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THE SCRAP BOOK.

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The Latest Viewpoints of Men Worth While

Compiled and edited for The Scrap Book.

A PLEA FOR THE HIGHER ECONOMY.

Unnecessary Waste is the Crying Evil in
All Our Business Administration,
Says Stuyvesant Fish.

"The Higher Economy" is the theme upon which Stuyvesant Fish, the well-known president of the Illinois Central Railroad, discourses in the Arena for March. Mr. Fish is a solid figure in finance. His idea of economy is not parsimony, but thrift—the prevention of waste. The higher economy, he points out, is needed in the household, in the state, and in the management of corporations. First, he speaks of waste in the household:

Conditions in local, State, and Federal government are much in need of reform, continues Mr. Fish:

In the Post-Office Department, for example, there was, in 1905, a deficit of fourteen million dollars, which the writer thinks was due to laws and not to administration. Government free matter cost twenty million dollars. Rural free delivery cost nearly twenty-one millions, the receipts covering only about one-quarter of this sum. Mr. Fish does not think it surprising that under laws which not only permit, but require, such a waste of public revenues there is a deficit, and that the deficit should be growing rapidly.

The Surgeon's Knife Needed.

Under the head of corporate management, Mr. Fish says:

Having looked into the matter myself somewhat carefully of late, I beg to say to you in all seriousness that not only in the insurance companies, but in many other corporations, there is need of the advice and probably the knife of the trained surgeon. Without pretending to any superior knowl[Pg 191]edge on the subject, I think that the root of the evil lies in too few men having undertaken to manage too many corporations; that in so doing they have perverted the powers granted under corporate charters, and in their hurry to do a vast business have in many cases done it all.

We who—as breadwinners, as taxpayers, and as stockholders—provide the wherewithal suffer because we have set others to rule over us without holding them to that strict accountability for the discharge of their trust which the common law and common sense alike demand. Indeed, things have come to such a pass that in certain quarters it is now considered indecorous and ill-bred for us, the many, even to discuss, much less to correct, the shortcomings of the elect few. Such was neither the theory nor the practise on which our forefathers ordered the economy of this republic.

KINDLY WORDS FROM PASTOR WAGNER.

The Author of "The Simple Life" Sets
Forth in Friendly Terms His
Impressions of America.

Charles Wagner, the author of "The Simple Life," has published a volume, "Vers le Cœur de l'Amérique" ("Toward the Heart of America"), in which are recorded his impressions of the United States as gathered during his visit here in the fall of 1904. He is no globe-trotting critic, nor is he a collector of statistics; he gives merely an account of what he has seen.

Of President Roosevelt the famous French pastor holds a high opinion, as this bit of appreciation indicates:

As a pastor, M. Wagner was struck by the depth of religious feeling in the United States. The great diversity of creeds signified to him vitality and liberty, not the loss of a central belief. He was surprised, too, to find such cordial relations existing among different sects.

In our schools, he says, it is possible to trace the universality of the ideals of democratic government. The public schools are the mills to which comes the grist of immigration, to be ground into American citizens.

To the American character he admits the advantages of youth—sincerity, frankness, prompt initiative; and with these, the maturer qualities of endurance and patient wisdom.

The strength of the country, concludes this most kindly of observers, is in four strongholds. The first is religious faith. The Americans, he says, are a religious nation by heredity as well as by conviction. The second stronghold is the belief in liberty:

Our old Europe shows us states whose entire politics consist in hindering the development of men and institutions. There law takes the form of a systematic prohibition, initiative is regarded as lack of discipline, independence of mind as an act or a beginning of treason. America believes in liberty as she believes in God; and, as she believes in the God of others, she also believes in the liberty of others. To individuality there is left an unlimited field. From childhood, strength of character is encouraged. Each one is expected to show himself in the fulness of his originality; all he is asked in return is to respect the right of his neighbor.

Though Pastor Wagner recognizes our country's originality in questionable financial schemes, he thinks that on the whole our relations are marked by sincerity and conscientiousness. Therefore, he names honesty as our third stronghold.

The fourth is respect for women. Cus[Pg 192]tom makes slaves of women in France, while in America our national respect for them gives them freedom and the opportunity to develop.

JOSEPH'S CORNER IS NOW DEFENDED.

Pros and Cons of an Old Question Discussed
by J.D. Rockefeller, Jr.,
and Professor C.P. Fagnani.

Joseph's policy in cornering the visible supply of corn in Egypt has found its defense. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., raised the question a short time ago in his New York Bible class, and after discussing the transaction in its different phases, said that he could not see how Joseph had done anything unjust. The foresight and ability of Joseph, said Mr. Rockefeller, saved the people of Egypt from starvation.

Mr. Rockefeller's talk, in substance at least, appears to have been as follows:

A few days after this pronouncement Professor Charles P. Fagnani, of the Union Theological Seminary, was addressing the New York Baptist Social Union on "Christianity and Democracy," and among other things he said:

In conclusion we may note the Richmond Times-Dispatch's remark that "compared with Mr. Rockefeller's, Joseph's was a mere cozy corner."

SOCIALISM'S LATEST MILLIONAIRE CONVERT.

Views Expressed by J.M. Patterson, of
Chicago, Who Has Resigned Office
Because of His Convictions.

One of the most recent converts to Socialism is Joseph Medill Patterson, of Chicago. Though he is now only twenty-seven years of age, Mr. Patterson has had a strong taste of public life as commissioner of public works in Chicago. In the local campaign of 1905 he supported Judge (now Mayor) Dunne, who, after election, gave him his important appointment. He has now resigned the commissionership. In his letter of resignation he says:

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He then goes on to say that in Great Britain—where municipal trading has been highly developed—the problem of the unemployed is becoming very intense; while in Germany—where municipal and government ownership of public utilities has become almost the rule—the gap between the possessions of the rich and the poor grows wider every day. The letter concludes:

Interviewed regarding his conversion to socialism, Mr. Patterson adds:

Mr. Patterson is a son of a wealthy family. His father, Robert W. Patterson, proprietor of the Chicago Tribune, is a conservative, opposed to his son's beliefs. But he adds: "I am a firm believer in letting everybody think as he pleases, including my son." He says, however, that if the young man runs for office on the socialistic ticket, the Tribune certainly will not support him.

THE RICH MAN IS NOW THE UNDER DOG.

If the Millionaire Does Not Give, He is
"Stingy;" if He Does Give, He
is Called a "Briber."

Dr. Emil G. Hirsch, the distinguished Chicago rabbi, says that "charity, as the word is known to-day, is only a bribe of moneyed men to make a community forget the wrongs heaped upon it." The New York Globe catches at the text, and brings out the fact that present-day critics are leaving the rich no refuge at all. The rich man is the common target.

GREAT SERVICES AND GREAT FORTUNES.

Thomas F. Ryan Contends that Opportunity
to Win Wealth is Necessary
to Stimulate Initiative.

Are the fortunes of to-day too vast? Does the getting of great wealth by individuals necessarily involve injustice to others? If it does, is it possible to prevent men from making much money without at the same time destroying the energy and initiative which spring up in the presence of opportunity?

These are familiar questions. Thomas F. Ryan has tried to answer them from the viewpoint of a successful financier, saying, in an article contributed to the Independent:

Closely related to these arguments is the opinion of the New York Evening Post:

FOR THE REFORM OF ENGLISH SPELLING.

Many Representative Men Associated
With the New Movement to
Simplify Orthography.

Andrew Carnegie's latest activity is to champion a movement for the reform of English spelling. He has promised to finance a campaign by the Simplified Spelling Board. The greater part of the actual campaign work will be done by the following executive committee of the board: Professor Brander Matthews, chairman; Dr. Charles P.G. Scott, secretary; Dr. William Hayes Ward, Henry Holt, Dr. I.K. Funk, and[Pg 195] Colonel H.B. Sprague. With Mr. Carnegie's backing, far-reaching results are likely to be gained.

Movements for reformed spelling are no new thing, but this is the first one that has been adequately financed.

Word comes from England that the poet Swinburne denounces the Carnegie plan as "a monstrous, barbarous absurdity." But the American press, on the whole, seems favorable. For example, the New York Times says:

How Dr. Johnson Takes It.

It would seem, however, that the shades of former lexicographers are incensed by the threat of "fonetic speling." The New York Globe describes the reception of the news in the land across the Styx:

THE PUNISHMENT TO FIT THE OFFENDER.

Samuel J. Barrows Gives Reasons For
Favoring the Indeterminate Sentence
For Convicted Criminals.

Times and conditions have changed since Dickens and Charles Reade aroused the English-speaking world by revealing the inhuman abuses of the English prison system. To-day humane treatment is taken as a matter of course. The chief aim of the modern[Pg 196] criminologist is not to punish the criminal but to cure him; and in curing him the first agency is fair treatment. Therefore is urged the necessity of making the penalty more nearly fit the crime.

According to Samuel J. Barrows, president of the International Prison Congress, "it is still more difficult to make the penalty fit the offender." In a recent article in the Outlook, he enters a plea for safeguarding the "indeterminate sentence" for convicted criminals. The best criminal code, he says, is an arbitrary instrument, and it is impossible, on any principle, so to construct one that the penalty and crime are commensurate. After making this assertion, he continues:

DOES COEDUCATION FEMINIZE COLLEGE?

Thorough Training, Rather than Separate
Training, is the Need of the
Times, Says President Jordan.

President David Starr Jordan, of Leland Stanford Junior University, has ever been a strong advocate of coeducation. At the present time, when the system is being so severely criticized in so many quarters, his defense of it, which appears in Munsey's Magazine for March, sounds a note of reassurance. The article is an answer to an attack on coeducation—in the February issue of the same magazine—by President G. Stanley Hall, of Clark University.

To the charges that the character of college work has been lowered by coeducation, and that it offers difficulties or embarrassments in the class-room, Dr. Jordan replies with categorical denials. The argument that the presence of women tends to "feminize" the universities is, he grants, more serious. But he then enters into the following distinctions:

The question whether or not coeducation leads to marriage seems to present few difficulties to Dr. Jordan. "Love and marriage and parenthood," he says, "will go on normally whatever our scheme of education."

PREDOMINANCE OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS.

Sport is the Great Secondary Interest in
Our Universities, Says Professor
Ostwald, a German Visitor.

Professor Wilhelm Ostwald, of the University of Leipsic, is not only a great chemist; he is also a philosopher, and his mind is alert to every kind of human interest. The courses of lectures which he delivered not long ago at Harvard and Columbia universities attracted much attention. Among other things he predicted that before long scientists might be creating living things.

Since his return to Germany, Professor Ostwald has been preparing for the Prussian government a report on what he observed in America. Meantime he talks freely to German press interviewers. He says of our college sports:

The trouble is not, of course, that the great secondary interest of student life is sport, but that the American idea of college sport has come to be the training of a few champion athletes for the purpose of winning, not the training of all young men and women for the purpose of recreation. G. Upton Harvey dwells on this point in an article published in the Review of Reviews:

SHAW RAGES AGAINST THE AMATEUR STAGE.

The Author of "Candida" Declares
With Emphasis That Charity Actors
Make Themselves Ridiculous.

Bernard Shaw recently contributed to the London Tribune a characteristic bit of criticism. It seems that he has been much annoyed by requests for permission to give amateur performances of his plays in behalf of charity. Mr. Shaw has a small opinion of amateur actors, as may be gathered from the following:

KAISER MAKES NEW TEN COMMANDMENTS.

The Most Versatile of Monarchs Draws
Up a List of Rules to be Followed
by Horse-Owners.

Varied and numerous as are his regular activities, the German Emperor frequently adds new ones to the list. One of the latest manifestations of his ubiquitous interest is the following productions, which he has sent to his friends under the title, "The Ten Commandments for Horse-Owners." It is worth preserving for two reasons—first, because of the soundness of the advice it offers; second, because it indicates that the most important figure among continental monarchs is not above considering the welfare of his dumb servants.

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PARADOX PROVERBS.

These Pampered Children of Wisdom and Experience Find It So Difficult to Agree That
if They Had Teeth and Claws They Might Fight It Out in
the Manner of the Kilkenny Cats.

A proverb is defined in one of the more popular dictionaries of our language as "a brief, pithy saying, condensing in witty or striking form the wisdom of experience."

But experiences vary and often lead to different results, so that of proverbs it may be said that "what is one man's meat is another man's poison." It is as futile for a man to live his life in accordance with proverbs as it is for twenty cooks to collaborate in the making of a broth that will please the palates of all.

The truth is, proverbs are just as likely to disagree as are physicians. Here are a few that have agreed to disagree:

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WHEN THE LAST CURTAIN FELL.

Some Striking Instances of How Death Has Stepped Behind the Footlights and Claimed His
Victims in Full View of Audiences Who Have Mistaken Real Tragedy for Play.

"Into Thy hands, O Lord! Into Thy hands!"

These words, inscribed on a card that was fastened to the cross of lilies sent by Queen Alexandra of England to be laid on the casket containing the body of Sir Henry Irving, were the last uttered on the stage by that famous actor. They are the last words of Becket, in Tennyson's drama of that name.

Though Irving did not die on the stage, the hand of death was upon him at the close of that last performance. He was scarcely more than outside the theater in Bradford, England, when he was stricken with syncope, and he died a few minutes after reaching his hotel.

There are a score of other cases on record in which death has appeared on the stage of a theater for the purpose of marking its victims.

It was a fateful irony that Signor Castelmary should be fatally stricken on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, in the midst of the bright and romantic scenes of "Martha." A tragi-comedy if ever there were one!

Yet this overpowering mingling of the real and the unreal is by no means an unusual element of stage life. History records many instances of deaths on the stage; some of them the result of accidental violence, but by far the greater number caused by the sudden effect of overwrought emotions.

Sometimes death comes instantaneously; sometimes the blow is received from which recovery is impossible, and the actor lingers on with nothing but suffering and death before him. Both tragedy and comedy have been the scenes of actual death on the stage.

Peg Woffington, it will be remembered, was stricken with paralysis while playing Rosalind. She had gone through the entire play with a life and spirit which gave no sign of the weakening powers plainly evident to her companions on the stage, and had nearly concluded the epilogue:

"If I were among you, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me——"

Her last words on the stage had been spoken. Staggering off the scene, she fell apparently lifeless, and recovered only to live three long years of loneliness and retirement away from the work she loved.

But most wonderful of all was Edmund Kean's last night on the stage. He was playing Othello to his son's Iago at Covent Garden, and, worn out with physical and mental excess, barely managed to conceal his incapacity and weakness from the audience.

Reaching the great scenes of the third act, they proved too much for his waning powers, and uttering the words, "Othello's occupation's gone," he began the next line, but was unable to complete it, and fell into his son's arms, with the faint cry:

"God, I am dying! Speak to them, Charles."

He was carried to his home, where he died seven weeks later.

The story of the death of John Palmer, while acting in "The Stranger" at Liverpool, in 1798, offers an instance almost analogous to the death of Castelmary. He had gone on with his part into the fourth act, when, faltering in his lines, he fell prostrate before his companion actor and died while being carried off the stage. The story that he died while uttering the lines in an earlier act, "There is another and a better world," is a fiction which requires denial almost as often as the story of his death is repeated.

Others have met with accidental death in melodramatic scenes at the hands of their overzealous brother actors. Sometimes the actor does himself actual violence, and there are a few instances on record of the murder of actor by actor during the performance of a play.

Crozier, for example, was accidentally stabbed by a brother actor in "Sins of the Night," at the Novelty, in London, on August 10, 1896. In 1820 Mme. Linsky was fatally shot in a melodrama by a soldier super; and in 1891, at a school representation of "Romeo and Juliet," in Manchester, England, the youngster playing Tybalt killed Romeo in the quarrel scene.

In 1898 Miss Ethel Marlowe died from heart disease at the Knickerbocker, New York, during a performance of "The Christian." Her sister, Virginia Marlowe, in 1896, and her father, Owen Marlowe, in 1876, also died on the stage in view of the audience.[Pg 201]

Creating Wealth From Waste.

By EUGENE WOOD.

The Number of Scrap-Heaps Is Diminishing as Manufacturers Learn that
By-Products Often Are More Valuable than the Things
from Which They Are Taken.

An original article written for The Scrap Book.

The true test of the industrial civilization of a people is the extent to which every scrap and grain of its resources are utilized. The motto of a prosperous nation is: "Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost."

That the last few years have seen such an increase in the production of wealth as has never been known before in the history of the world is not to be wondered at when it is realized that in every department of industry those things that had been previously thrown away have become a source of revenue, and, in some cases, the by-product has become of more value than the original product itself.

The recovery of wealth from waste is the distinguishing mark of the age, because this is the age of industrial civilization. If the increase in the production of wealth is greater and more rapid than it has ever been since man first landed on this earth, without either a penny or a pocket to put the penny in, it is due to the general extension of methods that have been in use ever since he began to try to pick a living out of the clinched fist of dour old Mother Nature.

The delicate perfumes of flowers that otherwise would vanish in a day are trapped in lard, and then snared again from the lard by alcohol. The crusted argols that gather on the inside of the vats where wine ferments are utilized to make the cream of tartar for our biscuits.

