoration, wishing, and pretending onlyto be melted and absorbed daily deeper and deeper in him whom she hasfreely and forever chosen." This is an old German instinct. The soul inthis race is at once primitive and serious. Women are disposed to followthe noble dream called duty. "Thus, supported by innocence andconscience, they introduce into love a profound and upright sentiment,abjure coquetry, vanity, and flirtation; they do not lie, they are notaffected. When they love they are not tasting a forbidden fruit, but arebinding themselves for their whole life. Thus understood, love becomesalmost a holy thing; the spectator no longer wishes to be malicious or tojest; women do not think of their own happiness, but of that of the lovedones; they aim not at pleasure, but at devotion."

Thus far M. Taine's brilliant antitheses—the most fascinating and mostdangerous model for a young writer. But we are indebted to him for a mostsuggestive study of the period. His astonishment, the astonishment of theGallic mind, at what he finds, is a measure of the difference in theliterature of the two races as an expression of their life. It wasnatural that he should somewhat exaggerate what he regards as the sourceof this expression, leaving out of view, as he does, certain great forcesand currents which an outside observer cannot feel as the race itselffeels. We look, indeed, for the local color of this English literature inthe manners and habits of the times, traits of which Taine has soskillfully made a mosaic from Harrison, Stubbes, Stowe, Holinshed, andthe pages of Reed and Drake; but we look for that which made it somethingmore than a mirror of contemporary manners, vices, and virtues, made itrepresentative of universal men, to other causes and forces-such as theReformation, the immense stir, energy, and ambition of the age (theresult of invention and discovery), newly awakened to the sense thatthere was a world to be won and made tributary; that England, and, aboveall places on the globe at that moment, London, was the centre of adisplay of energy and adventure such as has been scarcely paralleled inhistory. And underneath it all was the play of an uneasy, protestingdemocracy, eager to express itself in adventure, by changing itscondition, in the joy of living and overcoming, and in literature, withsmall regard for tradition or the unities.

When Shakespeare came up to London with his first poems in his pocket,the town was so great and full of marvels, and luxury, and entertainment,as to excite the astonishment of continental visitors. It swarmed withsoldiers, adventurers, sailors who were familiar with all seas and everyport, men with projects, men with marvelous tales. It teemed with schemesof colonization, plans of amassing wealth by trade, by commerce, byplanting, mining, fishing, and by the quick eye and the strong hand.Swaggering in the coffee-houses and ruffling it in the streets were themen who had sailed with Frobisher and Drake and Sir Humphrey Gilbert,Hawkins, and Sir Richard Granville; had perhaps witnessed the heroicdeath of Sir Philip Sidney, at Zutphen; had served with Raleigh in Anjou,Picardy, Languedoc, in the Netherlands, in the Irish civil war; had takenpart in the dispersion of the Spanish Armada, and in the bombardment ofCadiz; had filled their cups to the union of Scotland with England; hadsuffered shipwreck on the Barbary Coast, or had, by the fortune of war,felt the grip of the Spanish Inquisition; who could tell tales of themarvels seen in new-found America and the Indies, and, perhaps, likeCaptain John Smith, could mingle stories of the naive simplicity of thenatives beyond the Atlantic, with charming narratives of the wars inHungary, the beauties of the seraglio of the Grand Turk, and the barbaricpomp of the Khan of Tartary. There were those in the streets who wouldsee Raleigh go to the block on the scaffold in Old Palace Yard, who wouldfight against King Charles on the fields of Newbury or Naseby, Kineton orMarston Moor, and perchance see the exit of Charles himself from anotherscaffold erected over against the Banqueting House.

Although London at the accession of James I.(1603) had only about onehundred and fifty thousand inhabitants—the population of England thennumbering about five million—it was so full of life and activity thatFrederick, Duke of Wurtemberg, who saw it a few years before, in 1592,was impressed with it as a large, excellent, and mighty city of business,crowded with people buying and selling merchandise, and trading in almostevery corner of the world, a very populous city, so that one can scarcelypass along the streets on account of the throng; the inhabitants, hesays, are magnificently appareled, extremely proud and overbearing, whoscoff and laugh at foreigners, and no one dare oppose them lest thestreet boys and apprentices collect together in immense crowds and striketo right and left unmercifully without regard to persons.

There prevailed an insatiable curiosity for seeing strange sights andhearing strange adventures, with an eager desire for visiting foreigncountries, which Shakespeare and all the play-writers satirize.Conversation turned upon the wonderful discoveries of travelers, whosevoyages to the New World occupied much of the public attention. Theexaggeration which from love of importance inflated the narratives, thepoets also take note of. There was also a universal taste for hazard inmoney as well as in travel, for putting it out on risks at exorbitantinterest, and the habit of gaming reached prodigious excess. The passionfor sudden wealth was fired by the success of the sea-rovers, news ofwhich inflamed the imagination. Samuel Kiechel, a merchant of Ulm, whowas in London in 1585, records that, "news arrived of a Spanish shipcaptured by Drake, in which it was said there were two millions ofuncoined gold and silver in ingots, fifty thousand crowns in coinedreals, seven thousand hides, four chests of pearls, each containing twobushels, and some sacks of cochineal—the whole valued at twenty-fivebarrels of gold; it was said to be one year and a half's tribute fromPeru."

The passion for travel was at such a height that those who were unable toaccomplish distant journeys, but had only crossed over into France andItaly, gave themselves great airs on their return. "Farewell, monsieurtraveler," says Shakespeare; "look, you lisp, and wear strange suits;disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with yournativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are,or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola." The Londoners dearlyloved gossip, and indulged in exaggeration of speech and high-flowncompliment. One gallant says to another: "O, signior, the star thatgoverns my life is contentment; give me leave to interre myself in yourarms."—"Not so, sir, it is too unworthy an enclosure to contain suchpreciousness!"

Dancing was the daily occupation rather than the amusem*nt at court andelsewhere, and the names of dances exceeded the list of the virtues—suchas the French brawl, the pavon, the measure, the canary, and many underthe general titles of corantees, jigs, galliards, and fancies. At thedinner and ball given by James I. to Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Constableof Castile, in 1604, fifty ladies of honor, very elegantly dressed andextremely beautiful, danced with the noblemen and gentlemen. Prince Henrydanced a galliard with a lady, "with much sprightliness and modesty,cutting several capers in the course of the dance"; the Earl ofSouthampton led out the queen, and with three other couples danced abrando, and so on, the Spanish visitors looking on. When Elizabeth wasold and had a wrinkled face and black teeth, she was one day discoveredpracticing the dance step alone, to the sound of a fiddle, determined tokeep up to the last the limberness and agility necessary to impressforeign ambassadors with her grace and youth. There was one custom,however, that may have made dancing a labor of love: it was consideredill manners for the gentleman not to kiss his partner. Indeed, in allhouseholds and in all ranks of society the guest was expected to salutethus all the ladies a custom which the grave Erasmus, who was in Englandin the reign of Henry VIII., found not disagreeable.

Magnificence of display went hand in hand with a taste for cruel andbarbarous amusem*nts. At this same dinner to the Constable of Castile,the two buffets of the king and queen in the audience-chamber, where thebanquet was held, were loaded with plate of exquisite workmanship, richvessels of gold, agate, and other precious stones. The constable drank tothe king the health of the queen from the lid of a cup of agate ofextraordinary beauty and richness, set with diamonds and rubies, prayinghis majesty would condescend to drink the toast from the cup, which hedid accordingly, and then the constable directed that the cup shouldremain in his majesty's buffet. The constable also drank to the queen thehealth of the king from a very beautiful dragon-shaped cup of crystalgarnished with gold, drinking from the cover, and the queen, standing up,gave the pledge from the cup itself, and then the constable ordered thatthe cup should remain in the queen's buffet.

The banquet lasted three hours, when the cloth was removed, the table wasplaced upon the ground—that is, removed from the dais—and theirmajesties, standing upon it, washed their hands in basins, as did theothers. After the dinner was the ball, and that ended, they took theirplaces at the windows of a roam that looked out upon a square, where aplatform was raised and a vast crowd was assembled to see the king'sbears fight with greyhounds. This afforded great amusem*nt. Presently abull, tied to the end of a rope, was fiercely baited by dogs. After thistumblers danced upon a rope and performed feats of agility on horseback.The constable and his attendants were lighted home by half an hundredhalberdiers with torches, and, after the fatigues of the day, supped inprivate. We are not surprised to read that on Monday, the 30th, theconstable awoke with a slight attack of lumbago.

Like Elizabeth, all her subjects were fond of the savage pastime of bearand bull baiting. It cannot be denied that this people had a taste forblood, took delight in brutal encounters, and drew the sword and swungthe cudgel with great promptitude; nor were they fastidious in the matterof public executions. Kiechel says that when the criminal was driven inthe cart under the gallows, and left hanging by the neck as the cartmoved from under him, his friends and acquaintances pulled at his legs inorder that he might be strangled the sooner.

When Shakespeare was managing his theatres and writing his plays Londonwas full of foreigners, settled in the city, who no doubt formed part ofhis audience, for they thought that English players had attained greatperfection. In 1621 there were as many as ten thousand strangers inLondon, engaged in one hundred and twenty-one different trades. The poetneed not go far from Blackfriars to pick up scraps of German andfolk-lore, for the Hanse merchants were located in great numbers in theneighborhood of the steel-yard in Lower Thames Street.

Foreigners as well as contemporary chronicles and the printed diatribesagainst luxury bear witness to the profusion in all ranks of society andthe variety and richness in apparel. There was a rage for the display offine clothes. Elizabeth left hanging in her wardrobe above three thousanddresses when she was called to take that unseemly voyage down the stream,on which the clown's brogan jostles the queen's slipper. The plays ofShakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and of all the dramatists,are a perfect commentary on the fashions of the day, but a knowledge ofthe fashions is necessary to a perfect enjoyment of the plays. We see thefine lady in a gown of velvet (the foreigners thought it odd that velvetshould be worn in the street), or cloth of gold and silver tissue, herhair eccentrically dressed, and perhaps dyed, a great hat with wavingfeathers, sometimes a painted face, maybe a mask or a muffler hiding allthe features except the eyes, with a muff, silk stockings, high-heeledshoes, imitated from the "chopine" of Venice, perfumed bracelets,necklaces, and gloves—"gloves sweet as damask roses"—apocket-handkerchief wrought in gold and silver, a small looking-glasspendant at the girdle, and a love-lock hanging wantonly over theshoulder, artificial flowers at the corsage, and a mincing step. "Thesefashionable women, when they are disappointed, dissolve into tears, weepwith one eye, laugh with the other, or, like children, laugh and cry theycan both together, and as much pity is to be taken of a woman weeping asof a goose going barefoot," says old Burton.

The men had even greater fondness for finery. Paul Hentzner, theBrandenburg jurist, in 1598, saw, at the Fair at St. Bartholomew, thelord mayor, attended by twelve gorgeous aldermen, walk in a neighboringfield, dressed in a scarlet gown, and about his neck a golden chain, towhich hung a Golden Fleece. Men wore the hair long and flowing, with highhats and plumes of feathers, and carried muffs like the women; gallantssported gloves on their hats as tokens of ladies' favors, jewels androses in the ears, a long love-lock under the left ear, and gems in aribbon round the neck. This tall hat was called a "capatain." Vincentio,in the "Taming of the Shrew," exclaims: "O fine villain! A silkendoublet! A velvet hose! A scarlet cloak! And a capatain hat!" There wasno limit to the caprice and extravagance. Hose and breeches of silk,velvet, or other rich stuff, and fringed garters wrought of gold orsilver, worth five pounds apiece, are some of the items noted. Burtonsays, "'Tis ordinary for a gallant to put a thousand oaks and an hundredoxen into a suit of apparel, to wear a whole manor on his back." Evenserving-men and tailors wore jewels in their shoes.

We should note also the magnificence in the furnishing of houses, thearras, tapestries, cloth of gold and silver, silk hangings of manycolors, the splendid plate on the tables and sideboards. Even in thehouses of the middle classes the furniture was rich and comfortable, andthere was an air of amenity in the chambers and parlors strewn with sweetherbs and daily decked with pretty nosegays and fragrant flowers. Lightswere placed on antique candelabra, or, wanting these at suppers, therewere living candleholders. "Give me a torch," says Romeo; "I'll be acandle-holder, and look on." Knowledge of the details of luxury of anEnglish home of the sixteenth century will make exceedingly vivid hostsof allusions in Shakespeare.

Servants were numerous in great households, a large retinue being a markof gentility, and hospitality was unbounded. During the lord mayor's termin London he kept open house, and every day any stranger or foreignercould dine at his table, if he could find an empty seat. Dinner, servedat eleven in the early years of James, attained a degree of epicureanismrivaling dinners of the present day, although the guests ate with theirfingers or their knives, forks not coming in till 1611. There was mightyeating and swigging at the banquets, and carousing was carried to anextravagant height, if we may judge by the account of an orgy at theking's palace in 1606, for the delectation of the King and Queen ofDenmark, when the company and even their majesties abandoned discretionand sobriety, and "the ladies are seen to roll about in intoxication."

The manners of the male population of the period, says Nathan Drake, seemto have been compounded from the characters of the two sovereigns. LikeElizabeth, they are brave, magnanimous, and prudent; and sometimes, likeJames, they are credulous, curious, and dissipated. The credulity andsuperstition of the age, and its belief in the supernatural, and thesumptuousness of masques and pageants at the court and in the city, ofwhich we read so much in the old chronicles, are abundantly reflected inthe pages of Jonson, Shakespeare, and other writers.

The town was full of public-houses and pleasure-gardens, but, curiouslyenough, the favorite place of public parading was the middle aisle of St.Paul's Cathedral—"Paul's Walk," as it was called—which was dailyfrequented by nobles, gentry, perfumed gallants, and ladies, from ten totwelve and three to six o'clock, to talk on business, politics, orpleasure. Hither came, to acquire the fashions, make assignations,arrange for the night's gaming, or shun the bailiff, the gallant, thegamester, the ladies whose dresses were better than their manners, thestale knight, the captain out of service. Here Falstaff purchasedBardolph. "I bought him," say's the knight, "at Paul's." The tailors wentthere to get the fashions of dress, as the gallants did to display them,one suit before dinner and another after. What a study was this varied,mixed, flaunting life, this dance of pleasure and license before the veryaltar of the church, for the writers of satire, comedy, and tragedy!

But it is not alone town life and court life and the society of the finefolk that is reflected in the English drama and literature of theseventeenth century, and here is another wide difference between it andthe French literature of the same period; rural England and the popularlife of the country had quite as much to do in giving tone and color tothe writings of the time. It is necessary to know rural England to enterinto the spirit of this literature, and to appreciate how thoroughly ittook hold of life in every phase. Shakespeare knew it well. He drew fromlife the country gentleman, the squire, the parson, the pedanticschoolmaster who was regarded as half conjurer, the yeoman or farmer, thedairy maids, the sweet English girls, the country louts, shepherds,boors, and fools. How he loved a fool! He had talked with all thesepersons, and knew their speeches and humors. He had taken part in thecountry festivals-May Day, Plow Monday, the Sheep Shearing, the MorrisDances and Maud Marian, the Harvest Home and Twelfth Night. The rusticmerrymakings, the feasts in great halls, the games on the greensward, thelove of wonders and of marvelous tales, the regard for portents, thenaive superstitions of the time pass before us in his pages. Drake, inhis "Shakespeare and his Times," gives a graphic and indeed charmingpicture of the rural life of this century, drawn from Harrison and othersources.

In his spacious hall, floored with stones and lighted by large transomwindows, hung with coats of mail and helmets, and all militaryaccoutrements, long a prey to rust, the country squire, seated at araised table at one end, held a baronial state and dispensed prodigalhospitality. The long table was divided into upper and lower messes by ahuge salt-cellar; and the consequence of the guests was marked by theirseats above or below the salt. The distinction extended to the fare, forwine frequently circulated only above the salt, and below it the food wasof coarser quality. The literature of the time is full of allusions tothis distinction. But the luxury of the table and good cooking were wellunderstood in the time of Elizabeth and James. There was massive eatingdone in those days, when the guests dined at eleven, rose from thebanquet to go to evening prayers, and returned to a supper at five orsix, which was often as substantial as the dinner. Gervase Markham in his"English Housewife," after treating of the ordering of great feasts,gives directions for "a more humble feast of an ordinary proportion."This "humble feast," he says, should consist for the first course of"sixteen full dishes, that is, dishes of meat that are of substance, andnot empty, or for shew—as thus, for example: first, a shield of brawnwith mustard; secondly, a boyl'd capon; thirdly, a boyl'd piece of beef;fourthly, a chine of beef rosted; fifthly, a neat's tongue rosted;sixthly, a pig rosted; seventhly, chewets bak'd; eighthly, a gooserosted; ninthly, a swan rosted; tenthly, a turkey rosted; the eleventh, ahaunch of venison rosted; the twelfth, a pasty of venison; thethirteenth, a kid with a pudding in the belly; the fourteenth, anolive-pye; the fifteenth, a couple of capons; the sixteenth, a custard ordowsets. Now to these full dishes may be added sallets, fricases,'quelque choses,' and devised paste; as many dishes more as will make noless than two and thirty dishes, which is as much as can convenientlystand on one table, and in one mess; and after this manner you mayproportion both your second and third course, holding fullness on onehalf the dishes, and shew in the other, which will be both frugal in thesplendor, contentment to the guest, and much pleasure and delight to thebeholders." After this frugal repast it needed an interval of prayersbefore supper.

The country squire was a long-lived but not always an intellectualanimal. He kept hawks of all kinds, and all sorts of hounds that ranbuck, fox, hare, otter, and badger. His great hall was commonly strewnwith marrow-bones, and full of hawks' perches, of hounds, spaniels, andterriers. His oyster-table stood at one end of the room, and oysters heate at dinner and supper. At the upper end of the room stood a smalltable with a double desk, one side of which held a church Bible, theother Fox's "Book of Martyrs." He drank a glass or two of wine at hismeals, put syrup of gilly-flower in his sack, and always had a tun-glassof small beer standing by him, which he often stirred about withrosemary. After dinner, with a glass of ale by his side he improved hismind by listening to the reading of a choice passage out of the "Book ofMartyrs."

This is a portrait of one Henry Hastings, of Dorsetshire, in Gilpin's"Forest Scenery." He lived to be a hundred, and never lost his sight norused spectacles. He got on horseback without help, and rode to the deathof the stag till he was past fourscore.

The plain country fellow, plowman, or clown, is several pegs lower, anddescribed by Bishop Earle as one that manures his ground well, but letshimself lie fallow and untitled. His hand guides the plow, and the plowhis thoughts. His mind is not much disturbed by objects, but he can fix ahalf-hour's contemplation on a good fat cow. His habitation is under apoor thatched roof, distinguished from his barn only by loop-holes thatlet out the smoke. Dinner is serious work, for he sweats at it as much asat his labor, and he is a terrible fastener on a piece of beef. Hisreligion is a part of his copyhold, which he takes from his landlord andrefers it wholly to his discretion, but he is a good Christian in hisway, that is, he comes to church in his best clothes, where he is capableonly of two prayers—for rain and fair weather.

The country clergymen, at least those of the lower orders, or readers,were distinguished in Shakespeare's time by the appellation "Sir," as SirHugh, in the "Merry Wives," Sir Topas, in "Twelfth Night," Sir Oliver, in"As You Like It." The distinction is marked between priesthood andknighthood when Vista says, "I am one that would rather go with SirPriest than Sir Knight." The clergy were not models of conduct in thedays of Elizabeth, but their position excites little wonder when we readthat they were often paid less than the cook and the minstrel.

There was great fondness in cottage and hall for merry tales of errantknights, lovers, lords, ladies, dwarfs, friars, thieves, witches,goblins, for old stories told by the fireside, with a toast of ale on thehearth, as in Milton's allusion

"—-to the nut-brown ale, With stories told of many a feat"

A designation of winter in "Love's Labour's Lost" is

"When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl."

To "turne a crab" is to roast a wild apple in the fire in order to throwit hissing hot into a bowl of nutbrown ale, into which had been put atoast with some spice and sugar. Puck describes one of his wanton pranks:

"And sometimes I lurk in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks against her lips I bob:"

I love no roast, says John Still, in "Gammer Gurton's Needle,"

"I love no rost, but a nut-browne torte,
And a crab layde in the fyre;
A lytle bread shall do me stead,
Much bread I not desire."

In the bibulous days of Shakespeare, the peg tankard, a species ofwassail or wish-health bowl, was still in use. Introduced to restrainintemperance, it became a cause of it, as every drinker was obliged todrink down to the peg. We get our expression of taking a man "a peglower," or taking him "down a peg," from this custom.

In these details I am not attempting any complete picture of the rurallife at this time, but rather indicating by illustrations the sort ofstudy which illuminates its literature. We find, indeed, if we go belowthe surface of manners, sober, discreet, and sweet domestic life, and anappreciation of the virtues. Of the English housewife, says GervaseMarkham, was not only expected sanctity and holiness of life, but "greatmodesty and temperance, as well outwardly as inwardly. She must be ofchaste thoughts, stout courage, patient, untired, watchful, diligent,witty, pleasant, constant in friendship, full of good neighborhood, wisein discourse, but not frequent therein, sharp and quick of speech, butnot bitter or talkative, secret in her affairs, comportable in hercounsels, and generally skillful in the worthy knowledges which do belongto her vocation." This was the mistress of the hospitable house of thecountry knight, whose chief traits were loyalty to church and state, alove of festivity, and an ardent attachment to field sports. Hiswell-educated daughter is charmingly described in an exquisite poem byDrayton:

He had, as antique stories tell,

He had, as antique stories tell,
A daughter cleaped Dawsabel,
A maiden fair and free;
And for she was her father's heir,
Full well she ycond the leir
Of mickle courtesy.

"The silk well couth she twist and twine,
And make the fine march-pine,
And with the needle work:
And she couth help the priest to say
His matins on a holy day,
And sing a psalm in Kirk.

"She wore a frock of frolic green
Might well become a maiden queen,
Which seemly was to see;
A hood to that so neat and fine,
In color like the columbine,
Ywrought full featously.

"Her features all as fresh above
As is the grass that grows by Dove,
And lythe as lass of Kent.
Her skin as soft as Lemster wool,
As white as snow on Peakish Hull,
Or swan that swims in Trent.

"This maiden in a morn betime
Went forth when May was in the prime
To get sweet setywall,
The honey-suckle, the harlock,
The lily, and the lady-smock,
To deck her summer hall."

How late such a simple and pretty picture could have been drawn to lifeis uncertain, but by the middle of the seventeenth century the luxury ofthe town had penetrated the country, even into Scotland. The dress of arich farmer's wife is thus described by Dunbar. She had "a robe of finescarlet, with a white hood, a gay purse and gingling keys pendant at herside from a silken belt of silver tissue; on each finger she wore tworings, and round her waist was bound a sash of grass-green silk, richlyembroidered with silver."

Shakespeare was the mirror of his time in things small as well as great.How far he drew his characters from personal acquaintances has often beendiscussed. The clowns, tinkers, shepherds, tapsters, and such folk, heprobably knew by name. In the Duke of Manchester's "Court and Societyfrom Elizabeth to Anne" is a curious suggestion about Hamlet. Readingsome letters from Robert, Earl of Essex, to Lady Rich, his sister, thehandsome, fascinating, and disreputable Penelope Devereaux, he notes, intheir humorous melancholy and discontent with mankind, something in toneand even language which suggests the weak and fantastic side of Hamlet'smind, and asks if the poet may not have conceived his character of Hamletfrom Essex, and of Horatio from Southampton, his friend and patron. Andhe goes on to note some singular coincidences. Essex was supposed by manyto have a good title to the throne. In person he had his father's beautyand was all that Shakespeare has described the Prince of Denmark. Hismother had been tempted from her duty while her noble and generoushusband was alive, and this husband was supposed to have been poisoned byher and her paramour. After the father's murder the seducer had marriedthe guilty mother. The father had not perished without expressingsuspicion of foul play against himself, yet sending his forgiveness tohis faithless wife. There are many other agreements in the facts of thecase and the incidents of the play. The relation of Claudius to Hamlet isthe same as that of Leicester to Essex: under pretense of fatherlyfriendship he was suspicious of his motives, jealous of his actions; kepthim much in the country and at college; let him see little of his mother,and clouded his prospects in the world by an appearance of benignantfavor. Gertrude's relations with her son Hamlet were much like those ofLettice with Robert Devereaux. Again, it is suggested, in his moodiness,in his college learning, in his love for the theatre and the players, inhis desire for the fiery action for which his nature was most unfit,there are many kinds of hints calling up an image of the Danish Prince.

This suggestion is interesting in the view that we find in the charactersof the Elizabethan drama not types and qualities, but individualsstrongly projected, with all their idiosyncrasies and contradictions.These dramas touch our sympathies at all points, and are representativeof human life today, because they reflected the human life of their time.This is supremely true of Shakespeare, and almost equally true of Jonsonand many of the other stars of that marvelous epoch. In England as wellas in France, as we have said, it was the period of the classic revival;but in England the energetic reality of the time was strong enough tobreak the classic fetters, and to use classic learning for modernpurposes. The English dramatists, like the French, used classic historiesand characters. But two things are to be noted in their use of them.First, that the characters and the play of mind and passion in them arethoroughly English and of the modern time. And second, and this seems atfirst a paradox, they are truer to the classic spirit than the charactersin the contemporary French drama. This results from the fact that theyare truer to the substance of things, to universal human nature, whilethe French seem to be in great part an imitation, having root neither inthe soil of France nor Attica. M. Guizot confesses that France, in orderto adopt the ancient models, was compelled to limit its field in somesort to one corner of human existence. He goes on to say that the present"demands of the drama pleasures and emotions that can no longer besupplied by the inanimate representation of a world that has ceased toexist. The classic system had its origin in the life of the time; thattime has passed away; its image subsists in brilliant colors in itsworks, but can no more be reproduced." Our own literary monuments mustrest on other ground. "This ground is not the ground of Corneille orRacine, nor is it that of Shakespeare; it is our own; but Shakespeare'ssystem, as it appears to me, may furnish the plans according to whichgenius ought now to work. This system alone includes all those socialconditions and those general and diverse feelings, the simultaneousconjuncture and activity of which constitute for us at the present daythe spectacle of human things."

That is certainly all that any one can claim for Shakespeare and hisfellow-dramatists. They cannot be models in form any more than Sophoclesand Euripides; but they are to be followed in making the drama, or anyliterature, expressive of its own time, while it is faithful to theemotions and feeling of universal human nature. And herein, it seems tome, lies the broad distinction between most of the English and Frenchliterature of the latter part of the sixteenth and the beginning of theseventeenth centuries. Perhaps I may be indulged in another observationon this topic, touching a later time. Notwithstanding the prevalentnotion that the French poets are the sympathetic heirs of classicculture, it appears to me that they are not so imbued with the trueclassic spirit, art, and mythology as some of our English poets, notablyKeats and Shelley.

Ben Jonson was a man of extensive and exact classical erudition; he was asolid scholar in the Greek and Roman literatures, in the works of thephilosophers, poets, and historians. He was also a man of uncommonattainments in all the literary knowledge of his time. In some of histragedies his classic learning was thought to be ostentatiouslydisplayed, but this was not true of his comedy, and on the whole he wastoo strong to be swamped in pseudo-classicism. For his experience of menand of life was deep and varied. Before he became a public actor anddramatist, and served the court and fashionable society with hisentertaining, if pedantic, masques, he had been student, tradesman, andsoldier; he had traveled in Flanders and seen Paris, and wandered on footthrough the length of England. London he knew as well as a man knows hisown house and club, the comforts of its taverns, the revels of lords andladies, the sports of Bartholomew Fair, and the humors of suburbanvillages; all the phases, language, crafts, professions of high and lowcity life were familiar to him. And in his comedies, as Mr. A. W. Wardpertinently says, his marvelously vivid reproduction of manners isunsurpassed by any of his contemporaries. "The age lives in his men andwomen, his country gulls and town gulls, his imposters and skelderingcaptains, his court ladies and would-be court ladies, his pulingpoetasters and whining Puritans, and, above all, in the whole ragamuffinrout of his Bartholomew Fair. Its pastimes, fashionable andunfashionable, its games and vapors and jeering, its high-politecourtships and its pulpit-shows, its degrading superstitions andconfounding hallucinations, its clubs of naughty ladies and its officesof lying news, its taverns and its tobacco shops, its giddy heights andits meanest depths—all are brought before us by our author."

No, he was not swamped by classicism, but he was affected by it, and justhere, and in that self-consciousness which Shakespeare was free from, andwhich may have been more or less the result of his classic erudition, hefails of being one of the universal poets of mankind. The genius ofShakespeare lay in his power to so use the real and individual facts oflife as to raise in the minds of his readers a broader and noblerconception of human life than they had conceived before. This is creativegenius; this is the idealist dealing faithfully with realistic material;this is, as we should say in our day, the work of the artist asdistinguished from the work of the photographer. It may be an admirablebut it is not the highest work of the sculptor, the painter, or thewriter, that does not reveal to the mind—that comes into relation withit something before out of his experience and beyond the facts eitherbrought before him or with which he is acquainted.

What influence Shakespeare had upon the culture and taste of his own timeand upon his immediate audience would be a most interesting inquiry. Weknow what his audiences were. He wrote for the people, and the theatre inhis day was a popular amusem*nt for the multitude, probably more than itwas a recreation for those who enjoyed the culture of letters. A tastefor letters was prevalent among the upper class, and indeed wasfashionable among both ladies and gentlemen of rank. In this the court ofElizabeth set the fashion. The daughter of the duch*ess was taught notonly to distill strong waters, but to construe Greek. When the queen wastranslating Socrates or Seneca, the maids of honor found it convenient toaffect at least a taste for the classics. For the nobleman and thecourtier an intimacy with Greek, Latin, and Italian was essential to"good form." But the taste for erudition was mainly confined to themetropolis or the families who frequented it, and to persons of rank, anddid not pervade the country or the middle classes. A few of the countrygentry had some pretension to learning, but the majority cared littleexcept for hawks and hounds, gaming and drinking; and if they read it wassome old chronicle, or story of knightly adventure, "Amadis de Gaul," ora stray playbook, or something like the "History of Long Meg ofWestminster," or perhaps a sheet of news. To read and write were stillrare accomplishments in the country, and Dogberry expressed a commonnotion when he said reading and writing come by nature. Sheets of newshad become common in the town in James's time, the first newspaper beingthe English Mercury, which appeared in April, 1588, and furnished foodfor Jonson's satire in his "Staple of News." His accusation has afamiliar sound when he says that people had a "hunger and thirst afterpublished pamphlets of news, set out every Saturday, but made all athome, and no syllable of truth in them."

Though Elizabeth and James were warm patrons of the theatre, the courthad no such influence over the plays and players as had the court inParis at the same period. The theatres were built for the people, and theaudiences included all classes. There was a distinction between what werecalled public and private theatres, but the public frequented both. TheShakespeare theatres, at which his plays were exclusively performed, werethe Globe, called public, on the Bankside, and the Blackfriars, calledprivate, on the City side, the one for summer, the other for winterperformances. The Blackfriars was smaller than the Globe, was roofedover, and needed to be lighted with candles, and was frequented more bythe better class than the more popular Globe. There is no evidence thatElizabeth ever attended the public theatres, but the companies were oftensummoned to play before her in Whitehall, where the appointments andscenery were much better than in the popular houses.

The price of general admission to the Globe and Blackfriars was sixpence,at the Fashion Theatre twopence, and at some of the inferior theatres onepenny. The boxes at the Globe were a shilling, at the Blackfriarsone-and-six. The usual net receipts of a performance were from nine toten pounds, and this was about the sum that Elizabeth paid to companiesfor a performance at Whitehall, which was always in the evening and didnot interfere with regular hours. The theatres opened as early as oneo'clock and not later than three in the afternoon. The crowds that filledthe pit and galleries early, to secure places, amused themselvesvariously before the performance began: they drank ale, smoked, foughtfor apples, cracked nuts, chaffed the boxes, and a few read the cheappublications of the day that were hawked in the theatre. It was a roughand unsavory audience in pit and gallery, but it was a responsive one,and it enjoyed the acting with little help to illusion in the way ofscenery. In fact, scenery did not exist, as we understand it. A boardinscribed with the name of the country or city indicated the scene ofaction. Occasionally movable painted scenes were introduced. The interiorroof of the stage was painted sky-blue, or hung with drapery of thattint, to represent the heavens. But when the idea of a dark, starlessnight was to be imposed, or tragedy was to be acted, these heavens werehung with black stuffs, a custom illustrated in many allusions inShakespeare, like that in the line,

"Hung be the heavens in black, yield day to night"

To hang the stage with black was to prepare it for tragedy. The costumesof the players were sometimes less nigg*rdly than the furnishing of thestage, for it was an age of rich and picturesque apparel, and it was notdifficult to procure the cast-off clothes of fine gentlemen for stageuse. But there was no lavishing of expense. I am recalling these detailsto show that the amusem*nt was popular and cheap. The ordinary actors,including the boys and men who took women's parts (for women did notappear on the stage till after the Restoration) received only about fiveor six shillings a week (for Sundays and all), and the first-class actor,who had a share in the net receipts, would not make more than ninetypounds a year. The ordinary price paid for a new play was less than sevenpounds; Oldys, on what authority is not known, says that Shakespearereceived only five pounds for "Hamlet."

The influence of the theatre upon politics, contemporary questions thatinterested the public, and morals, was early recognized in the restraintsput upon representations by the censorship, and in the floods of attacksupon its licentious and demoralizing character. The plays of Shakespearedid not escape the most bitter animadversions of the moral reformers. Wehave seen how Shakespeare mirrored his age, but we have less means ofascertaining what effect he produced upon the life of his time. Untilafter his death his influence was mainly direct, upon the play-goers, andconfined to his auditors. He had been dead seven years before his playswere collected. However the people of his day regarded him, it is safe tosay that they could not have had any conception of the importance of thework he was doing. They were doubtless satisfied with him. It was a greatage for romances and story-telling, and he told stories, old in newdresses, but he was also careful to use contemporary life, which hishearers understood.

It is not to his own age, but to those following, and especially to ourown time, that we are to look for the shaping and enormous influence uponhuman life of the genius of this poet. And it is measured not by thelibraries of comments that his works have called forth, but by theprevalence of the language and thought of his poetry in all subsequentliterature, and by its entrance into the current of common thought andspeech. It may be safely said that the English-speaking world and almostevery individual of it are different from what they would have been ifShakespeare had never lived. Of all the forces that have survived out ofhis creative time, he is one of the chief.

By Charles Dudley Warner

INTRODUCTORY SKETCH

The title naturally suggested for this story was "A Dead Soul," but itwas discarded because of the similarity to that of the famous novel byNikolai Gogol—"Dead Souls"—though the motive has nothing in common withthat used by the Russian novelist. Gogol exposed an extensive fraudpracticed by the sale, in connection with lands, of the names of "serfs"(called souls) not living, or "dead souls."

This story is an attempt to trace the demoralization in a woman's soul ofcertain well-known influences in our existing social life. In no otherway could certain phases of our society be made to appear so distinctlyas when reflected in the once pure mirror of a woman's soul.

The character of Margaret is the portrait of no one woman. But it wassuggested by the career of two women (among others less marked) who hadbegun life with the highest ideals, which had been gradually eaten awayand destroyed by "prosperous" marriages and association with unscrupulousmethods of acquiring money.

The deterioration was gradual. The women were in all outward conductunchanged, the conventionalities of life were maintained, the graces werenot lost, the observances of the duties of charities and of religion wereeven emphasized, but worldliness had eaten the heart out of them, andthey were "dead souls." The tragedy of the withered life was athousand-fold enhanced by the external show of prosperous respectability.

The story was first published (in 1888) in Harper's Monthly. During itsprogress—and it was printed as soon as each installment was ready (avery poor plan)—I was in receipt of the usual letters of sympathy, orprotest, and advice. One sympathetic missive urged the removal ofMargaret to a neighboring city, where she could be saved by being broughtunder special Christian influences. The transfer, even in a serial, wasimpossible, and she by her own choice lived the life she had enteredupon.

And yet, if the reader will pardon the confidence, pity intervened toshorten it. I do not know how it is with other writers, but the personsthat come about me in a little drama are as real as those I meet inevery-day life, and in this case I found it utterly impossible to go onto what might have been the bitter, logical development of Margaret'scareer. Perhaps it was as well. Perhaps the writer should have nodespotic power over his creations, however slight they are. He mayprofitably recall the dictum of a recent essayist that "there is nolimit to the mercy of God."

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.

Hartford, August 11, 1899.

A LITTLE JOURNEY IN THE WORLD

I

We were talking about the want of diversity in American life, the lack ofsalient characters. It was not at a club. It was a spontaneous talk ofpeople who happened to be together, and who had fallen into anuncompelled habit of happening to be together. There might have been aclub for the study of the Want of Diversity in American Life. The memberswould have been obliged to set apart a stated time for it, to attend as aduty, and to be in a mood to discuss this topic at a set hour in thefuture. They would have mortgaged another precious portion of the littletime left us for individual life. It is a suggestive thought that at agiven hour all over the United States innumerable clubs might beconsidering the Want of Diversity in American Life. Only in this way,according to our present methods, could one expect to accomplish anythingin regard to this foreign-felt want. It seems illogical that we couldproduce diversity by all doing the same thing at the same time, but weknow the value of congregate effort. It seems to superficial observersthat all Americans are born busy. It is not so. They are born with a fearof not being busy; and if they are intelligent and in circ*mstances ofleisure, they have such a sense of their responsibility that they hastento allot all their time into portions, and leave no hour unprovided for.This is conscientiousness in women, and not restlessness. There is a dayfor music, a day for painting, a day for the display of tea-gowns, a dayfor Dante, a day for the Greek drama, a day for the Dumb Animals' AidSociety, a day for the Society for the Propagation of Indians, and so on.When the year is over, the amount that has been accomplished by thisincessant activity can hardly be estimated. Individually it may not bemuch. But consider where Chaucer would be but for the work of the Chaucerclubs, and what an effect upon the universal progress of things isproduced by the associate concentration upon the poet of so many minds.

A cynic says that clubs and circles are for the accumulation ofsuperficial information and unloading it on others, without muchindividual absorption in anybody. This, like all cynicism, contains onlya half-truth, and simply means that the general diffusion ofhalf-digested information does not raise the general level ofintelligence, which can only be raised to any purpose by thoroughself-culture, by assimilation, digestion, meditation. The busy bee is afavorite simile with us, and we are apt to overlook the fact that theleast important part of his example is buzzing around. If the hive simplygot together and buzzed, or even brought unrefined treacle from somecyclopaedia, let us say, of treacle, there would be no honey added to thegeneral store.

It occurred to some one in this talk at last to deny that there was thistiresome monotony in American life. And this put a new face on thediscussion. Why should there be, with every race under the heavensrepresented here, and each one struggling to assert itself, and nohom*ogeneity as yet established even between the people of the oldestStates? The theory is that democracy levels, and that the anxious pursuitof a common object, money, tends to uniformity, and that facility ofcommunication spreads all over the land the same fashion in dress; andrepeats everywhere the same style of house, and that the public schoolsgive all the children in the United States the same superficialsmartness. And there is a more serious notion, that in a society withoutclasses there is a sort of tyranny of public opinion which crushes outthe play of individual peculiarities, without which human intercourse isuninteresting. It is true that a democracy is intolerant of variationsfrom the general level, and that a new society allows less latitude ineccentricities to its members than an old society.

But with all these allowances, it is also admitted that the difficultythe American novelist has is in hitting upon what is universally acceptedas characteristic of American life, so various are the types in regionswidely separated from each other, such different points of view are hadeven in conventionalities, and conscience operates so variously on moralproblems in one community and another. It is as impossible for onesection to impose upon another its rules of taste and propriety inconduct—and taste is often as strong to determine conduct as principle—as it is to make its literature acceptable to the other. If in the landof the sun and the jasmine and the alligator and the fig, the literatureof New England seems passionless and timid in face of the ruling emotionsof life, ought we not to thank Heaven for the diversity of temperament aswell as of climate which will in the long-run save us from that samenessinto which we are supposed to be drifting?

When I think of this vast country with any attention to localdevelopments I am more impressed with the unlikenesses than with theresemblances. And besides this, if one had the ability to draw to thelife a single individual in the most hom*ogeneous community, the productwould be sufficiently startling. We cannot flatter ourselves, therefore,that under equal laws and opportunities we have rubbed out the salienciesof human nature. At a distance the mass of the Russian people seem asmonotonous as their steppes and their commune villages, but the Russiannovelists find characters in this mass perfectly individualized, and,indeed, give us the impression that all Russians are irregular polygons.Perhaps if our novelists looked at individuals as intently, they mightgive the world the impression that social life here is as unpleasant asit appears in the novels to be in Russia.

This is partly the substance of what was said one winter evening beforethe wood fire in the library of a house in Brandon, one of the lesser NewEngland cities. Like hundreds of residences of its kind, it stood in thesuburbs, amid forest-trees, commanding a view of city spires and towerson the one hand, and on the other of a broken country of clustering treesand cottages, rising towards a range of hills which showed purple andwarm against the pale straw-color of the winter sunsets. The charm of thesituation was that the house was one of many comfortable dwellings, eachisolated, and yet near enough together to form a neighborhood; that is tosay, a body of neighbors who respected each other's privacy, and yetflowed together, on occasion, without the least conventionality. And areal neighborhood, as our modern life is arranged, is becoming more andmore rare.

I am not sure that the talkers in this conversation expressed their real,final sentiments, or that they should be held accountable for what theysaid. Nothing so surely kills the freedom of talk as to have somematter-of-fact person instantly bring you to book for some impulsiveremark flashed out on the instant, instead of playing with it and tossingit about in a way that shall expose its absurdity or show its value.Freedom is lost with too much responsibility and seriousness, and thetruth is more likely to be struck out in a lively play of assertion andretort than when all the words and sentiments are weighed. A person verylikely cannot tell what he does think till his thoughts are exposed tothe air, and it is the bright fallacies and impulsive, rash ventures inconversation that are often most fruitful to talker and listeners. Thetalk is always tame if no one dares anything. I have seen the mostpromising paradox come to grief by a simple "Do you think so?" Nobody, Isometimes think, should be held accountable for anything said in privateconversation, the vivacity of which is in a tentative play about thesubject. And this is a sufficient reason why one should repudiate anyprivate conversation reported in the newspapers. It is bad enough to beheld fast forever to what one writes and prints, but to shackle a manwith all his flashing utterances, which may be put into his mouth by someimp in the air, is intolerable slavery. A man had better be silent if hecan only say today what he will stand by tomorrow, or if he may notlaunch into the general talk the whim and fancy of the moment. Racy,entertaining talk is only exposed thought, and no one would hold a manresponsible for the thronging thoughts that contradict and displace eachother in his mind. Probably no one ever actually makes up his mind untilhe either acts or puts out his conclusion beyond his recall. Why shouldone be debarred the privilege of pitching his crude ideas into aconversation where they may have a chance of being precipitated?

I remember that Morgan said in this talk that there was too muchdiversity. "Almost every church has trouble with it—the different socialconditions."

An Englishman who was present pricked-up his ears at this, as if heexpected to obtain a note on the character of Dissenters. "I thought allthe churches here were organized on social affinities?" he inquired.

"Oh, no; it is a good deal a matter of vicinage. When there is areal-estate extension, a necessary part of the plan is to build a churchin the centre of it, in order to—"

"I declare, Page," said Mrs. Morgan, "you'll give Mr. Lyon a totallyerroneous notion. Of course there must be a church convenient to theworshipers in every district."

"That is just what I was saying, my dear: As the settlement is not drawntogether on religious grounds, but perhaps by purely worldly motives, theelements that meet in the church are apt to be socially incongruous, suchas cannot always be fused even by a church-kitchen and a church-parlor."

"Then it isn't the peculiarity of the church that has attracted to itworshipers who would naturally come together, but the church is aneighborhood necessity?" still further inquired Mr. Lyon.

"All is," I ventured to put in, "that churches grow up like schoolhouses,where they are wanted."

"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Morgan; "I'm talking about the kind of wantthat creates them. If it's the same that builds a music hall, or agymnasium, or a railway waiting-room, I've nothing more to say."

"Is it your American idea, then, that a church ought to be formed only ofpeople socially agreeable together?" asked the Englishman.

"I have no American idea. I am only commenting on facts; but one of themis that it is the most difficult thing in the world to reconcilereligious association with the real or artificial claims of social life."

"I don't think you try much," said Mrs. Morgan, who carried along hertraditional religious observance with grateful admiration of her husband.

Mr. Page Morgan had inherited money, and a certain advantageous positionfor observing life and criticising it, humorously sometimes, and withoutany serious intention of disturbing it. He had added to his fair fortuneby marrying the daintily reared daughter of a cotton-spinner, and he hadenough to do in attending meetings of directors and looking out for hisinvestments to keep him from the operation of the State law regardingvagrants, and give greater social weight to his opinions than if he hadbeen compelled to work for his maintenance. The Page Morgans had been agood deal abroad, and were none the worse Americans for having come incontact with the knowledge that there are other peoples who arereasonably prosperous and happy without any of our advantages.

"It seems to me," said Mr. Lyon, who was always in the conversationalattitude of wanting to know, "that you Americans are disturbed by thenotion that religion ought to produce social equality."

Mr. Lyon had the air of conveying the impression that this question wassettled in England, and that America was interesting on account ofnumerous experiments of this sort. This state of mind was not offensiveto his interlocutors, because they were accustomed to it in transatlanticvisitors. Indeed, there was nothing whatever offensive, and littledefensive, in Mr. John Lyon. What we liked in him, I think, was hissimple acceptance of a position that required neither explanation norapology—a social condition that banished a sense of his own personality,and left him perfectly free to be absolutely truthful. Though an eldestson and next in succession to an earldom, he was still young. Fresh fromOxford and South Africa and Australia and British Columbia he had come tostudy the States with a view of perfecting himself for his duties as alegislator for the world when he should be called to the House of Peers.He did not treat himself like an earl, whatever consciousness he may havehad that his prospective rank made it safe for him to flirt with thevarious forms of equality abroad in this generation.

"I don't know what Christianity is expected to produce," Mr. Morganreplied, in a meditative way; "but I have an idea that the earlyChristians in their assemblies all knew each other, having met elsewherein social intercourse, or, if they were not acquainted, they lost sightof distinctions in one paramount interest. But then I don't suppose theywere exactly civilized."

"Were the Pilgrims and the Puritans?" asked Mrs. Fletcher, who now joinedthe talk, in which she had been a most animated and stimulating listener,her deep gray eyes dancing with intellectual pleasure.

"I should not like to answer 'no' to a descendant of the Mayflower. Yes,they were highly civilized. And if we had adhered to their methods, weshould have avoided a good deal of confusion. The meeting-house, youremember, had a committee for seating people according to their quality.They were very shrewd, but it had not occurred to them to give the bestpews to the sitters able to pay the most money for them. They escaped theperplexity of reconciling the mercantile and the religious ideas."

"At any rate," said Mrs. Fletcher, "they got all sorts of people insidethe same meeting-house."

"Yes, and made them feel they were all sorts; but in those, days theywere not much disturbed by that feeling."

"Do you mean to say," asked Mr. Lyon, "that in this country you havechurches for the rich and other churches for the poor?"

"Not at all. We have in the cities rich churches and poor churches, withprices of pews according to the means of each sort, and the rich arealways glad to have the poor come, and if they do not give them the bestseats, they equalize it by taking up a collection for them."

"Mr. Lyon," Mrs. Morgan interrupted, "you are getting a travesty of thewhole thing. I don't believe there is elsewhere in the world such aspirit of Christian charity as in our churches of all sects."

"There is no doubt about the charity; but that doesn't seem to make thesocial machine run any more smoothly in the church associations. I'm notsure but we shall have to go back to the old idea of considering thechurches places of worship, and not opportunities for sewing-societies,and the cultivation of social equality."

"I found the idea in Rome," said Mr. Lyon, "that the United States is nowthe most promising field for the spread and permanence of the RomanCatholic faith."

"How is that?" Mr. Fletcher asked, with a smile of Puritan incredulity.

"A high functionary at the Propaganda gave as a reason that the UnitedStates is the most democratic country and the Roman Catholic is the mostdemocratic religion, having this one notion that all men, high or low,are equally sinners and equally in need of one thing only. And I must saythat in this country I don't find the question of social equalityinterfering much with the work in their churches."

"That is because they are not trying to make this world any better, butonly to prepare for another," said Mrs. Fletcher.

"Now, we think that the nearer we approach the kingdom-of-heaven idea onearth, the better off we shall be hereafter. Is that a modern idea?"

"It is an idea that is giving us a great deal of trouble. We've got intosuch a sophisticated state that it seems easier to take care of thefuture than of the present."

"And it isn't a very bad doctrine that if you take care of the present,the future will take care of itself," rejoined Mrs. Fletcher.

"Yes, I know," insisted Mr. Morgan; "it's the modern notion ofaccumulation and compensation—take care of the pennies and the poundswill take care of themselves—the gospel of Benjamin Franklin."

"Ah," I said, looking up at the entrance of a newcomer, "you are just intime, Margaret, to give the coup de grace, for it is evident by Mr.Morgan's reference, in his Bunker Hill position, to Franklin, that he isgetting out of powder."

The girl stood a moment, her slight figure framed in the doorway, whilethe company rose to greet her, with a half-hesitating, half-inquiringlook in her bright face which I had seen in it a thousand times.

II

I remember that it came upon me with a sort of surprise at the momentthat we had never thought or spoken much of Margaret Debree as beautiful.We were so accustomed to her; we had known her so long, we had known heralways. We had never analyzed our admiration of her. She had so manyqualities that are better than beauty that we had not credited her withthe more obvious attraction. And perhaps she had just become visiblybeautiful. It may be that there is an instant in a girl's lifecorresponding to what the Puritans called conversion in the soul, whenthe physical qualities, long maturing, suddenly glow in an effect whichwe call beauty. It cannot be that women do not have a consciousness ofit, perhaps of the instant of its advent. I remember when I was a childthat I used to think that a stick of peppermint candy must burn with aconsciousness of its own deliciousness.

Margaret was just turned twenty. As she paused there in the doorway herphysical perfection flashed upon me for the first time. Of course I donot mean perfection, for perfection has no promise in it, rather the sadnote of limit, and presently recession. In the rounded, exquisite linesof her figure there was the promise of that ineffable fullness anddelicacy of womanhood which all the world raves about and destroys andmourns. It is not fulfilled always in the most beautiful, and perhapsnever except to the woman who loves passionately, and believes she isloved with a devotion that exalts her body and soul above every otherhuman being.

It is certain that Margaret's beauty was not classic. Her features wereirregular even to piquancy. The chin had strength; the mouth wassensitive and not too small; the shapely nose with thin nostrils had anassertive quality that contradicted the impression of humility in theeyes when downcast; the large gray eyes were uncommonly soft and clear,an appearance of alternate tenderness and brilliancy as they were veiledor uncovered by the long lashes. They were gently commanding eyes, and nodoubt her most effective point. Her abundant hair, brown with a touch ofred in it in some lights, fell over her broad forehead in the fashion ofthe time. She had a way of carrying her head, of throwing it back attimes, that was not exactly imperious, and conveyed the impression ofspirit rather than of mere vivacity. These details seem to me allinadequate and misleading, for the attraction of the face that made itinteresting is still undefined. I hesitate to say that there was a dimplenear the corner of her mouth that revealed itself when she smiled lestthis shall seem mere prettiness, but it may have been the keynote of herface. I only knew there was something about it that won the heart, as atoo conscious or assertive beauty never does. She may have been plain,and I may have seen the loveliness of her nature, which I knew well, infeatures that gave less sign of it to strangers. Yet I noticed that Mr.Lyon gave her a quick second glance, and his manner was instantly that ofdeference, or at least attention, which he had shown to no other lady inthe room. And the whimsical idea came into my mind—we are all so warpedby international possibilities—to observe whether she did not walk likea countess (that is, as a countess ought to walk) as she advanced toshake hands with my wife. It is so easy to turn life into a comedy!

Margaret's great-grandmother—no, it was her great-great-grandmother, butwe have kept the Revolutionary period so warm lately that it seemsnear—was a Newport belle, who married an officer in the suite ofRochambeau what time the French defenders of liberty conquered the womenof Rhode Island. After the war was over, our officer resigned his love ofglory for the heart of one of the loveliest women and the care of thebest plantation on the Island. I have seen a miniature of her, which herlover wore at Yorktown, and which he always swore that Washingtoncoveted—a miniature painted by a wandering artist of the day, whichentirely justifies the French officer in his abandonment of the trade ofa soldier. Such is man in his best estate. A charming face can make himcampaign and fight and slay like a demon, can make a coward of him, canfill him with ambition to win the world, and can tame him into thedomesticity of a drawing-room cat. There is this noble capacity in man torespond to the divinest thing visible to him in this world. EtienneDebree became, I believe, a very good citizen of the republic, and in '93used occasionally to shake his head with satisfaction to find that it wasstill on his shoulders. I am not sure that he ever visited Mount Vernon,but after Washington's death Debree's intimacy with our first Presidentbecame a more and more important part of his life and conversation. Thereis a pleasant tradition that Lafayette, when he was here in 1784,embraced the young bride in the French manner, and that this salute wasvalued as a sort of heirloom in the family.

I always thought that Margaret inherited her New England conscience fromher great-great-grandmother, and a certain esprit or gayety—that is, asub-gayety which was never frivolity—from her French ancestor. Herfather and mother had died when she was ten years old, and she had beenreared by a maiden aunt, with whom she still lived. The combined fortunesof both required economy, and after Margaret had passed her school courseshe added to their resources by teaching in a public school. I rememberthat she taught history, following, I suppose, the American notion thatany one can teach history who has a text-book, just as he or she canteach literature with the same help. But it happened that Margaret was abetter teacher than many, because she had not learned history in school,but in her father's well-selected library.

There was a little stir at Margaret's entrance; Mr. Lyon was introducedto her, and my wife, with that subtle feeling for effect which womenhave, slightly changed the lights. Perhaps Margaret's complexion or herblack dress made this readjustment necessary to the harmony of the room.Perhaps she felt the presence of a different temperament in the littlecircle.

I never can tell exactly what it is that guides her in regard to theinfluence of light and color upon the intercourse of people, upon theirconversation, making it take one cast or another. Men are susceptible tothese influences, but it is women alone who understand how to producethem. And a woman who has not this subtle feeling always lacks charm,however intellectual she may be; I always think of her as sitting in theglare of disenchanting sunlight as indifferent to the exposure as a manwould be. I know in a general way that a sunset light induces one kind oftalk and noonday light another, and I have learned that talk alwaysbrightens up with the addition of a fresh crackling stick to the fire. Ishouldn't have known how to change the lights for Margaret, although Ithink I had as distinct an impression of her personality as had my wife.There was nothing disturbing in it; indeed, I never saw her otherwisethan serene, even when her voice betrayed strong emotion. The qualitythat impressed me most, however, was her sincerity, coupled withintellectual courage and clearness that had almost the effect ofbrilliancy, though I never thought of her as a brilliant woman.

"What mischief have you been attempting, Mr. Morgan?" asked Margaret, asshe took a chair near him. "Were you trying to make Mr. Lyon comfortableby dragging in Bunker Hill?"

"No; that was Mr. Fairchild, in his capacity as host."

"Oh, I'm sure you needn't mind me," said Mr. Lyon, good-humoredly. "Ilanded in Boston, and the first thing I went to see was the Monument. Itstruck me as so odd, you know, that the Americans should begin life bycelebrating their first defeat."

"That is our way," replied Margaret, quickly. "We have started on a newbasis over here; we win by losing. He who loses his life shall find it.If the red slayer thinks he slays he is mistaken. You know theSoutherners say that they surrendered at last simply because they gottired of beating the North."

"How odd!"

"Miss Debree simply means," I exclaimed, "that we have inherited from the
English an inability to know when we are whipped."

"But we were not fighting the battle of Bunker Hill, or fighting aboutit, which is more serious, Miss Debree. What I wanted to ask you waswhether you think the domestication of religion will affect its power inthe regulation of conduct."

"Domestication? You are too deep for me, Mr. Morgan. I don't any moreunderstand you than I comprehend the writers who write about thefeminization of literature."

"Well, taking the mystery out of it, the predominant element of worship,making the churches sort of good-will charitable associations for thespread of sociability and good-feeling."

"You mean making Christianity practical?"

"Partially that. It is a part of the general problem of what women aregoing to make of the world, now they have got hold of it, or are gettinghold of it, and are discontented with being women, or with being treatedas women, and are bringing their emotions into all the avocations oflife."

"They cannot make it any worse than it has been."

"I'm not sure of that. Robustness is needed in churches as much as ingovernment. I don't know how much the cause of religion is advanced bythese church clubs of Christian Endeavor if that is the name,associations of young boys and girls who go about visiting other likeclubs in a sufficiently hilarious manner. I suppose it's the spirit ofthe age. I'm just wondering whether the world is getting to think more ofhaving a good time than it is of salvation."

"And you think woman's influence—for you cannot mean anything else—issomehow taking the vigor out of affairs, making even the church a soft,purring affair, reducing us all to what I suppose you would call a mushof domesticity."

"Or femininity."

"Well, the world has been brutal enough; it had better try a littlefemininity now."

"I hope it will not be more cruel to women."

"That is not an argument; that is a stab. I fancy you are altogetherskeptical about woman. Do you believe in her education?"

"Up to a certain point, or rather, I should say, after a certain point."

"That's it," spoke up my wife, shading her eyes from the fire with a fan."I begin to have my doubts about education as a panacea. I've noticedthat girls with only a smattering—and most of them in the nature ofthings can go, no further—are more liable to temptations."

"That is because 'education' is mistaken for the giving of informationwithout training, as we are finding out in England," said Mr. Lyon.

"Or that it is dangerous to awaken the imagination without a heavyballast of principle," said Mr. Morgan.

"That is a beautiful sentiment," Margaret exclaimed, throwing back herhead, with a flash from her eyes. "That ought to shut out women entirely.Only I cannot see how teaching women what men know is going to give themany less principle than men have. It has seemed to me a long while thatthe time has come for treating women like human beings, and giving themthe responsibility of their position."

"And what do you want, Margaret?" I asked.

"I don't know exactly what I do want," she answered, sinking back in herchair, sincerity coming to modify her enthusiasm. "I don't want to go toCongress, or be a sheriff, or a lawyer, or a locomotive engineer. I wantthe freedom of my own being, to be interested in everything in the world,to feel its life as men do. You don't know what it is to have an inferiorperson condescend to you simply because he is a man."

"Yet you wish to be treated as a woman?" queried Mr. Morgan.

"Of course. Do you think I want to banish romance out of the world?"

"You are right, my dear," said my wife. "The only thing that makessociety any better than an industrial ant-hill is the love between womenand men, blind and destructive as it often is."

"Well," said Mrs. Morgan, rising to go, "having got back to firstprinciples—"

"You think it is best to take your husband home before he denies eventhem," Mr. Morgan added.

When the others had gone, Margaret sat by the fire, musing, as if no oneelse were in the room. The Englishman, still alert and eager forinformation, regarded her with growing interest. It came into my mind asodd that, being such an uninteresting people as we are, the Englishshould be so curious about us. After an interval, Mr. Lyon said:

"I beg your pardon, Miss Debree, but would you mind telling me whetherthe movement of Women's Rights is gaining in America?"

"I'm sure I don't know, Mr. Lyon," Margaret replied, after a pause, witha look of weariness. "I'm tired of all the talk about it. I wish men andwomen, every soul of them, would try to make the most of themselves, andsee what would come of that."

"But in some places they vote about schools, and you have conventions—"

"Did you ever attend any kind of convention yourself, Mr. Lyon?"

"I? No. Why?"

"Oh, nothing. Neither did I. But you have a right to, you know. I shouldlike to ask you one question, Mr. Lyon," the girl, continued, rising.

"Should be most obliged."

"Why is it that so few English women marry Americans?"

"I—I never thought of that," he stammered, reddening. "Perhaps—perhapsit's because of American women."

"Thank you," said Margaret, with a little courtesy. "It's very nice ofyou to say that. I can begin to see now why so many American women marryEnglishmen."

The Englishman blushed still more, and Margaret said good-night.

It was quite evident the next day that Margaret had made an impression onour visitor, and that he was struggling with some new idea.

"Did you say, Mrs. Fairchild," he asked my wife, "that Miss Debree is ateacher? It seems very odd."

"No; I said she taught in one of our schools. I don't think she isexactly a teacher."

"Not intending always to teach?"

"I don't suppose she has any definite intentions, but I never think ofher as a teacher."

"She's so bright, and—and interesting, don't you think? So American?"

"Yes; Miss Debree is one of the exceptions."

"Oh, I didn't mean that all American women were as clever as Miss
Debree."

"Thank you," said my wife. And Mr. Lyon looked as if he couldn't see whyshe should thank him.

The cottage in which Margaret lived with her aunt, Miss Forsythe, was notfar from our house. In summer it was very pretty, with its vine-shadedveranda across the front; and even in winter, with the inevitableraggedness of deciduous vines, it had an air of refinement, a promisewhich the cheerful interior more than fulfilled. Margaret's parting wordto my wife the night before had been that she thought her aunt would liketo see the "chrysalis earl," and as Mr. Lyon had expressed a desire tosee something more of what he called the "gentry" of New England, my wifeended their afternoon walk at Miss Forsythe's.

It was one of the winter days which are rare in New England, but of whichthere had been a succession all through the Christmas holidays. Snow hadnot yet come, all the earth was brown and frozen, whichever way youlooked the interlacing branches and twigs of the trees made a delicatelace-work, the sky was gray-blue, and the low-sailing sun had just enoughheat to evoke moisture from the frosty ground and suffuse the atmosphereinto softness, in which all the landscape became poetic. The phenomenonknown as "red sunsets" was faintly repeated in the greenish crimson glowalong the violet hills, in which Venus burned like a jewel.

There was a fire smoldering on the hearth in the room they entered, whichseemed to be sitting-room, library, parlor, all in one; the old table ofoak, too substantial for ornament, was strewn with late periodicals andpamphlets—English, American, and French—and with books which layunarranged as they were thrown down from recent reading. In the centrewas a bunch of red roses in a pale-blue Granada jug. Miss Forsythe rosefrom a seat in the western window, with a book in her hand, to greet hercallers. She was slender, like Margaret, but taller, with soft brown eyesand hair streaked with gray, which, sweeping plainly aside from herforehead in a fashion then antiquated, contrasted finely with the flushof pink in her cheeks. This flush did not suggest youth, but ratherripeness, the tone that comes with the lines made in the face by gentleacceptance of the inevitable in life. In her quiet and self-possessedmanner there was a little note of graceful timidity, not perhapsnoticeable in itself, but in contrast with that unmistakable air ofconfidence which a woman married always has, and which in the unrefinedbecomes assertive, an exaggerated notion of her importance, of the valueadded to her opinions by the act of marriage. You can see it in her airthe moment she walks away from the altar, keeping step to Mendelssohn'stune. Jack Sharpley says that she always seems to be saying, "Well, I'vedone it once for all." This assumption of the married must be one of thehardest things for single women to bear in their self-congratulatingsisters.

I have no doubt that Georgiana Forsythe was a charming girl, spirited andhandsome; for the beauty of her years, almost pathetic in its dignity andself-renunciation, could not have followed mere prettiness or acommonplace experience. What that had been I never inquired, but it hadnot soured her. She was not communicative nor confidential, I fancy, withany one, but she was always friendly and sympathetic to the trouble ofothers, and helpful in an undemonstrative way. If she herself had asecret feeling that her life was a failure, it never impressed herfriends so, it was so even, and full of good offices and quiet enjoyment.Heaven only knows, however, the pathos of this apparently undisturbedlife. For did a woman ever live who would not give all the years oftasteless serenity, for one year, for one month, for one hour, of theuncalculating delirium of love poured out upon a man who returned it? Itmay be better for the world that there are these women to whom life hasstill some mysteries, who are capable of illusions and the sweetsentimentality that grows out of a romance unrealized.

Although the recent books were on Miss Forsythe's table, her tastes andculture were of the past age. She admired Emerson and Tennyson. One maykeep current with the news of the world without changing his principles.I imagine that Miss Forsythe read without injury to herself thepassionate and the pantheistic novels of the young women who have comeforward in these days of emancipation to teach their grandmothers a newbasis of morality, and to render meaningless all the consoling epitaphson the mossy New England gravestones. She read Emerson for his sweetspirit, for his belief in love and friendship, her simpleCongregationalist faith remaining undisturbed by his philosophy, fromwhich she took only a habit of toleration.

"Miss Debree has gone to church," she said, in answer to Mr. Lyon'sglance around the room.

"To vespers?"

"I believe they call it that. Our evening meetings, you know, only beginat early candlelight."

"And you do not belong to the Church?"

"Oh, yes, to the ancient aristocratic church of colonial times," shereplied, with a little smile of amusem*nt. "My niece has stepped offPlymouth Rock."

"And was your religion founded on Plymouth Rock?"

"My niece says so when I rally her deserting the faith of her fathers,"replied Miss Forsythe, laughing at the working of the Episcopalian mind.

"I should like to understand about that; I mean about the position of
Dissenters in America."

"I'm afraid I could not help you, Mr. Lyon. I fancy an Englishman wouldhave to be born again, as the phrase used to be, to comprehend that."

While Mr. Lyon was still unsatisfied on this point, he found theconversation shifted to the other side. Perhaps it was a new experienceto him that women should lead and not follow in conversation. At anyrate, it was an experience that put him at his ease. Miss Forsythe was agreat admirer of Gladstone and of General Gordon, and she expressed heradmiration with a knowledge that showed she had read the Englishnewspapers.

"Yet I confess I don't comprehend Gladstone's conduct with regard to
Egypt and Gordon's relief," she said.

"Perhaps," interposed my wife, "it would have been better for Gordon ifhe had trusted Providence more and Gladstone less."

"I suppose it was Gladstone's humanity that made him hesitate."

"To bombard Alexandria?" asked Mr. Lyon, with a look of asperity.

"That was a mistake to be expected of a Tory, but not of Mr. Gladstone,who seems always seeking the broadest principles of justice in hisstatesmanship."

"Yes, we regard Mr. Gladstone as a very great man, Miss Forsythe. He isbroad enough. You know we consider him a rhetorical phenomenon.Unfortunately he always 'muffs' anything he touches."

"I suspected," Miss Forsythe replied, after a moment, "that party spiritran as high in England as it does with us, and is as personal."

Mr. Lyon disclaimed any personal feeling, and the talk drifted into acomparison of English and American politics, mainly with reference to thesocial factor in English politics, which is so little an element here.

In the midst of the talk Margaret came in. The brisk walk in the rosytwilight had heightened her color, and given her a glowing expressionwhich her face had not the night before, and a tenderness and softness,an unworldliness, brought from the quiet hour in the church.

"My lady comes at last,
Timid and stepping fast,
And hastening hither,
Her modest eyes downcast."

She greeted the stranger with a Puritan undemonstrativeness, and as ifnot exactly aware of his presence.

"I should like to have gone to vespers if I had known," said Mr. Lyon,after an embarrassing pause.

"Yes?" asked the girl, still abstractedly. "The world seems in a vespermood," she added, looking out the west windows at the red sky and theevening star.

In truth Nature herself at the moment suggested that talk was animpertinence. The callers rose to go, with an exchange of neighborhoodfriendliness and invitations.

"I had no idea," said Mr. Lyon, as they walked homeward, "what the New
World was like."

III

Mr. Lyon's invitation was for a week. Before the end of the week I wascalled to New York to consult Mr. Henderson in regard to a railwayinvestment in the West, which was turning out more permanent thanprofitable. Rodney Henderson—the name later became very familiar to thepublic in connection with a certain Congressional investigation—was agraduate of my own college, a New Hampshire boy, a lawyer by profession,who practiced, as so many American lawyers do, in Wall Street, inpolitical combinations, in Washington, in railways. He was already knownas a rising man.

When I returned Mr. Lyon was still at our house. I understood that mywife had persuaded him to extend his visit—a proposal he was littlereluctant to fall in with, so interested had he become in studying sociallife in America. I could well comprehend this, for we are all making a"study" of something in this age, simple enjoyment being considered anunworthy motive. I was glad to see that the young Englishman wasimproving himself, broadening his knowledge of life, and not wasting thegolden hours of youth. Experience is what we all need, and though love orlove-making cannot be called a novelty, there is something quite freshabout the study of it in the modern spirit.

Mr. Lyon had made himself very agreeable to the little circle, not lessby his inquiring spirit than by his unaffected manners, by a kind ofsimplicity which women recognize as unconscious, the result of aninherited habit of not thinking about one's position. In excess it may bevery disagreeable, but when it is combined with genuine good-nature andno self-assertion, it is attractive. And although American women like aman who is aggressive towards the world and combative, there is thedelight of novelty in one who has leisure to be agreeable, leisure forthem, and who seems to their imagination to have a larger range in lifethan those who are driven by business—one able to offer the peace andsecurity of something attained.

There had been several little neighborhood entertainments, dinners at theMorgans' and at Mrs. Fletcher's, and an evening cup of tea at MissForsythe's. In fact Margaret and Mr. Lyon had been thrown much together.He had accompanied her to vespers, and they had taken a wintry walk ortwo together before the snow came. My wife had not managed it—sheassured me of that; but she had not felt authorized to interfere; and shehad visited the public library and looked into the British Peerage. Menwere so suspicious. Margaret was quite able to take care of herself. Iadmitted that, but I suggested that the Englishman was a stranger in astrange land, that he was far from home, and had perhaps a weakened senseof those powerful social influences which must, after all, control him inthe end. The only response to this was, "I think, dear, you'd better wraphim up in cotton and send him back to his family."

Among her other activities Margaret was interested in a mission school inthe city, to which she devoted an occasional evening and Sundayafternoons. This was a new surprise for Mr. Lyon. Was this also a part ofthe restlessness of American life? At Mrs. Howe's german the otherevening the girl had seemed wholly absorbed in dress, and the gayety ofthe serious formality of the occasion, feeling the responsibility of itscarcely less than the "leader." Yet her mind was evidently much occupiedwith the "condition of women," and she taught in a public school. Hecould not at all make it out. Was she any more serious about the germanthan about the mission school? It seemed odd at her age to take life soseriously. And was she serious in all her various occupations, or onlyexperimenting? There was a certain mocking humor in the girl that puzzledthe Englishman still more.

"I have not seen much of your life," he said one night to Mr. Morgan;"but aren't most American women a little restless, seeking anoccupation?"

"Perhaps they have that appearance; but about the same number find it, asformerly, in marriage."

"But I mean, you know, do they look to marriage as an end so much?"

"I don't know that they ever did look to marriage as anything but ameans."

"I can tell you, Mr. Lyon," my wife interrupted, "you will get noinformation out of Mr. Morgan; he is a scoffer."

"Not at all, I do assure you," Morgan replied. "I am just a humbleobserver. I see that there is a change going on, but I cannot comprehendit. When I was young, girls used to go in for society; they danced theirfeet off from seventeen to twenty-one. I never heard anything about anyoccupation; they had their swing and their fling, and their flirtations;they appeared to be skimming off of those impressionable, joyous yearsthe cream of life."

"And you think that fitted them for the seriousness of life?" asked hiswife.

"Well, I am under the impression that very good women came out of thatsociety. I got one out of that dancing crowd who has been serious enoughfor me."

"And little enough you have profited by it," said Mrs. Morgan.

"I'm content. But probably I'm old-fashioned. There is quite anotherspirit now. Girls out of pinafores must begin seriously to consider somecalling. All their flirtation from seventeen to twenty-one is with someoccupation. All their dancing days they must go to college, or in someway lay the foundation for a useful life. I suppose it's all right. Nodoubt we shall have a much higher style of women in the future than weever had in the past."

"You allow nothing," said Mrs. Fletcher, "for the necessity of earning aliving in these days of competition. Women never will come to theirproper position in the world, even as companions of men, which you regardas their highest office, until they have the ability to beself-supporting."

"Oh, I admitted the fact of the independence of women a long time ago.Every one does that before he comes to middle life. About the shiftingall round of this burden of earning a living, I am not so sure. It doesnot appear yet to make competition any less; perhaps competition woulddisappear if everybody did earn his own living and no more. I wonder,by-the-way, if the girls, the young women, of the class we seem to bediscussing ever do earn as much as would pay the wages of the servantswho are hired to do the housework in their places?"

"That is a most ignoble suggestion," I could not help saying, "when youknow that the object in modern life is the cultivation of the mind, theelevation of women, and men also, in intellectual life."

"I suppose so. I should like to have asked Abigail Adams's opinion on theway to do it."

"One would think," I said, "that you didn't know that the spinning-jennyand the stocking-knitter had been invented. Given these, the women'scollege was a matter of course."

"Oh, I'm a believer in all kinds of machinery anything to save labor.Only, I have faith that neither the jenny nor the college will changehuman nature, nor take the romance out of life."

"So have I," said my wife. "I've heard two things affirmed: that womenwho receive a scientific or professional education lose their faith,become usually agnostics, having lost sensitiveness to the mysteries oflife."

"And you think, therefore, that they should not have a scientificeducation?"

"No, unless all scientific prying into things is a mistake. Women may bemore likely at first to be upset than men, but they will recover theirbalance when the novelty is worn off. No amount of science will entirelychange their emotional nature; and besides, with all our science, I don'tsee that the supernatural has any less hold on this generation than onthe former."

"Yes, and you might say the world was never before so credulous as it isnow. But what was the other thing?"

"Why, that co-education is likely to diminish marriages among theco-educated. Daily familiarity in the classroom at the mostimpressionable age, revelation of all the intellectual weaknesses andpetulances, absorption of mental routine on an equality, tend to destroythe sense of romance and mystery that are the most powerful attractionsbetween the sexes. It is a sort of disenchanting familiarity that rubsoff the bloom."

"Have you any statistics on the subject?"

"No. I fancy it is only a notion of some old fogy who thinks education inany form is dangerous for women."

"Yes, and I fancy that co-education will have about as much effect onlife generally as that solemn meeting of a society of intelligent andfashionable women recently in one of our great cities, who met to discussthe advisability of limiting population."

"Great Scott!" I exclaimed, "this is an interesting age."

I was less anxious about the vagaries of it when I saw the veryold-fashioned way in which the international drama was going on in ourneighborhood. Mr. Lyon was increasingly interested in Margaret's missionwork. Nor was there much affectation in this. Philanthropy, anxiety aboutthe working-classes, is nowhere more serious or in the fashion than it isin London. Mr. Lyon, wherever he had been, had made a special study ofthe various aid and relief societies, especially of the work for youngwaifs and strays.

One Sunday afternoon they were returning from the Bloom Street Mission.Snow covered the ground, the sky was leaden, and the air had apenetrating chill in it far more disagreeable than extreme cold.

"We also," Mr. Lyon was saying, in continuation of a conversation, "aremaking a great effort for the common people."

"But we haven't any common people here," replied Margaret, quickly. "Thatbright boy you noticed in my class, who was a terror six months ago, willno doubt be in the City Council in a few years, and likely enough mayor."

"Oh, I know your theory. It practically comes to the same thing, whateveryou call it. I couldn't see that the work in New York differed much fromthat in London. We who have leisure ought to do something for theworking-classes."

"I sometimes doubt if it is not all a mistake most of our charitablework. The thing is to get people to do something for themselves."

"But you cannot do away with distinctions?"

"I suppose not, so long as so many people are born vicious, orincompetent, or lazy. But, Mr. Lyon, how much good do you supposecondescending charity does?" asked Margaret, firing up in a way the girlhad at times. "I mean the sort that makes the distinctions more evident.The very fact that you have leisure to meddle in their affairs may be anannoyance to the folks you try to help by the little palliatives ofcharity. What effect upon a wretched city neighborhood do you suppose isproduced by the advent in it of a stylish carriage and a lady in silk, oreven the coming of a well-dressed, prosperous woman in a horse-car,however gentle and unassuming she may be in this distribution of sympathyand bounty? Isn't the feeling of inequality intensified? And thedegrading part of it may be that so many are willing to accept this sortof bounty. And your men of leisure, your club men, sitting in the windowsand seeing the world go by as a spectacle-men who never did an hour'snecessary work in their lives—what effect do you suppose the sight ofthem has upon men out of work, perhaps by their own fault, owing to thesame disposition to be idle that the men in the club windows have?"

"And do you think it would be any better if all were poor alike?"

"I think it would be better if there were no idle people. I'm halfashamed that I have leisure to go every time I go to that mission. AndI'm almost sorry, Mr. Lyon, that I took you there. The boys knew you wereEnglish. One of them asked me if you were a 'lord' or a 'juke' orsomething. I cannot tell how they will take it. They may resent thespying into their world of an 'English juke,' and they may take it in thelight of a show."

Mr. Lyon laughed. And then, perhaps after a little reflection upon thepossibility that the nobility was becoming a show in this world, he said:

"I begin to think I'm very unfortunate, Miss Debree. You seem to remindme that I am in a position in which I can do very little to help theworld along."

"Not at all. You can do very much."

"But how, when whatever I attempt is considered a condescension? What can
I do?"

"Pardon me," and Margaret turned her eyes frankly upon him. "You can be agood earl when your time comes."

Their way lay through the little city park. It is a pretty place insummer—a varied surface, well planted with forest and ornamental trees,intersected by a winding stream. The little river was full now, and icehad formed on it, with small openings here and there, where the darkwater, hurrying along as if in fear of arrest, had a more chilling aspectthan the icy cover. The ground was white with snow, and all the treeswere bare except for a few frozen oak-leaves here and there, whichshivered in the wind and somehow added to the desolation. Leaden cloudscovered the sky, and only in the west was there a gleam of the departingwinter day.

Upon the elevated bank of the stream, opposite to the road by which theyapproached, they saw a group of people—perhaps twenty-drawn closelytogether, either in the sympathy of segregation from an unfeeling world,or for protection from the keen wind. On the hither bank, and leaning onthe rails of the drive, had collected a motley crowd of spectators, men,women, and boys, who exhibited some impatience and much curiosity,decorous for the most part, but emphasized by occasional jocose remarksin an undertone. A serious ceremony was evidently in progress. Theseparate group had not a prosperous air. The women were thinly clad forsuch a day. Conspicuous in the little assembly was a tall, elderly man ina shabby long coat and a broad felt hat, from under which his white hairfell upon his shoulders. He might be a prophet in Israel come out totestify to an unbelieving world, and the little group around him, shakenlike reeds in the wind, had the appearance of martyrs to a cause. Thelight of another world shone in their thin, patient faces. Come, theyseemed to say to the worldlings on the opposite bank—come and see whathappiness it is to serve the Lord. As they waited, a faint tune wasstarted, a quavering hymn, whose feeble notes the wind blew away offirst, but which grew stronger.

Before the first stanza was finished a carriage appeared in the rear ofthe group. From it descended a middle-aged man and a stout woman, andthey together helped a young girl to alight. She was clad all in white.For a moment her thin, delicate figure shrank from the cutting wind.Timid, nervous, she glanced an instant at the crowd and the dark icystream; but it was only a protest of the poor body; the face had therapt, exultant look of joyous sacrifice.

The tall man advanced to meet her, and led her into the midst of thegroup.

For a few moments there was prayer, inaudible at a distance. Then thetall man, taking the girl by the hand, advanced down the slope to thestream. His hat was laid aside, his venerable locks streamed in thebreeze, his eyes were turned to heaven; the girl walked as in a vision,without a tremor, her wide-opened eyes fixed upon invisible things. Asthey moved on, the group behind set up a joyful hymn in a kind ofmournful chant, in which the tall man joined with a strident voice.Fitfully the words came on the wind, in an almost heart-breaking wail:

"Beyond the smiling and the weeping I shall be soon;
Beyond the waking and the sleeping,
Beyond the sowing and the reaping, I shall be soon."

They were near the water now, and the tall man's voice sounded out loudand clear:

"Lord, tarry not, but come!"

They were entering the stream where there was an opening clear of ice;the footing was not very secure, and the tall man ceased singing, but thelittle band sang on:

"Beyond the blooming and the fading I shall be soon."

The girl grew paler and shuddered. The tall man sustained her with anattitude of infinite sympathy, and seemed to speak words ofencouragement. They were in the mid-stream; the cold flood surged abouttheir waists. The group sang on:

"Beyond the shining and the shading,
Beyond the hoping and the dreading, I shall be soon."

The strong, tender arms of the tall man gently lowered the white formunder the cruel water; he staggered a moment in the swift stream,recovered himself, raised her, white as death, and the voices of thewailing tune came:

"Love, rest, and home
Sweet hope! Lord, tarry not, but come!"

And the tall man, as he struggled to the shore with his almost insensibleburden, could be heard above the other voices and the wind and the rushof the waters:

"Lord, tarry not, but come!"

The girl was hurried into the carriage, and the group quickly dispersed."Well, I'll be—" The tender-hearted little wife of the rough man in thecrowd who began that sentence did not permit him to finish it. "That'llbe a case for a doctor right away," remarked a well-known practitionerwho had been looking on.

Margaret and Mr. Lyon walked home in silence. "I can't talk about it,"she said. "It's such a pitiful world."

IV

In the evening, at our house, Margaret described the scene in the park.

"It's dreadful," was the comment of Miss Forsythe. "The authorities oughtnot to permit such a thing."

"It seemed to me as heroic as pitiful, aunt. I fear I should be incapableof making such a testimony."

"But it was so unnecessary."