Tin Pans for Complexions.

The bloom of health that glows upon the cheeks of the ladies of the chorus may be traced to the tin pans and cups that jingle on the rag-collector's wagon. These homely and prosaic vessels are made of plates of iron, coated, all too thinly in these degenerate days, with tin.

These iron plates have to be "pickled," as the trade phrase goes. All the rust and other substances than the clean iron have to be washed off with acids and water. The pickling liquor is not emptied out as slops by any means. There is a finely divided iron rust floating in it, and when the water is removed by evaporating it, the residue is Venetian red and iron pigment that, made up as rouge, can counterfeit the ruddy blood that courses so near the surface of the satin skin of youth.

It is almost a personal triumph to us to know that the broken bits of rock from the quarry, unfit to use as building material, are turned into crushed stone, for which there is so large a demand, thanks to the increasing popularity of concrete, and that its revenues pay the operating expenses of the quarry, and make the price got from building stone so much clear money.

Illuminating-gas has to be washed and scrubbed anyhow before it can be introduced into our houses. The household ammonia with which the kitchen sink is kept so sweet is taken by the thousand tons from the scrub-water of the gas-house and the furnace-gas of iron-works.

Only the Pig's Squeal Gets Away.

Meat packers will tell you that nowadays they save everything but the pig's last dying squeal. Naturally, the hides and skins of the animals slaughtered are[Pg 202] worth saving. The tips of cows' horns are used for the mouthpieces of pipes; the horns themselves are split and pressed flat, and combs, the backs of brushes, and large buttons are made of them. What bits and splinters are too small to be worked up go for fertilizer.

Hoofs are sorted by colors. The white ones go to Japan, there to be made up into ornaments of artistic merit. We haven't got that far along ourselves. The striped ones stay here to be made up into buttons. The black ones are utilized in the manufacture of cyanide of potash, by which gold is extracted from low-grade ores it formerly did not pay to work.

The bones in the feet of cattle bear up a great weight, so they are hard and take a high polish. They can be used instead of ivory, which is getting scarce. Tooth-brush handles and cutlery handles are made of these bones. The others in the skeleton are built of lime stuck together with glue and molded into shape by the push and pull of muscles.

The soft bones of the head, shoulders, ribs, and breast do not need to be so stiff as the bones of the legs; they have more glue in proportion to lime than the leg-bones. The animal needs a kind of flexible, weather-proof varnish flowed over it, so to speak, to protect the tissues. Glue is what makes this coat or hide. So from bones and scraps and trimmings of hide this glue or gelatin is soaked out. Even the bones on which meat has been cooked have some little dribs of gelatin and fat in them, and these are stewed under pressure until there is nothing left in them of the gelatin, of which they now make the little capsules in which the druggist puts the medicine whose taste we don't just fancy, and fats which go to the soap-maker for the want of a better destination.

Drugs from Dead Cattle.

From the bodies of cows is obtained the tallow which is made into oleomargarin.

The prevailing ailment of the American people is dyspepsia, which is due to a natural lack of pepsin. But it has been found out that the pig's pepsin will do as well as our own, so it is prepared for the drug-trade and sold at considerably above the price per pound of the hog on the hoof.

There are all sorts of obscure nervous troubles which can be very materially helped by a substance extracted from the gray matter of calves' brains.

A growing child should make red corpuscles in his blood at a great rate. All the processes which construct his bones and his flesh and his various organs should be working full-powered. The red rib-marrow of freshly killed young animals contains a substance which is soluble in chemically pure glycerin and can be digested out of that red rib-marrow, and which, if given to the child, greatly increases the proportion of red corpuscles in the blood and stimulates all the constructive processes of the body. This will sell for a much larger sum a pound than veal.

And so there are various other substances taken from the sweetbreads proper, the neck-and-throat sweetbreads, the thyroid gland, the parotids, and the suprarenal capsules which can be used in medicine and can be sold at a large profit to people brought up to believe that "eating the part strengthens the part."

Glycerin a By-Product.

And when all has been extracted that you would think could be extracted, all the bits and scraps and scrapings and what not are put into a tank and cooked and cooked until all is dissolved that can be dissolved. The residual fat is skimmed off, and the last bit of glue, and the insoluble matter at the bottom of the tank, go for fertilizer, and then, in the packing-houses that don't know their business, the tank water is let run away. But there is much valuable nitrogenous matter in those waters which the first-rate packers utilize. And there is glycerin there.

In the old days the candle-makers who used palm-oil had their own troubles with glycerin. If a candle was blown out, the smoldering wick used to leave an offensive odor. It was the glycerin that caused this. Naturally, the only thing to do was to take it out of the candle, and the next thing was to get rid of it down the gulley into the creek. People complained, as people will; but[Pg 203] what else was an honest chandler to do? Latterly they have been figuring on the matter, and some of them have come to the conclusion that they used to let as much as two thousand dollars' worth of glycerin get away from them every week.

In the last five years the soap-makers have learned that they can realize more money out of the glycerin than they can out of the soap they make. Some of this glycerin is refined, but the great part of the crude goes to the manufacturers of dynamite, which is nitroglycerin mixed with infusorial earth, so as to weaken it.

There is just as much acid after the glycerin is turned into nitroglycerin as there was before. After it is washed out the nitro is left apparently unchanged. It is not broken up, but it is on the edge of it. Give it a knock and it all flies to pieces at once so suddenly that it will loosen more dirt in a second than a hundred pick-and-shovel men could scoop out in a week.

Wealth in Refuse Heaps.

Back of the tin shop there used to be a heap of shining clippings. The heap of clippings isn't there now. If there are any bits of tin too small to make the backs of buttons, they are pressed together to make window-sash weights.

Nor is that pile of sawdust back of the sawmill any more. The butchers want it for their floors, but that isn't the most economical use for it. There are acetic acid, wood alcohol, naphtha, wood-tar (and all that that implies) to be had from the distillation of sawdust—to say nothing of sugar from birch sawdust. The reason there isn't more money in the sawdust than in sashes, doors, and blinds which the factory turns out is because we have more faith in cog-wheels than we have in test tubes.

In machinery, big or little, Americans stand at the head of the class; in industrial chemistry they are at the foot of the class.

We pay the Germans about ten times what we ought to for phenacetin, because we can't get it into our heads that there is any money in applied organic chemistry. Coal-tar was once a nuisance, but the Germans make indigo so much better and cheaper from it now that they have put the indigo-plant out of business.

The red trousers of the French soldiers are dyed with German alizarin, also a coal-tar product, because it doesn't pay to raise madder any longer. In coal-tar are all sorts of valuable drugs, dyes, and perfumes. But we don't know it—industrially.

Stay! I do my country an injustice. We can make moth-balls and carbolic acid. But that is as much as ever we can do. And this is why we do not utilize the saw-dust and make a better business out of it than the sawmill can.

And garbage! I wonder how much orange-peel and lemon-peel is thrown away in New York City every day, and how much the neroli or essential oil that could be got from it would be worth. I wonder if the stalks and fag-ends of vegetables could not be distilled and something made from them. But the limit of our wisdom in regard to garbage is: burn it and get power from it. Somebody is going to get rich from this garbage problem one of these days. But it will be the test-tube and not the cogwheel that will make the money. It will be the industrial chemist, not the mechanic.

Fortunes Lurk in Old Wool.

See what a difference such knowledge has made in the wool industry. Sheep's wool is dirty and greasy when it comes to the mills. Wash it with strong alkali in running water. That is what has always been done. But a man in Massachusetts thought it would be a good idea to dissolve the grease with some such solvent as naphtha. He saved the naphtha to use over again; he recovered the grease, which is the most softening and penetrating of all fats and is most valuable for ointments, and he recovered carbonate of potash. Sheep wearing heavy wool in the hot weather perspire freely, and this perspiration contains carbonate of potash.

After the wool is once woven into cloth, we may dismiss from our minds all thought of effecting any more economies. When the suit of clothes is worn to rags, the rags are still as good as new, for the wool is picked out into strands of fiber again and woven anew. It isn't[Pg 204] ground into shoddy as it was in the days of the Civil War.

The wool is picked apart as long as it has any staple to it at all, and forms part of the most expensive and enduring of fabrics. It may be mixed with cotton, but when it comes to be a rag again, the cotton is burned out either with acid or with heat, the dust is taken out, and once more behold absolutely pure wool, much safer to wear than the new wool of the tropics and semi-tropics. When there is not enough wool to hold together it goes into our clothing. With wood ashes and scrap iron it ceases to be a fabric and becomes a dye, Prussian blue.

The cotton rag has no such long life. All it is good for is paper stock. The paper business is essentially a wealth from waste industry. For a long time, linen rags, cotton rags, and old rope were the only materials of which paper was made. Cheap books and magazines and newspapers had to wait until it was discovered that the resins and gums in which the fibers of wood are imbedded could be dissolved away, leaving the pulp of the wood in just the same condition that the pulp of rags was.

Where Old Magazines Go.

If the resins are not thoroughly dissolved away the paper turns brown in the course of time. Naturally enough, the wood-pulp makers let the solution of resins run off and become a nuisance, but they, too, are learning that there are glucoses and pyroligneous acids and all manner of riches to be obtained from the solution of the vegetable matter, to say nothing of the possibilities of a sort of gum or glue which is softened both by heat and by moisture.

And just a word about an economy found necessary by the magazines and newspapers which take back the copies the newsdealer does not sell. These "returns" were hard to get rid of. Paper is mean stuff to burn in quantities. So far as the texture of the wood-pulp paper is concerned, it might be used to print on again, but how are you going to remove the ink? Let the ink stay on and use the pulp over again for pasteboard boxes. And that's what becomes of the newspapers and magazines that nobody buys.

If you will look over journals devoted to concrete and its wonders, you will see a good deal about the concrete made out of slag. And there was a neat little point made when it was discovered that about two cents a pound could be saved in the manufacture of iron by freezing all the moisture out of the atmospheric air before it was heated for the blast. But the best is yet to come. Quite a little bit of money has been made in this country from the manufacture of iron. What do you say to the proposition to make the iron itself a mere by-product to something even more valuable?

Valuable Gas Ran to Waste.

From the top of the furnace in which iron ore is liquefying in the fervent heat there rushes out a gas, largely carbon monoxide, whose hunger for oxygen has been only half satisfied. If it could get that other atom of oxygen it would be a gas that would only smother us when it didn't make the soda-fountain fizz. As it is, carbon monoxide is deadly poison.

It has to be put to some use. It doesn't burn under a boiler very well. It is necessary to keep a bed of coals going so that the furnace-gas may stay lighted. But it has been found that even when it is too poor to keep alight it will explode in the combustion chamber of a gas-engine.

It has also been found that a furnace smelting seven tons of pig-iron an hour will make enough furnace-gas to supply nine thousand horse-power per hour.

Deducting gas and power that can be economically used on the premises, it is estimated that there will be a surplus of power to sell of five thousand horse-power per hour. Now that we are able to transmit power cheaply by high-tension currents, it is easy to see what this means. In New York they sell electromotive force for from four cents per horse-power per hour up to twelve cents. Call it two cents, and five thousand horse-power per hour means a hundred dollars, which is more money than seven tons of pig-iron will bring.

A lot has been done with cog-wheels; a lot is being done with wires; but when it comes to recovering wealth from waste, it is the test-tube that will do it. And so, study chemistry, young man.[Pg 205]

OLD MAY-DAY CUSTOMS.

The Ancient Romans and the Druids Are Partly Responsible for Some of the Modern
Methods of Celebrating the Festival of the Spring Deities Which Are Now
Represented by Youthful Queens and Kings.

Customs do not become established without reason. If no meaning is seen in a popular superstition or an annual festival, the significance or the apparent lack of significance, is simply that the ritual, as so often happens, has long outlived the belief.

In many of our hereditary customs we bow down, unaware, before the gods of our pagan ancestors. Thus May-Day rites, which have come to us through Roman and Druidical channels, are remains of a very early worship.

The Druids, on May 1, lighted great fires in honor of Bel or Belen—the Apollo, or Orus, of other nations. In Celtic centers of Great Britain the day is still called la Bealtine, Bealtine, or Beltine, which means "day of Belen's fire," since, in the Celtic language of Cornwall, tan means "fire," and the verb tine means to "light a fire."

In the Highlands of Scotland, as late as 1790, the Beltein, or rural sacrifice on May 1, was fully observed. The herdsmen of every village lighted a fire within a square outlined by cutting a trench in the turf. Over the fire was dressed a caudle of eggs, milk, oatmeal, and butter. Part was poured on the ground as a libation.

Then every one took a cake of oatmeal, upon which were nine knobs, each dedicated to some divinity. Facing the fire, they broke off the knobs, one at a time, throwing them over their shoulders and saying: "This I give to thee. Preserve thou my horses." "This to thee; preserve thou my sheep," and so on. The caudle was then eaten.

Traces of fire sacrifice are found in Ireland, particularly in the custom of lighting fires at short intervals and driving cattle between them, and the custom of fathers jumping over or running through fires with their children in their arms. Undoubtedly these singular forms of sport are modifications of what was once real sacrifice.

Our commonest May-Day games, however, probably come from the Floralia, or rather from the Maiuma, of the Romans, who, it is said, were but repeating the festal customs of ancient Egypt and India. The Maiuma were established under the Emperor Claudius, to take the place of the Floralia, from which they seem to have differed little, except, perhaps, that they were not made an occasion for so great license.

The May-festival, in its deepest meaning, is a recognition of the renewed fertility of the earth with the returning spring. It is one of the oldest of all festivals. The children who now go a Maying, or dance around the Maypole, or choose a May Queen, are unconsciously imitating the joyous ceremonies with which the ancients welcomed the new birth of Nature. Fertility was among the earliest of religious ideas.

"Going a Maying" is a very ancient custom in England. Bourne, in his "Antiquitates Vulgares," said:

In the "Morte d'Arthur" we find this passage:

[Pg 206]

Shakespeare, in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," alludes to the custom:

No doubt they rise up early to observe
The rite of May.

The Maypole is still common in many countries. It used to be general throughout England, and the cutting and decorating of the pole was one of the many reasons for going a Maying. Often the pole was left standing until near the end of the year, and sometimes especially durable poles remained erect in their places for many seasons and were used in successive festivals.

The last Maypole erected in London was a hundred feet high and stood in the Strand. Taken down in 1717, it was removed to Wanstead Park, in Essex, where it was made part of the support for a large telescope which was set up by Sir Isaac Newton.

The May Queen traditionally represents the Roman goddess Flora.

SOME DEEP-SEA HUMOR.

The first day out: Steward—Did you ring, sir? Traveler—Yes, steward, I—I rang. Steward—Anything I can bring you, sir? Traveler—Y-yes, st-steward. Bub-bring me a continent, if you have one, or an island—anything, steward, so l-lul-long as it's solid. If you can't, sus-sink the ship.—Harper's Bazar.

Van Dyke—As the boat left the dock I waved my handkerchief, and then a most curious thing happened. Forney—What was it? Van Dyke—The ocean waved back.—Truth.

Uneasy Passenger (on an ocean steamship)—Doesn't the vessel tip frightfully? Dignified Steward—The wessel, mum, is trying to set hexample to the passengers.—Chicago Tribune.

Jinks—I can't understand how shipwrecked sailors ever starve to death. Filkins—Why not? Jinks—Because I just came over from Liverpool and I never felt any desire to eat.—Puck.

Lady (to sea captain)—How do you manage to find your way across the ocean? Captain—By the compass. The needle always points to north. Lady—But suppose you wish to go south?—London Tit-Bits.

Nervous Passenger—Why are you steaming along at such a fearful rate through this fog? Ocean Captain (reassuringly)—Fogs are dangerous, madam, and I'm always in a hurry to get out of them.—New York Weekly.

"This is your sixth trip across the ocean in winter, is it?" said the timid passenger. "Are you never oppressed by a fear that the ship will run into an iceberg and sink?" "Never, madam," replied the business-like passenger briskly; "I never invest a cent in ships."—Chicago Tribune.

Two ministers were crossing a lake in a storm. When matters became most critical some one cried out: "The two ministers must pray!" "Na, na," said the boatman; "the little ane can pray if he likes, but the big ane maun tak' an oar."—Century.

A judge, in crossing the Irish Channel one stormy night, knocked against a well-known witty lawyer who was suffering terribly from seasickness. "Can I do anything for you?" said the judge. "Yes," gasped the seasick lawyer; "I wish your lordship would overrule this motion!"—White Mountain Echo.

"My dear, look down below," said Mr. Grandiose, as he stood on deck with his wife and gazed at a tug hauling a long line of barges. "Such is life; the tug is like the man, working and toiling, while the barges, like women, are——" "I know," interrupted Mrs. G. acridly, "the tug does all the blowing, and the barges bear all the burden."—Charleston News.

The bishop thought the capful of wind was an Atlantic storm, and worried the captain by asking constantly if there was danger. The captain led his lordship to the hatch over the fo'cs'le. "You hear the crew swearing," he said. "Do you think those men would use such oaths if there was danger of their meeting death?" The sun set in an angry storm-torn sky, the wind rose higher yet, and the good steamer pitched and rolled and groaned and creaked. It was midnight, and a portly figure crept forward to the fo'cs'le hatch. "Thank heaven," murmured the bishop, "those men are swearing yet."—New York Mercury.[Pg 207]

How They Got On In The World.

Brief Biographies of Successful Men Who Have Passed Through
the Crucible of Small Beginnings and Won Out.

Compiled and edited for The Scrap Book.

A TITLED INVENTOR.

Englishman Spent Fortune After Fortune
Experimenting With New Ideas,
but Died a Millionaire.

Samuel Cunliffe-Lister, Lord Masham, whose air-brake is used on many British railroads and who invented the first successful wool-combing machine, started, in 1837, at Manningham, Yorkshire, England, in company with his elder brother, a small worsted-spinning establishment. Both brothers had worked at the trade since childhood, and both were capable men. For a time the business prospered. Then it began to drop off and the elder partner accused Samuel of wasting his time and energy in experimenting with toys when he should devote his efforts exclusively to building up the enterprise they had started. The discussion almost terminated in a rupture between the two, but a couple of the toys were patented and as machines in the worsted-spinning business they brought in a fair profit.

But another cause for dissension arose. As fast as money came in for early inventions it was spent in experimenting on other things. Several times Cunliffe-Lister spent what would then be looked upon as a fairly comfortable fortune in trying to perfect his ideas, and, despite his income, he continually hovered on the verge of bankruptcy.

Perfects His Wool-Comber.

At last, in 1865, he perfected the wool-comber, a machine that takes the raw material, thoroughly cleanses it, and straightens the fiber, leaving it ready for the carder to take in hand. Its enormous utility was instantly recognized, and the wool-working towns and cities of England and the United States were supplied with the new machines. During the subsequent years the inventor received every year, from this machine alone, an income that seldom fell below two hundred thousand pounds.

The first form of the wool-comber was far more perfect than the first form of most machines. Nevertheless, Cunliffe-Lister spent enormous sums of money in making improvements on it, and on one occasion, when several hundred of the machines were ready for shipment, he held them up in order that there might be incorporated in them certain improvements he had just made. His partners protested that the machines embodied all the features the purchasers had paid for. The inventor was obdurate, and every one of the machines had added to it the improvements, and all the alterations were made solely at his expense.

Head Not Turned by Fortune.

The immense fortune he had made from this and other inventions never for an instant turned him from his work and experiments. Like Edison, he had the ability to concentrate his mind for long periods, to work for long stretches with little rest, and to apportion to his assistants the experiments that he could not personally perform. He could have retired thirty-five years ago and been assured of a large income for the remainder of his life, but he preferred to stick to his work to the last.

"You've got your fortune now," said one of his friends; "why don't you stop working?"

"I didn't work simply to acquire wealth," he replied. "I value the money chiefly for what it will enable me to do."

His second great invention was the[Pg 208] air-brake, introduced by him at about the same time Westinghouse introduced his air-brake in America. The English inventor, however, experienced little difficulty in having his device adopted, for he had already made a name for himself, and the English railroad officials were willing to give the benefit of thorough, practical tests to what he brought them. The tests proved the efficiency of the brake, and its general adoption added greatly to the inventor's already large income.

He worked incessantly, experimenting in all branches of science, and his improvements in mill machinery, in railroad devices and steel working are of immense value. For weeks at a time, the expense of his experiments averaged a thousand pounds a day. In spite of this, the enormous income he received from his patents more than kept pace with his expenses, and when he died, early last February, he was one of the richest men in the United Kingdom.

HARD-FIGHTING EDITOR.

Founder of Modern Journalism Was
Called Everything That Had an Unpleasant
Name, but He Prospered.

James Gordon Bennett, who founded the New York Herald, was well over thirty-five years of age when he left the office of the old New York Courier and Enquirer. He had learned what a newspaper should be, he believed, and he was going to put that knowledge into operation. He had toiled early and late all his life, and when he was ready to start for himself he had a nominal capital of five hundred dollars, and a big idea.

He was the only newspaper man in New York who thought that a newspaper didn't have to be dull to be good. In fact, he found that if he wished to be an editor at all it would have to be on his own paper. So on May 6, 1835, in a cellar on Wall Street, he issued the first number of the Herald.

Many things which we take for granted in the newspapers of to-day were originated by Bennett and his lively little cellar-born sheet. In the second month of its existence, the Herald printed the first Wall Street reports that had ever appeared in an American daily. Later, in the same year, Bennett introduced modern reportorial methods by his graphic "story" of the great fire that devastated down-town New York in December, 1835; and his introduction of a picture of the Stock Exchange on fire, and a map of the burned district, was another epoch-making innovation. It was he, too, who ordered for the Herald a telegraphic report of the first speech ever sent in full over the wires to a newspaper—that of Calhoun on the Mexican War.

There were no theories concerning the news in the Herald, no stately, long-winded, word-spinning explanations of what the news meant; just the news itself, given tersely and in as simple and bright language as possible. The readers were left to draw their own inferences and make their own comments.

Competitors Tried to Crush Him.

Bennett was right in trusting to the readers' intelligence, for his following increased. But though the public came to him in goodly numbers, the battle was a desperate, up-hill one. Five years after he started, all the papers in the city banded together to crush him. The records of the fight are curious now, chiefly for the profusion of the epithets that were hurled at him. One paper, in one short broadside, managed to call him an "obscene rogue," "profligate adventurer," "venomous reptile," "pestilential scoundrel," "polluted wretch," "habitual liar," and "veteran blackguard."

Bennett weathered the storm, seldom bothering about hitting back, but all the time striving to make his paper brighter and more readable. His adversaries soon realized that they were losing ground, and they gradually relinquished the struggle.

Twelve years after he had started the Herald, Bennett got into a dispute with Horace Greeley concerning the relative circulation of the Herald and Tribune. The dispute was settled by an impartial committee, and this committee found that the Herald had a daily circulation of 16,711 to the Tribune's 11,455, while the Weekly Herald had a circulation of 11,455 to a circulation of 15,780 for the[Pg 209] Weekly Tribune. On the whole, the result was a decided victory for Bennett.

His Announcement of His Marriage.

Here is the announcement of his marriage, written by himself and published in the Herald on June 1, 1840:

A BARBER LINGUIST.

King of Italy's Prize for Language Scholarship
Won by Humble Toiler
Who Amazes Europe.

Alfredo Trombetti, who won the King of Italy's Prize for Languages, has a remarkable history. In 1903 King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, carrying out his plan for encouraging education, offered a prize of ten thousand lire—two thousand dollars—for the best contribution to the study of languages. Hundreds of Italian scholars competed. But the work of the judges was facilitated by the fact that one man so far distanced the others that there could be absolute unanimity in making the award. The successful treatise was in five volumes, and was a remarkable study and comparison of ancient languages, into which the author had compressed a store of knowledge that astounded the learned judges.

The writer was Trombetti. Those who passed on his work had never before heard of him. They looked him up, and their astonishment at his erudition was heightened when they found he was a poor teacher in a little academy at Cuneo, a town with a population of thirty thousand. He, in turn, was astonished that the reward should come to him, for he was as modest as he was poor. His salary was less than two hundred and fifty dollars a year, and on this he supported a family of seven. The prize amounted to two thousand dollars—a sum greater than he[Pg 210] could earn in eight years of teaching. He was master of fifty languages and dialects.

Learned from Customers.

They found he was a simple, enthusiastic man, without much knowledge of the world and of its ways. He had been living among books practically all his life, and they represented everything to him, and for them he had sacrificed practically everything. But underneath the naïveté there were the solidity and thoroughness of the scholar. Trombetti had cultivated his natural aptitude for languages by the most exhaustive studies and at a cost few men would care to meet. After the dull routine and hard work of the school year he employed his vacations in traveling about from one library to another in order to consult and study the books he could not afford to buy. On these trips black bread, wayside pot-herbs, and fruit given him from vineyards and orchards formed his fare.

He managed to buy some books, painfully saving the money cent by cent, and when other scholars discovered him he had already gathered together a fairly good library. In that library the chief place was occupied by a tattered old French grammar, a book he had bought for five cents when a boy, and from which he had learned his first foreign language.

"How did you manage to acquire such an amount of knowledge?" one of the judges asked him.

"I began when I was a barber," he said.

"A barber!"

"Yes. When a man sat in my chair I let him talk. I got from one a new word, from another a new variation in dialect. So even there I was learning all the time."

Faculty Not Easily Acquired.

The faculty of learning languages, he said, was not easily acquired. It took him longer to gain a reading knowledge of French, despite the fact that French and Italian have an enormous number of words derived from the same common source, than it took him to learn Russian and Hebrew—the fifth and sixth languages he began to study—although both the latter are much more difficult than French.

"I had taught myself how to study," he said, "how to systematize, and make everything I had previously learned help me in everything I undertook. I know from my own case that any one can learn a language if he is determined and will give a little time each day to it."

So, by pursuing the method he had learned, Trombetti had placed himself, as far as the number of languages understood is concerned, with Cardinal Mezzofanti, who spoke fifty-eight.

The winning of the king's prize when Trombetti was thirty-seven years old, and after he had struggled amid the direst privations, changed the whole current of his life. He was appointed a professor at the University of Bologna. Linguists everywhere placed their collections at his service, for they recognized that the work he had already done would facilitate the researches and studies of all future inquirers. The scholars of the United States were especially prompt, and the Bureau of Ethnology, when he announced his intention of making a comparative study of Indian languages, sent him a large and valuable collection of works on the subject.

GAMBLING IS A VICE, BUT—

Famous Speculator Who Tries to Limit
His Investments to "Sure Things"
Has Had Many Stumbles.

James R. Keene, famous as a leader of the Wall Street bulls—or occasionally of the bears—asserts that he never gambles in stocks, and that gambling is one of the worst of vices.

"I try not to touch anything that is not worth while," he said. "If a stock is good and is selling under price it is legitimate to take that stock and push it up to its real value."

Several times in attempting to do that Keene has been cleaned out and left as poor as he was when he started out in California in the fifties. He was a sickly, nervous, near-sighted boy of twelve when he arrived in the West. Three years of life in the open built him up, and he started in as a prospector on[Pg 211] his own account. It didn't pan out well, and he turned farmer for a while, left that work as a cowboy, and then put in a year as a newspaper reporter.

But the mines drew him back, and he managed to get ten thousand dollars out of the Comstock lode. With this he went to San Francisco, and when he saw how things were run on the exchange there he decided that he would enter the game. It took him three months to turn his ten thousand dollars into a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and it took his opponents two days to take that away from him and leave him not only without a cent, but also heavily in debt.

Young Keene's Period of Poverty.

The period that followed was one of poverty for Keene, and for two years he fought through it, working at whatever he could find to do, but all the time intent on getting back to the exchange. Finally, his creditors allowed him to join the Mining Exchange, and his knowledge of mining properties soon put him at the head of the mining stockbrokers.

Keene won his success as a broker through his painstaking study of the property in which he invested either for himself or for others, and through the amazing courage he evinced in taking a chance on properties in which he believed.

"Keene's too blamed conscientious," said one of his fellow-brokers. "Why, he's taken a week to look over some Idaho property, and he could just as well have handled the investments even if there wasn't a sign of metal there. He wouldn't lose anything."

That was not Keene's way. He was not in the game to make a little and risk nothing. He was willing to risk everything in order to make a big killing, and usually the campaigns that looked like wild and reckless gambles were backed by good, solid knowledge, gained after examination of the value of the property involved.

Keene's clients liked such methods, and they came to him in such numbers that in a short time he forced his way to the leading position among the San Francisco brokers, and as an operator on his own account he easily distanced all the others both in daring and in winnings.

Thirty years ago he had a fortune of six million dollars, and he started for Europe, but stopped off in New York to sell railroad shares short, for what he had seen on his trip East convinced him that there would be a break. His first deal netted him two hundred thousand dollars, and he threw up all thoughts of a European trip.

There was a story current at the time that Keene had all his wealth turned into gold, and the gold was done up in neat little parcels. With this, so he was credited with saying, he intended to wipe Jay Gould off the financial map. This story, however, is not true. It was Keene's intention to take a little flier, gain a little spending money, and continue on his way to Europe for rest.

But Wall Street fascinated him. Everything there was done upon such a lavish scale that it just suited him. So instead of taking a vacation he plunged into the market, and his winnings at first were enormous. During the next two years he cleared nine million dollars. Then he went into a wheat corner, and before he got out again he was squeezed dry, and a million and a half in debt.

Turning Failure into Success.

He fought the old San Francisco fight over again and he manifested the same old San Francisco courage.

They had pushed him down to such a point that he could no longer afford to live in New York, and he hired a little house in the suburbs. A cab was a luxury that was not to be thought of, and so every day, pleasant or stormy, Keene walked from the cars to his office. His lunch, and sometimes his dinner, consisted of fruit bought from a basket.

Around him were scores of men reduced to a similar pass, and most of them lost courage and drifted down and out. Courage was the only thing Keene did not lose. He hung on tight, and his former experience enabled him slowly to recover the position he had lost. Little by little, he got on to his feet, and when once he had wiped out his debts he began the fight again on a big scale, and has managed to make himself one of the richest men in the country.[Pg 212]

The Tapestried Chamber.

By SIR WALTER SCOTT.

The following narrative is given from the pen, so far as memory permits, in the same character in which it was presented to the author's ear; nor has he claim to further praise, or to be more deeply censured, than in proportion to the good or bad judgment which he has employed in selecting his materials, as he has studiously avoided any attempt at ornament which might interfere with the simplicity of the tale.

At the same time it must be admitted that the particular class of stories which turns on the marvelous, possesses a stronger influence when told than when committed to print. The volume taken up at noonday, though rehearsing the same incidents, conveys a much more feeble impression than is achieved by the voice of the speaker on a circle of fireside auditors, who hang upon the narrative as the narrator details the minute incidents which serve to give it authenticity, and lowers his voice with an affectation of mystery while he approaches the fearful and wonderful part.

It was with such advantages that the present writer heard the following events related, more than twenty years since, by the celebrated Miss Seward, of Litchfield, who, to her numerous accomplishments, added, in a remarkable degree, the power of narrative in private conversation.

In its present form the tale must necessarily lose all the interest which was attached to it by the flexible voice and intelligent features of the gifted narrator. Yet still, read aloud, to an undoubting audience by the doubtful light of the closing evening, or, in silence, by a decaying taper, and amidst the solitude of a half-lighted apartment, it may redeem its character as a good ghost-story.

Miss Seward always affirmed that she had derived her information from an authentic source, although she suppressed the names of the two persons chiefly concerned. I will not avail myself of any particulars I may have since received concerning the localities of the detail, but suffer them to rest under the same general description in which they were first related to me; and, for the same reason, I will not add to or diminish the narrative by any circumstance, whether more or less material, but simply rehearse, as I heard it, a story of supernatural terror.[Pg 213]

About the end of the American War, when the officers of Lord Cromwell's army, which surrendered at Yorktown, and others who had been made prisoners during the impolitic and ill-fated controversy, were returning to their own country, to relate their adventures, and repose themselves after their fatigues, there was among them a general officer, to whom Miss S. gave the name of Browne, but merely, as I understood, to save the inconvenience of introducing a nameless agent in the narrative. He was an officer of merit, as well as a gentleman of high consideration for family and attainments.

Some business had carried General Browne upon a tour through the western counties, when, in the conclusion of a morning stage, he found himself in the vicinity of a small country town, which presented a scene of uncommon beauty, and of a character peculiarly English.

The little town, with its stately old church, whose tower bore testimony to the devotion of ages long past, lay amid pastures and corn-fields of small extent, but bounded and divided with hedgerow timber of great age and size. There were few marks of modern improvement. The environs of the place intimated neither the solitude of decay nor the bustle of novelty; the houses were old, but in good repair; and the beautiful little river murmured freely on its way to the left of the town, neither restrained by a dam nor bordered by a towing-path.

Upon a gentle eminence, nearly a mile to the southward of the town, were seen, among many venerable oaks and tangled thickets, the turrets of a castle, as old as the wars of York and Lancaster, but which seemed to have received important alterations during the age of Elizabeth and her successor.

It had not been a place of great size; but whatever accommodation it formerly afforded was, it must be supposed, still to be obtained within its walls; at least, such was the inference which General Browne drew from observing the smoke arise merrily from several of the ancient wreathed and carved chimney-stalks.

The wall of the park ran alongside of the highway for two or three hundred yards; and through the different points by which the eye found glimpses into the woodland scenery, it seemed to be well stocked. Other points of view opened in succession; now a full one, of the front of the old castle, and now a side glimpse at its particular towers; the former rich in all the bizarrerie of the Elizabethan school, while the simple and solid strength of other parts of the building seemed to show that they had been raised more for defense than ostentation.

Delighted with the partial glimpses which he obtained of the castle through the woods and glades by which this ancient feudal fortress was surrounded, our military traveler was determined to inquire whether it might not deserve a nearer view, and whether it contained family pictures or other objects of curiosity worthy of a stranger's visit; when, leaving the vicinity of the park, he rolled through a clean and well-paved street, and stopped at the door of a well-frequented inn.