"How do we know what is necessary to any poor soul? What impressed memost strongly was that there is in the world still this longing to sufferphysically and endure public scorn for a belief."

"It may have been a disappointment to the little band," said Mr. Morgan,"that there was no demonstration from the spectators, that there was noloud jeering, that no snowballs were thrown by the boys."

"They could hardly expect that," said I; "the world has become sotolerant that it doesn't care."

"I rather think," Margaret replied, "that the spectators for a momentcame under the spell of the hour, and were awed by something supernaturalin the endurance of that frail girl."

"No doubt," said my wife, after a little pause. "I believe that there isas much sense of mystery in the world as ever, and as much of what wecall faith, only it shows itself eccentrically. Breaking away fromtraditions and not going to church have not destroyed the need in theminds of the mass of people for something outside themselves."

"Did I tell you," interposed Morgan—"it is almost in the line of yourthought—of a girl I met the other day on the train? I happened to be herseat-mate in the car-thin face, slight little figure—a commonplace girl,whom I took at first to be not more than twenty, but from the lines abouther large eyes she was probably nearer forty. She had in her lap a book,which she conned from time to time, and seemed to be committing verses tomemory as she looked out the window. At last I ventured to ask whatliterature it was that interested her so much, when she turned andfrankly entered into conversation. It was a little Advent song-book. Sheliked to read it on the train, and hum over the tunes. Yes, she was agood deal on the cars; early every morning she rode thirty miles to herwork, and thirty miles back every evening. Her work was that of clerk andcopyist in a freight office, and she earned nine dollars a week, on whichshe supported herself and her mother. It was hard work, but she did notmind it much. Her mother was quite feeble. She was an Adventist. 'Andyou?' I asked. 'Oh, yes; I am. I've been an Adventist twenty years, andI've been perfectly happy ever since I joined—perfectly,' she added,turning her plain face, now radiant, towards me. 'Are you one?' sheasked, presently. 'Not an immediate Adventist,' I was obliged to confess.'I thought you might be, there are so many now, more and more.' I learnedthat in our little city there were two Advent societies; there had been asplit on account of some difference in the meaning of original sin. 'Andyou are not discouraged by the repeated failure of the predictions of theend of the world?' I asked. 'No. Why should we be? We don't fix anycertain day now, but all the signs show that it is very near. We are allfree to think as we like. Most of our members now think it will be nextyear.'—'I hope not!' I exclaimed. 'Why?' she asked, turning to me with alook of surprise. 'Are you afraid?' I evaded by saying that I supposedthe good had nothing to fear. 'Then you must be an Adventist, you have somuch sympathy.'—'I shouldn't like to have the world come to an end nextyear, because there are so many interesting problems, and I want to seehow they will be worked out.'—'How can you want to put it off'—andthere was for the first time a little note of fanaticism in hervoice—'when there is so much poverty and hard work? It is such a hardworld, and so much suffering and sin. And it could all be ended in amoment. How can you want it to go on?' The train approached the station,and she rose to say good-by. 'You will see the truth some day,' she said,and went away as cheerful as if the world was actually destroyed. She wasthe happiest woman I have seen in a long time."

"Yes," I said, "it is an age of both faith and credulity."

"And nothing marks it more," Morgan added, "than the popular expectationamong the scientific and the ignorant of something to come out of thedimly understood relation of body and mind. It is like the expectation ofthe possibilities of electricity."

"I was going on to say," I continued, "that wherever I walk in the cityof a Sunday afternoon, I am struck with the number of little meetingsgoing on, of the faithful and the unfaithful, Adventists, socialists,spiritualists, culturists, Sons and Daughters of Edom; from all the openwindows of the tall buildings come notes of praying, of exhortation, themelancholy wail of the inspiring Sankey tunes, total abstinence melodies,over-the-river melodies, songs of entreaty, and songs of praise. There isso much going on outside of the regular churches!"

"But the churches are well attended," suggested my wife.

"Yes, fairly, at least once a day, and if there is sensational preaching,twice. But there is nothing that will so pack the biggest hall in thecity as the announcement of inspirational preaching by some young womanwho speaks at random on a text given her when she steps upon theplatform. There is something in her rhapsody, even when it is incoherent,that appeals to a prevailing spirit."'

"How much of it is curiosity?" Morgan asked. "Isn't the hall just asjammed when the clever attorney of Nothingism, Ham Saversoul, jokes aboutthe mysteries of this life and the next?"

"Very likely. People like the emotional and the amusing. All the same,they are credulous, and entertain doubt and belief on the slightestevidence."

"Isn't it natural," spoke up Mr. Lyon, who had hitherto been silent,"that you should drift into this condition without an establishedchurch?"

"Perhaps it's natural," Morgan retorted, "that people dissatisfied withan established religion should drift over here. Great Britain, you know,is a famous recruiting-ground for our socialistic experiments."

"Ah, well," said my wife, "men will have something. If what isestablished repels to the extent of getting itself disestablished, andall churches should be broken up, society would somehow precipitateitself again spiritually. I heard the other day that Boston, getting alittle weary of the Vedas, was beginning to take up the New Testament."

"Yes," said Morgan, "since Tolstoi mentioned it."

After a little the talk drifted into psychic research, and got lost instories of "appearances" and "long-distance" communications. It appearedto me that intelligent people accepted this sort of story as true onevidence on which they wouldn't risk five dollars if it were a questionof money. Even scientists swallow tales of prehistoric bones on testimonythey would reject if it involved the title to a piece of real estate.

Mr. Lyon still lingered in the lap of a New England winter as if it hadbeen Capua. He was anxious to visit Washington and study the politics ofthe country, and see the sort of society produced in the freedom of arepublic, where there was no court to give the tone and there were noclass lines to determine position. He was restless under this sense ofduty. The future legislator for the British Empire must understand theConstitution of its great rival, and thus be able to appreciate thesocial currents that have so much to do with political action.

In fact he had another reason for uneasiness. His mother had written him,asking why he stayed so long in an unimportant city, he who had been soactive a traveler hitherto. Knowledge of the capitals was what he needed.Agreeable people he could find at home, if his only object was to passthe time. What could he reply? Could he say that he had become very muchinterested in studying a schoolteacher—a very charming school-teacher?He could see the vision raised in the minds of his mother and of the earland of his elder sister as they should read this precious confession—avision of a schoolma'am, of an American girl, and an American girlwithout any money at that, moving in the little orbit of Chisholm House.The thing was absurd. And yet why was it absurd? What was Englishpolitics, what was Chisholm House, what was everybody in England comparedto this noble girl? Nay, what would the world be without her? He grew hotin thinking of it, indignant at his relations and the whole artificialframework of things.

The situation was almost humiliating. He began, to doubt the stability ofhis own position. Hitherto he had met no obstacle: whatever he haddesired he had obtained. He was a sensible fellow, and knew the world wasnot made for him; but it certainly had yielded to him in everything. Whydid he doubt now? That he did doubt showed him the intensity of hisinterest in Margaret. For love is humble, and undervalues self incontrast with that which it desires. At this touchstone rank, fortune,all that go with them, seemed poor. What were all these to a woman'ssoul? But there were women enough, women enough in England, women morebeautiful than Margaret, doubtless as amiable and intellectual. Yet nowthere was for him only one woman in the world. And Margaret showed nosign. Was he about to make a fool of himself? If she should reject him hewould seem a fool to himself. If she accepted him he would seem a fool tothe whole circle that made his world at home. The situation wasintolerable. He would end it by going.

But he did not go. If he went today he could not see her tomorrow. To alover anything can be borne if he knows that he shall see her tomorrow.In short, he could not go so long as there was any doubt about herdisposition towards him.

And a man is still reduced to this in the latter part of the nineteenthcentury, notwithstanding all our science, all our analysis of thepassion, all our wise jabber about the failure of marriage, all ourcommonsense about the relation of the sexes. Love is still a personalquestion, not to be reasoned about or in any way disposed of except inthe old way. Maidens dream about it; diplomats yield to it; stolid menare upset by it; the aged become young, the young grave, under itsinfluence; the student loses his appetite—God bless him! I like to hearthe young fellows at the club rattle on bravely, indifferent to the wholething—skeptical, in fact, about it. And then to see them, one afteranother, stricken down, and looking a little sheepish and not sayingmuch, and by-and-by radiant. You would think they owned the world.Heaven, I think, shows us no finer sarcasm than one of these youngskeptics as a meek family man.

Margaret and Mr. Lyon were much together.

And their talk, as always happens when two persons find themselves muchtogether, became more and more personal. It is only in books thatdialogues are abstract and impersonal. The Englishman told her about hisfamily, about the set in which he moved—and he had the English franknessin setting it out unreservedly—about the life he led at Oxford, abouthis travels, and so on to what he meant to do in the world. Margaret inreturn had little to tell, her own life had been so simple—not muchexcept the maidenly reserves, the discontents with herself, whichinterested him more than anything else; and of the future she would notspeak at all. How can a woman, without being misunderstood? All this talkhad a certain danger in it, for sympathy is unavoidable between twopersons who look ever so little into each other's hearts and comparetastes and desires.

"I cannot quite understand your social life over here," Mr. Lyon wassaying one day. "You seem to make distinctions, but I cannot see exactlyfor what."

"Perhaps they make themselves. Your social orders seem able to resistDarwin's theory, but in a republic natural selection has a betterchance."

"I was told by a Bohemian on the steamer coming over that money in
America takes the place of rank in England."

"That isn't quite true."

"And I was told in Boston by an acquaintance of very old family andlittle fortune that 'blood' is considered here as much as anywhere."

"You see, Mr. Lyon, how difficult it is to get correct information aboutus. I think we worship wealth a good deal, and we worship family a gooddeal, but if any one presumes too much upon either, he is likely to cometo grief. I don't understand it very well myself."

"Then it is not money that determines social position in America?"

"Not altogether; but more now than formerly. I suppose the distinction isthis: family will take a person everywhere, money will take him almosteverywhere; but money is always at this disadvantage—it takes more andmore of it to gain position. And then you will find that it is a gooddeal a matter of locality. For instance, in Virginia and Kentucky familyis still very powerful, stronger than any distinction in letters orpolitics or success in business; and there is a certain diminishingnumber of people in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, who cultivate a gooddeal of exclusiveness on account of descent."

"But I am told that this sort of aristocracy is succumbing to the newplutocracy."

"Well, it is more and more difficult to maintain a position withoutmoney. Mr. Morgan says that it is a disheartening thing to be anaristocrat without luxury; he declares that he cannot tell whether theKnickerbockers of New York or the plutocrats are more uneasy just now.The one is hungry for social position, and is morose if he cannot buy it;and when the other is seduced by luxury and yields, he finds that hisdistinction is gone. For in his heart the newly rich only respects therich. A story went about of one of the Bonanza princes who had built hispalace in the city, and was sending out invitations to his firstentertainment. Somebody suggested doubts to him about the response. 'Oh,'he said, 'the beggars will be glad enough to come!'"

"I suppose, Mr. Lyon," said Margaret, demurely, "that this sort of thingis unknown in England?"

"Oh, I couldn't say that money is not run after there to some extent."

"I saw a picture in Punch of an auction, intended as an awful satire on
American women. It struck me that it might have two interpretations."

"Yes, Punch is as friendly to America as it is to the Englisharistocracy."

"Well, I was only thinking that it is just an exchange of commodities.People will always give what they have for what they want. The Westernman changes his pork in New York for pictures. I suppose that—what doyou call it?—the balance of trade is against us, and we have to sendover cash and beauty."

"I didn't know that Miss Debree was so much of a political economist."

"We got that out of books in school. Another thing we learned is thatEngland wants raw material; I thought I might as well say it, for itwouldn't be polite for you."

"Oh, I'm capable of saying anything, if provoked. But we have got awayfrom the point. As far as I can see, all sorts of people intermarry, andI don't see how you can discriminate socially—where the lines are."

Mr. Lyon saw the moment that he had made it that this was a suggestionlittle likely to help him. And Margaret's reply showed that he had lostground.

"Oh, we do not try to discriminate—except as to foreigners. There is apopular notion that Americans had better marry at home."

"Then the best way for a foreigner to break your exclusiveness is to benaturalized." Mr. Lyon tried to adopt her tone, and added, "Would youlike to see me an American citizen?"

"I don't believe you could be, except for a little while; you are too
British."

"But the two nations are practically the same; that is, individuals ofthe nations are. Don't you think so?"

"Yes, if one of them gives up all the habits and prejudices of a lifetimeand of a whole social condition to the other."

"And which would have to yield?"

"Oh, the man, of course. It has always been so. Mygreat-great-grandfather was a Frenchman, but he became, I have alwaysheard, the most docile American republican."

"Do you think he would have been the one to give in if they had gone to
France?"

"Perhaps not. And then the marriage would have been unhappy. Did younever take notice that a woman's happiness, and consequently thehappiness of marriage, depends upon a woman's having her own way in allsocial matters? Before our war all the men who married down South tookthe Southern view, and all the Southern women who married up North heldtheir own, and sensibly controlled the sympathies of their husbands."

"And how was it with the Northern women who married South, as you say?"

"Well, it must be confessed that a good many of them adapted themselves,in appearance at least. Women can do that, and never let anyone see theyare not happy and not doing it from choice."

"And don't you think American women adapt themselves happily to Englishlife?"

"Doubtless some; I doubt if many do; but women do not confess mistakes ofthat kind. Woman's happiness depends so much upon the continuation of thesurroundings and sympathies in which she is bred. There are alwaysexceptions. Do you know, Mr. Lyon, it seems to me that some people do notbelong in the country where they were born. We have men who ought to havebeen born in England, and who only find themselves really they go there.There are who are ambitious, and court a career different from any that arepublic can give them. They are not satisfied here. Whether they arehappy there I do not know; so few trees, when at all grown, will beartransplanting."

"Then you think international marriages are a mistake?"

"Oh, I don't theorize on subjects I am ignorant of."

"You give me very cold comfort."

"I didn't know," said Margaret, with a laugh that was too genuine to beconsoling, "that you were traveling for comfort; I thought it was forinformation."

"And I am getting a great deal," said Mr. Lyon, rather ruefully. "I'mtrying to find out where. I ought to have been born."

"I'm not sure," Margaret said, half seriously, "but you would have been avery good American."

This was not much of an admission, after all, but it was the most thatMargaret had ever made, and Mr. Lyon tried to get some encouragement outof it. But he felt, as any man would feel, that this beating about thebush, this talk of nationality and all that, was nonsense; that if awoman loved a man she wouldn't care where he was born; that all the worldwould be as nothing to him; that all conditions and obstacles society andfamily could raise would melt away in the glow of a real passion. And hewondered for a moment if American girls were not "calculating"—a word towhich he had learned over here to attach a new and comical meaning.

V

The afternoon after this conversation Miss Forsythe was sitting readingin her favorite window-seat when Mr. Lyon was announced. Margaret was ather school. There was nothing un usual in this afternoon call; Mr. Lyon'svisits had become frequent and informal; but Miss Forsythe had a nervouspresentiment that something important was to happen, that showed itselfin her greeting, and which was perhaps caught from a certain newdiffidence in his manner.

Perhaps the maiden lady preserves more than any other this sensitiveness,inborn in women, to the approach of the critical moment in the affairs ofthe heart. The day may some time be past when she—is sensitive forherself—philosophers say otherwise—but she is easily put in a flutterby the affair of another. Perhaps this is because the negative (as we sayin these days) which takes impressions retains all its delicacy from thefact that none of them have ever been developed, and perhaps it is a wiseprovision of nature that age in a heart unsatisfied should awaken livelyapprehensive curiosity and sympathy about the manifestation of the tenderpassion in others. It certainly is a note of the kindliness and charityof the maiden mind that its sympathies are so apt to be most stronglyexcited in the success of the wooer. This interest may be quite separablefrom the common feminine desire to make a match whenever there is theleast chance of it. Miss Forsythe was not a match-maker, but Margaretherself would not have been more embarrassed than she was at thebeginning of this interview.

When Mr. Lyon was seated she made the book she had in her hand the excusefor beginning a talk about the confidence young novelists seem to have intheir ability to upset the Christian religion by a fictitiousrepresentation of life, but her visitor was too preoccupied to join init. He rose and stood leaning his arm upon the mantel-piece, and lookinginto the fire, and said, abruptly, at last:

"I called to see you, Miss Forsythe, to—to consult you about yourniece."

"About her career?" asked Miss Forsythe, with a nervous consciousness offalsehood.

"Yes, about her career; that is, in a way," turning towards her with alittle smile.

"Yes?"

"You must have seen my interest in her. You must have known why I stayedon and on. But it was, it is, all so uncertain. I wanted to ask yourpermission to speak my mind to her."

"Are you quite sure you know your own mind?" asked Miss Forsythe,defensively.

"Sure—sure; I have never had the feeling for any other woman I have forher."

"Margaret is a noble girl; she is very independent," suggested Miss
Forsythe, still avoiding the point.

"I know. I don't ask you her feeling." Mr. Lyon was standing quietlylooking down into the coals. "She is the only woman in the world to me. Ilove her. Are you against me?" he asked, suddenly looking up, with aflush in his face.

"Oh, no! no!" exclaimed Miss Forsythe, with another access of timidity."I shouldn't take the responsibility of being against you, or—orotherwise. It is very manly in you to come to me, and I am sure I—we allwish nothing but your own happiness. And so far as I am concerned—"

"Then I have your permission?" he asked, eagerly.

"My permission, Mr. Lyon? why, it is so new to me, I scarcely realizedthat I had any permission," she said, with a little attempt atpleasantry. "But as her aunt—and guardian, as one may say—personally Ishould have the greatest satisfaction to know that Margaret's destiny wasin the hands of one we all esteem and know as we do you."

"Thank you, thank you," said Mr. Lyon, coming forward and seizing herhand.

"But you must let me say, let me suggest, that there are a great manythings to be thought of. There is such a difference in education, in allthe habits of your lives, in all your relations. Margaret would never behappy in a position where less was accorded to her than she had all herlife. Nor would her pride let her take such a position."

"But as my wife—"

"Yes, I know that is sufficient in your mind. Have you consulted yourmother, Mr. Lyon?"

"Not yet."

"And have you written to any one at home about my niece?"

"Not yet."

"And does it seem a little difficult to do so?" This was a probe thatwent even deeper than the questioner knew. Mr. Lyon hesitated, seeingagain as in a vision the astonishment of his family. He was conscious ofan attempt at self-deception when he replied:

"Not difficult, not at all difficult, but I thought I would wait till Ihad something definite to say."

"Margaret is, of course, perfectly free to act for herself. She has avery ardent nature, but at the same time a great deal of what we callcommon sense. Though her heart might be very much engaged, she wouldhesitate to put herself in any society which thought itself superior toher. You see I speak with great frankness."

It was a new position for Mr. Lyon to find his prospective rank seeminglyan obstacle to anything he desired. For a moment the whimsicality of itinterrupted the current of his feeling. He thought of the probablecomments of the men of his London club upon the drift his conversationwas taking with a New England spinster about his fitness to marry aschool-teacher. With a smile that was summoned to hide his annoyance, hesaid, "I don't see how I can defend myself, Miss Forsythe."

"Oh," she replied, with an answering smile that recognized his view ofthe humor of the situation, "I was not thinking of you, Mr. Lyon, but ofthe family and the society that my niece might enter, to which rank is ofthe first importance."

"I am simply John Lyon, Miss Forsythe. I may never be anything else. Butif it were otherwise, I did not suppose that Americans objected to rank."

It was an unfortunate speech, felt to be so the instant it was uttered.Miss Forsythe's pride was touched, and the remark was not softened to herby the, air of half banter with which the sentence concluded. She said,with a little stillness and formality: "I fear, Mr. Lyon, that yoursarcasm is too well merited. But there are Americans who make adistinction between rank and blood. Perhaps it is very undemocratic, butthere is nowhere else more pride of family, of honorable descent, thanhere. We think very much of what we call good blood. And you will pardonme for saying that we are accustomed to speak of some persons andfamilies abroad which have the highest rank as being thoroughly badblood. If I am not mistaken, you also recognize the historic fact ofignoble blood in the owners of noble titles. I only mean, Mr. Lyon," sheadded, with a softening of manner, "that all Americans do not think thatrank covers a multitude of sins."

"Yes, I think I get your American point of view. But to return to myself,if you will allow me; if I am so fortunate as to win Miss Debree's love,I have no fear that she would not win the hearts of all my family. Do youthink that my—my prospective position would be an objection to her?"

"Not your position, no; if her heart were engaged. But expatriation,involving a surrender of all the habits and traditions and associationsof a lifetime and of one's kindred, is a serious affair. One would needto be very much in love"—and Miss Forsythe blushed a little as she saidit—"to make such a surrender."

"I know. I am sure I love her too much to wish to bring any change in herlife that would ever cause her unhappiness."

"I am glad to feel sure of that."

"And so I have your permission?"

"Most sincerely," said Miss Forsythe, rising and giving him her hand. "Icould wish nothing better for Margaret than union with a man like you.But whatever I wish, you two have your destiny in your own hands." Hertone was wholly frank and cordial, but there was a wistful look in herface, as of one who knew how roughly life handles all youthfulenthusiasms.

When John Lyon walked away from her door his feelings were very muchmixed. At one instant his pride rebelled against the attitude he had justassumed. But this was only a flash, which he put away as unbecoming a mantowards a true woman. The next thought was one of unselfish considerationfor Margaret herself. He would not subject her to any chance of socialmortifications. He would wait. He would return home and test his love byrenewing his lifelong associations, and by the reception his family wouldgive to his proposal. And the next moment he saw Margaret as she hadbecome to him, as she must always be to him. Should he risk the loss ofher by timidity? What were all these paltry considerations to his love?

Was there ever a young man who could see any reasons against thepossession of the woman he loved? Was there ever any love worth the namethat could be controlled by calculations of expediency? I have no doubtthat John Lyon went through the usual process which is called weighing athing in the mind. It is generally an amusing process, and it isconsoling to the conscience. The mind has little to do with it except tofurnish the platform on which the scales are set up. A humorist says thathe must have a great deal of mind, it takes him so long to make it up.There is the same apparent deliberation where love is concerned.Everything "contra" is carefully placed in one scale of the balance, andit is always satisfactory and convincing to see how quickly it kicks thebeam when love is placed in the other scale. The lightest love in theworld, under a law as invariable as gravitation, is heavier than anyother known consideration. It is perhaps doing injustice to Mr. Lyon notto dwell upon this struggle in his mind, and to say that in all honestyhe may not have known that the result of it was predetermined. Butinteresting and commendable as are these processes of the mind, I confessthat I should have respected him less if the result had not beenpredetermined. And this does not in any way take from him the merit of arestless night and a tasteless breakfast.

Philosophizers on this topic say that a man ought always to be able totell by a woman's demeanor towards him whether she is favorably inclined,and that he need run no risk. Little signs, the eyes alone, draw peopletogether, and make formal language superfluous. This theory is abundantlysustained by examples, and we might rest on it if all women knew theirown minds, and if, on the other hand, they could always tell whether aman was serious before he made a definite avowal. There is anothernotion, fortunately not yet extinct, that the manliest thing a man can dois to take his life in his hand, pay the woman he loves the highesttribute in his power by offering her his heart and name, and giving herthe definite word that may be the touchstone to reveal to herself her ownfeeling. In our conventional life women must move behind a mask in aworld of uncertainties. What wonder that many of them learn in theirdefensive position to play a game, and sometimes experiment upon thehonest natures of their admirers! But even this does not absolve thechivalrous man from the duty of frankness and explicitness. Life seemsideal in that far country where the handsome youth stops his carriage atthe gate of the vineyard, and says to the laughing girl carrying a basketof grapes on her head, "My pretty maid, will you marry me?" And thepretty maid, dropping a courtesy, says, "Thank you, sir; I am alreadybespoken," or "Thank you; I will consider of it when I know you better."

Not for a moment, I suppose, is a woman ever ignorant of a man'sadmiration of her, however uncertain she may be of his intentions, and itwas with an unusual flutter of the heart that Margaret received Mr. Lyonthat afternoon. If she had doubts, they were dissipated by a certainconstraint in his manner, and the importance he seemed to be attaching tohis departure, and she was warned to go within her defenses. Even themost complaisant women like at least the appearance of a siege.

"I'm off tomorrow," he said, "for Washington. You know you recommended itas necessary to my American education."

"Yes. We send Representatives and strangers there to be educated. I havenever been there myself."

"And do you not wish to go?"

"Very much. All Americans want to go to Washington. It is the greatsocial opportunity; everybody there is in society. You will be able tosee there, Mr. Lyon, how a republican democracy manages social life.

"Do you mean to say there are no distinctions?"

"Oh, no; there are plenty of official distinctions, and a code that isvery curious and complicated, I believe. But still society is open."

"It must be—pardon me—a good deal like a mob."

"Well, our mobs of that sort are said to be very well behaved. Mr. Morgansays that Washington is the only capital in the world where the principleof natural selection applies to society; that it is there shown for thefirst time that society is able to take care of itself in the free playof democratic opportunities."

"It must be very interesting to see that."

"I hope you will find it so. The resident diplomats, I have heard, saythat they find society there more agreeable than at any other capital—atleast those who have the qualities to make themselves agreeableindependent of their rank."

"Is there nothing like a court? I cannot see who sets the mode."

"Officially there may be something like a court, but it can be onlytemporary, for the personnel of it is dissolved every four years. Andsociety, always forming and reforming, as the voters of the republicdictate, is almost independent of the Government, and has nothing of thesocial caste of Berlin or London."

"You make quite an ideal picture."

"Oh, I dare say it is not at all ideal; only it is rather fluid, andinteresting, to see how society, without caste and subject to suchconstant change, can still be what is called 'society.' And I am toldthat while it is all open in a certain way, it nevertheless selectsitself into agreeable groups, much as society does elsewhere. Yes, youought to see what a democracy can do in this way."

"But I am told that money makes your aristocracy here."

"Very likely rich people think they are an aristocracy. You see, Mr.Lyon, I don't know much about the great world. Mrs. Fletcher, whose latehusband was once a Representative in Washington, says that life is notnearly so simple there as it used to be, and that rich men in theGovernment, vying with rich men who have built fine houses and who livethere permanently without any Government position, have introduced anelement of expense and display that interferes very much with the naturalselection of which Mr. Morgan speaks. But you will see. We are all rightsorry to have you leave us," Margaret added, turning towards him withfrank, unclouded eyes.

"It is very good in you to say so. I have spent here the most delightfuldays of my life."

"Oh, that is charming flattery. You will make us all very conceited."

"Don't mock me, Miss Debree. I hoped I had awakened something morevaluable to me than conceit," Lyon said, with a smile.

"You have, I assure you: gratitude. You have opened quite another worldto us. Reading about foreign life does not give one at all the sameimpression of it that seeing one who is a part of it does."

"And don't you want to see that life for yourself? I hope some time—"

"Of course," Margaret said, interrupting; "all Americans expect to go toEurope. I have a friend who says she should be mortified if she reachedheaven and there had to confess that she never had seen Europe. It is oneof the things that is expected of a person. Though you know now that theembarrassing question that everybody has to answer is, 'Have you been toAlaska?' Have you been to Alaska, Mr. Lyon?"

This icy suggestion seemed very inopportune to Lyon. He rose and walked astep or two, and stood by the fire facing her. He confessed, lookingdown, that he had not been in Alaska, and he had no desire to go there."In fact, Miss Debree," he said, with effort at speaking lightly, "I fearI am not in a geographical mood today. I came to say good-by, and—and—"

"Shall I call my aunt?" said Margaret, rising also.

"No, I beg; I had something to say that concerns us; that is, thatconcerns myself. I couldn't go away without knowing from you—that is,without telling you—"

The color rose in Margaret's cheek, and she made a movement ofembarrassment, and said, with haste: "Some other time; I beg you will notsay—I trust that I have done nothing that—"

"Nothing, nothing," he went on quickly; "nothing except to be yourself;to be the one woman"—he would not heed her hand raised in a gesture ofprotest; he stood nearer her now, his face flushed and his eyes eagerwith determination—"the one woman I care for. Margaret, Miss Debree, Ilove you!"

Her hand that rested on the table trembled, and the hot blood rushed toher face, flooding her in an agony of shame, pleasure, embarrassment, andanger that her face should contradict the want of tenderness in her eyes.In an instant self-possession came back to her mind, but not strength toher body, and she sank into the chair, and looking up, with only pity inher eyes, said, "I am sorry."

Lyon stopped; his heart seemed to stand still; the blood left his face;for an instant the sunshine left the world. It was a terrible blow, theworst a man can receive—a bludgeon on the head is nothing to it. He halfturned, he looked again for an instant at the form that was more to himthan all the world besides, unable to face the dreadful loss, andrecovering speech, falteringly said, "Is that all?"

"That is all, Mr. Lyon," Margaret answered, not looking up, and in avoice that was perfectly steady.

He turned to go mechanically, and passed to the door in a sort of daze,forgetful of all conventionality; but habit is strong, and he turnedalmost immediately back from the passage. Margaret was still sitting,with no recognition of his departure.

"I beg you will make my excuses, and say good-by to Miss Forsythe. I hadmentioned it to her. I thought perhaps she had told you, perhaps—Ishould like to know if it is anything about difference in—innationality, about family, or—"

"No, no," said Margaret; "this could never be anything but a personalquestion with me. I—"

"But you said, 'some other time:' Might I ever expect—"

"No, no; there is no other time; do not go on. It can only be painful."

And then, with a forced cheerfulness: "You will no doubt thank me someday. Your life must be so different from mine. And you must not doubt myesteem, my appreciation," (her sense of justice forced this from her),"my good wishes. Good-by." She gave him her hand. He held it for asecond, and then was gone.

She heard his footstep, rapid and receding. So he had really gone! Shewas not sorry—no. If she could have loved him! She sank back in herchair.

No, she could not love him. The man to command her heart must be ofanother type. But the greatest experience in a woman's life had come toher here, just now, in this commonplace room. A man had said he lovedher. A thousand times as a girl she had dreamed of that, hardlyconfessing it to herself, and thought of such a scene, and feared it. Anda man had said that he loved her. Her eyes grew tenderer and her faceburned at the thought. Was it with pleasure? Yes, and with womanly pain.What an awful thing it was! Why couldn't he have seen? A man had said heloved her. Perhaps it was not in her to love any one. Perhaps she shouldlive on and on like her aunt Forsythe. Well, it was over; and Margaretroused herself as her aunt entered the room.

"Has Mr. Lyon been here?"

"Yes; he has just gone. He was so sorry not to see you and say good-by.
He left ever so many messages for you."

"And" (Margaret was moving as if to go) "did he say nothing—nothing toyou?"

"Oh yes, he said a great deal," answered this accomplished hypocrite,looking frankly in her aunt's eyes. "He said how delightful his visit hadbeen, and how sorry he was to go."

"And nothing else, Margaret?"

"Oh yes; he said he was going to Washington." And the girl was gone fromthe room.

VI

Margaret hastened to her chamber. Was the air oppressive? She opened thewindow and sat down by it. A soft south wind was blowing, eating away theremaining patches of snow; the sky was full of fleecy clouds. Where dothese days come from in January? Why should nature be in a melting mood?Margaret instinctively would have preferred a wild storm, violence,anything but this elemental languor. Her emotion was incredible toherself.

It was only an incident. It had all happened in a moment, and it wasover. But it was the first of the kind in a woman's life. The thrilling,mysterious word had been dropped into a woman's heart. Hereafter shewould be changed. She never again would be as she was before. Would herheart be hardened or softened by the experience? She did not love him;that was clear. She had done right; that was clear. But he had said heloved her. Unwittingly she was following him in her thought. She hadrejected plain John Lyon, amiable, intelligent, unselfish, kindly,deferential. She had rejected also the Earl of Chisholm, a conspicuousposition, an honorable family, luxury, a great opportunity in life. Itcame to the girl in a flash. She moved nervously in her chair. She putdown the thought as unworthy of her. But she had entertained it for amoment. In that second, ambition had entered the girl's soul. She had aglimpse of her own nature that seemed new to her. Was this, then, themeaning of her restlessness, of her charitable activities, of herunconfessed dreams of some career? Ambition had entered her soul in adefinite form. She expelled it. It would come again in some form orother. She was indignant at herself as she thought of it. How odd it was!Her privacy had been invaded. The even tenor of her life had been broken.Henceforth would she be less or more sensitive to the suggestion of love,to the allurements of ambition? Margaret tried, in accordance with hernature, to be sincere with herself.

After all, what nonsense it was! Nothing really had happened. A strangerof a few weeks before had declared himself. She did not love him; he wasno more to her than any other man. It was a common occurrence. Herjudgment accorded with her feeling in what she had done. How was she toknow that she had made a mistake, if mistake it was? How was she to knowthat this hour was a crisis in her life? Surely the little tumult wouldpass; surely the little whisper of worldliness could not disturb herideals. But all the power of exclusion in her mind could not exclude thereturning thought of what might have been if she had loved him. Alas! inthat moment was born in her heart something that would make the idea oflove less simple than it had been in her mind. She was heart-free, buther nature was too deep not to be profoundly affected by this experience.

Looking back upon this afternoon in the light of after-years, sheprobably could not feel—no one could say—that she had done wrong. Howwas she to tell? Why is it that to do the right thing is often to makethe mistake of a life? Nothing could have been nobler than for Margaretindignantly to put aside a temptation that her heart told her wasunworthy. And yet if she had yielded to it?

I ought to ask pardon, perhaps, for dwelling upon a thing so slight asthe entrance of a thought in a woman's life. For as to Margaret, sheseemed unchanged. She made no sign that anything unusual had occurred. Weonly knew that Mr. Lyon went away less cheerful than he usually was, thathe said nothing of returning in response to our invitations, and that heseemed to anticipate nothing but the fulfillment of a duty in his visitto Washington.

What had happened was regarded as only an episode. In fact, however, Idoubt if there are any episodes in our lives, any asides, that do notpermanently affect our entire career. Are not the episodes, the casualthoughts, the fortuitous, unplanned meetings, the brief and maybe at themoment unnoted events, those which exercise the most influence on ourdestiny? To all observation the career of Lyon, and not of Margaret, wasmost affected by their interview. But often the implanting of an idea inthe mind is more potent than the frustration of a plan or thegratification of a desire, so hidden are the causes that make character.

For some time I saw little of Margaret. Affairs in which I was not aloneor chiefly concerned took me from home. One of the most curious andinteresting places in the world is a Chamber in the business heart of NewYork—if that scene of struggle and passion can be said to have a heart—situated midway where the currents of eagerness to acquire the money ofother people, not to make it, ceaselessly meet and dash against eachother. If we could suppose there was a web covering this region, spun bythe most alert and busy of men to catch those less alert and moreproductive, here in this Chamber would sit the ingenious spiders. But theanalogy fails, for spiders do not prey upon each other. Scientists saythat the human system has two nerve-centres—one in the brain, to whichand from which are telegraphed all movements depending upon the will, andanother in the small of the back, the centre of the involuntaryoperations of respiration, digestion, and so on. It may be fanciful tosuppose that in the national system Washington is the one nervous centreand New York the other. And yet it does sometimes seem that the nervesand ganglions in the small of the back in the commercial metropolis actautomatically and without any visible intervention of intelligence. Forall that, their operations may be as essential as the other, in which thewill-power sometimes gets into a deadlock, and sometimes telegraphs themost eccentric and incomprehensible orders. Puzzled by thesecontradictions, some philosophers have said that there may be somewhereoutside of these two material centres another power that keeps affairsmoving along with some steadiness.

This noble Chamber has a large irregular area of floor space, is veryhigh, and has running round three sides a narrow elevated gallery, fromwhich spectators can look down upon the throng below. Upon a raised daisat one side sits the presiding genius of the place, who rules very muchas Jupiter was supposed to govern the earthly swarms, by letting thingsrun and occasionally launching a thunderbolt. High up on one side, in anOlympian seclusion, away from the noise and the strife, sits a Board,calm as fate, and panoplied in the responsibility of chance, whosefunction seems to be that of switch-shifters in their windowed cubby at anetwork of railway intersections—to prevent collisions.

At both ends of the floor and along one side are narrow railed-off spacesfull of clerks figuring at desks, of telegraph operators clicking theirmachines, of messenger-boys arriving and departing in haste, ofunprivileged operators nervously watching the scene and waiting thechance of a word with some one on the floor; through noiseless swingingdoors men are entering and departing every moment—men in a hurry, menwith anxious faces, conscious that the fate of the country is in theirhands. On the floor itself are five hundred, perhaps a thousand, men,gathered for the most part in small groups about little stands upon thesummit of which is a rallying legend, talking, laughing, screaming,good-natured, indifferent, excited, running hither and thither inresponse to changing figures in the checker-board squares on the greatwall opposite—calm, cynical one moment, the next violently agitated,shouting, gesticulating, rushing together, shaking their fists in atumult of passion which presently subsides.

The swarms ebb and flow about these little stands—bees, not bringing anyhoney, but attracted to the hive where it is rumored most honey is to behad. By habit some always stand or sit about a particular hive, waitingfor the show of comb. By-and-by there is a stir; the crowd thickens; onebeardless youth shouts out the figure "one-half"; another howls,"three-eighths." The first one nods. It is done. The electric wirerunning up the stand quivers and takes the figure, passes it to all theother wires, transmits it to every office and hotel in the city, to allthe "tickers" in ten thousand chambers and "bucketshops" and offices inthe republic. Suddenly on the bulletin-boards in New Orleans, Chicago,San Francisco, Podunk, Liverpool, appear the mysterious "three-eighths,"electrifying the watchers of these boards, who begin to jabber andgesticulate and "transact business." It is wonderful.

What induced the beardless young man to make this "investment" in"three-eighths"—who can tell? Perhaps he had heard, as he came into theroom, that the Secretary of the Treasury was going to make a call ofFives; perhaps he had heard that Bismarck had said that the French bloodwas too thin and needed a little more iron; perhaps he had heard that anorther in Texas had killed a herd of cattle, or that two grasshoppershad been seen in the neighborhood of Fargo, or that Jay Hawker had beenobserved that morning hurrying to his brokers with a scowl on his faceand his hat pulled over his eyes. The young man sold what he did nothave, and the other young man bought what he will never get.

This is business of the higher and almost immaterial sort, and has anelement of faith in it, and, as one may say, belief in the unseen, whenceit is characterized by an expression—"dealing in futures." It is notgambling, for there are no "chips" used, and there is no roulette-tablein sight, and there are no piles of money or piles of anything else. Itis not a lottery, for there is no wheel at which impartial men preside toinsure honest drawings, and there are no predestined blanks and prizes,and the man who buys and the man who sells can do something, either inthe newspapers or elsewhere, to affect the worth of the investment,whereas in a lottery everything depends upon the turn of the blind wheel.It is not necessary, however, to attempt a defense of the Chamber. It isone of the recognized ways of becoming important and powerful in thisworld. The privilege of the floor—a seat, as it is called—in thistemple of the god Chance to be Rich is worth more than a seat in theCabinet. It is not only true that a fortune may be made here in a day orlost here in a day, but that a nod and a wink here enable people all overthe land to ruin others or ruin themselves with celerity. The relation ofthe Chamber to the business of the country is therefore evident. If anearthquake should suddenly sink this temple and all its votaries into thebowels of the earth, with all its nervousness and all its electricity, itis appalling to think what would become of the business of the country.

Not far from this vast Chamber, where great financial operations areconducted on the highest principles of honor, and with the strictestregard to the Marquis of Dusenbury's rules, there is another lesspretentious Chamber, known as "open," a sort of overflow meeting. Thosewho have not quite left hope behind can go in here. Here are the tickerscommunicating with the Chamber, tended by lads, who transfer the figuresto big blackboards on the wall. In front of these boards sit, frommorning to night, rows, perhaps relays, of men intently or listlesslywatching the figures. Many of them, who seldom make a sign, come herefrom habit; they have nowhere else to go. Some of them were once lords inthe great Chamber, who have been, as the phrase is, "cleaned out." Thereis a gray-bearded veteran in seedy clothes, with sunken fiery eyes, whowas once many times a millionaire, was a power in the Board, followed byreporters, had a palace in the Avenue, and drove to his office withcoachman and footman in livery, and his wife headed the list ofcharities. Now he spends his old age watching this blackboard, andconsiders it a good day that brings him five dollars and his car-fare. Atone end of the low-ceiled apartment are busy clerks behind a counter,alert and cheerful. If one should go through a side door and down apassage he might encounter the smell of rum. Smart young men, clad in thechoicest raiment from the misfit counters, with greed stamped on theirastute faces, bustle about, watch the blackboards, and make investmentswith each other. Middle-aged men in slouch hats lounge around with hungryeyes. The place is feverish rather than exciting. A tall fellow, whosegait and clothes proclaim him English, with a hard face and lack-lustreeyes, saunters about; his friends at home suppose he is making hisfortune in America. A dapper young gentleman, quite in the mode, and withthe quick air of prosperity, rapidly enters the room and confers with aclerk at the counter. He has the run of the Chamber, and is from thegreat house of Flamm and Slamm. Perhaps he is taking a "flier" on his ownaccount, perhaps he represents his house in a side transactionthere areso many ways open to enterprising young men in the city; at any rate, hisentrance is regarded as significant: This is not a hospital for thebroken down and "cleaned out" of the Chamber, but it is a place ofbusiness, which is created and fed by the incessant "ticker." How menexisted or did any business at all before the advent of the "ticker" is awonder.

But the Chamber, the creator of low-pressure and high-pressure, theinspirer of the "ticker," is the great generator of business. Here Ifound Henderson in the morning hour, and he came up to me on the call ofa messenger. He approached, nonchalant and smiling as usual. "Do you seethat man," he said, as we stood a moment looking down, "sitting there ona side bench—big body, small head, hair grayish, long beardparted—apparently taking no interest in anything?

"That's Flink, who made the corner in O. B.—one of the longest-headedoperators in the Chamber. He is about the only man who dare try a holdwith Jay Hawker. And for some reason or another, though they haveapparent tussles, Hawker rather favors him. Five years ago he could justraise money enough to get into the Chamber. Now he is reckoned atanywhere from five to ten millions. I was at his home the other night.Everybody was there. I had a queer feeling, in all the magnificence, thatthe sheriff might be in there in ten days. Yet he may own a good slice ofthe island in ten years. His wife, whom I complimented, and who thankedme for coming, said she had invited none but the reshershy."

"He looks like a rascal," I ventured to remark.

"Oh, that is not a word used in the Chamber. He is called a 'daisy.' Iwas put into his pew in church the other Sunday, and the preacherdescribed him and his methods so exactly that I didn't dare look at him.When we came out he whispered, 'That was rather hard on Slack; he musthave felt it.' These men rather like that sort of preaching."

"I don't come here often," Henderson resumed, as we walked away. "Themarket is flat today. There promised to be a little flurry in L. and P.,and I looked in for a customer."

We walked to his down-town club to lunch. Everybody, I noticed, seemed toknow Henderson, and his presence was hailed with a cordial smile, agood-humored nod, or a hearty grasp of the hand. I never knew a moreprepossessing man; his bonhomie was infectious. Though his demeanor wasperfectly quiet and modest, he carried the air of good-fellowship. He wasentirely frank, cordial, and had that sort of sincerity which one canafford to have who does not take life too seriously. Tall—at least sixfeet-with a well-shaped head set on square shoulders, brown hair inclinedto curl, large blue eyes which could be merry or exceedingly grave, Ithought him a picture of manly beauty. Good-natured, clever, prosperous,and not yet thirty. What a dower!

After we had disposed of our little matter of business, which I confesswas not exactly satisfactory to me, although when I was told that "thefirst bondholders will be obliged to come in," he added that "of coursewe shall take care of our friends," we went to his bachelor quartersuptown. "I want you to see," he said, "how a hermit lives."

The apartments were not my idea of a hermitage—except in the city. Acharming library, spacious, but so full as to be cozy, with an open fire;chamber, dressing-room, and bathroom connecting, furnished witheverything that a luxurious habit could suggest and good taste would notrefuse, made a retreat that could almost reconcile a sinner to solitude.There were a few good paintings, many rare engravings, on the walls, anotable absence, even in the sleeping-room, of photographs of actressesand professional beauties, but here and there souvenirs of travel andevidences that the gentler sex had contributed the skill of their slenderfingers to the cheerfulness of the bachelor's home. Scattered about werethe daily and monthly products of the press, the newest sensations, thethings talked about at dinners, but the walls for the most part werelined with books that are recognized as the proper possessions of thelover of books, and most of them in exquisite bindings. Less care, Ithought, had been given in the collection to "sets" of "standards" thanto those that are rare, or for some reason, either from distinguishedownership or autograph notes, have a peculiar value.

In this atmosphere, when we were prepared to take our ease, the talk wasno longer of stocks, or railways, or schemes, but of books. Whether ornot Henderson loved literature I did not then make up my mind, but he hada passion for books, especially for rare and first editions; and thedelight with which he exhibited his library, the manner in which hehandled the books that he took down one after the other, the sparkle inhis eyes over a "find" or a bargain, gave me a side of his characterquite different from that I should have gained by seeing him "in thestreet" only. He had that genuine respect and affection for a "book"which has become almost traditional in these days of cheap and flimsypublications, a taste held by scholars and collectors, and quite beyondthe popular comprehension. The respect for a book is essential to thedignity and consideration of the place of literature in the world, andwhen books are treated with no more regard than the newspaper, it is asign that literature is losing its power. Even the collector, who mayread little and care more for the externals than for the soul of hisfavorites, by the honor he pays them, by the solicitude he expends upontheir preservation without spot, by the lavishness of expense uponbinding, contributes much to the dignity of that art which preserves forthe race the continuity of its thought and development. If Hendersonloved books merely as a collector whose taste for luxury and expensetakes this direction, his indulgence could not but have a certainrefining influence. I could not see that he cultivated any decidedspecialty, but he had many rare copies which had cost fabulous prices,the possession of which gives a reputation to any owner. "My shelves ofAmericana," he said, "are nothing like Goodloe's, who has a lot of scarcethings that I am hoping to get hold of some day. But there's a littlething" (it was a small coffee-colored tract of six leaves, upon which thebinder of the city had exercised his utmost skill) "which Goodloe offeredme five hundred dollars for the other day. I picked it up in a NewHampshire garret." Not the least interesting part of the collection wasfirst editions of American authors—a person's value to a collector isoften in proportion to his obscurity—and what most delighted him amongthem were certain thin volumes of poetry, which the authors sincebecoming famous had gone to a good deal of time and expense to suppress.The world seems to experience a lively pleasure in holding a man to hisearly follies. There were many examples of superb binding, especially ofexquisite tooling on hog-skin covers—the appreciation of which haslately greatly revived. The recent rage for bindings has been a soretrouble to students and collectors in special lines, raising the pricesof books far beyond their intrinsic value. I had a charming afternoon inHenderson's library, an enjoyment not much lessened at the time byexperiencing in it, with him, rather a sense of luxury than of learning.It is true, one might pass an hour altogether different in the garret ofa student, and come away with quite other impressions of the pageant oflife.

At five o'clock his stylish trap was sent around from the boardingstable, and we drove in the Park till twilight. Henderson handling thereins, and making a part of that daily display which is too heterogeneousto have distinction, reverted quite naturally to the tone of worldlinessand tolerant cynicism which had characterized his conversation in themorning. If the Park and the moving assemblage had not the air ofdistinction, it had that of expense, which is quite as attractive tomany. Here, as downtown, my companion seemed to know and be known byeverybody, returning the familiar salutes of brokers and club men,receiving gracious bows from stout matrons, smiles and nods from prettywomen, and more formal recognition from stately and stiff elderly men,who sat bolt-upright beside their wives and tried to look likemillionaires. For every passerby Henderson had a quick word ofcharacterization sufficiently amusing, and about many a story whichilluminated the social life of the day. It was wonderful how many of thischance company had little "histories"—comic, tragic, pitiful,interesting enough for the pages of a novel.

"There is a young lady"—Henderson touched his hat, and I caught aglimpse of golden hair and a flash of dark eyes out of a mass of furs—"who has no history: the world is all before her."

"Who is that?"

"The daughter of old Eschelle—Carmen Eschelle—the banker andpolitician, you remember; had a diplomatic position abroad, and the girlwas educated in Europe. She is very clever. She and her mother have moremoney than they ought to know what to do with."

"That was the celebrated Jay Hawker" ( a moment after), "in the modestcoupe—not much display about him."

"Is he recognized by respectable people?"

"Recognized?" Henderson laughed. "He's a power. There are plenty ofpeople who live by trying to guess what he is going to do. Hawker isn'tsuch a bad fellow. Other people have used the means he used to get richand haven't succeeded. They are not held up to point a moral. The troubleis that Hawker succeeded. Of course, it's a game. He plays as fair asanybody."

"Yes," Henderson resumed, walking his horses in sight of the obelisk,which suggested the long continuance of the human race, "it is the sameold game, and it is very interesting to those who are in it. Outsidersthink it is all greed. In the Chamber it is a good deal the love of thegame, to watch each other, to find out a man's plans, to circumvent him,to thwart him, to start a scheme and manipulate it, to catch somebody, toescape somebody; it is a perpetual excitement."

"The machine in the Chamber appears to run very smoothly," I said. "Oh,that is a public register and indicator. The system back of it iscomprehensive, and appears to be complicated, but it is really verysimple. Spend an hour some day in the office of Flamm and Slamm, and youwill see a part of the system. There are, always a number of men watchingthe blackboard, figures on which are changed every minute by theattendants. Telegrams are constantly arriving from every part of theUnion, from all over the continent, from all the centres in Europe, whichare read by some one connected with the firm, and then displayed for theguidance of the watchers of the blackboard. Upon this news one or anothersays, 'I think I'll buy,' or 'I think I'll sell,' so and so. His order istransmitted instantly to the Chamber. In two minutes the result comesback and appears upon the blackboard."

"But where does the news come from?"

"From the men whose special business it is to pick it up or make it. Theyare inside of politics, of the railways, of the weather bureau,everywhere. The other day in Chicago I sat some time in a broker's officewith others watching the market, and dropped into conversation with abright young fellow, at whose right hand, across the rail, was atelegraph operator at the end of a private wire. Soon a man came inquietly, and whispered in the ear of my neighbor and went out. The youngfellow instantly wrote a despatch and handed it to the operator, andturning to me, said, 'Now watch the blackboard.'

"In an incredibly short space of time a fall in a leading railway showedon the blackboard. 'What was it?' I asked. 'Why, that man was the generalfreight manager of the A. B. road. He told me that they were to cutrates. I sent it to New York by a private wire.' I learned by furtherconversation that my young gentleman was a Manufacturer of News, and thatsuch was his address and intelligence that though he was not a member ofthe broker's firm, he made ten thousand a year in the business. Soonanother man came in, whispered his news, and went away. Anotherdespatch—another responsive change in the figures. 'That,' explained mycompanion, 'was a man connected with the weather bureau. He told me thatthere would be a heavy frost tonight in the Northwest.'"

"Do they sell the weather?" I asked, very much amused.

"Yes, twice; once over a private wire, and then to the public, after thevalue of it has been squeezed out, in the shape of predictions. Oh, theweather bureau is worth all the money it costs, for business purposes. Itis a great auxiliary."

Dining that evening with Henderson at his club, I had further opportunityto study a representative man. He was of a good New Hampshire family,exceedingly respectable without being distinguished. Over thechimney-place in the old farmhouse hung a rusty Queen Anne that had beenat the taking of Louisburg. His grandfather shouldered a musket at BunkerHill; his father, the youngest son, had been a judge as well as a farmer,and noted for his shrewdness and reticence. Rodney, inheriting the thriftof his ancestors, had pushed out from his home, adapting this thrift tothe modern methods of turning it to account. He had brought also to thecity the stamina of three generations of plain living—a splendidcapital, by which the city is constantly reinforced, and which onegeneration does not exhaust, except by the aid of extreme dissipation.With sound health, good ability, and fair education, he had the cheerfultemperament which makes friends, and does not allow their misfortunes toinjure his career. Generous by impulse, he would rather do a favor thannot, and yet he would be likely to let nothing interfere with any objecthe had in view for himself. Inheriting a conventional respect forreligion and morality, he was not so bigoted as to rebuke the gayety of aconvivial company, nor so intractable as to make him an uncomfortableassociate in any scheme, according to the modern notions of business,that promised profit. His engaging manner made him popular, and hisgood-natured adroitness made him successful. If his early experience oflife caused him to be cynical, he was not bitterly so; his cynicism wasof the tolerant sort that does not condemn the world and withdraw fromit, but courts it and makes the most of it, lowering his private opinionof men in proportion as he is successful in the game he plays with them.At this period I could see that he had determined to be successful, andthat he had not determined to be unscrupulous. He would only drift withthe tide that made for fortune. He enjoyed the world—a sufficient reasonwhy the world should like him. His business morality was gauged by whatother people do in similar circ*mstances. In short, he was a product ofthe period since the civil war closed, that great upheaval of patrioticfeeling and sacrifice, which ended in so much expansion and so manyopportunities. If he had remained in New Hampshire he would probably havebeen a successful politician, successful not only in keeping in place,but in teaching younger aspirants that serving the country is a very goodway to the attainment of luxury and the consideration that money brings.But having chosen the law as a stepping-stone to the lobby, tospeculation, and the manipulation of chances, he had a poor opinion ofpolitics and of politicians. His success thus far, though considerable,had not been sufficient to create for him powerful enemies, so that hemay be said to be admired by all and feared by none. In the generalopinion he was a downright good fellow and amazingly clever.

VII

In youth, as at the opera, everything seems possible. Surely it is notnecessary to choose between love and riches. One may have both, and theone all the more easily for having attained the other. It must be afiction of the moralists who construct the dramas that the god of loveand the god of money each claims an undivided allegiance. It was in somewholly legendary, perhaps spiritual, world that it was necessary torenounce love to gain the Rhine gold. The boxes at the Metropolitan didnot believe this. The spectators of the boxes could believe it stillless. For was not beauty there seen shining in jewels that have a marketvalue, and did not love visibly preside over the union, and make it knownthat his sweetest favors go with a prosperous world? And yet, is thecharm of life somewhat depending upon a sense of its fleetingness, of itsphantasmagorial character, a note of coming disaster, maybe, in the midstof its most seductive pageantry, in the whirl and glitter and hurry ofit? Is there some subtle sense of exquisite satisfaction in snatching thesweet moments of life out of the very delirium of it, that must soon endin an awakening to bankruptcy of the affections, and the dreadful loss ofillusions? Else why do we take pleasure—a pleasure so deep that ittouches the heart like melancholy—in the common drama of the opera? Howgay and joyous is the beginning! Mirth, hilarity, entrancing sound,brilliant color, the note of a trumpet calling to heroism, the beseechingof the concordant strings, and the soft flute inviting to pleasure;scenes placid, pastoral, innocent; light-hearted love, the dance on thegreen, the stately pageant in the sunlit streets, the court, the ball,the mad splendor of life. And then love becomes passion, and passionthwarted hurries on to sin, and sin lifts to the heights of the immortal,sweetly smiling gods, and plunges to the depths of despair. In vain theorchestra, the inevitable accompaniment of life, warns and pleads andadmonishes; calm has gone, and gayety has gone; there is no sweetness nowbut in the wildness of surrender and of sacrifice. How sad are theremembered strains that aforetime were incentives to love and promises ofhappiness! Gloom settles upon the scene; Mephisto, the only radiant one,flits across it, and mocks the poor broken-hearted girl clinging to thechurch door. There is a dungeon, the chanting of the procession oftonsured priests, the passing-bell. Seldom appears the golden bridge overwhich the baffled and tired pass into Valhalla.

Do we like this because it is life, or because there is a certainsatisfaction in seeing the tragedy which impends over all, pervades theatmosphere, as it were, and adds something of zest to the mildestenjoyment? Should we go away from the mimic stage any, better andstronger if the drama began in the dungeon and ended on the greensward,with innocent love and resplendent beauty in possession of the Rhinegold?

How simple, after all, was the created world on the stage to the realworld in the auditorium, with its thousand complexities and dramaticsituations, and if the little knot of players of parts for an hour couldhave had leisure to be spectators of the audience, what a deeperrevelation of life would they not have seen! For the world has neverassembled such an epitome of itself, in its passion for pleasure and itspassion for display, as in the modern opera, with its ranks and tiers ofvotaries from the pit to the dome. I fancy that even Margaret, whose lovefor music was genuine, was almost as much fascinated by the greaterspectacle as by the less.

It was a crowded night, for the opera was one that appealed to the sensesand stimulated them to activity, and left the mind free to pursue its ownschemes; in a word, orchestra and the scenes formed a sort ofaccompaniment and interpreter to the private dramas in the boxes. Theopera was made for society, and not society for the opera. We occupied abox in the second tier—the Morgans, Margaret, and my wife. Morgan saidthat the glasses were raised to us from the parquet and leveled at usfrom the loges because we were a country party, but he well enough knewwhose fresh beauty and enthusiastic young face it was that drew the firewhen the curtain fell on the first act, and there was for a moment alittle lull in the hum of conversation.

"I had heard," Morgan was saying, "that the opera was not acclimated inNew York; but it is nearly so. The audience do not jabber so loud nor soincessantly as at San Carlo, and they do not hum the airs with thesingers—"

"Perhaps," said my wife, "that is because they do not know the airs."

"But they are getting on in cultivation, and learning how to assert thesocial side of the opera, which is not to be seriously interfered with bythe music on the stage."

"But the music, the scenery, were never before so good," I replied tothese cynical observations.

"That is true. And the social side has risen with it. Do you know what animpudent thing the managers did the other night in protesting against theraising of the lights by which the house was made brilliant and the cheapillusions of the stage were destroyed? They wanted to make the housepositively gloomy for the sake of a little artificial moonlight on thepainted towers and the canvas lakes."

As the world goes, the scene was brilliant, of course with republicansimplicity. The imagination was helped by no titled names any more thanthe eye was by the insignia of rank, but there was a certain glow offeeling, as the glass swept the circle, to know that there were tenmillions in this box, and twenty in the next, and fifty in the next,attested well enough by the flash of jewels and the splendor of attire,and one might indulge a genuine pride in the prosperity of the republic.As for beauty, the world, surely, in this later time, had flowered here—flowered with something of Aspasia's grace and something of the haughtycoldness of Agrippina. And yet it was American. Here and there in theboxes was a thoroughbred portrait by Copley—the long shapely neck, thesloping shoulders, the drooping eyelids, even to the gown in which thegreat-grandmother danced with the French officers.

"Who is that lovely creature?" asked Margaret, indicating a box opposite.

I did not know. There were two ladies, and behind them I had nodifficulty in making out Henderson and—Margaret evidently had not seenhim Mr. Lyon. Almost at the same moment Henderson recognized me, andsignaled for me to come to his box. As I rose to do so, Mrs. Morganexclaimed: "Why, there is Mr. Lyon! Do tell him we are here." I sawMargaret's color rise, but she did not speak.

I was presented to Mrs. Eschelle and her daughter; in the latter Irecognized the beauty who had flashed by us in the Park. The elder ladyinclined to stoutness, and her too youthful apparel could not mislead oneas to the length of her pilgrimage in this world, nor soften the hardlines of her worldly face-lines acquired, one could see, by a socialstruggle, and not drawn there by an innate patrician insolence.

"We are glad to see a friend of Mr. Henderson's," she said, "and of Mr.Lyon's also. Mr. Lyon has told us much of your charming country home. Whois that pretty girl in your box, Mr. Fairchild?"

Miss Eschelle had her glass pointed at Margaret as I gave the desiredinformation.

"How innocent!" she murmured. "And she's quite in the style—isn't she,Mr. Lyon?" she asked, turning about, her sweet mobile face quite thepicture of what she was describing. "We are all innocent in these days."

"It is a very good style," I said.

"Isn't it becoming?" asked the girl, making her dark eyes at once merryand demure.

Mr. Lyon was looking intently at the opposite box, and a slight shadecame over his fine face. "Ah, I see!"

"I beg your pardon, Miss Eschelle," he said, after a second, "I hardlyknow which to admire most, the beauty, or the wit, or the innocence ofthe American women."

"There is nothing so confusing, though, as the country innocence," thegirl said, with the most natural air; "it never knows where to stop."

"You are too absurd, Carmen," her mother interposed; "as if the town girldid!"

"Well, mamma, there is authority for saying that there is a time foreverything, only one must be in the fashion, you know."

Mr. Lyon looked a little dubious at this turn of the talk; Mr. Hendersonwas as evidently amused at the girl's acting. I said I was glad to seethat goodness was in fashion.

"Oh, it often is. You know we were promised a knowledge of good as wellas evil. It depends upon the point of view. I fancy, now, that Mr.Henderson tolerates the good—that is the reason we get on so welltogether; and Mr. Lyon tolerates the evil—that's the reason he likes NewYork. I have almost promised him that I will have a mission school."

The girl looked quite capable of it, or of any other form of devotion.Notwithstanding her persistent banter, she had a most inviting innocenceof manner, almost an ingenuousness, that well became her exquisitebeauty. And but for a tentative daring in her talk, as if the gentlecreature were experimenting as to how far one could safely go, herinnocence might have seemed that of ignorance.

It came out in the talk that Mr. Lyon had been in Washington for a week,and would return there later on.

"We had a claim on him," said Mrs. Eschelle, "for his kindness to us inLondon, and we are trying to convince him that New York is the realcapital."

"Unfortunately," added Miss Eschelle, looking up in Mr. Lyon's face, "hevisited Brandon first, and you seem to have bewitched him with yoursimple country ways. I can get him to talk of nothing else."

"You mean to say," Mr. Lyon replied, with the air of retorting, "that youhave asked me about nothing else."

"Oh, you know we felt a little responsible for you; and there is no placeso dangerous as the country. Now here you are protected—we put all thewickedness on the stage, and learn to recognize and shun it."

"It may be wicked," said her mother, "but it is dull. Don't you find itso, Mr. Henderson? I am passionately fond of Wagner, but it is too noisyfor anything tonight."

"I notice, dear," the dutiful daughter replied for all of us, "that youhave to raise your voice. But there is the ballet. Let us all listennow."

Mr. Lyon excused himself from going with me, saying that he would call atour hotel, and I took Henderson. "I shall count the minutes you are goingto lose," the girl said as we went out-to our box. The lobbies in theinteract were thronged with men—for the most part the young speculatorsof the Chamber turned into loungers in the foyer—knowing, alert,attitudinizing in the extreme of the mode, unable even in this hour togive beauty the preference to business, well knowing, perhaps, thatbeauty itself in these days has a fine eye for business.

I liked Henderson better in our box than in his own. Was it because theatmosphere was more natural and genuine? Or was it Margaret's transparentnature, her sincere enjoyment of the scene, her evident pleasure in themusic, the color, the gayety of the house, that made him drop the slightcynical air of the world which had fitted him so admirably a momentbefore? He already knew my wife and the Morgans, and, after the greetingswere made, he took a seat by Margaret, quite content while the act wasgoing on to watch its progress in the play of her responsive features.How quickly she felt, how the frown followed the smile, how, she seemedto weigh and try to apprehend the meaning of what went on—how her everysense enjoyed life!

"It is absurd," she said, turning her bright face to him when the curtaindropped, "to be so interested in fictitious trouble."

"I'm not so sure that it is," he replied, in her own tone; "the opera isa sort of pulpit, and not seldom preaches an awful sermon—more plainlythan the preacher dares to make it."

"But not in nomine Dei."

"No. But who can say what is most effective? I often wonder, as I watchthe congregations coming from the churches on the Avenue, if they are anymore solemnized than the audiences that pour out of this house. I confessthat I cannot shake off 'Lohengrin' in a good while after I hear it."

"And so you think the theatres have a moral influence?"

"Honestly"—and I heard his good-natured laugh—"I couldn't swear tothat. But then we don't know what New York might be without them."

"I don't know," said Margaret, reflectively, "that my own good impulses,such as I have, are excited by anything I see on the stage; perhaps I ammore tolerant, and maybe toleration is not good. I wonder if I shouldgrow worldly, seeing more of it?"

"Perhaps it is not the stage so much as the house," Henderson replied,beginning to read the girl's mind.

"Yes, it would be different if one came alone and saw the play,unconscious of the house, as if it were a picture. I think it is thehouse that disturbs one, makes one restless and discontented."

"I never analyzed my emotions," said Henderson, "but when I was a boy andcame to the theatre I well remember that it made me ambitious; every sortof thing seemed possible of attainment in the excitement of the crowdedhouse, the music, the lights, the easy successes on the stage; nothingelse is more stimulating to a lad; nothing else makes the world moreattractive."

"And does it continue to have the same effect, Mr. Henderson?"

"Hardly," and he smiled; "the illusion goes, and the stage is about asreal as the house—usually less interesting. It can hardly compete withthe comedy in the boxes."

"Perhaps it is lack of experience, but I like the play for itself."

"Oh yes; desire for the dramatic is natural. People will have it somehow.In the country village where there are no theatres the people make dramasout of each other's lives; the most trivial incidents are magnified andtalked about—dramatized, in short."

"You mean gossiped about?"

"Well, you may call it gossip—nothing can be concealed; everybody knowsabout everybody else; there is no privacy; everything is used to createthat illusory spectacle which the stage tries to give. I think that inthe country village a good theatre would be a wholesome influence,satisfy a natural appetite indicated by the inquisition into the affairsof neighbors, and by the petty scandal."

"We are on the way to it," said Mr. Morgan, who sat behind them; "we havetheatricals in the church parlors, which may grow into a nineteenthcentury substitute for the miracle-plays. You mustn't, Margaret, let Mr.Henderson prejudice you against the country."

"No," said the latter, quickly; "I was only trying to defend the city. Wecountry people always do that. We must base our theatrical life onsomething in nature."

"What is the difference, Mr. Henderson," asked Margaret, "between thegossip in the boxes and the country gossip you spoke of?"

"In toleration mainly, and lack of exact knowledge. It is here rathercynical persiflage, not concentrated public opinion."

"I don't follow you," said Morgan. "It seems to me that in the cityyou've got gossip plus the stage."

"That is to say, we have the world."

"I don't like to believe that," said Margaret, seriously—"yourdefinition of the world."

"You make me see that it was a poor jest," he said, rising to go.
"By-the-way, we have a friend of yours in our box tonight—a young
Englishman."

"Oh, Mr. Lyon. We were all delighted with him. Such a transparent,genuine nature!"

"Tell him," said my wife, "that we should be happy to see him at ourhotel."

When Henderson came back to his box Carmen did not look up, but she said,indifferently: "What, so soon? But your absence has made one personthoroughly miserable. Mr. Lyon has not taken his eyes off you. I neversaw such an international attachment."

"What more could I do for Miss Eschelle than to leave her in suchcompany?"

"I beg your pardon," said Lyon. "Miss Eschelle must believe that Ithoroughly appreciate Mr. Henderson's self-sacrifice. If I occasionallylooked over where he was, I assure you it was in pity."

"You are both altogether too self-sacrificing," the beauty replied,turning to Henderson a look that was sweetly forgiving. "They who sinmuch shall be forgiven much, you know."

"That leaves me," Mr. Lyon answered, with a laugh, "as you say over here,out in the cold, for I have passed a too happy evening to feel like atransgressor."

"The sins of omission are the worst sort," she retorted.

"You see what you must do to be forgiven," Henderson said to Lyon, withthat good-natured smile that was so potent to smooth away sharpness.

"I fear I can never do enough to qualify myself." And he also laughed.

"You never will," Carmen answered, but she accompanied the doubt with awitching smile that denied it.

"What is all this about forgiveness?" asked Mrs. Eschelle, turning tothem from regarding the stage.

"Oh, we were having an experience meeting behind your back, mamma, only
Mr. Henderson won't tell his experience."

"Miss Eschelle is in such a forgiving humor tonight that she absolvesbefore any one has a chance to confess," he replied.

"Don't you think I am always so, Mr. Lyon?"

Mr. Lyon bowed. "I think that an opera-box with Miss Eschelle is theeasiest confessional in the world."

"That's something like a compliment. You see" (to Henderson) "how muchyou Americans have to learn."

"Will you be my teacher?"

"Or your pupil," the girl said, in a low voice, standing near him as sherose.

The play was over. In the robing and descending through the corridorsthere were the usual chatter, meaning looks, confidential asides. It isalways at the last moment, in the hurry, as in a postscript, that womansays what she means, or what for the moment she wishes to be thought tomean. In the crowd on the main stairway the two parties saw each other ata distance, but without speaking.

"Is it true that Lyon is 'epris' there?" Carmen whispered to Hendersonwhen she had scanned and thoroughly inventoried Margaret.

"You know as much as I do."

"Well, you did stay a long time," she said, in a lower tone.

As Margaret's party waited for their carriage she saw Mrs. Eschelle andher daughter enter a shining coach, with footman and coachman in livery.Henderson stood raising his hat. A little white hand was shaken to himfrom the window, and a sweet, innocent face leaned forward—a face withdark, eyes and golden hair, lit up with a radiant smile. That face forthe moment was New York to Margaret, and New York seemed a vain show.

Carmen threw herself back in her seat as if weary. Mrs. Eschelle satbolt-upright.

"What in the world, child, made you go on so tonight?"

"I don't know."

"What made you snub Mr. Lyon so often?"

"Did I? He won't mind much. Didn't you see, mother, that he was distraitthe moment he espied that girl? I'm not going to waste my time. I knowthe signs. No fisheries imbroglio for me, thank you."

"Fish? Who said anything about fish?"

"Oh, the international business. Ask Mr. Henderson to explain it. TheEnglish want to fish in our waters, I believe. I think Mr. Lyon has had anibble from a fresh-water fish. Perhaps it's the other way, and he'shooked. There be fishers of men, you know, mother."

"You are a strange child, Carmen. I hope you will be civil to both ofthem." And they rode on in silence.

VIII

In real life the opera or the theatre is only the prologue to theevening. Our little party supped at Delgardo's. The play then begins. NewYork is quite awake by that time, and ready to amuse itself. After thepublic duty, the public attitudinizing, after assisting at the artificialcomedy and tragedy which imitate life under a mask, and suggest withoutsatisfying, comes the actual experience. My gentle girl—God bless yoursweet face and pure heart!—who looked down from the sky-parlor at theMetropolitan upon the legendary splendor of the stage, and the alluringbeauty and wealth of the boxes, and went home to create in dreams thedearest romance in a maiden's life, you did not know that for many theromance of the night just began when the curtain fell.

The streets were as light as day. At no other hour were the pavements sothronged, was there such a crush of carriages, such a blockade of cars,such running, and shouting, greetings and decorous laughter, such a swirlof pleasurable excitement. Never were the fashionable cafes andrestaurants so crowded and brilliant. It is not a carnival time; it isjust the flow and ebb of a night's pleasure, an electric night which hasall of the morning except its peace, a night of the gayest opportunityand unlimited possibility.

At each little table was a drama in progress, light or serious—all themore serious for being light at the moment and unconsidered. Morgan, whowas so well informed in the gossip of society and so little involved init—some men have this faculty, which makes them much more entertainingthan the daily newspaper—knew the histories of half the people in theroom. There were an Italian marquis and his wife supping together likelovers, so strong is the force of habit that makes this public lifenecessary even when the domestic life is established. There is a man whoshot himself rather seriously on the doorsteps of the beauty who rejectedhim, and in a year married the handsome and more wealthy woman who sitsopposite him in that convivial party. There is a Russian princess, a fairwoman with cool observant eyes, making herself agreeable to a mixedcompany in three languages. In this brilliant light is it not wonderfulhow dazzlingly beautiful the women are—brunettes in yellow and diamonds,blondes in elaborately simple toilets, with only a bunch of roses forornament, in the flush of the midnight hour, in a radiant glow that eventhe excitement and the lifted glass cannot heighten? That pretty girlyonder—is she wife or widow?—slight and fresh and fair, they say has anambition to extend her notoriety by going upon the stage; the young ladywith her, who does not seem to fear a public place, may be helping her onthe road. The two young gentlemen, their attendants, have the air oftaking life more seriously than the girls, but regard with respectfulinterest the mounting vivacity of their companions, which rises andsparkles like the bubbles in the slender glasses which they raise totheir lips with the dainty grace of practice. The staid family partieswho are supping at adjoining tables notice this group with curiosity, andexpress their opinion by elevated eyebrows.

Margaret leaned back in her chair and regarded the whole in a musing'frame of mind. I think she apprehended nothing of it except the light,the color, the beauty, the movement of gayety. For her the notes of theorchestra sounded through it all—the voices of the singers, the hum ofthe house; it was all a spectacle and a play. Why should she not enjoyit? There was something in the nature of the girl that responded to thisform of pleasure—the legitimate pleasure the senses take in beinggratified. "It is so different," she said to me, "from the pleasure onehas in an evening by the fire. Do you know, even Mr. Morgan seems worldlyhere."

It was a deeper matter than she thought, this about worldliness, whichhad been raised in Margaret's mind. Have we all double natures, and do wesimply conform to whatever surrounds us? Is there any difference in kindbetween the country worldliness and the city worldliness? I do notsuppose that Margaret formulated any of these ideas in words. Herknowledge of the city had hitherto been superficial. It was a place forshopping, for a day in a picture exhibition, for an evening in thetheatre, no more a part of her existence than a novel or a book oftravels: of the life of the town she knew nothing. That night in her roomshe became aware for the first time of another world, restless,fascinating, striving, full of opportunities. What must London be?

If we could only note the first coming into the mind of a thought thatchanges life and re-forms character—supposing that every act and everynew departure has this subtle beginning—we might be less the sport ofcirc*mstances than we seem to be. Unnoted, the desire so swiftly followsthe thought and juggles with the will.

The next day Mr. Henderson left his card and a basket of roses. Mr. Lyoncalled. It was a constrained visit. Margaret was cordially civil, and Ifancied that Mr. Lyon would have been more content if she had been lessso. If he were a lover, there was little to please him in the exchange ofthe commonplaces of the day.

"Yes," he was saying to my wife, "perhaps I shall have to change my mindabout the simplicity of your American life. It is much the same in NewYork and London. It is only a question of more or less sophistication."

"Mr. Henderson tells us," said my wife, "that you knew the Eschelles in
London."

"Yes. Miss Eschelle almost had a career there last season."

"Why almost?"

"Well—you will pardon me—one needs for success in these days to be notonly very clever, but equally daring. It is every day more difficult tomake a sensation."

"I thought her, across the house," Margaret said, "very pretty andattractive. I did not know you were so satirical, Mr. Lyon. Do you meanthat one must be more daring, as you call it, in London than in NewYork?"

"I hope it will not hurt your national pride, Miss Debree, if I say thatthere is always the greater competition in the larger market."

"Oh, my pride," Margaret answered, "does not lie in that direction."

"And to do her justice, I don't think Miss Eschelle's does, either. Sheappears to be more interested now in New York than in London."

He laughed as he said this, and Margaret laughed also, and then stoppedsuddenly, thinking of the roses that came that morning. Could she becomparing the Londoner with the handsome American who sat by her side atthe opera last night? She was half annoyed with herself at the thought.

"And are not you also interested in New York, Mr. Lyon?" my wife asked.

"Yes, moderately so, if you will permit me to say it." It was an efforton his part to keep up the conversation, Margaret was so whollyunresponsive; and afterwards, knowing how affairs stood with them, Icould understand his well-bred misery. The hardest thing in the world isto suffer decorously and make no sign in the midst of a society whichinsists on stoicism, no matter how badly one is hurt. The Society forFirst Aid to the Injured hardens its heart in these cases. "I have neverseen another place," he continued, "where the women are so busy inimproving themselves. Societies, clubs, parlor lectures, readings,recitations, musicales, classes—it fatigues one to keep in sight ofthem. Every afternoon, every evening, something. I doubt if men arecapable of such incessant energy, Mrs. Fairchild."

"And you find they have no time to be agreeable?"

"Quite the contrary. There is nothing they are not interesting in,nothing about which they cannot talk, and talk intensely. They absorbeverything, and have the gift of acquiring intelligence without, as oneof them told me, having to waste time in reading. Yes, it is a mostinteresting city."

The coming in of Mr. Morgan gave another turn to the talk. He had been tosee a rural American play, an exhibition of country life and character,constructed in absolute disregard of any traditions of the stage.

"I don't suppose," Mr. Morgan said, "a foreigner would understand it; itwould be impossible in Paris, incomprehensible in London."

"Yes, I saw it," said Mr. Lyon, thus appealed to. "It was very odd, andseemed to amuse the audience immensely. I suppose one must be familiarwith American farm life to see the points of it. I confess that while Isat there, in an audience so keenly in sympathy with the play—almost apart of it, one might say—I doubted if I understood your people as wellas I thought I did when I had been here a week only. Perhaps this is thebeginning of an American drama."

"Some people say that it is."

"But it is so local!"

"Anything that is true must be true to local conditions, to begin with.The only question is, is it true to human nature? What puzzled me in thisAmerican play was its raising the old question of nature and art. You'veseen Coquelin? Well, that is acting, as artificial as a sonnet, theperfection of training, skill in an art. You never doubt that he isperforming in a play for the entertainment of an audience. You have thesame enjoyment of it that you have of a picture—a picture, I mean, fullof character and sentiment, not a photograph. But I don't think of DenmanThompson as an actor trained to perfection in a dramatic school, but as aNew Hampshire farmer. I don't admire his skill; I admire him. There isplenty that is artificial, vulgarly conventional, in his play, plenty ofimitation of the rustic that shows it is imitation, but he is the naturalman. If he is a stage illusion, he does not seem so to me." "Probably toan American audience only he does not," Mr. Lyon remarked.

"Well, that is getting to be a tolerably large audience."

"I doubt if you will change the laws of art," said Mr. Lyon, rising togo.

"We shall hope to see you again at our house," my wife said.

"You are very good. I should like it; but my time is running out."

"If you cannot come, you may leave your adieus with Miss Debree, who isstaying some time in the city," my wife said, evidently to Margaret'sannoyance. But she could do no less than give him her city address,though the information was not accompanied by any invitation in hermanner.

Margaret was to stay some time with two maiden ladies, old friends of hermother, the Misses Arbuser. The Arbusers were people of consequence intheir day, with a certain social prestige; in fact, the excellent ladieswere two generations removed from successful mercantile life, which inthe remote prospective took on an old-family solidity. Nowhere else inthe city could Margaret have come closer in contact with a certain phaseof New York life in which women are the chief actors—a phase which maybe a transition, and may be only a craze. It is not so much acondescension of society to literature as it is a discovery thatliterature and art, in the persons of those who produce both, may besources of amusem*nt, or perhaps, to be just, of the enlargement of thehorizon and the improvement of the mind. The society mind was neverbefore so hospitable to new ideas and new sensations. Charities, boardsof managers, missions, hospitals, news-rooms, and lodging-houses for theilliterate and the homeless—these are not sufficient, even with balls,dancing classes, and teas, for the superfluous energies of this restless,improving generation; there must be also radical clubs, reading classes,study classes, ethical, historical, scientific, literary lectures, thereading of papers by ladies of distinction and gentlemen of specialattainments—an unremitting pursuit of culture and information. Curiosityis awake. The extreme of social refinement and a mild Bohemianism almosttouch. It passes beyond the affectation of knowing persons who writebooks and write for the press, artists in paint and artists in music."You cannot be sure in the most exclusive circle"—it was Carmen Eschellewho said this—"that you will not meet an author or even a journalist."Not all the women, however, adore letters or affect enthusiasm atdrawing-room lectures; there are some bright and cynical ones who do not,who write papers themselves, and have an air of being behind the scenes.

Margaret had thought that she was fully occupied in the country, with herteaching, her reading, her literature and historical clubs, but she hadnever known before what it was to be busy and not have time for anything,always in pursuit of some new thing, and getting a fragment here andthere; life was a good deal like reading the dictionary and rememberingnone of the words. And it was all so cosmopolitan and all-embracinglysympathetic. One day it was a paper by a Servian countess on the sociallife of the Servians, absorbingly interesting both in itself and becauseit was a countess who read it; and this was followed by the singing of anIcelandic tenor and a Swedish soprano, and a recital on the violin by aslight, red-haired, middle-aged woman from London. All the talents seemto be afloat and at the service of the strenuous ones who are cultivatingthemselves.

The first function at which Margaret assisted in the long drawing-roomsof the Arbusers was a serious one—one that combined the charm of culturewith the temptations of benevolence. The rooms were crowded with thefashion of the town, with a sprinkling of clergymen and of thinphilanthropic gentlemen in advanced years. It was a four-o'clock, and theassembly had the cheerfulness of a reception, only that the display oftoilets was felt to be sanctified by a purpose. The performance openedwith a tremendous prelude on the piano by Herr Bloomgarten, who had beenLiszt's favorite pupil; indeed, it was whispered that Liszt had saidthat, old as he was, he never heard Bloomgarten without learningsomething. There was a good deal of subdued conversation while thepianist was in his extreme agony of execution, and a hush of extremeadmiration—it was divine, divine, ravishing—when he had finished. Thespeaker was a learned female pundit from India, and her object was tointerest the women of America in the condition of their unfortunateHindoo sisters. It appeared that thousands and tens of thousands of themwere doomed to early and lifelong widowhood, owing to the operation ofcruel caste laws, which condemned even girls betrothed to deceasedBrahmins to perpetual celibacy. This fate could only be alleviated by theeducation and elevation of women. And money was needed for schools,especially for medical schools, which would break down the walls ofprejudice and enfranchise the sex. The appeal was so charmingly made thatevery one was moved by it, especially the maiden ladies present, whomight be supposed to enter into the feelings of their dusky sistersbeyond the seas. The speaker said, with a touch of humor that alwaysintensifies a serious discourse, that she had been told that in one ofthe New England States there was a superfluity of unmarried women; butthis was an entirely different affair; it was a matter of choice withthese highly educated and accomplished women. And the day had come whenwoman could make her choice! At this there was a great clapping of hands.It was one thing to be free to lead a life of single self-culture, andquite another to be compelled to lead a single fife without self-culture.The address was a great success, and much enthusiasm spread abroad forthe cause of the unmarried women of India.

In the audience were Mrs. Eschelle and her daughter. Margaret and Carmenwere made acquainted, and were drawn together by curiosity, and perhapsby a secret feeling of repulsion. Carmen was all candor and sweetness,and absorbingly interested in the women of India, she said. WithMargaret's permission she would come and see her, for she believed theyhad common friends.

It would seem that there could not be much sympathy between natures soopposed, persons who looked at life from such different points of view,but undeniably Carmen had a certain attraction for Margaret. The NewEnglander, whose climate is at once his enemy and his tonic, always longsfor the tropics, which to him are a region of romance, as Italy is to theGerman. In his nature, also, there is something easily awakened to theallurements of a sensuous existence, and to a desire for a freerexperience of life than custom has allowed him. Carmen, who showed toMargaret only her best side—she would have been wise to exhibit no otherto Henderson, but women of her nature are apt to cheapen themselves withmen—seemed an embodiment of that graceful gayety and fascinatingworldliness which make the world agreeable.

One morning, a few days after the Indian function, Margaret was alone inher own cozy sitting-room. Nothing was wanting that luxury could suggestto make it in harmony with a beautiful woman, nothing that did notflatter and please, or nurse, perhaps, a personal sense of beauty, andimpart that glow of satisfaction which comes when the senses are adroitlyministered to. Margaret had been in a mood that morning to pay extremeattention to her toilet. The result was the perfection of simplicity, offreshness, of maiden purity, enhanced by the touch of art. As shesurveyed herself in the pier-glass, and noted the refined lines of themorning-gown which draped but did not conceal the more exquisite lines ofher figure, and adjusted a rose in her bosom, she did not feel like aPuritan, and, although she may not have noted the fact, she did not looklike one. It was not a look of vanity that she threw into the mirror, orof special self-consciousness; in her toilet she had obeyed only herinstinct (that infallible guide in a woman of refinement), and if she wasconscious of any emotion, it was of the stirring within her of thedeepest womanly nature.

In fact, she was restless. She flung herself into an easy-chair beforethe fire, and took up a novel. It was a novel with a religious problem.In vain she tried to be interested in it. At home she would have absorbedit eagerly; they would have discussed it; the doubts and suggestions init would have assumed the deepest personal importance. It might have madean era in her thoughtful country life. Here it did not so appeal to her;it seemed unreal and shadowy in a life that had so much more of actionthan of reflection in it. It was a life fascinating and exciting, andprofoundly unsatisfactory. Yet, after all, it was more really life thanthat placid vegetation in the country. She felt that in the whirl of onlya few days of it—operas, receptions, teas, readings, dances, dinners,where everybody sparkled with a bewildering brilliancy, and yet fromwhich one brought away nothing but a sense of strain; such gallantry,such compliments, such an easy tossing about of every topic under heaven;such an air of knowing everything, and not caring about anything verymuch; so much mutual admiration and personal satisfaction! She liked it,and perhaps was restless because she liked it. To be admired, to bedeferred to—was there any harm in that? Only, if one suffers admirationtoday, it becomes a necessity tomorrow. She began to feel the influenceof that life which will not let one stand still for a moment. If it isnot the opera, it is a charity; if it is not a lover, it is some endowedcot in a hospital. There must be something going on every day, everyhour.

Yes, she was restless, and could not read. She thought of Mr. Henderson.He had called formally. She had seen him, here and there, again andagain. He had sought her out in all companies; his face had broken into asmile when he met her; he had talked with her lightly, gayly; sheremembered the sound of his voice; she had learned to know his figure ina room among a hundred; and she blushed as she remembered that she hadonce or twice followed him with her eyes in a throng. He was, to be sure,nothing to her; but he was friendly; he was certainly entertaining; hewas a part, somehow, of this easy-flowing life.

Miss Eschelle was announced. Margaret begged that she would come upstairswithout ceremony. The mutual taking-in of the pretty street costume andthe pretty morning toilet was the work of a moment—the photographer hasinvented no machine that equals a woman's eyes for such a purpose.

"How delightful it is! how altogether charming!" and Margaret felt thatshe was included with the room in this admiration. "I told mamma that Iwas coming to see you this morning, even if I missed the Nestors'luncheon. I like to please myself sometimes. Mamma says I'm frivolous,but do you know"—the girls were comfortably seated by the fire, andCarmen turned her sweet face and candid eyes to her companion—"I getdreadfully tired of all this going round and round. No, I don't even goto the Indigent Mothers' Home; it's part of the same thing, but I haven'tany gift that way. Ah, you were reading—that novel."

"Yes; I was trying to read it; I intend to read it."

"Oh, we have had it! It's a little past now, but it has been all therage. Everybody has read it; that is, I don't know that anybody has readit, but everybody has been talking about it. Of course somebody must haveread it, to set the thing agoing. And it has been discussed to death. Isometimes feel as if I had changed my religion half a dozen times in afortnight. But I haven't heard anything about it for a week. We havetaken up the Hindoo widows now, you know." And the girl laughed, as ifshe knew she were talking nonsense.

"And you do not read much in the city?" Margaret asked, with an answeringsmile.

"Yes; in the summer. That is, some do. There is a reading set. I don'tknow that they read much, but there is a reading set. You know, MissDebree, that when a book is published—really published, as Mr. Hendersonsays—you don't need to read it. Somehow it gets into the air and becomescommon property. Everybody hears the whole thing. You can talk about itfrom a notice. Of course there are some novels that one must read inorder to understand human nature. Do you read French?"

"Yes; but not many French novels; I cannot."

"Nor can I," said Carmen, with a sincere face. "They are too realisticfor me." She was at the moment running over in her mind a "situation" ina paper-covered novel turned down on her nightstand. "Mr. Henderson saysthat everybody condemns the French novels, and that people praise thenovels they don't read."

"You know Mr. Henderson very well?"

"Yes; we've known him a long time. He is the only man I'm afraid of."

"Afraid of?"

"Well, you know he is a sort of Club man; that style of man provokes yourcuriosity, for you never can tell how much such men know. It makes you alittle uneasy."

Carmen was looking into the fire, as if abstractedly reflecting upon thenature of men in general, but she did not fail to notice a slightexpression of pain on Margaret's face.

"But there is your Mr. Lyon—"

Margaret laughed. "You do me too much honor. I think you discovered himfirst."

"Well, our Mr. Lyon." Carmen was still looking into the fire. "He is sucha good young man!"

Margaret did not exactly fancy this sort of commendation, and shereplied, with somewhat the tone of defending him, "We all have thehighest regard for Mr. Lyon."

"Yes, and he is quite gone on Brandon, I assure you. He intends to do agreat deal of good in the world. I think he spends half his time in NewYork studying, he calls it, our charitable institutions. Mamma reproachesme that I don't take more interest in philanthropy. That is her worldlyside. Everybody has a worldly side. I'm as worldly as I can be"—thiswith a look of innocence that denied the self-accusation—"but I haven'tany call to marry into Exeter Hall and that sort of thing. That is whatshe means—dear mamma. Are you High-Church or evangelical?" she asked,after a moment, turning to Margaret?

Margaret explained that she was neither.

"Well, I am High-Church, and Mr. Lyon is evangelical-Church evangelical.There couldn't be any happiness, you know, without harmony in religiousbelief."

"I should think not," said Margaret, now quite recovering herself. "Itmust be a matter of great anxiety to you here."

Carmen was quick to note the change of tone, and her face beamed withmerriment as she rose.

"What nonsense I've been talking! I did not intend to go into such deepthings. You must not mind what I said about Mr.—(a little pause to readMargaret's face)—Mr. Lyon. We esteem him as much as you do. How charmingyou are looking this morning! I wish I had your secret of not lettingthis life tell on one." And she was gone in a shower of compliments andsmiles and caressing ways. She had found out what she came to find out.Mr. Henderson needs watching, she said to herself.

The interview, as Margaret thought it over, was amusing, but it did notraise her spirits. Was everybody worldly and shallow? Was this the sortof woman whom Mr. Henderson fancied? Was Mr. Henderson the sort of man towhom such a woman would be attracted?

IX

It was a dinner party in one of the up-town houses—palaces—that beginto repeat in size, spaciousness of apartments, and decoration thesplendor of the Medicean merchant princes. It is the penalty that we payfor the freedom of republican opportunity that some must be very rich.This is the logical outcome of the open chance for everybody to be rich—and it is the surest way to distinction. In a free country the coursemust be run, and it is by the accumulation of great wealth that one canget beyond anxiety, and be at liberty to indulge in republicansimplicity.

Margaret and Miss Arbuser were ushered in through a double row ofservants in livery—shortclothes and stockings—in decorous vacuity—anarray necessary to bring into relief the naturalness and simplicity ofthe entertainers. Vulgarity, one can see, consists in making one's self apart of the display of wealth: the thing to be attained is personalsimplicity on a background of the richest ostentation. It is difficult toattain this, and theory says that it takes three generations for a man toseparate himself thus from his display. It was the tattle of the townthat the first owner of the pictures in the gallery of the Stott mansionused to tell the prices to his visitors; the third owner is quite beyondremembering them. He might mention, laughingly, that the ornamentedshovel in the great fireplace in the library was decorated by Vavani—itwas his wife's fancy. But he did not say that the ceiling in themusic-room was painted by Pontifex Lodge, or that six Italian artists hadworked four years making the Corean room, every inch of it exquisite asan intaglio—indeed, the reporters had made the town familiar with thecostly facts.

The present occupants understood quite well the value of a background:the house swarmed with servants—retainers, one might say. Margaret, whowas fresh from her history class, recalled the days of Elizabeth, when aman's importance was gauged by the retinue of servitors and men and womenin waiting. And this is, after all, a better test of wealth than a mereaccumulation of things and cost of decoration; for though men and womendo not cost so much originally as good pictures—that is, good men andwomen—everybody knows that it needs more revenue to maintain them.Though the dinner party was not large, there was to be a danceafterwards, and for every guest was provided a special attendant.

The dinner was served in the state dining-room, to which Mr. Hendersonhad the honor of conducting Margaret. Here prevailed also the samestudied simplicity. The seats were for sixteen. The table went to theextremity of elegant plainness, no crowding, no confusion of colors underthe soft lights; if there was ostentation anywhere, it was in thedazzling fineness of the expanse of table-linen, not in the few rareflowers, or the crystal, or the plate, which was of solid gold, simplymodest. The eye is pleased by this chastity—pure whiteness, the glow ofyellow, the slight touch of sensuous warmth in the rose. The dinner wasin keeping, short, noiselessly served under the eye of the maitred'hotel, few courses, few wines; no anxiety on the part of the host andhostess—perhaps just a little consciousness that everything was simpleand elegant, a little consciousness of the background; but anothergeneration will remove that.

If to Margaret's country apprehension the conversation was not quite upto the level of the dinner and the house—what except that of a circle ofwits, who would be out of place there, could be?—the presence of Mr.Henderson, who devoted himself to her, made the lack unnoticed. The talkran, as usual, on the opera, Wagner, a Christmas party at Lenox, atTuxedo, somebody's engagement, some lucky hit in the Exchange, theirritating personalities of the newspapers, the last English season, themarriage of the duch*ess of Bolinbroke, a confidential disclosure of whowould be in the Cabinet and who would have missions, a jocular remarkacross the table about a "corner" (it is impossible absolutely here, aswell as at a literary dinner, to sink the shop), the Sunday opening ofgalleries—anything to pass the hour, the ladies contributing most of thevivacity and persiflage.

"I saw you, Mr. Henderson"—it was Mrs. Laflamme raising her voice—"theother night in a box with a very pretty woman."

"Yes—Miss Eschelle."

"I don't know them. We used to hear of them in Naples, Venice, variousplaces; they were in Europe some time; I believe. She was said to be veryentertaining—and enterprising."

"Well, I suppose they have seen something of the world. The other ladywas her mother. And the man with us—that might interest you more, Mrs.Laflamme, was Mr. Lyon, who will be the Earl of Chisholm."

"Ah! Then I suppose she has money?"

"I never saw any painful evidence of poverty. But I don't think Mr. Lyonis fortune-hunting. He seems to be after information and—goodness."

Margaret flushed a little, but apparently Henderson did not notice it.Then she said (after Mrs. Laflamme had dropped the subject with theremark that he had come to the right place), "Miss Eschelle called on meyesterday."

"And was, no doubt, agreeable."

"She was, as Mrs. Laflamme says, entertaining. She quoted you a gooddeal."

"Quoted me? For what?"

"As one would a book, as a familiar authority."

"I suppose I ought to be flattered, if you will excuse the streetexpression, to have my stock quotable. Perhaps you couldn't tell whetherMiss Eschelle was a bull or a bear in this case?"

"I don't clearly know what that is. She didn't offer me any," saidMargaret, in a tone of carrying on the figure without any personalmeaning.

"Well, she is a bit of an operator. A good many women here amusethemselves a little in stocks."

"It doesn't seem to me very feminine."

"No? But women generally like to' take risks and chances. In countrieswhere lotteries are established they always buy tickets."

"Ah! then they only risk what they have. I think women are more prudentand conservative than men."

"No doubt. They are conservatives usually. But when they do go in forradical measures and risks, they leave us quite behind." Mr. Hendersondid not care to extend the conversation in this direction, and he asked,abruptly, "Are you finding New York agreeable, Miss Debree?"

"Yes. Yes and no. One has no time to one's self. Do you understand why itis, Mr. Henderson, that one can enjoy the whole day and then bethoroughly dissatisfied with it?"

"Perfectly; when the excitement is over."

"And then I don't seem to be myself here. I have a feeling of having lostmyself."

"Because the world is so big?"

"Not that. Do you know, the world seems much smaller here than at home."

"And the city appears narrow and provincial?"

"I cannot quite explain it. The interests of life don't seem so large—the questions, I mean, what is going on in Europe, the literature, thereforms, the politics. I get a wider view when I stand off—at home. Isuppose it is more concentrated here. And, oh dear, I'm so stupid!Everybody is so alert in little things, so quick to turn a compliment,and say a bright thing. While I am getting ready to say what I reallythink about Browning, for instance, he is disposed of in a sentence."

"That is because you try to say what you really think."

"If one don't, what's the use of talk?"

"Oh, to pass the time."

Margaret looked up to see if Henderson was serious. There was a smile ofamusem*nt on his face, but not at all offensive, because the woman sawthat it was a look of interest also.

"Then I sha'n't be serious any more," she said, as there was a movementto quit the table.

"That lays the responsibility on me of being serious," he replied, in thesame light tone.

Later they were wandering through the picture-gallery together. A galleryof modern pictures appeals for the most part to the senses—representsthe pomps, the color, the allurements of life. It struck Hendersonforcibly that this gallery, which he knew well, appeared very differentlooking at it with Miss Debree from what it would if he had been lookingat it with Miss Eschelle. There were some pictures that he hurried past,some technical excellences only used for sensuous effects—that he didnot call attention to as he might have done with another. Curiouslyenough, he found himself seeking sentiment, purity. If the drawing wasbad, Margaret knew it; if a false note was struck, she saw it. But shewas not educated up to a good many of the suggestions of the gallery.Henderson perceived this, and his manner to her became more deferentialand protective. It was a manner to which every true woman responds, andMargaret was happy, more herself, and talked with a freedom and gayety, aspice of satire, and a note of reality that made her every moment moreattractive to her companion. In her, animation the charm of her unwornbeauty blazed upon him with a direct personal appeal. He hardly cared toconceal his frank admiration. She, on her part, was thinking, what couldMiss Eschelle mean by saying that she was afraid of him?

"Does the world seem any larger here, Miss Debree?" he asked, as they hadlingeringly made the circuit of the room and passed out through thetropical conservatory to join the rest of the company.

"Yes—away from people."

"Then it is not numbers, I am glad to know, that make a world."

She did not reply. But when he encountered her, robed for departure, atthe foot of the stairway, she gave him her hand in good-night, and theireyes met for a moment.

I wonder if that was the time? Probably not. I fancy that when the rightday came she confessed that the moment was when she first saw him entertheir box at the opera.

Henderson walked down the avenue slowly, hearing the echo of his ownsteps in the deserted street. He was in no haste to reach home. It wassuch a delightful evening-snowing a little, and cold, but soexhilarating. He remembered just how she turned her head as she got intothe carriage. She had touched his arm lightly once in the gallery to callhis attention to a picture. Yes, the world was larger, larger, by one,and it would seem large—her image came to him distinctly—if she werethe only one.

Henderson was under the spell of this evening when the next, in responseto a note asking him to call for a moment on business, he was shown intothe Eschelle drawing-room. It was dimly lighted, but familiarity with theplace enabled him without difficulty to find his way down the long suite,rather overcrowded with luxurious furniture, statuary, and pictures oneasels, to the little library at the far end glowing in a rosy light.

There, ensconced in a big chair, a book in her hand, one pretty foot onthe fender, sat Carmen, in a grayish, vaporous toilet, which took a warmhue from the color of the spreading lamp-shades. On the carved table nearwas a litter of books and of nameless little articles, costly andcoquettish, which assert femininity, even in a literary atmosphere. Overthe fireplace hung a picture of spring—a budding girl, smiling andwinning, in a semi-transparent raiment, advancing with swift steps tobring in the season of flowers and of love. The hand that held the bookrested upon the arm of the chair, a finger inserted in the place whereshe had been reading, her rounded white arm visible to the elbow, andCarmen was looking into the fire in the attitude of reflection upon asuggestive passage.

Women have so many forms of attraction, different women are attractive inso many different ways, moods are so changing, beauty is so undefinable,and has so many weapons. And yet men are called inconstant!

It was not until Henderson had time to take in the warmth of thisdomestic picture that Carmen rose.

"It is so good of you to come, with all your engagements. Mamma isexcused with a headache, but she has left me power of attorney to askquestions about our little venture."

"I hope the attorney will not put me through a cross-examination."

"That depends upon how you have been behaving, Mr. Henderson. I'm notvery cross yet. Now, sit there so that I can look at you and see howhonest you are."

"Do you want me to put on my business or my evening expression?"

"Oh, the first, if you mean business."

"Well, your stocks are going up."

"That's nice. You are so lucky! Everything goes up with you. Do you knowwhat they say of you.

"Nothing bad, I hope."

"That everything you touch turns to gold. That you will be one of thenabobs of New York in ten years."

"That's a startling destiny."

"Isn't it? I don't like it." The girl seemed very serious. "I'd like you
to be distinguished. To be in the Cabinet. To be minister—go to England.
But one needs a great deal of money for that, to go as one ought to go.
What a career is open to a man in this country if he has money!"

"But I don't care for politics."

"Who does? But position. You can afford that if you have money enough. Doyou know, Mr. Henderson, I think you are dull."

"Thank you. I reckoned you'd find it out."

"The other night at the Nestor ball a lady—no, I won't tell you who sheis—asked me if I knew who that man was across the room; such an air ofdistinction; might be the new British Minister. You know, I almostblushed when I said I did know him."

"Well?"

"You see what people expect of you. When a man looks distinguished and isclever, and knows how to please if he likes, he cannot help having acareer, unless he is afraid to take the chances."

Henderson was not conscious of ever being wanting in this direction. Thepicture conjured up by the ingenious girl was not unfamiliar to his mind,and he understood quite well the relation to it that Carmen had in hermind; but he did not take the lead offered. Instead, he took refuge inthe usual commonplace, and asked, "Wouldn't you like to have been a man?"

"Heaven forbid! I should be too wicked. It is responsibility enough to bea woman. I did not expect such a banality from you. Do you think, Mr.Henderson, we had better sell?"

"Sell what?"

"Our stocks. You are so occupied that I thought they might fall when youare up in the clouds somewhere."

"No, I shall not forget."

"Well, such things happen. I might forget you if it were not for thestocks."

"Then I shall keep the stocks, even if they fall."

"And we should both fall together. That would be some compensation. Notmuch. Going to smash with you would be something like going to churchwith Mr. Lyon. It might have a steadying effect."

"What has come over you tonight, Carmen?" Henderson asked, leaningforward with an expression of half amusem*nt, half curiosity.

"I've been thinking—doesn't that astonish you?—about life. It is veryserious. I got some new views talking with that Miss Debree from Brandon.Chiefly from what she didn't say. She is such a lovely girl, and just asunsophisticated—well, as we are. I fear I shocked her by telling heryour opinion of French novels."

"You didn't tell her that I approved of all the French novels you read?"

"Oh no! I didn't say you approved of any. It sort of came out that youknew about them. She is so downright and conscientious. I declare I feltvirtuous shivers running all over me all the time I was with her. I'mconscientious myself. I want everybody to know the worst of me. I wish Icould practice some concealment. But she rather discourages me. She wouldtake the color out of a career. She somehow doesn't allow for color, Icould see. Duty, duty—that is the way she looks at life. She'd try tokeep me up to it; no playing by the way. I liked her very much. I likepeople not to have too much toleration. She would be just the wife forsome nice country rector."

"Perhaps I ought to tell her your plan for her? I dined with her lastnight at the Stotts'."

"Yes?" Carmen had been wondering if he would tell her of that. "Was itvery dull?"

"Not very. There was music, distant enough not to interfere withconversation, and the gallery afterwards."

"It must have been very exhilarating. You talked about the duch*ess ofBolinbroke, and the opera, and Prince Talleyrand, and the corner inwheat—dear me, I know, so decorous! And you said Miss Debree was there?"

"I had the honor of taking her out."

"Mr. Henderson"—the girl had risen to adjust the lamp-shade, and nowstood behind his chair with her arm resting on it, so that he was obligedto turn his head backward to see her—"Mr. Henderson, do you know you aregetting to be a desperate flirt?" The laughing eyes looking into his saidthat was not such a desperate thing to do if he chose the right object.

"Who taught me?" He raised his left hand. She did not respond to theoverture, except to snap the hand with her index-finger, and was back inher chair again, regarding him demurely.

"I think we shall go abroad soon." The little foot was on the fenderagain, and the face had the look of melancholy resolution.

"And leave Mr. Lyon without any protection here?" The remark was made ina tone of good-humored raillery, but for some reason it seemed to stingthe girl.

"Pshaw!" she said. "How can you talk such nonsense? You," and she rose toher feet in indignation—"you to advise an American girl to sell herselffor a title—the chance of a title. I'm ashamed of you!"

"Why, Carmen," he replied, flushing, "I advised nothing of the sort. Ihadn't the least idea. I don't care a straw for Mr. Lyon."

"That's just it; you don't care," sinking into her seat, stillunappeased. "I think I'll tell Mr. Lyon that he will have occupationenough to keep him in this country if he puts his money into that schemeyou were talking over the other night."

Henderson was in turn annoyed. "You can tell him anything you like. I'mno more responsible for his speculations than for his domestic concerns."

"Now you are offended. It's not nice of you to put me in the wrong whenyou know how impulsive I am. I wish I didn't let my feelings run awaywith me." This said reflectively, and looking away from him. And then,turning towards him with wistful, pleading eyes: "Do you know, Isometimes wish I had never seen you. You have so much power to make aperson very bad or very good."

"Come, come," said Henderson, rising, "we mustn't quarrel about an
Englishman—such old friends."

"Yes, we are very old friends." The girl rose also, and gave him herhand. "Perhaps that's the worst of it. If I should lose your esteem Ishould go into a convent." She dropped his hand, and snatching a bunch ofviolets from the table, fixed them in his button-hole, looking up in hisface with vestal sweetness. "You are not offended?"

"Not a bit; not the least in the world," said Henderson, heartily,patting the hand that still lingered upon his lapel.

When he had gone, Carmen sank into her chair with a gesture of vexation,and there were hard lines in her sweet face. "What an insensible stick!"Then she ran up-stairs to her mother, who sat in her room reading one ofthe town-weeklies, into which some elderly ladies look for something tocondemn.

"Well?"

"Such a stupid evening! He is just absorbed in that girl from Brandon. Itold him we were going abroad."

"Going abroad! You are crazy, child. New York is forty times as amusing."

"And forty times as tiresome. I'm sick of it. Mamma, don't you think itwould be only civil to ask Mr. Lyon to a quiet dinner before he goes?"

"Certainly. That is what I said the other day. I thought you—"

"Yes, I was ill-natured then. But I want to please you. And we reallyought to be civil."

One day is so like another in the city. Every day something new, and, thenew the same thing over again. And always the expectation that it will bedifferent tomorrow. Nothing is so tiresome as a kaleidoscope, though itnever repeats itself.

Fortunately there are two pursuits that never pall—making money andmaking love.

Henderson had a new object in life, though the new one did not sensiblydivert him from the old; it rather threw a charming light over it, andmade the possibilities of it more attractive. In all his schemes he foundthe thought of Margaret entering. Why should it not have been Carmen? hesometimes thought. She thoroughly understood him. She would never standin the way of his most daring ambitions with any scruples. Her consciencewould never nag his. She would be ambitious for a career for him. Wouldshe care for him or the career? How clever she was! And affectionate? Shewould be if she had a heart.

He was not balancing the two. What man ever does, in fact? It was simplybecause Margaret had a heart that he loved her, that she seemed necessaryto him. He was quite capable of making a match for his advancement, buthe felt strong enough to make one for his own pleasure. And if there aremen so worldly as not to be attracted to unworldliness in a woman,Henderson was not one of them. If his heart had not dictated, his brainwould have told him the value of the sympathy of a good woman.

He was a very busy man, in the thick of the struggle for a great fortune.It did not occur to him to reflect whether she would approve all themethods he resorted to, but all the women he knew liked success, and thethought of her invigorated him. If she once loved him, she would approvewhat he did.

He saw much of her in those passing days—days that went like a dream toone of them at least. He was a welcome guest at the Arbusers', but he sawlittle of Margaret alone. It did not matter. A chance look is a volume; aword is a library. They saw each other; they heard each other. And thenpassion grows almost as well in the absence as in the presence of theobject. Imagination then has free play. A little separation sometimeswill fan it into a flame.

The days went by, and Margaret's visit was over. I am obliged to say thatthe leave-taking was a gay one, as full of laughter as it was of hope.Brandon was such a little way off. Henderson often had business there.The Misses Arbuser said, "Of course." And Margaret said he must notforget that she lived there. Even when she bade her entertainers anaffectionate good-by, she could not look very unhappy.

Spring was coming. That day in the cars there were few signs of it on theroadside to be seen, but the buds were swelling. And Margaret, neglectingthe book which lay on her lap, and looking out the window, felt it in allher veins.

X

It is said that the world is created anew for every person who is inlove. There is therefore this constant miracle of a new heavens and a newearth. It does not depend upon the seasons. The subtle force which is inevery human being, more or less active, has this power, as if love weresomehow a principle pervading nature itself, and capable of transformingit. Is this a divine gift? Can it be used more than once? Once spent,does the world to each succeeding experimenter in it become old andstale? We say the world is old. In one sense, the real sense to everyperson, it is no older than the lives lived in it at any given time. Ifit is always passing away, it is always being renewed. Every time a youthlooks love in a maiden's eyes, and sees the timid appealing return of theuniversal passion, the world for those two is just as certainly createdas it was on the first morning, in all its color, odor, song, freshness,promise. This is the central mystery of life.

Unconsciously to herself, Margaret had worked this miracle. Never beforedid the little town look so bright; never before was there exactly such acolor on the hills-sentiment is so pale compared with love; never beforedid her home appear so sweet; never before was there such a fine ecstasyin the coming of spring.

For all this, home-coming, after the first excitement of arrival is over,is apt to be dull. The mind is so occupied with other emotions that thefriends even seem a little commonplace and unresponsive, and the routineis tame. Out of such a whirl of new experiences to return and find thatnothing has happened; that the old duties and responsibilities arewaiting! Margaret had eagerly leaped from the carriage to throw herselfinto her aunt's arms-what a sweet welcome it is, that of kin!—and yetalmost before the greeting was over she felt alone. There was that in theaffectionate calmness of Miss Forsythe that seemed to chill the glow andfever of passion in her new world. And she had nothing to tell.Everything had changed, and she must behave as if nothing had happened.She must take up her old life—the interests of the neighborhood. Eventhe little circle of people she loved appeared distant from her at themoment; impossible it seemed to bring them into the rushing current ofher life. Their joy in getting her back again she could not doubt, northe personal affection with which she was welcomed. But was the NewEngland atmosphere a little cold? What was the flavor she missed in itall? The next day a letter came. The excuse for it was the return of afan which Mr. Henderson had carried off in his pocket from the opera.What a wonderful letter it was—his handwriting, the first note from him!Miss Forsythe saw in it only politeness. For Margaret it outweighed thetown of Brandon. It lay in her lap as she sat at her chamber windowlooking out over the landscape, which was beginning to be flushed with apale green. There was a robin on the lawn, and a blackbird singing in thepine. "Go not, happy day," she said, with tears in her eyes. She took upthe brief letter and read it again. Was he really hers, "truly"? And sheanswered the letter, swiftly and with no hesitation, but with a throbbingheart. It was a civil acknowledgment; that was all. Henderson might havelead it aloud in the Exchange. But what color, what charming turns ofexpression, what of herself, had the girl put into it, that gave him sucha thrill of pleasure when he read it? What secret power has a woman tomake a common phrase so glow with her very self?

Here was something in her life that was her own, a secret, a hope, andyet a tremulous anticipation to be guarded almost from herself. Itcolored everything; it was always, whatever she was doing or saying,present, like an air that one unconsciously hums for days after it hascaught his fancy. Blessed be the capacity of being fond and foolish! Ifthat letter was under her pillow at night, if this new revelation waslast in her thought as she fell asleep, if it mingled with the song ofthe birds in the spring morning, as some great good pervading the world,is there anything distinguishing in such an experience that it should bedwelt on? And if there were questionings and little panics of doubt, didnot these moments also reveal Margaret to herself more certainly than thehours of happy dreaming?

Questionings no doubt there were, and, later, serious questionings; forhabit is almost as strong as love, and the old ways of life and ofthought will reassert themselves in a thoughtful mind, and reason willinsist on analyzing passion and even hope.

Gradually the home life and every-day interests began to assume theirnatural aspect and proportions. It was so sweet and sane, this home life,interesting and not feverish. There was time for reading, time forturning over things in the mind, time for those interchanges of feelingand of ideas, by the fireside; she was not required to be always on dressparade, in mind or person, always keyed up to make an impression orreceive one; how much wider and sounder was Morgan's view of the world,allowing for his kindly cynicism, than that prevalent in the talk whereshe had lately been! How sincere and hearty and free ran the personalcurrents in this little neighborhood! In the very fact that the dailylove and affection for her and interest in her were taken for granted sherealized the difference between her position here and that among newerfriends who showed more open admiration.

Little by little there was a readjustment. In comparison, the city life,with its intensity of action and feeling, began to appear distant, not soreal, mixed, turbid, even frivolous. And was Henderson a vanishing partof this pageant? Was his figure less distinct as the days went by? Itcould not be affirmed. Love is such a little juggler, and likes, now andagain, to pretend to be so reasonable and judicious. There were no moreletters. If there had been a letter now and then, on any excuse, thenexus would have been more distinct: nothing feeds the flame exactly likea letter; it has intention, personality, secrecy. And the littleexcitement of it grows. Once a week gets to be twice a week, three times,four times, and then daily. And then a day without a letter is such ablank, and so full of fear! What can have happened? Is he ill? Has hechanged? The opium habit is nothing to the letter habit-between lovers.Not that Margaret expected a letter. Indeed, reason told her that it hadnot gone so far as that. But she should see him. She felt sure of that.And the thought filled all the vacant places in her imagination of thefuture.

And yet she thought she was seeing him more clearly than when he was withher. Oh wise young woman! She fancied she was deliberating, looking atlife with great prudence. It must be one's own fault if one makes aradical mistake in marriage. She was watching the married people abouther with more interest-the Morgans, our own household, Mrs. Fletcher; andbesides, her aunt, whose even and cheerful life lacked this experience.It is so wise to do this, to keep one's feelings in control, not to betoo hasty! Everybody has these intervals of prudence. That is the reasonthere are so few mistakes.

I dare say that all these reflections and deliberations in the maidenlymind were almost unconscious to herself; certainly unacknowledged. It washer imagination that she was following, and scarcely a distinct realityor intention. She thought of Henderson, and he gave a certainpersonality, vivid maybe, to that dream of the future which we all inyouth indulge; but she would have shrunk from owning this even toherself. We deceive ourselves as often as we deceive others. Margaretwould have repudiated with some warmth any intimation that she had losther heart, and was really predicting the practical possibilities of thatloss, and she would have been quite honest with herself in thinking thatshe was still mistress of her own feeling. Later on she would know, anddelight to confess, that her destiny was fixed at a certain hour, at acertain moment, in New York, for subsequent events would run back to thatlike links in a chain. And she would have been right and also wrong inthat; for but for those subsequent events the first impression would havefaded, and been taken little account of in her life. I am more and moreconvinced that men and women act more upon impulse and less upon deepreflection and self-examination than the analytic novelists would have usbelieve, duly weighing motives and balancing considerations; and that menand women know themselves much less thoroughly than they suppose they do.There is a great deal of exaggeration, I am convinced, about the inwardstruggles and self-conflicts. The reader may know that Margaret washopelessly in love, because he knows everything; but that charming girlwould have been shocked and wounded to the most indignant humiliation ifshe had fancied that her friends thought that. Nay, more, if Hendersonhad at this moment made by letter a proposal for her hand, her impulsewould have been to repudiate the offer as unjustified by anything thathad taken place, and she would no doubt have obeyed that impulse.

But something occurred, while she was in this mood, that did not shockher maidenly self-consciousness, nor throw her into antagonism, but whichdid bring her face to face with a possible reality. And this was simplythe receipt of a letter from Henderson; not a love-letter—far enoughfrom that—but one in which there was a certain tone and intention thatthe most inexperienced would recognize as possibly serious. Aside fromthe announcement in the letter, the very fact of writing it wassignificant, conveying an intimation that the reader might be interestedin what concerned the writer. The letter was longer than it need havebeen, for one thing, as if the pen, once started on its errand, ran oncon amore. The writer was coming to Brandon; business, to be sure, wasthe excuse; but why should it have been necessary to announce to her abusiness visit? There crept into the letter somehow a good deal about hisdaily life, linked, to be sure, with mention of places and people inwhich she had recently an interest. He had been in Washington, and therewere slight sketches of well-known characters in Congress and in theGovernment; he had been in Chicago, and even as far as Denver, and therewere little pictures of scenes that might amuse her. There was no specialmystery about all this travel and hurrying from place to place, but itgave Margaret a sense of varied and large occupations that she did notunderstand. Through it all there was the personality that had beenrecently so much in her thoughts. He was coming. That was a very solidfact that she must meet. And she did not doubt that he was coming to seeher, and soon. That was a definite and very different idea from the dimbelief that he would come some time. He had signed himself hers"faithfully."

It was a letter that could not be answered like the other one; for itraised questions and prospects, and the thousand doubts that make onehesitate in any definite step; and, besides, she pleased herself to thinkthat she did not know her own mind. He had not asked if he might come; hehad said he was coming, and really there was no answer to that. Thereforeshe put it out of her mind-another curious mental process we have indealing with a matter that is all the time the substratum of ourexistence. And she was actually serious; if she was reflective, she wasconscious of being judicially reflective.

But in this period of calm and reflection it was impossible that a womanof Margaret's habits and temperament should not attempt to settle in hermind what that life was yonder of which she had a little taste; what wasthe career that Henderson had marked out for himself; what were hisprinciples; what were the methods and reasons of his evident success.Endeavoring in her clear mind to separate the person, about whosepersonality she was so fondly foolish, from his schemes, which she sodimly comprehended, and applying to his somewhat hazy occupations hersimple moral test, were the schemes quite legitimate? Perhaps she did notgo so far as this; but what she read in the newspapers of moneymaking inthese days made her secretly uneasy, and she found herself wishing thathe were definitely practicing some profession, or engaged in some onesolid occupation.

In the little parliament at our house, where everything, first and last,was overhauled and brought to judgment, without, it must be confessed,any visible effect on anything, one evening a common "incident" of theday started the conversation. It was an admiring account in a newspaperof a brilliant operation by which three or four men had suddenly becomemillionaires.

"I don't see," said my wife, "any mention in this account of thethousands who have been reduced to poverty by this operation."

"No," said Morgan; "that is not interesting."

"But it would be very interesting to me," Mrs. Fletcher remarked. "Isthere any protection, Mr. Morgan, for people who have invested theirlittle property?"

"Yes; the law."

"But suppose your money is all invested, say in a railway, and somethinggoes wrong, where are you to get the money to pay for the law that willgive you restitution? Is there anything in the State, or public opinion,or anywhere, that will protect your interests against clever swindling?"

"Not that I know of," Morgan admitted. "You take your chance when you letyour money go out of your stocking. You see there are so many people whowant it. You can put it in the ground."

"But if I own the ground I put it in, the voters who have no ground willtax it till there is nothing left for me."

"That is equality."

"But it isn't equality, for somebody gets very rich in railways or lands,while we lose our little all. Don't you think there ought to be a publicofficial whose duty it is to enforce the law gratis which I cannot affordto enforce when I am wronged?"

"The difficulty is to discover whether you are wronged or onlyunfortunate. It needs a lawyer to find that out. And very likely if youare wronged, the wrongdoer has so cleverly gone round the law that itneeds legislation to set you straight, and that needs a lobbyist, whomthe lawyer must hire, or he must turn lobbyist himself. Now, a lawyercosts money, and a lobbyist is one of the most expensive of modernluxuries; but when you have a lawyer and lobbyist in one, you will findit economical to let him take your claim and all that can be made out ofit, and not bother you any more about it. But there is no doubt about thelaw, as I said. You can get just as much law as you can pay for. It islike any other commodity."

"You mean to say," I asked, "that the lawyer takes what the operatorleaves?"

"Not exactly. There is a great deal of unreasonable prejudice againstlawyers. They must live. There is no nobler occupation than theapplication of the principle of justice in human affairs. The trouble isthat public opinion sustains the operator in his smartness, and estimatesthe lawyer according to his adroitness. If we only evoked the aid of alawyer in a just cause, the lawyers would have less to do.

"Usually and naturally the best talent goes with the biggest fees."

"It seems to me," said my wife, musing along, in her way, on parallellines, "that there ought to be a limit to the amount of property one mancan get into his absolute possession, to say nothing of the methods bywhich he gets it."

"That never yet could be set," Morgan replied. "It is impossible for anynumber of men to agree on it. I don't see any line between absolutefreedom of acquisition, trusting to circ*mstances, misfortune, and deathto knock things to pieces, and absolute slavery, which is communism."

"Do you believe, Mr. Morgan, that any vast fortune was ever honestly comeby?"

"That is another question. Honesty is such a flexible word. If you mean aprocess the law cannot touch, yes. If you mean moral consideration forothers, I doubt. But property accumulates by itself almost. Many a manwho has got a start by an operation he would not like to haveinvestigated, and which he tries to forget, goes on to be very rich, andhas a daily feeling of being more and more honorable and respectable,using only means which all the world calls fair and shrewd."

"Mr. Morgan," suddenly asked Margaret, who had been all the time anuneasy listener to the turn the talk had taken, "what is railroadwrecking?"

"Oh, it is very simple, at least in some of its forms. The 'wreckers,' asthey are called, fasten upon some railway that is prosperous, paysdividends, pays a liberal interest on its bonds, and has a surplus. Theycontrive to buy, no matter of what cost, a controlling interest in it,either in its stock or its management. Then they absorb its surplus; theylet it run down so that it pays no dividends, and by-and-by cannot evenpay its interest; then they squeeze the bondholders, who may be glad toaccept anything that is offered out of the wreck, and perhaps then theythrow the property into the hands of a receiver, or consolidate it withsome other road at a value enormously greater than the cost to them instealing it. Having in one way or another sucked it dry, they look roundfor another road."

"And all the people who first invested lose their money, or the most ofit?"

"Naturally, the little fish get swallowed."

"It is infamous," said Margaret—"infamous! And men go to work to dothis, to get other people's property, in cool blood?"

"I don't know how cool, but it is in the way of business."

"What is the difference between that and getting possession of a bank androbbing it?" she asked, hot with indignation.

"Oh, one is an operation, and the other is embezzlement."

"It is a shame. How can people permit it? Suppose, Mrs. Fletcher, awrecker should steal your money that way?"

"I was thinking of that."

I never saw Margaret more disturbed—out of all proportion, I thought, tothe cause; for we had talked a hundred times about such things.

"Do you think all men who are what you call operating around are likethat?" she asked.

"Oh, no," I said. "Probably most men who are engaged in what is generallycalled speculation are doing what seems to them a perfectly legitimatebusiness. It is a common way of making a fortune."

"You see, Margaret," Morgan explained, "when people in trade buyanything, they expect to sell it for more than they gave for it."

"It seems to me," Margaret replied, more calmly, "that a great deal ofwhat you men call business is just trying to get other people's money,and doesn't help anybody or produce anything."

"Oh, that is keeping up the circulation, preventing stagnation."

"And that is the use of brokers in grain and stocks?"

"Partly. They are commonly the agents that others use to keep themselvesfrom stagnation."

"I cannot see any good in it," Margaret persisted. "No one seems to havethe things he buys or sells. I don't understand it."

"That is because you are a woman, if you will pardon me for saying it.Men don't need to have things in hand; business is done on faith andcredit, and when a transaction is over, they settle up and pay thedifference, without the trouble of transporting things back and forth."

"I know you are chaffing me, Mr. Morgan. But I should call that betting."

"Oh, there is a risk in everything you do. But you see it is reallypaying for a difference of knowledge or opinion."

"Would you buy stocks that way?"

"What way?"

"Why, agreeing to pay for your difference of opinion, as you call it, notreally having any stock at all."

"I never did. But I have bought stocks and sold them pretty soon, if Icould make anything by the sale. All merchants act on that principle."

"Well," said Margaret, dimly seeing the sophistry of this, "I don'tunderstand business morality."

"Nobody does, Margaret. Most men go by the law. The Golden Rule seems tobe suspended by a more than two-thirds vote."

It was by such inquiries, leading to many talks of this sort, thatMargaret was groping in her mind for the solution of what might become toher a personal question. Consciously she did not doubt Henderson'sintegrity or his honor, but she was perplexed about the world of whichshe had recently had a glimpse, and it was impossible to separate himfrom it. Subjected to an absolutely new experience, stirred as her hearthad never been before by any man—a fact which at once irritated andpleased her—she was following the law of her own nature, while she wasstill her own mistress, to ponder these things and to bring her reason tothe guidance of her feeling. And it is probable that she did not at allknow the strength of her feeling, or have any conception of the realpower of love, and how little the head has to do with the great passionof life, the intensity of which the poets have never in the leastexaggerated. If she thought of Mr. Lyon occasionally, of his white faceand pitiful look of suffering that day, she could not, after all, make itreal or permanently serious. Indeed, she was sure that no emotion couldso master her. And yet she looked forward to Henderson's coming with asort of nervous apprehension, amounting almost to dread.

XI

It was the susceptible time of the year for plants, for birds, for maids:all innocent natural impulses respond to the subtle influence of spring.One may well gauge his advance in selfishness, worldliness, and sin byhis loss of this annual susceptibility, by the failure of this sweetappeal to touch his heart. One must be very far gone if some note of itdoes not for a moment bring back the tenderest recollections of the daysof joyous innocence.

Even the city, with its mass of stone and brick, rectangles, straightlines, dust, noise, and fever of activity, is penetrated by this divinesuggestion of the renewal of life. You can scarcely open a window withoutletting in a breath of it; the south wind, the twitter of a sparrow, therustle of leaves in the squares, the smell of the earth and of somestruggling plant in the area, the note of a distant hand-organ softenedby distance, are begetting a longing for youth, for green fields, forlove. As Carmen walked down the avenue with Mr. Lyon on a spring morningshe almost made herself believe that an unworldly life with thissimple-hearted gentleman—when he should come into his title andestate—would be more to her liking than the most brilliant success inplace and power with Henderson. Unfortunately the spring influence alsosuggested the superior attractiveness of the only man who had ever takenher shallow fancy. And unfortunately the same note of nature suggested toMr. Lyon the contrast of this artificial piece of loveliness with thedomestic life of which he dreamed.

As for Margaret, she opened her heart to the spring without reserve. Itwas May. The soft maples had a purple tinge, the chestnuts showed color,the apple-trees were in bloom (all the air was full of their perfume),the blackbirds were chattering in convention in the tall oaks, the brightleaves and the flowering shrubs were alive with the twittering andsinging of darting birds. The soft, fleecy clouds, hovering as over aworld just created, seemed to make near and participant in the scene thedelicate blue of the sky. Margaret—I remember the morning—was standingon her piazza, as I passed through the neighborhood drive, with a sprayof apple-blossoms in her hand. For the moment she seemed to embody allthe maiden purity of the scene, all its promise. I said, laughing:

"We shall have to have you painted as spring."

"But spring isn't painted at all," she replied, holding up the apple—blossoms, and coming down the piazza with a dancing step.

"And so it won't last. We want something permanent," I was beginning tosay, when a carriage passed, going to our house. "I think that must beHenderson."

"Ah!" she exclaimed. Her sunny face clouded at once, and she turned to goin as I hurried away.

It was Mr. Henderson, and there was at least pretense enough of businessto occupy us, with Mr. Morgan, the greater part of the day. It was nottill late in the afternoon that Henderson appeared to remember thatMargaret was in the neighborhood, and spoke of his intention of calling.My wife pointed out the way to him across the grounds, and watched himleisurely walking among the trees till he was out of sight.

"What an agreeable man Mr. Henderson is!" she said, turning to me; "mostcompanionable; and yet—and yet, my dear, I'm glad he is not my husband.You suit me very well." There was an air of conviction about this remark,as if it were the result of deep reflection and comparison, and it wasemphasized by the little possessory act of readjusting my necktie—oneof the most subtle of female flatteries.

"But who wanted him to be your husband?" I asked. "Married women have theoddest habit of going about the world picking out the men they would notlike to have married. Do they need continually to justify themselves?"

"No; they congratulate themselves. You never can understand."

"I confess I cannot. My first thought about an attractive woman whoseacquaintance I make is not that I am glad I did not marry her."

"I dare say not. You are all inconsistent, you men. But you are the leastso of any man in the world, I do believe."

It would be difficult to say whether the spring morning seemed more orless glorious to Margaret when she went indoors, but its serenity wasgone.

It was like the premonition in nature of a change. She put the appleblossoms in water and placed the jug on the table, turning it about halfa dozen times, moving her head from side to side to get the effect. Whenit was exactly right, she said to her aunt, who sat sewing in thebay-window, in a perfectly indifferent tone, "Mr. Fairchild just passedhere, and said that Mr. Henderson had come."

"Ah!" Her aunt did not lift her eyes from her work, or appear to attachthe least importance to this tremendous piece of news. Margaret wasannoyed at what seemed to her an assumed indifference. Her nerves werequivering with the knowledge that he had arrived, that he was in the nexthouse, that he might be here any moment—the man who had entered into herwhole life—and the announcement was no more to her aunt than if she hadsaid it rained. She was provoked at herself that she should be sodisturbed, yes, annoyed, at his proximity. She wished he had not come—not today, at any rate. She looked about for something to do, and beganto rearrange this and that trifle in the sitting-room, which she hadperfectly arranged once before in the morning, moving about here andthere in a rather purposeless manner, until her aunt looked up and for amoment followed her movements till Margaret left the room. In her ownchamber she sat by the window and tried to think, but there was noorderly mental process; in vain she tried to run over in her mind thepast month and all her reflections and wise resolves. She heard the callof the birds, she inhaled the odor of the new year, she was conscious ofall that was gracious and inviting in the fresh scene, but in hersub-consciousness there was only one thought—he was there, he wascoming. She took up her sewing, but the needle paused in the stitch, andshe found herself looking away across the lawn to the hills; she took upa book, but the words had no meaning, read and reread them as she would.He is there, he is coming. And what of it? Why should she be sodisturbed? She was uncommitted, she was mistress of her own actions. Hadshe not been coolly judging his conduct? She despised herself for beingso nervous and unsettled. If he was coming, why did he not come? Why washe waiting so long? She arose impatiently and went down-stairs. There wasa necessity of doing something.

"Is there anything that you want from town, auntie?"

"Nothing that I know of. Are you going in?"

"No, unless you have an errand. It is such a fine day that it seems apity to stay indoors."

"Well, I would walk if I were you." But she did not go; she went insteadto her room. He might come any moment. She ought not to run away; and yetshe wished she were away. He said he was coming on business. Was it not,then, a pretense? She felt humiliated in the idea of waiting for him ifthe business were not a pretense.

How insensible men are! What a mere subordinate thing to them in life isthe love of a woman! Yes, evidently business was more important to himthan anything else. He must know that she was waiting; and she blushed toherself at the very possibility that he should think such a thing. Shewas not waiting. It was lunch-time. She excused herself. In the nextmoment she was angry that she had not gone down as usual. It was time forhim to come. He would certainly come immediately after lunch. She wouldnot see him. She hoped never to see him. She rose in haste, put on herhat, put it on carefully, turning and returning before the glass,selected fresh gloves, and ran down-stairs.

"I'm going, auntie, for a walk to town."

The walk was a long one. She came back tired. It was late in theafternoon. Her aunt was quietly reading. She needed to ask her nothing:Mr. Henderson had not been there. Why had he written to her?

"Oh, the Fairchilds want us to come over to dinner," said Miss Forsythe,without looking up.

"I hope you will go, auntie. I sha'n't mind being alone."

"Why? It's perfectly informal. Mr. Henderson happens to be there."

"I'm too stupid. But you must go. Mr. Henderson, in New York, expressedthe greatest desire to make your acquaintance."

Miss Forsythe smiled. "I suppose he has come up on purpose. But, dear,you must go to chaperon me. It would hardly be civil not to go, when youknew Mr. Henderson in New York, and the Fairchilds want to make itagreeable for him."

"Why, auntie, it is just a business visit. I'm too tired to make theeffort. It must be this spring weather."

Perhaps it was. It is so unfortunate that the spring, which begets somany desires, brings the languor that defeats their execution. But thereis a limit to the responsibility even of spring for a woman's moods. Justas Margaret spoke she saw, through the open window, Henderson comingacross the lawn, walking briskly, but evidently not inattentive to thecharm of the landscape. It was his springy step, his athletic figure,and, as he came nearer, the joyous anticipation in his face. And it wasso sudden, so unexpected—the vision so long looked for! There was notime for flight, had she wanted to avoid him; he was on the piazza; hewas at the open door. Her hand went quickly to her heart to still therapid flutter, which might be from pain and might be from joy—she couldnot tell. She had imagined their possible meeting so many times, and itwas not at all like this. She ought to receive him coldly, she ought toreceive him kindly, she ought to receive him indifferently. But how realhe was, how handsome he was! If she could have obeyed the impulse of themoment I am not sure but she would have fled, and cast herself facedownward somewhere, and cried a little and thanked God for him. He was inthe room. In his manner there was no hesitation, in his expression nouncertainty. His face beamed with pleasure, and there was so much openadmiration in his eyes that Margaret, conscious of it to her heart'score, feared that her aunt would notice it. And she met him calmlyenough, frankly enough. The quickness with which a woman can pull herselftogether under such circ*mstances is testimony to her superior fibre.

"I've been looking across here ever since morning," he said, as soon asthe hand-shaking and introduction were over, "and I've only this minutebeen released." There was no air of apology in this, but a delicateintimation of impatience at the delay. And still, what an unconsciousbrute a man is!

"I thought perhaps you had returned," said Margaret, "until my aunt wasjust telling me we were asked to dine with you."

Henderson gave her a quick glance. Was it possible she thought he couldgo away without seeing her?

"Yes, and I was commissioned to bring you over when you are ready." "Iwill not keep you waiting long, Mr. Henderson," interposed Miss Forsythe,out of the goodness of her heart. "My niece has been taking a long walk,and this debilitating spring weather—"

"Oh, since the sun has gone away, I think I'm quite up to the exertion,since you wish it, auntie," a speech that made Henderson stare again,wholly unable to comprehend the reason of an indirection which he couldfeel—he who had been all day impatient for this moment. There was alittle talk about the country and the city at this season, mainlysustained by Miss Forsythe and Henderson, and then he was left alone. "Ofcourse you should go, Margaret," said her aunt, as they went upstairs;"it would not be at all the thing for me to leave you here. And what afine, manly, engaging fellow Mr. Henderson is!"

"Yes, he acts very much like a man;" and Margaret was gone into her room.

Go? There was not force enough in the commonwealth, without calling outthe militia, to keep Margaret from going to the dinner. She stopped amoment in the middle of her chamber to think. She had almost forgottenhow he looked—his eyes, his smile. Dear me! how the birds were singingoutside, and how fresh the world was! And she would not hurry. He couldwait. No doubt he would wait now any length of time for her. He was inthe house, in the room below, perhaps looking out of the window, perhapsreading, perhaps spying about at her knick-knacks—she would like to lookin at the door a moment to see what he was doing. Of course he was hereto see her, and all the business was a pretext. As she sat a moment uponthe edge of her bed reflecting what to put on, she had a little pang thatshe had been doing him injustice in her thought. But it was only for aninstant. He was here. She was not in the least flurried. Indeed, hermental processes were never clearer than when she settled upon her simpletoilet, made as it was in every detail with the sure instinct of a womanwho dresses for her lover. Heavens! what a miserable day it had been,what a rebellious day! He ought to be punished for it somehow. Perhapsthe rose she put in her hair was part of the punishment. But he shouldnot see how happy she was; she would be civil, and just a littlereserved; it was so like a man to make a woman wait all day and thenthink he could smooth it all over simply by appearing.

But somehow in Henderson's presence these little theories of conduct didnot apply. He was too natural, direct, unaffected, his pleasure in beingwith her was so evident! He seemed to brush aside the little defenses andsubterfuges. There was this about him that appeared to her admirable, andin contrast with her own hesitating indirection, that whatever hewanted—money, or position, or the love of woman—he went straight to hisobject with unconsciousness that failure was possible. Even in walkingacross the grounds in the soft sunset light, and chatting easily, theirrelations seemed established on a most natural basis, and Margaret foundherself giving way to the simple enjoyment of the hour. She was not onlyhappy, but her spirits rose to inexpressible gayety, which ran into thehumor of badinage and a sort of spiritual elation, in which all thingsseemed possible. Perhaps she recognized in herself, what Henderson saw inher. And with it all there was an access of tenderness for her aunt, thedear thing whose gentle life appeared so colorless.

I had never seen Margaret so radiant as at the dinner; her high spiritsinfected the table, and the listening and the talking were of the bestthat the company could give. I remembered it afterwards, not fromanything special that was said, but from its flow of high animal spirits,and the electric responsive mood everyone was in; no topic carried toofar, and the chance seriousness setting off the sparkling comments onaffairs. Henderson's talk had the notable flavor of direct contact withlife, and very little of the speculative and reflective tone of Morgan's,who was always generalizing and theorizing about it. He had just comefrom the West, and his off-hand sketches of men had a special cynicism,not in the least condemnatory, mere good-natured acceptance, and incontrast to Morgan's moralizing and rather pitying cynicism. It struck methat he did not believe in his fellows as much as Morgan did; but Ifancied that Margaret only saw in his attitude a tolerant knowledge ofthe world.

"Are the people on the border as bad as they are represented?" she asked.

"Certainly not much worse than they represent themselves," he replied; "Isuppose the difference is that men feel less restraint there."

"It is something more than that," added Morgan. "There is a sort ofdrift-wood of adventure and devil-may-care-ism that civilization throwsin advance of itself; but that isn't so bad as the slag it manufacturesin the cities."

"I remember you said, Mr. Morgan, that men go West to get rid of theirpast," said Margaret.

"As New Yorkers go to Europe to get rid of their future?" Hendersoninquired, catching the phrase.

"Yes"—Morgan turned to Margaret—"doubtless there is a satisfactionsometimes in placing the width of a continent between a man and what hehas done. I've thought that one of the most popular verses in thePsalter, on the border, must be the one that says—you will know if Iquote it right 'Look how wide also the East is from the West; so far hathHe set our sins from us.'"

"That is dreadful," exclaimed Margaret. "To think of you spending yourtime in the service picking out passages to fit other people!"

"It sounds as if you had manufactured it," was Henderson's comment.

"No; that quiet Mr. Lyon pointed it out to me when we were talking about
Montana. He had been there."

"By-the-way, Mr. Henderson," my wife asked, "do you know what has becomeof Mr. Lyon?"

"I believe he is about to go home."

"I fancied Miss Eschelle might have something to say about that," Morganremarked.

"Perhaps, if she were asked. But Mr. Lyon appeared rather indifferent to
American attractions."

Margaret looked quickly at Henderson as he said this, and then ventured,a little slyly, "She seemed to appreciate his goodness."

"Yes; Miss Eschelle has an eye for goodness."

This was said without change of countenance, but it convinced thelistener that Carmen was understood.

"And yet," said Margaret, with a little air of temerity, "you seem to bevery good friends."

"Oh, she is very charitable; she sees, I suppose, what is good in me; andI'll spare you the trouble of remarking that she must necessarily be verysharp-sighted."

"And I'm not going to destroy your illusion by telling you her realopinion of you," Margaret retorted.

Henderson begged to know what it was, but Margaret evaded the question bynew raillery. What did she care at the moment what Carmen thought ofHenderson? What—did either of them care what they were saying, so longas there was some personal flavor in the talk! Was it not enough to talkto each other, to see each other?

As we sat afterwards upon the piazza with our cigars, inhaling the odorof the apple blossoms, and yielding ourselves, according to our age, tothe influence of the mild night, Margaret was in the high spirits whichaccompany the expectation of bliss, without the sobering effect of itsresponsibility. Love itself is very serious, but the overture is full offreakish gayety. And it was all gayety that night. We all constitutedourselves a guard of honor to Miss Forsythe and Margaret when they wentto their cottage, and there was a merry leave-taking in the moonlight. Tobe sure, Margaret walked with Henderson, and they lagged a little behind,but I had no reason to suppose that they were speaking of the stars, orthat they raised the ordinary question of their being inhabited. I doubtif they saw the stars at all. How one remembers little trifles, thatrecur like the gay bird notes of the opening scenes that are repeated inthe tragedy of the opera! I can see Margaret now, on some banteringpretext, running back, after we had said good-night, to give Hendersonthe blush-rose she had worn in her hair. How charming the girl was inthis freakish action!

"Do you think he is good enough for her?" asked my wife, when we werealone.

"Who is good enough for whom?" I said, a yawn revealing my want ofsentiment.

"Don't be stupid. You are not so blind as you pretend."

"Well, if I am not so blind as I pretend, though I did not pretend to beblind, I suppose that is mainly her concern."

"But I wish she had cared for Lyon."

"Perhaps Lyon did not care for her," I suggested.

"You never see anything. Lyon was a noble fellow."

"I didn't deny that. But how was I to know about Lyon, my dear? I neverheard you say that you were glad he wasn't your husband."

"Don't be silly. I think Henderson has very serious intentions."

"I hope he isn't frivolous," I said.

"Well, you are. It isn't a joking matter—and you pretend to be so fondof Margaret!"

"So that is another thing I pretend? What do you want me to do? Which onedo you want me to make my enemy by telling him or her that the otherisn't good enough?"

"I don't want you to do anything, except to be reasonable, andsympathize."

"Oh, I sympathize all round. I assure you I've no doubt you are quiteright." And in this way I crawled out of the discussion, as usual.

What a pretty simile it is, comparing life to a river, because rivers areso different! There are the calm streams that flow eagerly from theyouthful sources, join a kindred flood, and go placidly to the sea, onlybroadening and deepening and getting very muddy at times, but without arapid or a fall. There are others that flow carelessly in the uppersunshine, begin to ripple and dance, then run swiftly, and rush intorapids in which there is no escape (though friends stand weeping andimploring on the banks) from the awful plunge of the cataract. Then thereis the tumult and the seething, the exciting race and rage through thecanon, the whirlpools and the passions of love and revelations ofcharacter, and finally, let us hope, the happy emergence into the lake ofa serene life. And the more interesting rivers are those that havetumults and experiences.

I knew well enough before the next day was over that it was too late forthe rescue of Margaret or Henderson. They were in the rapids, and wouldhave rejected any friendly rope thrown to draw them ashore. Andnotwithstanding the doubts of my wife, I confess that I had so muchsympathy with the genuineness of it that I enjoyed this shock of twostrong natures rushing to their fate. Was it too sudden? Do two livingstreams hesitate when they come together? When they join they join, andmingle and reconcile themselves afterwards. It is only canals that flowlanguidly in parallel lines, and meet, if they meet at all, by theorderly contrivance of a lock.

In the morning the two were off for a stroll. There is a hill from whicha most extensive prospect is had of the city, the teeming valley, with ascore of villages and innumerable white spires, of forests and meadowsand broken mountain ranges. It was a view that Margaret the night beforehad promised to show Henderson, that he might see what to her was theloveliest landscape in the world. Whether they saw the view I do notknow. But I know the rock from which it is best seen, and could fancyMargaret sitting there, with her face turned towards it and her handsfolded in her lap, and Henderson sitting, half turned away from it,looking in her face. There is an apple orchard just below. It was inbloom, and all the invitation of spring was in the air. That he saw allthe glorious prospect reflected in her mobile face I do not doubt—allthe nobility and tenderness of it. If I knew the faltering talk in thathour of growing confidence and expectation, I would not repeat it.Henderson lunched at the Forsythe's, and after lunch he had some talkwith Miss Forsythe. It must have been of an exciting nature to her, for,immediately after, that good woman came over in a great flutter, and wascloseted with my wife, who at the end of the interview had an air ofmysterious importance. It was evidently a woman's day, and my advice wasnot wanted, even if my presence was tolerated. All I heard my wife saythrough the opening door, as the consultation ended, was, "I hope sheknows her own mind fully before anything is decided."

As to the objects of this anxiety, they were upon the veranda of thecottage, quite unconscious of the necessity of digging into their ownminds. He was seated, and she was leaning against the railing on whichthe honeysuckle climbed, pulling a flower in pieces.

"It is such a short time I have known you," she was saying, as if inapology for her own feeling.

"Yes, in one way;" and he leaned forward, and broke his sentence with alittle laugh. "I think I must have known you in some pre-existent state."

"Perhaps. And yet, in another way, it seems long—a whole month, youknow." And the girl laughed a little in her turn.

"It was the longest month I ever knew, after you left the city."

"Was it? I oughtn't to have said that first. But do you know, Mr.
Henderson, you seem totally different from any other man I ever knew."

That this was a profound and original discovery there could be no doubt,from the conviction with which it was announced. "I felt from the firstthat I could trust you."

"I wish"—and there was genuine feeling in the tone—"I were worthier ofsuch a generous trust."

There was a wistful look in her face—timidity, self-depreciation,worship—as Henderson rose and stood near her, and she looked up while hetook the broken flower from her hand. There was but one answer to this,and in spite of the open piazza and the all-observant, all-revealing day,it might have been given; but at the moment Miss Forsythe was seenhurrying towards them through the shrubbery. She came straight to wherethey stood, with an air of New England directness and determination. Onehand she gave to Henderson, the other to Margaret. She essayed to speak,but tears were in her eyes, and her lips trembled; the words would notcome. She regarded them for an instant with all the overflowing affectionof a quarter of a century of repression, and then quickly turned and wentin. In a moment they followed her. Heaven go with them!

After Henderson had made his hasty adieus at our house and gone, beforethe sun was down, Margaret came over. She came swiftly into the room,gave me a kiss as I rose to greet her, with a delightful impersonality,as if she owed a debt somewhere and must pay it at once—we men who areso much left out of these affairs have occasionally to thank Heaven for amerciful moment—seized my wife, and dragged her to her room.

"I couldn't wait another moment," she said, as she threw herself on mywife's bosom in a passion of tears. "I am so happy! he is so noble, and Ilove him so!" And she sobbed as if it were the greatest calamity in theworld. And then, after a little, in reply to a question—for women arenever more practical than in such a crisis: "Oh, no—not for a long,long, long time. Not before autumn."

And the girl looked, through her glad tears, as if she expected to beadmired for this heroism. And I have no doubt she was.

XII

Well, that was another success. The world is round, and like a ball seemsswinging in the air, and swinging very pleasantly, thought Henderson, ashe stepped on board the train that evening. The world is truly what youmake it, and Henderson was determined to make it agreeable. Hisphilosophy was concise, and might be hung up, as a motto: Get all youcan, and don't fret about what you cannot get.

He went into the smoking compartment, and sat musing by the window forsome time before he lit his cigar, feeling a glow of happiness that wasnew in his experience. The country was charming at twilight, but he waslittle conscious of that. What he saw distinctly was Margaret's face,trustful and wistful, looking up into his as she bade him goodby. What hewas vividly conscious of was being followed, enveloped, by a woman'slove.

"You will write, dear, the moment you get there, will you not? I am soafraid of accidents," she had said.

"Why, I will telegraph, sweet," he had replied, quite gayly.

"Will you? Telegraph? I never had that sort of a message." It seemed avery wonderful thing that he should use the public wire for this purpose,and she looked at him with new admiration.

"Are you timid about the train?" he asked.

"No. I never think of it. I never thought of it for myself; but this isdifferent."

"Oh, I see." He put his arm round her and looked down into her eyes. Thiswas a humorous suggestion to him, who spent half his time on the trains."I think I'll take out an accident policy."

"Don't say that. But you men are so reckless. Promise you won't stand onthe platform, and won't get off while the train is in motion, and all therest of the directions," she said, laughing a little with him; "and youwill be careful?"

"I'll take such care of myself as I never did before, I promise. I neverfelt of so much consequence in my life."

"You'll think me silly. But you know, don't you, dear?" She put a hand oneach shoulder, and pushing him back, studied his face. "You are all theworld. And only to think, day before yesterday, I didn't think of thetrains at all."

To have one look like that from a woman! To carry it with him! Hendersonstill forgot to light his cigar.

"Hello, Rodney!"

"Ah, Hollowell! I thought you were in Kansas City."

The new-comer was a man of middle age, thick set, with rounded shoulders,deep chest, heavy neck, iron-gray hair close cut, gray whiskers croppedso as to show his strong jaw, blue eyes that expressed at once resolutionand good-nature.

"Well, how's things? Been up to fix the Legislature?"

"No; Perkins is attending to that," said Henderson, rather indifferently,like a man awakened out of a pleasant dream. "Don't seem to need muchfixing. The public are fond of parallels."

Hollowell laughed. "I guess that's so—till they get 'em."

"Or don't get them," Henderson added. And then both laughed.

"It looks as if it would go through this time. Bemis says the C. D.'sbadly scared. They'll have to come down lively."

"I shouldn't wonder. By-the-way, look in tomorrow. I've got something toshow you."

Henderson lit his cigar, and they both puffed in silence for somemoments.

"By-the-way, did I ever show you this?" Hollowell took from hisbreast-pocket a handsome morocco case, and handed it to his companion. "Inever travel without that. It's better than an accident policy."

Henderson unfolded the case, and saw seven photographs—a showy-lookinghandsome woman in lace and jewels, and six children, handsome like theirmother, the whole group with the photographic look of prosperity.

Henderson looked at it as if it had been a mirror of his own destiny, andexpressed his admiration.

"Yes, it's hard to beat," Hollowell confessed, with a soft look in hisface. "It's not for sale. Seven figures wouldn't touch it." He looked atit lovingly before he put it up, and then added: "Well, there's a figurefor each, Rodney, and a big nest-egg for the old woman besides. There'snothing like it, old man. You'd better come in." And he put his handaffectionately on Henderson's knee.

Jeremiah Hollowell—commonly known as Jerry—was a remarkable man. Thirtyyears ago he had come to the city from Maine as a "hand" on a coastschooner, obtained employment in a railroad yard, then as a freightconductor, gone West, become a contractor, in which position a lucky hitset him on the road of the unscrupulous accumulation of property. He wasnow a railway magnate, the president of a system, a manipulator ofdexterity and courage. All this would not have come about if his big headhad not been packed with common-sense brains, and he had not had uncommonwill and force of character. Success had developed the best side of him,the family side; and the worst side of him—a brutal determination toincrease his big fortune. He was not hampered by any scruples inbusiness, but he had the good-sense to deal squarely with his friendswhen he had distinctly agreed to do so.

Henderson did not respond to the matrimonial suggestion; it was notpossible for him to vulgarize his own affair by hinting it to such a manas Hollowell; but they soon fell into serious talk about schemes in whichthey were both interested. This talk so absorbed Henderson that afterthey had reached the city he had walked some blocks towards his lodgingbefore he recalled his promise about the message. On his table he found anote from Carmen bidding him to dinner informally—an invitation which hehad no difficulty in declining on account of a previous engagement. Andthen he went to his club, and passed a cheerful evening. Why not? Therewas nothing melancholy about the young fellows in the smoking-room, wholiked a good story and the latest gossip, and were attracted to thesociety of Henderson, who was open-handed and full of animal spirits, andabove all had a reputation for success, and for being on the inside ofaffairs. There is nowhere else so much wisdom and such understanding oflife as in a city club of young fellows, who have their experience still,for the most part, before them. Henderson was that night in great"force"—as the phrase is. His companions thought he had made a luckyturn, and he did not tell them that he had won the love of the finestgirl in the world, who was at that moment thinking of him as fondly as hewas thinking of her—but this was the subconsciousness of his gayety.Late at night he wrote her a long letter—an honest letter of love andadmiration, which warmed into the tenderness of devotion as it went on; aletter that she never parted with all her life long; but he left adescription of the loneliness of his evening without her to herimagination.

It was for Margaret also a happy evening, but not a calm one, and notgay. She was swept away by a flood of emotions. She wanted to be alone,to think it over, every item of the short visit, every look, every tone.Was it all true? The great change made her tremble: of the future shedared scarcely think. She was restless, but not restless as before; shecould not be calm in such a great happiness. And then the wonder of it,that he should choose her of all others—he who knew the world so well,and must have known so many women. She followed him on his journey,thinking what he was doing now, and now, and now. She would have giventhe world to see him just for a moment, to look in his eyes and be sureagain, to have him say that little word once more: there was a kind ofpain in her heart, the separation was so cruel; it had been over twohours now. More than once in the evening she ran down to thesitting-room, where her aunt was pretending to be absorbed in a book, tokiss her, to pet her, to smooth her grayish hair and pat her cheek, andget her to talk about her girlhood days. She was so happy that tears werein her eyes half the time. At nine o'clock there was a pull at the bellthat threatened to drag the wire out, and an insignificant little urchinappeared with a telegram, which frightened Miss Forsythe, and seemed toMargaret to drop out of heaven. Such an absurd thing to do at night, saidthe aunt, and then she kissed Margaret, and laughed a little, anddeclared that things had come to a queer pass when people made love bytelegraph. There wasn't any love in the telegram, Margaret said; but sheknew better—the sending word of his arrival was a marvelous exhibitionof thoughtfulness and constancy.

And then she led her aunt on to talk of Mr. Henderson, to give herimpression, how he looked, what she really thought of him, and so on, andso on.

There was not much to say, but it could be said over and over again invarious ways. It was the one night of the world, and her overwroughtfeeling sought relief. It would not be so again. She would be morereticent and more coquettish about her lover, but now it was all so newand strange.

That night when the girl went to sleep the telegram was under her pillow,and it seemed to throb with a thousand messages, as if it felt thepulsation of the current that sent it.

The prospective marriage of the budding millionaire Rodney Henderson wasa society paper item in less than a week—the modern method of publishingthe banns. This was accompanied by a patronizing reference to the prettyschool-ma'am, who was complimented upon her good-fortune in phrases soneatly turned as to give Henderson the greatest offense, and leave him noremedy, since nothing could have better suited the journal than furthernotoriety. He could not remember that he had spoken of it to any oneexcept the Eschelles, to whom his relations made the communication anecessity, and he suspected Carmen, without, however, guessing that shewas a habitual purveyor of the town gossiper.

"It is a shameful impertinence," she burst out, introducing the subjectherself, when he called to see her. "I would horsewhip the editor." Herindignation was so genuine, and she took his side with such warm goodcomradeship, that his suspicions vanished for a moment.

"What good?" he answered, cooling down at the sight of her rage. "It istrue, we are to be married, and she has taught school. I can't drag hername into a row about it. Perhaps she never will see it."

"Oh dear! dear me! what have I done?" the girl cried, with an accent ofcontrition. "I never thought of that. I was so angry that I cut it outand put it in the letter that was to contain nothing but congratulations,and told her how perfectly outrageous I thought it. How stupid!" andthere was a world of trouble in her big dark eyes, while she looked uppenitently, as if to ask his forgiveness for a great crime.

"Well, it cannot be helped," Henderson said, with a little touch ofsympathy for Carmen's grief. "Those who know her will think it simplymalicious, and the others will not think of it a second time."

"But I cannot forgive myself for my stupidity. I'm not sure but I'drather you'd think me wicked than stupid," she continued, with the smilein her eyes that most men found attractive. "I confess—is that verybad?—that I feel it more for you than for her. But" ( she thought shesaw a shade in his face) "I warn you, if you are not very nice, I shalltransfer my affections to her."

The girl was in her best mood, with the manner of a confiding, intimatefriend. She talked about Margaret, but not too much, and a good deal moreabout Henderson and his future, not laying too great stress upon themarriage, as if it were, in fact, only an incident in his career,contriving always to make herself appear as a friend, who hadn't manyillusions or much romance, to be sure, but who could always be relied onin any mood or any perplexity, and wouldn't be frightened or very severeat any confidences. She posed as a woman who could make allowances, andwhose friendship would be no check or hinderance. This was conveyed inmanner as much as in words, and put Henderson quite at his ease. He wasnot above the weakness of liking the comradeship of a woman of whom hewas not afraid, a woman to whom he could say anything, a woman who couldmake allowances. Perhaps he was hardly conscious of this. He knew Carmenbetter than she thought he knew her, and he couldn't approve of her as awife; and yet the fact was that she never gave him any moral worries.

"Yes," she said, when the talk drifted that way, "the chrysalis earl hasgone. I think that mamma is quite inconsolable. She says she doesn'tunderstand girls, or men, or anything, these days."

"Do you?" asked Henderson, lightly.

"I? No. I'm an agnostic—except in religion. Have you got it into yourhead, my friend, that I ever fancied Mr. Lyon?"

"Not for himself—" began Henderson, mischievously.

"That will do." She stopped him. "Or that he ever had any intention—"

"I don't see how he could resist such—"

"Stuff! See here, Mr. Rodney!" The girl sprang up, seized a plaque fromthe table, held it aloft in one hand, took half a dozen fascinating,languid steps, advancing and retreating with the grace of a Nautch girl,holding her dress with the other hand so as to allow a free movement. "Doyou think I'd ever do that for John the Lyon's head on a charger?"

Then her mood changed to the domestic, as she threw herself into aneasy-chair and said: "After all, I'm rather sorry he has gone. He was aman you could trust; that is, if you wanted to trust anybody—I wish Ihad been made good."

When Henderson bade her good-night it was with the renewed impressionthat she was a very diverting comrade.

"I'm sort of sorry for you," she said, and her eyes were not so seriousas to offend, as she gave him her hand, "for when you are married, youknow, as the saying is, you'll want some place to spend your evenings."The audacity of the remark was quite obscured in the innocent franknessand sweetness of her manner.

What Henderson had to show Hollowell in his office had been of a naturegreatly to interest that able financier. It was a project that would haveexcited the sympathy of Carmen, but Henderson did not speak of it toher—though he had found that she was a safe deposit of daring schemes ingeneral—on account of a feeling of loyalty to Margaret, to whom he hadnever mentioned it in any of his daily letters. The scheme made a greatdeal of noise, later on, when it came to the light of consummation inlegislatures and in courts, both civil and criminal; but its magnitudeand success added greatly to Henderson's reputation as a bold andfortunate operator, and gave him that consideration which always attachesto those who command millions of money, and have the nerve to goundaunted through the most trying crises. I am anticipating by sayingthat it absolutely ruined thousands of innocent people, caused widespreadstrikes and practical business paralysis over a large region; but thosethings were regarded as only incidental to a certain sort of development,and did not impair the business standing, and rather helped the socialposition, of the two or three men who counted their gains by millions inthe operation. It furnished occupation and gave good fees to a multitudeof lawyers, and was dignified by the anxious consultation of many learnedjudges. A moralist, if he were poor and pessimistic, might have put thecase in a line, and taken that line from the Mosaic decalogue (which wasnot intended for this new dispensation); but it was involved in such acloud of legal technicalities, and took on such an aspect of enterpriseand development of resources, and what not, that the general public mindwas completely befogged about it. I am charitable enough to suppose thatif the scheme had failed, the public conscience is so tender that therewould have been a question of Henderson's honesty. But it did not fail.

Of this scheme, however, we knew nothing at the time in Brandon.Henderson was never in better spirits, never more agreeable, and it didnot need inquiry to convince one that he was never so prosperous. He wasoften with us, in flying visits, and I can well remember that his comingand the expectation of it gave a kind of elation to the summer—that andMargaret's supreme and sunny happiness. Even my wife admitted that it wason both sides a love-match, and could urge nothing against it except thewoman's instinct that made her shrink from the point of ever thinking ofhim as a husband for herself, which seemed to me a perfectly reasonablefeeling under all the circ*mstances.

The summer—or what we call summer in the North, which is usually apreparation for warm weather, ending in a preparation for cold weather—seemed to me very short—but I have noticed that each summer is alittle shorter than the preceding one. If Henderson had wanted to gainthe confidence of my wife he could not have done so more effectually thanhe did in making us the confidants of a little plan he had in the city,which was a profound secret to the party most concerned. This was thepurchase and furnishing of a house, and we made many clandestine visitswith him to town in the early autumn in furtherance of his plan. He wasintent on a little surprise, and when I once hinted to him that womenliked to have a hand in making the home they were to occupy, he said hethought that my wife knew Margaret's taste—and besides, he added, with asmile, "it will be only temporary; I should like her, if she chooses, tobuild and furnish a house to suit herself." In any one else this wouldhave seemed like assumption, but with Henderson it was only the simplebelief in his career.

We were still more surprised when we came to see the temporary home thatHenderson had selected, the place where the bride was to alight, and lookabout her for such a home as would suit her growing idea of expandingfortune and position. It was one of the old-fashioned mansions onWashington Square, built at a time when people attached more importanceto room and comfort than to outside display—a house that seemed to havetraditions of hospitality and of serene family life. It was beingthoroughly renovated and furnished, with as little help from thedecorative artist and the splendid upholsterer as consisted with someregard to public opinion; in fact the expenditure showed in solid dignityand luxurious ease, and not in the construction of a museum in which onecould only move about with the constant fear of destroying something. Mywife was given almost carte blanche in the indulgence of her taste, andshe confessed her delight in being able for once to deal with a housewithout the feeling that she was ruining me. Only in the suite designedfor Margaret did Henderson seriously interfere, and insist upon a luxurythat almost took my wife's breath away. She opposed it on moral grounds.She said that no true woman could stand such pampering of her senseswithout destruction of her moral fibre. But Henderson had his way, as healways had it. What pleased her most in the house was the conservatory,opening out from the drawing-room—a spacious place with a fountain andcool vines and flowering plants, not a tropical hothouse in a stiflingatmosphere, in which nothing could live except orchids and flowers bornnear the equator, but a garden with a temperature adapted to human lungs,where one could sit and enjoy the sunshine, and the odor of flowers, andthe clear and not too incessant notes of Mexican birds. But when it wasall done, undoubtedly the most agreeable room in the house was that towhich least thought had been given, the room to which any odds and endscould be sent, the room to which everybody gravitated when rest andsimple enjoyment without restraint were the object Henderson's ownlibrary, with its big open fire, and the books and belongings of hisbachelor days. Man is usually not credited with much taste or ability totake care of himself in the matter of comfortable living, but it isfrequently noticed that when woman has made a dainty paradise of everyother portion of the house, the room she most enjoys, that from which itis difficult to keep out the family, is the one that the man is permittedto call his own, in which he retains some of the comforts and can indulgesome of the habits of his bachelor days. There is an important truth inthis fact with regard to the sexes, but I do not know what it is.

They were married in October, and went at once to their own house. Isuppose all other days were but a preparation for this golden autumn dayon which we went to church and returned to the wedding-breakfast. I amsure everybody was happy. Miss Forsythe was so happy that tears were inher eyes half the time, and she bustled about with an affectation ofcheerfulness that was almost contagious. Poor, dear, gentle lady! I canimagine the sensations of a peach-tree, in an orchard of trees which budand bloom and by-and-by are weighty with yellow fruit, year after year—apeach-tree that blooms, also, but never comes to fruition, only wastesits delicate sweetness on the air, and finally blooms less and less, butfeels nevertheless in each returning spring the stir of the sap and thelonging for that fuller life, while all the orchard bursts into flower,and the bees swarm about the pink promises, and the fruit sets and slowlymatures to lusciousness in the sun of July. I fancy the wedding, whichrobbed us all, was hardest for her, for it was in one sense a finality ofher life. Whereas if Margaret had regrets—and deep sorrow she had inwrenching herself from the little neighborhood, though she never couldhave guessed the vacancy she caused by the withdrawal of her lovedpresence—her own life was only just beginning, and she was sustained bythe longing which every human soul has for a new career, by the curiosityand imagination which the traveler feels when he departs for a land whichhe desires, and yet dreads to see lest his illusions should vanish.Margaret was about to take that journey in the world which Miss Forsythehad dreamed of in her youth, but had never set out on. There are some whosay that those are happiest who keep at home and content themselves withreading about the lands of the imagination. But happily the world doesnot believe this, and indeed would be very unhappy if it could not tryand prove all the possibilities of human nature, to suffer as well as toenjoy.