Before ordering horses to proceed on his journey, General Browne made inquiries concerning the proprietor of the château which had so attracted his admiration; and was equally surprised and pleased at hearing in reply a nobleman named, whom we shall call Lord Woodville. How fortunate!

Much of Browne's early recollections, both at school and at college, had been connected with young Woodville, whom, by a few questions, he now ascertained to be the same with the owner of this fair domain. He had been raised to the peerage by the decease of his father a few months before, and, as the general learned from the landlord, the term of mourning being ended, was now taking possession of his paternal estate, in the jovial season of merry autumn, accompanied by a select party of friends, to enjoy the sports of a country famous for game.

This was delightful news to our traveler. Frank Woodville had been Richard Browne's fag at Eton and his chosen intimate at Christ Church; their pleasures and their tasks had been the same; and the honest soldier's heart warmed to find his early friend in possession of so delightful a residence, and[Pg 214] of an estate, as the landlord assured him with a nod and a wink, fully adequate to maintain and add to his dignity.

Nothing was more natural than that the traveler should suspend a journey, which there was nothing to render hurried, to pay a visit to an old friend under such agreeable circumstances.

The fresh horses, therefore, had only the brief task of conveying the general's traveling carriage to Woodville Castle. A porter admitted them at a modern Gothic lodge, built in that style to correspond with the castle itself, and at the same time rang a bell to give warning of the approach of visitors.

Apparently the sound of the bell had suspended the separation of the company, bent on the various amusements of the morning; for, on entering the court of the château, several young men were lounging about in their sporting dresses, looking at, and criticizing, the dogs which the keepers held in readiness to attend their pastime.

As General Browne alighted, the young lord came to the gate of the hall, and for an instant gazed, as at a stranger, upon the countenance of his friend, on which war, with its fatigues and its wounds, had made a great alteration. But the uncertainty lasted no longer than till the visitor had spoken, and the hearty greeting which followed was such as can only be exchanged between those who have passed together the merry days of careless boyhood or early youth.

"If I could have formed a wish, my dear Browne," said Lord Woodville, "it would have been to have you here, of all men, upon this occasion, which my friends are good enough to hold as a sort of holiday. Do not think you have been unwatched during the years you have been absent from us. I have traced you through your dangers, your triumphs, your misfortunes, and was delighted to see that, whether in victory or defeat, the name of my old friend was always distinguished with applause."

The general made a suitable reply, and congratulated his friend on his new dignities, and the possession of a place and domain so beautiful.

"Nay, you have seen nothing of it as yet," said Lord Woodville, "and I trust you do not mean to leave us till you are better acquainted with it. It is true, I confess, that my present party is pretty large, and the old house, like other places of the kind, does not possess so much accommodation as the extent of the outward walls appears to promise. But we can give you a comfortable old-fashioned room, and I venture to suppose that your campaigns have taught you to be glad of worse quarters."

The general shrugged his shoulders and laughed.

"I presume," he said, "the worst apartment in your château is considerably superior to the old tobacco-cask, in which I was fain to take up my night's lodging when I was in the Bush, as the Virginians call it, with the light corps. There I lay, like Diogenes himself, so delighted with my covering from the elements that I made a vain attempt to have it rolled on to my next quarters; but my commander for the time would give way to no such luxurious provision, and I took farewell of my beloved cask with tears in my eyes."

"Well, then, since you do not fear your quarters," said Lord Woodville, "you will stay with me a week at least. Of guns, dogs, fishing-rods, flies, and means of sport by sea and land, we have enough and to spare; you cannot pitch on an amusement but we will find the means of pursuing it. But if you prefer the gun and pointers, I will go with you myself, and see whether you have mended your shooting since you have been among the Indians of the back settlements."

The general gladly accepted his friendly host's proposal in all its points. After a morning of manly exercise, the company met at dinner, where it was the delight of Lord Woodville to conduce to the display of the high properties of his recovered friend, so as to recommend him to his guests, most of whom were persons of distinction.

He led General Browne to speak of the scenes he had witnessed; and as every word marked alike the brave officer and the sensible man, who retained possession of his cool judgment under the most imminent dangers, the company looked upon the soldier with general respect, as on one who had proved himself possessed of an uncommon portion[Pg 215] of personal courage; that attribute, of all others, of which everybody desires to be thought possessed.

The day at Woodville Castle ended as usual in such mansions. The hospitality stopped within the limits of good order; music, in which the young lord was a proficient, succeeded to the circulation of the bottle; cards and billiards, for those who preferred such amusements, were in readiness: but the exercise of the morning required early hours, and not long after eleven o'clock the guests began to retire to their several apartments.

The young lord himself conducted his friend, General Browne, to the chamber destined for him, which answered the description he had given of it, being comfortable, but old-fashioned. The bed was of the massive form used in the end of the seventeenth century, and the curtains of faded silk, heavily trimmed with tarnished gold. But then the sheets, pillows, and blankets looked delightful to the campaigner, when he thought of his "mansion, the cask."

There was an air of gloom in the tapestry hangings, which, with their worn-out graces, curtained the walls of the little chamber, and gently undulated as the autumnal breeze found its way through the ancient lattice-window, which pattered and whistled as the air gained entrance. The toilet, too, with its mirror, turbaned, after the manner of the beginning of the century, with a coiffure of murrey-colored silk, and its hundred strange-shaped boxes, providing for arrangements which had been obsolete for more than fifty years, had an antique, and in so far a melancholy aspect.

But nothing could blaze more brightly and cheerfully than the two large wax candles; or if aught could rival them, it was the flaming, bickering fagots in the chimney, that sent at once their gleam and their warmth through the snug apartment; which, notwithstanding the general antiquity of its appearance, was not wanting in the least convenience that modern habits rendered either necessary or desirable.

"This is an old-fashioned sleeping apartment, general," said the young lord; "but I hope you find nothing that makes you envy your old tobacco-cask."

"I am not particular respecting my lodgings," replied the general; "yet were I to make any choice, I would prefer this chamber by many degrees to the gayer and more modern rooms of your family mansion. Believe me, that when I unite its modern air of comfort with its venerable antiquity, and recollect that it is your lordship's property, I shall feel in better quarters here than if I were in the best hotel London could afford."

"I trust—I have no doubt—that you will find yourself as comfortable as I wish you, my dear general," said the young nobleman; and once more bidding his guest good night, he shook him by the hand and withdrew.

The general once more looked about him, and internally congratulating himself on his return to peaceful life, the comforts of which were endeared by the recollection of the hardships and dangers he had lately sustained, undressed himself, and prepared for a luxurious night's rest.

Here, contrary to the custom of this species of tale, we leave the general in possession of his apartment until the next morning.

The company assembled for breakfast at an early hour, but without the appearance of General Browne, who seemed the guest that Lord Woodville was desirous of honoring above all whom his hospitality had assembled around him.

He more than once expressed surprise at the general's absence, and at length sent a servant to make inquiry after him. The man brought back information that General Browne had been walking abroad since an early hour of the morning, in defiance of the weather, which was misty and ungenial.

"The custom of a soldier," said the young nobleman to his friends; "many of them acquire habitual vigilance, and cannot sleep after the early hour at which their duty usually commands them to be alert."

Yet the explanation which Lord Woodville thus offered to the company seemed hardly satisfactory to his own mind, and it was in a fit of silence and abstraction that he awaited the return of the general.

It took place near an hour after the[Pg 216] breakfast bell had rung. He looked fatigued and feverish. His hair, the powdering and arrangement of which was at this time one of the most important occupations of a man's whole day, and marked his fashion as much as, in the present time, the tying of a cravat, or the want of one, was disheveled, uncurled, void of powder, and dank with dew. His clothes were huddled on with a careless negligence, remarkable in a military man, whose real or supposed duties are usually held to include some attention to the toilet, and his looks were haggard and ghastly.

"So you have stolen a march upon us this morning, my dear general," said Lord Woodville; "or you have not found your bed so much to your mind as I had hoped and you seemed to expect. How did you rest last night?"

"Oh, excellently well! remarkably well! never better in my life," said General Browne rapidly, and yet with an air of embarrassment which was obvious to his friend. He then hastily swallowed a cup of tea, and, neglecting or refusing whatever else was offered, seemed to fall into a fit of abstraction.

"You will take the gun to-day, General?" said his friend and host, but had to repeat the question twice ere he received the abrupt answer: "No, my lord; I am sorry I cannot have the honor of spending another day with your lordship; my post horses are ordered, and will be here directly."

All who were present showed surprise, and Lord Woodville immediately replied: "Post horses, my good friend! What can you possibly want with them, when you promised to stay with me quietly for at least a week?"

"I believe," said the general, obviously much embarrassed, "that I might, in the pleasure of my first meeting with your lordship, have said something about stopping here a few days; but I have since found it altogether impossible."

"That is very extraordinary," answered the young nobleman. "You seemed quite disengaged yesterday, and you cannot have had a summons to-day; for our post has not come up from the town, and therefore you cannot have received any letters."

General Browne, without giving any further explanation, muttered something of indispensable business, and insisted on the absolute necessity of his departure in a manner which silenced all opposition on the part of his host, who saw that his resolution was taken, and forbore all further importunity.

"At least, however," he said, "permit me, my dear Browne, since go you will or must, to show you the view from the terrace, which the mist, that is now rising, will soon display."

He threw open a sash-window, and stepped down upon the terrace as he spoke. The general followed him mechanically, but seemed little to attend to what his host was saying, as, looking across an extended and rich prospect, he pointed out the different objects worthy of observation.

Thus they moved on till Lord Woodville had attained his purpose of drawing his guest entirely apart from the rest of the company, when, turning around upon him with an air of great solemnity, he addressed him thus:

"Richard Browne, my old and very dear friend, we are now alone. Let me conjure you to answer me upon the word of a friend, and the honor of a soldier. How did you in reality rest during last night?"

"Most wretchedly indeed, my lord," answered the general, in the same tone of solemnity; "so miserably, that I would not run the risk of such a second night, not only for all the lands belonging to this castle, but for all the country which I see from this elevated point of view."

"This is most extraordinary," said the young lord, as if speaking to himself; "then there must be something in the reports concerning that apartment." Again turning to the general, he said: "For God's sake, my dear friend, be candid with me, and let me know the disagreeable particulars which have befallen you under a roof where, with consent of the owner, you should have met nothing save comfort."

The general seemed distressed by this appeal, and paused a moment before he replied.

"My dear lord," he at length said, "what happened to me last night is of a[Pg 217] nature so peculiar and so unpleasant, that I could hardly bring myself to detail it even to your lordship, were it not that, independent of my wish to gratify any request of yours, I think that sincerity on my part may lead to some explanation about a circumstance equally painful and mysterious. To others, the communication I am about to make might place me in the light of a weak-minded, superstitious fool, who suffered his own imagination to delude and bewilder him; but you have known me in childhood and youth, and will not suspect me of having adopted in manhood the feelings and frailties from which my early years were free."

Here he paused, and his friend replied:

"Do not doubt my perfect confidence in the truth of your communication, however strange it may be," replied Lord Woodville, "I know your firmness of disposition too well to suspect you could be made the object of imposition, and am aware that your honor and your friendship will equally deter you from exaggerating whatever you may have witnessed."

"Well, then," said the general, "I will proceed with my story as well as I can, relying upon your candor; and yet distinctly feeling that I would rather face a battery than recall to my mind the odious recollections of last night."

He paused a second time, and then, perceiving that Lord Woodville remained silent and in an attitude of attention, he commenced, though not without obvious reluctance, the history of his night adventures in the Tapestried Chamber.

"I undressed and went to bed, so soon as your lordship left me yesterday evening; but the wood in the chimney, which nearly fronted my bed, blazed brightly and cheerfully, and, aided by a hundred exciting recollections of my childhood and youth, which had been recalled by the unexpected pleasure of meeting your lordship, prevented me from falling immediately asleep.

"I ought, however, to say that these reflections were all of a pleasant and agreeable kind, grounded on a sense of having for a time exchanged the labor, fatigues, and dangers of my profession for the enjoyments of a peaceful life, and the reunion of those friendly and affectionate ties which I had torn asunder at the rude summons of war.

"While such pleasing reflections were stealing over my mind, and gradually lulling me to slumber, I was suddenly aroused by a sound like that of the rustling of a silken gown, and the tapping of a pair of high-heeled shoes, as if a woman were walking in the apartment.

"Ere I could draw the curtain to see what the matter was, the figure of a little woman passed between the bed and the fire. The back of this form was turned to me, and I could observe, from the shoulders and neck, it was that of an old woman, whose dress was an old-fashioned gown, which, I think, ladies call a sacque; that is, a sort of robe completely loose in the body, but gathered into broad plaits upon the neck and shoulders which fall down to the ground and terminate in a species of train.

"I thought the intrusion singular enough, but never harbored for a moment the idea that what I saw was anything more than the mortal form of some old woman about the establishment, who had a fancy to dress like her grandmother, and who, having perhaps (as your lordship mentioned that you were rather straitened for room) been dislodged from her chamber for my accommodation, had forgotten the circumstance and returned by twelve to her old haunt.

"Under this persuasion I moved myself in bed and coughed a little, to make the intruder sensible of my being in possession of the premises. She turned slowly around, but, gracious heaven! my lord, what a countenance did she display to me!

"There was no longer any question what she was, or any thought of her being a living being.

"Upon a face which wore the fixed features of a corpse were imprinted the traces of the vilest and most hideous passions which had animated her while she lived. The body of some atrocious criminal seemed to have been given up from the grave, and the soul restored from the penal fire, in order to form, for a space, a union with the ancient accomplice of its guilt.[Pg 218]

"I started up in bed and sat upright, supporting myself on my palms, as I gazed on this horrible specter.

"The hag made, as it seemed, a single and swift stride to the bed where I lay, and squatted herself down upon it in precisely the same attitude which I had assumed in the extremity of horror, advancing her diabolical countenance within half a yard of mine, with a grin which seemed to intimate the malice and the derision of an incarnate fiend."

Here General Browne stopped and wiped from his brow the cold perspiration with which the recollection of this horrible vision had covered it.

"My lord," he said, "I am no coward. I have been in all the mortal dangers incidental to my profession, and I may truly boast that no man ever knew Richard Browne dishonor the sword he wears; but in these horrible circumstances, under the eyes, and, as it seemed, almost in the grasp of an incarnation of an evil spirit, all firmness forsook me, all manhood melted from me like wax in the furnace, and I felt my hair individually bristle. The current of my life-blood ceased to flow, and I sank back in a swoon, as very a victim to panic terror as ever was a village girl, or a child of ten years old. How long I lay in this condition I cannot pretend to guess.

"But I was roused by the castle clock striking one, so loud that it seemed as if it were in the very room. It was some time before I dared open my eyes, lest they should again encounter the horrible spectacle. When, however, I summoned courage to look up, she was no longer visible.

"My first idea was to pull my bell, wake the servants, and remove to a garret or a hayloft, to be insured against a second visitation. Nay, I will confess the truth, that my resolution was altered, not by the shame of exposing myself, but by the fear that, as the bell-cord hung by the chimney, I might, in making my way to it, be again crossed by the fiendish hag, who, I figured to myself, might be still lurking about some corner of the apartment.

"I will not pretend to describe what hot and cold fever-fits tormented me for the rest of the night, through broken sleep, weary vigils, and that dubious state which forms the neutral ground between them. A hundred terrible objects appeared to haunt me; but there was the great difference between the vision which I have described, and those which followed, that I knew the last to be deceptions of my own fancy.

"Day at last appeared, and I rose from my bed, ill in health and humiliated in mind. I was ashamed of myself as a man and a soldier, and still more so at feeling my own extreme desire to escape from the haunted apartment, which, however, conquered all other considerations; so that, huddling on my clothes with the most careless haste, I made my escape from your lordship's mansion to seek in the open air some relief to my nervous system, shaken as it was by this horrible encounter with a visitant, for such I must believe her, from the other world.

"Your lordship has now heard the cause of my discomfiture, and of my sudden desire to leave your hospitable castle. In other places I trust we may often meet; but God protect me from ever spending a second night under that roof!"

Strange as the general's tale was, he spoke with such a deep air of conviction that it cut short all the usual commentaries which are made on such stories. Lord Woodville never once asked him if he was sure he did not dream of the apparition, or suggested any of the possibilities by which it is fashionable to explain supernatural appearances—as wild vagaries of the fancy or deceptions of the optic nerves.

On the contrary he seemed deeply impressed with the truth and reality of what he had heard; and, after a considerable pause, regretted, with much appearance of sincerity, that his early friend should in his house have suffered so severely.

"I am the more sorry for your pain, my dear Browne," he continued, "that it is the unhappy, though most unexpected, result of an experiment of my own. You must know that, for my father and grandfather's time at least, the apartment which was assigned to you last night had been shut on account of reports that it was disturbed by supernatural sights and noises.[Pg 219]

"When I came, a few weeks since, into possession of the estate, I thought the accommodation which the castle afforded for my friends was not extensive enough to permit the inhabitants of the invisible world to retain possession of a comfortable sleeping apartment.