I do not know how we fell into the feeling that this marriage was somehowexceptional and important, since marriages take place every day, and areso common and ordinarily so commonplace, when the first flutter is over.Even Morgan said, in his wife's presence, that he thought there had beenweddings enough; at least he would interdict those that upset things likethis one. For one thing, it brought about the house-keeping union of Mrs.Fletcher and Miss Forsythe in the tatter's cottage—a sort of closing upof the ranks that happens on the field during a fatal engagement. As wego on, it becomes more and more difficult to fill up the gaps.

We were very unwilling to feel that Margaret had gone out of our life."But you cannot," Morgan used to say, "be friends with the rich, and thatis what makes the position of the very rich so pitiful, for the rich getso tired of each other."

"But Margaret," my wife urged, "will never be of that sort: money willnot change either her habits or her affections."

"Perhaps. You can never trust to inherited poverty. I have no doubt thatshe will resist the world, if anybody can, but my advice is that if youwant to keep along with Margaret, you'd better urge your husband to makemoney. Experience seems to teach that while they cannot come to us, wemay sometimes go to them."

My wife and Mrs. Fletcher were both indignant at this banter, and accusedMorgan of want of faith, and even lack of affection for Margaret; inshort, of worldly-mindedness himself.

"Perhaps I am rather shop-worn," he confessed. "It's not distrust ofMargaret's intentions, but knowledge of the strength of the current onwhich she has embarked. Henderson will not stop in his career short ofsome overwhelming disaster or of death."

"I thought you liked him? At any rate, Margaret will make a good use ofhis money."

"It isn't a question, my dear Mrs. Fairchild, of the use of money, but ofthe use money makes of you. Yes, I do like Henderson, but I can't give upmy philosophy of life for the sake of one good fellow."

"Philosophy of fudge!" exclaimed my wife. And there really was no answerto this.

After six weeks had passed, my wife paid a visit to Margaret. Nothingcould exceed the affectionate cordiality of her welcome. Margaret wasoverjoyed to see her, to show the house, to have her know her husbandbetter, to take her into her new life. She was hardly yet over the naivesurprises of her lovely surroundings. Or if it is too mach to say thather surprise had lasted six weeks—for it is marvelous how soon womenadapt themselves to new conditions if they are agreeable—she was in aglow of wonder at her husband's goodness, at his love, which had procuredall this happiness for her.

"You have no idea," she said, "how thoughtful he is about everything—andhe makes so little of it all. I am to thank you, he tells me always, forwhatever pleases my taste in the house, and indeed I think I should haveknown you had been here if he had not told me. There are so many littletouches that remind me of home. I am glad of that, for it is the morelikely to make you feel that it is your home also."

She clung to this idea in the whirl of the new life. In the first daysshe dwelt much on this theme; indeed it was hardly second in her talk toher worship—I can call it nothing less—of her husband. She liked totalk of Brandon and the dear life there and the dearer friends—this muchtalk about it showed that it was another life, already of the past, andbeginning to be distant in the mind. My wife had a feeling that Margaret,thus early, was conscious of a drift, of a widening space, and was makingan effort to pull the two parts of her life together, that there shouldbe no break, as one carried away to sea by a resistless tide grasps thestraining rope that still maintains his slender connection with theshore.

But it was all so different: the luxurious house, the carriage at call,the box at the opera, the social duties inevitable with her ownacquaintances and the friends of her husband. She spoke of this inmoments of confidence, and when she was tired, with a consciousness thatit was a different life, but in no tone of regret, and I fancy that theFrench blood in her veins, which had so long run decorously in Puritanchannels, leaped at its return into new gayety. Years ago Margaret hadthought that she might some time be a missionary, at least that sheshould like to devote her life to useful labors among the poor and theunfortunate. If conscience ever reminded her of this, conscience wasquieted by the suggestion that now she was in a position to be moreliberal than she ever expected to be; that is, to give everything exceptthe essential thing—herself. Henderson liked a gay house, brightness,dinners, entertainment, and that his wife should be seen and admired.Proof of his love she found in all this, and she entered into it withspirit, and an enjoyment increased by the thought that she was lighteningthe burden of his business, which she could see pressed more and more.Not that Henderson made any account of his growing occupations, or thatany preoccupation was visible except to the eye of love, which is quickto see all moods. These were indeed happy days, full of the brightness ofan expanding prosperity and unlimited possibilities of the enjoyment oflife. It was in obedience to her natural instinct, and not yet a feelingof compensation and propitiation, that enlisted Margaret in the citycharities, connection with which was a fashionable self-entertainmentwith some, and a means of social promotion with others. My wife came homea little weary with so much of the world, but, on the whole, impressedwith Margaret's good-fortune. Henderson in his own house was the soul ofconsideration and hospitality, and Margaret was blooming in the beautythat shines in satisfied desire.

XIII

It is so painful to shrink, and so delightful to grow! Every one knowsthe renovation of feeling—often mistaken for a moral renewal—when theworn dress of the day is exchanged for the fresh evening toilet. Theexpansiveness of prosperity has a like effect, though the moralist isalways piping about the beneficent uses of adversity. The moralist is, ofcourse, right, time enough given; but what does the tree, putting out itstender green leaves to the wooing of the south wind, care for themoralist? How charming the world is when you go with it, and not againstit!

It was better than Margaret had thought. When she came to Washington inthe winter season the beautiful city seemed to welcome her and respond tothe gayety of her spirit. It was so open, cheerful, hospitable, in theappearance of its smooth, broad avenues and pretty little parks, with thebronze statues which all looked noble—in the moonlight; it was such acombination and piquant contrast of shabby ease and stately elegance—negro cabins and stone mansions, picket-fences and sheds, andflower-banked terraces before rows of residences which bespoke wealth andrefinement. The very aspect of the street population was novel; comparedto New York, the city was as silent as a country village, and thepassers, who have the fashion of walking in the middle of the street uponthe asphalt as freely as upon the sidewalks, had a sort of busyleisureliness, the natural air of thousands of officials hived in officesfor a few hours and then left in irresponsible idleness. But what mostdistinguished the town, after all, in Margaret's first glimpse of it, wasthe swarming negro population pervading every part of it—the slouchingplantation negro, the smart mulatto girl with gay raiment and mincingstep, the old-time auntie, the brisk waiter-boy with uncertain eye, thewasherwoman, the hawkers and fruiterers, the loafing strollers of bothsexes—carrying everywhere color, abandon, a certain picturesqueness andirresponsibility and good-nature, and a sense of moral relaxation in atoo strict and duty-ridden world.

In the morning, when Margaret looked from the windows of the hotel, thesky was gray and yielding, and all the outlines of the looming buildingswere softened in the hazy air. The dome of the Capitol seemed to floatlike a bubble, and to be as unsubstantial as the genii edifices in theArabian tale. The Monument, the slim white shaft as tall as the GreatPyramid, was still more a dream creation, not really made of hard marble,but of something as soft as vapor, almost melting into the sky, and yetdistinct, unwavering, its point piercing the upper air, threatening everyinstant to dissolve, as if it were truly the baseless fabric of a vision—light, unreal, ghost-like, spotless, pure as an unsullied thought; itmight vanish in a breath; and yet, no; it is solid: in the mist of doubt,in the assault of storms, smitten by the sun, beaten by the tempests, itstands there, springing, graceful, immovable—emblem, let us say, of thepurity and permanence of the republic.

"You never half told me, Rodney, how beautiful it all is!" Margaretexclaimed, in a glow of delight.

"Yes," said Henderson, "the Monument is behaving very well this morning.
I never saw it before look so little like a factory chimney."

"That is, you never looked at it with my eyes before, cynic. But it isall so lovely, everywhere."

"Of course it is, dear." They were standing together at the window, andhis arm was where it should have been. "What did you expect? There areconcentrated here the taste and virtue of sixty millions of people."

"But you always said the Washington hotels were so bad. These apartmentsare charming."

"Yes"—and he drew her closer to him—"there is no denying that. Butpresently I shall have to explain to you an odd phenomenon. Virginia, youknow, used to be famous for its good living, and Maryland was simplyunapproachable for good cooking. It was expected when the District wasmade out of these two that the result would be something quiteextraordinary in the places of public entertainment. But, by a processwhich nobody can explain, in the union the art of cooking in hotels gotmislaid."

"Well," she said, with winning illogicality, "you've got me."

"If you could only eat the breakfasts for me, as you can see the Monumentfor me!"

"Dear, I could eat the Monument for you, if it would do you any good."And neither of them was ashamed of this nonsense, for both knew thatmarried people indulge in it when they are happy.

Although Henderson came to Washington on business, this was Margaret'swedding journey. There is no other city in the world where a weddingjourney can better be combined with such business as is transacted here,for in both is a certain element of mystery. Washington is gracious to abride, if she is pretty and agreeable—devotion to governing, or tolegislation, or to diplomacy, does not render a man insensible tofeminine attractions; and if in addition to beauty a woman has thereputation of wealth, she is as nearly irresistible here as anywhere. ToMargaret, who was able to return the hospitality she received, and whoseequipage was almost as much admired as her toilets, all doors wereopen—a very natural thing, surely, in a good-natured, give-and-takeworld. The colonel—Margaret had laughed till she cried when first sheheard her husband saluted by this title in Washington by his NewHampshire acquaintances, but he explained to her that he had justly wonit years ago by undergoing the hardship of receptions as a member of theGovernor's staff—the colonel had brought on his horses and carriages,not at all by way of ostentation, but simply out of regard to what wasdue her as his wife, and because a carriage at call is a constantnecessity in this city, whose dignity is equal to the square of itsdistances, and because there is something incongruous in sending a brideabout in a herdic. Margaret's unworldly simplicity had received a littleshock when she first saw her servants in livery, but she was not slow tosee the propriety and even necessity of it in a republican society, sinceelegance cannot be a patchwork, but must be harmonious, and there is noharmony between a stylish turnout—noble horses nobly caparisoned—and acoachman and footman on the box dressed according to their own vulgartaste. Given a certain position, one's sense of fitness and taste mast bemaintained. And there is so much kindliness and consideration in humannature—Margaret's gorgeous coachman and footman never by a look revealedtheir knowledge that she was new to the situation, and I dare say thattheir respectful demeanor contributed to raise her in her own esteem asone of the select and favored in this prosperous world. The mostself-poised and genuine are not insensible to the tribute of thispersonal consideration. My lady giving orders to her respectfulservitors, and driving down the avenue in her luxurious turnout, is notat all the same person in feeling that she would be if dragged about in adissolute-looking hack whose driver has the air of the stable. We takekindly to this transformation, and perhaps it is only the vulgar in soulwho become snobbish in it. Little by little, under this genialconsideration, Margaret advanced in the pleasant path of worldliness; andwe heard, by the newspapers and otherwise—indeed, Mr. and Mrs. Morganwere there for a couple of weeks in the winter—that she was never moresweet and gracious and lovely than in this first season at the capital. Idon't know that the town was raving, as they said, about her beauty andwit—there is nothing like the wit of a handsome woman—and amiabilityand unostentatious little charities, but she was a great favorite. Weused to talk about it by the fire in Brandon, where everything remindedus of the girl we loved, and rejoice in her good-fortune and happiness,and get rather heavy-hearted in thinking that she had gone away from usinto such splendor.

"I wish you were here," she wrote to my wife. "I am sure you would enjoyit. There are so many distinguished people and brilliant people—thoughthe distinguished are not always brilliant nor the brilliantdistinguished—and everybody is so kind and hospitable, and Rodney issuch a favorite. We go everywhere, literally, and all the time. You mustnot scold, but I haven't opened a book, except my prayerbook, in sixweeks—it is such a whirl. And it is so amusing. I didn't know there wereso many kinds of people and so many sorts of provincialism in the world.The other night, at the British Minister's, a French attache, whocomplimented my awful French—I told him that I inherited all but thevocabulary and the accent—said that if specimens of the different kindsof women evolved in all out-of-the-way places who come to Washingtoncould be exhibited, nobody would doubt any more that America is aninteresting country. Wasn't it an impudent speech? I tried to tell him,in French, how grateful American women are for any little attention fromforeigners who have centuries of politeness behind them. Ah me! Isometimes long for one of the old-fashioned talks before your smolderinglogs! What we talk about here, Heaven only knows. I sometimes tell Rodneyat night—it is usually morning—that I feel like an extinct piece offireworks. But next day it is all delightful again; and, dear friend, Idon't know but that I like being fireworks."

Among the men who came oftenest to see Henderson was Jerry Hollowell. Itseemed to Margaret an odd sort of companionship; it could not be anysimilarity of tastes that drew them together, and she could notunderstand the nature of the business transacted in their mysteriousconferences. Social life had few attractions for Hollowell, for hisfamily were in the West; he appeared to have no relations with any branchof government; he wanted no office, though his influence was much soughtby those who did want it.

"You spend a good deal of time here, Mr. Hollowell," Margaret said oneday when he called in Henderson's absence.

"Yes, ma'am, considerable. Things need a good deal of fixing up.Washington is a curious place. It's a sort of exchange for the wholecountry: you can see everybody here, and it is a good place to arrangematters."

"With Congress, do you mean?" Margaret had heard much of the corruptionof Congress.

"No, not Congress particularly. Congressmen are just about like otherpeople. It's all nonsense, this talk about buying Congressmen. You cannotbuy them any more than you can buy other people, but you can sort of worktogether with some of them. We don't want anything of Congress, except tobe let alone. If we are doing something to develop the trade in theSouthwest, build it up, some member who thinks he is smart will just aslikely as not try to put in a block somewhere, or investigate, orsomething, in order to show his independence, and then he has to be seen,and shown that he is going against the interests of his constituents. Itis just as it is everywhere: men have to be shown what their realinterest is. No; most Congressmen are poor, and they stay poor. It is agood deal easier to deal with those among them who are rich and have someidea about the prosperity of the country. It is just so in thedepartments. You've got to watch things, if you expect them to go smooth.You've got to get acquainted with the men. Most men are reasonable whenyou get well acquainted with them. I tell your husband that people areabout as reasonable in Washington as you'll find them anywhere."

"Washington is certainly very pleasant."

"Yes, that's so; it is pleasant. Where most everybody wants something,they are bound to be accommodating. That's my idea. I reckon you don'tfind Jerry Hollowell trying to pull a cat by its tail," he added,dropping into his native manner.

"Well, I must go and hunt up the old man. Glad to have made youracquaintance, Mrs. Henderson." And then, with a sly look, "If I knew youbetter, ma'am, I should take the liberty of congratulating you thatHenderson has come round so handsomely."

"Come round?" asked Margaret, in amused wonder.

"Well, I took the liberty of giving him a hint that he wasn't cut-out fora single man. I showed him that," and he lugged out his photograph-casefrom a mass of papers in his breast-pocket and handed it to her.

"Ah, I see," said Margaret, studying the photographs with a peculiarsmile.

"Oh, Henderson knows a good thing when he sees it," said Hollowell,complacently.

It was not easy to be offended with Hollowell's kind-hearted boorishness,and after he had gone, Margaret sat a long time reflecting upon this newspecimen of man in her experience. She was getting many new ideas inthese days, the moral lines were not as clearly drawn as she had thought;it was impossible to ticket men off into good and bad. In Hollowell shehad a glimpse of a world low-toned and vulgar; she had heard that he wasabsolutely unscrupulous, and she had supposed that he would appear to bea very wicked man. But he seemed to be good-hearted and tolerant andfriendly. How fond he was of his family, and how charitable aboutCongress! And she wondered if the world was generally on Hollowell'slevel. She met many men more cultivated than he, gentlemen in manner andin the first social position, who took, after all, about his tone inregard to the world, very agreeable people usually, easy to get on with,not exacting, or professing much faith in anybody, and mildly cynical—only bitterly cynical when they failed to get what they wanted, andfelt the good things of life slipping away from them. It was to take hersome time to learn that some of the most agreeable people are those whohave succeeded by the most questionable means; and when she came to thisknowledge, what would be her power of judgment as to these means?

"Mr. Hollowell has been here," she said, when Henderson returned.

"Old Jerry? He is a character."

"Do you trust him?"

"It never occurred to me. Yes, I suppose so, as far as his interests go.
He isn't a bad sort of fellow—very long-headed."

"Dear," said Margaret, with hesitation, "I wish you didn't have anythingto do with such men."

"Why, dearest?"

"Oh, I don't know. You needn't laugh. It rather lets one down; and itisn't like you."

Henderson laughed aloud now. "But you needn't associate with Hollowell.We men cannot pick our companions in business and politics. It needs allsorts to keep the world going."

"Then I'd rather let it stop," Margaret said.

"And sell out at auction?" he cried, with a look of amusem*nt.

"But aren't Mr. Morgan and Mr. Fairchild business men?"

"Yes—of the old-fashioned sort. The fact—is, Margaret, you've got asort of preserve up in Brandon, and you fancy that the world is dividedinto sheep and goats. It's a great mistake. There is no such division.Every man almost is both a sheep and a goat."

"I don't believe it, Rodney. You are neither." She came close to him, andtaking the collar of his coat in each hand, gave him a little shake, andlooking up into his face with quizzical affection, asked, "What is yourbusiness here?"

Henderson stooped down and kissed her forehead, and tenderly lifted thelocks of her brown hair. "You wouldn't understand, sweet, if I told you."

"You might try."

"Well, there's a man here from Fort Worth who wants us to buy a piece ofrailroad, and extend it, and join it with Hollowell's system, and open upa lot of new country."

"And isn't it a good piece of road?"

"Yes; that's the trouble. The owners want to keep it to themselves, andprevent the general development. But we shall get it."

"It isn't anything like wrecking, is it, dear?"

"Do you think we would want to wreck our own property?"

"But what has Congress to do with it?"

"Oh, there's a land grant. But some of the members who were not in the
Congress that voted it say that it is forfeited."

In this fashion the explanation went on. Margaret loved to hear herhusband talk, and to watch the changing expression of his face, and heexplained about this business until she thought he was the sweetestfellow in the world.

The Morgans had arrived at the same hotel, and Margaret went about withthem in the daytime, while Henderson was occupied. It was like a breathof home to be with them, and their presence, reviving that old life, gavea new zest to the society spectacle, to the innocent round ofentertainments, which more and more absorbed her. Besides, it was veryinteresting to have Mr. Morgan's point of view of Washington, and to seethe shifting panorama through his experience. He had been very much inthe city in former years, but he came less and less now, not because itwas less beautiful or attractive in a way, but because it had lost forhim a certain charm it once had.

"I am not sure," he said, as they were driving one day, "that it is notnow the handsomest capital in the world; at any rate, it is on its way tobe that. No other has public buildings more imposing, or streets andavenues so attractive in their interrupted regularity, so many statelyvistas ending in objects refreshing to the eye—a bit of park, banks offlowers, a statue or a monument that is decorative, at least in thedistance. As the years go on we shall have finer historical groups,triumphal arches and columns that will give it more and more an air ofdistinction, the sort of splendor with which the Roman Empire celebrateditself, and, added to this, the libraries and museums and galleries thatare the chief attractions of European cities. Oh, we have only justbegun—the city is so accessible in all directions, and lends itself toall sorts of magnificence and beauty."

"I declare," said Mrs. Morgan to Margaret, "I didn't know that he couldbe so eloquent. Page, you ought to be in Congress."

"In order to snuff myself out? Congress is not so important a feature asit used to be. Washington is getting to have a character of its own; itseems as if it wouldn't be much without its official life, yet theprocess is going on here that is so marked all over the country—thedivorce of social and political life. I used to think, fifteen years ago,that Washington was a standing contradiction to the old aphorism that ademocracy cannot make society—there was no more agreeable society in theworld than that in Washington even ten years ago: society selected itselfsomehow without any marked class distinction, and it was delightfullysimple and accessible."

"And what has changed it?" Margaret asked.

"Money, which changes everything and everybody. The whole scale hasaltered. There is so much more display and expense. I remember when aprivate carriage in Washington was a rare object. The possession of moneydidn't help one much socially. What made a person desired in any companywas the talent of being agreeable, talent of some sort, not the abilityto give a costly dinner or a big ball."

"But there are more literary and scientific people here, everybody says,"said Margaret, who was becoming a partisan of the city.

"Yes, and they keep more to themselves—withdraw into their studies, orhive in their clubs. They tell me that the delightful informality andfreedom of the old life is gone. Ask the old Washington residents whetherthe coming in of rich people with leisure hasn't demoralized society, orstiffened it, and made it impossible after the old sort. It is as easyhere now as anywhere else to get together a very heavy dinner party—allvery grand, but it isn't amusing. It is more and more like New York."

"But we have been to delightful dinners," Margaret insisted.

"No doubt. There are still houses of the old sort, where wit andgood-humor and free hospitality are more conspicuous than expense; butwhen money selects, there is usually an incongruous lot about the board.An oracular scientist at the club the other night put it rather neatlywhen he said that a society that exists mainly to pay its debts getsstupid."

"That's as clever," Margaret retorted, "as the remark of anunder-secretary at a cabinet reception the other night, that it is onething to entertain and another to be entertaining. I won't have youslander Washington. I should like to spend all my winters here."

"Dear me!" said Morgan, "I've been praising Washington. I should like tolive here also, if I had the millions of Jerry Hollowell. Jerry is goingto build a palace out on the Massachusetts Avenue extension bigger thanthe White House."

"I don't want to hear anything about Hollowell."

"But he is the coming man. He represents the democratic plutocracy thatwe are coming to."

All Morgan's banter couldn't shake Margaret's enjoyment of the cheerfulcity. "You like it as well as anybody," she told him. And in truth he andMrs. Morgan dipped into every gayety that was going. "Of course I do," hesaid, "for a couple of weeks. I shouldn't like to be obliged to follow itas a steady business. Washington is a good place to take a plungeoccasionally. And then you can go home and read King Solomon withappreciation."

Margaret had thought when she came to Washington that she should spend agood deal of time at the Capitol, listening to the eloquence of theSenators and Representatives, and that she should study the collectionsand the Patent-office and explore all the public buildings, in which shehad such intense historical interest as a teacher in Brandon. But therewas little time for these pleasures, which weighed upon her like duties.She did go to the Capitol once, and tired herself out tramping up anddown, and was very proud of it all, and wondered how any legislation wasever accomplished, and was confused by the hustling about, the swingingof doors, the swarms in the lobbies, and the racing of messengers, andconcluded unjustly that it was a big hive of whispered conference, andbargaining, and private interviewing. Morgan asked her if she expectedthat the business of sixty millions of people was going to be done withthe order and decorum of a lyceum debating society. In one of thecommittee-rooms she saw Hollowell, looking at ease, and apparently anindispensable part of the government machine. Her own husband, who hadaccompanied the party, she lost presently, whisked away somewhere. He wassought in vain afterwards, and at last Margaret came away dazed andstunned by the noise of the wheels of the great republic in motion. Shedid not try it again, and very little strolling about the departmentssatisfied her. The west end claimed her—the rolling equipages, thedrawing-rooms, the dress, the vistas of evening lamps, the gay chatter ina hundred shining houses, the exquisite dinners, the crush of theassemblies, the full flow of the tide of fashion and of enjoyment—whatis there so good in life? To be young, to be rich, to be pretty, to beloved, to be admired, to compliment and be complimented—every Sunday atmorning service, kneeling in a fluttering row of the sweetly devout,whose fresh toilets made it good to be there, and who might humbly hopeto be forgiven for the things they have left undone, Margaret thankedHeaven for its gifts.

And it went well with Henderson meantime. Surely he was born under alucky star—if it is good-luck for a man to have absolute prosperity andthe gratification of all his desires. One reason why Hollowell sought hiscooperation was a belief in this luck, and besides Henderson was, heknew, more presentable, and had social access in quarters where influencewas desirable, although Hollowell was discovering that with most mendelicacy in presenting anything that is for their interest is thrownaway. He found no difficulty in getting recruits for his little dinnersat Champolion's—dinners that were not always given in his name, andwhere he appeared as a guest, though he footed the bills. Bunglinggrossness has disappeared from all really able and large transactions,and genius is mainly exercised in the supply of motives for a line ofconduct. The public good is one of the motives that looks best inWashington.

Henderson and Hollowell got what they wanted in regard to the Southwestconsolidation, and got it in the most gentlemanly way. Nobody was bought,no one was offered a bribe. There were, of course, fees paid for opinionsand for professional services, and some able men induced to take aprospective interest in what was demonstrably for the public good. But novote was given for a consideration—at least this was the report of aninvestigating committee later on. Nothing, of course, goes throughCongress of its own weight, except occasionally a resolution of sympathywith the Coreans, and the calendar needs to be watched, and the goodoffices of friends secured. Skillful wording of a clause, the rightmoment, and opportune recognition do the business. The main thing is tocreate a favorable atmosphere and avoid discussion. When the bill waspassed, Hollowell did give a dinner on his own invitation, a dinner thatwas talked of for its refinement as well as its cost. The chief topic ofconversation was the development of the Southwest and the extension ofour trade relations with Mexico. The little scheme, hatched inHenderson's New York office, in order to transfer certain already createdvalues to the pockets of himself and his friends, appeared to have anational importance. When Henderson rose to propose the health of JerryHollowell, neither he nor the man he eulogized as a creator of industrieswhose republican patriotism was not bound by State lines norcirc*mscribed by sections was without a sense of the humor of thesituation.

And yet in a certain way Mr. Hollowell was conscious that he merited theeulogy. He had come to believe that the enterprises in which he wasengaged, that absolutely gave him, it was believed, an income of amillion a year, were for the public good. Such vast operations lent himthe importance of a public man. If he was a victim of the confusion ofmind which mistook his own prosperity for the general benefit, he onlyshared a wide public opinion which regards the accumulation of enormousfortunes in a few hands as an evidence of national wealth.

Margaret left Washington with regret. She had a desire to linger in theopening of the charming spring there, for the little parks were brilliantwith flower beds-tulips, hyacinths, crocuses, violets—the magnolias andredbuds in their prodigal splendor attracted the eye a quarter of a mileaway, and the slender twigs of the trees began to be suffused with tendergreen. It was the sentimental time of the year. But Congress had gone,and whatever might be the promise of the season, Henderson had alreadygathered the fruits that had been forced in the hothouse of the session.He was in high spirits.

"It has all been so delightful, dear!" said Margaret as they rode away inthe train, and caught their last sight of the dome. They were inHollowell's private car, which the good-natured old fellow had put attheir disposal. And Margaret had a sense of how delightful and prosperousthis world is as seen from a private car.

"Yes," Henderson answered, thinking of various things; "it has been asuccessful winter. The capital is really attractive. It occurred to methe other day that America has invented a new kind of city, theapotheosis of the village—Washington."

They talked of the city, of the acquaintances of the winter, ofHollowell's thoughtfulness in lending them his car, that their bridaltrip, as he had said, might have a good finish. Margaret's heart openedto the world. She thought of the friends at Brandon, she thought of thepoor old ladies she was accustomed to look after in the city, of theragged-school that she visited, of the hospital in which she was amanager, of the mission chapel. The next Sunday would be Easter, and shethought of a hundred ways in which she could make it brighter for so manyof the unfortunates. Her heart was opened to the world, and lookingacross to Henderson, who was deep in the morning paper, she said, with awife's unblushing effrontery, "Dearest, how handsome you are!"

The home life took itself up again easily and smoothly in WashingtonSquare. Did there ever come a moment of reflection as to the nature ofthis prosperity which was altogether so absorbing and agreeable? If itcame, did it give any doubts and raise any of the old questions that usedto be discussed at Brandon? Wasn't it the use that people made of money,after all, that was the real test? She did not like Hollowell, but onacquaintance he was not the monster that he had appeared to her in thenewspapers. She was perplexed now and then by her husband's business, butdid it differ from that of other men she had known, except that it was ona larger scale? And how much good could be done with money!

On Easter morning, when Margaret returned from early service, to whichshe had gone alone, she found upon her dressing-table a note addressed to"My Wife," and in it a check for a large sum to her order, and a card, onwhich was written, "For Margaret's Easter Charities." Flushed withpleasure, she ran to meet her husband on the landing as he was descendingto breakfast, threw her arms about his neck, and, with tears in her eyes,cried, "Dearest, how good you are!"

It is such a good and prosperous generation.

XIV

Our lives are largely made up of the things we do not have. In May, thetime of the apple blossoms—just a year from the swift wooing ofMargaret—Miss Forsythe received a letter from John Lyon. It was in amourning envelope. The Earl of Chisholm was dead, and John Lyon was Earlof Chisholm. The information was briefly conveyed, but with an air ofprofound sorrow. The letter spoke of the change that this loss brought tohis own life, and the new duties laid upon him, which would confine himmore closely to England. It also contained congratulations—whichcirc*mstances had delayed—upon Mrs. Henderson's marriage, and a simplewish for her happiness. The letter was longer than it need have been forthese purposes; it seemed to love to dwell upon the little visit toBrandon and the circle of friends there, and it was pervaded by a tone,almost affectionate, towards Miss Forsythe, which touched her verydeeply. She said it was such a manly letter.

America, the earl said, interested him more and more. In all history, hewrote, there never had been such an opportunity for studying theformation of society, for watching the working out of political problems;the elements meeting were so new, and the conditions so original, thathistorical precedents were of little service as guides. He acknowledgedan almost irresistible impulse to come back, and he announced hisintention of another visit as soon as circ*mstances permitted.

I had noticed this in English travelers of intelligence before. Crude asthe country is, and uninteresting according to certain establishedstandards, it seems to have a "drawing" quality, a certain unexplainedfascination. Morgan says that it is the social unconventionality thatattracts, and that the American women are the loadstone. He declares.that when an Englishman secures and carries home with him an Americanwife, his curiosity about the country is sated. But this is generalizingon narrow premises.

There was certainly in Lyon's letter a longing to see the country again,but the impression it made upon me when I read it—due partly to its tonetowards Miss Forsythe, almost a family tone—was that the earldom was anempty thing without the love of Margaret Debree. Life is so brief at thebest, and has so little in it when the one thing that the heart desiresis denied. That the earl should wish to come to America again withouthope or expectation was, however, quite human nature. If a man has founda diamond and lost it, he is likely to go again and again and wanderabout the field where he found it, not perhaps in any defined hope offinding another, but because there is a melancholy satisfaction in seeingthe spot again. It was some such feeling that impelled the earl to wishto see again Miss Forsythe, and perhaps to talk of Margaret, but hecertainly had no thought that there were two Margaret Debrees in America.

To her aunt's letter conveying the intelligence of Mr. Lyon's loss,Margaret replied with a civil message of condolence. The news had alreadyreached the Eschelles, and Carmen, Margaret said, had written to the newearl a most pious note, which contained no allusion to his change offortune, except an expression of sympathy with his now enlargedopportunity for carrying on his philanthropic plans—a most unworldlynote. "I used to think," she had said, when confiding what she had doneto Margaret, "that you would make a perfect missionary countess, but youhave done better, my dear, and taken up a much more difficult work amongus fashionable sinners. Do you know," she went on, "that I feel a greatdeal less worldly than I used to?"

Margaret wrote a most amusing account of this interview, and added thatCarmen was really very good-hearted, and not half as worldly-minded asshe pretended to be; an opinion with which Miss Forsythe did not at allagree. She had spent a fortnight with Margaret after Easter, and she cameback in a dubious frame of mind. Margaret's growing intimacy with Carmenwas one of the sources of her uneasiness. They appeared to be more andmore companionable, although Margaret's clear perception of charactermade her estimate of Carmen very nearly correct. But the fact remainedthat she found her company interesting. Whether the girl tried toastonish the country aunt, or whether she was so thoroughly a child ofher day as to lack certain moral perceptions, I do not know, but hercandid conversation greatly shocked Miss Forsythe.

"Margaret," she said one day, in one of her apparent bursts ofconfidence, "seems to have had such a different start in life from mine.Sometimes, Miss Forsythe, she puzzles me. I never saw anybody so much inlove as she is with Mr. Henderson; she doesn't simply love him, she is inlove with him. I don't wonder she is fond of him—any woman might bethat—but, do you know, she actually believes in him."

"Why shouldn't she believe in him?" exclaimed Miss Forsythe, inastonishment.

"Oh, of course, in a way," the girl went on. "I like Mr. Henderson—Ilike him very much—but I don't believe in him. It isn't the way now tobelieve in anybody very much. We don't do it, and I think we get alongjust as well—and better. Don't you think it's nicer not to have anydeceptions?"

Miss Forsythe was too much stunned to make any reply. It seemed to herthat the bottom had fallen out of society.

"Do you think Mr. Henderson believes in people?" the girl persisted.

"If he does not he isn't much of a man. If people don't believe in eachother, society is going to pieces. I am astonished at such a tone from awoman."

"Oh, it isn't any tone in me, my dear Miss Forsythe," Carmen continued,sweetly. "Society is a great deal pleasanter when you are not anxious anddon't expect too much."

Miss Forsythe told Margaret that she thought Miss Eschelle was adangerous woman. Margaret did not defend her, but she did not join,either, in condemning her; she appeared to have accepted her as a part ofher world. And there were other things that Margaret seemed to haveaccepted without that vigorous protest which she used to raise atwhatever crossed her conscience. To her aunt she was never moreaffectionate, never more solicitous about her comfort and her pleasure,and it was almost enough to see Margaret happy, radiant, expanding day byday in the prosperity that was illimitable, only there was to her a noteof unreality in all the whirl and hurry of the busy life. She liked toescape to her room with a book, and be out of it all, and the two weeksaway from her country life seemed long to her. She couldn't reconcileMargaret's love of the world, her tolerance of Carmen, and other men andwomen whose lives seemed to be based on Carmen's philosophy, with herdevotion to the church services, to the city missions, and the dozens ofcharities that absorb so much of the time of the leaders of society.

"You are too young, dear, to be so good and devout," was Carmen's commenton the situation.

To Miss Forsythe's wonder, Margaret did not resent this impertinence, butonly said that no accumulation of years was likely to bring Carmen intoeither of these dangers. And the reply was no more satisfactory to MissForsythe than the remark that provoked it.

That she had had a delightful visit, that Margaret was more lovely thanever, that Henderson was a delightful host, was the report of MissForsythe when she returned to us. In a confidential talk with my wife sheconfessed, however, that she couldn't tell whither Margaret was going.

One of the worries of modern life is the perplexity where to spend thesummer. The restless spirit of change affects those who dwell in thecountry, as well as those who live in the city. No matter how charmingthe residence is, one can stay in it only a part of the year. He actuallyneeds a house in town, a villa by the sea, and a cottage in the hills.When these are secured—each one an establishment more luxurious year byyear—then the family is ready to travel about, and is in a greaterperplexity than before whether to spend the summer in Europe or inAmerica, the novelties of which are beginning to excite the imagination.This nomadism, which is nothing less than society on wheels, cannot besatirized as a whim of fashion; it has a serious cause in—the discoveryof the disease called nervous prostration, which demands for its cureconstant change of scene, without any occupation. Henderson recognizedit, but he said that personally he had no time to indulge in it. Hissummer was to be a very busy one. It was impossible to take Margaret withhim on his sudden and tedious journeys from one end of the country to theother, but she needed a change. It was therefore arranged that after avisit to Brandon she should pass the warm months with the Arbusers intheir summer home at Lenox, with a month—the right month—in theEschelle villa at Newport; and he hoped never to be long absent from oneplace or the other.

Margaret came to Brandon at the beginning of June, just at the seasonwhen the region was at its loveliest, and just when its society wasmaking preparations to get away from it to the sea, or the mountains, orto any place that was not home. I could never understand why a people whohave been grumbling about snow and frost for six months, and longing forgenial weather, should flee from it as soon as it comes. I had made thediscovery, quite by chance—and it was so novel that I might have takenout a patent on it—that if one has a comfortable home in our northernlatitude, he cannot do better than to stay in it when the hum of themosquito is heard in the land, and the mercury is racing up and down thescale between fifty and ninety. This opinion, however, did not extendbeyond our little neighborhood, and we may be said to have had the summerto ourselves.

I fancied that the neighborhood had not changed, but the coming ofMargaret showed me that this was a delusion. No one can keep in the sameplace in life simply by standing still, and the events of the past twoyears had wrought a subtle change in our quiet. Nothing had been changedto the eye, yet something had been taken away, or something had beenadded, a door had been opened into the world. Margaret had come home, yetI fancied it was not the home to her that she had been thinking about.Had she changed?

She was more beautiful. She had the air—I should hesitate to call itthat of the fine lady—of assured position, something the manner of thatgreater world in which the possession of wealth has supreme importance,but it was scarcely a change of manner so much as of ideas about life andof the things valuable in it gradually showing itself. Her delight atbeing again with her old friends was perfectly genuine, and she had neverappeared more unselfish or more affectionate. If there was a subtledifference, it might very well be in us, though I found it impossible toconceive of her in her former role of teacher and simple maiden, with herheart in the little concerns of our daily life. And why should she beexpected to go back to that stage? Must we not all live our lives? MissForsythe's solicitude about Margaret was mingled with a curiousdeference, as to one who had a larger experience of life than her own.The girl of a year ago was now the married woman, and was invested withsomething of the dignity that Miss Forsythe in her pure imaginationattached to that position. Without yielding any of her opinions, thisidea somehow changed her relations to Margaret; a little, I thought, tothe amusem*nt of Mrs. Fletcher and the other ladies, to whom marriagetook on a less mysterious aspect. It arose doubtless from a renewed senseof the incompleteness of her single life, long as it had been, andenriched as it was by observation.

In that June there were vexatious strikes in various parts of thecountry, formidable combinations of laboring-men, demonstrations oftrades-unions, and the exhibition of a spirit that sharply calledattention to the unequal distribution of wealth. The discontent wasattributed in some quarters to the exhibition of extreme luxury andreckless living by those who had been fortunate. It was even said thatthe strikes, unreasonable and futile as they were, and most injurious tothose who indulged in them, were indirectly caused by the railwaymanipulation, in the attempt not only to crush out competition, but toexact excessive revenues on fictitious values. Resistance to this couldbe shown to be blind, and the strikers technically in the wrong, yet theimpression gained ground that there was something monstrously wrong inthe way great fortunes were accumulated, in total disregard of individualrights, and in a materialistic spirit that did not take into accountordinary humanity. For it was not alone the laboring class that wasdiscontented, but all over the country those who lived upon smallinvested savings, widows and minors, found their income imperiled by thetrickery of rival operators and speculators in railways and securities,who treated the little private accumulations as mere counters in thegames they were playing. The loss of dividends to them was poorlycompensated by reflections upon the development of the country, and theadvantage to trade of great consolidations, which inured to the benefitof half a dozen insolent men.

In discussing these things in our little parliament we were notaltogether unprejudiced, it must be confessed. For, to say nothing ofinterests of Mr. Morgan and my own, which seemed in some danger ofdisappearing for the "public good," Mrs. Fletcher's little fortune wasnearly all invested in that sound "rock-bed" railway in the Southwestthat Mr. Jerry Hollowell had recently taken under his paternal care. Shewas assured, indeed, that dividends were only reserved pending some sortof reorganization, which would ultimately be of great benefit to all theparties concerned; but this was much like telling a hungry man that if hewould possess his appetite in patience, he would very likely have asplendid dinner next year. Women are not constituted to understand thissort of reasoning. It is needless to say that in our general talks on thesituation these personalities were not referred to, for although Margaretwas silent, it was plain to see that she was uneasy.

Morgan liked to raise questions of casuistry, such as that whether moneydishonestly come by could be accepted for good purposes.

"I had this question referred to me the other day," he said. "A gambler—not a petty cheater in cards, but a man who has a splendidestablishment in which he has amassed a fortune, a man known for hisliberality and good-fellowship and his interest in politics—offered thepresident of a leading college a hundred thousand dollars to endow aprofessorship. Ought the president to take the money, knowing how it wasmade?"

"Wouldn't the money do good—as much good as any other hundred thousanddollars?" asked Margaret.

"Perhaps. But the professorship was to bear his name, and what would bethe moral effect of that?"

"Did you recommend the president to take the money, if he could get itwithout using the gambler's name?"

"I am not saying yet what I advised. I am trying to get your views on ageneral principle."

"But wouldn't it be a sneaking thing to take a man's money, and refusehim the credit of his generosity?"

"But was it generosity? Was not his object, probably, to get a reputationwhich his whole life belied, and to get it by obliterating thedistinction between right and wrong?"

"But isn't it a compromising distinction," my wife asked, "to take hismoney without his name? The president knows that it is money fraudulentlygot, that really belongs to somebody else; and the gambler would feelthat if the president takes it, he cannot think very disapprovingly ofthe manner in which it was acquired. I think it would be more honest andstraightforward to take his name with the money."

"The public effect of connecting the gambler's name with the collegewould be debasing," said Morgan; "but, on the contrary, is every charityor educational institution bound to scrutinize the source of everybenefaction? Isn't it better that money, however acquired, should be usedfor a good purpose than a bad one?"

"That is a question," I said, "that is a vital one in our presentsituation, and the sophistry of it puzzles the public. What would you sayto this case? A man notoriously dishonest, but within the law, and veryrich, offered a princely endowment to a college very much in need of it.The sum would have enabled it to do a great work in education. But it wasintimated that the man would expect, after a while, to be made one of thetrustees. His object, of course, was social position."

"I suppose, of course," Margaret replied, "that the college couldn'tafford that. It would look like bribery."

"Wouldn't he be satisfied with an LL.D.?" Morgan asked.

"I don't see," my wife said, "any difference between the two cases statedand that of the stock gambler, whose unscrupulous operations have ruinedthousands of people, who founds a theological seminary with the gains ofhis slippery transactions. By accepting his seminary the public condoneshis conduct. Another man, with the same shaky reputation, endows acollege. Do you think that religion and education are benefited in thelong-run by this? It seems to me that the public is gradually losing itspower of discrimination between the value of honesty and dishonesty. Realrespect is gone when the public sees that a man is able to buy it."

This was a hot speech for my wife to make. For a moment Margaret flamedup under it with her old-time indignation. I could see it in her eyes,and then she turned red and confused, and at length said:

"But wouldn't you have rich men do good with their money?"

"Yes, dear, but I would not have them think they can blot out by theirliberality the condemnation of the means by which many of them makemoney. That is what they are doing, and the public is getting used toit."

"Well," said Margaret, with some warmth, "I don't know that they are anyworse than the stingy saints who have made their money by saving, and actas if they expected to carry it with them."

"Saints or sinners, it does not make much difference to me," now put inMrs. Fletcher, who was evidently considering the question from apractical point of view, "what a man professes, if he founds a hospitalfor indigent women out of the dividends that I never received."

Morgan laughed. "Don't you think, Mrs. Fletcher, that it is a good signof the times, that so many people who make money rapidly are disposed touse it philanthropically?"

"It may be for them, but it does not console me much just now."

"But you don't make allowance enough for the rich. Perhaps they are undera necessity of doing something. I was reading this morning in the diaryof old John Ward of Stratford-on-Avon this sentence: 'It was a saying ofNavisson, a lawyer, that no man could be valiant unless he hazarded hisbody, nor rich unless he hazarded his soul.'"

"Was Navisson a modern lawyer?" I asked.

"No; the diary is dated 1648-1679."

"I thought so."

There was a little laugh at this, and the talk drifted off into aconsideration of the kind of conscience that enables a professional manto espouse a cause he knows to be wrong as zealously as one he knows tobe right; a talk that I should not have remembered at all, except forMargaret's earnestness in insisting that she did not see how a lawyercould take up the dishonest side.

Before Margaret went to Lenox, Henderson spent a few days with us. Hebrought with him the amounding cheerfulness, and the air of a prosperous,smiling world, that attended him in all circ*mstances. And how happyMargaret was! They went over every foot of the ground on which theirbrief courtship had taken place, and Heaven knows what joy there was toher in reviving all the tenderness and all the fear of it! Busy asHenderson was, pursued by hourly telegrams and letters, we could not butbe gratified that his attention to her was that of a lover. How could itbe otherwise, when all the promise of the girl was realized in the bloomand the exquisite susceptibility of the woman? Among other things, shedragged him down to her mission in the city, to which he went in alaughing and bantering mood. When he had gone away, Margaret ran over tomy wife, bringing in her hand a slip of paper.

"See that!" she cried, her eyes dancing with pleasure. It was a check fora thousand dollars. "That will refurnish the mission from top to bottom,"she said, "and run it for a year."

"How generous he is!" cried my wife. Margaret did not reply, but shelooked at the check, and there were tears in her eyes.

XV

The Arbuser cottage at Lenox was really a magnificent villa. Richardsonhad built it. At a distance it had the appearance of a mediaevalstructure, with its low doorways, picturesque gables, and steep roofs,and in its situation on a gentle swell of green turf backed by nativeforest-trees it imparted to the landscape an ancestral tone which is muchvalued in these days. But near to, it was seen to be mediaevalism adaptedto the sunny hospitality of our summer climate, with generous verandasand projecting balconies shaded by gay awnings, and within spacious, opento the breezes, and from its broad windows offering views of lawns andflower-beds and ornamental trees, of a great sweep of pastures andforests and miniature lakes, with graceful and reposeful hills on thehorizon.

It was, in short, the modern idea of country simplicity. The passion forcountry life, which has been in decadence for nearly half a century, hasagain become the fashion. Nature, which, left to itself, is a littleragged, not to say monotonous and tiresome, is discovered to be avaluable ally for aid in passing the time when art is able to makeportions of it exclusive. What the Arbusers wanted was a simple home inthe country, and in obtaining it they were indulging a sentiment ofreturning to the primitive life of their father, who had come to the cityfrom a hill farm, and had been too busy all his life to recur to thetastes of his boyhood. At least that was the theory of his daughters; butthe old gentleman had a horror of his early life, and could scarcely bedragged away from the city even in the summer. He would no doubt havebeen astonished at the lofty and substantial stone stables, the longrange of greenhouses, and at a farm which produced nothing except lawnsand flower-beds, ornamental fields of clover, avenues of trees,lawn-tennis grounds, and a few Alderneys tethered to feed among thetrees, where their beauty would heighten the rural and domestic aspect ofthe scene. The Arbusers liked to come to this place as early as possibleto escape the society exactions of the city. That was another theory oftheirs. All their set in the city met there for the same purpose.

Margaret was welcomed with open arms.

"We have been counting the days," said the elder of the sisters. "Yourluggage has come, your rooms are all ready, and your coachman, who hasbeen here some days, says that the horses need exercise. Everybody ishere, and we need you for a hundred things."

"You are very kind. It is so charming here. I knew it would be, but Icouldn't bear to shorten my visit in Brandon."

"Your aunt must miss you very much. Is she well?"

"Perfectly."

"Wouldn't she have come with you? I've a mind to telegraph."

"I think not. She is wedded to quiet, and goes away from her littleneighborhood with reluctance."

"So Brandon was a little dull?" said Miss Arbuser, with a shrewd guess atthe truth.

"Oh no," quickly replied Margaret, shrinking a little from what was inher own mind; "it was restful and delightful; but you know that we NewEngland people take life rather seriously, and inquire into the reason ofthings, and want an object in life."

"A very good thing to have," answered this sweet woman of the world,whose object was to go along pleasantly and enjoy it.

"But to have it all the time!" Margaret suggested, lightly, as she ranup-stairs. But even in this suggestion she was conscious of a twinge ofdisloyalty to her former self. Deep down in her heart, coming to theatmosphere of Lenox was a relief from questionings that a littledisturbed her at her old home, and she was indignant at herself that itshould be so, and then indignant at the suggestions that put her out ofhumor with herself. Was it a sin, she said, to be happy and prosperous?

On her dressing-table was a letter from her husband. He was detained inthe city by a matter of importance. He scratched only a line, to catchthe mail, during a business interview. It was really only a businessinterview, and had no sort of relation to Lenox or the summer gayetythere.

Henderson was in his private office. The clerks in the outer offices, in
the neglige of summer costumes, winked to each other as they saw old
Jerry Hollowell enter and make his way to the inner room unannounced.
Something was in the wind.

"Well, old man," said Uncle Jerry, in the cheeriest manner, coming in,depositing his hat on the table, and taking a seat opposite Henderson,"we seem to have stirred up the animals."

"Only a little flurry," replied Henderson, laying down his pen andfolding a note he had just finished; "they'll come to reason."

"They've got to." Mr. Hollowell drew out a big bandanna and mopped hisheated face. "I've just got a letter from Jorkins. There's thecertificates that make up the two-thirds-more than we need, anyway. Noflaw about that, is there?"

"No. I'll put these with the balance in the safe. It's all right, ifJorkins has been discreet. It may make a newspaper scandal if they gethold of his operations."

"Oh, Jorkins is close. But he is a little overworked. I don't know but itwould do him good to have a little nervous prostration and go abroad fora while."

"I guess it would do Jorkins good to take a turn in Europe for a year orso."

"Well, you write to him. Give him a sort of commission to see the Englishbondholders, and explain the situation. They will appreciate that half aloaf is better than no bread. What bothers me is the way the Americanbondholders take it. They kick."

"Let 'em kick. The public don't care for a few soreheads andimpracticables in an operation that is going to open up the wholeSouthwest. I've an appointment with one of them this morning. He ought tobe here now."

At the moment Henderson's private secretary entered and laid on the tablethe card of Mr. John Hopper, who was invited to come in at once. Mr.Hopper was a man of fifty, with iron-gray hair, a heavy mustache, and asmooth-shaven chin that showed resolution. In dress and manner hisappearance was that of the shrewd city capitalist—quiet and determined,who is neither to be deceived nor bullied. With a courteous greeting toboth the men, whom he knew well, he took a seat and stated his business.

"I have called to see you, Mr. Henderson, about the bonds of the A. and
B., and I am glad to find Mr. Hollowell here also."

"What amount do you represent, Mr. Hopper?" asked Henderson.

"With my own and my friends', altogether, rising a million. What do youpropose?"

"You got our circular?"

"Yes, and we don't accept the terms."

"I'm sorry. It is the best that we could do."

"That is, the best you would do!"

"Pardon me, Mr. Hopper, the best we could do under the circ*mstances. Wegave you your option, to scale down on a fair estimate of the earnings ofthe short line (the A. and B.), or to surrender your local bonds and takenew ones covering the whole consolidation, or, as is of course in yourdiscretion, to hold on and take the chances."

"Which your operations have practically destroyed."

"Not at all, Mr. Hopper. We offer you a much better security on the wholesystem instead of a local road."

"And you mean to tell me, Mr. Henderson, that it is for our advantage toexchange a seven per cent. bond on a road that has always paid itsinterest promptly, for a four and a half on a system that is manipulatednobody knows how? I tell you, gentlemen, that it looks to outsiders as ifthere was crookedness somewhere."

"That is a rather rough charge, Mr. Hopper," said Henderson, with asmile.

"But we are to understand that if we do not accept your terms, it's afreeze-out?"

"You are to understand that we want to make the best arrangement possiblefor all parties in interest."

"How some of those interests were acquired may be a question for thecourts," replied Mr. Hopper, resolutely. "When we put our money in goodseven per cent. bonds, we propose to inquire into the right of anybody todemand that we shall exchange them for four and a half per cents. onother security."

"Perfectly right, Mr. Hopper," said Henderson, with imperturbablegood-humor; "the transfer books are open to your inspection."

"Well, we prefer to hold on to our bonds."

"And wait for your interest," interposed Hollowell.

Mr. Hopper turned to the speaker. "And while we are waiting we propose toinquire what has become of the surplus of the A. and B. The bondholdershad the first claim on the entire property."

"And we propose to protect it. See here, Mr. Hopper," continued UncleJerry, with a most benevolent expression, "I needn't tell you thatinvestments fluctuate—the Lord knows mine do! The A. and B. was a goodroad. I know that. But it was going to be paralleled. We'd got toparallel it to make our Southwest connections. If we had, you'd havewaited till the Gulf of Mexico freezes over before you got any couponspaid. Instead of that, we took it into our system, and it's being put ona permanent basis. It's a little inconvenient for holders, and they havegot to stand a little shrinkage, but in the long-run it will be betterfor everybody. The little road couldn't stand alone, and the day of biginterest is about over."

"That explanation may satisfy you, Mr. Hollowell, but it don't give usour money, and I notify you that we shall carry the matter into thecourts. Good-morning."

When Mr. Hopper had gone, the two developers looked at each other amoment seriously.

"Hopper 'll fight," Hollowell said at last.

"And we have got the surplus to fight him with," replied Henderson.

"That's so," and Uncle Jerry chuckled to himself. "The rats that are onthe inside of the crib are a good deal better off than the rats on theoutside."

"The reporter of The Planet wants five minutes," announced the secretary,opening the door. Henderson told him to let him in.

The reporter was a spruce young gentleman, in a loud summer suit, with arose in his button-hole, and the air of assurance which befits thecommissioner of the public curiosity.

"I am sent by The Planet," said the young man, "to show you this and askyou if you have anything to say to it."

"What is it?" asked Henderson.

"It's about the A. and B."

"Very well. There is the president, Mr. Hollowell. Show it to him."

The reporter produced a long printed slip and handed it to Uncle Jerry,who took it and began to read. As his eye ran down the column he wasapparently more and more interested, and he let it be shown on his facethat he was surprised, and even a little astonished. When he hadfinished, he said:

"Well, my young friend, how did you get hold of this?"

"Oh, we have a way," said the reporter, twirling his straw hat by theelastic, and looking more knowing than old Jerry himself.

"So I see," replied Jerry, with an admiring smile; "there is nothing thatyou newspaper folks don't find out. It beats the devil!"

"Is it true, sir?" said the young gentleman, elated with this recognitionof his own shrewdness.

"It is so true that there is no fun in it. I don't see how the devil yougot hold of it."

"Have you any explanations?"

"No, I guess not," said Uncle Jerry, musingly. "If it is to come out, I'drather The Planet would have it than any, other paper. It's got somesense. No; print it. It'll be a big beat for your paper. While you areabout it—I s'pose you'll print it anyway?" (the reporter nodded)—"youmight as well have the whole story."

"Certainly. We'd like to have it right. What is wrong about it?"

"Oh, nothing but some details. You have got it substantially. There's aword or two and a date you are out on, naturally enough, and there aretwo or three little things that would be exactly true if they weredifferently stated."

"Would you mind telling me what they are?"

"No," said Jerry, with a little reluctance; "might as well have it allout—eh, Henderson?"

And the old man took his pencil and changed some dates and a name or two,and gave to some of the sentences a turn that seemed to the reporter onlyanother way of saying the same thing.

"There, that is all I know. Give my respects to Mr. Goss."

When the commissioner had withdrawn, Uncle Jerry gave vent to a longwhistle. Then he rose suddenly and called to the secretary, "Tell thatreporter to come back." The reporter reappeared.

"I was just thinking, and you can tell Mr. Goss, that now you have gotonto this thing, you might as well keep the lead on it. The public isinterested in what we are doing in the Southwest, and if you, or someother bright fellow who has got eyes in his head, will go down there, hewill see something that will astonish him. I'm going tomorrow in myprivate car, and if you could go along, I assure you a good time. I wantyou to see for yourself, and I guess you would. Don't take my word. Ican't give you any passes, and I know you don't want any, but you canjust get into my private car and no expense to anybody, and see all thereis to be seen. Ask Goss, and let me know tonight."

The young fellow went off feeling several inches higher than when he camein. Such is the power of a good address, and such is the omnipotence ofthe great organ. Mr. Jerry Hollowell sat down and began to fan himself.It was very hot in the office.

"Seems to me it's lunch-time. Great Scott! what a lot of time I used towaste fighting the newspapers! That thing would have played the devil asit stood. It will be comparatively harmless now. It will make a littletalk, but there is nothing to get hold of. Queer, about the difference ofa word or two. Come, old man, I'm thirsty."

"Uncle Jerry," said Henderson, taking his arm as they went out, "youought to be President of the United States."

"The salary is too small," said Uncle Jerry.

Of all this there was nothing to write to Margaret, who was passing hertime agreeably in the Berkshire hills, a little impatient for herhusband's arrival, postponed from day to day, and full of sympathy forhim, condemned to the hot city and the harassment of a business themagnitude of which gave him the obligations and the character of a publicman. Henderson sent her instead a column from The Planet devoted to adescription of his private library. Mr. Goss, the editor, who was collegebred, had been round to talk with Henderson about the Southwest trip, andthe conversation drifting into other matters, Henderson had taken fromhis desk and shown him a rare old book which he had picked up the daybefore in a second-hand shop. This led to further talk about Henderson'shobby, and the editor had asked permission to send a reporter down tomake a note of Henderson's collection. It would make a good midsummeritem, "The Stock-Broker in Literature," "The Private Tastes of aMillionaire," etc. The column got condensed into a portable paragraph,and went the rounds of the press, and changed the opinions of a good manypeople about the great operator—he wasn't altogether devoted to vulgarmoneymaking. Uncle Jerry himself read the column with appreciation of itsvalue. "It diverts the public mind," he said. He himself had recentlydiverted the public mind by the gift of a bell to the NorembegaTheological (colored) Institute, and the paragraph announcing the factconveyed the impression that while Uncle Jerry was a canny old customer,his heart was on the right side. "There are worse men than Uncle Jerrywho are not worth a cent," was one of the humorous paragraphs tacked onto the item.

Margaret was not alone in finding the social atmosphere of Lenox ascongenial as its natural beauties. Mrs. Laflamme declared that it was theperfection of existence for a couple of months, one in early summer andanother in the golden autumn with its pathetic note of the fallingcurtain dropping upon the dream of youth. Mrs. Laflamme was not asentimental person, but she was capable of drifting for a moment into apoetic mood—a great charm in a woman of her vivacity and air of theworld. Margaret remembered her very distinctly, although she had onlyexchanged a word with her at the memorable dinner in New York whenHenderson had revealed her feelings to herself. Mrs. Laflamme had theimmense advantage—it seemed so to her after five years of widowhood ofbeing a widow on the sunny side of thirty-five. If she had lost someillusions she had gained a great deal of knowledge, and she had nofeverish anxiety about what life would bring her. Although she would notput it in this way to herself, she could look about her deliberately,enjoying the prospect, and please herself. Her position had twoadvantages—experience and opportunity. A young woman unmarried, shesaid, always has the uneasy sense of the possibility—well, it isimpossible to escape slang, and she said it with the merriest laugh—thepossibility of being left. A day or two after Margaret's arrival she haddriven around to call in her dog-cart, looking as fresh as a daisy in hersunhat. She held the reins, but her seat was shared by Mr. FoxMcNaughton, the most useful man in the village, indispensable indeed; abachelor, with no intentions, no occupation, no ambition (except to leadthe german), who could mix a salad, brew a punch, organize a picnic, andchaperon anything in petticoats with entire propriety, without regard toage. And he had a position of social authority. This eminence Mr. FoxMcNaughton had attained by always doing the correct thing. The obligationof society to such men is never enough acknowledged. While they aretrusted and used, and worked to death, one is apt to hear them spoken ofin a deprecatory tone.

"You hold the reins a moment, please. No, I don't want any help," shesaid, as she jumped down with an elastic spring, and introduced him toMargaret. "I've got Mr. McNaughton in training, and am thinking ofbringing him out."

She walked in with Margaret, chatting about the view and the house andthe divine weather.

"And your husband has not come yet?"

"He may come any day. I think business might suspend in the summer."

"So do I. But then, what would become of Lenox? It is rather hard on themen, only I dare say they like it. Don't you think Mr. Henderson wouldlike a place here?"

"He cannot help being pleased with Lenox."

"I'm sure he would if you are. I have hardly seen him since that eveningat the Stotts'. Can I tell you?—I almost had five minutes of envy thatevening. You won't mind it in such an old woman?"

"I should rather trust your heart than your age, Mrs. Laflamme," said
Margaret, with a laugh.

"Yes, my heart is as old as my face. But I had a feeling, seeing you walkaway that evening into the conservatory. I knew what was coming. I thinkI have discovered a great secret, Mrs. Henderson to be able to live overagain in other people. By-the-way, what has become of that quietEnglishman, Mr. Lyon?"

"He has come into his title. He is the Earl of Chisholm."

"Dear me, how stupid in us not to have taken a sense of that! And the
Eschelles—do you know anything of the Eschelles?"

"Yes; they are at their house in Newport."

"Do you think there was anything between Miss Eschelle and Mr. Lyon? Isaw her afterwards several times."

"Not that I ever heard. Miss Eschelle says that she is thoroughly
American in her tastes."

"Then her tastes are not quite conformed to her style. That girl might beanything—Queen of Spain, or coryphee in the opera ballet. She is cleveras clever. One always expects to hear of her as the heroine of anadventure."

"Didn't you say you knew her in Europe?"

"No. We heard of her and her mother everywhere. She was very independent.She had the sort of reputation to excite curiosity. But I noticed thatthe men in New York were a little afraid of her. She is a woman who likesto drive very near the edge."

Mrs. Laflamme rose. "I must not keep Mr. McNaughton waiting for any moreof my gossip. We expect you and the Misses Arbuser this afternoon. I warnyou it will be dull. I should like to hear of some summer resort wherethe men are over sixteen and under sixty."

Mrs. Laflamme liked to drive near the edge as much as Carmen did, andthis piquancy was undeniably an attraction in her case. But there wasthis difference between the two: there was a confidence that Mrs.Laflamme would never drive over the edge, whereas no one could tell whatsheer Carmen might not suddenly take. A woman's reputation is almost asmuch affected by the expectation of what she may do as by anything shehas done. It was Fox McNaughton who set up the dictum that a woman may doalmost anything if it is known that she draws a line somewhere.

The lawn party was not at all dull to Margaret. In the first place, shereceived a great deal of attention. Henderson's name was becoming verywell known, and it was natural that the splendor of his advancing fortuneshould be reflected in the person of his young wife, whose loveliness wasenhanced by her simple enjoyment of the passing hour. Then the toilets ofthe women were so fresh and charming, the colors grouped so prettily onthe greensward, the figures of the slender girls playing at tennis orlounging on the benches under the trees, recalled scenes from the classicpoets. It was all so rich and refined. Nor did she miss the men ofmilitary age, whose absence Mrs. Laflamme had deplored, for she thoughtof her husband. And, besides, she found even the college boys (who arealways spoken of as men) amusing, and the elderly gentlemen—upon whomwatering-place society throws much responsibility—gallant, facetious,complimentary, and active in whatever was afoot. Their boyishness,indeed, contrasted with—the gravity of the undergraduates, who tookthemselves very seriously, were civil to the young ladies,—confidentialwith the married women, and had generally a certain reserve and dignitywhich belong to persons upon whom such heavy responsibility rests.

There were, to be sure, men who looked bored, and women who werelistless, missing the stimulus of any personal interest; but the scenewas so animated, the weather so propitious, that, on the whole, a personmust be very cynical not to find the occasion delightful.

There was a young novelist present whose first story, "The Girl I LeftBehind Me," had made a hit the last season. It was thought to take aprofound hold upon life, because it was a book that could not be readaloud in a mixed company. Margaret was very much interested in him,although Mr. Summers Bass was not her idea of an imaginative writer. Hewas a stout young gentleman, with very black hair and small black eyes,to which it was difficult to give a melancholy cast even by an habitualfrown. Mr. Bass dressed himself scrupulously in the fashion, was veryexact in his pronunciation, careful about his manner, and had the air ofa little weariness, of the responsibility of one looking at life. It wasonly at rare moments that his face expressed intensity of feeling.

"It is a very pretty scene. I suppose, Mr. Bass, that you are makingstudies," said Margaret, by way of opening a conversation.

"No; hardly that. One must always observe. It gets to be a habit. Thething is to see reality under appearances."

"Then you would call yourself a realist?"

Mr. Bass smiled. "That is a slang term, Mrs. Henderson. What you want isnature, color, passion—to pierce the artificialities."

"But you must describe appearance."

"Certainly, to an extent—form, action, talk as it is, even trivialities—especially the trivialities, for life is made up of the trivial."

"But suppose that does not interest me?"

"Pardon me, Mrs. Henderson, that is because you are used to theconventional, the selected. Nature is always interesting."

"I do not find it so."

"No? Nature has been covered up; it has been idealized. Look yonder," andMr. Bass pointed across the lawn. "See that young woman upon whom thesunlight falls standing waiting her turn. See the quivering of theeyelids, the heaving of the chest, the opening lips; note the curve ofher waist from the shoulder, and the line rounding into the fall of thefolds of the Austrian cashmere. I try to saturate myself with that form,to impress myself with her every attitude and gesture, her color, hermovement, and then I shall imagine the form under the influence ofpassion. Every detail will tell. I do not find unimportant the tie of hershoe. The picture will be life."

"But suppose, Mr. Bass, when you come to speak with her, you find thatshe has no ideas, and talks slang."

"All the better. It shows what we are, what our society is. And besides,Mrs. Henderson, nearly everybody has the capacity of being wicked; thatis to say, of expressing emotion."

"You take a gloomy view, Mr. Bass."

"I take no view, Mrs. Henderson. My ambition is to record. It will nothelp matters by pretending that people are better than they are."

"Well, Mr. Bass, you may be quite right, but I am not going to let youspoil my enjoyment of this lovely scene," said Margaret, moving away. Mr.Bass watched her until she disappeared, and then entered in his notebooka phrase for future use, "The prosperous propriety of a prettyplutocrat." He was gathering materials for his forthcoming book, "TheLast Sigh of the Prude."

The whole world knows how delightful Lenox is. It even has a club wherethe men can take refuge from the exactions of society, as in the city.The town is old enough to have "histories"; there is a romance attachedto nearly every estate, a tragedy of beauty, and money, anddisappointment; great writers have lived here, families whose names wereconnected with our early politics and diplomacy; there is a tradition ofa society of wit and letters, of women whose charms were enhanced by aspice of adventure, of men whose social brilliancy ended in misanthropy.All this gave a background of distinction to the present gayety, luxury,and adaptation of the unsurpassed loveliness of nature to the refinedfashion of the age.

Here, if anywhere, one could be above worry, above the passion of envy;for did not every new "improvement" and every new refinement in livingadd to the importance of every member of this favored community? ForMargaret it was all a pageant of beauty. The Misses Arbuser talked aboutthe quality of the air, the variety of the scenery, the exhilaration ofthe drives, the freedom from noise and dust, the country quiet. Therewere the morning calls, the intellectual life of the reading clubs, thetennis parties, the afternoon teas, combined with charming drives fromone elegant place to another; the siestas, the idle swinging in hammocks,with the latest magazine from which to get a topic for dinner, the mildexcitement of a tete-a-tete which might discover congenial tastes or runon into an interesting attachment. Half the charm of life, says aphilosopher, is in these personal experiments.

When Henderson came, as he did several times for a few days, Margaret'shappiness was complete. She basked in the sun of his easy enjoyment oflife. She liked to take him about with her, and see the welcome in allcompanies of a man so handsome, so natural and cordial, as her husband.Especially aid she like the consideration in which he was evidently heldat the club, where the members gathered about him to listen to his racytalk and catch points about the market. She liked to think that he wasnot a woman's man. He gave her his version of some recent transactionsthat had been commented on in the newspapers, and she was indignant overthe insinuations about him. It was the price, he said, that everybody hadto pay for success. Why shouldn't he, she reflected, make money?Everybody would if they could, and no one knew how generous he was. Ifshe had been told that the family of Jerry Hollowell thought of him inthe same way, she would have said that there was a world-wide differencein the two men. Insensibly she was losing the old standards she used toapply to success. Here in Lenox, in this prosperous, agreeable world,there was nothing to remind her of them.

In her enjoyment of this existence without care, I do not suppose itoccurred to her to examine if her ideals had been lowered. SometimesHenderson had a cynical, mocking tone about the world, which she reprovedwith a caress, but he was always tolerant and good-natured. If he hadtold her that he acted upon the maxim that every man and woman has hisand her price she would have been shocked, but she was getting to makeallowances that she would not have made before she learned to look at theworld through his eyes. She could see that the Brandon circle wasover-scrupulous. Her feeling of this would have been confirmed if she hadknown that when her aunt read the letter announcing a month's visit tothe Eschelles in Newport, she laid it down with a sigh.

XVI

Uncle Jerry was sitting on the piazza of the Ocean House, absorbed in thestock reports of a New York journal, answering at random the occasionalobservations of his wife, who filled up one of the spacious chairs nearhim—a florid woman, with diamonds in her ears, who had the resolute airof enjoying herself. It was an August Newport morning, when there is asalty freshness in the air, but a temperature that discourages exertion.A pony phaeton dashed by containing two ladies. The ponies werecream-colored, with flowing manes and tails, and harness of black andgold; the phaeton had yellow wheels with a black body; the diminutivepage with folded arms, on the seat behind, wore a black jacket and yellowbreeches. The lady who held the yellow silk reins was a blonde with darkeyes. As they flashed by, the lady on the seat with her bowed, and Mr.Hollowell returned the salute.

"Who's that?" asked Mrs. Hollowell.

"That's Mrs. Henderson."

"And the other one?"

"I don't know her. She knows how to handle the ribbons, though."

"I seen her at the Casino the other night, before you come, with thattandem-driving count. I don't believe he's any more count than you are."

"Oh, he's all right. He's one of the Spanish legation. This is just theplace for counts. I shouldn't wonder, Maria, if you'd like to be acountess. We can afford it—the Countess Jeremiah, eh?" and Uncle Jerry'seyes twinkled.

"Don't be a goose, Mr. Hollowell," bringing her fat hands round in frontof her, so that she could see the sparkle of the diamond rings on them."She's as pretty as a picture, that girl, but I should think a good windwould blow her away. I shouldn't want to have her drive me round."

"Jorkins has sailed," said Mr. Hollowell, looking up from his paper. "ThePlanet reporter tried to interview him, but he played sick, said he wasjust going over and right back for a change. I guess it will be longenough before they get a chance at him again."

"I'm glad he's gone. I hope the papers will mind their own business for aspell."

The house of the Eschelles was on the sea, looking over a vast sweep oflawn to the cliff and the dimpling blue water of the first beach. It wasknown as the Yellow Villa. Coming from the elegance of Lenox, Margaretwas surprised at the magnificence and luxury of this establishment, thegreat drawing-rooms, the spacious chambers, the wide verandas, thepictures, the flowers, the charming nooks and recessed windows, withhandy book-stands, and tables littered with the freshest andmost-talked-of issues from the press of Paris, Madrid, and London. Carmenhad taken a hint from Henderson's bachelor apartment, which she hadvisited once with her mother, and though she had no literary taste,further than to dip in here and there to what she found toothsome andexciting in various languages, yet she knew the effect of the atmosphereof books, and she had a standing order at a book-shop for whatever wasfresh and likely to come into notice.

And Carmen was a delightful hostess, both because her laziness gave anair of repose to the place, and she had the tact never to appear to makeany demands upon her guests, and because she knew when to be piquant andexhibit personal interest, and when to show even a little abandon ofvivacity. Society flowed through her house without any obstructions. Itwas scarcely ever too early and never too late for visitors. Those whowere intimate used to lounge in and take up a book, or pass an hour onthe veranda, even when none of the family were at home. Men had a habitof dropping in for a five o'clock cup of tea, and where the men went thewomen needed little urging to follow. At first there had been somereluctance about recognizing the Eschelles fully, and there were stillhouses that exhibited a certain reserve towards them, but the example ofgoing to this house set by the legations, the members of which enjoyed achat with Miss Eschelle in the freedom of their own tongues and thefreedom of her tongue, went far to break down this barrier. They werespoken of occasionally as "those Eschelles," but almost everybody wentthere, and perhaps enjoyed it all the more because there had been a shadeof doubt about it.

Margaret's coming was a good card for Carmen. The little legend about herFrench ancestry in Newport, and the romantic marriage in Rochambeau'stime, had been elaborated in the local newspaper, and when she appearedthe ancestral flavor, coupled with the knowledge of Henderson'saccumulating millions, lent an interest and a certain charm to whatevershe said and did. The Eschelle house became more attractive than everbefore, so much so that Mrs. Eschelle declared that she longed for thequiet of Paris. To her motherly apprehension there was no result in thiswhirl of gayety, no serious intention discoverable in any of the trainthat followed Carmen. "You act, child," she said, "as if youth would lastforever."

Margaret entered into this life as if she had been born to it. Perhapsshe was. Perhaps most people never find the career for which they arefitted, and struggle along at cross-purposes with themselves. We allthought that Margaret's natural bent was for some useful andself-sacrificing work in the world, and never could have imagined thatunder any circ*mstances she would develop into a woman of fashion.

"I intend to read a great deal this month," she said to Carmen on herarrival, as she glanced at the litter of books.

"That was my intention," replied Carmen; "now we can read together. I'mtaking Spanish lessons of Count Crispo. I've learned two Spanish poemsand a Castilian dance."

"Is he married?"

"Not now. He told me, when he was teaching me the steps, that his heartwas buried in Seville."

"He seems to be full of sentiment."

"Perhaps that is because his salary is so small. Mamma says, of allthings an impecunious count! But he is amusing."

"But what do you care for money?" asked Margaret, by way of testing
Carmen's motives.

"Nothing, my dear. But deliver me from a husband who is poor; he wouldcertainly be a tyrant. Besides, if I ever marry, it will be with anAmerican."

"But suppose you fall in love with a poor man?"

"That would be against my principles. Never fall below your ideals—thatis what I heard a speaker say at the Town and Country Club, and that ismy notion. There is no safety for you if you lose your principles."

"That depends upon what they are," said Margaret, in the same banteringtone.

"That sounds like good Mr. Lyon. I suspect he thought I hadn't any. Mammasaid I tried to shock him; but he shocked me. Do you think you could livewith such a man twenty-four hours, even if he had his crown on?"

"I can imagine a great deal worse husbands than the Earl of Chisholm."

"Well, I haven't any imagination."

There was no reading that day nor the next. In the morning there was adrive with the ponies through town, in the afternoon in the carriage bythe sea, with a couple of receptions, the five o'clock tea, with itschatter, and in the evening a dinner party for Margaret. One day sufficedto launch her, and there-after Carmen had only admiration for theunflagging spirit which Margaret displayed. "If you were only unmarried,"she said, "what larks we could have!" Margaret looked grave at this, butonly for a moment, for she well knew that she could not please herhusband better than by enjoying the season to the full. He nevercriticised her for taking the world as it is; and she confessed toherself that life went very pleasantly in a house where there were neverany questions raised about duties. The really serious thought in Carmen'smind was that perhaps after all a woman had no real freedom until she wasmarried. And she began to be interested in Margaret's enjoyment of theworld.

It was not, after all, a new world, only newly arranged, like anotherscene in the same play. The actors, who came and went, were for the mostpart the acquaintances of the Washington winter, and the callers anddiners and opera-goers and charity managers of the city. In these daysMargaret was quite at home with the old set: the British Minister, theBelgian, the French, the Spanish, the Mexican, the German, and theItalian, with their families and attaches—nothing was wanting, not eventhe Chinese mandarin, who had rooms at the hotel, going about everywherein the conscientious discharge of his duties as ambassador to Americansociety, a great favorite on account of his silk apparel, whichgave him the appearance of a clumsy woman, and the everlasting,three-thousand-year-old smile on his broad face, punctiliously leaving inevery house a big flaring red piece of paper which the ladies pinned upfor a decoration; a picture of helpless, childlike enjoyment, and almostindependent of the interpreter who followed him about, when he hadlearned, upon being introduced to a lady, or taking a cup of tea, to say"good-by" as distinctly as an articulating machine; a truly learned man,setting an example of civility and perfect self-possession, but keenlyobservant of the oddities of the social life to which his missionarygovernment had accredited him. One would like to have heard the commentsof the minister and his suite upon our manners; but perhaps they were toopolite to make any even in their seclusion. Certain it is that no oneever heard any of the legation express any opinion but the most suave andflattering.

And yet they must have been amazed at the activity of this season ofrepose, the endurance of American women who rode to the fox meets, wereexcited spectators of the polo, played lawn-tennis, were incessantlydining and calling, and sat through long dinners served with theformality and dullness and the swarms of liveried attendants of a royalfeast. And they could not but admire the young men, who did not care forpolitics or any business beyond the chances of the stock exchange, butwho expended an immense amount of energy in the dangerous polo contests,in riding at fences after the scent-bag, in driving tandems andfour-in-hands, and yet had time to dress in the cut and shade demanded byevery changing hour.

Formerly the annual chronicle of this summer pageant, in which the samewomen appeared day after day, and the same things were done over and overagain, Margaret used to read with a contempt for the life; but that sheenjoyed it, now she was a part of it, shows that the chroniclers for thepress were unable to catch the spirit of it, the excitement of thepersonal encounters that made it new every day. Looking at a ball isquite another thing from dancing.

"Yes, it is lively enough," said Mr. Ponsonby, one afternoon when theyhad returned from the polo grounds and were seated on the veranda. Mr.Ponsonby was a middle-aged Englishman, whose diplomatic labors at variouscourts had worn a bald spot on his crown. Carmen had not yet come, andthey were waiting for a cup of tea. "And they ride well; but I think Irather prefer the Wild West Show."

"You Englishmen," Margaret retorted, "seem to like the uncivilized. Areyou all tired of civilization?"

"Of some kinds. When we get through with the London season, you know,
Mrs. Henderson, we like to rough it, as you call it, for some months.
But, 'pon my word, I can't see much difference between Washington and
Newport."

"We might get up a Wild West Show here, or a prize-fight, for you. Do youknow, Mr. Ponsonby, I think it will take full another century for womento really civilize men."

"How so?"

"Get the cruelty and love of brutal sports out of them."

"Then you'd cease to like us. Nothing is so insipid, I fancy, to a womanas a man made in her own image."

"Well, what have you against Newport?"

"Against it? I'm sure nothing could be better than this." And Mr.Ponsonby allowed his adventurous eyes to rest for a moment uponMargaret's trim figure, until he saw a flush in her face. "Thisprospect," he added, turning to the sea, where a few sails took the slantrays of the sun.

"'Where every prospect pleases,"' quoted Margaret, "'and only man—'"

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Henderson; men are not to be considered. Thewomen in Newport would make the place a paradise even if it were adesert."

"That is another thing I object to in men."

"What's that?"

"Flattery. You don't say such things to each other at the club. What isyour objection to Newport?"

"I didn't say I had any. But if you compel me well, the whole thing seemsto be a kind of imitation."

"How?"

"Oh, the way things go on—the steeple-chasing and fox-hunting, and thecarts, and the style of the swell entertainments. Is that ill-natured?"

"Not at all. I like candor, especially English candor. But there is Miss
Eschelle."

Carmen drove up with Count Crispo, threw the reins to the groom, andreached the ground with a touch on the shoulder of the count, who hadalighted to help her down.

"Carmen," said Margaret, "Mr. Ponsonby says that all Newport is just animitation."

"Of course it is. We are all imitations, except Count Crispo. I'll bet acup of tea against a pair of gloves," said Carmen, who had facility inpicking up information, "that Mr. Ponsonby wasn't born in England."

Mr. Ponsonby looked redder than usual, and then laughed, and said, "Well,
I was only three years old when I left Halifax."

"I knew it!" cried Carmen, clapping her hands. "Now come in and have acup of English breakfast tea. That's imitation, too."

"The mistake you made," said Margaret, "was not being born in Spain."

"Perhaps it's not irreparable," the count interposed, with an air ofgallantry.

"No, no," said Carmen, audaciously; "by this time I should be buried inSeville. No, I should prefer Halifax, for it would have been a pleasureto emigrate from Halifax. Was it not, Mr. Ponsonby?"

"I can't remember. But it is a pleasure to sojourn in any land with Miss
Eschelle."

"Thank you. Now you shall have two cups. Come."

The next morning, Mr. Jerry Hollowell, having inquired where Margaret wasstaying, called to pay his respects, as he phrased it. Carmen, who waswith Margaret in the morning-room, received him with her mostdistinguished manner. "We all know Mr. Hollowell," she said.

"That's not always an advantage," retorted Uncle Jerry, seating himself,and depositing his hat beside his chair. "When do you expect yourhusband, Mrs. Henderson?"

"Tomorrow. But I don't mean to tell him that you are here—not at first."

"No," said Carmen; "we women want Mr. Henderson a little while toourselves."

Why, I'm the idlest man in America. I tell Henderson that he ought totake more time for rest. It's no good to drive things. I like quiet."

"And you get it in Newport?" Margaret asked.

"Well, my wife and children get what they call quiet. I guess a month ofit would use me up. She says if I had a place here I'd like it. Perhapsso. You are very comfortably fixed, Miss Eschelle."

"It does very well for us, but something more would be expected of Mr.Hollowell. We are just camping-out here. What Newport needs is a realpalace, just to show those foreigners who come here and patronize us. Whyis it, Mr. Hollowell, that all you millionaires can't think of anythingbetter to do with your money than to put up a big hotel or a greatelevator or a business block?"

"I suppose," said Uncle Jerry, blandly, "that is because they areinterested in the prosperity of the country, and have simple democratictastes for themselves. I'm afraid you are not democratic, Miss Eschelle."

"Oh, I'm anxious about the public also. I'm on your side, Mr. Hollowell;but you don't go far enough. You just throw in a college now and then tokeep us quiet, but you owe it to the country to show the English that ademocrat can have as fine a house as anybody."

"I call that real patriotism. When I get rich, Miss Eschelle, I'll bearit in mind."

"Oh, you never will be rich," said Carmen, sweetly, bound to pursue herwhim. "You might come to me for a start to begin the house. I was verylucky last spring in A. and B. bonds."

"How was that? Are you interested in A. and B.?" asked Uncle Jerry,turning around with a lively interest in this gentle little woman.