"I therefore caused the Tapestried Chamber, as we call it, to be opened; and, without destroying its air of antiquity, I had such new articles of furniture placed in it as became the modern times. Yet as the opinion that the room was haunted very strongly prevailed among the domestics, and was also known in the neighborhood and to many of my friends, I feared some prejudice might be entertained by the first occupant of the Tapestried Chamber, which might tend to revive the evil report which it had labored under, and so disappoint my purpose of rendering it a useful part of the house.

"I must confess, my dear Browne, that your arrival yesterday, agreeable to me for a thousand reasons besides, seemed the most favorable opportunity of removing the unpleasant rumors which attached to the room, since your courage was indubitable, and your mind free of any preoccupation on the subject. I could not, therefore, have chosen a more fitting subject for my experiment."

"Upon my life," said General Browne, somewhat hastily, "I am infinitely obliged to your lordship—very particularly indebted indeed. I am likely to remember for some time the consequences of the experiment, as your lordship is pleased to call it."

"Nay, now you are unjust, my dear friend," said Lord Woodville. "You have only to reflect for a single moment in order to be convinced that I could not augur the possibility of the pain to which you have been so unhappily exposed.

"I was yesterday morning a complete skeptic on the subject of supernatural appearances. Nay, I am sure that had I told you what was said about that room, those very reports would have induced you, by your own choice, to select it for your accommodation. It was my misfortune, perhaps my error, but really cannot be termed my fault, that you have been afflicted so strangely."

"Strangely indeed!" said the general, resuming his good temper; "and I acknowledge that I have no right to be offended with your lordship for treating me like what I used to think myself—a man of some firmness and courage. But I see my post horses are arrived, and I must not detain your lordship from your amusement."

"Nay, my old friend," said Lord Woodville; "since you cannot stay with us another day—which, indeed, I can no longer urge—give me at least half an hour more. You used to love pictures, and I have a gallery of portraits, some of them by Vandyke, representing ancestry to whom this property and castle formerly belonged. I think that several of them will strike you as possessing merit."

General Browne accepted the invitation, though somewhat unwillingly. It was evident he was not to breathe freely or at ease till he left Woodville Castle far behind him. He could not refuse his friend's invitation, however; and the less so, that he was a little ashamed of the peevishness which he had displayed toward his well-meaning entertainer.

The general, therefore, followed Lord Woodville through several rooms, into a long gallery hung with pictures, which the latter pointed out to his guest, telling the names, and giving some account of the personages whose portraits presented themselves in progression.

General Browne was but little interested in the details which these accounts conveyed to him. They were, indeed, of the kind which are usually found in an old family gallery. Here was a cavalier who had ruined the estate in the royal cause; there, a fine lady who had reinstated it by contracting a match with a wealthy Roundhead. There hung a gallant who had been in danger for corresponding with the exiled Court at Saint Germain's; here, one who had taken arms for William at the Revolution; and there, a third that had thrown his weight alternately into the scale of Whig and Tory.

While Lord Woodville was cramming these words into his guest's ear, "against the stomach of his sense," they gained the middle of the gallery, when he beheld General Browne suddenly start and[Pg 220] assume an attitude of the utmost surprise, not unmixed with fear, as his eyes were caught and suddenly riveted by a portrait of an old lady in a sacque, the fashionable dress at the end of the seventeenth century.

"There she is!" he exclaimed; "there she is, in form and features, though inferior in demoniac expression to the hag that visited me last night!"

"If that be the case," said the young nobleman, "there can remain no longer any doubt of the horrible reality of your apparition. That is the picture of a wretched ancestress of mine, of whose crimes a black and fearful catalogue is recorded in a family history in my charter-chest. The recital of them would be too horrible; it is enough to say that in yon fatal apartment incest and unnatural murder were committed. I will restore it to the solitude to which the better judgment of those who preceded me had consigned it; and never shall any one, so long as I can prevent it, be exposed to a repetition of the supernatural horrors which could shake such courage as yours."

Thus the friends, who had met with such glee, parted in a very different mood; Lord Woodville to command the Tapestried Chamber to be unmantled and the door built up, and General Browne to seek in some less beautiful country, and with some less dignified friend, forgetfulness of the painful night which he had passed in Woodville Castle.

THE DIARY OF AN OLD MAID.

The following truthful and touching history of an old maid, dating from about 1843, is one of the briefest, yet at the same time most complete, records of human experience in print. Those who can read between the lines will have full sympathy for the author of it, who seems to have found that though marriage may prove a failure, abstention from matrimony does not bring happiness:

[Pg 221]

GRAVE, GAY, AND EPIGRAMMATIC.

COMPENSATION.

EASTER GOSSIP.

FAR FROM MARKET.

Soon after the Civil War, General Ingalls, U.S.A., visited a friend in the South. Taking a walk one morning he met a boy coming up from the river with a fine string of fish.

"What will you take for your fish?" asked the general.

"Thirty cents," was the reply.

"Thirty cents!" repeated the general in astonishment. "Why, if you were in New York you could get three dollars for them."

The boy looked critically at the officer for a moment and then said, scornfully:

"Yes, suh; en' I reckon if I had a bucket of water in hell I could get a million dollars for it."—Saturday Evening Post.

MOZART'S MILITARY MARCH.

Cardinal Gibbons was facetious when the Irish ladies' choir of Dublin called on him. Turning suddenly, he asked:

"Which one of you is the oldest?"

None claimed the honor and all blushed. The talk drifted around to Gilmore and his band, and Cardinal Gibbons told of how Gilmore, at Coney Island, hearing that the cardinal was in the audience, played "Maryland, My Maryland," and how it pleased him.

"Gilmore," said the cardinal, "was famous for his playing of Mozart's 'Twelfth Mass.' Once he played it in a North Carolina town and next day the local paper announced that he rendered with great effect Mozart's 'Twelfth Massachusetts.'"

Pittsburgh Dispatch.

THE BOSS.

CHANGES.

THE SULTAN'S THREAT.

The Sultan of Sulu is the man who is not afraid. He imported an eighteen-thousand-dollar uniform from Paris for the occasion of the Taft reception not long ago[Pg 222] and when the costume came he refused to pay duty on it. The custom authorities made a fuss and threatened to keep the uniform.

"Very well," said Mr. Sultan, "keep your old uniform, but understand that I shall wear that at the reception or nothing." The horrified officers perceived that he meant what he said and the suit was handed over in silence.—Minneapolis Tribune.

A FRAGMENT.

Pick-Me-Up.

REED'S WAY OUT OF IT.

A story is told of Thomas B. Reed by neighbors who knew him in his childhood to the effect that once, when sent to the grocery store with a jug for vinegar, he forgot what he was told to get, and, when asked by the grocer what he wanted, replied.

"Smell of the jug, and give me a quart."

Boston Herald.

CAUSE FOR ALARM.

The late Dr. Boardman of Philadelphia used to relate this on himself: "I preached a funeral sermon at one time, and spoke on the resurrection. I am sure I spoke longer than was my custom.

"The undertaker was a man of nervous temperament, and as the afternoon was going he began to be anxious to be on the way to the cemetery. He finally whispered to one of my members: 'Does your minister always preach as long as that at a funeral?'

"'Well,' said the brother, 'that is a good sermon.'

"'Yes,' said the undertaker, 'the sermon is all right, and I believe in the resurrection, but I am afraid if he does not stop pretty soon I will not get this man buried in time.'"—Philadelphia Ledger.

A CORRECTION.

WHEN THE BIG STICK WOULDN'T DO.

The following anecdote of President Roosevelt's youth is being told in England:

When Roosevelt was a student at Harvard he was required to recite a poem in public declamation. He got as far as a line which read:

"When Greece her knees in suppliance bent,"

when he stuck there.

Again he repeated,

"When Greece her knees ...," but could get no farther.

The teacher waited patiently, finally remarking:

"Grease her knees again, Roosevelt, then perhaps she'll go."

Woman's Home Companion.

DESERVED TO LIVE.

In a rural justice court in Georgia recently an old negro, whose testimony had been questioned, said in his own defense:

"Jedge, I'm a good man. I been a-livin' roun' heah ten years. I ain't never been lynched; en de only horse I ever stoled throwed me en broke my two legs!"—Chicago Daily News.

SENATORIAL COURTESY.

"I suppose you will bow to the will of the people," said the friend.

"Of course I will," answered Senator Sorghum; "I'll bow and take off my hat all they want me to. As long as there's no chance of their having their own way it's as little as I can do to be polite."—Washington Evening Star.[Pg 223]

The Nation's Conscience Fund.

For Ninety-five Years Persons Who Have Succeeded in Defrauding the Government
Have Coined Remorse into Gold and Sent It to Uncle
Sam, Who Has Received $400,000 in This Manner.

An original article written for The Scrap Book.

For ninety-five years contributions from penitent people throughout America have been flowing into the government's Conscience Fund at Washington. The first contribution of this nature was received in 1811, during the administration of Madison. At the first of this year the sums received from thousands of men and women who confessed that they had defrauded the government amounted to four hundred thousand dollars.

There is a great deal of variety in the character of transgressions, and also in the sums of money turned in to the Conscience Fund. One woman, a few years ago, sent a single one-cent stamp to the Secretary of the Treasury, explaining that she had defrauded the government of that amount of postage. In marked contrast to this contribution was a draft for fourteen thousand dollars, sent to the Conscience Fund by an American living in England.

One peculiarity that is revealed by the letters of repentant citizens is the effort to disguise the identity of the writers. They frequently write in a cramped, unnatural style, or they "print" the letters as children do, or purposely mis-spell words, as is evident when wretched orthography is done in handwriting that is itself indicative of culture.

All these efforts are unnecessary, for the United States government does not divulge the names even when, occasionally, they are frankly signed by the conscience-stricken. To enable the sender to know that his contribution has reached the Conscience Fund, announcement of the amount sent and the nature of the confession is made in the newspapers of the city or town whence the letter was mailed. But no effort is made to discover the identity of the contributor.

Many of the writers are women, but they do not send so much money to the Conscience Fund as the men. Their transgressions, as a rule, involve small transactions. The largest contributions come from smugglers. The remainder is received from persons who have used canceled stamps, or who have sent first-class mail under third-class rates, or persons who have actually stolen articles from Government buildings, forts, or reservations.

Faith in Fellowmen Awakened.

A curious fact in regard to the action of many of these penitents is that, having become awakened to a sense of high ethics, their distrust of others vanishes. This is not a universal trait among the contributors to the Conscience Fund, but there have been many conspicuous examples of it.

The Treasury Department receives daily about ten thousand letters. One morning, in 1905, there was received in the mail at this department a package in manila paper, folded to resemble an ordinary official-size envelope. It bore several two-cent stamps, but no more than was necessary to carry it, and nothing whatever to indicate its contents. It was the sort of package which might be expected to contain the vouchers of some claimant or subordinate official.

When the contents were shaken out, twelve thousand dollars in paper money lay on the desk of the astonished clerk. The letter accompanying this contribu[Pg 224]tion to the Conscience Fund read as follows:

That letter was simply signed "A Sinner," which is a common signature to these interesting confessions.

Of an entirely different turn of mind was a penitent a few years ago, who sent in eight thousand dollars to the Conscience Fund. He tore the bills making up this sum exactly in half, and sent the first instalment to the keeper of the Conscience Fund, saying that if the government would acknowledge its receipt, he would forward the other half. True to his word, upon receipt of the Federal acknowledgment, he mailed the necessary fragments of the bills. Pieced together, these were, of course, as good as gold, and the Conscience Fund was materially increased.

To His Majesty, the President.

While the contributions and the interesting letters connected with them are the source of some merriment, the whole custom and institution is a very serious one to a majority, if not to all, the penitents. Many of the letters reveal a condition of poignant remorse. Some of them are pathetic in the genuineness and simplicity of the suffering revealed.

One letter that deeply impressed the officials of the Treasury Department was from a little girl fifteen years of age. It was during the administration of President Cleveland. The child's letter disclosed intelligence and keen regret for using two canceled postage stamps. The missive read:

That was from a child. Here is a letter from a woman of evident cultivation. It was dated at Roanoke, October 12, 1905, and was sent to the President of the United States. It reads:

Prosperity Stirs the Conscience.

The sincerity displayed in all the letters is unmistakable. A few years ago many of the communications revealed a strong religious feeling. During the present period of prosperity contributions have been increasing, and it is now the opinion of some officials that many of these penitents have long been anxious to restore "to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's," but that they waited until they were better able to do so.

A few weeks ago a man wrote from Kansas, stating that thirty-six years before he bought a horse from army deserters, who had stolen it from Fort Leavenworth. He paid them forty dollars for the animal, and not long afterward sold it for the same sum. He therefore made nothing out of the transaction, but the fact that he had dealt in a contraband horse had preyed steadily,[Pg 225] he said, upon his conscience, and after the lapse of a generation he sent forty dollars to the Conscience Fund.

Just how much smuggling is carried on is a matter of interesting speculation. Last year our registered imports amounted in value to over one billion dollars. The dutiable goods amounted to considerably more than half this sum, and the duties collected aggregated no less than two hundred and seventy-seven million dollars.

In the latter part of 1905 a farmer in Michigan sent in thirty dollars as the duty which he should have paid on a horse driven across the Canadian border from Manitoba a number of years ago. This was duly credited to the Conscience Fund, and nearly a month later a second letter was received from the same penitent farmer, saying that he had decided also to pay duty on the harness (valued at seven dollars) which the horse wore and the buggy (valued at ten dollars) it hauled on the occasion of its journey across the border from Manitoba. In the second letter he enclosed six dollars and sixty-five cents for the Conscience Fund.

When John G. Carlisle was Secretary of the Treasury he received the following letter with forty dollars enclosed:

The Shadow of the Great Hereafter.

From Pleasant Lake, North Dakota, came a registered letter which contained ten dollars. An accompanying note was evidently in the handwriting of a very old man. He added the pathetic postscript:

"There is a lot more due in the near future. All of us become honest as we near the Great Hereafter. I need only sign my name as 'Conscience.'"

Collectors of customs throughout the United States, and particularly along the Canadian border, frequently receive sums of money sent to them anonymously, with the request that they be forwarded to the Conscience Fund at Washington. Some of these officials state that passengers, including fashionably dressed women, come hurriedly into the office of the collector, nervously hand in sums of money to relieve their conscience, and depart without any explanation other than at some previous time they have smuggled goods into the country.

The largest sum, briefly referred to above, was for fourteen thousand two hundred and twenty-five dollars and fifteen cents. It was sent to the Conscience Fund by the Rev. Prebendary Bariff, Vicar of St. Giles' Church, Cripplegate, London, who explained that the sum was entrusted to him by a person who declined to disclose his identity, but who said that he had come into the possession of that amount by defrauding the United States government.

Some of the penitents confess to odd offenses. A Chicago man sent one dollar to the Conscience Fund with the statement that years before he had taken a small apple-tree from the government orchard at Fort Sheridan, and that he now wished to make compensation for it. A few weeks ago Secretary Shaw received a letter from the West, stating that many years before the writer had stolen two sheets and a pillow-case from an Indian school. This penitent also sent one dollar to cover the value of the stolen goods.

Five Cents From Kansas.

During the administration of the late President McKinley, a Kansas man sent five cents to the United States Treasury to be added to the Conscience Fund. His note said:

Whether large or small, the sums sent to the Conscience Fund no doubt take a[Pg 226] great load from the spirit of the repentant ones. The following letter received by the President of the United States is typical of many. It was written by a woman, and reads:

The Conscience Fund is presided over by E.B. Daskam, chief of the Division of Public Moneys. All these quaint and tragic records of the quickening of conscience in America are carefully filed away.

While a separate record is kept of the Conscience Fund, the money constituting it is placed in the Government's big vaults and becomes a part of the nation's finances. It has been suggested that an act of Congress be passed setting aside this particular fund for some national benevolence.

HOCH, DER GOVERNOR OF KANSAS.

Taken to Task by a Recalcitrant Legislature Because He Said "Set 'Em Up," He Talks
of Things That May Happen on Resurrection Morn.

Governor Edward Wallis Hoch, of Kansas, is a big man, with a slow manner and a keen sense of humor. Born fifty-seven years ago in Kentucky, as soon as he had graduated from a freshwater college he moved westward. At twenty-five he found himself editor and proprietor of a country weekly in Kansas; and the step from journalism to politics proved an easy one.

When Hoch talks about "trust-busting" legislation he speaks quietly and seriously, with shrewdness and intelligence. At other times he is capable of enlivening the dull routine of official work with a touch of unconventional pleasantry. During the recent legislative eruption at Topeka one of the more impetuous representatives introduced a bill which had already been passed. The Governor vetoed it, remarking that it was up to the representative to "set 'em up."

A member of the opposition, thinking that this was a dangerous expression for the Governor of a prohibition State to use, had a resolution adopted calling on the Governor to explain. Governor Hoch was extremely busy, but he disentangled his signing hand from the pile of bills before him long enough to dash off the following reply:

[Pg 227]

ALL KINDS OF THINGS.