"Oh, no; we sold out. We sold when we heard what an interest there was inthe road. Mamma said it would never do for two capitalists to have theireggs in the same basket."

"What do you mean, Carmen?" asked Margaret, startled. "Why, that is theroad Mr. Henderson is in."

"Yes, I know, dear. There were too many in it."

"Isn't it safe?" said Margaret, turning to Hollowell.

"A great deal more solid than it was," he replied. "It is part of athrough line. I suppose Miss Eschelle found a better investment."

"One nearer home," she admitted, in the most matter-of-fact way.

"Henderson must have given the girl points," thought Hollowell. He beganto feel at home with her. If he had said the truth, it would have beenthat she was more his kind than Mrs. Henderson, but that he respected thelatter more.

"I think we might go in partnership, Miss Eschelle, to mutual advantage—but not in building. Your ideas are too large for me there."

"I should be a very unreliable partner, Mr. Hollowell; but I couldenlarge your ideas, if I had time."

Hollowell laughed, and said he hadn't a doubt of that. Margaret inquiredfor Mrs. Hollowell and the children, and she and Carmen appointed an hourfor calling at the Ocean House. The talk went to other topics, and aftera half-hour ended in mutual good-feeling.

"What a delightful old party!" said Carmen, after he had gone. "I've amind to adopt him."

In a week Hollowell and Carmen were the best of friends. She called him"Uncle Jerry," and buzzed about him, to his great delight. "The beauty ofit is," he said, "you never can tell where she will light."

Everybody knows what Newport is in August, and we need not dwell on it.To Margaret, with its languidly moving pleasures, its well-bred scenery,the luxury that lulled the senses into oblivion of the vulgar struggleand anxiety which ordinarily attend life, it was little less thanparadise. To float along with Carmen, going deeper and deeper into theshifting gayety which made the days fly without thought and with no carefor tomorrow, began to seem an admirable way of passing life. What couldone do fitter, after all, for a world hopelessly full of suffering andpoverty and discontent, than to set an example of cheerfulness andenjoyment, and to contribute, as occasion offered, to the less fortunate?Would it help matters to be personally anxious and miserable? To put alarge bill in the plate on Sunday, to open her purse wide for the objectsof charity and relief daily presented, was indeed a privilege and apleasure, and a satisfaction to the conscience which occasionally trippedher in her rapid pace.

"I don't believe you have a bit of conscience," said Margaret to Carmenone Sunday, as they walked home from morning service, when Margaret hadresponded "extravagantly," as Carmen said, to an appeal for the missionamong the city pagans.

"I never said I had, dear. It must be the most troublesome thing you cancarry around with you. Of course I am interested in the heathen, butcharity—that is where I agree with Uncle Jerry—begins at home, and Idon't happen to know a greater heathen than I am."

"If you were as bad as you make yourself out, I wouldn't walk with youanother step."

"Well, you ask mother. She was in such a rage one day when I told Mr.Lyon that he'd better look after Ireland than go pottering round amongthe neglected children. Not that I care anything about the Irish," addedthis candid person.

"I suppose you wanted to make it pleasant for Mr. Lyon?"

"No; for mother. She can't get over the idea that she is still bringingme up. And Mr. Lyon! Goodness! there was no living with him after hisvisit to Brandon. Do you know, Margaret, that I think you are just alittle bit sly?"

"I don't know what you mean," said Margaret, looking offended.

"Dear, I don't blame you," said the impulsive creature, wheeling shortround and coming close to Margaret. "I'd kiss you this minute if we werenot in the public road."

When Henderson came, Margaret's world was full; no desire wasungratified. He experienced a little relief when she did not bother himabout his business nor inquire into his operations with Hollowell, and hefancied that she was getting to accept the world as Carmen accepted it.There had been moments since his marriage when he feared that Margaret'sscruples would interfere with his career, but never a moment when he haddoubted that her love for him would be superior to any solicitations fromothers. Carmen, who knew him like a book, would have said that the modelwife for Henderson would be a woman devoted to him and to his interests,and not too scrupulous. A wife is a torment, if you can't feel at easewith her.

"If there were only a French fleet in the harbor, dear," said Margaretone day, "I should feel that I had quite taken up the life of mygreat-great-grandmother."

They were sailing in Hollowell's yacht, in which Uncle Jerry had broughthis family round from New York. He hated the water, but Mrs. Hollowelland the children doted on the sea, he said.

"Wouldn't the torpedo station make up for it?" Henderson asked.

"Hardly. But it shows the change of a hundred years. Only, isn't it odd,this personal dropping back into an old situation? I wonder what she waslike?"

"The accounts say she was the belle of Newport. I suppose Newport has abelle once in a hundred years. The time has come round. But I confess Idon't miss the French fleet," replied Henderson, with a look of love thatthrilled Margaret through and through.

"But you would have been an officer on the fleet, and I should havefallen in love with you. Ah, well, it is better as it is."

And it was better. The days went by without a cloud. Even after Hendersonhad gone, the prosperity of life filled her heart more and more.

"She might have been like me," Carmen said to herself, "if she had onlystarted right; but it is so hard to get rid of a New England conscience."

When Margaret stayed in her room, one morning, to write a long-postponedletter to her aunt, she discovered that she had very little to write, atleast that she wanted to write, to her aunt. She began, however,resolutely with a little account of her life. But it seemed another thingon paper, addressed to the loving eyes at Brandon. There were too muchluxury and idleness and triviality in it, too much Carmen and CountCrispo and flirtation and dissipation in it.

She tore it up, and went to the window and looked out upon the sea. Shewas indignant with the Brandon people that they should care so littleabout this charming life. She was indignant at herself that she had tornup the letter. What had she done that anybody should criticise her? Whyshouldn't she live her life, and not be hampered everlastingly bycomparisons?

She sat down again, and took up her pen. Was she changing—was shechanged? Why was it that she had felt a little relief when her lastBrandon visit was at an end, a certain freedom in Lenox and a greaterfreedom in Newport? The old associations became strong again in her mind,the life in the little neighborhood, the simplicity of it, the highideals of it, the daily love and tenderness. Her aunt was no doubtwondering now that she did not write, and perhaps grieving that Margaretno more felt at home in Brandon. It was too much. She loved them, sheloved them all dearly. She would write that, and speak only generally ofher frivolous, happy summer. And she began, but somehow the letter seemedstiff and to lack the old confiding tone.

But why should they disapprove of her? She thought of her husband. Ifcirc*mstances had altered, was she to blame? Could she always be thinkingof what they would think at Brandon? It was an intolerable bondage. Theyhad no right to set themselves up over her. Suppose her aunt didn't likeCarmen. She was not responsible for Carmen. What would they have her do?Be unhappy because Henderson was prosperous, and she could indulge hertastes and not have to drudge in school? Suppose she did look at somethings differently from what she used to. She knew more of the world.Must you shut yourself up because you found you couldn't trust everybody?What was Mr. Morgan always hitting at? Had he any better opinion of menand women than her husband had? Was he any more charitable than UncleJerry? She smiled as she thought of Uncle Jerry and his remark—"It's avery decent world if you don't huff it." No; she did like this life, andshe was not going to pretend that she didn't. It would be dreadful tolose the love and esteem of her dear old friends, and she cried a littleas this possibility came over her. And then she hardened her heart alittle at the thought that she could not help it if they chose tomisunderstand her and change.

Carmen was calling from the stairs that it was time to dress for thedrive. She dashed off a note. It contained messages of love foreverybody, but it was the first one in her life written to her aunt notfrom her heart.

XVII

Shall we never have done with this carping at people who succeed? Arethose who start and don't arrive any better than those who do arrive? Didnot men always make all the money they had an opportunity to make? Mustwe always have the old slow-coach merchants and planters thrown up to us?Talk of George Washington and the men of this day! Were things any betterbecause they were on a small scale? Wasn't the thrifty George Washingtonalways adding to his plantations, and squeezing all he could out of hisland and his slaves? What are the negro traditions about it? Were theyall patriots in the Revolutionary War? Were there no contractors whoamassed fortunes then? And how was it in the late war? The public has agreat spasm of virtue all of a sudden. But we have got past the day ofstage-coaches.

Something like this Henderson was flinging out to Carmen as he paced backand forth in her parlor. It was very unlike him, this outburst, andCarmen knew that he would indulge in it to no one else, not even to UncleJerry. She was coiled up in a corner of the sofa, her eyes sparkling withadmiration of his indignation and force. I confess that he had beenirritated by the comments of the newspapers, and by the prodding of thelawyers in the suit then on trial over the Southwestern consolidation.

"Why, there was old Mansfield saying in his argument that he had had somelittle experience in life, but he never had known a man to get richrapidly, barring some piece of luck, except by means that it would makehim writhe to have made public. I don't know but that Uncle Jerry wasright, that we made a mistake in not retaining him for the corporation."

"Not if you win," said Carmen, softly. "The public won't care for theremark unless you fail."

"And he tried to prejudice the Court by quoting the remark attributed toUncle Jerry, 'The public be d—-d' as if, said Mansfield, the public hasno rights as—against the railroad wreckers. Uncle Jerry laughed, andinterrupted: 'That's nonsense, reporters' nonsense. What I said was thatif the public thought I was fool enough to make it our enemy, the publicmight be d—-d (begging your honor's pardon).' Then everybody laughed.'It's the bond holders, who want big dividends, that stand in the way ofthe development of the country, that's what it is,' said he, as he satdown, to those around him, but loud enough to be heard all over the room.Mansfield asked the protection of the Court against these clap-trapinterruptions. The judge said it was altogether irregular, and UncleJerry begged pardon. The reporters made this incident the one prominentthing in the case that day."

"What a delightful Uncle Jerry it is!" said Carmen. "You'd better keep aneye on him, Rodney; he'll be giving your money to that theologicalseminary in Alabama."

"That reminds me," Henderson said, cooling down, "of a paragraph in ThePlanet, the other day, about the amount of my gifts unknown to thepublic. I showed it to Uncle Jerry, and he said, 'Yes, I mentioned it tothe editor; such things don't do any harm.'"

"I saw it, and wondered who started it," Carmen replied, wrinkling herbrows as if she had been a good deal perplexed about it.

"I thought," said Henderson, with a smile, "that it ought to be explainedto you."

"No," she said, reflectively; "you are liberal enough, goodness knows—too liberal—but you are not a flat."

Henderson was in the habit of dropping in at the Eschelles' occasionally,when he wanted to talk freely. He had no need to wear a mask with Carmen.Her moral sense was tolerant and elastic, and feminine sympathy of thissort is a grateful cushion. She admired Henderson, without thinking anytoo well of the world in general, and she admired him for the qualitiesthat were most conformable to his inclination. It was no case ofhero-worship, to be sure, nor for tragedy; but then what a satisfactionit must be to sweet Lady Macbeth, coiled up on her sofa, to feel that thethane of Cawdor has some nerve!

The Hendersons had come back to Washington Square late in the autumn. Itis a merciful provision that one has an orderly and well-appointed hometo return to from the fatigues of the country. Margaret, at any rate, wasa little tired with the multiform excitements of her summer, andexperienced a feeling of relief when she crossed her own threshold andentered into the freedom and quiet of her home. She was able to shut thedoor there even against the solicitations of nature and against theweariness of it also. How quiet it was in the square in those late autumndays, and yet not lifeless by any means! Indeed, it seemed all the more ahaven because the roar of the great city environed it, and one couldfeel, without being disturbed by, the active pulsation of human life. Andthen, if one has sentiment, is there anywhere that it is more ministeredto than in the city at the close of the year? The trees in the littlepark grow red and yellow and brown, the leaves fall and swirl and driftin windrows by the paths, the flower-beds flame forth in the last dyingsplendor of their color; the children, chasing each other with hoop andball about the walks, are more subdued than in the spring-time; the oldmen, seeking now the benches where the sunshine falls, sit in dreamyreminiscence of the days that are gone; the wandering minstrel of Italyturns the crank of his wailing machine, O! bella, bella, as in thespring, but the notes seem to come from far off and to be full of memoryrather than of promise; and at early morning, or when the shadowslengthen at evening, the south wind that stirs the trees has a saltsmell, and sends a premonitory shiver of change to the fading foliage.But how bright are the squares and the streets, for all this note ofmelancholy! Life is to begin again.

But the social season opened languidly. It takes some time to recoverfrom the invigoration of the summer gayety—to pick up again the threadsand weave them into that brilliant pattern, which scarcely shows all itsloveliness of combination and color before the weavers begin to work inthe subdued tints of Lent. How delightful it is to see this knitting andunraveling of the social fabric year after year! and how untiring are thesenders of the shuttles, the dyers, the hatchelers, the spinners, theever-busy makers and destroyers of the intricate web we call society!After one campaign, must there not be time given to organize for another?Who has fallen out, who are the new recruits, who are engaged, who willmarry, who have separated, who has lost his money? Before we can safelyreorganize we must not only examine the hearts but the stock-list. Nomatter how many brilliant alliances have been arranged, no matter howmany husbands and wives have drifted apart in the local whirlpools of thesummer's current, the season will be dull if Wall Street is torpid anddiscouraged. We cannot any of us, you see, live to ourselves alone. Doesnot the preacher say that? And do we not all look about us in the pews,when he thus moralizes, to see who has prospered? The B's have taken aback seat, the C's have moved up nearer the pulpit. There is a reason forthese things, my friends.

I am sorry to say that Margaret was usually obliged to go alone to thelittle church where she said her prayers; for however restful her lifemight have been while that season was getting under way, Henderson wasinvolved in the most serious struggle of his life—a shameful kind ofconspiracy, Margaret told Carmen, against him. I have hinted at hisannoyance in the courts. Ever since September he had been pestered withinjunctions, threatened with attachments. And now December had come andCongress was in session; in the very first days an investigation had beenordered into the land grants involved in the Southwestern operations.Uncle Jerry was in Washington to explain matters there, and Henderson,with the ablest counsel in the city, was fighting in the courts. Theaffair made a tremendous stir. Some of the bondholders of the A. and B.happened to be men of prominence, and able to make a noise about theirinjury. As several millions were involved in this one branch of the case—the suit of the bondholders—the newspapers treated it with theconsideration and dignity it deserved. It was a vast financial operation,some said, scathingly, a "deal," but the magnitude of it prevented itfrom falling into the reports of petty swindling that appear in thepolice-court column. It was a public affair, and not to be judged byone's private standard. I know that there were remarks made aboutHenderson that would have pained Margaret if she had heard them, but Inever heard that he lost standing in the street. Still, in justice to thestreet it must be said that it charitably waits for things to be proven,and that if Henderson had failed, he might have had little more lenientjudgment in the street than elsewhere.

In fact, those were very trying days for him-days when he needed all theprivate sympathy he could get, and to be shielded, in his great fightwith the conspiracy, from petty private annoyances. It needed all hiscourage and good-temper and bonhomie to carry him through. That he wentthrough was evidence not only of his adroitness and ability, but it wasproof also that he was a good fellow. If there were people who thoughtotherwise, I never heard that they turned their backs on him, or failedin that civility which he never laid aside in his intercourse withothers.

If a man present a smiling front to the world under extreme trial, is notthat all that can be expected of him? Shall he not be excused for showinga little irritation at home when things go badly? Henderson was asgood-humored a man as I ever knew, and he loved Margaret, he was proud ofher, he trusted her. Since when did the truest love prevent a man frombeing petulant, even to the extent of wounding those he best loves,especially if the loved one shows scruples when sympathy is needed? Thereader knows that the present writer has no great confidence in theprinciple of Carmen; but if she had been married, and her husband hadwrecked an insurance company and appropriated all the surplus belongingto the policy-holders, I don't believe she would have nagged him aboutit.

And yet Margaret loved Henderson with her whole soul. And in this stageof her progress in the world she showed that she did, though not in theway Carmen would have showed her love, if she had loved, and if she had asoul capable of love.

It may have been inferred from Henderson's exhibition of temper that hiscase had gone against him. It is true; an injunction had been granted inthe lower court, and public opinion went with the decree, and was in agreat measure satisfied by it. But this fight had really only just begun;it would go on in the higher courts, with new resources and infinitedevices, which the public would be unable to fathom or follow, untilby-and-by it would come out that a compromise had been made, and the easypublic would not understand that this compromise gave the looters of therailway substantially all they ever expected to get. The morning afterthe granting of the injunction Henderson had been silent and very muchabsorbed at breakfast, hardly polite, Margaret thought, and soinattentive to her remarks that she asked him twice whether they shouldaccept the Brandon invitation to Christmas. "Christmas! I don't know.I've got other things to think of than Christmas," he said, scarcelylooking at her, and rising abruptly and going away to his library.

When the postman brought Margaret's mail there was a letter in it fromher aunt, which she opened leisurely after the other notes had beenglanced through, on the principle that a family letter can wait, or fromthe fancy that some have of keeping the letter likely to be mostinteresting till the last. But almost the first line enchained herattention, and as she read, her heart beat faster, and her face becamescarlet. It was very short, and I am able to print it, because allMargaret's correspondence ultimately came into possession of her aunt:

"BRANDON, December 17th.

"DEAREST MARGARET,—You do not say whether you will come for Christmas, but we infer from your silence that you will. You know how pained we shall all be if you do not. Yet I fear the day will not be as pleasant as we could wish. In fact, we are in a good deal of trouble. You know, dear, that poor Mrs. Fletcher had nearly every dollar of her little fortune invested in the A. and B. bonds, and for ten months she has not had a cent of income, and no prospect of any. Indeed, Morgan says that she will be lucky if she ultimately saves half her principal. We try to cheer her up, but she is so cast down and mortified to have to live, as she says, on charity. And it does make rather close house-keeping, though I'm sure I couldn't live alone without her. It does not make so much difference with Mr. Fairchild and Mr. Morgan, for they have plenty of other resources. Mr. Fairchild tells her that she is in very good company, for lots of the bonds are held in Brandon, and she is not the only widow who suffers; but this is poor consolation. We had great hopes, the other day, of the trial, but Morgan says it may be years before any final settlement. I don't believe Mr. Henderson knows. But there, dearest, I won't find fault. We are all well, and eager to see you. Do come.

"Your affectionate aunt,

"GEORGIAN A."

Margaret's hand that held the letter trembled, and the eyes that readthese words were hot with indignation; but she controlled herself into anappearance of calmness as she marched away with it straight to thelibrary.

As she entered, Henderson was seated at his desk, with bowed head andperplexed brows, sorting a pile of papers before him, and making notes.He did not look up until she came close to him and stood at the end ofhis desk. Then, turning his eyes for a moment, and putting out his lefthand to her, he said, "Well, what is it, dear?"

"Will you read that?" said Margaret, in a voice that sounded strange inher own ears.

"What?"

"A letter from Aunt Forsythe."

"Family matter. Can't it wait?" said Henderson, going on with hisfiguring.

"If it can, I cannot," Margaret answered, in a tone that caused him toturn abruptly and look at her. He was so impatient and occupied that evenyet he did not comprehend the new expression in her face.

"Don't you see I am busy, child? I have an engagement in twenty minutesin my office."

"You can read it in a moment," said Margaret, still calm.

Henderson took the letter with a gesture of extreme annoyance, ran hiseye through it, flung it from him on the table, and turned squarely roundin his chair.

"Well, what of it?"

"To ruin poor Mrs. Fletcher and a hundred like her!" cried Margaret, withrising indignation.

"What have I to do with it? Did I make their investments? Do you think Ihave time to attend to every poor duck? Why don't people look where theyput their money?"

"It's a shame, a burning shame!" she cried, regarding him steadily.

"Oh, yes; no doubt. I lost a hundred thousand yesterday; did I whineabout it? If I want to buy anything in the market, have I got to lookinto every tuppenny interest concerned in it? If Mrs. Fletcher or anybodyelse has any complaint against me, the courts are open. I defy the wholepack!" Henderson thundered out, rising and buttoning his coat—"thewhole pack!"

"And you have nothing else to say, Rodney?" Margaret persisted, notquailing in the least before his indignation. He had never seen her sobefore, and he was now too much in a passion to fully heed her.

"Oh, women, women!" he said, taking up his hat, "you have sympathy enoughfor anybody but your husbands." He pushed past her, and was gone withoutanother word or look.

Margaret turned to follow him. She would have cried "Stop!" but the wordstuck in her throat. She was half beside herself with rage for a moment.But he had gone. She heard the outer door close. Shame and grief overcameher. She sat down in the chair he had just occupied. It was infamous theway Mrs. Fletcher was treated. And her husband—her husband was soregardless of it. If he was not to blame for it, why didn't he tellher—why didn't he explain? And he had gone away without looking at her.He had left her for the first time since they were married withoutkissing her! She put her head down on the desk and sobbed; it seemed asif her heart would break. Perhaps he was angry, and wouldn't come back,not for ever so long.

How cruel to say that she did not sympathize with her husband! How couldhe be angry with her for her natural anxiety about her old friend! He wasunjust. There must be something wrong in these schemes, these greatoperations that made so many confiding people suffer. Was everybodygrasping and selfish? She got up and walked about the dear room, whichrecalled to her only the sweetest memories; she wandered aimlessly aboutthe lower part of the house. She was wretchedly unhappy. Was her husbandcapable of such conduct? Would he cease to love her for what she haddone—for what she must do? How lovely this home was! Everything spoke ofhis care, his tenderness, his quickness to anticipate her slightest wishor whim. It had been all created for her. She looked listlessly at thepictures, the painted ceiling, where the loves garlanded with flowerschased each other; she lifted and let drop wearily the rich hangings. Hehad said that it was all hers. How pretty was this vista through theluxurious rooms down to the green and sunny conservatory. And she shrankinstinctively from it all. Was it hers? No; it was his. And was she onlya part of it? Was she his? How cold his look as he went away!

What is this love, this divine passion, of which we hear so much? Is it,then, such a discerner of right and wrong? Is it better than anythingelse? Does it take the place of duty, of conscience? And yet what anunbearable desert, what a den of wild beasts it would be, this world,without love, the passionate, all-surrendering love of the man and thewoman!

In the chambers, in her own apartments, into which she dragged her steps,it was worse than below. Everything here was personal. Mrs. Fairchild hadsaid that it was too rich, too luxurious; but her husband would have itso. Nothing was too costly, too good, for the woman he loved. How happyshe had been in this boudoir, this room, her very own, with her books,the souvenirs of all her happy life!

It seemed alien now, external, unsympathetic. Here, least of all places,could she escape from herself, from her hateful thoughts. It was a chillyday, and a bright fire crackled on the hearth. The square was almostdeserted, though the sun illuminated it, and showed all the delicatetracery of the branches and twigs. It was a December sun. Her easy-chairwas drawn to the fire and her book-stand by it, with the novel turneddown that she had been reading the night before. She sat down and took upthe book. She had lost her interest in the characters. Fiction! Whatstuff it was compared to the reality of her own life! No, it wasimpossible. She must do something. She went to her dressing-room andselected a street dress. She took pleasure in putting on the plainestcostume she could find, rejecting every ornament, everything but thenecessary and the simple. She wanted to get back to herself. Her maidappeared in response to the bell.

"I am going out, Marie."

"Will madame have the carriage?"

"No, I will walk; I need exercise. Tell Jackson not to serve lunch."

Yes, she would walk; for it was his carriage, after all.

It was after mid-day. In the keen air and the bright sunshine the streetswere brilliant. Margaret walked on up the avenue. How gay was the city,what a zest of life in the animated scene! The throng increased as sheapproached Twenty-third Street. In the place where three or four currentsmeet there was the usual jam of carriages, furniture wagons, carts, cars,and hurried, timid, half-bewildered passengers trying to make their waythrough it. It was all such a whirl and confusion. A policeman aidedMargaret to gain the side of the square. Children were playing there;white-capped maids were pushing about baby-carriages; the sparrowschattered and fought with as much vivacity as if they were natives of thecity instead of foreigners in possession. It seemed all so empty andunreal. What was she, one woman with an aching heart, in the midst of itall? What had she done? How could she have acted otherwise? Was he stillangry with her? The city was so vast and cruel. On the avenue again therewas the same unceasing roar of carts and carriages; business, pleasure,fashion, idleness, the stream always went by. From one and anothercarriage Margaret received a bow, a cool nod, or a smile of greeting.Perhaps the occupants wondered to see her on foot and alone. What did itmatter? How heartless it all was! what an empty pageant! If he wasalienated, there was nothing. And yet she was right. For a moment shethought of the Arbusers. She thought of Carmen. She must see somebody.No, she couldn't talk. She couldn't trust herself. She must bear italone.

And how weary it was, walking, walking, with such a burden! House afterhouse, street after street, closed doors, repellant fronts, staring ather. Suppose she were poor and hungry, a woman wandering forlorn, howstony and pitiless these insolent mansions! And was she not burdened andfriendless and forlorn! Tired, she reached at last, and with no purpose,the great white cathedral. The door was open. In all this street ofchurches and palaces there was no other door open. Perhaps here for amoment she could find shelter from the world, a quiet corner where shecould rest and think and pray.

She entered. It was almost empty, but down the vista of the great columnshospitable lights gleamed, and here and there a man or a woman—morewomen than men—was kneeling in the great aisle, before a picture, at theside of a confessional, at the steps of the altar. How hushed and calmand sweet it was! She crept into a pew in a side aisle in the shelter ofa pillar; and sat down. Presently, in the far apse, an organ began toplay, its notes stealing softly out through the great spaces like abenediction. She fancied that the saints, the glorified martyrs in thepainted windows illumined by the sunlight, could feel, could hear, weretouched by human sympathy in their beatitude. There was peace here at anyrate, and perhaps strength. What a dizzy whirl it all was in which shehad been borne along! The tones of the organ rose fuller and fuller, andnow at the side entrances came pouring in children, the boys on one side,the girls on another-school children with their books and satchels, thepoor children of the parish, long lines of girls and of boys, marshaledby priests and nuns, streaming in—in frolicsome mood, and filling allthe pews of the nave at the front. They had their books out, theirsinging-books; at a signal they all stood up; a young priest with hisbaton stepped into the centre aisle; he waved his stick, Margaret heardhis sweet tenor voice, and then the whole chorus of children's voicesrising and filling all the house with the innocent concord, but alwaysabove all the penetrating, soaring notes of the priest-strong, clear,persuading. Was it not almost angelic there at the moment? And howinspired the beautiful face of the singer leading the children!

Ah, me! it is not all of the world worldly, then. I don't know that thesinging was very good: it was not classical, I fear; not a voice, maybe,that priest's, not a chorus, probably, that, for the Metropolitan. I hearthe organ is played better elsewhere. Song after song, chorus afterchorus, repeated, stopped, begun again: it was only drilling the littleurchins of the parochial schools—little ragamuffins, I dare say, many ofthem. What was there in this to touch a woman of fashion, sitting therecrying in her corner? Was it because they were children's voices, andinnocent? Margaret did not care to check her tears. She was thinking ofher old home, of her own childhood, nay, of her girlhood—it was not solong ago—of her ideals then, of her notion of the world and what itwould bring her, of the dear, affectionate life, the simple life, theschool, the little church, her room in the cottage—the chamber wherefirst the realization of love came to her with the odors of May. Was itgone, that life?—gone or going out of her heart? And—great heavens!—if her husband should be cold to her! Was she very worldly? Would helove her if she were as unworldly as she once was? Why should thischildish singing raise these contrasts, and put her at odds so with herown life? For a moment I doubt not this dear girl saw herself as we werebeginning to see her. Who says that the rich and the prosperous and thesuccessful do not need pity?

Was this a comforting hour, do you think, for Margaret in the cathedral?Did she get any strength, I wonder? When the singing was over and theorgan ceased, and the children had filed out, she stole away also,wearily and humbly enough, and took the stage down the avenue. It wasnear the dinner-hour, and Henderson, if he came, would be at home anymoment. It seemed as if she could not wait—only to see him!

XVIII

Do you suppose that Henderson had never spoken impatiently and sharply tohis wife before, that Margaret had never resented it and replied withspirit, and been hurt and grieved, and that there had never beenreconciliations? In writing any biography there are some things that aretaken for granted with an intelligent public. Are men always gentle andconsiderate, and women always even-tempered and consistent, simply byvirtue of a few words said to the priest?

But this was a more serious affair. Margaret waited in a tumult ofemotion. She felt that she would die if she did not see him soon, and shedreaded his coming. A horrible suspicion had entered her mind thatrespect for her husband, confidence in him, might be lowered, and a morehorrible doubt that she might lose his love. That she could not bear. Andwas Henderson unconscious of all this? I dare say that in the perplexingexcitement of the day he did recall for a moment with a keen thrust ofregret the scene of the morning-his wife standing there flushed, wounded,indignant. "I might have turned back, and taken her in my arms, and toldher it was all right," he thought. He wished he had done so. But whatnonsense it was to think that she could be seriously troubled! Besides,he couldn't have women interfering with him every moment.

How inconsiderate men are! They drop a word or a phrase—they do not knowhow cruel it is—or give a look—they do not know how cold it is—and aregone without a second thought about it; but it sinks into the woman'sheart and rankles there. For the instant it is like a mortal blow, ithurts so, and in the brooding spirit it is exaggerated into a hopelessdisaster. The wound will heal with a kind word, with kisses. Yes, butnever, never without a little scar. But woe to the woman's love when shebecomes insensible to these little stabs!

Henderson hurried home, then, more eagerly than usual, with reparation inhis heart, but still with no conception of the seriousness of the breach.Margaret heard the key in the door, heard his hasty step in the hall,heard him call, as he always did on entering, "Margaret! where isMargaret?" and she, sitting there in the deep window looking on thesquare, longed to run to him, as usual also, and be lifted up in hisstrong arms; but she could not stir. Only when he found her did she riseup with a wistful look and a faint smile. "Have you had a good day,child?" And he kissed her. But her kiss was on her lips only, for herheart was heavy.

"Dinner will be served as soon as you dress," she said. What a greetingwas this! Who says that a woman cannot be as cruel as a man? The dinnerwas not very cheerful, though Margaret did her best not to appearconstrained, and Henderson rattled on about the events of the day. It hadbeen a deuce of a day, but it was coming right; he felt sure that theupper court would dissolve the injunction; the best counsel said so; andthe criminal proceedings—"Had there been criminal proceedings?" askedMargaret, with a stricture at her heart—had broken down completely,hadn't a leg to stand on, never had, were only begun to bluff thecompany. It was a purely malicious prosecution. And Henderson did notthink it necessary to tell Margaret that only Uncle Jerry's dexterity hadspared both of them the experience of a night in the Ludlow Street jail.

"Come," said Henderson—"come into the library. I have something to tellyou." He put his arm round her as they walked, and seating himself in hischair by his desk in front of the fire, he tried to draw Margaret to siton his knee.

"No; I'll sit here, so that I can see you," she said, composed andunyielding.

He took out his pocket-book, selected a slip of paper, and laid it on thetable before him. "There, that is a check for seven hundred dollars. Ilooked in the books. That is the interest for a year on the Fletcherbonds. Might as well make it an even year; it will be that soon."

"Do you mean to say—" asked Margaret, leaning forward.

"Yes; to brighten up the Christmas up there a little."

"—that you are going to send that to Mrs. Fletcher?" Margaret hadrisen.

"Oh, no; that wouldn't do. I cannot send it, nor know anything about it.It would raise the—well, it would—if the other bondholders knewanything about it. But you can change that for your check, and nobody thewiser."

"Oh, Rodney!" She was on his knee now. He was good, after all. Her headwas on his shoulder, and she was crying a little. "I've been so unhappy,so unhappy, all day! And I can send that?" She sprang up. "I'll do itthis minute—I'll run and get my check-book!" But before she reached thedoor she turned back, and came and stood by him and kissed him again andagain, and tumbled up his hair, and looked at him. There is, after all,nothing in the world like a woman.

"Time enough in the morning," said Henderson, detaining her. "I want totell you all about it."

What he told her was, in fact, the case as it had been presented by hislawyers, and it seemed a very large, a constitutional, kind of case. "Ofcourse," he said, "in the rivalry and competition of business somebodymust go to the wall, and in a great scheme of development andreorganization of the transportation of a region as big as an empire someindividual interests will suffer. You can't help these changes. I'm sorryfor some of them—very sorry; but nothing would ever be done if we waitedto consider every little interest. And that the men who create thesegreat works, and organize these schemes for the benefit of the wholepublic, shouldn't make anything by their superior enterprise and courageis all nonsense. The world is not made that way."

The explanation, I am bound to say, was one that half the world considersvalid; it was one that squeezed through the courts. And when it was done,and the whole thing had blown over, who cared? There were somebondholders who said that it was rascally, that they had been boldlyswindled. In the clubs, long after, you would hear it said that Hollowelland Henderson were awfully sharp, and hard to beat. It is a very badbusiness, said the Brandon parliament, and it just shows that the wholecountry is losing its moral sense, its capacity to judge what is rightand what is wrong.

I do not say that this explanation, the nature of which I have onlyindicated, would have satisfied the clear mind of Margaret a year or twobefore. But it was made by the man she loved, the man who had brought herout into a world that was full of sunlight and prosperity and satisfieddesire; and more and more, day by day, she saw the world through hiseyes, and accepted his estimate of the motives of people—and a lowestimate I fear it was. Who would not be rich if he could? Do you mean totell me that a man who is getting fat dividends out of a stock does notregard more leniently the manner in which that stock is manipulated thanone who does not own any of it? I dare say, if Carmen had heard thatexplanation, and seen Margaret's tearful, happy acceptance of it, shewould have shaken her pretty head and said, "They are getting too worldlyfor me."

In the morning the letter was despatched to Miss Forsythe, enclosing thecheck for Mrs. Fletcher—a joyful note, full of affection. "We cannotcome," Margaret wrote. "My husband cannot leave, and he does not want tospare me"—the little hypocrite! he had told her that she could easily gofor a day "but we shall think of you dear ones all day, and I do hopethat now there will not be the least cloud on your Christmas."

It seems a great pity, in view of the scientific organization of society,that there are so many sensibilities unclassified and unprovided for inthe otherwise perfect machinery. Why should the beggar to whom you toss asilver dollar from your carriage feel a little grudge against you?Perhaps he wouldn't like to earn the dollar, but if it had beenaccompanied by a word of sympathy, his sensibility might have beensoothed by your recognition of human partnership in the goods of thisworld. People not paupers are all eager to take what is theirs of right;but anything in the semblance of charity is a bitter pill to swallowuntil self-respect is a little broken down. Probably the resentment liesin the recognition of the truth that it is much easier to be charitablethan to be just. If Margaret had seen the effect produced by her lettershe might have thought of this; she might have gone further, andreflected upon what would have been her own state of mind two yearsearlier if she had received such a letter. Miss Forsythe read it with avery heavy heart. She hesitated about showing it to Mrs. Fletcher, andwhen she did, and gave her the check, it was with a sense of shame.

"The insolence of the thing!" cried Mrs. Fletcher, as soon as shecomprehended it.

"Not insolence," pleaded Miss Forsythe, softly; "it is out of thekindness of her heart. She would be dreadfully wounded to know that youtook it so."

"Well," said Mrs. Fletcher, hotly, "I like that kind of sensibility. Doesshe think I have no feeling? Does she think I would take from her as acharity what her husband knows is mine by right?"

"Perhaps her husband—"

"No," Mrs. Fletcher interrupted. "Why didn't he send it, then? why didn'tthe company send it? They owe it. I'm not a pauper. And all the otherbondholders who need the money as much as I do! I'm not saying that ifthe company sent it I should refuse it because the others had beentreated unjustly; but to take it as a favor, like a beggar!"

"Of course you cannot take it from Margaret," said Miss Forsythe sadly.

"How dreadful it is!"

Mrs. Fletcher would have shared her last crust with Miss Forsythe, and ifher own fortune were absolutely lost, she would not hesitate to acceptthe shelter of her present home, using her energies to add to theirlimited income, serving and being served in all love and trust. But thisis different from taking a bounty from the rich.

The check had to go back. Even my wife, who saw no insolence inMargaret's attempt, applauded Mrs. Fletcher's spirit. She told MissForsythe that if things did not mend they might get a few little pupilsfor Mrs. Fletcher from the neighborhood, and Miss Forsythe knew that shewas thinking that her own boy might have been one of them if he hadlived. Mr. Morgan was a little satirical, as usual. He thought it wouldbe a pity to check Margaret's growing notion that there was no wrong thatmoney could not heal a remark that my wife thought unjust to the girl.Mrs. Fletcher was for re-enclosing the check without a word of comment,but that Miss Forsythe would not do.

"My dearest Margaret," she wrote, "I know the kindness of heart thatmoved you to do this, and I love you more than ever, and am crying as Ithink of it. But you must see yourself, when you reflect, that Mrs.Fletcher could not take this from you. Her self-respect would not permitit. Somebody has done a great wrong, and only those who have done it canundo it. I don't know much about such things, my dear, and I don'tbelieve all that the newspapers have been saying, but there would be noneed for charity if there had not been dishonesty somewhere. I cannothelp thinking that. We do not blame you. And you must not take it toheart that I am compelled to send this back. I understand why you sentit, and you must try to understand why it cannot be kept."

There was more of this sort in the letter. It was full of a kind ofsorrowful yearning, as if there was fear that Margaret's love wereslipping away and all the old relations were being broken up, but yet ithad in it a certain moral condemnation that the New England spinstercould not conceal. Softened as it was by affectionate words, and all theloving messages of the season, it was like a slap in the face toMargaret. She read it in the first place with intense mortification, andthen with indignation. This was the way her loving spirit was flung backupon her! They did not blame her! They blamed her husband, then. Theycondemned him. It was his generosity that was spurned.

Is there a particular moment when we choose our path in life, when wetake the right or the left? At this instant, when Margaret arose with thecrumpled letter in her hand, and marched towards her husband's library,did she choose, or had she been choosing for the two years past, and wasthis only a publication of her election? Why had she secretly been alittle relieved from restraint when her Brandon visit ended in thespring? They were against her husband; they disapproved of him, that wasclear. Was it not a wife's duty to stand by her husband? She wasindignant with the Brandon scrupulousness; it chafed her.. Was thissimply because she loved her husband, or was this indignation a littledue also to her liking for the world which so fell in with herinclinations? The motives in life are so mixed that it seems impossiblewholly to condemn or wholly to approve. If Margaret's destiny had beenunited with such a man as John Lyon, what would have been her discernmentin such a case as this? It is such a pity that for most people there isonly one chance in life.

She laid the letter and the check upon her husband's desk. He read itwith a slight frown, which changed to a smile of amusem*nt as he lookedup and saw Margaret's excitement.

"Well, it was a miss-go. Those folks up there are too good for thisworld. You'd better send it to the hospital."

"But you see that they say they do not blame me," Margaret said, withwarmth.

"Oh, I can stand it. People usually don't try to hurt my feelings thatway. Don't mind it, child. They will come to their senses, and see whatnonsense it all is."

Yes, it was nonsense. And how generous and kind at heart her husband was!In his skillful making little of it she was very much comforted, and atthe same time drawn into more perfect sympathy with him. She was glad shewas not going to Brandon for Christmas; she would not submit herself toits censorship. The note of acknowledgment she wrote to her aunt wasshort and almost formal. She was very sorry they looked at the matter inthat way. She thought she was doing right, and they might blame her ornot, but her aunt would see that she could not permit any distinction tobe set up between her and her husband, etc.

Was this little note a severance of her present from her old life? I donot suppose she regarded it so. If she had fully realized that it was astep in that direction, would she have penned it with so little regret asshe felt? Or did she think that circ*mstances and not her own choice wereresponsible for her state of feeling? She was mortified, as has beensaid, but she wrote with more indignation than pain.

A year ago Carmen would have been the last person to whom Margaret wouldhave spoken about a family affair of this kind. Nor would she have doneso now, notwithstanding the intimacy established at Newport, if Carmenhad not happened in that day, when Margaret was still hurt and excited,and skillfully and most sympathetically extracted from her the cause ofthe mood she found her in. But even with all these allowances, thatMargaret should confide such a matter to Carmen was the most startlingsign of the change that had taken place in her.

"Well," said this wise person, after she had wormed out the whole story,and expressed her profound sympathy, and then fallen into an attitude ofdeep reflection—"well, I wish I could cast my bread upon the waters inthat way. What are you going to do with the money?"

"I've sent it to the hospital."

"What extravagance! And did you tell your aunt that?"

"Of course not."

"Why not? I couldn't have resisted such a righteous chance of making herfeel bad."

"But I don't want to make her feel bad."

"Just a little? You will never convince people that you are unworldlythis way. Even Uncle Jerry wouldn't do that."

"You and Uncle Jerry are very much alike," cried Margaret, laughing inspite of herself—"both of you as bad as you can be."

"But, dear, we don't pretend, do we?" asked Carmen, innocently.

To some of us at Brandon, Margaret's letter was scarcely a surprise,though it emphasized a divergence we had been conscious of. But with MissForsythe it was far otherwise. The coolness of Margaret's tone filled herwith alarm; it was the premonition of a future which she did not dare toface.

There was a passage in the letter which she did not show; not that it wasunfeeling, she told my wife afterwards, but that it exhibited aworldly-mindedness that she could not have conceived of in Margaret. Shecould bear separation from the girl on whom she had bestowed hertenderest affection, that she had schooled herself to expect upon hermarriage—that, indeed, was only a part of her life of willingself-sacrifice—their paths must lie apart, and she could hope to seelittle of her. But what she could not bear was the separation in spirit,the wrenching apart of sympathy, the loss of her heart, and the thoughtof her going farther and farther away into that world whose cynical andmaterialistic view of life made her shudder. I think there are fewtragedies in life comparable to this to a sensitive, trusting soul—notdeath itself, with its gracious healing and oblivion and pathos. Familyquarrels have something sustaining in them, something of a sense of wrongand even indignation to keep up the spirits. There was no family quarrelhere, no indignation, just simple, helpless grief and sense of loss. Inone sense it seemed to the gentle spinster that her own life was ended,she had lived so in this girl—ever since she came to her a child, inlong curls and short frocks, the sweetest, most trustful, mischievous,affectionate thing. These two then never had had any secrets, never anypleasure, never any griefs they did not share. She had seen the child'smind unfold, the girl's grace and intelligence, the woman's character.Oh, Margaret, she cried, to herself, if you only knew what you are to me!

Margaret's little chamber in the cottage was always kept ready for her,much in the condition she had left it. She might come back at any time,and be a girl again. Here were many of the things which she hadcherished; indeed everything in the room spoke of the simple days of hermaidenhood. It was here that Miss Forsythe sat in her loneliness themorning after she received the letter, by the window with the muslincurtain, looking out through the shrubbery to the blue hills. She must behere; she could stay nowhere else in the house, for here the littleMargaret came back to her. Ah, and when she turned, would she hear thequick steps and see the smiling face, and would she put back the tangledhair and lift her up and kiss her? There in that closet still hungarticles of her clothing-dresses that had been laid aside when she becamea woman—kept with the sacred sentiment of New England thrift. How eachone, as Miss Forsythe took them down, recalled the girl! In the innercloset was a pile of paper boxes. I do not know what impulse it was thatled the heavy-hearted woman to take them down one by one, and indulge hergrief in the memories enshrined in them. In one was a little bonnet, aspring bonnet; Margaret had worn it on the Easter Sunday when she tookher first communion. The little thing was out of fashion now; the ribbonswere all faded, but the spray of moss rose-buds on the side was almostas fresh as ever. How well she remembered it, and the girl's delight inthe nodding roses!

When Mrs. Fletcher had called again and again, with no response, andfinally opened the door and peeped in, there the spinster sat by thewindow, the pitiful little bonnet in her hand, and the tears rolling downher cheeks. God help her!

XIX

The medical faculty are of the opinion that a sprain is often worse thana broken limb; a purely scientific, view of the matter, in which thepatient usually does not coincide. Well-bred people shrink from thevulgarity of violence, and avoid the publicity of any open rupture indomestic and social relations. And yet, perhaps, a lively quarrel wouldbe less lamentable than the withering away of friendship whileappearances are kept up. Nothing, indeed, is more pitiable than thegradual drifting apart of people who have been dear to each other—aseverance produced by change of views and of principle, and thesubstitution of indifference for sympathy. This disintegration is certainto take the spring and taste out of life, and commonly to habituate oneto a lower view of human nature.

There was no rupture between the Hendersons and the Brandon circle, butthere was little intercourse of the kind that had existed before. Therewas with us a profound sense of loss and sorrow, due partly to thegrowing knowledge, not pleasing to our vanity, that Margaret could get onvery well without us, that we were not necessary to her life. MissForsythe recovered promptly her cheerful serenity, but not the elasticityof hope; she was irretrievably hurt; it was as if life was now to beendured. That Margaret herself was apparently unconscious of this, andthat it did not affect much her own enjoyment, made it the harder tobear. The absolute truth probably was that she regretted it, and hadmoments of sentimental unhappiness; but there is great compensation forsuch loss in the feeling of freedom to pursue a career that is more andmore agreeable. And I had to confess, when occasionally I saw Margaretduring that winter, that she did not need us. Why should she? Did not thecity offer her everything that she desired? And where in the world arebeauty, and gayety with a touch of daring, and a magnificentestablishment better appreciated? I do not know what criterion newspapernotoriety is of social prestige, but Mrs. Rodney Henderson's movementswere as faithfully chronicled as if she had been a visiting princess oran actress of eccentric proclivities. Her name appeared as patroness ofall the charities, the balls, the soirees, musical and literary, and ifit did not appear in a list of the persons at any entertainment, onemight suspect that the affair lacked the cachet of the best society. Isuppose the final test of one's importance is to have all the details ofone's wardrobe spread before the public. Judged by this, Margaret'scareer in New York was phenomenal. Even our interested household couldnot follow her in all the changing splendor of her raiment. In time evenMiss Forsythe ceased to read all these details, but she cut them out,deposited them with other relics in a sort of mortuary box of the childand the maiden. I used to wonder if, in the Brandon attitude of mind atthis period, there were not just a little envy of such uncloudedprosperity. It is so much easier to forgive a failure than a success.

In the spring the Hendersons went abroad. The resolution to go may havebeen sudden, for Margaret wrote of it briefly, and had not time to run upand say good-by. The newspapers said that the trip was taken on accountof Mrs. Henderson's health; that it was because Henderson needed restfrom overwork; that he found it convenient to be away for a time, pendingthe settlement of certain complications. There were ugly stories afloat,but they were put in so many forms, and followed by so many differentsorts of denial, and so much importance was attached to every wordHenderson uttered, and every step he took, that the general impression ofhis far-reaching sagacity and Napoleonic command of fortune was immenselyraised. Nothing is more significant of our progress than the good-humoreddeference of the world to this sort of success. It is said that theattraction of gravitation lessens according to the distance from theearth, and there seems to be a region of aerial freedom, if one canattain it, where the moral forces cease to be operative.

They remained in Europe a year, although Mr. Henderson in the interimmade two or three hasty trips to this country, always, so far as it wasmade public, upon errands of great importance, and in connection withnames of well-known foreign capitalists and enterprises of dignity.Margaret wrote seldom, but always with evident enjoyment of herexperiences, which were mainly social, for wherever they went theycommanded the consideration that is accorded to fortune. What mostimpressed me in these hasty notes was that the woman was so littleinterested in the persons and places which in the old days she expressedsuch a lively desire to see. If she saw them at all, it was from adifferent point of view than that she formerly had. She did indeedexpress her admiration of some charming literary friends of ours inLondon, to whom I had written to call on her—people in very moderatecirc*mstances, I am ashamed to say—but she had not time to see much ofthem. She and her husband had spent a couple of days at Chisholm—delightful days. Of the earl she had literally nothing to say, exceptthat he was very kind, and that his family received them with the mostengaging and simple cordiality. "It makes me laugh," she wrote fromChisholm, "when I think what we considered fine at Lenox and Newport.I've got some ideas for our new house." A note came from "John Lyon" toMiss Forsythe, expressing the great pleasure it was to return, even in sopoor a way, the hospitality he had received at Brandon. I did not see it,but Miss Forsythe said it was a sad little note.

In Paris Margaret was ill—very ill; and this misfortune caused for atime a revival of all the old affection, in sympathy with adisappointment which awoke in our womankind all the tenderness of theirnatures. She was indeed a little delicate for some time, but all ourapprehensions were relieved by the reports from Rome of a succession ofgayeties little interfered with by archaeological studies. They returnedin June. Of the year abroad there was nothing to chronicle, and therewould be nothing to note except that when Margaret passed a day with uson her return, we felt, as never before, that our interests in life weremore and more divergent.

How could it be otherwise? There were so many topics of conversation thatwe had to avoid. Even light remarks on current news, comments that weused to make freely on the conduct of conspicuous persons, now carriedcondemnation that took a personal color. The doubtful means of makingmoney, the pace of fashionable life, the wasteful prodigality of thetime, we instinctively shrank from speaking of before Margaret. Perhapswe did her injustice. She was never more gracious, never more anxious toplease. I fancied that there was at times something pathetic in herwistful desire for our affection and esteem. She was always a generousgirl, and I have no doubt she felt repelled at the quiet rejection of herwell-meant efforts to play the Lady Bountiful. There were moments duringher brief visit when her face was very sad, but no doubt her predominantfeeling escaped her in regard to the criticism quoted from somebody onJerry Hollowell's methods and motives. "People are becoming veryself-righteous," she said.

My wife said to me that she was reminded of the gentle observation ofCarmen Eschelle, "The people I cannot stand are those who pretend theyare not wicked." If one does not believe in anybody his cynicism hasusually a quality of contemptuous bitterness in it. One brought up asMargaret had been could not very well come to her present view of lifewithout a touch of this quality, but her disposition was so lovely—perhaps there is no moral quality in a good temper—that change ofprinciple could not much affect it. And then she was never more winning;perhaps her beauty had taken on a more refined quality from her illnessabroad; perhaps it was that indefinable knowledge of the world, which isrecognized as well in dress as in manner, which increased herattractiveness. This was quite apart from the fact that she was not sosympathetically companionable to us as she once was, and it was this veryattractiveness of the worldly sort, I fancied, that pained her aunt, andmarked the separateness of their sympathies.

How could it be otherwise than that our interests should diverge? It wasa very busy summer with the Hendersons. They were planning the New Yorkhouse, which had been one of the objects of Henderson's early ambition.The sea-air had been prescribed for Margaret, and Henderson had built asteam-yacht, the equipment and furnishing of which had been a prolificnewspaper topic. It was greatly admired by yachtsmen for the beauty ofits lines and its speed, and pages were written about its sumptuous andcomfortable interior. I never saw it, having little faith in the comfortof any structure that is not immovably reposeful, but from thedescriptions it was a boudoir afloat. In it short voyages were madeduring the summer all along the coast from New York to Maine, and thearrival and departure of the Henderson yacht was one of the telegraphicitems we always looked for. Carmen Eschelle was usually of the party onboard, sometimes the Misses Arbuser; it was always a gay company, and inwhatever harbor it dropped anchor there was a new impetus given to thesomewhat languid pleasure of the summer season. We read of the dinnersand lunches on board, the entertainments where there were wine anddancing and moonlight, and all that. I always thought of it as a fairysort of ship, sailing on summer seas, freighted with youth and beauty,and carrying pleasure and good-fortune wherever it went. What morepleasing spectacle than this in a world that has such a bad name for wantand misery?

Henderson was master of the situation. The sudden accumulation ofmillions of money is a mystery to most people. If Henderson had beenasked about it he would have said that he had not a dollar which he hadnot earned by hard work. None worked harder. If simple industry is avirtue, he would have been an example for Sunday-school children. Theobject of life being to make money, he would have been a perfect example.What an inspiration, indeed, for all poor boys were the names ofHollowell and Henderson, which were as familiar as the name of thePresident! There was much speculation as to the amount of Henderson'sfortune, and many wild estimates of it, but by common consent he was oneof the three or four great capitalists. The gauge of this was his power,and the amounts he could command in an emergency. There was a mystery inthe very fact that the amount he could command was unknown. I have saidthat his accumulation was sudden; it was probably so only in appearance.For a dozen years, by operations, various, secret, untiring, he had beenlaying the foundations for his success, and in the maturing of hisschemes it became apparent how vast his transactions had been. For yearshe had been known as a rising man, and suddenly he became an importantman. The telegraph, the newspapers, chronicled his every movement;whatever he said was construed like a Delphic oracle. The smile or thefrown of Jay Hawker himself had not a greater effect upon the market. TheSouthwest operation, which made so much noise in the courts, was merelyan incident. In the lives of many successful men there are suchincidents, which they do not care to have inquired into, turning-pointsthat one slides over in the subsequent gilded biography, or, as it iscalled, the nickel-plated biography. The uncomfortable A. and B.bondholders had been settled with and silenced, after a fashion. In theend, Mrs. Fletcher had received from the company nearly the full amountof her investment. I always thought this was due to Margaret, but I madeno inquiries. There were many people who had no confidence in Henderson,but generally his popularity was not much affected, and whatever was saidof him in private, his social position was almost as unchallenged as hisfinancial. It was a great point in his favor that he was very generous tohis family and his friends, and his public charities began to be talkedof. Nothing could have been more admirable than a paper which appearedabout this time in one of the leading magazines, written by a greatcapitalist during a strike in his "system," off the uses of wealth andthe responsibilities of rich men. It amused Henderson and Uncle Jerry,and Margaret sent it, marked, to her aunt. Uncle Jerry said it was verytimely, for at the moment there was a report that Hollowell and Hendersonhad obtained possession of one of the great steamship lines in connectionwith their trans-continental system. I thought at the time that I shouldlike to have heard Carmen's comments on the paper.

The continued friendly alliance of Rodney Henderson and Jerry Hollowellwas a marvel to the public, which expected to read any morning that theone had sold out the other, or unloaded in a sly deal. The Stock Exchangecouldn't understand it; it was so against all experience that it wasconsidered something outside of human nature. But the explanation wassimple enough. The two kept a sharp eye on each other, and, as UncleJerry would say, never dropped a stitch; but the simple fact was thatthey were necessary to each other, and there had been no opportunity whenthe one could handsomely swallow the other. So it was beautiful to seetheir accord, and the familiar understanding between them.

One day in Henderson's office—it was at the time they were arranging thesteamship "scoop" while they were waiting for the drafting of somepapers, Uncle Jerry suddenly asked:

"By the way, old man, what's all this about a quarter of a million for acolored college down South?"

"Oh, that's Mrs. Henderson's affair. They say it's the most magnificentcollege building south of Washington. It's big enough. I've seen the planof it. Henderson Hall, they are going to call it. I suggested MargaretHenderson Hall, but she wouldn't have it."

"What is it for?"

"One end of it is scientific, geological, chemical, electric, biological,and all that; and the other end is theological. Miss Eschelle says it'sto reconcile science and religion."

"She's a daisy-that girl. Seems to me, though, that you are educating thecolored brother all on top. I suppose, however, it wouldn't have been sophilanthropic to build a hall for a white college."

Henderson laughed. "You keep your eye on the religious sentiment of the
North, Uncle Jerry. I told Mrs. Henderson that we had gone long on the
colored brother a good while. She said this was nothing. We could endow a
Henderson University by-and-by in the Southwest, white as alabaster, and
I suppose we shall."

"Yes, probably we've got to do something in that region to keep 'emquiet. The public is a curious fish. It wants plenty of bait."

"And something to talk about," continued Henderson. "We are going downnext week to dedicate Henderson Hall. I couldn't get out of it."

"Oh, it will pay," said Uncle Jerry, as he turned again to business.

The trip was made in Henderson's private car; in fact, in a specialtrain, vestibuled; a neat baggage car with library and reading-room inone end, a dining-room car, a private car for invited guests, and his owncar—a luxurious structure, with drawing-room, sleeping-room, bath-room,and office for his telegrapher and type-writer. The whole was a mostcommodious house of one story on wheels. The cost of it would have builtand furnished an industrial school and workshop for a hundred negroes;but this train was, I dare say, a much more inspiring example of whatthey might attain by the higher education. There were half a dozen in theparty besides the Hendersons—Carmen, of course; Mr. Ponsonby, theEnglish attache; and Mrs. Laflamme, to matronize three New York youngladies. Margaret and Carmen had never been so far South before.

Is it not agreeable to have sweet charity silver shod? This sumptuousspecial train caused as much comment as the errand on which it went. Itscoming was telegraphed from station to station, and crowds everywherecollected to see it. Brisk reporters boarded it; the newspapers devotedcolumns to descriptions of it; editorials glorified it as a signalexample of the progress of the great republic, or moralized on it as asign of the luxurious decadence of morals; pointing to Carthage and Romeand Alexandria in withering sarcasm that made those places sink intoinsignificance as corrupters of the world. There were covert allusions toCleopatra ensconced in the silken hangings of the boudoir car, and onereporter went so far as to refer to the luxury of Capua and Baiae, totheir disparagement. All this, however, was felt to add to the glory ofthe republic, and it all increased the importance of Henderson. To hearthe exclamations, "That's he!" "That's him!" "That's Henderson!" was toMargaret in some degree a realization of her ambition; and Carmendeclared that it was for her a sweet thought to be identified withCleopatra.

So the Catachoobee University had its splendid new building—as great acontrast to the shanties from which its pupils came as is the Capitol atWashington to the huts of a third of its population. If the reader iscurious he may read in the local newspapers of the time glowing accountsof its "inaugural dedication"; but universities are so common in thiscountry that it has become a little wearisome to read of ceremonies ofthis sort. Mr. Henderson made a modest reply to the barefaced eulogy onhimself, which the president pronounced in the presence of six hundredyoung men and women of various colors and invited guests—a eulogy whichno one more thoroughly enjoyed than Carmen. I am sorry to say that sherefused to take the affair seriously.

"I felt for you, Mr. Henderson,"; she said, after the exercises wereover. "I blushed for you. I almost felt ashamed, after all the presidentsaid, that you had given so little."

"You seem, Miss Eschelle," remarked Mr. Ponsonby, "to be enthusiasticabout the education and elevation of the colored people."

"Yes, I am; I quite share Mr. Henderson's feeling about it. I'm for theelevation of everything."

"There is a capital chance for you," said Henderson; "the universitywants some scholarships."

"And I've half a mind to found one—the Eschelle Scholarship of Washingand Clear-starching. You ought to have seen my clothes that came back tothe car. Probably they were not done by your students. The things lookedas if they had been dragged through the Cat-a-what-do-you-call-it River,and ironed with a pine chip."

"Could you do them any better, with all your cultivation?" asked
Margaret.

"I think I could, if I was obliged to. But I couldn't get through thatuniversity, with all its ologies and laboratories and Greek and queerbottles and machines. You have neglected my education, Mr. Henderson."

"It is not too late to begin now; you might see if you could pass theexamination here. It is part of our plan gradually to elevate thewhites," said Henderson.

"Yes, I know; and did you see that some of the scholars had red hair andblue eyes, quite in the present style? And how nice the girls looked,"she rattled on; "and what a lot of intelligent faces, and how theykindled up when the president talked about the children of Israel in thewilderness forty years, and Caesar crossing the Rubicon! And you, sir"—she turned to the Englishman—"I've heard, were against all thisemancipation during the war."

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Ponsonby, "we never were against emancipation,and wanted the best side to win."

"You had a mighty queer way of showing it, then."

"Well, honestly, Miss Eschelle, do you think the negroes are any betteroff?"

"You'd better ask them. My opinion is that everybody should do what helikes in this world."

"Then what are you girding Mr. Henderson for about his university?"

"Because these philanthropists, like Mr. Henderson and Uncle JerryHollowell, are all building on top; putting on the frosting before thecake rises."

"Haven't you found out, Mr. Ponsonby," Margaret interrupted, "that ifthere were eight sides to a question, Miss Eschelle would be on every oneof them?"

"And right, too. There are eight sides to every question, and generallymore. I think the negro question has a hundred. But there is only oneside to Henderson Hall. It is a noble institution. I like to think aboutit, and Uncle Caesar Hollowell crossing the Rubicon in his theologicalseminary. It is all so beautiful!"

"You are a bad child," said Margaret. "We should have left you at home."

"No, not bad, dear; only confused with such a lot of good deeds in anaughty world."

That this junketing party was deeply interested in the cause of educationfor whites or blacks, no one would have gathered from the conversation.Margaret felt that Carmen had exactly hit the motives of this sort ofphilanthropy, and she was both amused and provoked by the girl's mockery.By force of old habit she defended, as well she might, these schools.

"You must have a high standard," she said. "You cannot have good lowerschools without good higher schools. And these colleges, which you thinkabove the colored people, will stimulate them and gradually raise thewhole mass. You cannot do anything until you educate teachers."

"So I have always heard," replied the incorrigible. "I have always been aphilanthropist about the negro till I came down here, and I intend to beagain when I go back."

Mrs. Laflamme was not a very eager apostle either, and the young ladiesdevoted themselves to the picturesque aspects of the population, withoutany concern for the moral problems. They all declared that they liked thenegro. But Margaret was not to be moved from her good-humor by any amountof badgering. She liked Henderson Hall; she was proud of theconsideration it brought her husband; she had a comfortable sense ofdoing something that was demanded by her opportunity. It is so difficultto analyze motives, and in Margaret's case so hard to define the changethat had taken place in her. That her heart was not enlisted in thisaffair, as it would have been a few years before, she herself knew.Insensibly she had come to look at the world, at men and women, throughher husband's eyes, to take the worldly view, which is not inconsistentwith much good feeling and easy-going charity. She also felt thenecessity—a necessity totally unknown to such a nature as Carmen's—ofmaking compensation, of compounding for her pleasures. Gradually she waslearning to play her husband's game in life, and to see no harm in it.What, then, is this thing we call conscience? Is it made of India-rubber?I once knew a clever Southern woman, who said that New England womenseemed to her all conscience—Southern women all soul and impulse. If itwere possible to generalize in this way, we might say that Carmen hadneither conscience nor soul, simply very clever reason. Uncle Jerry hadno more conscience than Carmen, but he had a great deal of naturalaffection. Henderson, with an abundance of good-nature, was simply a manof his time, troubled with no scruples that stood in the way of hissuccess. Margaret, with a finer nature than either of them, stifling herscruples in an atmosphere of worldly-mindedness, was likely to go furtherthan either of them. Even such a worldling as Carmen understood this. "Ido things," she said to Mrs. Laflamme—she made anybody her confidantwhen the fit was on her—"I do things because I don't care. Mrs.Henderson does the same, but she does care."

Margaret would be a sadder woman, but not a better woman, when the timecame that she did not care. She had come to the point of acceptingHenderson's methods of overreaching the world, and was tempering theresult with private liberality. Those were hypocrites who criticised him;those were envious who disparaged him; the sufficient ethics of the worldshe lived in was to be successful and be agreeable. And it is difficultto condemn a person who goes with the general opinion of his generation.Carmen was under no illusions about Henderson, or the methods and mannersof which she was a part. "Why pretend?" she said. "We are all badtogether, and I like it. Uncle Jerry is the easiest person to get onwith." I remember a delightful, wicked old baroness whom I met in myyouth stranded in Geneva on short allowance—European resorts are full ofsuch characters. "My dear," she said, "why shouldn't I renege? Whyshouldn't men cheat at cards? It's all in the game. Don't we all know weare trying to deceive each other and get the best of each other? Istopped pretending after Waterloo. Fighting for the peace of Europe! Bah!We are all fighting for what we can get."

So the Catachoobee Henderson Hall was dedicated, and Mr. Henderson gotgreat credit out of it.

"It's a noble deed, Mr. Henderson," Carmen remarked, when they were atdinner on the car the day of their departure. "But"—in an aside to herhost—"I advise the lambs in Wall Street to look alive at your nextdeal."

XX

We can get used to anything. Morgan says that even the New England summeris endurable when you learn to dress warmly enough. We come to endurepain and loss with equanimity; one thing and another drops out of ourlives-youth, for instance, and sometimes enthusiasm—and still we go onwith a good degree of enjoyment. I do not say that Miss Forsythe wasquite the same, or that a certain zest of life and spring had not goneout of the little Brandon neighborhood.

As the months and the years went by we saw less and less of Margaret—less and less, that is, in the old way. Her rare visits wereperfunctory, and gave little satisfaction to any of us; not that she wasungracious or unkindly, but simply because the things we valued in lifewere not the same. There was no doubt that any of us were welcome at theHendersons' when they were in the city, genuinely, though in an exteriorway, but gradually we almost ceased to keep up an intercourse which was alittle effort on both sides. Miss Forsythe came back from her infrequentcity visits weary and sad.

Was Margaret content? I suppose so. She was gay; she was admired; she wasalways on view in that semi-public world in which Henderson moved; sheattained a newspaper notoriety which many people envied. If she journeyedanywhere, if she tarried anywhere, if she had a slight illness, the factwas a matter of public concern. We knew where she worshiped; we knew thehouses she frequented, the charities she patronized, the fetes sheadorned, every new costume that her wearing made the fashion. Was shecontent? She could perhaps express no desire that an attempt was not madeto gratify it. But it seems impossible to get enough things enough money,enough pleasure. They had a magnificent place in Newport; it was notlarge enough; they were always adding to it—awning, a ballroom, somearchitectural whim or another. Margaret had a fancy for a cottage at BarHarbor, but they rarely went there. They had an interest in Tuxedo; theybelonged to an exclusive club on Jekyl Island. They passed one winteryachting among the islands in the eastern Mediterranean; a part ofanother sailing from one tropical paradise to another in the West Indies.If there was anything that money could not obtain, it seemed to be aplace where they could rest in serene peace with themselves.

I used to wonder whether Margaret was satisfied with her husband'sreputation. Perhaps she mistook the newspaper homage, the notoriety, forpublic respect. She saw his influence and his power. She saw that he wasfeared, and of course hated, by some—the unsuccessful—but she saw theterms he was on with his intimates, due to the fact that everybodyadmitted that whatever Henderson was in "a deal," privately he was adeuced good fellow.

Was this an ideal married life? Henderson's selfishness was fullydeveloped, and I could see that he was growing more and more hard. WouldMargaret not have felt it, if she also had not been growing hard, andaccustomed to regard the world in his unbelieving way? No, there wassharpness occasionally between them, tiffs and disagreements. He was agreat deal away from home, and she plunged into a life of her own, whichhad all the external signs of enjoyment. I doubt if he was ever veryselfish where she was concerned, and love can forgive almost any conductwhere there is personal indulgence. I had a glimpse of the real state ofthings in a roundabout way. Henderson loved his wife and was proud ofher, and he was not unkind, but he might have been a brute and tied herup to the bedpost, and she never would have shown by the least sign tothe world that she was not the most happy of wives.

When the Earl of Chisholm was in this country it was four years afterMargaret's marriage—we naturally saw a great deal of him. The youngfellow whom we liked so much had become a man, with a graver demeanor,and I thought a trace of permanent sadness in his face; perhaps it wasonly the responsibility of his position, or, as Morgan said, the modernweight that must press upon an earl who is conscientious. He was stillunmarried. The friendship between him and Miss Forsythe, which had beenkept alive by occasional correspondence, became more cordial andconfidential. In New York he had seen much of Margaret, not at all to hispeace of mind in many ways, though the generous fellow would have beenless hurt if he had not estimated at its real value the life she wasleading. It did not need Margaret's introduction for the earl to besought for by the novelty and pleasure loving society of the city; but hegot, as he confessed, small satisfaction out of the whirl of it, althoughwe knew that he met Mrs. Henderson everywhere, and in a manner assistedin her social triumphs. But he renewed his acquaintance with MissEschelle, and it was the prattle of this ingenuous creature that made himmore heavy-hearted than anything else.

"How nice it is of you, Mr. Lyon—may I call you so, to bring back theold relations?—to come here and revive the memory of the dear old dayswhen we were all innocent and happy! Dear me, I used to think I couldpatronize that little country girl from Brandon! I was so worldly—don'tyou remember?—and she was so good. And now she is such a splendid woman,it is difficult for the rest of us to keep pace with her. The nerve shehas, and the things she will do! I just envy her. I sometimes think shewill drive me into a convent. And don't you think she is more beautifulthan ever? Of course her face is a little careworn, but nobody makes upas she does; she was just ravishing the other night. Do you know, I thinkshe takes her husband too seriously."

"I trust she is happy," the earl had said.

"Why shouldn't she be?" Carmen asked in return. "She has everything shewants. They both have a little temper; life would be flat without that;she is a little irritable sometimes; she didn't use to be; and when theydon't agree they let each other alone for a little. I think she is ashappy as anybody can be who is married. Now you are shocked! Well, Idon't know any one who is more in love than she is, and that may behappiness. She is becoming exactly like Mr. Henderson. You couldn't askanything more than that."

If Margaret were really happy, the earl told Miss Forsythe, he was glad,but it was scarcely the career he would have thought would have suitedher.

Meantime, the great house was approaching completion. Henderson's palace,in the upper part of the city, had long been a topic for thecorrespondents of the country press. It occupied half a square. Manycritics were discontented with it because it did not occupy the wholesquare. Everybody was interested in having it the finest residence on thecontinent. Why didn't Henderson take the whole block of ground, build hispalace on three sides, with the offices and stables on the fourth, throwa glass roof over the vast interior court, plant it with tropical treesand plants, adorn it with flower-beds and fountains, and make a veritablewinter-garden, giving the inhabitants a temperate climate all the coldmonths? He might easily have summer in the centre of the city fromNovember to April. These rich people never know what to do with theirmoney. Such a place would give distinction to the city, and compelforeigners to recognize the high civilization of America. A great deal offault was found with Henderson privately for his parsimony in such asplendid opportunity.

Nevertheless it was already one of the sights of the town. Strangers weretaken to see it, as it rose in its simple grandeur. Local reporters madearticles on the progress of the interior whenever they could get anentrance. It was not ornate enough to please, generally, but those whoadmired the old Louvre liked the simplicity of its lines and the dignityof the elevations. They discovered the domestic note in its quietcharacter, and said that the architect had avoided the look of an"institution" in such a great mass. He was not afraid of dignified wallspace, and there was no nervous anxiety manifested, which would havebelittled it with trivial ornamentation.

Perhaps it was not an American structure, although one could find in itall the rare woods and stones of the continent. Great numbers of foreignworkmen were employed in its finishing and decoration. One could wanderin it from Pompeii to Japan, from India to Versailles, from Greece to theEngland of the Tudors, from the Alhambra to colonial Salem. It was socosmopolitan that a representative of almost any nationality, ancient ormodern, could have been suited in it with an apartment to his taste, andif the interior lacked unity it did not lack a display of variety thatappealed to the imagination. From time to time paragraphs appeared inEnglish, French, and Italian journals, regarding the work of this andthat famous artist who was designing a set of furniture or furnishing thedrawings of a room, or carving the paneling and statuary, or painting theceiling of an apartment in the great Palazzo Henderson in New York—Washington. The United American Workers (who were half foreigners bybirth) passed resolutions denouncing Henderson for employing foreignpauper labor, and organized more than one strike while the house wasbuilding. It was very unpatriotic and un-American to have anything donethat could not be done by a member of the Union. There was a firm ofexcellent stone-cutters which offered to make all the statuary needed inthe house, and set it up in good shape, and when the offer was declined,it memorialized Congress for protection.

Although Henderson gave what time he could spare to the design anderection of the building, it pleased him to call it Margaret's house, andto see the eagerness with which she entered into its embellishment. Therewas something humorous in the enlargement of her ideas since the dayswhen she had wondered at the magnificence of the Washington Square home,and modestly protested against its luxury. Her own boudoir was a cheapaffair compared with that in the new house.

"Don't you think, dear," she said, puzzling over the drawings, "that itwould better be all sandalwood? I hate mosaics. It looks so cheap to havelittle bits of precious woods stuck about."

"I should think so. But what do you do with the ebony?"

"Oh, the ebony and gold? That is the adjoining sitting-room—such apretty contrast."

"And the teak?"

"It has such a beautiful polish. That is another room. Carmen says thatwill be our sober room, where we go when we want to repent of things."

"Well, if you have any sandal-wood left over, you can work it into your
Boys' Lodging-house, you know."

"Don't be foolish! And then the ballroom, ninety feet long—it lookssmall on the paper. And do you think we'd better have those life-sizefigures all round, mediaeval statues, with the incandescents? Carmen saysshe would prefer a row of monks—something piquant about that in aballroom. I don't know that I like the figures, after all; they are toocrushing and heavy."

"It would make a good room for the Common Council," Henderson suggested."Wouldn't it be prettier hung with silken arras figured with a chain ofdancing-girls? Dear me, I don't know what to do. Rodney, you must putyour mind on it."

"Might line it with gold plate. I'll make arrangements so that you candraw on the Bank of England."

Margaret looked hurt. "But you told me, dear, not to spare anything—that we would have the finest house in the city. I'm sure I sha'n'tenjoy it unless you want it."

"Oh, I want it," resumed Henderson, good-humoredly. "Go ahead, littlewife. We shall pull through."

"Women beat me," Henderson confessed to Uncle Jerry next day. "They arethe most economical of beings and the most extravagant. I've got to lookround for an extra million somewhere today."

"Yes, there is this good thing about women," Uncle Jerry responded, witha twinkle in his eyes, "they share your riches just as cheerfully as theydo your poverty. I tell Maria that if I had the capacity for making moneythat she has for spending it I could assume the national debt."

To have the finest house in the city, or rather, in the Americannewspaper phrase, in the Western world, was a comprehensible ambition forHenderson, for it was a visible expression of his wealth and hiscultivated taste. But why Margaret should wish to exchange her dainty andluxurious home in Washington Square for the care of a vast establishmentbig enough for a royal court, my wife could not comprehend. But why not?To be the visible leader in her world, to be able to dispense ahospitality which should surpass anything heretofore seen, to be themistress and autocrat of an army of servants, with ample room for theirevolution, in a palace whose dimensions and splendor should awaken envyand astonishment—would this not be an attraction to a woman ofimagination and spirit?

Besides, they had outgrown the old house. There was no longer room forthe display, scarcely for the storage, of the works of art, the pictures,the curiosities, the books, that unlimited money and the opportunity offoreign travel had collected in all these years. "We must either build orsend our things to a warehouse," Henderson had long ago said. Among theobligations of wealth is the obligation of display. People of small meansdo not allow for the expansion of mind that goes along with theaccumulation of property. It was only natural that Margaret, who mighthave been contented with two rooms and a lean-to as the wife of a countryclergyman, should have felt cramped in her old house, which once seemed aworld too large for the country girl.

"I don't see how you could do with less room," Carmen said, with an airof profound conviction. They were looking about the house on its lastuninhabited day, directing the final disposition of its contents. ForCarmen, as well as for Margaret, the decoration and the furnishing of thehouse had been an occupation. The girl had the whim of playing the partof restrainer and economizer in everything; but Henderson used to say,when Margaret told him of Carmen's suggestions, that a little more of hereconomy would ruin him.

"Yes," Margaret admitted, "there does not seem to be anything that is notnecessary."

"Not a thing. When you think of it, two people require as much space as adozen; when you go beyond one room, you must go on. Of course youcouldn't get on without a reception-room, drawing-rooms, a conservatory,a music-room, a library, a morning-room, a breakfast-room, a smalldining-room and a state dining-room, Mr. Henderson's snuggery, with hisown library, a billiard-room, a picture-gallery—it is full already;you'll have to extend it or sell some pictures—your own suite and Mr.Henderson's suite, and the guest-rooms, and I forgot the theatre in theattic. I don't see but you have scrimped to the last degree."

"And yet there is room to move about," Margaret acknowledged, with agratified smile, as they wandered around. "Dear me, I used to think theStotts' house was a palace."

It was the height of the season before Lent. There had been one delay andanother, but at last all the workmen had been expelled, and Margaret wasmistress of her house. Cards for the house-warming had been out for twoweeks, and the event was near. She was in her own apartments this pale,wintry afternoon, putting the finishing touches to her toilet. Nothingseemed to suit. The maid found her in a very bad humor. "Remember," shehad said to her husband, when he ordered his brougham after breakfast,"sharp seven, we are to dine alone the first time." It lacked two hoursyet of dinner-time, but she was dressing for want of other occupation.

Was this then the summit of her ambition? She had indeed looked forwardto some such moment as this as one of exultation in the satisfaction ofall her wishes. She took up a book of apothegms that lay on the table,and opened by chance to this, "Unhappy are they whose desires are allratified." It was like a sting. Why should she think at this moment ofher girlhood; of the ideals indulged in during that quiet time; of heraunt's cheerful, tender, lonely life; of her rejection of Mr. Lyon? Shedid not love Mr. Lyon; she was not satisfied then. How narrow that littlelife in Brandon had been! She threw the book from her. She hated all thatrestraint and censoriousness. If her aunt could see her in all thissplendor, she would probably be sadder than ever. What right had she tosit there and mourn—as she knew her aunt did—and sigh over her career?What right had they to sit in judgment on her?

She went out from her room, down the great stairway, into the spacioushouse, pausing in the great hall to see opening vista after vista in themagnificent apartments. It was the first time that she had alone reallytaken the full meaning of it—had possessed it with the eye. It was hers.Wherever she went, all hers. No, she had desires yet. It should be filledwith life—it should be the most brilliant house in the world. Societyshould see, should acknowledge the leadership. Yes—as she glanced atherself in a drawing-room mirror—they should see that Henderson's wifewas capable of a success equal to his own, and she would stop the hatefulgossip about him. She set her foot firmly as she thought about it; shewould crush those people who had sneered at them as parvenu. She strayedinto the noble gallery. Some face there touched her, some landscapesoothed her. No, she said to herself, I will win them, I do not wanthateful strife.

Who knows what is in a woman? how many moods in a quarter of an hour, andwhich is the characteristic one? Was this the Margaret who had walkedwith Lyon that Sunday afternoon of the baptism, and had a heart full ofpain for the pitiful suffering of the world?

As she sat there she grew calmer. Her thoughts went away in a vision ofall the social possibilities of this wonderful house. From vaguelyadmiring what she looked at, she began to be critical; this and thatcould be changed to advantage; this shade of hanging was not harmonious;this light did not fall right. She smiled to think that her husbandthought it all done. How he would laugh to find that she was alreadyplanning to rearrange it! Hadn't she been satisfied for almosttwenty-four hours? That was a long time for a woman. Then she thought ofthe reception; of the guests; of what some of them would wear; how theywould look about; what they would say. She was already in that worldwhich was so shining and shifting and attractive. She did not hearHenderson come in until his arm was around her.

"Well, sweet, keeping house alone? I've had a jolly day; lucky as old Mr.
Luck."

"Have you?" she cried, springing up. "I'm so glad. Come, see the house."

"You look a little pale," he said, as they strolled out to theconservatory together.

"Just a little tired," she admitted. "Do you know, Rodney, I hated thishouse at five o'clock—positively hated it?"

"Why?"

"Oh, I don't know; I was thinking. But I liked it at half-past six. Ilove it now. I've got used to it, as if I had always lived here. Isn't itbeautiful everywhere? But I'm going to make some changes."

"A hanging garden on the roof?" Henderson asked, with meekness.

"That would be nice. No, not now. But to make over and take off the newlook. Everything looks so new."

"Well, we will try to live that down."

And so they wandered on, admiring, bantering, planning. Could EtienneDebree have seen his descendant at this moment he would have been morethan ever proud of his share in establishing the great republic, and ofhis appreciation of the promise of its beauty. What satisfies a woman'sheart is luxury, thought Henderson, in an admiring cynical moment.

They had come into his own den and library, and he stood looking at therows of his favorite collection shining in their new home. For all itsnewness it had a familiar look. He thought for a moment that he might bein his old bachelor quarters. Suddenly Margaret made a rush at him. Sheshook the great fellow. She feasted her eyes on him.

"What's got into you to look so splendid? Do you hear, go this instantand dress, and make yourself ten times as fascinating."

XXI

Live not unto yourselves! Can any one deny that this blessed sentiment isextending in modern life? Do we build houses for ourselves or for others?Do we make great entertainments for our own comfort? I do not know thatanybody regarded the erection of the Henderson palace as an altruisticperformance. The socialistic newspapers said that it was pureostentation. But had it not been all along in the minds of the buildersto ask all the world to see it, to share the delight of it? Is this aselfish spirit? When I stroll in the Park am I not pleased with theequipages, with the display of elegance upon which so much money has beenlavished for my enjoyment?

All the world was asked to the Henderson reception. The coming event wasthe talk of the town. I have now cuttings from the great journals,articles describing the house, more beautifully written than Gibbon'sstately periods about the luxury of later Rome. It makes one smile tohear that the day of fine writing is over. Everybody was eager to go;there was some plotting to obtain invitations by those who felt that theycould not afford to be omitted from the list that would be printed; bythose who did not know the Hendersons, and did not care to know them, butwho shared the general curiosity; and everybody vowed that he supposed hemust go, but he hated such a crush and jam as it was sure to be. Yet noone would have cared to go if it had not promised to be a crush. I saidthat all the world was asked, which is our way of saying that a thousandor two had been carefully selected from the million within reach.

Invitations came to Brandon, of course, for old times' sake. The Morganssaid that they preferred a private view; Miss Forsythe declared that shehadn't the heart to go; in short, Mr. and Mrs. Fairchild alone went torepresent the worldly element.

I am sorry to say that the reader must go to the files of the city pressfor an account of the night's festivity. The pen that has been used inportraying Margaret's career is entirely inadequate to it. There is ageneral impression that an American can do anything that he sets his handto, but it is not true; it is true only that he tries everything. Thereporter is born, as the poet is; it cannot be acquired—thatastonishing, irresponsible command of the English language; that warm,lyrical tone; that color, and bewildering metaphorical brilliancy; thatpicturesqueness; that use of words as the painter uses pigments, insplashes and blotches which are so effective; that touch of raillery andsarcasm and condescension; that gay enjoyment of reveling in theillimitable; that air of superior knowledge and style; that dash ofsentiment; that calm and somewhat haughty judgment.

I am always impressed at such an entertainment with the good-humor of the
American people, no matter what may be the annoyance and discomfort.

In all the push and thrust and confusion, amid the rending of trains, thetearing of lace, the general crushing of costumes, there was the merriestpersiflage, laughter, and chatter, and men and women entered into anddrew out of the fashionable wreck in the highest spirits. For even insuch a spacious mansion there were spots where currents met, and roomswhere there was a fight for mere breath. It would have been a tame affairwithout this struggle. And what an epitome of life it all was! There werethose who gave themselves up to admiration, who gushed with enthusiasm;there were those who had the weary air of surfeit with splendor of thissort; there were the bustling and volatile, who made facetious remarks,and treated the affair like a Fourth of July; and there were also groupsdark and haughty, like the Stotts, who held a little aloof, and coldlyadmitted that it was most successful; it lacked je ne sais quoi, but itwas in much better taste than they had expected. Is there something inthe very nature of a crowd to bring out the inherent vulgarity of thebest-bred people, so that some have doubted whether the highestcivilization will tolerate these crushing and hilarious assemblies?

At any rate, one could enjoy the general effect. There might be vulgarunits, and one caught notes of talk that disenchanted, but there were somany women of rare and stately beauty, of exquisite loveliness, of charmin manner and figure—so many men of fine presence, with such an air ofpower and manly prosperity and self-reliance—I doubt if any otherassembly in the world, undecorated by orders and uniforms, with no blazonof rank, would have a greater air of distinction. Looking over it from alanding in the great stairway that commanded vistas and ranges of thelofty, brilliant apartments, vivified by the throng, which seemedennobled by the spacious splendor in which it moved, one would bepardoned a feeling of national pride in the spectacle. I drew aside tolet a stately train of beauty and of fashion descend, and saw it sweepthrough the hall, and enter the drawing-rooms, until it was lost in a seaof shifting color. It was like a dream.

And the centre of all this charming plutocratic graciousness and beautywas Margaret—Margaret and her handsome husband. Where did the NewHampshire boy learn this simple dignity of bearing, this good-humoredcordiality without condescension, this easy air of the man of the world?Was this the railway wrecker, the insurance manipulator, the familiar ofUncle Jerry, the king of the lobby, the pride and the bugaboo of WallStreet? Margaret was regnant. And how charmingly she received her guests!How well I knew that half-imperious toss of the head, and the glance ofthose level, large gray eyes, softened instantly, on recognition, intothe sweetest smile of welcome playing about the dimple and the expressivemouth! What woman would not feel a little thrill of triumph? The worldwas at her feet. Why was it, I wonder, as I stood there watching thethrong which saluted this queenly woman of the world, in an hour ofsupreme social triumph, while the notes of the distant orchestra camesoftly on the air, and the overpowering perfume of banks of flowers andtropical plants—why was it that I thought of a fair, simple girl,stirred with noble ideals, eager for the intellectual life, tender,sympathetic, courageous? It was Margaret Debree—how often I had seen herthus!—sitting on her little veranda, swinging her chip hat by thestring, glowing from some errand in which her heart had played a muchmore important part than her purse. I caught the odor of the honeysucklethat climbed on the porch, and I heard the note of the robin that nestedthere.

"You seem to be in a brown study," said Carmen, who came up, leaning onthe arm of the Earl of Chisholm.

"I'm lost in admiration. You must make allowance, Miss Eschelle, for aperson from the country."

"Oh, we are all from the country. That is the beauty of it. There is Mr.Hollowell, used to drive a peddler's cart, or something of that sort, upin Maine, talking with Mr. Stott, whose father came in on the towpath ofthe Erie Canal. You don't dance? The earl has just been giving me a whirlin the ballroom, and I've been trying to make him understand aboutdemocracy."

"Yes," the earl rejoined; "Miss Eschelle has been interpreting to merepublican simplicity."

"And he cannot point out, Mr. Fairchild, why this is not as good as areception at St. James. I suppose it's his politeness."

"Indeed, it is all very charming. It must be a great thing to be thearchitect of your own fortune."

"Yes; we are all self-made," Carmen confessed.

"I am, and I get dreadfully tired of it sometimes. I have to read overthe Declaration and look at the map of the Western country at such times.A body has to have something to hold on to."

"Why, this seems pretty substantial," I said, wondering what the girl wasdriving at.

"Oh, yes; I suppose the world looks solid from a balloon. I heard one mansay to another just now, 'How long do you suppose Henderson will last?'Probably we shall all come down by the run together by-and-by."

"You seem to be on a high plane," I suggested.

"I guess it's the influence of the earl. But I am the most misunderstoodof women. What I really like is simplicity. Can you have that without thesocial traditions," she appealed to the earl, "such as you have inEngland?"

"I really cannot say," the earl replied, laughing. "I fancied there wassimplicity in Brandon; perhaps that was traditional."

"Oh, Brandon!" Carmen cried, "see what Brandon does when it gets achance. I assure your lordship that we used to be very simple people inNew York. Come, let us go and tell Mrs. Henderson how delightful it allis. I'm so sorry for her."

As I moved about afterwards with my wife we heard not many comments, aword here and there about Henderson's wonderful success, a remark aboutMargaret's beauty, some sympathy for her in such a wearisome ordeal—theworld is full of kindness—the house duly admired, and the ordinarycompliments paid; the people assembled were, as usual, absorbed in theirown affairs. From all we could gather, all those present were used toliving in a palace, and took all the splendor quite as a matter ofcourse. Was there no envy? Was there nothing said about the airs of acountry school-ma'am, the aplomb of an adventurer? Were there nocriticisms afterwards as the guests rolled home in their carriages,surfeited and exhausted? What would you have? Do you expect themillennium to begin in New York?

The newspapers said that it was the most brilliant affair the metropolishad ever seen. I have no doubt it was. And I do not judge, either, by thenewspaper estimates of the expense. I take the simple words addressed bythe earl to Margaret, when he said good-night, at their full value. Sheflushed with pleasure at his modest commendation. Perhaps it was to herthe seal of her night's triumph.

The house was opened. The world had seen it. The world had gone. If sleepdid not come that night to her tired head on the pillow, what wonder? Shehad a position in the great world. In imagination it opened wider andwider. Could not the infinite possibilities of it fill the hunger of anysoul?

The echoes of the Henderson reception continued long in the countrypress. Items multiplied as to the cost. It was said that the sum expendedin flowers alone, which withered in a night, would have endowed a ward ina charity hospital. Some wag said that the price of the supper would havechanged the result of the Presidential election. Views of the mansionwere given in the illustrated papers, and portraits of Mr. and Mrs.Henderson. In country villages, in remote farmhouses, this great socialevent was talked of, Henderson's wealth was the subject of conjecture,Margaret's toilet was an object of interest. It was a shining example ofsuccess. Preachers, whose sensational sermons are as widely read asdescriptions of great crimes, moralized on Henderson's career andHenderson's palace, and raised up everywhere an envied image of worldlyprosperity. When he first arrived in New York, with only fifty cents inhis pocket—so the story ran-and walked up Broadway and Fifth Avenue, hehad nearly been run over at the corner of Twenty-sixth Street by acarriage, the occupants of which, a lady and gentleman, had staredinsolently at the country youth. Never mind, said the lad to himself, theday will come when you will cringe to me. And the day did come when thegentleman begged Henderson to spare him in Wall Street, and his wifeintrigued for an invitation to Mrs. Henderson's ball. The reader knowsthere is not a word of truth in this. Alas! said the preacher, if he hadonly devoted his great talents to the service of the Good and the True!Behold how vain are all the triumphs of this world! see the result of theworship of Mammon! My friends, the age is materialized, a spirit ofworldliness is abroad; be vigilant, lest the deceitfulness of riches sendyour souls to perdition. And the plain country people thanked God forsuch a warning, and the country girl dreamed of Margaret's career, andthe country boy studied the ways of Henderson's success, and resolvedthat he, too, would seek his fortune in this bad metropolis.

The, Hendersons were important people. It was impossible that a knowledgeof their importance should not have a reflex influence upon Margaret.Could it be otherwise than that gradually the fineness of herdiscrimination should be dulled by the almost universal public consent inthe methods by which Henderson had achieved his position, and that intime she should come to regard adverse judgment as the result of envy?Henderson himself was under less illusion; the world was about what hehad taken it for, only a little worse—more gullible, and with lessprinciple. Carmen had mocked at Margaret's belief in Henderson. It iscertainly a pitiful outcome that Margaret, with her naturally believingnature, should in the end have had a less clear perception of what wasright and wrong than Henderson himself. Yet Henderson would not haveshrunk, any more than Carmen would, from any course necessary to hisends, while Margaret would have shrunk from many things; but in absoluteworldliness, in devotion to it, the time had come when Henderson feltthat his Puritan wife was no restraint upon him. It was this that brokegentle Miss Forsythe's heart when she came fully to realize it.

I said that the world was at Margaret's feet. Was it? How many worlds arethere, and does one ever, except by birth (in a republic), conquer themall? Truth to say, there were penetralia in New York society concerningwhich this successful woman was uneasy in her heart. There were peoplewho had accepted her invitations, to whose houses she had been, who had adozen ways of making her feel that she was not of them. These people—Isuppose that if two castaways landed naked on a desert island, one ofthem would instantly be the ancien regime—had spoken of Mrs. Hendersonand her ambition to the Earl of Chisholm in a way that pained him. Theygraciously assumed that he, as one of the elect, would understand them.It was therefore with a heavy heart that he came to say good-by toMargaret before his return.

I cannot imagine anything more uncomfortable for an old lover than ameeting of this sort; but I suppose the honest fellow could not resistthe inclination to see Margaret once more. I dare say she had a littleflutter of pride in receiving him, in her consciousness of the change inherself into a wider experience of the world. And she may have been alittle chagrined that he was not apparently more impressed by hersurroundings, nor noticed the change in herself, but met her upon theground of simple sincerity where they had once stood. What he tried tosee, what she felt he was trying to see, was not the beautiful womanabout whose charm and hospitality the town talked, but the girl he hadloved in the old days.

He talked a little, a very little, about himself and his work in England,and a great deal about what had interested him here on his second visit,the social drift, the politics, the organized charities; and as hetalked, Margaret was conscious how little the world in which she livedseemed to interest him; how little importance he attached to it. And shesaw, as in a momentary vision of herself, that the things that onceabsorbed her and stirred her sympathies were now measurably indifferentto her. Book after book which he casually mentioned, as showing the driftof the age, and profoundly affecting modern thought, she knew only byname. "I guess," said Carmen, afterwards, when Margaret spoke of theearl's conversation, "that he is one of those who are trying to live inthe spirit—what do they call it?—care for things of the mind."

"You are doing a noble work," he said, "in your Palace of Industry."

"Yes, it is very well managed," Margaret replied; "but it is uphill work,the poor are so ungrateful for charity."

"Perhaps nobody, Mrs. Henderson, likes to be treated as an object ofcharity."

"Well, work isn't what they want when we give it, and they'd rather livein the dirt than in clean apartments."

"Many of them don't know any better, and a good many of our poor resentcondescension."

"Yes," said Margaret, with warmth; "they are getting to demand things astheir right, and they are insolent. The last time I drove down in thatquarter I was insulted by their manner. What are you going to do withsuch people? One big fellow who was leaning against a lamp-post growled,'You'd better stay in your own palace, miss, and not come prying roundhere.' And a brazen girl cried out: 'Shut yer mouth, Dick; the lady's gotto have some pleasure. Don't yer see, she's a-slummin'?'"

"It's very hard, I know," said the earl; "perhaps we are all on the wrongtrack."

"Maybe. Mr. Henderson says that the world would get on better ifeverybody minded his own business."

"I wish it were possible," the earl remarked, with an air of finishingthe topic. "I have just been up to Brandon, Mrs. Henderson. I fear that Ihave seen the dear place for the last time."

"You don't mean that you are tired of America?"

"Not that. I shall never, even in thought, tire of Brandon."

"Yes, they are dear, good people."

"I thought Miss Forsythe—what a sweet, brave woman she is!—was lookingsad and weary."

"Oh, aunt won't do anything, or take an interest in anything. She juststays there. I've tried in vain to get her here. Do you know"—and sheturned upon the earl a look of the old playfulness—"she doesn't quiteapprove of me."

"Oh," he replied, hesitating a little—"I think, Mrs. Henderson, that herheart is bound up in you. It isn't for me to say that you haven't a truerfriend in the world."

"Yes, I know. If I'd only—" and she stopped, with a petulant look on herfair face—"well, it doesn't matter. She is a dear soul."

"I—suppose," said the earl, rising, "we shall see you again on the otherside?"

"Perhaps," with a smile. Could anything be more commonplace than such aparting? Good-by, I shall see you tomorrow or next year, or in the nextworld. Hail and farewell! That is the common experience. But, oh, thebitterness of it to many a soul!

It is quite possible that when the Earl of Chisholm said good-by, with anair of finality, Margaret felt that another part of her life was closed.He was not in any way an extraordinary person, he was not a very richpeer, probably with his modesty and conscientiousness, and devotion tothe ordinary duties of his station, he would never attain high rank inthe government. Yet no one could be long with him without apprehendingthat his life was on a high plane. It was with a little irritation thatMargaret recognized this, and remembered, with a twinge of conscience,that it was upon that plane that her life once traveled. The time hadbeen when the more important thing to her was the world of ideas, ofbooks, of intellectual life, of passionate sympathy with the fortunes ofhumanity, of deepest interest in all the new thoughts struck out by theleaders who studied the profound problems of life and destiny.

That peace of mind which is found only in the highest activity for thenoblest ends she once had, though she thought it then unrest andstriving—what Carmen, who was under no illusions about Henderson, orUncle Jerry, or the world of fashion, and had an intuitive perception ofcant that is sometimes denied to the children of light, called "takingpleasure in the things of the mind." To do Margaret justice, thereentered into her reflections no thought of the title and position of theEarl of Chisholm. They had never been alluring to her. If one could takeany satisfaction in this phase of her character, her worldiness waspurely American.

"I hardly know which I should prefer," Carmen was saying when they weretalking over the ball and the earl's departure, "to be an Englishcountess or the wife of an American millionaire."

"It might depend upon the man," replied Margaret, with a smile.

"The American," continued Carmen, not heeding this suggestion, "has thegreater opportunities, and is not hindered by traditions. If you were acountess you would have to act like a countess. If you are an Americanyou can act—like anything—you can do what you please. That is nicer.Now, an earl must do what an earl has always done. What could you do withsuch a husband? Mind! Yes, I know, dear, about things of the mind. First,you know, he will be a gentleman socialist (in the magazines), and maybea Christian socialist, or a Christian scientist, or something of thatsort, interested in the Mind Cure."

"I should think that would suit you. Last I knew, you were deep in the
Mind Cure."

"So I was. That was last week. Now I'm in the Faith Cure; I've found outabout both. The difference is, in the Mind Cure you don't require anyfaith; in the Faith Cure you don't require any mind. The Faith Cure justsuits me."

"So you put your faith in an American millionaire?"

"Yes, I think I should, until an American millionaire put faith in me.That might shake me. It is such a queer world. No, I'm in doubt. If youloved an earl he would stay an earl. If you loved an Americanmillionaire, ten to one he would fail."

Margaret did not escape the responsibility of her success. Who does? Mydear Charmian, who wrote the successful novel of last year, do you notalready repent your rash act? If you do not write a better novel thisyear, will not the public flout you and jeer you for a pretender? Did thepublic overpraise you at first? Its mistaken partiality becomes now yourpresumption. Last year the press said you were the rival of Hawthorne.This year it is, "that Miss Charmian who set herself up as a secondHawthorne." When the new house was opened, it might be said that sociallyMrs. Henderson had "arrived." Had she? When one enters on the path ofworldliness is there any resting-place? Is not eternal vigilance theprice of position?

Henderson was apparently on good terms with the world. Many envied him,many paid him the sincerest flattery, that of imitation. He was a king inthe street, great enterprises sought his aid, all the charities knockedat his door, his word could organize a syndicate or a trust, his nodcould smash a "corner." There were fabulous stories about his wealth,about his luck. This also was Margaret's world. Her ambition expanded init with his. The things he set his heart on she coveted. Alas! there isalways another round to the ladder.

Seeing the means by which he gained his ends, and the public condonationof them, would not his cynicism harden into utter unbelief in generalvirtue and goodness? I don't know that Henderson changed much, accentedas his grasping selfishness was on occasion; prosperity had not impairedthat indifferent good-fellowship and toleration which had early gainedhim popularity. His presence was nowhere a rebuke to whatever was goingon. He was always accessible, often jocular. The younger members in theclub said Henderson was a devilish good fellow, whatever people said. ThePresident of the United States used to send for him and consult him,because he wanted no office; he knew men, and it was a relief to talkwith a liberal rich man of so much bonhomie who wanted nothing.

And Margaret, what view of the world did all this give her? Did she comein contact with any one who had not his price, who was not going orwanting to go in the general current? Was it not natural that she shouldtake Henderson's view? Dear me, I am not preaching about her. We did notsee much of her in those days, and for one or two years of what I supposewas her greatest enjoyment of her social triumphs. So far as we heard,she was liked, admired, followed, envied. It could not be otherwise, forshe did not lose her beauty nor her charm, and she tried to please. Oncewhen I saw her in the city and we fell into talk—and the talk was gayenough and unconstrained—I was struck with a certain hardness of tone, alittle bitterness quite unlike her old self. It is a very hard thing tosay, and I did not say it even to my wife, but I had a painful impressionthat she was valuing people by the money they had, by the social positionthey had attained.

Was she content in that great world in which she moved? I had heardstories of slights, of stabs, of rebuffs, of spiteful remarks. Had shenot come to know how success even in social life is sometimes attained—the meannesses, the jealousies, the cringing? Even with all her moneyat command, did she not know that her position was at the price ofincessant effort? Because she had taken a bold step today, she must takea bolder one tomorrow—more display, more servants, some new invention ofluxury and extravagance. And seeing, as I say, the inside of this lifeand what it required, and how triumphs and notoriety were gained, was ita wonder that she gradually became in her gayety cynical, in herjudgments bitter?

I am not criticising her. What are we, who have had no opportunities, tosit in judgment on her! I believe that it is true that it was at hersolicitation that Henderson at last did endow a university in theSouthwest. I know that her name was on all the leading charities of thecity. I know that of all the patronesses of the charity ball her costumewas the most exquisite, and her liberality was most spoken of. I knowthat in the most fashionable house of worship (the newspapers call itthat) she was a constant attendant; that in her modest garb she nevermissed a Lenten service; and we heard that she performed a novena duringthis penitential season.

Why protract the story of how Margaret was lost to us? Could thisinterest any but us—we who felt the loss because we still loved her? Andwhy should we presume to set up our standard of what is valuable in life,of what is a successful career? She had not become what we hoped, andlittle by little all the pleasure of intercourse on both sides, I daresay, disappeared. Could we say that life, after all, had not given herwhat she most desired? Rather than write on in this strain about her, Iwould like to read her story as it appeared to the companions whosepleasures were her pleasures, whose successes were her successes—herstory written by one who appreciated her worldly advantages, and saw allthe delight there was in this attractive worldliness.

What comfort there was in it we had in knowing that she was a favorite inthe society of which we read such glowing descriptions, and that no oneelse bore its honors more winningly. It was not an easy life, with allits exactions and incessant movement. It demanded more physical strengththan most women possess, and we were not surprised to hear from time totime that she was delicate, and that she went through her season withfeverish excitement. But she chose it; it had become necessary to her.Can women stop in such a career, even if they wish to stop?

Yes, she chose it. I, for one, never begrudged her any pleasure she hadin life, and I do not know but she was as happy as it is possible forhuman being to be in a full experiment of worldliness. Who is the judge?But we, I say, who loved her, and knew so well the noble possibilities ofher royal nature under circ*mstances favorable to its development, feltmore and more her departure from her own ideals. Her life in itsspreading prosperity seemed more and more shallow. I do not say she washeartless, I do not say she was uncharitable, I do not say that in allthe externals of worldly and religious observance she was wanting; I donot say that the more she was assimilated to the serenely worldly natureof her husband she did not love him, or that she was unlovely in theworldliness that ingulfed her and bore her onward. I do not know thatthere is anything singular in her history. But the pain of it to us wasin the certainty—and it seemed so near—that in the decay of her higherlife, in the hardening process of a material existence, in the transferof all her interests to the trivial and sensuous gratifications—time,mind, heart, ambition, all fixed on them—we should never regain ourMargaret. What I saw in a vision of her future was a dead soul—abeautiful woman in all the success of envied prosperity, with a deadsoul.

XXII

It is difficult not to convey a false impression of Margaret at thistime. Habits, manners, outward conduct—nay, the superficial kindlinessin human intercourse, the exterior graceful qualities, may all remainwhen the character has subtly changed, when the real aims have changed,when the ideals are lowered. The fair exterior may be only a shell. I canimagine the heart retaining much tenderness and sympathy with sufferingwhen the soul itself has ceased to struggle for the higher life, when themind has lost, in regard to life, the final discrimination of what isright and wrong.

Perhaps it is fairer to Margaret to consider the general opinion of theworld regarding her. No doubt, if we had now known her for the firsttime, we should have admired her exceedingly, and probably have accountedher thrice happy in filling so well her brilliant position. That her lossof interest in things intellectual, in a wide range of topics of humanwelfare, which is in the individual soul a sign of warmth and growth,made her less companionable to some is true, but her very absorption inthe life of her world made her much more attractive to others. I wellremember a dinner one day at the Hendersons', when Mr. Morgan and Ihappened to be in town, and the gay chat and persiflage of the societypeople there assembled. Margaret shone in it. The light and daring touchof her raillery Carmen herself might have envied, and the spirit in whichshe handled the trifles and personal gossip tossed to the surface, likethe bubbles on the champagne.

It was such a pretty picture—the noble diningroom, the table sparklingwith glass and silver and glowing with masses of choicest flowers fromthe conservatory, the animated convives, and Margaret presiding, radiantin a costume of white and gold.

"After all," Morgan was saying, apropos of the position of women, "menget mighty little out of it in the modern arrangement."

"I've always said, Mr. Morgan," Margaret retorted, "that you came intothe world a couple of centuries too late; you ought to have been here inthe squaw age."

"Well, men were of some account then. I appeal to Henderson," Morganpersisted, "if he gets more than his board and clothes."

"Oh, my husband has to make his way; he's no time for idling andphilosophizing round."

"I should think not. Come, Henderson, speak up; what do you get out ofit?"

"Oh," said Henderson, glancing at his wife with an amused expression,"I'm doing very well. I'm very well taken care of, but I often wonderwhat the fellows did when polygamy was the fashion."

"Polygamy, indeed!" cried Margaret. "So men only dropped the a pluribusunum method on account of the expense?"

"Not at all," replied Henderson. "Women are so much better now thanformerly that one wife is quite enough."

"You have got him well in hand, Mrs. Henderson, but—" Morgan began.

"But," continued Margaret for him, "you think as things are going thatpolyandry will have to come in fashion—a woman will need more than onehusband to support her?"

"And I was born too soon," murmured Carmen.

"Yes, dear, you'll have to be born again. But, Mr. Morgan, you don't seemto understand what civilization is."

"I'm beginning to. I've been thinking—this is entirely impersonal—thatit costs more to keep one fine lady going than it does a college. Justreckon it up." (Margaret was watching him with sparkling eyes.) "Thepalace in town is for her, the house in the mountains, the house by thesea, are for her, the army of servants is for her, the horses andcarriages for all weathers are for her, the opera box is for her, andthen the wardrobe—why, half Paris lives on what women wear. I saynothing of what would become of the medical profession but for her."

"Have you done?" asked Margaret.

"No, but I'm taking breath."

"Well, why shouldn't we support the working-people of Paris andelsewhere? Do you want us to make our own clothes and starve thesewing-women? Suppose there weren't any balls and fine dresses and whatyou call luxury. What would the poor do without the rich? Isn't it thehighest charity to give them work? Even with it they are ungratefulenough."

"That is too deep for me," said Morgan, evasively. "I suppose they oughtto be contented to see us enjoying ourselves. It's all in the way ofcivilization, I dare say."

"It's just as I thought," said Margaret, more lightly. "You haven't aninkling of what civilization is. See that flower before you. It is themost exquisite thing in this room. See the refinement of its color andform. That was cultivated. The plant came from South Africa. I don't knowwhat expense the gardener has been to about it, what material and carehave been necessary to bring it to perfection. You may take it to Mrs.Morgan as an object-lesson. It is a thing of beauty. You cannot put anyof your mercantile value on it. Well, that is woman, the consummateflower of civilization. That is what civilization is for."

"I'm sorry for you, old fellow," said Henderson.

"I'm sorry for myself," Carmen said, demurely.

"I admit all that," Morgan replied. "Take Mr. Henderson as a gardener,then."

"Suppose you take somebody else, and let my husband eat his dinner."

"Oh, I don't mind preaching; I've got used to being made to point amoral."

"But he will go on next about the luxury of the age, and the extravaganceof women, and goodness knows what," said Margaret.

"No, I'm talking about men," Morgan continued. "Consider Henderson—it'sentirely impersonal—as a gardener. What does he get out of hisoccupation? He can look at the flower. Perhaps that is enough. He gets agood dinner when he has time for it, an hour at his club now and then,occasionally an evening or half a day off at home, a decent wardrobe—"

"Fifty-two suits," interposed Margaret.

"His own brougham—"

"And a four-in-hand," added Margaret.

"A pass on the elevated road—"

"And a steam-yacht."

"Which he never gets time to sail in; practically all the time on theroad, or besieged by a throng in his office, hustled about from morningtill night, begged of, interviewed, a telegraphic despatch every fiveminutes, and—"

"And me!" cried Margaret, rising. The guests all clapped their hands.

The Hendersons liked to have their house full, something going on—dinners, musicales, readings, little comedies in the theatre; there wascontinual coming and going, calling, dropping in for a cup of tea, latesuppers after the opera; the young fellows of town found no place soagreeable for a half-hour after business as Mrs. Henderson'sreception-room. I fancied that life would be dull and hang heavily,especially for Margaret, without this perpetual movement and excitement.Henderson, who certainly had excitement enough without seeking it athome, was pleased that his wife should be a leader in society, as he wasin the great enterprises in which his fortune waxed to enormousproportions. About what we call the home life I do not know. Necessarily,as heretofore, Henderson was often absent, and whether Margaretaccompanied him or not, a certain pace of life had to be kept up.

I suppose there is no delusion more general than that of retiring upon afortune—as if, when gained, a fortune would let a person retire, or,still more improbable, as if it ever were really attained. It is not atall probable that Henderson had set any limit to that he desired; thewildest speculations about its amount would no doubt fall short ofsatisfying the love of power which he expected to gratify in immeasurablyincreasing it. Does not history teach us that to be a great general, orpoet, or philanthropist, is not more certain to preserve one's name thanto be the richest man, the Croesus, in his age? I could imagine Margarethaving a certain growing pride in this distinction, and a glowingambition to be socially what her husband was financially.

Heaven often plans more mercifully for us than we plan for ourselves. Hadnot the Hebrew prophets a vision of the punishment by prosperity? Perhapsit applied to an old age, gratified to the end by possession ofeverything that selfishness covets, and hardened into absoluteworldliness. I knew once an old lady whose position and wealth had alwaysmade her envied, and presumably happy, who was absolutely to be pitiedfor a soul empty of all noble feeling.

The sun still shone on Margaret, and life yielded to her its specioussweets. She was still young. If in her great house, in her dazzlingcareer, in the whirl of resplendent prosperity, she had hours ofunsatisfied yearning for something unattainable in this direction, theworld would not have guessed it. Whenever we heard of her she was thecentre and star of whatever for the moment excited the world of fashion.It was indeed, at last, in the zenith of her gay existence that I, becameaware of a certain feminine anxiety about her in our neighborhood. Shehad been, years before, very ill in Paris, and the apprehensions for hersafety now were based upon the recollection of her peril then. The dayscame when the tender-hearted Miss Forsythe went about the house restless,impatient, tearful, waiting for a summons that was sure to come when shewas needed. She thought only of her child, as she called her, and all thetenderness of her nature was stirred-these years of cloud and separationand pain were as they had not been. Little Margaret had promised to sendfor her. She would not obtrude before she was wanted, but Margaret wascertain to send. And she was ready for departure the instant the despatchcame from Henderson—"Margaret wants you to come at once." I went withher.

In calamity, trouble, sorrow, it is wonderful how the ties of bloodassert themselves. In this hour I am sure that Margaret longed for no onemore than her dear aunt, in whose arms, as a child, she had so oftenforgotten her griefs. She had been able to live without her—nay, for along time her presence had been something of a restraint and a rebuke,and her feelings had hardened towards her. Why is it that the hearthardens in prosperity?

When we arrived Margaret was very ill. The house itself had a seriousair: it was no longer the palace of festivity and gayety, precautions hadbeen taken to secure quiet, the pavement was littered, and within thehushed movements and the sombre looks spoke of apprehension and theabsence of the spirit that had been the life and light of the house. Ourarrival seemed to be a relief to Henderson. Little was said. I had neverbefore seen him nervous, never before so restless and anxious, probablynever before in all his career had he been unnerved with a sense of hisown helplessness.

"She has been asking for you this moment," he said, as he accompanied
Miss Forsythe to Margaret's apartment.

"Dear, dear aunt, I knew you would come—I love you so;" she had tried toraise herself a little in her bed, and was sobbing like a child in heraunt's arms.

"You must have courage, Margaret; it will all be well."

"Yes, but I'm so discouraged; I'm so tired."

The vigil began. The nurses were in waiting. The family physician wouldnot leave the house. He was a man of great repute in his profession. Dr.Seftel's name was well known to me, but I had never met him before; a manpast middle life, smooth shaven, thin iron-gray hair, grave, usuallytaciturn, deliberate in all his movements, as if every gesture wereimportant and significant, but with a kindly face. Knowing that everymoment of his waking life was golden, I could not but be impressed withthe power that could command his exclusive service for an indefinitetime. When he came down, we talked together in Henderson's room.

"It is a question of endurance, of constitution," he said; "many weakwomen have this quality of persistence; many strong women go to pieces atonce; we know little about it. Mrs. Henderson"—glancing about him—"haseverything to live for; that's in her favor. I suppose there are not twoother men in the country whose fortune equals Henderson's."

I do not know how it was, probably the patient was not forgotten, but ina moment the grave doctor was asking me if I had seen the last bulletinabout the yacht regatta. He took the keenest interest in the contest, anddescribed to me the build and sailing qualities of the different yachtsentered, and expressed his opinion as to which would win, and why. Fromthis he passed to the city government and the recent election—like atrue New Yorker, his chief interest centred in the city politics and notin the national elections. Without the least unbending from his dignity,he told me many anecdotes about city politicians, which would have beenamusing if I had not been anxious about other things.

The afternoon passed, and the night, and the day, I cannot tell how. Butat evening I knew by the movements in the house that the crisis had come.I was waiting in Henderson's library. An hour passed, when Henderson camehurrying in, pale, excited, but joyous.

"Thank God," he cried, "it is a boy!"

"And Margaret?" I gasped.

"Is doing very well!" He touched a bell, and gave an order to theservant. "We will drink to the dear girl and to the heir of the house."

He was in great spirits. The doctor joined us, but I noticed that he wasanxious, and he did not stay long. Henderson was in and out, talking,excited, restless. But everything was going very well, he thought. Atlast, as we sat talking, a servant appeared at the door, with afrightened look.

"The baby, sir!"

"What?"

Alas! there had been an heir of the house of Henderson for just twohours; and Margaret was not sustaining herself.

Why go on? Henderson was beside himself; stricken with grief, enraged, Ibelieve, as well, at the thought of his own impotence. Messengers weredespatched, a consultation was called. The best skill of the city, at anycost, was at Margaret's bedside. Was there anything, then, that moneycould not do? How weak we are!

The next day the patient was no better, she was evidently sinking. Thenews went swiftly round the city. It needed a servant constantly at thedoor to answer the stream of sympathetic inquirers. Reporters werewatching the closed house from the opposite pavement. I undertook tosatisfy some of them who gained the steps and came forward, civil enoughand note-books in hand, when the door was opened. This intrusion ofcuriosity seemed so dreadful.

The great house was silent. How vain and empty and pitiful it all seemedas I wandered alone through the gorgeous apartments! What a mockery itall was of the tragedy impending above-stairs—the approach on list-shodfeet of the great enemy! Let us not be unjust. He would have come justthe same if his prey had lain in a farmhouse among the hills, or in atenement-house in C Street.

A day and a night, and another day—and then! It was Miss Forsythe whocame down to me, with strained eyes and awe in her face. It needed nowords. She put her face upon my shoulder, and sobbed as if her heart werebroken.

I could not stay in the house. I went out into the streets, the streetsbrilliant in the sun of an autumn day, into the town, gay, bustling,crowded, pulsing with vigorous life. How blue the sky was! The sparrowstwittered in Madison Square, the idlers sat in the sun, the childrenchased their hoops about the fountain.

I wandered into the club. The news had preceded me there. More than onemember in the reading-room grasped my hand, with just a word of sympathy.Two young fellows, whom I had last seen at the Henderson dinner, wereseated at a small table.

"It's rough, Jack"—the speaker paused, with a match in his hand—"it'srough. I'll be if she was not the finest woman I ever knew."

My wife and I were sitting in the orchestra stalls of the Metropolitan.The opera was Siegfried. At the close of the first act, as we turned tothe house, we saw Carmen enter a box, radiant, in white. Hendersonfollowed, and took a seat a little in shadow behind her. There wereothers in the box. There was a little movement and flutter as they camein and glasses were turned that way.

"Married, and it is only two years," I said.

"It is only a year and eight months," my wife replied.

And the world goes on as cheerfully and prosperously as ever.

By Charles Dudley Warner

I

It was near midnight: The company gathered in a famous city studio wereunder the impression, diligently diffused in the world, that the end ofthe century is a time of license if not of decadence. The situation hadits own piquancy, partly in the surprise of some of those assembled atfinding themselves in bohemia, partly in a flutter of expectation ofseeing something on the border-line of propriety. The hour, the place,the anticipation of the lifting of the veil from an Oriental and ancientart, gave them a titillating feeling of adventure, of a moral hazardbravely incurred in the duty of knowing life, penetrating to its core.Opportunity for this sort of fruitful experience being rare outside themetropolis, students of good and evil had made the pilgrimage to thismidnight occasion from less-favored cities. Recondite scholars in thephysical beauty of the Greeks, from Boston, were there; fair women fromWashington, whose charms make the reputation of many a newspapercorrespondent; spirited stars of official and diplomatic life, who havemoments of longing to shine in some more languorous material paradise,had made a hasty flitting to be present at the ceremony, sustained by aslight feeling of bravado in making this exceptional descent. But thefavored hundred spectators were mainly from the city-groups of latediners, who fluttered in under that pleasurable glow which the redJacqueminot always gets from contiguity with the pale yellow Clicquot;theatre parties, a little jaded, and quite ready for something real andstimulating; men from the clubs and men from studios—representatives ofsociety and of art graciously mingled, since it is discovered that it iseasier to make art fashionable than to make fashion artistic.

The vast, dimly lighted apartment was itself mysterious, a temple ofluxury quite as much as of art. Shadows lurked in the corners, the ribsof the roof were faintly outlined; on the sombre walls gleams of color,faces of loveliness and faces of pain, studies all of a mood or apassion, bits of shining brass, reflections from lustred ware strugglingout of obscurity; hangings from Fez or Tetuan, bits of embroidery,costumes in silk and in velvet, still having the aroma of balls a hundredyears ago, the faint perfume of a scented society of ladies and gallants;a skeleton scarcely less fantastic than the draped wooden model near it;heavy rugs of Daghestan and Persia, making the footfalls soundless on thefloor; a fountain tinkling in a thicket of japonicas and azaleas; thestems of palmettoes, with their branches waving in the obscurityoverhead; points of light here and there where a shaded lamp shone on asingle red rose in a blue Granada vase on a toppling stand, or on a massof jonquils in a barbarous pot of Chanak-Kallessi; tacked here and thereon walls and hangings, colored memoranda of Capri and of the North Woods,the armor of knights, trophies of small-arms, crossed swords of the Unionand the Confederacy, easels, paints, and palettes, and rows of canvasesleaning against the wall-the studied litter, in short, of a successfulartist, whose surroundings contribute to the popular conception of hisgenius.

On the wall at one end of the apartment was stretched a white canvas; infront of it was left a small cleared space, on the edge of which, in theshadow, squatting on the floor, were four swarthy musicians in Orientalgarments, with a mandolin, a guitar, a ney, and a darabooka drum. Aboutthis cleared space, in a crescent, knelt or sat upon the rugs a couple ofrows of men in evening dress; behind them, seated in chairs, a group ofladies, whose white shoulders and arms and animated faces flashed out inthe semi-obscurity; and in their rear stood a crowd of spectators—beautiful young gentlemen with vacant faces and the elevated Oxfordshoulders, rosy youth already blase to all this world can offer, andgray-headed men young again in the prospect of a new sensation. So theykneel or stand, worshipers before the shrine, expecting the advent of theGoddess of AEsthetic Culture.

The moment has come. There is a tap on the drum, a tuning of thestrings, a flash of light from the rear of the room inundates the whitecanvas, and suddenly a figure is poised in the space, her shadow castupon the glowing background.

It is the Spanish dancer!

The apparition evokes a flutter of applause. It is a superb figure, cladin a high tight bodice and long skirts simply draped so as to show everymotion of the athletic limbs. She seems, in this pose and light,supernaturally tall. Through her parted lips white teeth gleam, and shesmiles. Is it a smile of anticipated, triumph, or of contempt? Is itthe smile of the daughter of Herodias, or the invitation of a'ghazeeyeh'? She pauses. Shall she surprise, or shock, or only please?What shall the art that is older than the pyramids do for these kneelingChristians? The drum taps, the ney pipes, the mandolin twangs, her armsare extended—the castanets clink, a foot is thrust out, the bosomheaves, the waist trembles. What shall it be—the old serpent dance ofthe Nile, or the posturing of decorous courtship when the olives arepurple in the time of the grape harvest? Her head, wreathed with coilsof black hair, a red rose behind the left ear, is thrown back. The eyesflash, there is a snakelike movement of the limbs, the music hastensslowly in unison with the quickening pulse, the body palpitates, seems toflash invitation like the eyes, it turns, it twists, the neck is thrustforward, it is drawn in, while the limbs move still slowly, tentatively;suddenly the body from the waist up seems to twist round, with the waistas a pivot, in a flash of athletic vigor, the music quickens, the armsmove more rapidly to the click of the heated castenets, the steps aremore pronounced, the whole woman is agitated, bounding, pulsing withphysical excitement. It is a Maenad in an access of gymnastic energy.Yes, it is gymnastics; it is not grace; it is scarcely alluring. Yet itis a physical triumph. While the spectators are breathless, the furyceases, the music dies, and the Spaniard sinks into a chair, panting withtriumph, and inclines her dark head to the clapping of hands and thebravos. The kneelers rise; the spectators break into chattering groups;the ladies look at the dancer with curious eyes; a young gentleman withthe elevated Oxford shoulders leans upon the arm of her chair and fansher. The pose is correct; it is the somewhat awkward tribute of cultureto physical beauty.

To be on speaking terms with the phenomenon was for the moment adistinction. The young ladies wondered if it would be proper to goforward and talk with her.

"Why not?" said a wit. "The Duke of Donnycastle always shakes hands withthe pugilists at a mill."

"It is not so bad"—the speaker was a Washington beauty in an eveningdress that she would have condemned as indecorous for the dancer it isnot so bad as I—"

"Expected?" asked her companion, a sedate man of thirty-five, with thecynical air of a student of life.

"As I feared," she added, quickly. "I have always had a curiosity toknow what these Oriental dances mean."

"Oh, nothing in particular, now. This was an exhibition dance. Ofcourse its origin, like all dancing, was religious. The fault I findwith it is that it lacks seriousness, like the modern exhibition of thedancing dervishes for money."

"Do you think, Mr. Mavick, that the decay of dancing is the reason ourreligion lacks seriousness? We are in Lent now, you know. Does thisseem to you a Lenten performance?"

"Why, yes, to a degree. Anything that keeps you up till three o'clock inthe morning has some penitential quality."

"You give me a new view, Mr. Mavick. I confess that I did not expect toassist at what New Englanders call an 'evening meeting.' I thought Eroswas the deity of the dance."

"That, Mrs. Lamon, is a vulgar error. It is an ancient form of worship.
Virtue and beauty are the same thing—the two graces."

"What a nice apothegm! It makes religion so easy and agreeable."

"As easy as gravitation."

"Dear me, Mr. Mavick, I thought this was a question of levitation. Youare upsetting all my ideas. I shall not have the comfort of repenting ofthis episode in Lent."

"Oh yes; you can be sorry that the dancing was not more alluring."

Meantime there was heard the popping of corks. Venetian glasses filledwith champagne were quaffed under the blessing of sparkling eyes, younggirls, almond-eyed for the occasion, in the costume of Tokyo, handedround ices, and the hum of accelerated conversation filled the studio.

"And your wife didn't come?"

"Wouldn't," replied Jack Delancy, with a little bow, before he raised hisglass. And then added, "Her taste isn't for this sort of thing."

The girl, already flushed with the wine, blushed a little—Jack thoughthe had never seen her look so dazzlingly handsome—as she said, "And youthink mine is?"

"Bless me, no, I didn't mean that; that is, you know"—Jack didn'texactly see his way out of the dilemma—"Edith is a little old-fashioned;but what's the harm in this, anyway?"

"I did not say there was any," she replied, with a smile at hisembarrassment. "Only I think there are half a dozen women in the roomwho could do it better, with a little practice. It isn't as Oriental asI thought it would be."

"I cannot say as to that. I know Edith thinks I've gone into the depthsof the Orient. But, on the whole, I'm glad—" Jack stopped on the vergeof speaking out of his better nature.

"Now don't be rude again. I quite understand that she is not here."

The dialogue was cut short by a clapping of hands. The spectators tooktheir places again, the lights were lowered, the illumination was turnedon the white canvas, and the dancer, warmed with wine and adulation, tooka bolder pose, and, as her limbs began to move, sang a wild Moorishmelody in a shrill voice, action and words flowing together into thepassion of the daughter of tents in a desert life. It was all vigorous,suggestive, more properly religious, Mavick would have said, and theapplause was vociferous.

More wine went about. There was another dance, and then another, a slowlanguid movement, half melancholy and full of sorrow, if one might saythat of a movement, for unrepented sin; a gypsy dance this, accompaniedby the mournful song of Boabdil, "The Last Sigh of the Moor." Andsuddenly, when the feelings of the spectators were melted to tenderregret, a flash out of all this into a joyous defiance, a wooing ofpleasure with smiling lips and swift feet, with the clash of cymbals andthe quickened throb of the drum. And so an end with the dawn of a newday.

It was not yet dawn, however, for the clocks were only striking three asthe assembly, in winter coats and soft wraps, fluttered out to itscarriages, chattering and laughing, with endless good-nights in thelanguages of France, Germany, and Spain.

The streets were as nearly deserted as they ever are; here and there alumbering market-wagon from Jersey, an occasional street-car with itstinkling bell, rarer still the rush of a trembling train on the elevated,the voice of a belated reveler, a flitting female figure at a streetcorner, the roll of a livery hack over the ragged pavement. But mainlythe noise of the town was hushed, and in the sharp air the stars, far offand uncontaminated, glowed with a pure lustre.

Farther up town it was quite still, and in one of the noble houses in theneighborhood of the Park sat Edith Delancy, married not quite a year,listening for the roll of wheels and the click of a night-key.

II

Everybody liked John Corlear Delancy, and this in spite of himself, forno one ever knew him to make any effort to incur either love or hate.The handsome boy was a favorite without lifting his eyebrows, and hesauntered through the university, picking his easy way along an electivecourse, winning the affectionate regard of every one with whom he came incontact. And this was not because he lacked quality, or was merelyeasy-going and negative or effeminate, for the same thing happened to himwhen he went shooting in the summer in the Rockies. The cowboys and thesevere moralists of the plains, whose sedate business in life is to getthe drop on offensive persons, regarded him as a brother. It isn't a badtest of personal quality, this power to win the loyalty of men who havefew or none of the conventional virtues. These non-moral enforcers ofjustice—as they understood it liked Jack exactly as his friends in theNew York clubs liked him—and perhaps the moral standard of approval ofthe one was as good as the other.

Jack was a very good shot and a fair rider, and in the climate of Englandhe might have taken first-rate rank in athletics. But he had never takenfirst-rate rank in anything, except good-fellowship. He had a great manyexpensive tastes, which he could not afford to indulge, except inimagination. The luxury of a racing-stable, or a yacht, or a library ofscarce books bound by Paris craftsmen was denied him. Those who accountfor failures in life by a man's circ*mstances, and not by a lack in theman himself, which is always the secret of failure, said that Jack wasunfortunate in coming into a certain income of twenty thousand a year.This was just enough to paralyze effort, and not enough to permit a manto expand in any direction. It is true that he was related to millionsand moved in a millionaire atmosphere, but these millions might neverflow into his bank account. They were not in hand to use, and they alsohelped to paralyze effort—like black clouds of an impending shower thatmay pass around, but meantime keeps the watcher indoors.

The best thing that Jack Delancy ever did, for himself, was to marryEdith Fletcher. The wedding, which took place some eight months beforethe advent of the Spanish dancer, was a surprise to many, for the girlhad even less fortune than Jack, and though in and of his societyentirely, was supposed to have ideals. Her family, indeed, was an oldone on the island, and was prominent long before the building of thestone bridge on Canal Street over the outlet of Collect Pond. Those whoknew Edith well detected in her that strain of moral earnestness whichmade the old Fletchers such stanch and trusty citizens. The wonder wasnot that Jack, with his easy susceptibility to refined beauty, shouldhave been attracted to her, or have responded to a true instinct of whatwas best for him, but that Edith should have taken up with such a perfecttype of the aimlessness of the society strata of modern life. Thewonder, however, was based upon a shallow conception of the nature ofwoman. It would have been more wonderful if the qualities that endearedJack to college friends and club men, to the mighty sportsmen who do nothesitate, in the clubs, to devastate Canada and the United States of biggame, and to the border ruffians of Dakota, should not have gone straightto the tender heart of a woman of ideals. And when in all history wasthere a woman who did not believe, when her heart went with respect forcertain manly traits, that she could inspire and lift a man into a noblelife?

The silver clock in the breakfast-room was striking ten, and Edith wasalready seated at the coffee-urn, when Jack appeared. She was as freshas a rose, and greeted him with a bright smile as he came behind herchair and bent over for the morning kiss—a ceremony of affection which,if omitted, would have left a cloud on the day for both of them, andwhich Jack always declared was simply a necessity, or the coffee wouldhave no flavor. But when a man has picked a rose, it is always a sort ofclimax which is followed by an awkward moment, and Jack sat down with theair of a man who has another day to get through with.

"Were you amused with the dancing—this morning?"

"So, so," said Jack, sipping his coffee. "It was a stunning place forit, that studio; you'd have liked that. The Lamons and Mavick and a lotof people from the provinces were there. The company was more fun thanthe dance, especially to a fellow who has seen how good it can be and howbad in its home."

"You have a chance to see the Spanish dancer again, under properauspices," said Edith, without looking up.

"How's that?"

"We are invited by Mrs. Brown—"

"The mother of the Bible class at St. Philip's?"

"Yes—to attend a charity performance for the benefit of the Female
Waifs' Refuge. She is to dance."

"Who? Mrs. Brown?"

Edith paid no attention to this impertinence. "They are to make anartificial evening at eleven o'clock in the morning."

"They must have got hold of Mavick's notion that this dance is religiousin its origin. Do you, know if the exercises will open with prayer?"

"Nonsense, Jack. You know I don't intend to go. I shall send a smallcheck."

"Well, draw it mild. But isn't this what I'm accused of doing—shirkingmy duty of personal service by a contribution?"

"Perhaps. But you didn't have any of that shirking feeling last night,did you?"

Jack laughed, and ran round to give the only reply possible to such agibe. These breakfast interludes had not lost piquancy in all thesemonths. "I'm half a mind to go to this thing. I would, if it didn'tbreak up my day so."

"As for instance?"

"Well, this morning I have to go up to the riding-school to see a horse—Storm; I want to try him. And then I have to go down to Twist's and seea lot of Japanese drawings he's got over. Do you know that the birds andother animals those beggars have been drawing, which we thought werecaricatures, are the real thing? They have eyes sharp enough to seethings in motion—flying birds and moving horses which we never caughttill we put the camera on them. Awfully curious. Then I shall step intothe club a minute, and—"

"Be in at lunch? Bess is coming."

"Don't wait lunch. I've a lot to do."

Edith followed him with her eyes, a little wistfully; she heard the outerdoor close, and still sat at the table, turning over the pile of notes ather plate, and thinking of many things—things that it began to dawn uponher mind could not be done, and things of immediate urgency that must bedone. Life did not seem quite such a simple problem to her as it hadlooked a year ago. That there is nothing like experiment to clear thevision is the general idea, but oftener it is experience that perplexes.Indeed, Edith was thinking that some things seemed much easier to herbefore she had tried them.

As she sat at the table with a faultless morning-gown, with a bunch ofEnglish violets in her bosom, an artist could have desired no bettersubject. Many people thought her eyes her best feature; they were largebrown eyes, yet not always brown, green at times, liquid, but neveruncertain, apt to have a smile in them, yet their chief appealingcharacteristic was trustfulness, a pure sort of steadfastness, thatalways conveyed the impression of a womanly personal interest in theperson upon whom they were fixed. They were eyes that haunted one like aremembered strain of music. The lips were full, and the mouth was drawnin such exquisite lines that it needed the clear-cut and emphasized chinto give firmness to its beauty. The broad forehead, with archingeyebrows, gave an intellectual cast to a face the special stamp of whichwas purity. The nose, with thin open nostrils, a little too strong forbeauty, together with the chin, gave the impression of firmness andcourage; but the wonderful eyes, the inviting mouth, so modified thisthat the total impression was that of high spirit and great sweetness ofcharacter. It was the sort of face from which one might expectpassionate love or unflinching martyrdom. Her voice had a quality thememory of which lingered longer even than the expression of her eyes; itwas low, and, as one might say, a fruity voice, not quite clear, thoughsweet, as if veiled in femineity. This note of royal womanhood was alsoin her figure, a little more than medium in height, and full of naturalgrace. Somehow Edith, with all these good points, had not the reputationof a belle or a beauty—perhaps for want of some artificial splendor—butone could not be long in her company without feeling that she had greatcharm, without which beauty becomes insipid and even commonplace, andwith which the plainest woman is attractive.

Edith's theory of life, if one may so dignify the longings of a younggirl, had been very simple, and not at all such as would be selected bythe heroine of a romance. She had no mission, nor was she afflicted bythat modern form of altruism which is a yearning for notoriety byconspicuous devotion to causes and reforms quite outside her normalsphere of activity. A very sincere person, with strong sympathy forhumanity tempered by a keen perception of the humorous side of things,she had a purpose, perhaps not exactly formulated, of making the most outof her own life, not in any outward and shining career, but by adevelopment of herself in the most helpful and harmonious relations toher world. And it seemed to her, though she had never philosophized it,that a marriage such as she believed she had made was the woman's way tothe greatest happiness and usefulness. In this she followed the dictatesof a clear mind and a warm heart. If she had reasoned about it,considering how brief life is, and how small can be any singlecontribution to a better social condition, she might have felt morestrongly the struggle against nature, and the false position involved inthe new idea that marriage is only a kind of occupation, instead of anordinance decreed in the very constitution of the human race. With themere instinct of femineity she saw the falseness of the assumption thatthe higher life for man or woman lies in separate and solitary pathsthrough the wilderness of this world. To an intelligent angel,seated on the arch of the heavens, the spectacle of the latter-daypseudo-philosophic and economic dribble about the doubtful expediency ofhaving a wife, and the failure of marriage, must seem as ludicrous aswould a convention of birds or of flowers reasoning that the processes ofnature had continued long enough. Edith was simply a natural woman, whofelt rather than reasoned that in a marriage such as her heart approvedshe should make the most of her life.

But as she sat here this morning this did not seem to be so simple amatter as it had appeared. It began to be suspected that in order tomake the most of one's self it was necessary to make the most of manyother persons and things. The stream in its own channel flowed along notwithout vexations, friction and foaming and dashings from bank to bank;but it became quite another and a more difficult movement when it wasjoined to another stream, with its own currents and eddies andimpetuosities and sluggishness, constantly liable to be deflected if notput altogether on another course. Edith was not putting it in this formas she turned over her notes of invitation and appointments andengagements, but simply wondering where the time for her life was to comein, and for Jack's life, which occupied a much larger space than itseemed to occupy in the days before it was joined to hers. Very curiousthis discovery of what another's life really is. Of course the societylife must go on, that had always gone on, for what purpose no one couldtell, only it was the accepted way of disposing of time; and now therewere the dozen ways in which she was solicited to show her interest inthose supposed to be less fortunate in life than herself-the alleviationof the miseries of her own city. And with society, and charity, andsympathy with the working classes, and her own reading, and a littledrawing and painting, for which she had some talent, what became of thatcomradeship with Jack, that union of interests and affections, which wasto make her life altogether so high and sweet?

This reverie, which did not last many minutes, and was interrupted by theabrupt moving away of Edith to the writing-desk in her own room, wascaused by a moment's vivid realization of what Jack's interests in lifewere. Could she possibly make them her own? And if she did, what wouldbecome of her own ideals?

III

It was indeed a busy day for Jack. Great injustice would be done him ifit were supposed that he did not take himself and his occupationsseriously. His mind was not disturbed by trifles. He knew that he hadon the right sort of four-in-hand necktie, with the appropriate pin ofpear-shaped pearl, and that he carried the cane of the season. Thesethings come by a sort of social instinct, are in the air, as it were, anddo not much tax the mind. He had to hasten a little to keep hishalf-past-eleven o'clock appointment at Stalker's stables, and when hearrived several men of his set were already waiting, who were also busymen, and had made a little effort to come round early and assist Jack inmaking up his mind about the horse.

When Mr. Stalker brought out Storm, and led him around to show hisaction, the connoisseurs took on a critical attitude, an attitude ofjudgment, exhibited not less in the poise of the head and the seriousface than in the holding of the cane and the planting of legs wide apart.And the attitude had a refined nonchalance which professional horsem*nscarcely ever attain. Storm could not have received more critical andserious attention if he had been a cooked terrapin. He could afford tostand this scrutiny, and he seemed to move about with the consciousnessthat he knew more about being a horse than his judges.

Storm was, in fact, a splendid animal, instinct with life from his thinflaring nostril to his small hoof; black as a raven, his highly groomedskin took the polish of ebony, and showed the play of his powerfulmuscles, and, one might say, almost the nervous currents that thrilledhis fine texture. His large, bold eyes, though not wicked, flamed nowand then with an energy and excitement that gave ample notice that hewould obey no master who had not stronger will and nerve than his own.It was a tribute to Jack's manliness that, when he mounted him for a turnin the ring, Storm seemed to recognize the fine quality of both seat andhand, and appeared willing to take him on probation.

"He's got good points," said Mr. Herbert Albert Flick, "but I'd like astraighter back."

"I'll be hanged, though, Jack," was Mr. Mowbray Russell's comment, "ifI'd ride him in the Park before he's docked. Say what you like aboutaction, a horse has got to have style."

"Moves easy, falls off a little too much to suit me in the quarter,"suggested Mr. Pennington Docstater, sucking the head of his cane."How about his staying quality, Stalker?"

"That's just where he is, Mr. Docstater; take him on the road, he's astayer for all day. Goes like a bird. He'll take you along at the rateof nine miles in forty-five minutes as long as you want to sit there."

"Jump?" queried little Bobby Simerton, whose strong suit at the club wastalking about meets and hunters.

"Never refused anything I put him at," replied Stalker; "takes everyfence as if it was the regular thing."

Storm was in this way entirely taken to pieces, praised and disparaged,in a way to give Stalker, it might be inferred from his manner, a highopinion of the knowledge of these young gentlemen. "It takes agentleman," in fact, Stalker said, "to judge a hoss, for a good hoss is agentleman himself." It was much discussed whether Storm would do betterfor the Park or for the country, whether it would be better to put him inthe field or keep him for a roadster. It might, indeed, be inferred thatJack had not made up his mind whether he should buy a horse for use inthe Park or for country riding. Even more than this might be inferredfrom the long morning's work, and that was that while Jack's occupationwas to buy a horse, if he should buy one his occupation would be gone.He was known at the club to be looking for the right sort of a horse, andthat he knew what he wanted, and was not easily satisfied; and as long ashe occupied this position he was an object of interest to sellers and tohis companions.

Perhaps Mr. Stalker understood this, for when the buyers had gone heremarked to the stable-boy, "Mr. Delancy, he don't want to buy no hoss."

When the inspection of the horse was finished it was time for lunch, andthe labors of the morning were felt to justify this indulgence, thougheach of the party had other engagements, and was too busy to waste thetime. They went down to the Knickerbocker.

The lunch was slight, but its ordering took time and consideration, as itought, for nothing is so destructive of health and mental tone as thesnatching of a mid-day meal at a lunch counter from a bill of fareprepared by God knows whom. Mr. Russell said that if it took time to buya horse, it ought to take at least equal time and care to select thefodder that was to make a human being wretched or happy. Indeed, a manwho didn't give his mind to what he ate wouldn't have any mind by-and-byto give to anything. This sentiment had the assent of the table, and wasillustrated by varied personal experience; and a deep feeling prevailed,a serious feeling, that in ordering and eating the right sort of lunch achief duty of a useful day had been discharged.

It must not be imagined from this, however, that the conversation wasabout trifles. Business men and operators could have learned somethingabout stocks and investments, and politicians about city politics.Mademoiselle Vivienne, the new skirt dancer, might have been surprised atthe intimate tone in which she was alluded to, but she could have gotsome useful hints in effects, for her judges were cosmopolitans who hadseen the most suggestive dancing in all parts of the world. It came outincidentally that every one at table had been "over" in the course of theseason, not for any general purpose, not as a sightseer, but to look atsomebody's stables, or to attend a wedding, or a sale of etchings, or tosee his bootmaker, or for a little shooting in Scotland, just as onemight run down to Bar Harbor or Tuxedo. It was only an incident in abusy season; and one of the fruits of it appeared to be as perfect aknowledge of the comparative merits of all the ocean racers and captainsas of the English and American stables and the trainers. One notinformed of the progress of American life might have been surprised tosee that the fad is to be American, with a sort of patronage of thingsand ways foreign, especially of things British, a large continental kindof attitude, begotten of hearing much about Western roughing it, ofAlaska, of horse-breeding and fruit-raising on the Pacific, of theColorado River Canon. As for stuffs, well yes, London. As for style,you can't mistake a man who is dressed in New York.

The wine was a white Riesling from California. Docstater said hisattention had been called to it by Tom Dillingham at the Union, who had aranch somewhere out there. It was declared to be sound and palatable;you know what you are drinking. This led to a learned discussion of thefuture of American wines, and a patriotic impulse was given to the tradeby repeated orders. It was declared that in American wines lay thesolution of the temperance question. Bobby Simerton said that Burgundywas good enough for him, but Russell put him down, as he saw the lightyellow through his glass, by the emphatic affirmation that plenty ofcheap American well-made wine would knock the bottom out of all thesentimental temperance societies and shut up the saloons, dry up allthose not limited to light wines and beer. It was agreed that thesaloons would have to go.

This satisfactory conclusion was reached before the coffee came on andthe cigarettes, and the sound quality of the Riesling was emphasized by apony of cognac.

It is fortunate when the youth of a country have an ideal. No nation istruly great without a common ideal, capable of evoking enthusiasm andcalling out its energies. And where are we to look for this if not inthe youth, and especially in those to whom fortune and leisure give anopportunity of leadership? It is they who can inspire by their example,and by their pursuits attract others to a higher conception of thenational life. It may take the form of patriotism, as in this country,pride in the great republic, jealousy of its honor and credit, eagernessfor its commanding position among the nations, patriotism which will showitself, in all the ardor of believing youth, in the administration oflaw, in the purity of politics, in honest local government, and in anoble aspiration for the glory of the country. It may take the form ofculture, of a desire that the republic-liable, like all self-madenations, to worship wealth-should be distinguished not so much by avulgar national display as by an advance in the arts, the sciences, theeducation that adorns life, in the noble spirit of humanity, and in thenobler spirit of recognition of a higher life, which will be content withno civilization that does not tend to make the country for every citizena better place to live in today than it was yesterday. Happy is thecountry, happy the metropolis of that country, whose fortunate young menhave this high conception of citizenship!

What is the ideal of their country which these young men cherish? Therewas a moment—was there not for them?—in the late war for the Union,when the republic was visible to them in its beauty, in its peril, and ina passion of devotion they were eager—were they not?—to follow the flagand to give their brief lives to its imperishable glory. Nothing isimpossible to a nation with an ideal like that. It was this flame thatran over Europe in the struggle of France against a world in arms. Itwas this national ideal that was incarnate in Napoleon, as every greatidea that moves the world is sooner or later incarnated. What was itthat we saw in Washington on his knees at Valley Forge, or blazing withwrath at the cowardice on Monmouth? in Lincoln entering Richmond withbowed head and infinite sorrow and yearning in his heart? An embodimentof a great national idea and destiny.

In France this ideal burns yet like a flame, and is still evoked by aname. It is the passion of glory, but the desire of a nation, andNapoleon was the incarnation of passion. They say that he is not dead asothers are dead, but that he may come again and ride at the head of hislegions, and strike down the enemies of France; that his bugle will callthe youth from every hamlet, that the roll of his drum will transformFrance into a camp, and the grenadiers will live again and ride with him,amid hurrahs, and streaming tears, and shouts of "My Emperor! Oh, myEmperor!" Is it only a legend? But the spirit is there; not a boy butdreams of it, not a girl but knots the thought in with her holidaytricolor. That is to have an abiding ideal, and patiently to hold it, inisolation, in defeat, even in an overripe civilization.

We believe—do we not?—in other triumphs than those of the drum and thesword. Our aspirations for the republic are for a nobler example ofhuman society than the world has yet seen. Happy is the country, and themetropolis of the country, whose youth, gilded only by their virtues,have these aspirations.

When the party broke up, the street lamps were beginning to twinkle hereand there, and Jack discovered to his surprise that the Twiss businesswould have to go over to another day. It was such a hurrying life in NewYork. There was just time for a cup of tea at Mrs. Trafton's. Everybodydropped in there after five o'clock, when the duties of the day wereover, with the latest news, and to catch breath before rushing into theprogram of the evening.

There were a dozen ladies in the drawing-room when Jack entered, and hisfirst impression was that the scream of conversation would be harder totalk against than a Wagner opera; but he presently got his cup of tea,and found a snug seat in the chimney-corner by Miss Tavish; indeed, theymoved to it together, and so got a little out of the babel. Jack thoughtthe girl looked even prettier in her walking-dress than when he saw herat the studio; she had style, there was no doubt about that; and then,while there was no invitation in her manner, one felt that she was awoman to whom one could easily say things, and who was liable at anymoment to say things interesting herself.

"Is this your first appearance since last night, Mr. Delancy?"

"Oh no; I've been racing about on errands all day. It is very restful tosit down by a calm person."

"Well, I never shut my eyes till nine o'clock. I kept seeing that
Spanish woman whirl around and contort, and—do you mind my telling you?
—I couldn't just help it, I" (leaning forward to Jack) "got up and tried
it before the glass. There! Are you shocked?"

"Not so much shocked as excluded," Jack dared to say. "But do youthink—".

"Yes, I know. There isn't anything that an American girl cannot do.
I've made up my mind to try it. You'll see."

"Will I?"

"No, you won't. Don't flatter yourself. Only girls. I don't want menaround."

"Neither do I," said Jack, honestly.

Miss Tavish laughed. "You are too forward, Mr. Delancy. Perhaps sometime, when we have learned, we will let in a few of you, to look in atthe door, fifty dollars a ticket, for some charity. I don't see whydancing isn't just as good an accomplishment as playing the harp in aGreek dress."

"Nor do I; I'd rather see it. Besides, you've got Scripture warrant fordancing off the heads of people. And then it is such a sweet way ofdoing a charity. Dancing for the East Side is the best thing I haveheard yet."

"You needn't mock. You won't when you find out what it costs you."

"What are you two plotting?" asked Mrs. Trafton, coming across to thefireplace.

"Charity," said Jack, meekly.

"Your wife was here this morning to get me to go and see some of herfriends in Hester Street."

"You went?"

"Not today. It's awfully interesting, but I've been."

"Edith seems to be devoted to that sort of thing," remarked Miss Tavish.

"Yes," said Jack, slowly, "she's got the idea that sympathy is betterthan money; she says she wants to try to understand other people'slives."

"Goodness knows, I'd like to understand my own."

"And were you trying, Mr. Delancy, to persuade Miss Tavish into that sortof charity?"

"Oh dear, no," said Jack; "I was trying to interest the East End insomething, for the benefit of Miss Tavish."

"You'll find that's one of the most expensive remarks you ever made,"retorted Miss Tavish, rising to go.

"I wish Lily Tavish would marry," said Mrs. Trafton, watching the girl'sslender figure as it passed through the portiere; "she doesn't know whatto do with herself."

Jack shrugged his shoulders. "Yes, she'd be a lovely wife for somebody;"and then he added, as if reminiscently, "if he could afford it.Good-by."

"That's just a fashion of talking. I never knew a time when so manypeople afforded to do what they wanted to do. But you men are all alike.Good-by."

When Jack reached home it was only a little after six o'clock, and asthey were not to go out to dine till eight, he had a good hour to restfrom the fatigues of the day, and run over the evening papers and dipinto the foreign periodicals to catch a topic or two for thedinner-table.

"Yes, sir," said the maid, "Mrs. Delancy came in an hour ago."

IV

Edith's day had been as busy as Jack's, notwithstanding she had put asideseveral things that demanded her attention. She denied herself themorning attendance on the Literature Class that was raking over theeighteenth century. This week Swift was to be arraigned. The last timewhen Edith was present it was Steele. The judgment, on the whole, hadbeen favorable, and there had been a little stir of tenderness among thebonnets over Thackeray's comments on the Christian soldier. It seemed tobring him near to them. "Poor Dick Steele!" said the essayist. Edithdeclared afterwards that the large woman who sat next to her, Mrs. JerryHollowell, whispered to her that she always thought his name wasBessemer; but this was, no doubt, a pleasantry. It was a beautifulessay, and so stimulating! And then there was bouillon, and time to lookabout at the toilets. Poor Steele, it would have cheered his life toknow that a century after his death so many beautiful women, soexquisitely dressed, would have been concerning themselves about him.The function lasted two hours. Edith made a little calculation. In fiveminutes she could have got from the encyclopaedia all the facts in theessay, and while her maid was doing her hair she could have read fivetimes as much of Steele as the essayist read. And, somehow, she was notstimulated, for the impression seemed to prevail that now Steele wasdisposed of. And she had her doubts whether literature would, after all,prove to be a permanent social distraction. But Edith may have been toosevere in her judgment. There was probably not a woman in the class thatday who did not go away with the knowledge that Steele was an author, andthat he lived in the eighteenth century. The hope for the country is inthe diffusion of knowledge.

Leaving the class to take care of Swift, Edith went to the managers'meeting at the Women's Hospital, where there was much to do of verypractical work, pitiful cases of women and children suffering through nofault of their own, and money more difficult to raise than sympathy.The meeting took time and thought. Dismissing her carriage, and relyingon elevated and surface cars, Edith then took a turn on the East Side,in company with a dispensary physician whose daily duty called her intothe worst parts of the town. She had a habit of these tours before hermarriage, and, though they were discouragingly small in direct results,she gained a knowledge of city life that was of immense service in hergeneral charity work. Jack had suggested the danger of these excursions,but she had told him that a woman was less liable to insult in the EastSide than in Fifth Avenue, especially at twilight, not because the EastSide was a nice quarter of the city, but because it was accustomed to seewomen who minded their own business go about unattended, and the prowlershad not the habit of going there. She could even relate cases ofchivalrous protection of "ladies" in some of the worst streets.

What Edith saw this day, open to be seen, was not so much sin asignorance of how to live, squalor, filthy surroundings acquiesced in asthe natural order, wonderful patience in suffering and deprivation,incapacity, ill-paid labor, the kindest spirit of sympathy andhelpfulness of the poor for each other. Perhaps that which made thedeepest impression on her was the fact that such conditions of livingcould seem natural to those in them, and that they could get so muchenjoyment of life in situations that would have been simple misery toher.

The visitors were in a foreign city. The shop signs were in foreigntongues; in some streets all Hebrew. On chance news-stands weredisplayed newspapers in Russian, Bohemian, Arabic, Italian, Hebrew,Polish, German-none in English. The theatre bills were in Hebrew orother unreadable type. The sidewalks and the streets swarmed with noisydealers in every sort of second-hand merchandise—vegetables that hadseen a better day, fish in shoals. It was not easy to make one's waythrough the stands and push-carts and the noisy dickering buyers andsellers, who haggled over trifles and chaffed good-naturedly and werestrictly intent on their own affairs. No part of the town is morecrowded or more industrious. If youth is the hope of the country, thesight was encouraging, for children were in the gutters, on the housesteps, at all the windows. The houses seemed bursting with humanity,and in nearly every room of the packed tenements, whether the inmateswere sick or hungry, some sort of industry was carried on. In the dampbasem*nts were junk-dealers, rag-pickers, goose-pickers. In one noisomecellar, off an alley, among those sorting rags, was an old woman ofeighty-two, who could reply to questions only in a jargon, too proud tobeg, clinging to life, earning a few cents a day in this foul occupation.But life is sweet even with poverty and rheumatism and eighty years.Did her dull eyes, turning inward, see the Carpathian Hills, a freegirlhood in village drudgery and village sports, then a romance of love,children, hard work, discontent, emigration to a New World of promise?And now a cellar by day, the occupation of cutting rags for carpets, andat night a corner in a close and crowded room on a flock bed not fit fora dog. And this was a woman's life.

Picturesque foreign women going about with shawls over their heads andusually a bit of bright color somewhere, children at their games, hawkersloudly crying their stale wares, the click of sewing-machines heardthrough a broken window, everywhere animation, life, exchange of rough orkindly banter. Was it altogether so melancholy as it might seem? Noteverybody was hopelessly poor, for here were lawyers' signs and doctors'signs—doctors in whom the inhabitants had confidence because theycharged all they could get for their services—and thriving pawnbrokers'shops. There were parish schools also—perhaps others; and off some darkalley, in a room on the ground-floor, could be heard the strident noiseof education going on in high-voiced study and recitation. Nor wereamusem*nts lacking—notices of balls, dancing this evening, and ten-centshows in palaces of legerdemain and deformity.

It was a relenting day in March; patches of blue sky overhead, and thesun had some quality in its shining. The children and the caged birds atthe open windows felt it-and there were notes of music here and thereabove the traffic and the clamor. Turning down a narrow alley, with agutter in the centre, attracted by festive sounds, the visitors came intoa small stone-paved court with a hydrant in the centre surrounded by talltenement-houses, in the windows of which were stuffed the garments thatwould no longer hold together to adorn the person. Here an Italian girland boy, with a guitar and violin, were recalling la bella Napoli, and acouple of pretty girls from the court were footing it as merrily as if itwere the grape harvest. A woman opened a lower room door and sharplycalled to one of the dancing girls to come in, when Edith and the doctorappeared at the bottom of the alley, but her tone changed when sherecognized the doctor, and she said, by way of apology, that she didn'tlike her daughter to dance before strangers. So the music and the dancewent on, even little dots of girls and boys shuffling about in astiff-legged fashion, with applause from all the windows, and at lasta largesse of pennies—as many as five altogether—for the musicians.And the sun fell lovingly upon the pretty scene.

But then there were the sweaters' dens, and the private rooms where halfa dozen pale-faced tailors stitched and pressed fourteen and sometimessixteen hours a day, stifling rooms, smelling of the hot goose andsteaming cloth, rooms where they worked, where the cooking was done,where they ate, and late at night, when overpowered with weariness, laydown to sleep. Struggle for life everywhere, and perhaps no morediscontent and heart-burning and certainly less ennui than in the palaceson the avenues.

The residence of Karl Mulhaus, one of the doctor's patients, was typicalof the homes of the better class of poor. The apartment fronted on asmall and not too cleanly court, and was in the third story. As Edithmounted the narrow and dark stairways she saw the plan of the house.Four apartments opened upon each landing, in which was the common hydrantand sink. The Mulhaus apartment consisted of a room large enough tocontain a bed, a cook-stove, a bureau, a rocking-chair, and two otherchairs, and it had two small windows, which would have more freelyadmitted the southern sun if they had been washed, and a room adjoining,dark, and nearly filled by a big bed. On the walls of the living roomwere hung highly colored advertising chromos of steamships and palaces ofindustry, and on the bureau Edith noticed two illustrated newspapers ofthe last year, a patent-medicine almanac, and a volume of Schiller. Thebureau also held Mr. Mulhaus's bottles of medicine, a comb which needed adentist, and a broken hair-brush. What gave the room, however, acheerful aspect were some pots of plants on the window-ledges, and half adozen canary-bird cages hung wherever there was room for them.

None of the family happened to be at home except Mr. Mulhaus, whooccupied the rocking-chair, and two children, a girl of four years and aboy of eight, who were on the floor playing "store" with some blocks ofwood, a few tacks, some lumps of coal, some scraps of paper, and a tangleof twine. In their prattle they spoke, the English they had learned fromtheir brother who was in a store.

"I feel some better today," said Mr. Mulhaus, brightening up as thevisitors entered, "but the cough hangs on. It's three months since thisweather that I haven't been out, but the birds are a good deal ofcompany." He spoke in German, and with effort. He was very thin andsallow, and his large feverish eyes added to the pitiful look of hisrefined face. The doctor explained to Edith that he had been gettingfair wages in a type-foundry until he had become too weak to go anylonger to the shop.

It was rather hard to have to sit there all day, he explained to thedoctor, but they were getting along. Mrs. Mulhaus had got a job ofcleaning that day; that would be fifty cents. Ally—she was twelve—waslearning to sew. That was her afternoon to go to the College Settlement.Jimmy, fourteen, had got a place in a store, and earned two dollars aweek.

"And Vicky?" asked the doctor.

"Oh, Vicky," piped up the eight-year-old boy. "Vicky's up to the'stution"—the hospital was probably the institution referred to—"everso long now. I seen her there, me and Jim did. Such a bootifer place!'Nd chicken!" he added. "Sis got hurt by a cart."

Vicky was seventeen, and had been in a fancy store.

"Yes," said Mulhaus, in reply to a question, "it pays pretty well raisingcanaries, when they turn out singers. I made fifteen dollars last year.I hain't sold much lately. Seems 's if people stopped wanting 'em suchweather. I guess it 'll be better in the spring."

"No doubt it will be better for the poor fellow himself before spring,"said the doctor as they made their way down the dirty stairways. "NowI'll show you one of my favorites."

They turned into a broader street, one of the busy avenues, and passingunder an archway between two tall buildings, entered a court of backbuildings. In the third story back lived Aunt Margaret. The room wasscarcely as big as a ship's cabin, and its one window gave little light,for it opened upon a narrow well of high brick walls. In the only chairAunt Margaret was seated close to the window. In front of her was asmall work-table, with a kerosene lamp on it, but the side of theroom towards which she looked was quite occupied by a narrow couch—ridiculously narrow, for Aunt Margaret was very stout. There was a thinchest of drawers on the other side, and the small coal stove that stoodin the centre so nearly filled the remaining space that the two visitorswere one too many.

"Oh, come in, come in," said the old lady, cheerfully, when the dooropened. "I'm glad to see you."

"And how goes it?" asked the doctor.

"First rate. I'm coming on, doctor. Work's been pretty slack for twoweeks now, but yesterday I got work for two days. I guess it will bebetter now."

The work was finishing pantaloons. It used to be a good business beforethere was so much cutting in.

"I used to get fifteen cents a pair, then ten; now they don't pay butfive. Yes, the shop furnishes the thread."

"And how many pairs can you finish in a day?" asked Edith.

"Three—three pairs, to do 'em nice—and they are very particular—if Iwork from six in the morning till twelve at night. I could do more, butmy sight ain't what it used to be, and I've broken my specs."

"So you earn fifteen cents a day?"

"When I've the luck to get work, my lady. Sometimes there isn't any.
And things cost so much. The rent is the worst."

It appeared that the rent was two dollars and a half a month. That mustbe paid, at any rate. Edith made a little calculation that on a flushaverage of ninety cents a week earned, and allowing so many cents forcoal and so many cents for oil, the margin for bread and tea must besmall for the month. She usually bought three cents' worth of tea at atime.

"It is kinder close," said the old lady, with a smile. "The worst is,my feet hurt me so I can't stir out. But the neighbors is real kind.The little boy next room goes over to the shop and fetches my pantaloonsand takes 'em back. I can get along if it don't come slack again."

Sitting all day by that dim window, half the night stitching by akerosene lamp; lying for six hours on that narrow couch! How to accountfor this old soul's Christian resignation and cheerfulness! "For," saidthe doctor, "she has seen better days; she has moved in high society; herhusband, who died twenty years ago, was a policeman. What the old ladyis doing is fighting for her independence. She has only one fear—thealmshouse."

It was with such scenes as these in her eyes that Edith went to herdressing-room to make her toilet for the Henderson dinner.

V

It was the first time they had dined with the Hendersons. It was Jack'sdoings. "Certainly, if you wish it," Edith had said when the invitationcame. The unmentioned fact was that Jack had taken a little flier inOshkosh, and a hint from Henderson one evening at the Union, when theventure looked squally, had let him out of a heavy loss into a smallprofit, and Jack felt grateful.

"I wonder how Henderson came to do it?" Jack was querying, as he and old
Fairfax sipped their five-o'clock "Manhattan."

"Oh, Henderson likes to do a good-natured thing still, now and then.
Do you know his wife?"

"No. Who was she?"

"Why, old Eschelle's daughter, Carmen; of course you wouldn't know; thatwas ten years ago. There was a good deal of talk about it at the time."

"How?"

"Some said they'd been good friends before Mrs. Henderson's death."

"Then Carmen, as you call her, wasn't the first?"

"No, but she was an easy second. She's a social climber; bound to getthere from the start."

"Is she pretty?"

"Devilish. She's a little thing. I saw her once at Homburg, on thepromenade with her mother.

"The kind of sweet blonde, I said to myself, that would mix a man up in aduel before he knew where he was."

"She must be interesting."

"She was always clever, and she knows enough to play a straight game andwhen to propitiate. I'll bet a five she tells Henderson whom to be goodto when the chance offers."

"Then her influence on him is good?"

"My dear sir, she gets what she wants, and Henderson is going to the…..well, look at the lines in his face. I've known Henderson since hecame fresh into the Street. He'd rarely knife a friend when his firstwife was living. Now, when you see the old frank smile on his face, it'sput on."

It was half-past eight when Mr. Henderson with Mrs. Delancy on his armled the way to the diningroom. The procession was closed by Mrs.Henderson and Mr. Delancy. The Van Dams were there, and Mrs. Chesney andthe Chesney girls, and Miss Tavish, who sat on Jack's right, but the restof the guests were unknown to Jack, except by name. There was a strongdash of the Street in the mixture, and although the Street was tabooed inthe talk, there was such an emanation of aggressive prosperity at thetable that Jack said afterwards that he felt as if he had been at ameeting of the board.

If Jack had known the house ten years ago, he would have noticed certainsubtle changes in it, rather in the atmosphere than in many alterations.The newness and the glitter of cost had worn off. It might still becalled a palace, but the city had now a dozen handsomer houses, andCarmen's idea, as she expressed it, was to make this more like a home.She had made it like herself. There were pictures on the walls thatwould not have hung there in the late Mrs. Henderson's time; and theprevailing air was that of refined sensuousness. Life, she said, was heridea, life in its utmost expression, untrammeled, and yes, a littleGreek. Freedom was perhaps the word, and yet her latest notion wassimplicity. The dinner was simple. Her dress was exceedingly simple,save that it had in it somewhere a touch of audacity, revealing in aflash of invitation the hidden nature of the woman. She knew herselfbetter than any one knew her, except Henderson, and even he was forced tolaugh when she travestied Browning in saying that she had one soul-sideto face the world with, one to show the man she loved, and she declaredhe was downright coarse when on going out of the door he muttered, "Butit needn't be the seamy side." The reported remark of some one who hadseen her at church that she looked like a nun made her smile, but shebroke into a silvery laugh when she head Van Dam's comment on it, "Yes,a devil of a nun."

The library was as cozy as ever, but did not appear to be used much as alibrary. Henderson, indeed, had no time to add to his collection orenjoy it. Most of the books strewn on the tables were French novels orsuch American tales as had the cachet of social riskiness. But Carmenliked the room above all others. She enjoyed her cigarette there, andhad a fancy for pouring her five-o'clock tea in its shelter. Books whichhad all sorts of things in them gave somehow an unconventional atmosphereto the place, and one could say things there that one couldn't say in adrawing-room.

Henderson himself, it must be confessed, had grown stout in the tenyears, and puffy under the eyes. There were lines of irritation in hisface and lines of weariness. He had not kept the freshness of youth sowell as Carmen, perhaps because of his New England conscience. To hisguest he was courteous, seemed to be making an effort to be so, andlistened with well-assumed interest to the story of her day's pilgrimage.At length he said, with a smile, "Life seems to interest you, Mrs.Delancy."