HUMOROUS SIDE OF THE POSTAL SERVICE.

ILLITERACY OF RURAL OFFICIALS.

Fourth-Class Postmasters Sometimes
Write Queer Letters, Telling Their
Troubles to the Department.

The eagerness with which fourth-class postmasterships are sought seems strange when one remembers that the salaries are small and the duties often exacting. No fourth-class postmaster receives more than a thousand dollars a year. More than half of them receive less than a hundred dollars a year; fourteen thousand receive less than fifty dollars a year; and hundreds of them receive ten or twelve dollars a year.

Henry A. Castle, former auditor for the Post-Office Department, recently contributed to the Sunday Magazine an article filled with curious information concerning the fourth-class postmaster and his idiosyncrasies. Here, for example, is a facetious letter from an Illinois postmaster who for some time had been vainly trying to resign:

An Arkansas postmaster expressed as follows his delight in his appointment:

Illiteracy is not uncommon among the postmasters. Mr. Castle quotes a letter from a Southern ex-postmaster, presumably a negro:

And again, here is a letter from a local official who dreads the invasion of rural free delivery:

The ignorance and illiteracy of these postmasters is not typical. The cases are really exceptional. Yet there are many official eccentricities. There is, for example, the old story of postmasters who persistently peruse private postal cards—and this propensity is so common, or is supposed to be so common, that it has even been celebrated in verse:

A MAN'S CHARACTER IS AS HIS NOSE IS.

SIZE AND SHAPE ARE SIGNIFICANT.

He Who Knows His Nose May Quickly
Determine Whether His Traits Are
Those of Greatness or Mediocrity.

The nose, according to physiognomists, is one of the most important features. It tells its story of character like the eye and the mouth. Its size and its shape have their significance. Studying the faces of men and women prominent in past history the following interpretation of the language of noses has been made:

SUPPOSED ORIGIN OF AMERICAN LYNCH LAW.

ROUGH JUSTICE IN OLD VIRGINIA.

The Phrase Probably Arose from the
Administration of Off-Hand Judgments
of a Colonial Planter.

The application of summary punishment without authority of law is known in our country as Lynch law. The origin of the term is somewhat obscure. Here is one explanation:

More or less apocryphal is this story from Ireland. The explanation most generally accepted refers the term back to a planter who lived in what is now known as the Piedmont country of Virginia.

In England Lynch law was formerly called Lydford law. In Scotland it was known as Cowper law.

THE SORT OF NEWS OUR ANCESTORS READ.

GLEANINGS FROM OLD JOURNALS.

Runaway Slaves Delighted Hearts of Advertising
Managers, and Antics of
Militia Excited Applause.

Old newspapers make good reading—if they are old enough. Like the deciphering of moss-covered epitaphs, the reading of journals of other days gives rise to reflections that mingle the sweet with the sad. It shows plainly that time does not alter human nature, much as customs may change.

The American Weekly Mercury was formerly published in Philadelphia. An examination of the issue for November 29, 1722, brings to light this interesting advertisement:

Whether Dick was ever caught may never be known, for he seems to have made no deep impression on history, though his "smiling Countenance" is here immortalized.

Another Indian receives mention for another reason in the issue for September 2, 1723, the item coming from Boston:

The year 1723 seems nearly as far back to us as the year in which the English first settled on Boston Harbor. But Judge Sewall and Judge Dudley and their friends considered John Quittamog as interesting as we should consider a man, still living, who had witnessed the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.

The genial "neighborhood note" style of journalism is in evidence in this item from Boston in the issue for November 20, 1721:

The man who inserted the following notice was manifestly in earnest:

[Pg 230]

For incoherence Mr. Camm's English is a match for the printed request which, within a few years, was attached to the doors of a hotel at Lexington, Ky.:

"Guests are respectfully requested, if either leaves the room before the other is up, to lock and bolt the door again immediately upon his departure."

FIRST SELF-MADE MAN IN THIS COUNTRY.

WAS INVENTOR OF THE SEXTANT.

Thomas Godfrey Got a Valuable Idea by
Noting the Reflection of the Sun
from a Pail of Water.

Thomas Godfrey was probably the first self-made man in America. Born in 1704, he died in 1749. He was a glazier by trade, but he had naturally an interest in mathematics, and he learned Latin in order that he might read certain scientific treatises.

His reputation rests on an improvement which he made in the quadrant of John Davies. What Godfrey really did was to invent the sextant. John Hadley also invented a sextant, evidently carrying out a suggestion of Newton's which was found in Sir Isaac's original draft among Hadley's papers after his death. Godfrey antedated Hadley by about one year, but for a long time his claims were not recognized, and Hadley received all the credit.

How the humble glazier received his first inspiration to design the instrument of so great use to mariners is an interesting story. One day, while replacing a pane of glass in a window of a house on the north side of Arch Street, in Philadelphia, opposite a pump, a girl, after filling her pail, placed it upon the sidewalk. Godfrey, on turning toward it, saw the sun reflected from the window on which he had been at work, into the bucket of water, and his philosophic mind seizing upon the incident, was thus led to combine the plan of an instrument by which he could draw the sun down to the horizon, by a contrivance incomparably superior to any that had ever before been used for the purpose of ascertaining angular measurements.

EUROPEAN MONARCHS WHO SMOKE TOBACCO.

KING EDWARD'S BRIER-ROOT PIPE.

Almost All the European Monarchs Indulge
in Cigars, Pipes, or Cigarettes,
Except King Oscar of Sweden.

King James I of England, that "wisest fool in Christendom," was a monarch who inveighed against the "Virginia weed" in vain. His "Counter-blast Against Tobacco" was a famous book in its day. Yet to-day there is scarcely a king in Europe who does not smoke. The Paris Figaro has collected statistics as to smoking by royalty, and the Literary Digest translates the item:

MAN'S LIFE AS AFFECTED BY HIS VOCATION.

SOME LONG-LIVED PROFESSIONS.

Musical Composers and Men of Letters
Are Shown to Be the Most Likely
to Reach a Sound Old Age.

The Psalmist's "threescore years and ten" are not the average man's life, but are named as the average limit of[Pg 231] those who arrived at a normal old age. The average life of men in various occupations appears in the appended table:

The figures just given cover most classes of non-professional work. Musical composers, however, are said to live longer than persons engaged in other occupations, in proof of which this eminent list has been prepared:

RARE WORKMANSHIP IN OLD TIMEPIECES.

ILL-FATED MARY'S SKULL-WATCH.

Book-shaped Article Made for Duke of
Pomerania Is a Beautiful Triumph of
Metal Engraving and Design.

Two of the most elaborate watches that have ever been constructed belonged, the one to Queen Elizabeth, the other to Mary Queen of Scots. Queen Elizabeth's watch was in the form of a duck, with beautifully chased feathers. The lower part opened, showing a face of silver, with an elaborate gilt design, and the whole was kept in a case of brass, covered with black leather studded with knobs of silver.

The Scottish queen's watch was in the shape of a skull, the dial being introduced where the palate should have been, the works being in the mimic brain cavity. A little bell struck the hours.

One of the choicest rarities of the Bernal collection was a book-shaped watch. This curious time indicator was made by order of Bogislaus XIV, Duke of Pomerania, in the time of Gustavus Adolphus. On the face of the book, where the dial of the watch is set, there is an engraved inscription of the duke, and his titles and armorial bearings, together with the date, 1627.

On the back the engravings are also very finely and skilfully executed, among them being the portraits of two gentlemen of the seventeenth century. The dial-plate is of silver, chased in relief, while the insides are beautifully chased with figures of birds and foliage. The watch has two separate movements, and a large, sweet-toned bell. At the back, over the bell, the metal is ornamentally pierced in a circle, with a dragon and other devices, while the sides are pierced and engraved with a complicated design of beautiful scrollwork.

THE MONEY KINGS OF ANCIENT ROME.

THEIR RECORDS OF EXTRAVAGANCE.

Antony and Caligula Appear to Have Been
Leaders in the Wanton Expenditure
of Vast Fortunes.

That the accumulation of vast fortunes was as possible in ancient Rome, which knew neither the railroad nor Standard Oil, as it is in the United States to-day, is shown by the following table that has been compiled from authoritative historical records.

While it may be true that the wealth of the Czar of Russia and John D. Rockefeller may exceed nearly all of these old-time hoards, there can be no question of the fact that as spenders of enormous fortunes Antony and Caligula have never been surpassed.

[Pg 232]

MACHINES TAKE JOBS OF INSURANCE AGENTS.

THEY ISSUE POLICIES IN ENGLAND.

Applicant Drops Coin in Slot, Writes His
Name Through an Opening, and
Then Gets the Document.

Do nothing by human labor that can be done by machinery—that is the business maxim of the twentieth century.

No man is sure of his job once an inventor gets on his trail.

Twenty years ago it was said that nothing on earth, with less intelligence than a human being, could set type, play the piano, add figures, or tie a knot in a piece of binding-twine.

The inventors said, "We can make machines of wood and steel—machines that have no brains and no feeling, that can do these things, and do them better than a man."

The world haw-hawed at the silly inventors, but the inventors have made good. In England, to-day, there are showing us a machine that can hand out an insurance policy, properly stamped and signed.

The machine, which defies fraud, looks like a clock. When the applicant drops his coin into the slot he pulls forward a handle, when out drops a pencil, already sharpened, and an opening is disclosed through which the signature is made. Then the client pushes back the handle and simultaneously the space closes and an insurance policy is issued through another slot.

Against the signature inside the machine is printed the exact date and the time to the very minute when the policy was issued. If the insured meets with an accident within seven days he applies to the insurance company for his weekly allowance, and if his name is on the register retained by the machine the policy is paid.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ARITHMETICAL SIGNS.

HOW THEY FIRST CAME TO BE USED.

Prone to Short Cuts and Abbreviations,
Man Has Chopped Words Into
Lines and Crosses.

A little mark or sign, used in every-day life so frequently that its users concern themselves only with its necessary meaning, may have a very elaborate history—may embalm much tradition. Take the English sign for a pound—£. How many persons have stopped to inquire as to its meaning? £ stands for the Latin libra, as "d," used to indicate the pence, stands for the Latin denarius, and as "s," used to indicate the shilling, stands for the Latin solidus.

The origin of arithmetical signs is explained as follows:

[Pg 233]

HOUSEHOLD GODS IN TRANSIT.

Two Lyrics Which Describe Some of the Vicissitudes of Those Who Seek New Dwellings
and Give Employment to Furniture Vans.

FURTHERUPTOWN!

A MOVING BALLAD.

BROTHERS TO SISTERS.

THREE DEDICATIONS IN WHICH FAMOUS AUTHORS GIVE
ELOQUENT EXPRESSION TO AFFECTION
INSPIRED BY NOBLE WOMEN.

The men who wrote the three extracts which are given here represent three vividly contrasted types. Ernest Rénan was a distinguished Frenchman, a profound Hebrew scholar, and yet witty, cynical, and eloquent. John Greenleaf Whittier was a Massachusetts Quaker of rustic manners and great simplicity of life, who viewed Nature with the sympathetic eyes of a born poet, but always serious, simple, and sincere. Eugene Field was a Chicago journalist, full of irreverent American humor, rollicking and sometimes boisterous, although he too had a vein of tenderness in his nature and a sympathy with the finer things of life. Yet these three men all agreed in their affection for their sisters. Rénan wrote of his sister Henriette that "it was she who exerted the strongest influence on my life," and at his death he left a little volume containing his reminiscences of her.

It is evident from the dedications of Whittier and Field that each felt an almost equal debt of gratitude to the sisters with whom their early years were spent and whose affection they have so beautifully commemorated.

RÉNAN'S DEDICATION.

(From "The Life of Jesus," by Ernest Rénan. Translated by C.E. Wilbour.
Copyright by George W. Carlton, 1863.)

TO THE PURE SPIRIT OF MY SISTER HENRIETTE, WHO
DIED AT BYBLUS, SEPT. 24, 1861.

Do you remember, from your rest in the bosom of God, those long days at Ghazir, where, alone with you, I wrote these pages, inspired by the scenes we had just traversed? Silent by my side you read every leaf, and copied it as soon as written, while the sea, the villages, the ravines, the mountains were spread out at our feet.

When the overwhelming light of the sun had given place to the innumerable army of stars, your fine and delicate questions, your discreet doubts, brought me back to the sublime object of our common thoughts.

One day you told me you should love this book, first, because it had been written with you, and also because it pleased you. If sometimes you feared for it the narrow judgments of frivolous man, you were always persuaded that spirits truly religious would be pleased with it.

In the midst of these sweet meditations Death struck us both with his wing; the sleep of fever seized us both at the same hour. I woke alone!... You sleep now in the land of Adonis, near the holy Byblus and the sacred waters where the women of the ancient mysteries came to mingle their tears.

Reveal to me, O my good genius, to me whom you loved, those truths which master Death, prevent us from fearing, and make us almost love it.[Pg 235]

WHITTIER'S TRIBUTE.

(From the dedication page of his "Home Ballads.")

FIELD'S APPRECIATION.

(Dedication to His Sister, Mary Field French, from His "Little Book of Western
Verse." Copyrighted, 1889, by Eugene Field, Published by
Charles Scribner's Sons.)

The Personal Character of the Czar.

By FRANK MARSHALL WHITE.

Trained Observers of Men Describe the Impressions Made Upon Them by the
Ruler of the Russian People, But No Two Agree in Their
Estimates of the Man Behind the Mask.

Compiled and edited for The Scrap Book.

In the present crisis in Russia the actual character of the Czar is a matter of unusual interest to the world at large, since he is one of the factors to be considered in predicting the outcome of the most tremendous social and political upheaval of the time.

It is difficult enough for the person whose acquaintance with the rulers of the earth is through the public prints to obtain an idea of the individuality of any one of the reigning monarchs, though we appraise many of them with confidence—if not with accuracy.

For instance, the popular conception of Edward of England is that of an affable gentleman, with a fondness for pageantry and show, and tastes that lead him to the race-track rather than to the library. Most of us believe William of Germany to be a cocky little chap, of tireless energy, who makes all knowledge his province in the intervals of being photographed and changing his uniforms, and who pays personal attention to the fireworks that invariably illumine his progress.

We consider Oscar of Sweden to be a man of scholarly tastes, who would rather write books than rule, and too modern in his ideas to make a regal figure on the throne. We think of the aged Emperor of Austria as a pathetic figure, a man of naturally kindly disposition, after a long life into which has entered almost every element of tragedy and unhappiness, ending his career an object of obloquy to many of his subjects.

A pathetic figure also, to our minds, is young Alfonso of Spain, upon whom are visited the sins of his fathers, who was born literally in a cabinet meeting, and in all the twenty years of his life has scarcely been out of sight of his mother or one of his guardians, and who begged in vain for only one day to himself, incognito, during his recent visit to Paris, as the greatest possible boon.

We know of the personal attributes of several other monarchs—that Carlos of Portugal is as likely as any of his contemporaries to meet the fate of Henry I of England; that Leopold of the Belgians is not to be mentioned in polite society; that Victor Emmanuel of Italy is a serious young man who believes that his first duty is to his country instead of to himself.

Mystery Enshrouds Czar and Sultan.

With the foregoing sovereigns we find evidence as to their habits and disposition in the same direction. Of the Czar, however, as of Abdul Hamid of Turkey—who is described by one set of biographers as a high-minded and scholarly recluse, and by others as a sodden and fear-shaken sensualist—we have two pictures at variance with each other in almost every particular. It may prove interesting, therefore, under existing conditions, to compare some recorded impressions of Nicholas II, as made by him upon various persons who have been brought into contact with him.

In the World of To-Day, for January, William T. Stead, editor of the Review of Reviews, of London, one of the ablest and best-known journalists of his time,[Pg 237] and who recently had a personal interview with the Czar, writes of him thus:

A Former Instructor's Impression.

Mr. Stead's view partly corroborates that of a fellow-journalist, Brayley Hodgetts, who, in England, is considered an authority on Russian affairs, having received his earlier education in that country and lived there many years. Mr. Hodgetts wrote of the Czar in the Pall Mall Gazette, just before the war with Japan, as follows:

"Nothing Disconcerts Him."

Dr. Dillon, the St. Petersburg correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, who visited the United States last summer to report the proceedings of the Portsmouth peace conference, telegraphed to his paper immediately after "Bloody Sunday" in January of last year:

As Seen by Two American Business Men.

One of New York's foremost men of affairs, Charles R. Flint, who visited Russia last spring with a view to making an inquiry into the industrial possibilities of the country, was thus quoted in the Herald on his return in June last:

Lewis Nixon, who has recently been in Russia constructing torpedo-boats, and who talked with the Czar at Tsar-koye-Selo so short a time ago as last December, says of him, according to the Sun:

Asked by the reporter: "Did the Czar impress you as a man of great strength of character?" Mr. Nixon replied:

Andrew D. White's Somber Picture.

Not every one who has been brought into personal contact with the Czar names him but to praise, however. In an article that appeared in the Century Magazine just after the beginning of the war with Japan, Andrew D. White, who as minister to Russia during Harrison's administration saw something of the Czar before he succeeded to the throne; says of him:

Referring to the denationalization of Finland, in the same article Mr. White says:

Scathing Censure From Tolstoy.