"Yes, indeed," said Edith, looking up brightly; "doesn't it you?"

"Why, yes; not life exactly, but things, doing things—conflict."

"Yes, I can understand that. There is so much to be done for everybody."

Henderson looked amused. "You know in the city the gospel is thateverybody is to be done."

"Well," said Edith, not to be diverted, "but, Mr. Henderson, what is itall for—this conflict? Perhaps, however, you are fighting the devil?"

"Yes, that's it; the devil is usually the other fellow. But, Mrs.Delancy," added Henderson, with an accent of seriousness, "I don't knowwhat it's all for. I doubt if there is much in it."

"And yet the world credits you with finding a great deal in it."

"The world is generally wrong. Do you understand poker, Mrs. Delancy?No! Of course you do not. But the interest of the game isn't so much inthe cards as in the men."

"I thought it was the stakes."

"Perhaps so. But you want to win for the sake of winning. If I gambledit would be a question of nerve. I suppose that which we all enjoy isthe exercise of skill in winning."

"And not for the sake of doing anything—just winning? Don't you gettired of that?" asked Edith, quite simply.

There was something in Edith's sincerity, in her fresh enthusiasm aboutlife, that appeared to strike a reminiscent note in Henderson. Perhapshe remembered another face as sweet as hers, and ideals, faint and longago, that were once mixed with his ideas of success. At any rate, it waswith an accent of increased deference, and with a look she had not seenin his face before, that he said:

"People get tired of everything. I'm not sure but it would interest meto see for a minute how the world looks through your eyes." And then headded, in a different tone, "As to your East Side, Mrs. Henderson triedthat some years ago."

"Wasn't she interested?"

"Oh, very much. For a time. But she said there was too much of it."
And Edith could detect no tone of sarcasm in the remark.

Down at the other end of the table, matters were going very smoothly.Jack was charmed with his hostess. That clever woman had felt her wayalong from the heresy trial, through Tuxedo and the Independent Theatreand the Horse Show, until they were launched in a perfectly freeconversation, and Carmen knew that she hadn't to look out for thin ice.

"Were you thinking of going on to the Conventional Club tonight, Mr.
Delancy?" she was saying.

"I don't belong," said Jack. "Mrs. Delancy said she didn't care for it."

"Oh, I don't care for it, for myself," replied Carmen.

"I do," struck in Miss Tavish. "It's awfully nice."

"Yes, it does seem to fill a want. Why, what do you do with yourevenings, Mr. Delancy?"

"Well, here's one of them."

"Yes, I know, but I mean between twelve o'clock and bedtime."

"Oh," said Jack, laughing out loud, "I go to bed—sometimes."

"Yes, 'there's always that. But you want some place to go to after thetheatres and the dinners; after the other places are shut up you want togo somewhere and be amused."

"Yes," said Jack, falling in, "it is a fact that there are not manyplaces of amusem*nt for the rich; I understand. After the theatres youwant to be amused. This Conventional Club is—"

"I tell you what it is. It's a sort of Midnight Mission for the rich.
They never have had anything of the kind in the city."

"And it's very nice," said Miss Tavish, demurely.

The performers are selected. You can see things there that you want tosee at other places to which you can't go. And everybody you know isthere."

"Oh, I see," said Jack. "It's what the Independent Theatre is trying todo, and what all the theatrical people say needs to be done, to elevatethe character of the audiences, and then the managers can give betterplays."

"That's just it. We want to elevate the stage," Carmen explained.

"But," continued Jack, "it seems to me that now the audience is selectand elevated, it wants to see the same sort of things it liked to seebefore it was elevated."

"You may laugh, Mr. Delancy," replied Carmen, throwing an earnestsimplicity into her eyes, "but why shouldn't women know what is going onas well as men?"

"And why," Miss Tavish asked, "will the serpentine dances and the Londontopical songs do any more harm to women than to men?"

"And besides, Mr. Delancy," Carmen said, chiming in, "isn't it just asproper that women should see women dance and throw somersaults on thestage as that men should see them? And then, you know, women are such arestraining influence."

"I hadn't thought of that," said Jack. "I thought the Conventional wasfor the benefit of the audience, not for the salvation of theperformers."

"It's both. It's life. Don't you think women ought to know life? Howare they to take their place in the world unless they know life as menknow it?"

"I'm sure I don't know whose place they are to take, the serpentinedancer's or mine," said Jack, as if he were studying a problem. "Howdoes your experiment get on, Miss Tavish?"

Carmen looked up quickly.

"Oh, I haven't any experiment," said Miss Tavish, shaking her head.
"It's just Mr. Delancy's nonsense."

"I wish I had an experiment. There is so little for women to do. I wishI knew what was right." And Carmen looked mournfully demure, as if life,after all, were a serious thing with her.

"Whatever Mrs. Henderson does is sure to be right," said Jack, gallantly.

Carmen shot at him a quick sympathetic glance, tempered by a gratefulsmile. "There are so many points of view."

Jack felt the force of the remark as he did the revealing glance. And hehad a swift vision of Miss Tavish leading him a serpentine dance, and ofCarmen sweetly beckoning him to a pleasant point of view. After all itdoesn't much matter. Everything is in the point of view.

After dinner and cigars and cigarettes in the library, the talk dragged alittle in duets. The dinner had been charming, the house was lovely, thecompany was most agreeable. All said that. It had been so somewhereelse the night before that, and would be the next night. And the ennuiof it all! No one expressed it, but Henderson could not help looking it,and Carmen saw it. That charming hostess had been devoting herself toEdith since dinner. She was so full of sympathy with the East-Side work,asked a hundred questions about it, and declared that she must take it upagain. She would order a cage of canaries from that poor German for herkitchen. It was such a beautiful idea. But Edith did not believe in herone bit. She told Jack afterwards that "Mrs. Henderson cares no more forthe poor of New York than she does for—"

"Henderson?" suggested Jack.

"Oh, I don't know anything about that. Henderson has only one idea—toget the better of everybody, and be the money king of New York. But Ishould not wonder if he had once a soft spot in his heart. He is betterthan she is."

It was still early, lacked half an hour of midnight, and the night wasbefore them. Some one proposed the Conventional. "Yes," said Carmen;"all come to our box." The Van Dams would go, Miss Tavish, the Chesneys;the suggestion was a relief to everybody. Only Mr. Henderson pleadedimportant papers that must have his attention that night. Edith saidthat she was too tired, but that her desertion must not break up theparty.

"Then you will excuse me also," said Jack, a little shade ofdisappointment in his face.

"No, no," said Edith, quickly; "you can drop me on the way. Go, by allmeans, Jack."

"Do you really want me to go, dear?" said Jack, aside.

"Why of course; I want you to be happy."

And Jack recalled the loving look that accompanied these words, later on,as he sat in the Henderson box at the Conventional, between Carmen andMiss Tavish, and saw, through the slight haze of smoke, beyond theorchestra, the praiseworthy efforts of the Montana Kicker, who had justreturned with the imprimatur of Paris, to relieve the ennui of the modernworld.

The complex affair we call the world requires a great variety of peopleto keep it going. At one o'clock in the morning Carmen and our friendMr. Delancy and Miss Tavish were doing their part. Edith lay awakelistening for Jack's return. And in an alley off Rivington Street ayoung girl, pretty once, unknown to fortune but not to fame, was about torender the last service she could to the world by leaving it.

The impartial historian scarcely knows how to distribute his pathos.By the electric light (and that is the modern light) gayety is almost aspathetic as suffering. Before the Montana girl hit upon the happy devicethat gave her notoriety, her feet, whose every twinkle now was worth agold eagle, had trod a thorny path. There was a fortune now in the whirlof her illusory robes, but any day—such are the whims of fashion—shemight be wandering again, sick at heart, about the great city, knockingat the side doors of variety shows for any engagement that would give hera pittance of a few dollars a week. How long had Carmen waited on thesocial outskirts; and now she had come into her kingdom, was she anythingbut a tinsel queen? Even Henderson, the great Henderson, did the friendsof his youth respect him? had he public esteem? Carmen used to cut outthe newspaper paragraphs that extolled Henderson's domestic virtue andhis generosity to his family, and show them to her lord, with a queersmile on her face. Miss Tavish, in the nervous consciousness of fleetingyears, was she not still waiting, dashing here and there like a bird in anet for the sort of freedom, audacious as she was, that seemed deniedher? She was still beautiful, everybody said, and she was sought andflattered, because she was always merry and good-natured. Why should VanDam, speaking of women, say that there were horses that had been set up,and checked up and trained, that held their heads in an aristocraticfashion, moved elegantly, and showed style, long after the spirit hadgone out of them? And Jack himself, happily married, with a comfortableincome, why was life getting flat to him? What sort of career was itthat needed the aid of Carmen and the serpentine dancer? And why not,since it is absolutely necessary that the world should be amused?

We are in no other world when we enter the mean tenement in the alley offRivington Street. Here also is the life of the town. The room is small,but it contains a cook-stove, a chest of drawers, a small table, a coupleof chairs, and two narrow beds. On the top of the chest are alooking-glass, some toilet articles, and bottles of medicine. The crackedwalls are bare and not clean. In one of the beds are two children,sleeping soundly, and on the foot of it is a middle-aged woman, in asoiled woolen gown with a thin figured shawl drawn about her shoulders, adirty cap half concealing her frowzy hair; she looks tired and worn andsleepy. On the other bed lies a girl of twenty years, a woman inexperience. The kerosene lamp on the stand at the head of the bed casts aspectral light on her flushed face, and the thin arms that are restlesslythrown outside the cover. By the bedside sits the doctor, patient,silent, and watchful. The doctor puts her hand caressingly on that of thegirl. It is hot and dry. The girl opens her eyes with a startled look,and says, feebly:

"Do you think he will come?"

"Yes, dear, presently. He never fails."

The girl closed her eyes again, and there was silence. The dim rays ofthe lamp, falling upon the doctor, revealed the figure of a woman of lessthan medium size, perhaps of the age of thirty or more, a plain littlebody, you would have said, who paid the slightest possible attention toher dress, and when she went about the city was not to be distinguishedfrom a working-woman. Her friends, indeed, said that she had not theleast care for her personal appearance, and unless she was watched, shewas sure to go out in her shabbiest gown and most battered hat. She woretonight a brown ulster and a nondescript black bonnet drawn close down onher head and tied with black strings. In her lap lay her leathern bag,which she usually carried under her arm, that contained medicines, lint,bandages, smelling-salts, a vial of ammonia, and so on; to her patientsit was a sort of conjurer's bag, out of which she could produce anythingthat an emergency called for.

Dr. Leigh was not in the least nervous or excited. Indeed, an artistwould not have painted her as a rapt angelic visitant to this abode ofpoverty. This contact with poverty and coming death was quite in herordinary experience. It would never have occurred to her that she wasdoing anything unusual, any more than it would have occurred to theobjects of her ministrations to overwhelm her with thanks. They trustedher, that was all. They met her always with a pleasant recognition.She belonged perhaps to their world. Perhaps they would have said that"Dr. Leigh don't handsome much," but their idea was that her face wasgood. That was what anybody would have said who saw her tonight, "Shehas such a good face;" the face of a woman who knew the world, andperhaps was not very sanguine about it, had few illusions and fewantipathies, but accepted it, and tried in her humble way to alleviateits hardships, without any consciousness of having a mission or making asacrifice.

Dr. Leigh—Miss Ruth Leigh—was Edith's friend. She had not come fromthe country with an exalted notion of being a worker among the poor aboutwhom so much was written; she had not even descended from some highcircle in the city into this world, moved by a restless enthusiasm forhumanity. She was a woman of the people, to adopt a popular phrase.From her childhood she had known them, their wants, their sympathies,their discouragements; and in her heart—though you would not discoverthis till you had known her long and well—there was a burning sympathywith them, a sympathy born in her, and not assumed for the sake of havinga career. It was this that had impelled her to get a medical education,which she obtained by hard labor and self-denial. To her this was not ameans of livelihood, but simply that she might be of service to those allabout her who needed help more than she did. She didn't believe incharity, this stout-hearted, clearheaded little woman; she meant to makeeverybody pay for her medical services who could pay; but somehow herpractice was not lucrative, and the little salary she got as a dispensarydoctor melted away with scarcely any perceptible improvement in her ownwardrobe. Why, she needed nothing, going about as she did.

She sat—now waiting for the end; and the good face, so full of sympathyfor the living, had no hope in it. Just another human being had come tothe end of her path—the end literally. It was so everyday. Somebodycame to the end, and there was nothing beyond. Only it was the end, andthat was peace. One o'clock—half-past one. The door opened softly.The old woman rose from the foot of the bed with a start and a low"Herr! gross Gott." It was Father Damon. The girl opened her eyes witha frightened look at first, and then an eager appeal. Dr. Leigh rose tomake room for him at the bedside. They bowed as he came forward, andtheir eyes met. She shook her head. In her eyes was no expectation, nohope. In his was the glow of faith. But the eyes of the girl restedupon his face with a rapt expression. It was as if an angel had enteredthe room.

Father Damon was a young man, not yet past thirty, slender, erect.He had removed as he came in his broad-brimmed soft hat. The hair wasclose-cut, but not tonsured. He wore a brown cassock, falling instraight lines, and confined at the waist with a white cord. From hisneck depended from a gold chain a large gold cross. His face wassmooth-shaven, thin, intellectual, or rather spiritual; the nose long,the mouth straight, the eyes deep gray, sometimes dreamy and puzzling,again glowing with an inner fervor. A face of long vigils and theschooled calmness of repressed energy. You would say a fanatic of God,with a dash of self-consciousness. Dr. Leigh knew him well. They metoften on their diverse errands, and she liked, when she could, to go tovespers in the little mission chapel of St. Anselm, where he ministered.It was not the confessional that attracted her, that was sure; perhapsnot altogether the service, though that was soothing in certain moods;but it was the noble personality of Father Damon. He was devoted to thepeople as she was, he understood them; and for the moment their passionof humanity assumed the same aspect, though she knew that what he saw, orthought he saw, lay beyond her agnostic vision.

Father Damon was an Englishman, a member of a London Anglican order, whohad taken the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, who hadbeen for some years in New York, and had finally come to live on the EastSide, where his work was. In a way he had identified himself with thepeople; he attended their clubs; he was a Christian socialist; he spokeon the inequalities of taxation; the strikers were pretty sure of hissympathy; he argued the injustice of the present ownership of land. Somesaid that he had joined a lodge of the Knights of Labor. Perhaps it wasthese things, quite as much as his singleness of purpose and hisspiritual fervor, that drew Dr. Leigh to him with a feeling that vergedon devotion. The ladies up-town, at whose tables Father Damon was aninfrequent guest, were as fully in sympathy with this handsome andaristocratic young priest, and thought it beautiful that he should devotehimself to the poor and the sinful; but they did not see why he shouldadopt their views.

It was at the mission that Father Damon had first seen the girl. She hadventured in not long ago at twilight, with her cough and her pale face,in a silk gown and flower-garden of a hat, and crept into one of theconfessional boxes, and told him her story.

"Do you think, Father," said the girl, looking up wistfully, "that I can—can be forgiven?"

Father Damon looked down sadly, pitifully. "Yes, my daughter, if yourepent. It is all with our Father. He never refuses."

He knelt down, with his cross in his hand, and in a low voice repeatedthe prayer for the dying. As the sweet, thrilling voice went on insupplication the girl's eyes closed again, and a sweet smile played abouther mouth; it was the innocent smile of the little girl long ago, whenshe might have awakened in the morning and heard the singing of birds ather window.

When Father Damon arose she seemed to be sleeping. They all stood insilence for a moment.

"You will remain?" he asked the doctor.

"Yes," she said, with the faintest wan smile on her face. "It is I, youknow, who have care of the body."

At the door he turned and said, quite low, "Peace be to this house!"

VI

Father Damon came dangerously near to being popular. The austerity ofhis life and his known self-chastening vigils contributed to this effect.His severely formal, simple ecclesiastical dress, coarse in material butperfect in its saintly lines, separated him from the world in which hemoved so unostentatiously and humbly, and marked him as one who wentabout doing good. His life was that of self-absorption and hardship,mortification of the body, denial of the solicitation of the senses,struggling of the spirit for more holiness of purpose—a life ofsupplication for the perishing souls about him. And yet he was soinformed with the modern spirit that he was not content, as a zealotformerly might have been, to snatch souls out of the evil that is in theworld, but he strove to lessen the evil. He was a reformer. It wasprobably this feature of his activity, and not his spiritual mission,that attracted to him the little group of positivists on the East Side,the demagogues of the labor lodges, the practical workers of theworking-girls' clubs, and the humanitarian agnostics like Dr. Leigh, whowere literally giving their lives without the least expectation ofreward. Even the refined ethical-culture groups had no sneer for FatherDamon. The little chapel of St. Anselm was well known. It was alwaysopen. It was plain, but its plainness was not the barrenness of anon-conformist chapel. There were two confessionals; a great bronze lampattached to one of the pillars scarcely dispelled the obscurity, but castan unnatural light upon the gigantic crucifix that hung from a beam infront of the chancel. There were half a dozen rows of backless benches inthe centre of the chapel. The bronze lamp, and the candles always burningupon the altar, rather accented than dissipated the heavy shadows in thevaulted roof. At no hour was it empty, but at morning prayer and atvespers the benches were apt to be filled, and groups of penitents orspectators were kneeling or standing on the floor. At vespers there weresure to be carriages in front of the door, and among the kneeling figureswere ladies who brought into these simple services for the poor somethingof the refinement of grace as it is in the higher circles. Indeed, at thehour set apart for confession, there were in the boxes saints fromup-town as well as sinners from the slums. Sometimes the sinners werefrom up-town and the saints from the slums.

When the organ sounded, and through a low door in the chancel the priestentered, preceded by a couple of acolytes, and advanced swiftly to thereading-desk, there was an awed hush in the congregation. One would notdare to say that there was a sentimental feeling for the pale face andrapt expression of the devotee. It was more than that. He had just comefrom some scene of suffering, from the bed of one dying; he was wearywith watching. He was faint with lonely vigils; he was visibly carryingthe load of the poor and the despised. Even Ruth Leigh, who had droppedin for half an hour in one of her daily rounds—even Ruth Leigh, who hadin her stanch, practical mind a contempt for forms and rituals, and nofaith in anything that she could not touch, and who at times wasindignant at the efforts wasted over the future of souls concerning whichno one knew anything, when there were so many bodies, which had inheriteddisease and poverty and shame, going to worldly wreck before so-calledChristian eyes—even she could scarcely keep herself from adoring thisself-sacrificing spirit. The woes of humanity grieved him as theygrieved her, and she used to say she did not care what he believed solong as he gave his life for the needy.

It was when he advanced to the altar-rail to speak that the man bestappeared. His voice, which was usually low and full of melody, could besomething terrible when it rose in denunciation of sin. Those who hadtraveled said that he had the manner of a preaching friar—the simplelanguage, so refined and yet so homely and direct, the real, the inspiredword, the occasional hastening torrent of words. When he had occasion toaddress one of the societies of ladies for the promotion of somethingamong the poor, his style and manner were simplicity itself. One mighthave said there was a shade of contempt in his familiar and not seldomslightly humorous remarks upon society and its aims and aspirations,about which he spoke plainly and vigorously. And this was what theladies liked. Especially when he referred to the pitifulness of classdistinctions, in the light of the example of our Lord, in our shortpilgrimage in this world. This unveiling and denunciation made themsomehow feel nearer to their work, and, indeed, while they sat there,co-workers with this apostle of righteousness.

Perhaps there was something in the priestly dress that affected not onlythe congregation in the chapel, but all the neighborhood in which FatherDamon lived. There was in the long robe, with its feminine lines, anassurance to the women that he was set apart and not as others were; and,on the other hand, the semi-feminine suggestion of the straight-fallinggarment may have had for the men a sort of appeal for defense and evenprotection. It is certain, at any rate, that Father Damon had theconfidence of high and low, rich and poor. The forsaken sought him out,the hungry went to him, the dying sent for him, the criminal knocked atthe door of his little room, even the rich reprobate would have openedhis bad heart to him sooner than to any one else. It is evident,therefore, that Father Damon was dangerously near to being popular.Human vanity will feed on anything within its reach, and there has beendiscovered yet no situation that will not minister to its growth.Suffering perhaps it prefers, and contumely and persecution. Are notopposition, despiteful anger, slander even, rejection of men, stripeseven, if such there could be in these days, manna to the devout soulconsciously set apart for a mission? But success, obsequiousness,applause, the love of women, the concurrent good opinion of allhumanitarians, are these not almost as dangerous as persecution? FatherDamon, though exalted in his calling, and filled with a burning zeal,was a sincere man, and even his eccentricities of saintly conductexpressed to his mind only the high purpose of self-sacrifice. Yet hesaw, he could not but see, the spiritual danger in this rising tide ofadulation. He fought against its influence, he prayed against it,he tried to humiliate himself, and his very humiliations increased theadulation. He was perplexed, almost ashamed, and examined himself to seehow it was that he himself seemed to be thwarting his own work.Sometimes he withdrew from it for a week together, and buried himself ina retreat in the upper part of the island. Alas! did ever a man escapehimself in a retreat? It made him calm for the moment. But why was it,he asked himself, that he had so many followers, his religion so few?Why was it, he said, that all the humanitarians, the reformers, theguilds, the ethical groups, the agnostics, the male and female knights,sustained him, and only a few of the poor and friendless knocked, by hissolicitation, at the supernatural door of life? How was it that a womanwhom he encountered so often, a very angel of mercy, could do the thingshe was doing, tramping about in the misery and squalor of the great cityday and night, her path unilluminated by a ray from the future life?

Perhaps he had been remiss in his duty. Perhaps he was letting a vaguephilanthropy take the place of a personal solicitude for individualsouls. The elevation of the race! What had the land question to do withthe salvation of man? Suppose everybody on the East Side should becomeas industrious, as self-denying, as unselfish as Ruth Leigh, and yetwithout belief, without hope! He had accepted the humanitarian situationwith her, and never had spoken to her of the eternal life. Whatunfaithfulness to his mission and to her! It should be so no longer.

It was after one of his weeks of retreat, at the close of vesper service,that Dr. Leigh came to him. He had been saying in his little talk thatpoverty is no excuse for irreligion, and that all aid in the hardship ofthis world was vain and worthless unless the sinner laid hold on eternallife. Dr. Leigh, who was laboring with a serious practical problem,heard this coldly, and with a certain contempt for what seemed to her avague sort of consolation.

"Well," he said, when she came to him in the vestry, with a drop from therather austere manner in which he had spoken, "what can I do for you?"

"For me, nothing, Father Damon. I thought perhaps you would go roundwith me to see a pretty bad case. It is in your parish."

"Ah, did they send for me? Do they want spiritual help?"

"First the natural, then the spiritual," she replied, with a slight toneof sarcasm in her voice. "That's just like a priest," she was thinking."I do not know what to do, and something must be done."

"Did you report to the Associated Charities?"

"Yes. But there's a hitch somewhere. The machine doesn't take hold.The man says he doesn't want any charity, any association, treating himlike a pauper. He's off peddling; but trade is bad, and he's been away aweek. I'm afraid he drinks a little."

"Well?"

"The mother is sick in bed. I found her trying to do some finestitching, but she was too weak to hold up the muslin. There are fiveyoung children. The family never has had help before."

Father Damon put on his hat, and they went out together, and for sometime picked their way along the muddy streets in silence.

At length he asked, in a softened voice, "Is the mother a Christian?"

"I didn't ask," she replied shortly. "I found her crying because thechildren were hungry."

Father Damon, still under the impression of his neglect of duty, did notheed her warning tone, but persisted, "You have so many opportunities,Dr. Leigh, in your visits of speaking a word."

"About what?" she asked, refusing to understand, and hardened at theslightest sign of what she called cant.

"About the necessity of repentance and preparation for another life," heanswered, softly but firmly. "You surely do not think human beings arecreated just for this miserable little experience here?"

"I don't know. I have too much to do with the want and suffering I seeto raise anxieties about a world of which no one can possibly knowanything."

"Pardon me," he persisted, "have you no sense of incompleteness in thislife, in your own life? no inward consciousness of an undyingpersonality?"

The doctor was angry for a moment at this intrusion. It had seemednatural enough for Father Damon to address his exhortations to the poorand sinful of his mission. She admired his spirit, she had a certainsympathy with him; for who could say that ministering to minds diseasedmight not have a physical influence to lift these people into a moredecent and prosperous way of living? She had thought of herself asworking with him to a common end. But for him now to turn upon her,absolutely ignoring the solid, rational, and scientific ground on whichhe knew, or should know, she stood, and to speak to her as one of the"lost," startled her, and filled her with indignation. She had on herlips a sarcastic reply to the effect that even if she had a soul, she hadnot taken up her work in the city as a means of saving it; but she wasnot given to sarcasm, and before she spoke she looked at her companion,and saw in the eyes a look of such genuine humble feeling, contradictingthe otherwise austere expression of his face, that her momentarybitterness passed away.

"I think, Father Damon," she said, gently, "we had better not talk ofthat. I don't have much time for theorizing, you know, nor muchinclination," she added.

The priest saw that for the present he could make no progress, and aftera little silence the conversation went back to the family they were aboutto visit.

They found the woman better—at least, more cheerful. Father Damonnoticed that there were medicines upon the stand, and that there were theremains of a meal which the children had been eating. He turned to thedoctor. "I see that you have been providing for them."

"Oh, the eldest boy had already been out and begged a piece of bread whenI came. Of course they had to have something more at once. But it isvery little that I can do."

He sat down by the bed, and talked with the mother, getting her story,while the doctor tidied up the room a bit, and then, taking the youngestchild in her lap and drawing the others about her, began to tell a storyin a low voice. Presently she was aware that the priest was on his kneesand saying a prayer. She stopped in her story, and looked out throughthe dirty window into the chill and dark area.

"What is he doing?" whispered one of the children.

"I don't know," she said, and a sort of chill came over her heart. Itall seemed a mockery, in these surroundings.

When he rose he said to the woman, "We will see that you do not want tillyour husband comes back."

"And I will look in tomorrow," said the doctor.

When they were in the street, Father Damon thanked her for calling hisattention to the case, thanked her a little formally, and said that hewould make inquiries and have it properly attended to. And then heasked: "Is your work ended for the day? You must be tired."

"Oh, no; I have several visits to make. I'm not tired. I rather thinkit is good for me, being out-of-doors so much." She thanked him, andsaid good-by.

For a moment he stood and watched the plain, resolute little womanthreading her way through the crowded and unclean street, and then slowlywalked away to his apartment, filled with sadness and perplexity.

The apartment which he occupied was not far from the mission chapel,and it was the one clean spot among the ill-kept tenements; but as tocomfort, it was not much better than the cell of an anchorite. Of this,however, he was not thinking as he stretched himself out on his pallet torest a little from the exhausting labors of the day. Probably it did notoccur to him that his self-imposed privations lessened his strength forhis work.

He was thinking of Ruth Leigh. What a rare soul! And yet apparently shedid not think or care whether she had a soul. What could be the springof her incessant devotion? If ever woman went about doing good in anunselfish spirit it was she. Yet she confessed her work hopeless. Shehad no faith, no belief in immortality, no expectation of any reward,nothing to offer to anybody beyond this poor life. Was this theenthusiasm of humanity, of which he heard so much? But she did not seemto have any illusions, or to be burned up by enthusiasm. She just kepton. Ah, he thought, what a woman she would be if she were touched by thefire of faith!

Meantime, Ruth Leigh went on her round. One day was like another, exceptthat every day the kaleidoscope of misery showed new combinations, newphases of suffering and incompetence, and there was always a freshinterest in that. For years now this had been her life, in the chill ofwinter and the heat of summer, without rest or vacation. The amusem*nts,the social duties, the allurements of dress and society, that so muchoccupied the thoughts of other women, did not seem to come into her life.For books she had little time, except the books of her specialty. Themost exciting novels were pale compared with her daily experiences ofreal life. Almost her only recreation was a meeting of theworking-girls, a session of her labor lodge, or an assembly at the CooperUnion, where some fiery orator, perhaps a priest, or a clever agitator, aworking-man glib of speech, who had a mass of statistics at the end ofhis tongue, who read and discussed, in some private club of zealots ofhumanity, metaphysics, psychology, and was familiar with the wholeliterature of labor and socialism, awoke the enthusiasm of thediscontented or the unemployed, and where men and women, in clear buthomely speech, told their individual experiences of wrong and injustice.There was evidence in all these demonstrations and organizations that theworld was moving, and that the old order must change.

Years and years the little woman had gone on with her work, and shefrankly confessed to Edith, one day when they were together going herrounds, that she could see no result from it all. The problem of povertyand helplessness and incapacity seemed to her more hopeless than when shebegan. There might be a little enlightenment here and there, but therewas certainly not less misery. The state of things was worse than shethought at first; but one thing cheered her: the people were better thanshe thought. They might be dull and suspicious in the mass, but shefound so much patience, unselfishness, so many people of good hearts andwarm affections.

"They are the people," she said, "I should choose for friends. They arenatural, unsophisticated. And do you know," she went on, "that what mostsurprises me is the number of reading, thoughtful people among those whodo manual labor. I doubt if on your side of town the, best books, thereal fundamental and abstruse books, are so read and discussed, or thephilosophy of life is so seriously considered, as in certain littlecircles of what you call the working-classes."

"Isn't it all very revolutionary?" asked Edith.

"Perhaps," replied the doctor, dryly. "But they have no more fads thanother people. Their theories seem to them not only practical, but theytry to apply them to actual legislation; at any rate, they discriminatein vagaries. You would have been amused the other night in a smallcircle at the lamentations over a member—he was a car-driver—who wasthe authoritative expositor of Schopenhauer, because he had gone off intoTheosophy. It showed such weakness."

"I have heard that the members of that circle were Nihilists."

"The club has not that name, but probably the members would not care torepudiate the title, or deny that they were Nihilists theoretically—thatis, if Nihilism means an absolute social and political overturning inorder that something better may be built up. And, indeed, if you seewhat a hopeless tangle our present situation is, where else can the mindlogically go?"

"It is pitiful enough," Edith admitted. "But all this movement you speakof seems to me a vague agitation."

"I don't think," the doctor said, after a moment, "that you appreciatethe intellectual force that is in it all, or allow for the fermentingpower in the great discontented mass of these radical theories on theproblem of life."

This was a specimen of the sort of talk that Edith and the doctor oftendrifted into in their mission work. As Ruth Leigh tramped along latethis afternoon in the slush of the streets, from one house of sicknessand poverty to another, a sense of her puny efforts in this great mass ofsuffering and injustice came over her anew. Her indignation rose againstthe state of things. And Father Damon, who was trying to save souls, washe accomplishing anything more than she? Why had he been so curt withher when she went to him for help this afternoon? Was he just anarrow-minded, bigoted priest? A few nights before she had heard himspeak on the single tax at a labor meeting. She recalled his eloquence,his profound sympathy with the cause of the people, the thrilling,pathetic voice, the illumination of his countenance, the authority, theconsecration in his attitude and dress; and he was transfigured to herthen, as he was now in her thought, into an apostle of humanity. Alas!she thought, what a leader he would be if he would break loose from hissuperstitious traditions!

VII

The acquaintance between the house of Henderson and the house of Delancywas not permitted to languish. Jack had his reasons for it, which mayhave been financial, and Carmen had her reasons, which were probablypurely social. What was the good of money if it did not bring socialposition? and what, on the other hand, was the good of social position ifyou could not use it to get money?

In his recent association with the newly rich, Jack's twenty thousand ayear began to seem small. In fact, in the lowering of the rate ofinterest and the shrinkage of securities, it was no longer twentythousand a year. This would have been a matter of little consequence inthe old order. His lot was not cast among the poor; most of hisrelations had solid fortunes, and many of them were millionaires, or whatwas equivalent to that, before the term was invented. But they madelittle display; none at all merely for the purpose of exhibition, or togain or keep social place. In this atmosphere in which he was born Jackfloated along without effort, with no demand upon him to keep up with arising standard of living. Even impecuniosity, though inconvenient,would not have made him lose caste.

All this was changing now. Since the introduction of a new element eventhe conservative old millions had begun to feel the stir of uneasiness,and to launch out into extravagance in rivalry with the new millions.Even with his relations Jack began to feel that he was poor. It did notspur him to do anything, to follow the example, for instance, of theyoung fellows from the country, who were throwing themselves into WallStreet with the single purpose of becoming suddenly rich, but it made himuneasy. And when he was with the Hendersons, or Miss Tavish, whosefather, though not newly rich, was one of the most aggressive ofspeculators, and saw how easily every luxurious desire glided intofulfillment, he felt for the first time in his life the emotion of envy.It seemed then that only unlimited money could make the world attractive.Why, even to keep up with the unthinking whims of Miss Tavish wouldbankrupt him in six months. That little spread at Wherry's for thetheatre party the other night, though he made light of it to Edith, wasalmost the price he couldn't afford to pay for Storm. He had a grimthought that midwinter flowers made dining as expensive as dying.Carmen, whom nothing escaped, complimented him on his taste, quite awarethat he couldn't afford it, and, apropos, told him of a lady in Chicagowho, hearing that the fashion had changed, wrote on her dinner cards, "Noflowers." It was only a matter of course for these people to build a newcountry-house in any spot that fashion for the moment indicated, to equiptheir yachts for a Mediterranean voyage or for loitering down theSouthern coast, to give a ball that was the talk of the town, to make upa special train of luxurious private cars for Mexico or California. Evenat the clubs the talk was about these things and the opportunities forgetting them.

There was a rumor about town that Henderson was a good deal extended.
It alarmed a hundred people, not on Henderson's account, but their own.
When one of them consulted Uncle Jerry, that veteran smiled.

"Oh, I guess Henderson's all right. But I wouldn't wonder if it meant asqueeze. Of course if he's extended, it's an excuse for settling up, andthe shorts will squeal. I've seen Henderson extended a good many times,"and the old man laughed. "Don't you worry about him."

This opinion, when reported, did not seem to quiet Jack's fears, who sawhis own little venture at the mercy of a sweeping Street game. Itoccurred to him that he possibly might get a little light on the matterby dropping in that afternoon and taking a quiet cup of tea with Mrs.Henderson.

He found her in the library. Outdoors winter was slouching into springwith a cold drizzle, with a coating of ice on the pavements-animatingweather for the medical profession. Within, there was the glow of warmthand color that Carmen liked to create for herself. In an entrancingtea-gown, she sat by a hickory fire, with a fresh magazine in one handand a big paper-cutter in the other. She rose at Jack's entrance, and,extending her hand, greeted him with a most cordial smile. It was so goodof him! She was so lonesome! He could himself see that the lonesomenesswas dissipated, as she seated him in a comfortable chair by the fire, andthen stood a moment looking at him, as if studying his comfort. She wassuch a domestic woman!

"You look tired, monsieur," she said, as she passed behind his chair andrested the tip of her forefinger for a second on his head. "I shall makeyou a cup of tea at once."

"Not tired, but bothered," said Jack, stretching out his legs.

"I know," she replied; "it's a bothering world." She was still behindhim, and spoke low, but with sympathy. "I remember, it's only one lump."

He could feel her presence, so womanly and friendly. "I don't care whatpeople say," he was thinking, "she's a good-hearted little thing, andunderstands men." He felt that he could tell her anything, almostanything that he could tell a man. She was sympathetic and notsqueamish.

"There," she said, handing him the tea and looking down on him.

The cup was dainty, the fragrance of the tea delicious, the womanexquisite.

"I'm better already," said Jack, with a laugh.

She made a cup for herself, handed him the cigarettes, lit one forherself, and sat on a low stool not far from him.

"Now what is it?"

"Oh, nothing—a little business worry. Have you heard any Street rumor?"

"Rumor?" she repeated, with a little start. And then, leaning forward,
"Do you mean that about Mr. Henderson in the morning papers?"

"Yes."

Carmen, relieved, gave a liquid little laugh, and then said, with achange to earnestness: "I'm going to trust you, my friend. Henderson putit in himself! He told me so this morning when I asked him about it.This is just between ourselves."

Jack said, "Of course," but he did not look relieved. The clevercreature divined the situation without another word, for there was noturn in the Street that she was not familiar with. But there was noapparent recognition of it, except in her sympathetic tone, when shesaid: "Well, the world is full of annoyances. I'm bothered myself—andsuch a little thing."

"What is it?"

"Oh nothing, not even a rumor. You cannot do anything about it. I don'tknow why I should tell you. But I will." And she paused a moment,looking down in an innocent perplexity. "It's just this: I am on theFoundlings' Board with Mrs. Schuyler Blunt, and I don't know her, and youcan't think how awkward it is having to meet her every week in that stiffkind of way." She did not go on to confide to Jack how she had intriguedto get on the board, and how Mrs. Schuyler Blunt, in the most well-bredmanner, had practically ignored her.

"She's an old friend of mine."

"Indeed! She's a charming woman."

"Yes. We were great cronies when she was Sadie Mack. She isn't agenius, but she is good-hearted. I suppose she is on all the charityboards in the city. She patronizes everything," Jack continued, with asmile.

"I'm sure she is," said Carmen, thinking that however good-hearted shemight be she was very "snubby." "And it makes it all the more awkward,for I am interested in so many things myself."

"I can arrange all that," Jack said, in an off-hand way. Carmen's lookof gratitude could hardly be distinguished from affection. "That's easyenough. We are just as good friends as ever, though I fancy she doesn'taltogether approve of me lately. It's rather nice for a fellow, Mrs.Henderson, to have a lot of women keeping him straight, isn't it?" askedJack, in the tone of a bad boy.

"Yes. Between us all we will make a model of you. I am so glad now that
I told you."

Jack protested that it was nothing. Why shouldn't friends help eachother? Why not, indeed, said Carmen, and the talk went on a good dealabout friendship, and the possibility of it between a man and a woman.This sort of talk is considered serious and even deep, not to sayphilosophic. Carmen was a great philosopher in it. She didn't know, butshe believed, it seemed natural, that every woman should have one manfriend. Jack rose to go.

"So soon?" And it did seem pathetically soon. She gave him her hand, andthen by an impulse she put her left hand over his, and looked up to himin quite a business way.

"Mr. Delancy, don't you be troubled about that rumor we were speaking of.
It will be all right. Trust me."

He understood perfectly, and expressed both his understanding and hisgratitude by bending over and kissing the little hand that lay in his.

When he had gone, Carmen sat a long time by the fire reflecting. Itwould be sweet to humiliate the Delancy and Schuyler Blunt set, asHenderson could. But what would she gain by that? It would be sweeterstill to put them under obligations, and profit by that. She had endureda good many social rebuffs in her day, this tolerant little woman, andthe sting of their memory could only be removed when the people who hadignored her had to seek social favors she could give. If Henderson onlycared as much for such things as she did! But he was at times actuallybrutal about it. He seemed to have only one passion. She herself likedmoney, but only for what it would bring. Henderson was like an oldPharaoh, who was bound to build the biggest pyramid ever built to hismemory; he hated to waste a block. But what was the good of that whenone had passed beyond the reach of envy?

Revolving these deep things in her mind, she went to her dressing-room
and made an elaborate toilet for dinner. Yet it was elaborately simple.
That sort needed more study than the other. She would like to be the
Carmen of ten years ago in Henderson's eyes.

Her lord came home late, and did not dress for dinner. It was often so,and the omission was usually not allowed to pass by Carmen withoutnotice, to which Henderson was sure to growl that he didn't care to bealways on dress parade. Tonight Carmen was all graciousness and warmth.Henderson did not seem to notice it. He ate his dinner abstractedly, andresponded only in monosyllables to her sweet attempts at conversation.The fact was that the day had been a perplexing one; he was engaged inone of his big fights, a scheme that aroused all his pugnacity and taxedall his resources. He would win—of course; he would smash everybody,but he would win. When he was in this mood Carmen felt that she was likea daisy in the path of a cyclone. In the first year of their marriage heused to consult her about all his schemes, and value her keenunderstanding. She wondered why he did not now. Did he distrust evenher, as he did everybody else? Tonight she asked no questions. She wasunruffled by his short responses to her conversational attempts; by hersubtle, wifely manner she simply put herself on his side, whatever theside was.

In the library she brought him his cigar, and lighted it. She saw thathis coffee was just as he liked it. As she moved about, making thingshomelike, Henderson noticed that she was more Carmenish than he had seenher in a long time. The sweet ways and the simple toilet must be byintention. And he knew her so well. He began to be amused and softened.At length he said, in his ordinary tone, "Well, what is it?"

"What is what, dear?"

"What do you want?"

Carmen looked perplexed and sweetly surprised. There is nothing sopitiful about habitual hypocrisy as that it never deceives anybody.It was not the less painful now that Carmen knew that Henderson knew herto the least fibre of her self-seeking soul, and that she felt that therewere currents in his life that she could not calculate. A man is so muchmore difficult to understand than a woman, she reflected. And yet he isso susceptible that he can be managed even when he knows he is beingmanaged. Carmen was not disconcerted for a moment. She replied, withher old candor:

"What an idea! You give me everything I want before I know what it is."

"And before I know it either," he responded, with a grim smile. "Well,what is the news today?"

"Just the same old round. The Foundlings' Board, for one thing."

"Are you interested in foundlings?"

"Not much," said Carmen, frankly. "I'm interested in those that findthem. I told you how hateful that Mrs. Schuyler Blunt is."

"Why don't you cut her? Why don't you make it uncomfortable for her?"

"I can't find out," she said, with a laugh, dropping into the language ofthe Street, "anything she is short in, or I would."

"And you want me to get a twist on old Blunt?" and Henderson roared withlaughter at the idea.

"No, indeed. Dear, you are just a goose, socially. It is nothing toyou, but you don't understand what we women have to go through. Youdon't know how hard it is—that woman!"

"What has she done?"

"Nothing. That's just it. What do you say in the Street—freeze? Well,she is trying to freeze me out."

Henderson laughed again. "Oh, I'll back you against the field."

"I don't want to be backed," said Carmen; "I want some sympathy."

"Well, what is your idea?"

"I was going to tell you. Mr. Delancy dropped in this afternoon for acup of tea—"

"Oh!"

"Yes, and he knows Mrs. Schuyler Blunt well; they are old friends, and heis going to arrange it."

"Arrange what?"

"Why, smooth everything out, don't you know. But, Rodney, I do want youto do something for me; not for me exactly, but about this. Won't youlook out for Mr. Delancy in this deal?"

"Seems to me you are a good deal interested in Jack Delancy," said
Henderson, in a sneering tone. The remark was a mistake, for it gave
Carmen the advantage, and he did not believe it was just. He knew that
Carmen was as passionless as a diamond, whatever even she might pretend
for a purpose.

"Aren't you ashamed!" she cried, with indignation, and her eyes flaredfor an instant and then filled with tears. "And I try so hard."

"But I can't look out for all the lame ducks."

"He isn't a duck," said Carmen, using her handkerchief; "I'd hate him fora duck. It's just to help me, when you know, when you know—and it is sohard," and the tears came again.

Did Henderson believe? After all, what did it matter? Perhaps, afterall, the woman had a right to her game, as he had to his.

"Oh, well," he said, "don't take on about it. I'll fix it. I'll make amemorandum this minute. Only don't you bother me in the future with toomany private kites."

Carmen dried her eyes. She did not look triumphant; she just lookedsweet and grateful, like a person who had been helped. She went over andkissed her lord on the forehead, and sat on the arm of his chair, not toolong, and then patted him on the shoulder, and said he was a good fellow,and she was a little bother, and so went away like a dutiful little wife.

And Henderson sat looking into the fire and musing, with the feeling thathe had been at the theatre, and that the comedy had been beautifullyplayed.

His part of the play was carried out next day in good faith. One of thesecrets of Henderson's success was that he always did what he said hewould do. This attracted men to him personally, and besides he found, asBismarck did, that it was more serviceable to him than lying, for thecrafty world usually banks upon insincerity and indirectness. But whilehe kept his word he also kept his schemes to himself, and executed themwith a single regard to his own interest and a Napoleonic selfishness.He did not lie to enemy or friend, but he did not spare either wheneither was in his way. He knew how to appeal to the self-interest of hisfellows, and in time those who had most to do with him trusted him leastwhen he seemed most generous in his offers.

When, the next day, his secretary reported to him briefly that Delancywas greatly elated with the turn things had taken for him, and was goingin again, Henderson smiled sardonically, and said, "It was the worstthing I could have done for him."

Jack, who did not understand the irony of his temporary rescue, and hadlittle experience of commercial integrity, so called, was intent onfulfilling his part of the understanding with Carmen. This could best beeffected by a return dinner to the Hendersons. The subject was broachedat breakfast in an off-hand manner to Edith.

It was not an agreeable subject to Edith, that was evident; but it wasnot easy for her to raise objections to the dinner. She had gone to theHendersons' to please Jack, in her policy of yielding in order toinfluence him; but having accepted the hospitality, she could not objectto returning it. The trouble was in making the list.

"I do not know," said Edith, "who are the Hendersons' friends."

"Oh, that doesn't matter. Ask our friends. If we are going to do athing to please them, no use in doing it half-way, so as to offend them,by drawing social lines against them."

"Well, suggest."

"There's Mavick; he'll be over from Washington next week."

"That's good; and, oh, I'll ask Father Damon."

"Yes; he'll give a kind of flavor to it. I shouldn't wonder if he wouldlike to meet such a man as Henderson."

"And then the Van Dams and Miss Tavish; they were at Henderson's, andwould help to make it easy."

"Yes; well, let's see. The Schuyler Blunts?"

"Oh, they wouldn't do at all. They wouldn't come. She wouldn't think ofgoing to the Hendersons'."

"But she would come to us. I don't think she would mind once in a way."

"But why do you want them?"

"I don't want them particularly; but it would no doubt please theHendersons more than any other thing we could do-and, well, I don't wantto offend Henderson just now. It's a little thing, anyway. What's theuse of all this social nonsense? We are not responsible for either theHendersons or the Blunts being in the world. No harm done if they don'tcome. You invite them, and I'll take the responsibility."

So it was settled, against Edith's instinct of propriety, and the dinnerwas made up by the addition of the elder Miss Chesney. And Jack didpersuade Mrs. Blunt to accept. In fact, she had a little curiosity tosee the man whose name was in the newspapers more prominently than thatof the President.

It was a bright thought to secure Mr. Mavick. Mr. Thomas Mavick wassocially one of the most desirable young men of the day. Matrimoniallyhe was not a prize, for he was without fortune and without powerfulconnections. He had a position in the State Department. Originally hecame from somewhere in the West, it was said, but he had early obtainedone or two minor diplomatic places; he had lived a good deal abroad;he had traveled a little—a good deal, it would seem, from his occasionalOriental allusions. He threw over his past a slight mystery, not toomuch; and he always took himself seriously. His salary was sufficient toset up a bachelor very comfortably who always dined out; he dressed inthe severity of the fashion; he belonged only to the best clubs, where heunbent more than anywhere else; he was credited with knowing a good dealmore than he would tell. It was believed, in fact, that he had a greatdeal of influence. The President had been known to send for him ondelicate personal business with regard to appointments, and there werecertain ticklish diplomatic transactions that he was known to havemanaged most cleverly. His friends could see his hand in state papers.This he disclaimed, but he never denied that he knew the inside ofwhatever was going on in Washington. Even those who thought him a snobsaid he was clever. He had perfectly the diplomatic manner, and thereserve of one charged with grave secrets. Whatever he disclosed wasalways in confidence, so that he had the reputation of being as discreetas he was knowing. With women he was of course a favorite, for he knewhow to be confidential without disclosing anything, and the hints hedropped about persons in power simply showed that he was secretlymanoeuvring important affairs, and could make the most interestingrevelations if he chose. His smile and the shake of his head at the clubwhen talk was personal conveyed a world of meaning. Tom Mavick was, inshort, a most accomplished fellow. It was evident that he carried on theState Department, and the wonder to many was that he was not in aposition to do it openly. His social prestige was as mysterious as hisdiplomatic, but it was now unquestioned, and he might be considered asone of the first of a class who are to reconcile social and politicallife in this country.

VIII

Looking back upon this dinner of the Delancys, the student of humanaffairs can see how Providence uses small means for the accomplishment ofits purposes. Of all our social contrivances, the formal dinner isprobably the cause of more anxiety in the arrangement, of more wearinessin the performance, and usually of less satisfaction in the retrospectthan any other social function. However carefully the guests areselected, it lacks the spontaneity that gives intellectual zest to thechance dining together of friends. This Delancy party was made up forreasons which are well understood, and it seemed to have been admirablywell selected; and yet the moment it assembled it was evident that itcould not be very brilliant or very enjoyable. Doubtless you, madam,would have arranged it differently, and not made it up of suchincongruous elements.

As a matter of fact, scarcely one of those present would not have hadmore enjoyment somewhere else. Father Damon, whose theory was that therich needed saving quite as much as the poor, would nevertheless havebeen in better spirits sitting down to a collation with the working-womenin Clinton Place. It was a good occasion for the cynical observation ofMr. Mavick, but it was not a company that he could take in hand andimpress with his mysterious influence in public affairs. Henderson wasnot in the mood, and would have had much more ease over a chop and abottle of half-and-half with Uncle Jerry. Carmen, socially triumphant,would have been much more in her element at a petit souper of a not toofastidious four. Mrs. Schuyler Blunt was in the unaccustomed position ofhaving to maintain a not too familiar and not too distant line ofdeportment. Edith and Jack felt the responsibility of having put anincongruous company on thin conventional ice. It was only the easy-goingMiss Tavish and two or three others who carried along their own animalspirits and love of amusem*nt who enjoyed the chance of a possiblecontretemps.

And yet the dinner was providentially arranged. If these people had notmet socially, this history would have been different from what it mustbe. The lives of several of them were appreciably modified by thismeeting. It is too much to say that Father Damon's notion of the meansby which such men as Henderson succeed was changed, but personal contactwith the man may have modified his utterances about him, and he may haveturned his mind to the uses to which his wealth might be applied ratherthan to the means by which he obtained it. Carmen's ingenuous interestin his work may have encouraged the hope that at least a portion of thisfortune might be rescued to charitable uses. For Carmen, dining withMrs. Schuyler Blunt was a distinct gain, and indirectly opened many otherhitherto exclusive doors. That lady may not have changed her opinionabout Carmen, but she was good-natured and infected by the incomingsocial tolerance; and as to Henderson, she declared that he was anexceedingly well-bred man, and she did not believe half the stories abouthim. Henderson himself at once appreciated the talents of Mavick, gaugedhim perfectly, and saw what services he might be capable of rendering atWashington. Mr. Mavick appreciated the advantage of a connection withsuch a capitalist, and of having open to him another luxurious house inNew York. At the dinner-table Carmen and Mr. Mavick had not exchanged adozen remarks before these clever people felt that they were congenialspirits. It was in the smoking-room that Henderson and Mavick fell intoan interesting conversation, which resulted in an invitation for Mavickto drop in at Henderson's office in the morning. The dinner had not beena brilliant one. Henderson found it not easy to select topics equallyinteresting to Mrs. Delancy and Mrs. Blunt, and finally fell intogeographical information to the latter about Mexico and Honduras. ForEdith, the sole relief of the evening was an exchange of sympathy withFather Damon, and she was too much preoccupied to enjoy that. As forCarmen, placed between Jack and Mr. Mavick, and conscious that the eyesof Mrs. Blunt were on her, she was taking a subdued role, which Jackfound much less attractive than her common mood. But this was not heronly self-sacrifice of the evening. She went without her usualcigarette.

To Edith the dinner was a revelation of new difficulties in the life sheproposed for herself, though they were rather felt than distinctlyreasoned about. The social atmosphere was distasteful; its elements wereout of harmony with her ideals. Not that this society was new to her,but that she saw it in a new light. Before her marriage all these thingshad been indifferent to this high-spirited girl. They were merelyincidents of the social state into which she was born, and she pursuedher way among them, having a tolerably clear conception of what her ownlife should be, with little recognition of their tendencies. Were onlyher own life concerned, they would still be indifferent to her. Butsomething had happened. That which is counted the best thing in life hadcome to her, that best thing which is the touchstone of character as itis of all conditions, and which so often introduces inextricablecomplications. She had fallen in love with Jack Delancy and married him.

The first effect of this was to awake and enlarge what philosophers wouldcall her enthusiasm of humanity. The second effect was to show her—andthis was what this little dinner emphasized—that she had put limitationsupon herself and taken on unthought-of responsibilities. To put thissort of life one side, or make it secondary to her own idea of a usefuland happy life, would have been easy but for one thing—she loved Jack.This philosophic reasoning about it does her injustice. It did not occurto her that she could go her way and let him go his way. Nor must it besupposed that the problem seemed as grave to her as it really was—thedanger of frittering away her own higher nature in faithfulness to one ofthe noblest impulses of that nature. Yet this is the way that so manytrials of life come, and it is the greatest test of character. She felt—as many women do feel—that if she retained her husband's love all wouldbe well, and the danger involved to herself probably did not cross hermind.

But what did cross her mind was that these associations meant only evilfor Jack, and that to be absorbed in the sort of life that seemed toplease him was for her to drift away from all her ideals.

A confused notion of all this was in her thoughts when she talked withFather Damon, while the gentlemen were in the smoking-room. She askedhim about his mission.

"The interest continues," he replied; "but your East Side, Mrs. Delancy,is a puzzling place."

"How so?"

"Perhaps you'll laugh if I say there is too much intelligence."

Edith did laugh, and then said: "Then you'd better move your missionover to this side. Here is a field of good, unadulterated worldliness.But what, exactly, do you mean?"

"Well, the attempt of science to solve the problem of sin andwretchedness. What can you expect when the people are socialists andtheir leaders agnostics?"

"But I thought you were something of a socialist yourself!"

"So I am," he said, frankly, "when I see the present injustice, theiniquitous laws and combinations that leave these people so littlechance. They are ignorant, and expect the impossible; but they are rightin many things, and I go with them. But my motive is not theirs. I hopenot. There is no hope except in a spiritual life. Materialism down atthe bottom of society is no better than materialism at the top. Do youknow," he went on, with increased warmth, "that pessimism is rather therule over that side, and that many of those who labor most among the poorhave the least hope of ever making things substantially better?"

"But such unselfish people as Dr. Leigh do a great deal of good," Edithsuggested.

"Yes," he said reflecting—"yes, I have no doubt. I don't understand it.She is not hopeful. She sees nothing beyond. I don't know what keepsher up."

"Love of humanity, perhaps."

"I wish the phrase had never been invented. Religion of humanity!
The work is to save the souls of those people."

"But," said Edith, with a flush of earnestness "but, Father Damon, isn'thuman love the greatest power to save?"

The priest looked at the girl. His face softened, and he said, moregently, "I don't know. Of the soul, yes. But human love is so apt tostand in the way of the higher life."

In her soul Edith resented this as an ascetic and priestly view; but sheknew his devotion to that humanity which he in vain tried to eliminatefrom his austere life, and she turned the talk lightly by saying, "Ah,that is your theory. But I am coming over soon, and shall expect you andDr. Leigh to take me about."

The next morning Mr. Mavick's card gave him instant admission to theinner office of Mr. Henderson, the approach to whom was more carefullyguarded than that to the President of the United States. This was notmerely necessary to save him from the importunities of cranks who mightcarry concealed dynamite arguments, but as well to protect him fromhundreds of business men with whom he was indirectly dealing, and withwhom he wished to evade explanations. He thoroughly understood theadvantages of delay. He also understood the value of the mystery thatattends inaccessibility. Even Mr. Mavick himself was impressed by theshow of ceremony, by the army of clerks, and by the signs of completeorganization. He knew that the visitor was specially favored whopenetrated these precincts so far as to get an interview, usuallyfruitless, with Henderson's confidential man. This confidential man wasa very grave and confidence-begetting person, who dealt out dubious hintsand promises, and did not at all mind when Henderson found it necessaryto repudiate as unauthorized anything that had been apparently said inhis name. To be sure, this gave a general impression that Henderson wasan inscrutable man to deal with, but at the same time it was confessedthat his spoken word could be depended on. Anything written might, it istrue, lead to litigation, and this gave rise to a saying in the Streetthat Henderson's word was better than his bond.

Henderson was not a politician, but he was a friend of politicians. Itwas said that he contributed about equally to both sides in a politicalcampaign, and that this showed patriotism more than partisanship. It wasfor his interest to have friends on both sides in Congress, and friendsin the Cabinet, and it was even hinted that he was concerned to have menwhose economic and financial theories accorded with his own on theSupreme Bench. He had unlimited confidence in the power of money. Hisvisitor of the morning was not unlike him in many respects. He also wasnot a politician. He would have described himself as a governmental man,and had a theory of running the government with as little popularinterference as possible. He regarded himself as belonging to thegoverning class.

Between these two men, who each had his own interests in view, there wasnaturally an apparent putting aside of reserve.

"I was very glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Mavick," said Henderson,cordially. "I have known of you for a long time."

"Yes? I've been in the employ of the government for some time."

"And I suppose it pays pretty well," said Henderson, smilingly.

"Oh, extravagantly," Mavick rejoined, in the same spirit. "You justabout get your board and clothes out of government. Your washing isanother thing. You are expected, you know, to have your washing donewhere you vote."

"Well, it's a sure thing."

"Yes, till you are turned out. You know the theory at Washington is thatvirtue is its own reward. Tom Fakeltree says it's enough."

"I wonder how he knows?"

"Observation, probably. Tom startled a dinner table the other day withthe remark that when a man once gives himself up to the full enjoyment ofa virtuous life, it seems strange to him that more people do not followhis example."

"The trouble with the virtue of Washington is that it always wants tointerfere with other people's business. Fellows like Tom are alwayshunting up mares' nests in order to be paid for breaking them up."

"I can't say about Tom," rejoined Mavick. "I suppose it is necessary tolive."

"I suppose so. And that goes along with another proposition—that thesuccessful have no rights which the unsuccessful are bound to respect.As soon as a man gets ahead," Henderson continued, with a tone ofbitterness, "the whole pack are trying to pull him down. A capitalist isa public enemy. Why, look at that Hodge bill! Strikes directly at theability of the railways to develop the country. Have you seen it?"

"Yes," Mavick admitted; "the drawer of it was good enough to consult meon its constitutionality. It's a mighty queer bill."

"It can't get through the Senate," said Henderson; "but it's a bother.
Such schemes are coming up all the time, and they unsettle business.
These fellows need watching."

"And managing," added Mavick.

"Exactly. I can't be in Washington all the time. And I need to knowwhat is going on every twenty-four hours from the inside. I can't relyon politicians or lobbyists."

"Well," said Mr. Mavick, in his easiest manner, "that's easy enough.
You want a disinterested friend."

Henderson nodded, but did not even smile, and the talk went on aboutother measures, and confidentially about certain men in Washington,until, after twenty minutes' conversation, the two men came to a perfectunderstanding. When Mavick arose to go they shook hands even morecordially than at first, and Henderson said:

"Well, I expect to hear from you, and remember that our house will alwaysbe your home in the city."

IX

It seemed very fortunate to Jack Delancy that he should have such aclever woman as Carmen for his confidante, a man so powerful as Hendersonas his backer, and a person so omniscient as Mavick for his friend.No combination could be more desirable for a young man who proposed tohimself a career of getting money by adroit management and spending it inpure and simple self-indulgence. There are plenty of men who have takenadvantage of like conditions to climb from one position to another, andhave then kicked down the ladders behind them as fast as they attained anew footing. It was Jack's fault that he was not one of these. Youcould scarcely dignify his character by saying that he had an aim, exceptto saunter through life with as little personal inconvenience aspossible. His selfishness was boneless. It was not by any meansnegative, for no part of his amiable nature was better developed thanregard for his own care and comfort; but it was not strong enough to givehim Henderson's capacity for hard work and even self-denial, nor Mavick'scool, persevering skill in making a way for himself in the world.Why was not Edith his confidante? His respect for her was undoubted; hislove for her was unquestioned; his trust in her was absolute. And yetwith either Carmen or Miss Tavish he fell into confidential revelationsof himself which instinctively he did not make to Edith. The explanationof this is on the surface, and it is the key to half the unhappiness indomestic life. He felt that Edith was not in sympathy with theassociations and the life he was leading. The pitiful and hopeless partof it is that if she had been in sympathy with them, Jack would have goneon in his frivolous career at an accelerated pace. It was not absence oflove, it was not unfaithfulness, that made Jack enjoy the hours he spentwith Carmen, or with the pleasing and not too fastidious Miss Tavish,with a zest that was wanting to his hours at home. If he had been upon asinking steamboat with the three women, and could have saved only one ofthem, he would not have had a moment's hesitation in rescuing Edith andletting the other two sink out of his life. The character is notunusual, nor the situation uncommon. What is a woman to do? Her veryvirtues are enemies of her peace; if she appears as a constant check andmonitor, she repels; if she weakly acquiesces, the stream will flow overboth of them. The dilemma seems hopeless.

It would be a mistake to suppose that either Edith or Jack put theirrelations in any such definite shape as this. He was unthinking. Shewas too high-spirited, too confident of her position, to be assailed bysuch fears. And it must be said, since she was a woman, that she had theconsciousness of power which goes along with the possession of lovelinessand keen wit. Those who knew her best knew that under her serenity was agay temperament, inherited from the original settlers of Manhattan, anabounding enjoyment of life, and capacity for passion. It was earlydiscovered in her childhood that little Edith had a will of her own.

Lent was over. It was the time of the twittering of sparrows, of theopening of windows, of putting in order the little sentimental spotscalled "squares," where the poor children get their idea of forests, andthe rich renew their faint recollections of innocence and country life;when the hawkers go about the streets, and the hand-organs celebrate thereturn of spring and the possibility of love. Even the idle felt that itwas a time for relaxation and quiet.

"Have you answered Miss Tavish's invitation?" asked Jack one morning atthe breakfast-table.

"Not yet. I shall decline today for myself."

"Why? It's for charity."

"Well, my charity extends to Miss Tavish. I don't want to see herdance."

"That leaves me in a nice hole. I said I'd go."

"And why not? You go to a good many places you don't take me—the clubs,brokers' offices, Stalker's, the Conventional, and—"

"Oh, go on. Why do you object to my going to see this dance?"

"My dear Jack," said Edith, "I haven't objected the least in the world;"and her animated face sparkled with a smile, which seemed to irritateJack more than a frown would have done.

"I don't see why you set yourself up. I'll bet Miss Tavish will raisemore money for the Baxter Street Guild, yes, and do more good, than youand the priest and that woman doctor slopping about on the East Side insix months."

"Very likely," replied Edith, still with the same good-humored smile."But, Jack, it's delightful to see your philanthropic spirit stirred upin this way. You ought to be encouraged. Why don't you join Miss Tavishin this charity? I have no doubt that if it was advertised that MissTavish and Mr. Jack Delancy would dance for the benefit of an East Sideguild in the biggest hall in the city, there wouldn't be standing room."

"Oh, bosh!" said Jack, getting up from his chair and striding about theroom, with more irritation than he had ever shown to Edith before."I wouldn't be a prude."

Edith's eyes flashed and her face flushed, but her smile came back in amoment, and she was serene again. "Come here, Jack. Now, old fellow,look me straight in the eyes, and tell me if you would like to have medance the serpentine dance before a drawing-room full of gossiping women,with, as you say, just a few men peeping in at the doors."

Jack did look, and the serene eyes, yet dancing with amusem*nt at theincongruous picture, seemed to take a warmer glow of love and pleading.

"Oh, hang it! that's different," and he stooped and gave her an awkwardkiss.

"I'm glad you know it's different," she said, with a laugh that had not atrace of mockery in it; "and since you do, you'd better go along and doyour charity, and I'll stay at home, and try to be—different when youcome back."

And Jack went; with a little feeling of sheepishness that he would nothave acknowledged at the time, and he found himself in a company where hewas entirely at his ease. He admired the dancing of the blithe, gracefulgirl, he applauded her as the rest did with hand-clapping and bravas, andsaid it was ravishing. It all suited him perfectly. And somehow, in themidst of it all, in the sensuous abandon of this electric-lighteccentricity at mid-day, he had a fleeting vision of something verydifferent, of a womanhood of another sort, and a flush came to his facefor a moment as he imagined Edith in a skirt dance under the gaze of thissensation-loving society. But this was only for a moment. When hecongratulated Miss Tavish his admiration was entirely sincere; and thegirl, excited with her physical triumph, seemed to him as one emancipatedout of acquired prudishness into the Greek enjoyment of life. MissTavish, who would not for the world have violated one of the socialconventions of her set, longed, as many women do, for the sort of freedomand the sort of applause which belongs to women who succeed upon thestage. Not that she would have forfeited her position by dancing at atheatre for money; but; within limits, she craved the excitement, theabandon, the admiration, that her grace and passion could win. This wasnot at all the ambition which led the Egyptian queen Hatshepsu to assumethe dress of a man, but rather that more famous aspiration which led thedaughter of Herodias, in a pleasure-loving court, to imitate and excelthe professional dancing-girls. If in this inclination of the women ofthe day, which is not new, but has characterized all societies to whichwealth has brought idleness, there was a note of demoralization, it didnot seem so to Jack, who found the world day by day more pleasing andmore complaisant.

As the months went by, everything prospered with him on his driftingvoyage. Of all voyages, that is the easiest to make which has no port inview, that depends upon the varying winds, if the winds happen to be softand the chance harbors agreeable. Jack was envied, thanks to Henderson.He was lucky in whatever he touched. Without any change in his idlehabits, and with no more attention to business than formerly, money cameto him so freely that he not only had a complacent notion that he was afavorite of fortune, but the idea of his own importance in the financialworld increased enormously, much to the amusem*nt of Mavick, when he wasoccasionally in the city, to whom he talked somewhat largely of hisoperations, and who knew that he had no more comprehension of the sweepof Henderson's schemes than a baby has of the stock exchange when heclaps his hands with delight at the click of the ticker.

His prosperity was visible. It showed in the increase of his accountsat the Union, in his indifference to limits in the game of poker, in ahandsome pair of horses which he insisted on Edith's accepting for herown use, in an increased scale of living at home, in the hundred waysthat a man of fashion can squander money in a luxurious city. If he didnot haunt the second-hand book-shops or the stalls of dealers inengravings, or bring home as much bric-a-brac as he once had done, it wasbecause his mind was otherwise engaged; his tailor's bills were longer,and there were more expensive lunches at the clubs, at which there was agreat deal of sage talk about stocks and combinations, and much wisdomexhibited in regard to wines; and then there were the little suppers atWherry's after the theatres, which a bird could have eaten and a fishhave drunken, and only a spendthrift have paid for.

"It is absurd," Edith had said one night after their return. "It makesus ridiculous in the eyes of anybody but fools." And Jack had flared upabout it, and declared that he knew what he could afford, and she hadretorted that as for her she would not countenance it. And Jack hadattempted to pass it off lightly, at last, by saying, "Very well then,dear, if you won't back me, I shall have to rely upon my bankers."At any rate, neither Carmen nor Miss Tavish took him to task. Theycomplimented him on his taste, and Carmen made him feel that sheappreciated his independence and his courage in living the life thatsuited him. She knew, indeed, how much he made in his speculations, howmuch he lost at cards; she knew through him the gossip of the clubs, andventuring herself not too far at sea, liked to watch the undertow offashionable life. And she liked Jack, and was not incapable of throwinghim a rope when the hour came that he was likely to be swept away by thatundertow.

It was remarked at the Union, and by the men in the Street who knew him,that Jack was getting rapid. But no one thought the less of him for hispace—that is, no one appeared to, for this sort of estimate of a man isonly tested by his misfortunes, when the day comes that he must seekfinancial backing. In these days he was generally in an expansive mood,and his free hand and good-humor increased his popularity. There werethose who said that there were millions of family money back of Jack, andthat he had recently come in for something handsome.

But this story did not deceive Major Fairfax, whose business it was toknow to a dot the standing of everybody in society, in which he was asort of oracle and privileged favorite. No one could tell exactly howthe Major lived; no one knew the rigid economy that he practiced; no onehad ever seen his small dingy chamber in a cheap lodging-house. The nameof Fairfax was as good as a letter of introduction in the metropolis, andthe Major had lived on it for years, on that and a carefully nursedlittle income—an habitue of the club, and a methodical cultivator of theart of dining out. A most agreeable man, and perhaps the wisest man inhis generation in those things about which it would be as well not toknow anything.

Seated one afternoon in his favorite corner for street observation, bythe open window, with the evening paper in his hand, in the attitude ofone expecting the usual five o'clock co*cktail, he hailed Jack, who wasjust coming down-stairs from a protracted lunch.

"I say, Delancy, what's this I hear?"

"About what?" said Jack, sauntering along to a seat opposite the Major,and touching a bell on the little table as he sat down. Jack's face wasflushed, but he talked with unusual slowness and distinctness. "Whathave you heard, Major?"

"That you have bought Benham's yacht."

"No, I haven't; but I was turning the thing over in my mind," Jackreplied, with the air of a man declining an appointment in the Cabinet."He offers it cheap."

"My dear boy, there is no such thing as a cheap yacht, any more thanthere is a cheap elephant."

"It's better to buy than build," Jack insisted. "A man's got to havesome recreation."

"Recreation! Why don't you charter a Fifth Avenue stage and take yourfriends on a voyage to the Battery? That'll make 'em sick enough." Itwas a misery of the Major's life that, in order to keep in with necessaryfriends, he had to accept invitations for cruises on yachts, and pretendhe liked it. Though he had the gout, he vowed he would rather walk toNewport than go round Point Judith in one of those tipping tubs. He hadtried it, and, as he said afterwards, "The devil of it was that Mrs.Henderson and Miss Tavish sympathized with me. Gad! it takes away aperson's manhood, that sort of thing."

The Major sipped his bitters, and then added: "Or I'll tell you what; ifyou must do something, start a newspaper—the drama, society, andletters, that sort of thing, with pictures. I heard Miss Tavish say shewished she had a newspaper."

"But," said Jack, with gravity, "I'm not buying a yacht for Miss Tavish."

"I didn't suppose you were. Devilish fine girl, though. I don't carewho you buy it for if you don't buy it for yourself. Why don't you buyit for Henderson? He can afford it."

"I'd like to know what you mean, Major Fairfax!" cried Jack. "Whatbusiness—"

"There!" exclaimed the Major, sinking back in his chair, with a softenedexpression in his society beaten face. "It's no use of nonsense, Jack.I'm an average old sinner, and I'm not old enough yet to like a milksop.But I've known you since you were so high, and I knew your father; heused to stay weeks on my plantation when we were both younger. And yourmother—that was a woman!—did me a kindness once when I was in a d—-dtight place, and I never forgot it. See here, Jack, if I had moneyenough I'd buy a yacht and put Carmen and Miss Tavish on it, and sendthem off on the longest voyage there is."

"Who's been talking?" exclaimed Jack, touched a little, but very muchoffended.

"The town, Jack. Don't mind the talk. People always talk. I supposepeople talk about me: At your age I should have been angry too at a hinteven from an old friend. But I've learned. It doesn't pay. I don't getangry any more. Now there's Henderson—"

"What have you got against Henderson?"

"Nothing. He is a very good fellow, for that sort of man. But, Lord!Henderson is a big machine. You might as well try to stand in with acombination of gang-saws, or to make friends with the Department of theInterior. Look at the men who have gone in with Henderson from time totime. The ground is strewn with them. He's got no more feeling inbusiness than a reaper-and-binder."

"I don't know what Henderson's got to do with my having a yacht."

"I beg your pardon, Jack; it's none of my business. Only I do not put myinvestments"—Jack smiled faintly, as if the conversation were taking ahumorous turn—"at the mercy of Henderson's schemes. If I did, Iwouldn't try to run a yacht at the same time. I should be afraid thatsome day when I got to sea I should find myself out of coal. You know,my boy, that the good book says you cannot serve two masters."

"Nobody ever accused you of that, Major," retorted Jack, with a laugh.
"But what two have you in mind?"

"Oh, I don't mean anything personal. I just use names as typical. SayHenderson and Carmen." And the Major leaned back and tapped his fingerstogether, as if he were putting a general proposition.

Jack flushed, and then thought a moment—it would be ridiculous to getangry with old Fairfax—and then said: "Major, if I were you, I wouldn'thave anything to do with either of them. You'll spoil your digestion."

"Umph!" the Major grunted, as he rose from his chair. "This is an age ofimpudence. There's no more respect for gray hair than if it were dyed.I cannot waste any more time on you. I've got an early dinner. Devilishuphill work trying to encourage people who dine at seven. But, my boy,think on these things, as the saint says."

And the old fellow limped away. There was one good thing about theMajor. He stood up in church every Sunday and read his prayers, like afaithful old sinner as he was.

Jack, sobered by the talk, walked home in a very irritated mood, blamingeverybody except himself. For old Fairfax's opinion he didn't care, butevidently the old fellow represented a lot of gossip. He wished peoplewould mind their own business. His irritation was a little appeased byEdith's gay and loving greeting; but she, who knew every shade of hisface, saw it.

"Have you had a worrying day?"

"No; not specially. I've had an hour of old Fairfax, who hasn't anybusiness of his own to attend to."

"Oh, nobody minds the Major," Edith said, as she gave him a shake andanother kiss; but a sharp pang went through her heart, for she guessedwhat had happened, since she had had a visit that afternoon from anotherplain-speaking person.

They were staying late in town. Edith, who did not care to travel far,
was going presently to a little cottage by the sea, and Mrs. Schuyler
Blunt had looked in for a moment to say good-by before she went up to her
Lenox house.

"It's only an old farmhouse made over," Mrs. Blunt was saying; "hardlysmart enough to ask anybody to, but we hope to have you and Jack theresome time."

"That would be very nice. I hear Lenox is more beautiful than ever."

"Yes, it is, and about as difficult to get into as the kingdom of heaven.It's being spoiled for moderate people. The Hendersons and the Van Damsand that sort are in a race to see who shall build houses with thebiggest rooms, and give the most expensive entertainments. It's allshow. The old flavor has gone."

"But they cannot spoil the scenery.".

"My child, they are the scenery. You can't see anything else. Itdoesn't bother me, but some of my old neighbors are just ruiningthemselves trying to keep the pace. I do think the Americans are thebiggest fools on earth."

"Father Damon says the trouble is we haven't any middle class for abalance."

"Yes, that's the English of it. But it's a pity that fashion has gothold of the country, and is turning our summers into a worry and aburden. I thought years ago when we went to Lenox that it was a goodthing the country was getting to be the fashion; but now it'sfashionable, and before we know it every desirable spot will be what theycall syndicated. Miss Tavish says she is coming to visit the Hendersonsthere."

"I thought she went to Bar Harbor."

"But she is coming down for part of the season. These people don't stayanywhere. Just long enough in one place to upset everything with theirextravagance. That's the reason I didn't ask you and Jack up thissummer."

"Thank you, we couldn't go, you know," said Edith, simply, and then, withcuriosity in her eyes, asked; "but I don't quite understand what's thereason."

"Well," said Mrs. Blunt, as if nerving herself up to say what must besaid, "I thought perhaps you wouldn't like to be where they are."

"I don't know why I should or why I should not," Edith replied.

"Nor have Jack with them," continued Mrs. Blunt, stoutly.

"What do you mean, Mrs. Blunt?" cried Edith, her brown eyes flaming.

"Don't turn on me, Edith dear. I oughtn't to have said anything. But Ithought it was my duty. Of course it is only talk."

"Well?"

"That Jack is always with one or the other of those women."

"It is false!" cried Edith, starting up, with tears now in her eyes;"it's a cruel lie if it means anything wrong in Jack. So am I with thosewomen; so are you. It's a shame. If you hear any one say such things,you can tell them for me that I despise them."

"I said it was a shame, all such talk. I said it was nonsense. But,dear, as a friend, oughtn't I to tell you?" And the kind-hearted gossipput her arm round Edith, and kept saying that she perfectly understoodit, and that nobody really meant anything. But Edith was crying now,with a heart both hurt and indignant.

"It's a most hateful world, I know," Mrs, Blunt answered; "but it's thebest we have, and it's no use to fret about it."

When the visitor had gone, Edith sat a long time in misery. It was thefirst real shock of her married life. And in her heart she prayed. ForJack? Oh no. The dear girl prayed for herself, that suspicions mightnot enter her heart. She could not endure that the world should talkthus of him. That was all. And when she had thought it all over andgrown calm, she went to her desk and wrote a note to Carmen. It askedMrs. Henderson, as they were so soon to leave town, to do her the favorto come round informally and lunch with her the next day, and afterwardsperhaps a little drive in the Park.

X

Jack was grateful for Edith's intervention. He comprehended that she hadstepped forward as a shield to him in the gossip about Carmen. He showedhis appreciation in certain lover-like attentions and in a gayety ofmanner, but it was not in his nature to feel the sacrifice she had madeor its full magnanimity; he was relieved, and in a manner absolved.Another sort of woman might have made him very uncomfortable. Instead ofbeing rebuked he had a new sense of freedom.

"Not one woman in a thousand would have done it," was the comment ofMajor Fairfax when he heard of the drive in the Park. "Gad! most of 'emwould have cut Carmen dead and put Jack in Coventry, and then there wouldhave been the devil to pay. It takes quality, though; she's such a womanas Jack's mother. If there were not one of them now and then societywould deliquesce." And the Major knew, for his principal experience hadbeen with a deliquescent society.

Whether Carmen admired Mrs. Delancy or thought her weak it is impossibleto say, but she understood the advances made and responded to them, forthey fell in perfectly with her social plans. She even had the face toeulogize Mrs. Delancy to Jack, her breadth of view, her lack ofprejudice, and she had even dared to say, "My dear friend, she is toogood for us," and Jack had not protested, but with a laugh had acceptedthe implication of his position on a lower moral level. Perhaps he didnot see exactly what it meant, this being on confidential terms about hiswife with another woman; all he cared for at the moment was that thecomradeship of Miss Tavish and Carmen was agreeable to him. They were norestraint upon him. So long as they remained in town the exchange ofcivilities was kept up. Carmen and Miss Tavish were often at his house,and there was something reassuring to Jack in the openness with whichaffairs went on.

Early in June Edith went down to their rented cottage on the south LongIsland shore. In her delicate health the doctor had recommended theseaside, and this locality as quiet and restful, and not too far from thewhirl of the city. The place had a charm of its own, the charm, namely,of a wide sky, illimitable, flashing, changing sea, rolling in from thefar tropical South with its message of romance to the barren Northernshore, and the pure sand dunes, the product of the whippings of tempestsand wild weather. The cottage was in fact an old farmhouse, not animpertinent, gay, painted piece of architecture set on the sand like atent for a month, but a solid, ugly, fascinating habitation, with barnsand outhouses, and shrubs, and an old garden—a place with a salty airfriendly to delicate spring blossoms and summer fruits and foliage.If it was a farmhouse, the sea was an important part of the farm, and thelow-ceiled rooms suggested cabins; it required little imagination tofancy that an East-Indian ship had some time come ashore and settled inthe sand, that it had been remodeled and roofed over, and its sidespierced with casem*nt windows, over which roses had climbed in order tobind the wanderer to the soil. It had been painted by the sun and thewind and the salt air, so that its color depended upon the day, and itwas sometimes dull and almost black, or blue-black, under a lowering sky,and again a golden brown, especially at sunset, and Edith, feeling itscharacter rather than its appearance to ordinary eyes, had named it theGolden House. Nature is such a beautiful painter of wood.

With Edith went one of her Baltimore cousins, a young kindergartenteacher of fine intelligence and sympathetic manner, who brought to herwork a long tradition of gentle breeding and gayety and simplicity—qualities which all children are sure to recognize. What a hopeful thingit is, by-the-way, in the world, that all conditions of people know alady at sight! Jack found the place delightful. He liked itsquaintness, the primitiveness of the farmer-fisherman neighbors, he likedthe sea. And then he could run up to the city any morning and back atnight. He spent the summer with Edith at the Golden House. This was histheory. When he went to town in the morning he expected to return atnight. But often he telegraphed in the afternoon that he was detained bybusiness; he had to see Henderson, or Mavick was over from Washington.Occasionally, but not often, he missed the train. He had too keen asense of the ridiculous to miss the train often. When he was detainedover for two or three days, or the better part of the week, he wroteEdith dashing, hurried letters, speaking of ever so many places he hadbeen to and ever so many people he had seen—yes, Carmen and Miss Tavishand everybody who was in town, and he did not say too much about the hotcity and its discomforts.

Henderson's affairs kept him in town, Miss Tavish still postponed BarHarbor, and Carmen willingly remained. She knew the comfort of a big NewYork house when the season is over, when no social duties are required,and one is at leisure to lounge about in cool costumes, to read or dream,to open the windows at night for the salt breeze from the bay, to takelittle excursions by boat or rail, to dine al fresco in the garden ofsome semi-foreign hotel, to taste the unconventional pleasures of thetown, as if one were in some foreign city. She used to say that New Yorkin matting and hollands was almost as nice as Buda-Pesth. These werereally summer nights, operatic sorts of nights, with music floating inthe air, gay groups in the streets, a stage imitation of nature in thesquares with the thick foliage and the heavy shadows cast on the asphaltby the electric lights, the brilliant shops, the nonsense of the summertheatres, where no one expected anything, and no one was disappointed,the general air of enjoyment, and the suggestion of intrigue. Sometimes,when Mavick was over, a party was made up for the East Side, to see theforeign costumes, the picturesque street markets, the dime museums, andthe serious, tragical theatres of the people. The East Side was leftpretty much to itself, now that the winter philanthropists had gone away,and was enjoying its summer nights and its irresponsible poverty.