Nor is Mr. White alone in expressing an uncomplimentary opinion of the Czar. In an article published in the Free Age Press, of England, last August, Count Tolstoy, in acquitting his emperor of the charge of bringing about the war, declares:

Two other Russians, both anonymous—Tolstoy being the only man in Russia who dares openly speak his mind about the throne and its occupant—but whose standing is guaranteed by the publications in which their articles appear, have written of their hereditary ruler in much the same strain.

The first of these articles was published in the London Quarterly Review after the beginning of the war, the author, according to the editor of the review, being "a Russian official of high rank." This writer devotes several pages to a bitter denunciation of the Czar and his entourage. Of Nicholas he says:

[Pg 239]

The other anonymous article appeared in the National Review, of London, last May. The author of it says:

Only a short time before this article appeared the Times had published an interview, obtained by its Paris correspondent with "a prominent European diplomat just arrived from St. Petersburg," who described the Czar as "a little, commonplace, family man, never happier than when playing with his children in their nursery, and quite unequal to the task of government."

The diplomat added that the autocrat of all the Russias was so afraid of the present Count Witte (who was then plain monsieur) that he trembled when the minister came into his presence.

In endeavoring to arrive at a conclusion as to the real character of the Czar from the mass of conflicting evidence cited, it is essential to consider the relation of the witnesses to the subject of our inquiry, in order to ascertain if their testimony is likely to be prejudiced, consciously or otherwise, for or against him.

It should be borne in mind, in the first place, that so effective are the artificial adjuncts that lend grandeur to the occupant of a throne it sometimes occurs that a visitor unaccustomed to such environments is unable to retain the complete use of his ordinary faculties.

The Majesty That Hedges a King.

That is to say that it is often difficult for one who has hitherto pursued the commonplace routine of life, on accomplishing the protracted and arduous negotiations essential to obtain access to a palace, then being introduced with pomp and ceremony into the royal precincts and attended through one stately apartment after another by court functionaries, themselves of high rank and distinguished name, to realize, on being reverently ushered into the kingly presence, that he is face to face with a mere human like himself—nay, that in nine cases out of ten he is the superior of the royal personage in all that constitutes real worth.

It may be remembered that the arrogant Samuel Johnson, in the presence of George III, his inferior in everything that was not superficial, was properly subdued; and that, according to Boswell, the incident of his visit to royalty was one that he "loved to relate with all its circumstances when requested by his friends."

Human vanity also may be considered as a factor in the value of the testimony of him who comes forth from the seats of the mighty to relate his experiences. Does he not speak ill of the great one who has given him an audience, the listener's inference is that the visitor has found something in the manner of his treatment to resent; whereas he who sounds the monarch's praises is put down as having met with a cordial reception. None of these generalizations necessarily apply to the gentlemen whose views concerning Nicholas II have been quoted, however.

William T. Stead's Opportunities.

At fifty-five years of age, and in spite of many bitter experiences, Mr. Stead is still a man of many enthusiasms. He has always had the courage of his convictions, and has known what it is to suffer for them. He has probably never, in the course of a long and hon[Pg 240]orable journalistic career, sought the popular side of a controversy; indeed, during the Boer war he was one of a mere handful of Englishmen to stand out against the entire nation.

As he himself shows, he has had abundant opportunity to form an opinion of Nicholas, and sufficient experience of men to make that opinion valuable. It may be recalled, however, that after spending an hour or two with Richard Croker during a voyage across the Atlantic, when that eminent politician was at the height of his power, Mr. Stead described the boss of Tammany Hall as a benefactor of his countrymen.

No one would think of accusing Mr. Stead of wilful misstatement, but it may be mentioned that, while Mr. Stead informs us that the interview quoted from is the fourth he has had with the Russian sovereign, it is probable that if he had ventured to publish anything detrimental about him in any one of them that one would have been the last. And access to a reigning monarch is a valuable asset to any journalist.

Mr. Hodgetts is a different type of journalist from Mr. Stead. He is of the school which, as a matter of public policy, invariably treats with outward reverence men in high station. More than that, an article like Mr. Hodgetts's appearing in a journal of the standing of the Pall Mall Gazette might secure for its author any degree of consideration on the occasion of a visit to Russia.

Mr. Hodgetts, however, does not pretend to come by his ideas about Nicholas II at first hand, but gives an instructor of the young emperor as his authority; and who ever heard of an instructor having opinions other than complimentary of a royal pupil, even when we get down to the tutors of the princes of the cannibal islands?

Dr. Dillon's rather involved despatch to the Daily Telegraph, quoted above, bears internal evidence of having been produced under some sort of pressure. As a matter of fact, it was his first contribution to his paper after his release from arrest to which he had been subjected by reason of his association with Maxim Gorky and other liberals with whom the Russian officials knew him to be in sympathy. If, in the circumstances, Dr. Dillon allowed his name to be attached to a telegram dictated by Trepoff he is not to be severely blamed.

Both Mr. Flint and Mr. Nixon take an admiring view of the Czar, and agree that he is a man of unusual intelligence, the former crediting him with "imperial poise and kingly dignity." It may be noted, however, that both of these gentlemen come within the category of witnesses who, Dr. Johnson believes, may from gratitude exaggerate the praises of kings.

The unnecessary use of the word "imperial" by both Mr. Flint and Mr. Hodgetts, by the way, seems to be palpable flattery, though either gentleman may have employed it merely for rhetorical purposes.

Mr. White, in his estimate of the character of Nicholas, seems to have come very close to the facts. Mr. White is not only an unprejudiced witness, but a trained observer and thinker. He is an American who has spent a considerable portion of his life in European courts, and thus has come out of the ordeal a truer democrat than ever, and he is, above everything else, a truth-seeker and a truth-speaker.

His testimony is the more valuable in that he violates one of the unwritten laws that help to make diplomacy ridiculous in these times, in venturing to make public property of information obtained in a diplomatic capacity within the awesome precincts of a court.

That Mr. White's picture of Nicholas is true to life is evidenced by the present plight of Russia, as well as by the fact that the American diplomat's views are corroborated, not only by the three Russian witnesses who may be considered as testifying against him, but by Messrs. Flint, Nixon and Stead, who speak in his favor. Mr. Stead declares that during his recent interview with the Czar "his spirits were as high, his courage as calm, and his outlook as cheerful as ever." Only a weakling sovereign, careless and unfit to rule, could remain serene, indifferent, and passive—whether his demeanor be characterized as kingly dignity or the self-complacency of mental and moral impotence—under the conditions that exist in Russia to-day.[Pg 241]

ANECDOTES OF AUTHORS.

A.T. Quiller-Couch told a good Cornish story the other day in presenting certificates to the members of an ambulance class in his own town of Troy.

"Years ago," he said, "an old Cornish fisherman at a similar class was asked how he would treat the apparently drowned.

"'Well,' he replied, 'the first thing we always did was to empty the man's pockets.'"—Westminster Gazette.

When Archibald Clavering Gunter began the series of novels which was to make him famous, he tried in vain to find a publisher. As none of them would have anything to do with his books, he was obliged to bring them out himself.

Shortly after the appearance of "Mr. Barnes of New York," he met the head of one of the big publishing houses, who inquired how his last book was selling.

"Fine," responded the cheerful commercialist; "I've sold two tons of it already."

Thackeray chanced to be dining at his club when a pompous officer of the Guards stopped beside the table and said:

"Haw, Thackeray, old boy, I hear Lawrence has been painting yer portrait!"

"So he has," was the reply.

"Full length?"

"No; full-length portraits are for soldiers, that we may see their spurs. But the other end of the man is the principal thing with authors," said Thackeray.—London Tit-Bits.

Mr. Gladstone was once guilty of deliberately evading an international regulation at the Franco-Italian frontier. He was carrying for his refreshment a basket of fine grapes, which stringent regulations at the time forbade being taken from one country to the other, on account of phylloxera, an insect that attacks the roots and leaves of the grapevines.

Mr. Gladstone's great brain reviewed the situation; he must obey the law, but he was determined to have the grapes, so he sat down then and there on the railway station bench and—ate them.

Irving Bacheller, the author of "Eben Holden," went a little farther north than usual last summer while on his vacation, and penetrated Newfoundland. He caught a good many fish, but this did not prevent his keeping an eye on the natives. He was particularly impressed by the men who spent the day lounging about the village stores.

"What do you fellows do when you sit around the store like this?" he asked of the crowd arranged in a circle of tilted chairs and empty boxes and maintaining a profound silence.

"Well," drawled one of the oldest, "sometimes we set and think, and then again other times we just set."—Woman's Home Companion.

Marie Corelli's domestic quiet at Stratford-on-Avon seemed likely to be destroyed not long since by the opening of a girls' school in the house immediately adjoining her own. The famous novelist found that the recitations of the pupils greatly interrupted her literary work. She stood it, however, as long as she could, but finally wrote a letter of protest to the proprietor of the school. The reply she received from the elderly school-mistress was prompt, and ran as follows:

"Dear Miss Corelli: Judging from the literary work of yours which it has been my privilege to see, I should say that it would be just as well if you were interrupted even more frequently."—New York Times.

Emerson Hough once wrote a story called "Hasenberg's Cross-Eyed Horse," which he sought diligently, but unsuccessfully, to market with the greater number of the known periodicals of the world. At last the story found a resting-place in Mr. Hough's desk. Three years ago, feeling a bit let down physically, he took the advice of a distinguished publisher of New York and put himself in the hands of an osteopathic physician.

Some doubts as to the beneficial results existed, but no doubt whatever as to the size of the bill. Mr. Hough pondered long and seriously on the question of getting even with his doctor. At length he happened to think of his old story of the cross-eyed horse.

"I'll have the osteopath treat the horse's cross-eyes," said the author to himself. Whereupon he rewrote the story, sold it promptly at a good figure, and made it a chapter of his last novel, "Heart's Desire," where it is known as "Science at Heart's Desire."—Bookman.[Pg 242]

WHEN THE MUSE CUTS BAIT.

Fish Don't Always Bite, but Everything Is Grist for the Poet's Mill, So Here Are a Few
Verses Anglers May Con When the Tide is Out and the Boat's
High and Dry on a Mud Flat.

THE COLD-WATER MAN.

By John G. Saxe.

THE ANGLER'S CHANT.

By Isaac M'Lellan.

FISH LINES.

By Jessica H. Lowell.

THREE FISHERS.

[Pg 244]

BULLS IN PARLIAMENT.

Some of the Mixed Metaphors Perpetrated in the English House of Commons Have
Afforded Amusement for the Entire World.

For many years there has been an impression that the linguistic bull is a distinctively Irish animal. The fame of Paddy Bull is world-wide, but the fact is he often is compelled to answer for the sins of his neighbor, Johnnie Bull, who, as a perpetrator of mixed metaphors, is without a peer.

In no deliberative body in the world is the mixed metaphor so much in its element as in the British House of Commons. As examples of its activity in that institution, London Tit-Bits submits the following list:

In his "One Thousand and One Anecdotes" Alfred H. Miles records some exceptionally amusing bulls. Among these are the following:

[Pg 245]

The Part of Chance in Progress.

Fortunate Accidents Frequently Have Opened the Way to the Discovery of
Important Truths Before the Searchlights of Science and
Invention Were Brought Into Play.

Nature has her own ways of telling her secrets to man, and the commonest of those ways is what man chooses to call chance or accident. The words are convenient names and that is about all we know of the phenomena which they are used to describe.

Below are given the stories of a number of important discoveries made by accident. Perhaps it will occur to the reader that none of the discoveries was really accidental, since in each case it was the witnessing of the accident by an intelligent human being which aroused in the mind of that human being the train of thought leading to the discovery. An Australian black might watch a swaying chandelier for ten years, and he would never discover the pendulum. As a rule, special knowledge is required to make "discoveries by accident."

But the apparent working of chance in the incidents told here is obvious:

HATE FOR NAPOLEON TURNED TO LOVE.

Curious Effect Produced on French Newspapers By the Series of Successes That Attended
the Emperor's Progress from Elba to Paris.

There are instances on record of cases in which distance did not "lend enchantment to the view." Of these instances Napoleon's advance to Paris after his escape from Elba affords a striking example.

In 1815 the French newspapers announced the departure of Bonaparte from Elba, his progress through France, and entry into Paris, in the following manner:

[Pg 247]

The Story of the Snow Elinora.

A True Tale of the South Seas That Tells of the Remarkable Experience
of an American Trading-Vessel and Its Skipper's Terrible
Revenge, More Than a Century Ago.

At the time that Commodore Dewey's squadron hurled its showers of lead and steel upon the doomed ships of the Spanish admiral in Manila Bay, scores of mushroom bards uncovered their lyres and described the sensations of the echoes that had the honor of bearing, "for the first time in the history of the world," the sounds of Yankee guns among the startled islands of the Pacific. But the bards were wrong. The echoes performed that office during the first administration of George Washington as President of the United States.

The incident is one which apparently has escaped the notice of historians, else it would have been recalled shortly before the close of last year when political circles in France were somewhat fluttered by a rumor that as a result of a series of secret negotiations the French government had expressed its willingness to sell to the United States the island of Tahiti.

The rumor was soon denied officially, but in the meantime thousands of Americans had taken down their atlases, looked up the situation of the island, and asked themselves what the United States wanted with it anyway.

But there was a little story concerning the island of Tahiti, formerly known as Otaheite, that the atlases and gazetteers did not give them—the story of a Yankee skipper's revenge. It tells how American guns commanded respect for the flag in the South Seas in the year 1790.

The Yankee skipper was Captain Metcalfe, who then was in command of an armed trading vessel named the Elinora. The Elinora was a snow—which, it may be worth while to explain, was an old-fashioned variety of brig. Her crew consisted of Americans, Portuguese, and some natives picked up at Manila. The account of the remarkable adventure is printed in The Gentleman's Magazine, published in London, April, 1791. The writer, who was one of the officers of the Elinora at the time, relates his story with brutal frankness, and his narration resulted in a vast deal of comment abroad that was somewhat galling to the citizens of the new-born republic of the United States.

The account, as published in The Gentleman's Magazine, is as follows:

[Pg 250]

1868—DECORATION DAY—1906.

Among the holidays which are generally observed in the United States, none excites more reverence in the breast of an American, or more respect in the mind of a foreigner, than Decoration (or Memorial) Day.

Decoration Day was first celebrated in 1866, by Union soldiers and sailors in Washington. In the spring of 1868 General John A. Logan, commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, issued an order in which he named May 30 as a day on which all members of the G.A.R. should repair to the cemeteries in the towns in which they lived and there spread flowers on the graves of their dead comrades.

Among the many tributes paid to our dead soldiers none has made a more profound impression on two generations of American people than the speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, on November 19, 1863, on the occasion of the dedication of a part of the famous battle-field as a soldiers' cemetery. It is here given in full, from a manuscript in Lincoln's own handwriting.

LINCOLN'S SPEECH AT GETTYSBURG.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.[Pg 251]

Blue Laws in Old New England.

How the Puritans, Seeking and Finding Toleration for Themselves, Become
Themselves Intolerant—Sunday Observance With a Vengeance—Death
Penalty for Disobedient Children.

Compiled and edited for The Scrap Book.

People who object to modern laws for the regulation of conduct may, after all, consider themselves fortunate. Sometimes anti-cigarette laws are resented as infringements on personal liberty. But what shall we say of a law under which, in a certain colony, the mere possession of dice or playing-cards was punishable by a fine?

The old "Blue Laws" of Connecticut, or, strictly, of New Haven Colony, are not, in their frequently quoted form, true Blue Laws. Attention was first attracted to the collection by the publication of a "General History of Connecticut" in England in 1781. The author was a Tory minister, the Rev. S.A. Peters, who had been forced to flee from the colony. In the circumstances, it is not remarkable that his volume should bear many signs of spiteful exaggeration.

The Rev. Mr. Peters, however, did not invent the Blue Laws, though he has often been charged with so doing. All but two or three of the forty-five are to be found in the works of earlier writers, or, slightly modified, in the statute books of the various New England colonies. Many of them are not in the New Haven statute books. Those which we quote have been carefully selected from the best obtainable authorities.

The Puritans came to America to find a place where they could practise their religion without interference. Here are some of the Blue Laws which indicate the Puritan intolerance of the religion of others:

How strictly the conduct of the individual was made to conform with religious rules may be gathered from the following laws as to Sunday observance, the name of authorities being given in parentheses, in some instances:

Tradition says that a man of New Haven reached home on Sunday, after an absence of several months, and, meeting his wife at the door, kissed her. For thus violating the law he was arraigned before the court and fined.