They even looked in at Father Damon's chapel, the dimly lighted fragrantrefuge from the world and from sin. Why not? They were interested inthe morals of the region. Had not Miss Tavish danced for one of theguilds; and had not Carmen given Father Damon a handsome check in supportof his mission? It was so satisfactory to go into such a place and seethe penitents kneeling here and there, the little group of very plainlydressed sinners attracted by Father Damon's spiritual face and unselfishenthusiasm. Carmen said she felt like kneeling at one of the littleboxes and confessing—the sins of her neighbors. And then the four—Carmen, Miss Tavish, Mavick, and Jack—had a little supper at Wherry's,which they enjoyed all the more for the good action of visiting the EastSide—a little supper which lasted very late, and was more and moreenjoyed as it went on, and was, in fact, so gay that when the ladies wereset down at their houses, Jack insisted on dragging Mavick off to theBeefsteak Club and having something manly to drink; and while they drankhe analyzed the comparative attractions of Carmen and Miss Tavish; heliked that kind of women, no nonsense in them; and presently he wandereda little and lost the cue of his analysis, and, seizing Mavick by thearm, and regarding him earnestly, in a burst of confidence declared that,notwithstanding all appearances, Edith was the dearest girl in the world.

It was at this supper that the famous society was formed, which thenewspapers ridiculed, and which deceived so many excellent people in NewYork because it seemed to be in harmony with the philanthropic endeavorof the time, but which was only an expression of the Mephistophelianspirit of Carmen—the Society for Supplying Two Suspenders to Those whohave only One.

By the end of June there was no more doubt about the heat of the townthan about its odors. The fashionable residence part was dismantled anddeserted. At least miles and miles of houses seemed to be closed.Few carriages were seen in this quarter, the throngs of fashion haddisappeared, comparatively few women were about, and those that appearedin the Sunday promenade were evidently sight-seers and idlers from otherquarters; the throng of devotees was gone from the churches, and indeedin many of them services were suspended till a more convenient season.The hotels, to be sure, were full of travelers, and the club-houses hadmore habitues than usual, and were more needed by the members whosefamilies had gone into the country.

Notwithstanding the silence and vacation aspect of up-town, the publicconveyances were still thronged, and a census would have shown no suchdiminution of population as seemed. Indeed, while nobody was in town,except accidentally, the greater portion of it presented a more animatedappearance than usual, especially at night, on account of the openwindows, the groups on door-steps and curb-stones, and the restlessthrong in the streets-buyers and sellers and idlers. To most thisoutdoor life was a great enjoyment, and to them the unclean streets withthe odors and exhalations of decay were homelike and congenial. Nor didthey seem surprised that a new country should so completely reproduce theevil smells and nastiness of the old civilization. It was all familiarand picturesque. Work still went on in the crowded tenement-houses, andsickness simply changed its character, death showing an increasedfriendliness to young children. Some impression was of course made bythe agents of various charities, the guilds and settlements bravelystrove at their posts, some of the churches kept their flags flying onthe borders of the industrial districts, the Good Samaritans of theFresh-air Fund were active, the public dispensaries did a thrivingbusiness, and the little band of self-sacrificing doctors, most of themwomen, went their rounds among the poor, the sick, and the friendless.

Among them Ruth Leigh was one who never took a vacation. There was notime for it. The greater the heat, the more noisome the town, the morepeople became ill from decaying food and bad air and bad habits, the morepeople were hungry from improvidence or lack of work, the more were herdaily visits a necessity; and though she was weary of her monotonouswork, and heart-sick at its small result in such a mass, there never camea day when she could quit it. She made no reputation in her professionby this course; perhaps she awoke little gratitude from those she served,and certainly had not so much of their confidence as the quacks whoimposed upon them and took their money; and she was not heartened much byhope of anything better in this world or any other; and as for pay, ifthere was enough of that to clothe her decently, she apparently did notspend it on herself.

It was, in short, wholly inexplicable that this little woman shouldsimply go about doing good, without any ulterior purpose whatever, noteven notoriety. Did she love these people? She did not ever sayanything about that. In the Knights of Labor circle, and in the littleclubs for the study of social questions, which she could only get leisureto attend infrequently, she was not at all demonstrative about anyreligion of humanity. Perhaps she simply felt that she was a part ofthese people, and that whether they rejected her or received her, therewas nothing for her to do but to give herself to them. She wouldprobably have been surprised if Father Damon had told her that she was inthis following a great example, and there might have been a tang ofa*gnostic bitterness in her reply. When she thought of it the conditionseemed to her hopeless, and the attitude of what was called civilizationtowards it so remorseless and indifferent, and that of Christianity sopharisaical. If she ever lost her temper, it was when she let her mindrun in this nihilistic channel, in bitterness against the whole socialorganization, and the total outcome of civilization so far as the mass ofhumanity is concerned.

One day Father Damon climbed up to the top of a wretched tenement inBaxter Street in search of a German girl, an impulsive and pretty girl offifteen, whom he had missed for several days at the chapel services.He had been in the room before. It was not one of the worst, for thoughsmall and containing a cook-stove, a large bed, and a chest of drawers,there was an attempt to make it tidy. In a dark closet opening out fromit was another large bed. As he knocked and opened the door, he saw thatGretchen was not at home. Her father sat in a rocking-chair by an openwindow, on the sill of which stood a pot of carnations, the Easter giftof St. George's, a wax-faced, hollow-eyed man of gentle manners, wholooked round wearily at the priest. The mother was washing clothes in atub in one corner; in another corner was a half-finished garment from aslop-shop. The woman alternated the needle at night and the tub in thedaytime. Seated on the bed, with a thin, sick child in her arms, was Dr.Leigh. As she looked up a perfectly radiant smile illuminated herusually plain face, an unworldly expression of such purity and happinessthat she seemed actually beautiful to the priest, who stopped,hesitating, upon the threshold.

"Oh, you needn't be afraid to come in, Father Damon," she cried out; "itisn't contagious—only rash."

Father Damon, who would as readily have walked through a pestilence as ina flower-garden, only smiled at this banter, and replied, after speakingto the sick man, and returning in German the greeting of the woman, whohad turned from the tub, "I've no doubt you are disappointed that itisn't contagious!" And then, to the mother: "Where is Gretchen? Shedoesn't come to the chapel."

"Nein," replied the woman, in a mixture of German and English, "it don'tcome any more in dot place; it be in a shtore now; it be good girl."

"What, all day?"

"Yaas, by six o'clock, and abends so spate. Not much it get, but my mancan't earn nothing any more." And the woman, as she looked at him, wipedher eyes with the corner of her apron.

"But, on Sunday?" Father Damon asked, still further.

"Vell, it be so tired, and goed up by de Park with Dick Loosing and demoder girls."

"Don't you think it better, Father Damon," Dr. Leigh interposed, "that
Gretchen should have fresh air and some recreation on Sunday?"

"Und such bootiful tings by de Museum," added the mother.

"Perhaps," said he, with something like a frown on his face, and thenchanged the subject to the sick child. He did not care to argue thematter when Dr. Leigh was present, but he resolved to come again andexplain to the mother that her daughter needed some restraining powerother than her own impulse, and that without religious guidance she waspretty certain to drift into frivolous and vulgar if not positively badways. The father was a free-thinker; but Father Damon thought he hadsome hold on the mother, who was of the Lutheran communion, but hadfollowed her husband so far as to become indifferent to anything buttheir daily struggle for life. Yet she had a mother's instinct about thedanger to her daughter, and had been pleased to have her go to FatherDamon's chapel.

And, besides, he could not bring himself in that presence to seem torebuke Ruth Leigh. Was she not practically doing what his Lord did—going about healing the sick, sympathizing with the poor and thediscouraged, taking upon herself the burden of the disconsolate,literally, without thought of self, sharing, as it were, the misery andsin of this awful city? And today, for the first time, he seemed to haveseen the woman in her—or was it the saint? and he recalled thatwonderful illumination of her plain face that made her actually beautifulas she looked up from the little waif of humanity she held in her arms.It had startled him, and struck a new chord in his heart, and planted anew pang there that she had no belief in a future life.

It did not occur to him that the sudden joy in her face might have beenevoked by seeing him, for it was a long time since she had seen him. Nordid he think that the pang at his heart had another cause than religiousanxiety. Ah, priest and worldly saint, how subtle and enduring are theprimal instincts of human nature!

"Yes," he said, as they walked away, in reply to her inquiry as to hisabsence, "I have been in retreat a couple of weeks."

"I suppose," she said, softly, "you needed the rest; though," and shelooked at him professionally, "if you will allow me to say it, it seemsto me that you have not rested enough."

"I needed strength"—and it was the priest that spoke—"in meditationand prayer to draw upon resources not my own."

"And in fasting, too, I dare say," she added, with a little smile.

"And why not?" he asked.

"Pardon me," she said; "I don't pretend to know what you need. I need toeat, though Heaven knows it's hard enough to keep up an appetite downhere. But it is physical endurance you need for the work here. Do youthink fasting strengthens you to go through your work night and day?"

"I know I couldn't do it on my own strength." And Dr. Leigh recalledtimes when she had seen him officiating in the chapel apparentlysustained by nothing but zeal and pure spirit, and wondered that he didnot faint and fall. And faint and fall he did, she was sure, when theservice was over.

"Well, it may be necessary to you, but not as an example to these people.
I see enough involuntary fasting."

"We look at these people from different points of view, I fear." Andafter a moment he said: "But, doctor, I wanted to ask you about Gretchen.You see her?"

"Occasionally. She works too many hours, but she seems to be getting onvery well, and brings her mother all she earns."

"Do you think she is able to stand alone?"

Dr. Leigh winced a little at this searching question, for no one knewbetter than she the vulgarizing influence of street life and chanceassociations upon a young girl, and the temptations. She was even forcedto admit the value in the way of restraint, as a sort of police force,of the church and priestly influence, especially upon girls at thesusceptible age. But she knew that Father Damon meant something morethan this, and so she answered:

"But people have got to stand alone. She might as well begin."

"But she is so young."

"Yes, I know. She is in the way of temptation, but so long as she worksindustriously, and loves her mother, and feels the obligation, which thepoor very easily feel, of doing her share for the family, she is not inso much moral danger as other girls of her age who lead idle andself-indulgent lives. The working-girls of the city learn to protectthemselves."

"And you think this is enough, without any sort of religion—that this
East Side can go on without any spiritual life?"

Ruth Leigh made a gesture of impatience. In view of the actual strugglefor existence she saw around her, this talk seemed like cant. And shesaid:

"I don't know that anything can go on. Let me ask you a question, FatherDamon. Do you think there is any more spirituality, any more of theessentials of what you call Christianity, in the society of the otherside than there is on the East Side?"

"It is a deep question, this of spirituality," replied Father Damon, whowas in the depths of his proselyting action a democrat and in sympathywith the people, and rated quite at its full value the conventionalfashion in religion. "I shouldn't like to judge, but there is a greatbody of Christian men and women in this city who are doing noble work."

"Yes," replied the little doctor, bitterly, "trying to save themselves.How many are trying to save others—others except the distant and foreignsinners?"

"You surely cannot ignore," replied the father, still speaking mildly,"the immense amount of charitable work done by the churches!"

"Yes, I know; charity, charity, the condescension of the rich to thepoor. What we want are understanding, fellowship, and we get alms!If there is so much spirituality as you say, and Christianity is what yousay it is today, how happens it that this side is left in filth andmisery and physical wretchedness? You know what it is, and you know theluxury elsewhere. And you think to bridge over the chasm between classeswith flowers, in pots, yes, and Bible-readers and fashionable visitorsand little aid societies—little palliatives for an awful state ofthings. Why, look at it! Last winter the city authorities hauled offthe snow and the refuse from the fashionable avenues, and dumped it downin the already blockaded and filthy side streets, and left us to strugglewith the increased pneumonia and diphtheria, and general unsanitaryconditions. And you wonder that the little nihilist groups and labororganizations and associations of agnostics, as you call them, meeting tostudy political economy and philosophy, say that the existing state ofthings has got to be overturned violently, if those who have the powerand the money continue indifferent."

"I do not wonder," replied Father Damon, sadly. "The world is evil, and Ishould be as despairing as you are if I did not know there was anotherlife and another world. I couldn't bear it. Nobody could."

"And all you've got to offer, then, to this mass of wretchedness,poverty, ignorance, at close quarters with hunger and disease, is to grinand bear it, in hope of a reward somewhere else!"

"I think you don't quite—"

The doctor looked up and saw a look of pain on the priest's face.

"Oh," she hastened to say, almost as impetuously as she had spokenbefore, "I don't mean you—I don't mean you. I know what you do. Pardonme for speaking so. I get so discouraged sometimes." They stood still amoment, looking up and down the hot, crowded, odorful street they werein, with its flaunting rags of poverty and inefficiency. "I see solittle result of what I can do, and there is so little help."

"I know," said the father, as they moved along. "I don't see how youcan bear it alone."

This touched a sore spot, and aroused Ruth Leigh's combativeness.It seemed to her to approach the verge of cant again. But she knew thefather's absolute sincerity; she felt she had already said too much; andshe only murmured, as if to herself, "If we could only know." And then,after a moment, she asked, "Do you, Father Damon, see any sign ofanything better here?"

"Yes, today." And he spoke very slowly and hesitatingly. "If you willexcuse the personality of it. When I entered that room today, and sawyou with that sick child in your arms, and comprehended what it allmeant, I had a great wave of hope, and I knew, just then, that there iscoming virtue enough in the world to redeem it."

Ruth was confounded. Her heart seemed to stand still, and then the hotblood flowed into her face in a crimson flood. "Ah," escaped from herlips, and she walked on more swiftly, not daring to look up. This fromhim! This recognition from the ascetic father! If one of her dispensarycomrades had said it, would she have been so moved?

And afterwards, when she had parted from him, and gone to her littleroom, the hot flush again came to her neck and brow, and she saw hispale, spiritual face, and could hear the unwonted tenderness of hisvoice. Yes, Father Damon had said it of her.

XI

The question has been very much discussed whether the devil, in temperatelatitudes, is busier in the summer or in the winter. When Congress andthe various State legislatures are in session, and the stock and grainexchanges are most active, and society is gayest, and the churches andbenevolent and reformatory associations are most aggressive—at thisseason, which is the cool season, he seems to be most animated andpowerful.

But is not this because he is then most opposed? The stream may not flowany faster because it is dammed, but it exhibits at the obstructed pointsgreater appearance of agitation. Many people are under the impressionthat when they stop fighting there is a general truce: There is reason tobelieve that the arch enemy is pleased with this impression, that helikes a truce, and that it is his best opportunity, just as the weeds inthe garden, after a tempest, welcome the sun and the placidity of theelements. It is well known that in summer virtue suffers from inertia,and that it is difficult to assemble the members of any vigilantorganization, especially in cities, where the flag of the enemy is neverlowered. But wherever the devil is there is always a quorum present forbusiness. It is not his plan to seek an open fight, and many observerssay that he gains more ground in summer than in any other season, andthis notwithstanding people are more apt to lose their tempers, and evenbecome profane, in the aggravations of what is known as spring than atany other time. The subject cannot be pursued here, but there is groundfor supposing that the devil prefers a country where the temperature ishigh and pretty uniform.

At any rate, it is true that the development of character is not arrestedby any geniality or languor of nature. By midsummer the Hendersons weresettled in Lenox, where the Blunts had long been, and Miss Tavish and herparty of friends were at Bar Harbor. Henderson was compelled to be inthe city most of the time, and Jack Delancy fancied that businessrequired his presence there also; but he had bought a yacht, andcontemplated a voyage, with several of the club men, up the Maine coast."No, I thank you," Major Fairfax had said; "I know an easier way to getto Bar Harbor."

Jack was irritable and restless, to be sure, in the absence of the sortof female society he had become accustomed to; but there were manycompensations in his free-and-easy bachelor life, in his pretense ofbusiness, which consisted in watching the ticker, as it is called,in an occasional interview with Henderson, and in the floating summeramusem*nts of the relaxed city. There was nothing unusual in this lifeexcept that he needed a little more stimulation, but this was not strangein the summer, and that he devoted more time to poker—but everybodyknows that a person comes out about even in the game of poker if he keepsat it long enough—there was nothing unusual in this, only it was givingJack a distaste for the quiet and it seemed to him the restraint of theGolden House down by the sea. And he was more irritable there thanelsewhere. It is so difficult to estimate an interior deterioration ofthis sort, for Jack was just as popular with his comrades as ever, andapparently more prosperous.

It is true that Jack had had other ideas when he was courting EdithFletcher, and at moments, at any rate, different aspirations from any hehad now. With her at that time there had been nobler aspirations aboutlife. But now she was his wife. That was settled. And not only that,but she was the best woman he knew; and if she were not his wife, hewould spare no effort to win her. He felt sure of that. He did not putit to himself in the way an Oriental would do, "That is finished"; but itwas an act done—a good act—and here was his world again, with a hundredinterests, and there were people besides Edith to be thought of, otherwomen and men, and affairs. Because a man was married, was he to be shutup to one little narrow career, that of husband? Probably it did notoccur to him that women take a different view of this in the singlenessof their purpose and faith. Edith, for instance, knew or guessed thatJack had no purpose in life that was twenty-four hours old; but she hadfaith—and no amount of observation destroys this faith in women—thatmarriage would inspire him with energy and ambition to take a man's placein the world.

With most men marriage is un fait accompli. Jack had been lucky, butthere was, no doubt, truth in an observation of Mavick's. One night asthey sat at the club Jack had asked him a leading question, apropos ofHenderson's successful career: "Mavick, why don't you get married?""I have never," he replied, with his usual cynical deliberation, "beenobliged to. The fact is, marriage is a curb-bit. Some horses show offbetter with it, and some are enraged and kick over the traces. I cannotdecide which I would be."

"That's true enough," said Jack, "from a bachelor's point of view ofindependence, but it's really a question of matching."

"The most difficult thing in the world—in horses. Just about impossiblein temperament and movement, let alone looks. Most men are lucky if theyget, like Henderson, a running mate."

"I see," said Jack, who knew something about the Henderson household,"your idea of a pair is that they should go single."

Mavick laughed, and said something about the ideas of women changing somuch lately that nobody could tell what the relation of marriage wouldbecome, and Jack, who began to feel that he was disloyal, changed thesubject. To do him justice, he would have been ashamed for Edith to hearthis sort of flippant and shallow talk, which wouldn't have been at allout of place with Carmen or Miss Tavish.

"I wanted to ask you, Mavick, as a friend, do you think Henderson issquare?"

"How square?"

"Well, safe?"

"Nobody is safe. Henderson is as safe as anybody. You can rely on whathe says. But there's a good deal he doesn't say. Anything wrong?"

"Not that I know. I've been pretty lucky. But the fact is, I've gone inrather deep."

"Well, it's a game. Henderson plays it, as everybody does, for himself.I like Henderson. He plays to win, and generally does. But, you know,if one man wins, somebody else has got to lose in this kind of industry."

"But Henderson looks out for his friends?"

"Yes—when it doesn't cost too much. Times may come when a man has tolook out for himself. Wealth isn't made out of nothing. There must bestreams into the reservoir. These great accumulations of one—you cansee that—must be made up of countless other men's small savings.There's Uncle Jerry. He operates a good deal with Henderson, and they'dincline to help each other out. But Uncle Jerry says he's got a smallpond of his own, and he's careful not to connect it with Henderson'sreservoir."

"What do you think of Missouri?"

"What do I think of the Milky Way? It doesn't much matter to me whatbecomes of Missouri, unless Henderson should happen to get smashed in it,and that isn't what he is there for. But when you look at thecombinations, and the dropping-off of roads that have been drained,and the scaling down in refunding, and the rearranging, and the strikes,how much chance do you think the small fry stand? I don't doubt thatHenderson will make a big thing out of it, and there will be lots ofhowling by those who were not so smart, and the newspapers will say thatHenderson was too strong for them. What we respect nowadays areadroitness and strength."

"It's an exciting game," Mavick continued, after a moment's pause."Let me know if you get uneasy. But I'll tell you what it is, Jack;if I had a comfortable income, I wouldn't risk it in any speculation.There is a good deal that is interesting going on in this world, and Ilike to be in it; but the best plan for a man who has anything is, asUncle Jerry says, to sail close and salt down."

The fact was that Mavick's connection with Henderson was an appreciableaddition to his income, and it was not a bad thing for Henderson.Mavick's reputation for knowing the inside of everything and beingclose-mouthed actually brought him confidences; that which at first was aclever assumption became a reality, and his reputation was so establishedfor being behind the scenes that he was not believed when he honestlyprofessed ignorance of anything. His modest disclaimer merely increasedthe impression that he was deep. Henderson himself had something of theBismarck trait of brutal, contemptuous frankness. Mavick was neverbrutal and never contemptuous, but he had a cynical sort of frankness,which is a good deal more effectual in a business way than the oily,plausible manner which on 'Change, as well as in politics, is distrustedas hypocrisy. Now Uncle Jerry Hollowell was neither oily nor frank; hewas long-headed and cautious, and had a reputation for shrewdness andjust enough of plasticity of conscience to remove him out of the list ofthe impracticable and over-scrupulous. This reputation that business menand politicians acquire would be a very curious study. The world is verycomplacent, and apparently worships success and votes for smartness,but it would surprise some of our most successful men to know what a realrespect there is in the community, after all, for downright integrity.

Even Jack, who fell into the current notion of his generation of youngmen that the Henderson sort of morality was best adapted to quicksuccess, evinced a consciousness of want of nobility in the course he waspursuing by not making Edith his confidante. He would have said, ofcourse, that she knew nothing about business, but what he meant was thatshe had a very clear conception of what was honest. All the evidences ofhis prosperity, shown in his greater freedom of living, were sore trialsto her. She belonged to that old class of New-Yorkers who made tradehonorable, like the merchants of Holland and Venice, and she knew alsothat Jack's little fortune had come out of honest toil and strictbusiness integrity. Could there be any happiness in life in any othercourse?

It seemed cruel to put such a problem as this upon a young woman hardlyyet out of girlhood, in the first flush of a new life, which she haddreamed should be so noble and high and so happy, in the period which isconsecrated by the sweetest and loveliest visions and hopes that evercome into a woman's life.

As the summer wore on to its maximum of heat and discomfort in the city,Edith, who never forgot to measure the hardships of others by her ownmore fortunate circ*mstances, urged Dr. Leigh to come away from herlabors and rest a few days by the sea. The reply was a refusal, butthere was no complaint in the brief business-like note. One might havesupposed that it was the harvest-time of the doctor, if he had not knownthat she gathered nothing for herself. There had never been so muchsickness, she wrote, and such an opportunity for her. She was learning agreat deal, especially about some disputed contagious diseases. Shewould like to see Mrs. Delancy, and she wouldn't mind a breath of airthat was more easily to be analyzed than that she existed in, but nothingcould induce her to give up her cases. All that appeared in her letterwas her interest in her profession.

Father Damon, who had been persuaded by Edith's urgency to go down withJack for a few days to the Golden House, seemed uncommonly interested inthe reasons of Dr. Leigh's refusal to come.

"I never saw her," he said, "so cheerful. The more sickness there is,the more radiant she is. I don't mean," he added, laughing, "in apparel.Apparently she never thinks of herself, and positively she seems to takeno time to eat or sleep. I encounter her everywhere. I doubt if sheever sits down, except when she drops in at the mission chapel now andthen, and sits quite unmoved on a bench by the door during vespers."

"Then she does go there?" said Edith.

"That is a queer thing. She would promptly repudiate any religiousinterest. But I tell her she is a bit of a humbug. When I speak abouther philanthropic zeal, she says her interest is purely scientific."

"Anyway, I believe," Jack put in, "that women doctors are less mercenarythan men. I dare say they will get over that when the novelty of cominginto the profession has worn off."

"That is possible," said Father Damon; "but that which drives women intoprofessions now is the desire to do something rather than the desire tomake something. Besides, it is seldom, in their minds, a finality;marriage is always a possibility."

"Yes," replied Edith, "and the probability of having to support a husbandand family; then they may be as mercenary as men are."

"Still, the enthusiasm of women," Father Damon insisted, "in hospital andoutdoor practice, the singleness of their devotion to it, is in contrastto that of the young men-doctors. And I notice another thing in thecity: they take more interest in philanthropic movements, in thecondition of the poor, in the labor questions; they dive eagerly intophilosophic speculations, and they are more aggressively agnostics.And they are not afraid of any social theories. I have one friend,a skillful practitioner they tell me, a linguist, and a metaphysician,a most agreeable and accomplished woman, who is in theory an extremenihilist, and looks to see the present social and political order upset."

"I don't see," Jack remarked, "what women especially are to gain by sucha revolution."

"Perhaps independence, Jack," replied Edith. "You should hear my club ofworking-girls, who read and think much on these topics, talk of thesethings."

"Yes," said Father Damon, "you toss these topics about, and discuss themin the magazines, and fancy you are interested in socialistic movements.But you have no idea how real and vital they are, and how the dumbdiscontent of the working classes is being formulated into ideas.It is time we tried to understand each other."

Not all the talk was of this sort at the Golden House. There were threeworlds here—that of Jack, to which Edith belonged by birth and traditionand habit; that of which we have spoken, to which she belonged byprofound sympathy; and that of Father Damon, to which she belonged byundefined aspiration. In him was the spiritual element asserting itselfin a mediaeval form, in a struggle to mortify and deny the flesh and yettake part in modern life. Imagine a celibate and ascetic of thefifteenth century, who knew that Paradise must be gained through povertyand privation and suffering, interesting himself in the tenement-housequestion, in labor leagues, and the single tax.

Yet, hour after hour, in those idle summer days, when nature was in amood that suggested grace and peace, when the waves lapsed along theshore and the cicada sang in the hedge, did Father Damon unfold to Edithhis ideas of the spiritualization of modern life through a conviction ofits pettiness and transitoriness. How much more content there would beif the poor could only believe that it matters little what happens hereif the heart is only pure and fixed on the endless life.

"Oh, Father Damon," replied Edith, with a grave smile, "I think yourmission ought to be to the rich."

"Yes," he replied, for he also knew his world, "if I wanted to make myideas fashionable; but I want to make them operative. By-and-by," headded, also with a smile, "we will organize some fishermen and carpentersand tailors on a mission to the rich."

Father Damon's visit was necessarily short, for his work called him backto town, and perhaps his conscience smote him a little for indulging inthis sort of retreat. By the middle of August Jack's yacht was ready,and he went with Mavick and the Van Dams and some other men of the clubon a cruise up the coast. Edith was left alone with her Baltimorefriend.

And yet not alone. As she lay in her hammock in those dreamy days a newworld opened to her. It was not described in the chance romance she tookup, nor in the volume of poems she sometimes held in her hand, with afinger inserted in the leaves. Of this world she felt herself the centreand the creator, and as she mused upon its mysteries, life took a new,strange meaning to her. It was apt to be a little hazy off there in thewatery horizon, and out of the mist would glide occasionally a boat,and the sun would silver its sails, and it would dip and toss for half anhour in the blue, laughing sea, and then disappear through the mysteriouscurtain. Whence did it come? Whither had it gone? Was life like that?Was she on the shore of such a sea, and was this new world into which shewas drifting only a dream? By her smile, by the momentary illuminationthat her sweet thoughts made in her lovely, hopeful face, you knew thatit was not. Who can guess the thoughts of a woman at such a time? Arethe trees glad in the spring, when the sap leaps in their trunks, and thebuds begin to swell, and the leaves unfold in soft response to thecreative impulse? The miracle is never old nor commonplace to them, norto any of the human family. The anticipation of life is eternal. Thesinging of the birds, the blowing of the south wind, the sparkle of thewaves, all found a response in Edith's heart, which leaped with joy. Andyet there was a touch of melancholy in it all, the horizon was so vast,and the mist of uncertainty lay along it. Literature, society,charities, all that she had read and experienced and thought, was nothingto this, this great unknown anxiety and bliss, this saddest and sweetestof all human experiences. She prayed that she might be worthy of thisgreat distinction, this responsibility and blessing.

And Jack, dear Jack, would he love her more?

XII

Although Father Damon had been absent from his charge only ten days, itwas time for him to return. If he had not a large personal following, hehad a wide influence. If comparatively few found their way to hischapel, he found his way to many homes; his figure was a familiar one inthe streets, and his absence was felt by hundreds who had no personalrelations with him, but who had become accustomed to seeing him go abouton his errands of encouragement, and probably had never realized how muchthe daily sight of him had touched them. The priestly dress, which mayonce have provoked a sneer at his effeminacy, had now a suggestion ofrefinement, of unselfish devotion, of consecration to the service of theunfortunate, his spiritual face appealed to their better natures, and thevisible heroism that carried his frail figure through labors that wouldhave worn out the stoutest physique stirred in the hearts of the rudestsome comprehension of the reality of the spirit.

It may not have occurred to them that he was of finer clay than they—perhaps he was not—but his presence was in their minds a subtleconnection and not a condescending one, rather a confession ofbrotherhood, with another world and another view of life. They may nothave known that their hearts were stirred because he had the gift ofsympathy.

And was it an unmanly trait that he evoked in men that sentiment ofchivalry which is never wanting in the roughest community for a purewoman? Wherever Father Damon went there was respect for his purity andhis unselfishness, even among those who would have been shamefaced ifsurprised in any exhibition of softness.

And many loved him, and many depended on him. Perhaps those who mostdepended on him were the least worthy, and those who loved him most wereleast inclined to sacrifice their own reasonable view of life to his ownsublimated spiritual conception. It was the spirit of the man theyloved, and not the creed of the priest. The little chapel in its subduedlights and shadows, with confessionals and crosses and candles andincense, was as restful a refuge as ever to the tired and the dependent;but wanting his inspiring face and voice, it was not the same thing, andthe attendance always fell away when he was absent. There was neededthere more than elsewhere the living presence.

He was missed, and the little world that missed him was astray. Thefirst day of his return his heart was smitten by the thinness of thecongregation. Had he, then, accomplished nothing; had he made noimpression, established in his shifting flock no habit of continuance inwell-doing that could survive even his temporary withdrawal? The faultmust be his. He had not sufficiently humiliated and consecrated himself,and put under all strength of the flesh and trust in worldlyinstrumentalities. There must be more prayer, more vigils, more fasting,before the power would come back to him to draw these wandering minds tothe light. And so in the heat of this exhausting August, at the timewhen his body most needed re-enforcement for the toil he required of it,he was more rigid in his spiritual tyranny and contempt of it.

Ruth Leigh was not dependent upon Father Damon, but she also learned howlong ten days could be without a sight of him. When she looked into hischapel occasionally she realized, as never before, how much in the airhis ceremonies and his creed were. There was nothing there for herexcept his memory. And she knew when she stepped in there, for her cool,reasoning mind was honest, that it was the thought of him that drew herto the place, and that going there was a sentimental indulgence. Whatshe would have said was that she admired, loved Father Damon on accountof his love for humanity. It was a common saying of all the professionalwomen in her set, and of the working-girls, that they loved Father Damon.It is a comfort to women to be able to give their affection freely whereconventionalities and circ*mstances make the return of it in degreeunlikely.

At the close of a debilitating day Dr. Leigh found herself in theneighborhood of the mission chapel. She was tired and needed to restsomewhere. She knew that Father Damon had returned, but she had not seenhim, and a double motive drew her steps. The attendance was larger thanit had been recently, and she found a stool in a dark corner, andlistened, with a weary sort of consciousness of the prayers and thesinging, but not without a deeper feeling of peace in the tones of avoice every inflection of which she knew so well. It seemed to her thatthe reading cost him an effort, and there was a note of pathos in thevoice that thrilled her. Presently he advanced towards the altar rail—he was accustomed to do this with his little flock—and placing one handon the lectern, began to speak.

At first, and this was not usual, he spoke about himself in a strain ofsincere humility, taking blame upon himself for his inability to doeffectively the great service his Master had set him to do. He meant tohave given himself more entirely to the dear people among whom helabored; he hoped to show himself more worthy of the trust they had givenhim; he was grateful for the success of his mission, but no one knew sowell as he how far short it came of being what he ought to have made it.He knew indeed how weak he was, and he asked the aid of their sympathyand encouragement. It seemed to be with difficulty that he said this,and to Ruth's sympathetic ear there was an evidence of physicalexhaustion in his tone. There was in it, also, for her, a confession offailure, the cry of the preacher, in sorrow and entreaty, that says,"I have called so long, and ye would not listen."

As he went on, still with an effort and feebly, there came over thelittle group a feeling of awe and wonderment, and the silence wasprofound. Still steadying himself by the reading-desk, he went on tospeak of other things, of those of his followers who listened, of thegreat mass swirling about them in the streets who did not listen and didnot care; of the little life that now is so full of pain and hardship anddisappointment, of good intentions frustrated, of hopes that deceive,and of fair prospects that turn to ashes, of good lives that go wrong, ofsweet natures turned to bitterness in the unaided struggle. His voicegrew stronger and clearer, as his body responded to the kindling theme inhis soul. He stepped away from the desk nearer the rail, the bowed headwas raised. "What does it matter?" he said. "It is only for a littlewhile, my children." Those who heard him that day say that his faceshone like that of an angel, and that his voice was like a victoriousclarion, so clear, so sweet, so inspiring, as he spoke of the life thatis to come, and the fair certainty of that City where he with them allwished to be.

As he closed, some were kneeling, many were crying; all, profoundlymoved, watched him as, with the benediction and the sign of the cross, heturned and walked swiftly to the door of the sacristy. It opened, andthen Ruth Leigh heard a cry, "Father Damon! Father Damon!" and there wasa rush into the chancel. Hastening through the throng, which promptlymade way for the doctor, she found Father Damon lying across thethreshold, as he had fallen, colorless and unconscious. She at once tookcommand of the situation. The body was lifted to the plain couch in theroom, a hasty examination was made of pulse and heart, a vial of brandywas produced from her satchel, and messengers were despatched for thingsneeded, and especially for beef-tea.

"Is he dead, Dr. Leigh? Is he any better, doctor? What is the matter,doctor?"

"Want of nourishment," replied Dr. Leigh, savagely.

The room was cleared of all except a couple of stout lads and a friendlyGerman woman whom the doctor knew. The news of the father's suddenillness had spread rapidly, with the report that he had fallen dead whilestanding at the altar; and the church was thronged, and the streetrapidly blocked up with a hushed crowd, eager for news and eager to giveaid. So great was the press that the police had to interfere, and pushback the throng from the door. It was useless to attempt to disperse itwith the assurance that Father Damon was better; it patiently waited tosee for itself. The sympathy of the neighborhood was most impressive,and perhaps the thing that the public best remembers about this incidentis the pathetic solicitude of the people among whom Father Damon laboredat the rumor of his illness, a matter which was greatly elaborated by thereporters from the city journals and the purveyors of telegraphic newsfor the country.

With the application of restoratives the patient revived. When he openedhis eyes he saw figures in the room as in a dream, and his mind struggledto remember where he was and what had happened; but one thing was not adream: Dr. Leigh stood by his bedside, with her left hand on his browand the right grasping his own right hand, as if to pull him back tolife. He saw her face, and then he lost it again in sheer weariness atthe effort. After a few moments, in a recurring wave of strength, helooked up again, still bewildered, and said, faintly:

"Where am I?"

"With friends," said the doctor. "You were a little faint, that is all;you will be all right presently."

She quickly prepared some nourishment, which was what he most needed, andfed him from time to time, as he was able to receive it. Gradually hecould feel a little vigor coming into his frame; and regaining control ofhimself, he was able to hear what had happened. Very gently the doctortold him, making light of his temporary weakness.

"The fact is, Father Damon," she said, "you've got a disease common inthis neighborhood—hunger."

The father smiled, but did not reply. It might be so. For the time hefelt his dependence, and he did not argue the point. This dependenceupon a woman—a sort of Sister of Charity, was she not?—was notaltogether unpleasant. When he attempted to rise, but found that he wastoo weak, and she said "Not yet," he submitted, with the feeling that tobe commanded with such gentleness was a sort of luxury.

But in an hour's time he declared that he was almost himself again,and it was decided that he was well enough to be removed to his ownapartments in the neighborhood. A carriage was sent for, and thetransfer was made, and made through a crowd in the streets, which stoodsilent and uncovered as his carriage passed through it. Dr. Leighremained with him for an hour longer, and then left him in chargeof a young gentleman from the Neighborhood Guild, who gladly volunteeredto watch for the night.

Ruth walked slowly home, weary now that the excitement was over, andrevolving many things in her mind, as is the custom of women. She heardagain that voice, she saw again that inspired face; but the impressionmost indelible with her was the prostrate form, the pallid countenance,the helplessness of this man whose will had before been strong enough tocompel the obedience of his despised body. She had admired his strength;but it was his weakness that drew upon her woman's heart, and evolved atenderness dangerous to her peace of mind. Yet it was the doctor and notthe woman that replied to the inquiries at the dispensary.

"Yes, it was fasting and overwork. Men are so stupid; they think theycan defy all the laws of nature, especially priests." And she determinedto be quite plain with him next day.

And Father Damon, lying weary in his bed, before he fell asleep, saw thefaces in the dim chapel turned to him in strained eagerness the momentbefore he lost consciousness; but the most vivid image was that of awoman bending over him, with eyes of tenderness and pity, and the smilewith which she greeted his awakening. He could feel yet her hand uponhis brow.

When Dr. Leigh called next day, on her morning rounds, she found abrother of the celibate order, Father Monies, in charge. He was sittingby the window reading, and when the doctor came up the steps he told herin a low voice to enter without knocking. Father Damon was better, muchbetter; but he had advised him not to leave his bed, and the patient hadbeen dozing all the morning. The doctor asked if he had eaten anything,and how much. The apartment was small and scantily furnished—a sort ofanchorite cell. Through the drawn doors of the next room the bed was insight. As they were talking in low voices there came from this room acheerful:

"Good-morning, doctor."

"I hope you ate a good breakfast," she said, as she arose and went to hisbedside.

"I suppose you mean better than usual," he replied, with a faint attemptat a smile. "No doubt you and Father Monies are satisfied, now you'vegot me laid up."

"That depends upon your intentions."

"Oh, I intend to get up tomorrow."

"If you do, without other change in your intentions, I am going to reportyou to the Organized Charity as a person who has no visible means ofsupport."

She had brought a bunch of violets, and as they talked she had filled aglass with water and put them on a stand by the head of the bed. Then—oh, quite professionally—she smoothed out his pillows and straightenedthe bedclothes, and, talking all the time, and as if quite unconscious ofwhat she was doing, moved about the room, putting things to rights, andsaying, in answer to his protest, that perhaps she should lose herreputation as a physician in his eyes by appearing to be a professionalnurse.

There was a timid knock at the door, and a forlorn little figure, clad ina rumpled calico, with an old shawl over her head, half concealing aneager and pretty face, stood in the doorway, and hesitatingly came in.

"Meine Mutter sent me to see how Father Damon is," she explained; "shecould not come, because she washes."

She had a bunch of flowers in her hand, and encouraged by the greeting ofthe invalid, she came to the bedside and placed them in his outstretchedhand—a faded blossom of scarlet geranium, a bachelor's button, and asprig of parsley, probably begged of a street dealer as she came along."Some blooms," she said.

"Bless you, my dear," said Father Damon; "they are very pretty."

"Dey smells nice," the child exclaimed, her eyes dancing with pleasure atthe reception of her gift. She stood staring at him, and then, her eyecatching the violets, she added, "Dose is pooty, too."

"If you can stay half an hour or so, I should like to step round to thechapel," Father Monies said to the doctor in the front room, taking uphis hat.

The doctor could stay. The little girl had moved a chair up to thebedside, and sat quite silent, her grimy little hand grasped in thefather's. Ruth, saying that she hoped the father wouldn't mind, began toput in order the front room, which the incidents of the night hadsomewhat disturbed. Father Damon, holding fast by that little hand tothe world of poverty to which he had devoted his life, could not refrainfrom watching her, as she moved about with the quick, noiseless way thata woman has when she is putting things to rights. This was indeed anovel invasion of his life. He was still too weak to reason about itmuch. How good she was, how womanly! And what a sense of peace andrepose she brought into his apartment! The presence of Brother Monieswas peaceful also, but hers was somehow different. His eyes had notcared to follow the brother about the room. He knew that she wasunselfish, but he had not noticed before that her ways were so graceful.As she turned her face towards him from time to time he thought itsexpression beautiful. Ruth Leigh would have smiled grimly if any one hadcalled her beautiful, but then she did not know how she looked sometimeswhen her feelings were touched. It is said that the lamp of love canillumine into beauty any features of clay through which it shines. As hegazed, letting himself drift as in a dream, suddenly a thought shotthrough his mind that made him close his eyes, and such a severe priestlylook came upon his face that the little girl, who had never taken hereyes off him, exclaimed:

"It is worse?"

"No, my dear," he replied, with a reassuring smile; "at least, I hopenot."

But when the doctor, finishing her work, drew a chair into the doorway,and sat by the foot of his bed, the stern look still remained on his paleface. And the doctor, she also was the doctor again, as matter of factas in any professional visit.

"You are very kind," he said.

There was a shade of impatience on her face as she replied, "But you mustbe a little kind to yourself."

"It doesn't matter."

"But it does matter. You defeat the very work you want to do. I'm goingto report you to your order." And then she added, more lightly, "Don'tyou know it is wrong to commit suicide?"

"You don't understand," he replied. "There is more than one kind ofsuicide; you don't believe in the suicide of the soul. Ah, me!" And ashade of pain passed over his face.

She was quick to see this. "I beg your pardon, Father Damon. It is noneof my business, but we are all so anxious to have you speedily wellagain."

Just then Father Monies returned, and the doctor rose to go. She tookthe little girl by the hand and said, "Come, I was just going round tosee your father. Good-by. I shall look in again tomorrow."

"Thank you—thank you a thousand times. But you have so much to do thatyou must not bother about me."

Whether he said this to quiet his own conscience, secretly hoping that hemight see her again on the morrow, perhaps he himself could not havedecided.

Late the next afternoon, after an unusually weary round of visits, madein the extreme heat and in a sort of hopeless faithfulness, Dr. Leighreached the tenement in which Father Damon lodged: In all the miserablescenes of the day it had been in her mind, giving to her work a pleasurethat she did not openly acknowledge even to herself, that she should seehim.

The curtains were down, and there was no response to her knock, exceptfrom a door in the passage opposite. A woman opened the door wide enoughto show her head and to make it evident that she was not sufficientlydressed to come out, and said that Father Damon had gone. He was verymuch better, and his friend had taken him up-town. Dr. Leigh thankedher, and said she was very glad.

She was so glad that, as she walked away, scarcely heeding her steps orconscious of the chaffing, chattering crowd, all interest in her work andin that quarter of the city seemed dead.

XIII

It is well that there is pleasure somewhere in the world. It is possiblefor those who have a fresh-air fund of their own to steam away in ayacht, out of the midsummer ennui and the weary gayety of the land.It is a costly pleasure, and probably all the more enjoyed on thataccount, for if everybody had a yacht there would be no more feeling ofdistinction in sailing one than in going to any of the second-rateresorts on the coast. There is, to be sure, some ennui in yachting on arainy coast, and it might be dull but for the sensation created byarrivals at watering-places and the telegraphic reports of thesesensations.

If there was any dullness on the Delancy yacht, means were taken todispel it. While still in the Sound a society was formed for thesuppression of total abstinence, and so successful was this that PointJudith was passed, in a rain and a high and chopping sea, with a kind ofhilarious enjoyment of the commotion, which is one of the things desiredat sea. When the party came round to Newport it declared that it had hada lovely voyage, and inquiry brought out the great general principle,applicable to most coast navigation for pleasure, that the enjoyable wayto pass Point Judith is not to know you are passing Point Judith.

Except when you land, and even after you have got your sea-legs on, thereis a certain monotony in yachting, unless the weather is very bad, andunless there are women aboard. A party of lively women make even the seafresh and entertaining. Otherwise, the game of poker is much what it ison land, and the constant consulting of charts and reckoning of speedevince the general desire to get somewhere—that is, to arrive at aharbor. In the recollections of this voyage, even in Jack'srecollections of it after he had paid the bills, it seemed that it hadbeen simply glorious, free from care, generally a physical setting-upperformance, and a lark of enormous magnitude. And everybody envied thefortunate sailors.

Mavick actually did enjoy it, for he had that brooding sort of nature,that self-satisfied attitude, that is able to appropriate to its own useswhatever comes. And being an unemotional and very tolerable sailor,he was able to be as cynical at sea as on land, and as much of an oracle,in his wholly unobtrusive way. The perfect personal poise of Mavick,which gave him an air of patronizing the ocean, and his lightly heldskeptical view of life, made his company as full of flavor on ship as itwas on shore. He didn't know anything more about the weather than theWeather Bureau knows, yet the helmsman of the yacht used to consult himabout the appearances of the sky and a change of wind with a confidencein his opinion that he gave to no one else on board. And Mavick neverforfeited this respect by being too positive. It was so with everything;he evidently knew a great deal more than he cared to tell. It ispleasing to notice how much credit such men as Mavick obtain in the worldby circ*mspect reticence and a knowing manner. Jack, blundering along inhis free-hearted, emotional way, and never concealing his opinion, wasreally right twice where Mavick was right once, but he never had theleast credit for wisdom.

It was late in August that the Delancy yacht steamed into the splendidBar Harbor, making its way slowly through one of the rare fogs which aresometimes seen by people who do not own real estate there. Even beforethey could see an island those on board felt the combination of mountainand sea air that makes this favored place at once a tonic and a sedativeto the fashionable world.

The party were expected at Bar Harbor. It had been announced that theyacht was on its way, and some of the projected gayeties were awaitingits coming, for the society reenforcement of the half-dozen men on boardwas not to be despised. The news went speedily round that CaptainDelancy's flag was flying at the anchorage off the landing.

Among the first to welcome them as they landed and strolled up to thehotel was Major Fairfax.

"Oh yes," he said; "we are all here—that is, all who know where theyought to be at the right moment."

To the new-comers the scene was animated. The exotic shops sparkled withcheap specialties; landaus, pony-phaetons, and elaborate buckboardsdashed through the streets; aquatic and law-tennis costumes abounded.If there was not much rowing and lawn-tennis, there was a great deal ofbecoming morning dressing for these sports, and in all the rather aimlessidleness there was an air of determined enjoyment. Even here it wasevident that there was a surplus of women. These lovers of nature, inthe summer season, who had retired to this wild place to be free from theimportunities of society, betrayed, Mavick thought, the common instinctof curiosity over the new arrival, and he was glad to take it as anevidence that they loved not nature less but man more. Jack tripped upthis ungallant speech by remarking that if Mavick was in this mood he didnot know why he came ashore. And Van Dam said that sooner or later allmen went ashore. This thin sort of talk was perhaps pardonable after theweariness of a sea voyage, but the Major promptly said it wouldn't do.And the Major seemed to be in charge of the place.

"No epigrams are permitted. We are here to enjoy ourselves. I'm orderedto bring the whole crew of you to tea at the Tavish cottage."

"Anybody else there?" asked Jack, carelessly.

"Well, it's the most curious coincidence, but Mrs. Henderson arrived lastnight; Henderson has gone to Missouri."

"Yes, he wrote me to look out for his wife on this coast," said Mavick.

"You kept mighty still about it," said Jack.

"So did you," retorted Mavick.

"It is very curious," the Major explained, "how fashionable intelligenceruns along this coast, apparently independent of the telegraph; everybodyknows where everybody else is."

The Tavish cottage was a summer palace of the present fashion, but therewas one good thing about it: it had no tower, nor any make-believebalconies hung on the outside like bird-cages. The rooms were spacious,and had big fireplaces, and ample piazzas all round, so that the suncould be courted or the wind be avoided at all hours of the day. It was,in short, not a house for retirement and privacy, but for entertainment.It was furnished luxuriously but gayly, and with its rugs and portieresand divans it reminded Mavick of an Oriental marquee. Miss Tavish calledit her tepee, an evolution of the aboriginal dwelling. She liked toentertain, and she never appeared to better advantage than when her housewas full, and something was going on continually-lively breakfasts anddinners, dances, theatricals, or the usual flowing in and out of callersand guests, chattering groups, and flirtatious couples. It was her ideaof repose from the winter's gayety, and in it she sustained the role ofthe non-fatigueable society girl. It is a performance that manyworking-girls regard with amazement.

There was quite a flutter in the cottage, as there always is when thosewho know each other well meet under new circ*mstances after a shortseparation.

"We are very glad to see you," Miss Tavish said, cordially; "we have beenawfully dull."

"That is complimentary to me," said the Major.

"You can judge the depths we have been in when even the Major couldn'tpull us out," she retorted. "Without him we should have simply died."

"And it would have been the liveliest obsequies I ever attended."

Carmen was not effusive in her greeting; she left that role to MissTavish, taking for herself that of confidential friend. She was almostretiring in her manner, but she made Jack feel that she had a strongpersonal interest in his welfare, and she asked a hundred questions aboutthe voyage and about town and about Edith.

"I'm going to chaperon you up here," she said, "for Miss Tavish will leadyou into all sorts of wild adventures."

There was that in the manner of the demure little woman when she madethis proposal that convinced Jack that under her care he would beperfectly safe—from Miss Tavish.

After cigarettes were lighted she contrived to draw Mavick away to thepiazza. She was very anxious to know what Henderson's latest moves were.Mavick was very communicative, and told her nothing that he knew she didnot already know. And she was clever enough to see, without any apparentdistrust, that whatever she got from him must be in what he did not say.As to Jack's speculations, she made little more progress. Jack gaveevery sign of being prosperous; he entertained royally on his yacht.

Mavick himself was puzzled to know whether Carmen really cared for Jack,or whether she was only interested as in a game, one of the things thatamused her life to play, to see how far he would go, and to watch hisascension or his tumble. Mavick would have been surprised if he hadknown that as a result of this wholly agreeable and confidential talk,Carmen wrote that night in a letter to her husband:

"Your friend Mavick is here. What a very clever man he is! If I wereyou I would keep an eye on him."

A dozen plans were started at the tea for relieving the tedium of thedaily drives and the regulation teas and receptions. For one thing,weather permitting, they would all breakfast at twelve on the yacht, andthen sail about the harbor, and come home in the sunset.

The day was indeed charming, so stimulating as to raise the value of realestate, and incite everybody to go off in search of adventure, in wagons,in walking parties, in boats. There is no happiness like theanticipation of pleasure begot by such a morning. Those who live theresaid it was regular Bar Harbor weather.

Captain Delancy was on deck to receive his guests, who came out in smallboats, chattering and fluttering and "ship-ahoying," as gay in spirits asin apparel. Anything but high spirits and nonsense would be unpardonableon such a morning. Breakfast was served on deck, under an awning, insight of the mountains, the green islands, the fringe of breaking sea inthe distant opening, the shimmer and sparkle of the harbor, the whitesails of pleasure-boats, the painted canoes, the schooners and coal-boatsand steamers swinging at anchor just enough to make all the scene alive."This is my idea," said the Major, "of going to sea in a yacht; it wouldbe perfect if we were tied up at the dock."

"I move that we throw the Major overboard," cried Miss Tavish.

"No," Jack exclaimed; "it is against the law to throw anything into theharbor."

"Oh, I expected Miss Tavish would throw me overboard when Mavickappeared."

Mavick raised his glass and proposed the health of Miss Tavish.

"With all my heart," the Major said; "my life is passed in returning goodfor evil."

"I never knew before," and Miss Tavish bowed her acknowledgments, "thesecret of the Major's attractions."

"Yes," said Carmen, sweetly, "he is all things to all women."

"You don't appear to have a friend here, Major," Mavick suggested.

"No; my friends are all foul-weather friends; come a bright day, they areall off like butterflies. That comes of being constant."

"That's no distinction," Carmen exclaimed; "all men are that till theyget what they want."

"Alas! that women also in these days here become cynical! It was not sowhen I was young. Here's to the ever young," and he bowed to Carmen andMiss Tavish.

"He's been with Ponce de Leon!" cried Miss Tavish.

"He's the dearest man living, except a few," echoed Carmen. "The Major'shealth."

The yellow wine sparkled in the glasses like the sparkling sea, the windblew softly from the south, the sails in the bay darkened and flashed,and the breakfast, it seemed to go along of itself, and erelong theconvives were eating ambrosia and sipping nectar. Van Dam told a sharkstory. Mavick demonstrated its innate improbability. The Major sang asong—a song of the forties, with a touch of sentiment. Jack, whosecheerful voice was a little of the cider-cellar order, and who never sangwhen he was sad, struck up the latest vaudeville ditty, and Carmen andMiss Tavish joined in the chorus.

"I like the sea," the Major declared. They all liked it. The breakfastlasted a long time, and when they rose from the table Jack said thatpresently they would take a course round the harbor. The Major remarkedthat that would suit him. He appeared to be ready to go round the world.

While they were preparing to start, Carmen and Jack strolled away to thebow, where she perched herself, holding on by the rigging. He thought hehad never seen her look so pretty as at that moment, in her trim nauticalcostume, sitting up there, swinging her feet like a girl, and regardinghim with half-mocking, half-admiring eyes.

What were they saying? Heaven only knows. What nonsense do people sosituated usually talk? Perhaps she was warning him against Miss Tavish.Perhaps she was protesting that Julia Tavish was a very, very old friend.To an observer this admirable woman seemed to be on the defensive—hermost alluring attitude. It was not, one could hear, exactly sober talk;there was laughter and raillery and earnestness mingled. It might besaid that they were good comrades. Carmen professed to like goodcomradeship and no nonsense. But she liked to be confidential.

Till late in the afternoon they cruised about among the islands, gettingdifferent points of view of the coast, and especially different points ofview of each other, in the freedom of talk and repartee permitted on anexcursion. Before sunset they were out in the open, and could feel thelong ocean swell. The wind had risen a little, and there was a low bandof clouds in the south. The skipper told Mr. Delancy that it would bemuch fresher with the sinking of the sun, but Jack replied that itwouldn't amount to anything; the glass was all right.

"Now the great winds shoreward blow;
Now the salt tides seaward flow;
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray."

Miss Tavish was in the wheel-house, and had taken the wheel. This clevergirl knew her right hand from her left, instantly, without having to stopand think and look at her rings, and she knew what port and starboardmeant, as orders, and exactly how to meet a wave with a turn of thewheel.

"I say, Captain Delancy," she cried out, "the steamer is about due.
Let's go down and meet her, and race in."

"All right," replied Jack. "We can run round her three times and thenbeat her in."

The steamer's smoke was seen at that instant, and the yacht was headedfor it. The wind was a little fresher, but the tight little craft tookthe waves like a duck, and all on board enjoyed the excitement of thechange, except the Major, who said he didn't mind, but he didn't believethe steamer needed any escort.

By the time the steamer was reached the sun was going down in a band ofclouds. There was no gale, but the wind increased in occasional puffs ofspite, and the waves were getting up. The skipper took the wheel to turnthe yacht in a circle to her homeward course. As this operation createdstrange motions, and did not interest the Major, he said he would gobelow and reflect.

In turning, the yacht came round on the seaward side of the steamer, butfar behind. But the little craft speedily showed her breeding andoverhauled her big rival, and began to forge ahead. The little group onthe yacht waved their handkerchiefs as if in good-by, and the passengerson the steamer cheered. As the wind was every moment increasing, theskipper sheered away to allow plenty of sea-room between the boats. Therace appeared to be over.

"It's a pity," said Miss Tavish.

"Let's go round her," said Jack; "eh, skipper?"

"If you like, sir," responded the skipper. "She can do it."

The yacht was well ahead, but the change in the direction brought thevessels nearer together. But there was no danger. The speed they weregoing would easily bring her round away ahead of the steamer.

But just then something happened. The yacht would not answer to herhelm. The wheel flew around without resistance. The wind, hauled nowinto the east, struck her with violence and drove her sideways. Thelittle thing was like a chip on the sea. The rudder-chain had broken.The yacht seemed to fly towards the long, hulking steamer. The dangerwas seen there, and her helm was put hard down, and her nose began toturn towards the shore. But it was too late. It seemed all over in aninstant. The yacht dashed bow on to the side of the steamer, quivered aninstant, and then dropped away. At the same moment the steamer sloweddown and began to turn to assist the wounded.

The skipper of the yacht and a couple of hands rushed below. A part ofthe bow had been carried away and a small hole made just above thewaterline, through which the water spurted whenever she encountered alarge wave. It was enough to waterlog her and sink her in such a sea.The two seamen grasped whatever bedding was in reach below, rammed itinto the opening, and held it there. The skipper ran on deck, and by theaid of the men hauled out a couple of sails and dropped them over thebow. These would aid in keeping out the water. They could float now,but where were they going? "Going ashore," said Mavick, grimly. And sothey were.

"Was there a panic on board?" it was asked afterwards. Not exactly.Among well-bred people a panic is never good form. But there were whitefaces and trembling knees and anxious looks. The steamer was comingtowards them, and all eyes were fixed on that rather than on the rocks ofthe still distant shore.

The most striking incident of the moment—it seemed so to some of thosewho looked back upon it—was a singular test of character, or rather ofwoman's divination of character. Carmen instinctively flew to Jack andgrasped and held his arm. She knew, without stopping to reason about it,that he would unhesitatingly imperil his life to save that of any woman.Whatever judgment is passed upon Jack, this should not be forgotten.And Miss Tavish; to whom did she fly in this peril? To the gallantMajor? No. To the cool and imperturbable Mavick, who was as strong andsinewy as he was cool? No. She ran without hesitation to Van Dam, andclung to him, recognizing instinctively, with the woman's feeling, thesame quality that Jack had. There are such men, who may have no greatgifts, but who will always fight rather than run under fire, and who willalways protect a woman.

Mavick saw all this, and understood it perfectly, and didn't object to itat the time—but he did not forget it.

The task of rescue was not easy in that sea and wind, but it wasdexterously done. The steamer approached and kept at a certain distanceon the windward side. A boat was lowered, and a line was brought to theyacht, which was soon in tow with a stout cable hitched to the steamer'sanchor windlass.

It was all done with much less excitement than appeared from thetelegraphic accounts, and while the party were being towed home the perilseemed to have been exaggerated, and the affair to look like an ordinarysea incident. But the skipper said that it was one escape in a hundred.

The captain of the steamer raised his hat gravely in reply to the littlecheer from the yacht, when Carmen and Miss Tavish fluttered theirhandkerchiefs towards him. The only chaff from the steamer was roaredout by a fat Boston man, who made a funnel of his hands and shouted, "Therace is not always to the swift."

As soon as Jack stepped ashore he telegraphed to Edith that the yacht hadhad an accident in the harbor, but that no one was hurt. When he reachedthe hotel he found a letter from Edith of such a tenor that he sentanother despatch, saying that she might expect him at once, leaving theyacht behind. There was a buzz of excitement in the town, and there werea hundred rumors, which the sight of the yacht and its passengers landedin safety scarcely sufficed to allay.

When Jack called at the Tavish cottage to say good-by, both the ladieswere too upset to see him. He took a night train, and as he was whirledaway in the darkness the events of the preceding forty-eight hours seemedlike a dream. Even the voyage up the coast was a little unreal—aninsubstantial episode in life. And the summer city by the sea, with itsgayety and gossip and busy idleness, sank out of sight like a phantom.He drew his cap over his eyes, and was impatient that the rattling traindid not go faster, for Edith, waiting there in the Golden House, seemedto stretch out her arms for him to come. Still behind him rose a pictureof that bacchanalian breakfast—the Major and Carmen and Mavick and MissTavish dancing a reel on the sloping deck, then the rising wind, thereckless daring of the race, and a vision of sudden death. He shudderedfor the first time in a quick realization of how nearly it came to beingall over with life and its pleasures.

XIV

Edith had made no appeal to Jack to come home. His going, therefore, hadthe merit in his eyes of being a voluntary response to the promptings ofhis better nature. Perhaps but for the accident at Mount Desert he mighthave felt that his summer pleasure was needlessly interfered with, butthe little shock of that was a real, if still temporary, moralturning-point for him. For the moment his inclination seemed to run withhis duty, and he had his reward in Edith's happiness at his coming, theloving hunger in her eyes, the sweet trust that animated her face, thedelightful appropriation of him that could scarcely brook a moment'sabsence from her sight. There could not be a stronger appeal to hismanhood and his fidelity.

"Yes, Jack dear, it was a little lonesome." She was swinging in herhammock on the veranda in sight of the sea, and Jack sat by her with hiscigar. "I don't mind telling you now that there were times when I longedfor you dreadfully, but I was glad, all the same, that you were enjoyingyourself, for it is tiresome down here for a man with nothing to do butto wait."

"You dear thing!" said Jack, with his hand on her head, smoothing herglossy hair and pushing it back from her forehead, to make her look moreintellectual—a thing which she hated. "Yes, dear, I was a brute to gooff at all."

"But you wanted to comeback?" And there was a wistful look in her eyes.

"Indeed I did," he answered, fervently, as he leaned over the hammock tokiss the sweet eyes into content; and he was quite honest in theexpression of a desire that was nearly forty-eight hours old, and by asingular mental reaction seemed to have been always present with him.

"It was so good of you to telegraph me before I could see the newspaper."

"Of course I knew the account would be greatly exaggerated;" and he madelight of the whole affair, knowing that the facts would still be capableof shocking her, giving a comic picture of the Major's seafaringqualities, and Carmen's and Miss Tavish's chaff of the gallant old beau.

Even with this light sketching of the event she could not avoid aretrospective pang of apprehension, and the tightened grasp of his handwas as if she were holding him fast from that and all other peril.

The days went by in content, on the whole, shaded a little by anxiety andmade grave by a new interest. It could not well be but that the prospectof the near future, with its increase of responsibility, should create alittle uneasiness in Jack's mind as to his own career. Of this futurethey talked much, and in Jack's attitude towards her Edith saw, for thefirst time since her marriage, a lever of suggestion, and it camenaturally in the contemplation of their future life that she shouldencourage his discontent at having no occupation. Facing, in thiswaiting-time of quiet, certain responsibilities, it was impressed uponhim that the collecting of bric-a-brac was scarcely an occupation, andthat idling in clubs and studios and dangling about at the beck ofsociety women was scarcely a career that could save him from ultimateennui. To be sure, he had plenty of comrades, young fellows of fortune,who never intended to do anything except to use it for their personalsatisfaction; but they did not seem to be of much account except in thelittle circle that they ornamented. Speaking of one of them one day,Father Damon had said that it seemed a pity a fellow of such family andcapacity and fortune should go to the devil merely for the lack of anobject in life. In this closer communion with Edith, whose ideas hebegan to comprehend, Jack dimly apprehended this view, and for the momentimpulsively accepted it.

"I'm half sorry," he said one day, "that I didn't go in for a profession.But it is late now. Law, medicine, engineering, architecture, would takeyears of study."

"There was Armstrong," Edith suggested, "who studied law after he wasmarried."

"But it looks sort of silly for a fellow who has a wife to go to school,unless," said Jack, with a laugh, "he goes to school to his wife. Thenthere's politics. You wouldn't like to see me in that."

"I rather think, Jack"—she spoke musingly—"if I were a man I should gointo politics."

"You would have nice company!"

"But it's the noblest career—government, legislation, trying to dosomething to make the world better. Jack, I don't see how the men of NewYork can stand it to be governed by the very worst elements."

"My dear, you have no idea what practical politics is."

"I've an idea what I'd make it. What is the good of young men of leisureif they don't do anything for the country? Too fine to do what Hamiltondid and Jay did! I wish you could have heard my father talk about it.Abdicate their birthright for a four-in-hand!"

"Or a yacht," suggested Jack.

"Well, I don't see why a man cannot own a yacht and still care somethingabout the decent management of his city."

"There's Mavick in politics."

"Not exactly. Mavick is in office for what he can make. No, I will notsay that. No doubt he is a good civil servant, and we can't expecteverybody to be unselfish. At any rate, he is intelligent. Do youremember what Mr. Morgan said last winter?" And Edith lifted herself upon her elbow, as if to add the weight of her attitude to her words, asJack was still smiling at her earnestness.

"No; you said he was a delightful sort of pessimist."

"Mr. Morgan said that the trouble with the governing and legislation nowin the United States is that everybody is superficially educated, andthat the people are putting their superficial knowledge into laws, andthat we are going to have a nice time with all these wild theories andcrudities on the statute-book. And then educated people say thatpolitics is so corrupt and absurd that they cannot have anything to dowith it."

"And how far do you think we could get, my dear, in the crusade youpropose?"

"I don't know that you would get anywhere. Yet I should think the youngmen of New York could organize its intelligence and do something. Butyou think I'm nothing but a woman." And Edith sank back, as ifabandoning the field.

"I had thought that; but it is hard to tell, these days. Never mind,when we go back to town I'll stir round; you'll see."

This was an unusual sort of talk. Jack had never heard Edith break outin this direction before, and he wondered if many women were beginning tothink of men in this way, as cowardly about their public duties.Not many in his set, he was sure. If Edith had urged him to go intoNeighborhood Guild work, he could have understood that. Women andethical cranks were interested in that. And women were getting queererevery day, beginning, as Mavick said, to take notice. However, it wasodd, when you thought over it, that the city should be ruled by theslums.

It was easy to talk about these things; in fact, Jack talked a great dealabout them in the clubs, and occasionally with a knot of men after dinnerin a knowing, pessimistic sort of way. Sometimes the discussions werevery animated and even noisy between these young citizens. It seemed,sometimes, about midnight, that something might be done; but theresolution vanished next morning when another day, to be lived through,confronted them. They illustrated the great philosophic observation thatit is practically impossible for an idle man who has nothing to do tobegin anything today.

To do Jack justice, this enforced detention in the country he did notfind dull exactly. To be sure it was vacation-time, and his whole lifewas a vacation, and summer was rather more difficult to dispose of thanwinter, for one had to make more of an effort to amuse himself. ButEdith was never more charming than in this new dependence, and all hislove and loyalty were evoked in caring for her. This was occupationenough, even if he had been the busiest man in the world-to watch overher, to read to her, to anticipate her fancies, to live with her in thatdream of the future which made life seem almost ideal. There came a timewhen he looked back upon this month at the Golden House as the happiestin his life.

The talk about an occupation was not again referred to. Edith seemedentirely happy to have Jack with her, more entirely her own than he hadever been, and to have him just as he was. And yet he knew, by a sureinstinct, that she saw him as she thought he would be, with some aim andpurpose in life. And he made many good resolutions.

That which was nearest him attracted him most, and very feeble now werethe allurements of the life and the company he had just left. Not thathe would break with it exactly; it was not necessary to do that; but hewould find something to do, something worth a man's doing, or, at anyrate, some occupation that should tax his time and his energies. That,he knew, would make Edith happy, and to make her happy seemed now verymuch like a worthy object in life. She was so magnanimous, sounsuspicious, so full of all nobility. He knew she would stand by himwhatever happened. Down here her attitude to life was no longer a rebuketo him nor a restraint upon him. Everything seemed natural andwholesome. Perhaps his vanity was touched, for there must be somethingin, him if such a woman could love him. And probably there was, thoughhe himself had never yet had a chance to find it out. Brought up in theexpectation of a fortune, bred to idleness as others are to industry, hishighest ambition having been to amuse himself creditably and to takelife easily, what was to hinder his being one of the multitude of"good-for-nothings" in our modern life? If there had been war, he hadspirit enough to carry him into it, and it would have surprised no one tohear that Jack had joined an exploring expedition to the North Pole orthe highlands of Central Asia. Something uncommon he might do ifopportunity offered.

About his operations with Henderson he had never told Edith, and he didnot tell her now. Perhaps she divined it, and he rather wondered thatshe had never asked him about his increased expenditures, his yacht, andall that. He used to look at her steadily at times, as if he were tryingto read the secrets of her heart.

"What are you looking at, Jack?"

"To see if I can find out how much you know, you look so wise."

"Do I? I was just thinking about you. I suppose that made me look so."

"No; about life and the world generally."

"Mighty little, Jack, except—well, I study you."

"Do you? Then you'll presently lose your mind:"

Jack and most men have little idea that they are windows through whichtheir wives see the world; and how much more of the world they know inthat way than men usually suspect or wives ever tell!

He did not tell her about Henderson, but he almost resolved that when hispresent venture was over he would let stocks alone as speculations, andgo into something that he could talk about to his wife as he talked aboutstocks to Carmen.

From the stranded mariners at Bar Harbor Captain Jack had many andfacetious letters. They wanted to know if his idea was that they shouldstick by the yacht until he got leisure to resume the voyage, or if heexpected them to walk home. He had already given orders to the skipperto patch it up and bring it to New York if possible, and he advised hiscorrespondents to stay by the yacht as long as there was anything in thelarder, but if they were impatient, he offered them transportation on anyvessel that would take able-bodied seamen. He must be excused fromcommanding, because he had been assigned to shore duty. Carmen and MissTavish wrote that it was unfair to leave them to sustain all thepopularity and notoriety of the shipwreck, and that he owed it to thepublic to publish a statement, in reply to the insinuations of thenewspapers, in regard to the sea-worthiness of the yacht and the objectof this voyage. Jack replied that the only object of the voyage was torelieve the tedium of Bar Harbor, and, having accomplished this, he wouldpresent the vessel to Miss Tavish if she would navigate it back to thecity.

The golden autumn days by the sea were little disturbed by these echoesof another life, which seemed at the moment to be a very shallow one.Yet the time was not without its undertone of anxieties, of grave perilsthat seemed to sanctify it and heighten its pleasures of hope. Jack sawand comprehended for the first time in his life the real nature of a purewoman, the depths of tenderness and self-abnegation, the heroism and calmtrust and the nobility of an unworldly life. No wonder that he stood alittle in awe of it, and days when he wandered down on the beach, withonly the waves for company, or sat smoking in the arbor, with an unreadbook in his hand, his own career seemed petty and empty. Such moods,however, are not uncommon in any life, and are not of necessity fruitful.It need not be supposed that Jack took it too seriously, on the one hand,or, on the other, that a vision of such a woman's soul is ever withoutinfluence.

By the end of October they returned to town, Jack, and Edith with a newand delicate attractiveness, and young Fletcher Delancy the mostwonderful and important personage probably who came to town that season.It seemed to Edith that his advent would be universally remarked, andJack felt relieved when the boy was safely housed out of the public gaze.Yes, to Edith's inexpressible joy it was a boy, and while Jack gallantlysaid that a girl would have suited him just as well, he was conscious ofan increased pride when he announced the sex to his friends. Thisundervaluation of women at the start is one of the mysteries of life.And until women themselves change their point of view, it is to be fearedthat legislation will not accomplish all that many of them wish.

"So it is a boy. I congratulate you," was the exclamation of Major
Fairfax the first time Jack went down to the Union.

"I'm glad, Major, to have your approval."

"Oh, it's what is expected, that's all. For my part, I prefer girls.
The announcement of boys is more expensive."

Jack understood, and it turned out in all the clubs that he had hit uponthe most expensive sex in the view of responding to congratulations.

"It used to seem to me," said the Major, "that I must have a male heir tomy estates. But, somehow, as the years go on, I feel more like being anheir myself. If I had married and had a boy, he would have crowded meout by this time; whereas, if it had been a girl, I should no doubt havebeen staying at her place in Lenox this summer instead of beingshipwrecked on that desert island. There is nothing, my dear boy, like agirl well invested."

"You speak with the feelings of a father."

"I speak, sir, from observation. I look at society as it is, not as itwould be if we had primogeniture and a landed aristocracy. A daughterunder our arrangements is more likely to be a comfort to her parent inhis declining years than a son."

"But you seem, Major, to have preferred a single life?"

"Circ*mstances—thank you, just a drop more—we are the creatures ofcirc*mstances. It is a long story. There were misrepresentation andmisunderstanding. It is true, sir, that at that time my property wasencumbered, but it was not unproductive. She died long ago. I havereason to believe that her married life was not happy. I was hot-bloodedin those days, and my honor was touched, but I never blamed her. Shewas, at twenty, the most beautiful woman in Virginia. I have never seenher equal."

This was more than the Major had ever revealed about his private lifebefore. He had created an illusion about himself which society accepted,and in which he lived in apparent enjoyment of metropolitan existence.This was due to a sanguine temperament and a large imagination. And hehad one quality that made him a favorite—a hearty enjoyment of theprosperity of others. With regard to himself, his imagination wascreative, and Jack could not now tell whether this "most beautiful womanof Virginia" was not evoked by the third glass, about which the Majorremarked, as he emptied it, that only this extraordinary occasion couldjustify such an indulgence at this time of day.

The courtly old gentleman had inquired about madam—indeed, the secondglass had been dedicated to "mother and child"—and he exhibited afriendly and almost paternal interest, as he always did, in Jack.

"By-the-way," he said, after a silence, "is Henderson in town?"

"I haven't heard. Why?"

"There's been a good deal of uneasiness in the Street as to what he isdoing. I hope you haven't got anything depending on him."

"I've got something in his stocks, if that is what you mean; but I don'tmind telling you I have made something."

"Well, it's none of my business, only the Henderson stocks have gone offa little, as you know."

Jack knew, and he asked the Major a little nervously if he knew anythingfurther. The Major knew nothing except Street rumors. Jack was uneasy,for the Major was a sort of weatherco*ck, and before he left the club hewrote to Mavick.

He carried home with him a certain disquiet, to which he had been formonths a stranger. Even the sight of Edith, who met him with a happyface, and dragged him away at once to see how lovely the baby lookedasleep, could not remove this. It seemed strange that such a littlething should make a change, introduce an alien element into this domesticpeace. Jack was like some other men who lose heart not when they aredoing a doubtful thing, but when they have to face the consequences—cases of misplaced conscience. The peace and content that he had left inthe house in the morning seemed to have gone out of it when he returnedat night.

Next day came a reassuring letter from Mavick.

Henderson was going on as usual. It was only a little bear movement,which wouldn't amount to anything. Still, day after day, the bears keptclawing down, and Jack watched the stock-list with increasing eagerness.He couldn't decide to sacrifice anything as long as he had a margin ofprofit.

In this state of mind it was impossible to consider any of the plans hehad talked over with Edith before the baby was born. Inquiries he didmake about some sort of position or regular occupation, and these hereported to Edith; but his heart was not in it.

As the days went by there was a little improvement in his stocks, and hisspirits rose. But this mood was no more favorable than the other forbeginning a new life, nor did there seem to be, as he went along, anyneed of it. He had an appearance of being busy every day; he rose lateand went late to bed. It was the old life. Stocks down, there was anecessity of bracing up with whomever he met at any of the three or fourclubs in which he lounged in the afternoon; and stocks up, there wasreason for celebrating that fact in the same way.

It was odd how soon he became accustomed to consider himself and to beregarded as the father of a family. That, also, like his marriage,seemed something done, and in a manner behind him. There was acommonplaceness about the situation. To Edith it was a great event. ToJack it was a milestone in life. He was proud of the boy; he was proudof Edith. "I tell you, fellows," he would say at the club, "it's a greatthing," and so on, in a burst of confidence, and he was quite sincere inthis. But he preferred to be at the club and say these things ratherthan pass the same hours with his adorable family. He liked to thinkwhat he would do for that family—what luxuries he could procure forthem, how they should travel and see the world. There wasn't a betterfather anywhere than Jack at this period. And why shouldn't a man offamily amuse himself? Because he was happy in his family he needn'tchange all the habits of his life.

Presently he intended to look about him for something to do that wouldsatisfy Edith and fill up his time; but meantime he drifted on,alternately anxious and elated, until the season opened. The Blunts andthe Van Dams and the Chesneys and the Tavishes and Mrs. Henderson hadcalled, invitations had poured in, subscriptions were asked, studies andgayeties were projected, and the real business of life was under way.

XV

To the nurse of the Delancy boy and to his mother he was by no means anold story or merely an incident of the year. He was an increasingwonder—new every morning, and exciting every evening. He was the centreof a world of solicitude and adoration. It would be scarcely too much tosay that his coming into the world promised a new era, and his traits,his likes and dislikes, set a new standard in his court. If he hadapprehended his position his vanity would have outgrown his curiosityabout the world, but he displayed no more consciousness of his royaltythan a kicking Infanta of Spain. This was greatly to his credit in theopinion of the nurse, who devoted herself to the baby with thatenthusiasm of women for infants which fortunately never fails, and wonthe heart of Edith by her worship. And how much they found to say aboutthis marvel! To hear from the nurse, over and over again, what the babyhad done and had not done, in a given hour, was to Edith like a freshchapter out of an exciting romance.

And the boy's biographer is inclined to think that he had rare powers ofdiscrimination, for one day when Carmen had called and begged to bepermitted to go up into the nursery, and had asked to take him in herarms just for a moment, notwithstanding her soft dress and her caressingmanner, Fletcher had made a wry face and set up a howl. "How much helooks like his father" (he didn't look like anything), Carmen said,handing him over to the nurse. What she thought was that in manner anddisposition he was totally unlike Jack Delancy.

When they came down-stairs, Mrs. Schuyler Blunt was in the drawing-room."I've had such a privilege, Mrs. Blunt, seeing the baby!" cried Carmen,in her sweetest manner.

"It must have been," that lady rejoined, stiffly.

Carmen, who hated to be seen through, of all things, did not know whetherto resent this or not. But Edith hastened to the rescue of her guest.

"I think it's a privilege."

"And you know, Mrs. Blunt," said Carmen, recovering herself and smiling,"that I must have some excitement this dull season."

"I see," said Mrs. Blunt, with no relaxation of her manner; "we are allgrateful to Mrs. Delancy."

"Mrs. Henderson does herself injustice," Edith again interposed. "I canassure you she has a great talent for domesticity."

Carmen did not much fancy this apology for her, but she rejoined: "Yes,indeed. I'm going to cultivate it."

"How is this privileged person?" Mrs. Blunt asked.

"You shall see," said Edith. "I am glad you came, for I wanted very muchto consult you. I was going to send for you."

"Well, here I am. But I didn't come about the baby. I wanted to consultyou. We miss you, dear, every day." And then Mrs. Blunt began to speakabout some social and charitable arrangements, but stopped suddenly."I'll see the baby first. Good-morning, Mrs. Henderson." And she leftthe room.

Carmen felt as much left out socially as about the baby, and she alsorose to go.

"Don't go," said Edith. "What kind of a summer have you had?"

"Oh, very good. Some shipwrecks."

"And Mr. Henderson? Is he well?"

"Perfectly. He is away now. Husbands, you know, haven't so much talentfor domesticity as we have."

"That depends," Edith replied, simply, but with that spirit and air ofbreeding before which Carmen always inwardly felt defeat—"that dependsvery much upon ourselves."

Naturally, with this absorption in the baby, Edith was slow to resume herold interests. Of course she knew of the illness of Father Damon, andthe nurse, who was from the training-school in which Dr. Leigh was aninstructor, and had been selected for this important distinction by thedoctor, told her from time to time of affairs on the East Side. Overthere the season had opened quite as usual; indeed, it was always open;work must go on every day, because every day food must be obtained andrent-money earned, and the change from summer to winter was only aclimatic increase of hardships. Even an epidemic scare does notessentially vary the daily monotony, which is accepted with a doggedfatality:

There had been no vacation for Ruth Leigh, and she jokingly said, when atlength she got a half-hour for a visit to Edith, that she would hardlyknow what to do with one if she had it.

"We have got through very well," she added. "We always dread the summer,and we always dread the winter. Science has not yet decided which is themore fatal, decayed vegetables or unventilated rooms. City residencegives both a fair chance at the poor."

"Are not the people learning anything?" Edith asked.

"Not much, except to bear it, I am sorry to say. Even Father Damon—"

"Is he at work again? Do you see him often?"

"Yes, occasionally."

"I should so like to see him. But I interrupted you."

"Well, Father Damon has come to see that nothing can be done withoutorganization. The masses"—and there was an accent of bitterness in heruse of the phrase—"must organize and fight for anything they want."

"Does Father Damon join in this?"

"Oh, he has always been a member of the Labor League. Now he has been atwork with the Episcopal churches of the city, and got them to agree, whenthey want workmen for any purpose, to employ only union men."

"Isn't that," Edith exclaimed, "a surrender of individual rights and agreat injustice to men not in the unions?"

"You would see it differently if you were in the struggle. If theworking-men do not stand by each other, where are they to look for help?What have the Christians of this city done?" and the little doctor got upand began to pace the room. "Charities? Yes, little condescendingcharities. And look at the East Side! Is its condition any better?I tell you, Mrs. Delancy, I don't believe in charities—in anycharities."

"It seems to me," said Edith, with a smile calculated to mollify thisvehemence, "that you are a standing refutation of your own theory."

"Me? No, indeed. I'm paid by the dispensary. And I make my patientspay—when they are able."

"So I have heard," Edith retorted. "Your bills must be a terror to theneighborhood."

"You may laugh. But I'm establishing a reputation over there as aworking-woman, and if I have any influence, or do any little good, it'sowing to that fact. Do you think they care anything about Father Damon'sgospel?"

"I should be sorry to think they did not," Edith said, gravely.

"Well, very little they care. They like the man because they think heshares their feelings, and does not sympathize with them because they aredifferent from him. That is the only kind of gospel that is good foranything over there."

"I don't think Father Damon would agree with you in that."

"Of course he would not. He's as mediaeval as any monk. But then he isnot blind. He sees that it is never anything but personal influence thatcounts. Poor fellow," and the doctor's voice softened, "he'll killhimself with his ascetic notions. He is trying to take up the burden ofthis life while struggling under the terror of another."

"But he must be doing a great deal of good."

"Oh, I don't know. Nothing seems to do much good. But his presence isa great comfort. That is something. And I'm glad he is going about nowrousing opposition to what is, rather than all the time preachingsubmission to the lot of this life for the sake of a reward somewhereelse. That's a gospel for the rich."