Children were given excellent reason to mind their parents, as witness the following laws:

Puritan notions of propriety, as enforced by the laws, seem odd to modern minds. Thus we learn on authority of Barber, as well as from Peters, that "every male shall have his hair cut round according to a cap." Sometimes half a pumpkin was used instead of a cap, to guide the hair-cutting of these "Round-heads." Other unique laws follow:

There was an ancient law in Massachusetts that ladies' dresses should be made long enough to hide their shoe-buckles. In 1660 an act of the General Court prohibited short sleeves, and required garments to be lengthened so as to cover the arms to the wrists and gowns to the shoe-buckles; "immoderate great breeches, knots of ribbon, broad shoulder bands, and they be, silk roses, double ruffs and cuffs" were forbidden. In the same colony, in 1653, I. Fairbanks was tried for wearing great boots, but was acquitted.

Laws governing marriage and the marriage relation were rigorous.

Puritan New England was not alone among the colonies in adopting harsh laws. Virginia went to extremes, as appears in the following extract from "Laws of Virginia, at a Grand Assembly held at James City, 23d March, 1662":

Among commercial restrictions we[Pg 253] find an enactment prohibiting the planting of tobacco after July 10, which was done for "the improvement of our only commodity, tobacco, which can no ways be effected but by lessening the quantity and amending the quality."

Another object that the government had in view was to compel the people to become silk-growers against their will. "Be it therefore enacted," says the Legislature, "that every proprietor of land within the colony of Virginia shall, for every hundred acres of land holden in fee, plant upon the said land ten mulberry-trees at twelve feet distance from each other, and secure them by weeding and a sufficient fence from cattle and horses."

Tobacco fines, as usual, were enacted in case the planting and weeding were not duly performed according to the statute; and further:

This act was passed in 1662, and probably continued in force for a long time; but Virginia did not therefore become a silk-growing country, nor has it yet, though many parts are well adapted to raise this commodity. People, we presume, have hitherto found other things more profitable.

The following enactment is a mixture of the barbarous and the ludicrous:

THE PHILOSOPHY OF TROUBLE-SEEKING.

Adversity Has So Many Pleasant Uses That Most of the World's Inhabitants Appear to be
Unable to Wait Until It Comes to Them.

A very large proportion of the inhabitants of earth appear to take no stock in that cheerful assurance, given in the Book of Job, that "Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward." They believe that man cannot have trouble unless he looks for it.

"Seek and ye shall find" is their motto, and they seek trouble because they are philosophers. Apparently Shakespeare was of their ilk, for he said:

Here are some advantages of adversity as pointed out by Punch:

[Pg 254]

THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD.

By THEODORE O'HARA.

Theodore O'Hara (1820-1867) has been said to have produced the one perfect and universal martial elegy that the world has known. "The Bivouac of the Dead" has been translated into almost every European language, and since it was written, more than half a century ago, it has been almost as popular in England as in the United States.

On the field on which was fought one of the most stubbornly contested battles of the Crimean War is a large monument which bears the last four lines of the first verse of O'Hara's poem, and over the gateway of the National Cemetery at Arlington the whole first stanza is inscribed, while there, as at Antietam and other national cemeteries, the entire poem is produced, stanza by stanza, on slabs along the driveways.

O'Hara was a native of Kentucky, and served in the army during the war with Mexico. He wrote "The Bivouac of the Dead" on the occasion of the removal of the bodies of Kentucky soldiers from the field of the battle of Buena Vista to their native State.

At the outbreak of the Civil War O'Hara entered the Confederate army as a colonel. He died in Alabama in 1867, and his body was removed to Kentucky and laid beside those of the soldiers he had commemorated.

Little Glimpses of the 19th Century.

The Great Events in the History of the Last One Hundred Years, Assembled
so as to Present a Nutshell Record.

[Continued from page 163.]

THIRD DECADE.

1821

A congress of the European powers, held at Laibach, in Austria, determined to suppress the liberal movement in Italy and to restore absolute rule in Naples. King Ferdinand of Naples agreed, though he had recently sworn to uphold the constitution. Austrian armies invaded Piedmont and Naples, speedily crushed the revolutionary movement, and the leaders of the popular party were shot or imprisoned.

Both in the Old World and in the New the year was one of political unrest. Brazil rebelled against Portuguese rule, and Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador against Spanish domination. Greece and the Christian tribesmen of the Balkans rose against Turkey. In retaliation, Greeks in Constantinople were strangled; Greek settlements on the Bosporus were wiped out; and the Patriarch of Constantinople, head of the Greek Church, was hanged by the Turks. Russia, on the point of declaring war against Turkey, was restrained by England and Metternich. Both Greeks and Turks carried on a war of indiscriminate slaughter.

Napoleon died at St. Helena, May 5, after nearly six years of captivity. A curious feature of his will was his bequest of ten thousand francs to Cantillon, who had attempted to assassinate Wellington. Queen Caroline of England, wife of George IV, died; serious riots at her funeral. John Keats, English poet, died.

In the United States, James Monroe began his second term as President. Missouri was admitted to the Union. Arrangements were made to open the territory of Liberia, on the west coast of Africa, as a colony for freedmen. Amherst College and the Massachusetts General Hospital were founded.

POPULATION—Washington, D.C., 13,247; New York (including the boroughs now forming Greater New York), 152,056; New York (Manhattan), 123,706; London (Metropolitan District), 1,225,694; London (old city), 125,434; United States (1820), 9,633,822; Great Britain and Ireland (1821), 20,893,584.

RULERS—United States, James Monroe; Great Britain, George IV; France, Louis XVIII; Spain, Ferdinand VII; Prussia, Frederick William III; Russia, Alexander I; Austria, Francis I; Pope Pius VII.

1822

The Turks slaughtered some twenty-five thousand Greeks on the island of Scio (Chios), and sold the surviving women and children into slavery. Constantine Kanaris, unaided, burned the flag-ship of the Turkish fleet. A Turkish army under Dramalis invaded the Grecian mainland, and reached Corinth, but gained no decisive success. Other nations, in response to popular sympathy for the Greeks, intervened to put an end to the war. Spain disturbed by civil war; King Ferdinand VII imprisoned in his own palace. Spanish efforts to reconquer the revolted colonies in South America ended disastrously in the battle of Ayacucho, in which General Sucre, a lieutenant of the great liberator Bolivar, decisively defeated the Spaniards. Brazil became independent of Portugal by a peaceful revolution, which set Dom Pedro, son of the Portuguese king, upon the Brazilian throne with the title of emperor. General Iturbide proclaimed himself Emperor of Mexico.

Percussion-caps invented. Cabs introduced in London, and their use immediately spread. Aleppo, Syria, destroyed by an earthquake; twenty thousand people killed. Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet; Sir William Herschel, astronomer; and Antonio Canova, Italian sculptor, died. Viscount Castlereagh, British statesman, committed suicide.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year.

1823

Louis XVIII of France decided to invade Spain in order to maintain Bourbon rule, which[Pg 258] was threatened by the Spanish liberal movement; the Cortes withdrew to Cadiz, which was besieged and captured by the French. Ferdinand VII, being restored to absolute power, dissolved the Cortes, despite all persuasion annulled the constitution, and implacably punished by death, exile, or imprisonment all who had sided against him. The struggle between the Greeks and the Turks continued with much desperate fighting, but no decisive result. A notable episode of the war was the gallant defense of Missolonghi by Markos Bozzaris. Central America declared itself free from Spanish rule.

In the United States, 1823 is historically memorable as the year in which President Monroe, in his annual message to Congress, enunciated the so-called Monroe Doctrine, which has since been the keynote of American foreign policy. First steam printing-press operated in New York; an earlier attempt made by the London Times was only partially successful. Gaslight introduced in New York. The first boat passed through the Erie Canal from Rochester to New York.

Richard Jenner, discoverer of vaccination, and David Ricardo, political economist, died.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that Pope Pius VII died, August 20, and was succeeded by Cardinai della Genga, who assumed the name of Leo XII.

1824

An Egyptian army, aiding the Sultan of Turkey—to whom Egypt was, and nominally still is, a vassal state—landed in Crete, and nearly exterminated the Greek population. It also captured the island of Kossos, slaughtering most of the inhabitants, but on proceeding to attack Samos it was repulsed and driven back to Crete. The Turks also captured Psara and butchered or enslaved the whole population. The new independent states of South America—Venezuela, New Granada (Colombia), Chile, Peru, and Buenos Ayres (Argentina)—were formally recognized by the United States government. In Mexico, the self-styled Emperor Iturbide was shot, and Santa Anna established a republican government. The first Burmese War was precipitated by Bundula, who invaded Bengal. He was repelled, and the British captured Rangoon.

Lafayette revisited the United States and received a memorable welcome. Robert Owen, the English Fourierist, founded a colony at New Harmony, Indiana. First society for the prevention of cruelty to animals founded in England. Portland cement invented by Joseph Aspden, of Leeds, England. Lord Byron, English poet, died at Missolonghi, Greece, where he was serving as a volunteer in the cause of Grecian liberty.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that Louis XVIII of France died, and was succeeded by his brother, Charles X.

1825

The Turks reduced much of the Grecian territory to a desert, and slaughtered thousands of its inhabitants, the patriot forces having been defeated and scattered. General European resentment was aroused by the inhuman savagery of the Turks. The British forces decisively defeated the Burmese, and added greatly to British territory on the eastern frontier of India.

The first public steam railroad was opened in England, between Stockton and Darlington, George Stephenson himself driving the engine. It was the first thorough and practical test of the locomotive, though in 1813 William Hedley had partially succeeded at the Wyland colliery, and in 1814 Stephenson built an engine that made six miles an hour, but it proved defective. After the success of the new road was undeniable, it was difficult to persuade Parliament to sanction it.

In the United States, Congress decided the disputed Presidential election in favor of John Quincy Adams, John Calhoun becoming Vice-President. John Randolph and Henry Clay fought a resultless duel. Reorganization of United States political parties, the Whigs lining up as supporters of President Adams, with the Democrats, whose main strength lay in the South, as their opponents.

The first boat came through the entire length of the Erie Canal, from Buffalo to New York. Bunker Hill monument begun; Lafayette present; Webster the orator of the day. Congress granted Lafayette two hundred thousand dollars and a township site.

Mutiny of Russian troops at the coronation of Nicholas I put down after much bloodshed. First steam voyage from England to India, by the Cape of Good Hope route, eighty-five days out. Augustine Fresnel, French scientist; Jacques Louis David, French historical painter; and Jean Paul Richter, German author, died.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that Nicholas I succeeded[Pg 259] Alexander I as Czar of Russia, and John Quincy Adams succeeded James Monroe as President of the United States.

1826

Insurrection in Portugal against the infant queen, Maria da Gloria. Insurgents defeated and fled to Spain; aid sent to Portugal by England. The Russian Czar Nicholas began his reign by hanging or exiling to Siberia those who stood for a liberal government and for popular education. The Russians pushed forward in the direction of Persia, defeating the Persian troops and annexing disputed territory. Nicholas demanded from Turkey the autonomy of Servia, Moldavia, and Wallachia; Turkey, still occupied with its Grecian troubles, yielded. In Greece, the Turks captured Missolonghi and Athens, though the Acropolis of the latter city still held out.

Financial and industrial depression prevailed in England; machine-smashing continued; friction matches perfected by John Walker; lime-light discovered by Thomas Drummond; English state lotteries prohibited.

On July 4, while the people of the United States were celebrating the semi-centennial of the Declaration of Independence, two signers of that immortal document, both ex-Presidents, died—Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. A violent anti-Masonic movement further disturbed the American political situation. Bellevue Hospital founded in New York.

Froebel published "The Education of Man." Famous men dying in 1826 were Lindley Murray, grammarian; John Flaxman, sculptor; Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta and hymn-writer; and Prince Rostopchin, by whose orders Moscow was burned in 1812.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year.

1827

The revolt in Portugal finally suppressed, with the assistance of a British army corps. The Acropolis at Athens captured by the Turks. Many foreign volunteers joined the Greek forces, and England, Russia, and France demanded that Turkey should agree to an armistice. As the Turks refused, and continued their atrocities upon the helpless Greeks, Admiral Codrington, commanding twenty-nine English, Russian, and French vessels, attacked the Turkish and Egyptian fleets at Navarino—consisting of seventy warships, forty transports, and four fire-ships—and utterly destroyed them. The Sultan, however, remained obdurate, refusing all demands, and insisting on an indemnity for his ships.

Popular discontent and anti-clerical riots in France; Charles X disbanded the National Guard, and made ineffectual attempts to gag the press.

Joseph Smith, at Palmyra, New York, began to have visions that later developed into Mormonism. Woehler, German chemist, discovered the metal aluminum; Ohm made important discoveries concerning electric currents. Famous men dying in this year were George Canning, English statesman; Laplace, French astronomer; Ludwig van Beethoven, German musician; William Blake, English poet and artist; and Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year.

1828

Russia concluded peace with Persia, exacting an indemnity of twenty million rubles and annexing two provinces. She now moved against Turkey, where the Sultan Mahmoud had incited his people to a holy war. The Russians won some early successes, but were hampered by poor commissariat and transportation service, and could not pass the Turkish fortresses at Silistria, Varna, and Shumla. Meanwhile a French force landed in Greece; the Morea was evacuated by the Turks, and Greece became independent, with Count Joannes Capo d'Istria, a Greek who had been foreign minister at St. Petersburg, as president.

In the United States, Congress passed a bill establishing a protective tariff. The North, formerly agricultural and in favor of free trade, had turned to manufacturing, and, led by Webster, strenuously upheld protection against the Southern leaders, once its advocates, now its enemies. States rights discussions grew stronger. The first American steam railroad constructed at Baltimore. Webster's Dictionary published.

Internal wars in Latin America. The Emperor of China sought to restrain the English from carrying on the opium trade. Daniel O'Connell elected to Parliament, but not permitted to sit, being a Roman Catholic. As a result, however, a general sentiment in favor of Catholic emancipation developed in England. British troops withdrawn from Portugal. Dom Miguel proclaimed King of Portugal; absolutism supreme.[Pg 260]

Famous people dying in 1828 were Franz Schubert, Viennese musician; Lady Caroline Lamb, English author; Dugald Stewart, Scottish philosopher; and Thomas Bewick, engraver.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year.

1829

In the Balkans, the Russian forces renewed the campaign against Turkey, severely defeated the Turks at Kulevtcha, and captured Silistria and Adrianople. Other European powers demanded peace, and on April 14 a treaty was signed giving Russia a protectorate over the newly liberated Danubian principalities, Turkey surrendering all fortified points on the left bank of the Danube.

In the United States, President Jackson began his term by declaring that "to the victors belong the spoils," and instantly removing one hundred and sixty-seven appointees made by John Quincy Adams. Adams absented himself from the inaugural ceremonies. Georgia and South Carolina, in the course of their opposition to the tariff, maintained the right of the States to nullify acts of Congress. Jackson involved in quarrels with his Cabinet. Baltimore and Ohio Railroad opened.

The popular opposition to King Charles of France increased in intensity. The Catholic Emancipation Act passed by the British Parliament. Capital punishment for burglary abolished in England. The burning alive of widows forbidden in India. Sir Charles Gurney invented a steam-driven omnibus, the forerunner of the automobile. Sir John Ross, the British explorer, made the first Arctic voyage in a steamship. Jean Baptiste de Lamarck, French scientist; Karl von Schlegel, German scholar; and Thomas Young and Sir Humphry Davy, English scientists, died.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that Andrew Jackson became President of the United States, and Pope Leo XII died, February 10. Cardinal Castiglione, his successor, took the name of Pius VIII.

1830

France seized Algiers, despite English protests, thus laying the foundation of her vast colonial empire in Africa. The liberals gained a majority in the French chamber, and on an appeal to the people the government was overwhelmingly defeated. On July 24 Charles X dissolved the legislature and made Marshal Marmont commandant of Paris. Next day barricades were thrown up in the streets, merchants, working men, students, and soldiers joining in opposition to the government. Paris was declared in a state of siege, but the Louvre and the Tuileries were captured by the revolutionists. After vainly endeavoring to quiet the country by concessions, Charles abdicated and fled to England. His cousin, Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, son of the so-called Philippe Egalité, was crowned king.

Rebellion began in Brussels, and Holland and Belgium, which had been united as one state since the downfall of Napoleon, formed separate governments. Uprising in Spain against Ferdinand VII, because he had abolished the Salic law, being without male issue and wishing his wife to succeed him. Poland also rose against Russian domination, and set up a provisional government. The Sultan of Turkey formally recognized the independence of Greece.

In the United States Congress, nullification continued to be the absorbing topic; Webster, speaking on it, made his famous oration in reply to Hayne, of South Carolina (January 26, 27). Mormon Church organized at Manchester, New York. First American-built locomotive operated at Baltimore. A portion of Texas was claimed as United States territory by settlers living on the Texan border; Congress refused to take action in the matter.

In England, the Duke of Wellington's ministry resigned, and was succeeded by Earl Grey's. In the British colony of Van Diemen's Land—since renamed Tasmania—the white inhabitants began a war of extermination upon the natives. A cordon was drawn across the island, but failed to accomplish the work. There was further political unrest in Germany; Duke Charles Frederick of Brunswick was expelled from his dominions by a popular uprising, and the people of Saxony forced their king, Antony, to promise them a constitution.

Barthélemy Thimonnier, French tailor, introduced a practical chain-stitch sewing-machine. Joseph Lister contributed greatly to the utility of the microscope. Simon Bolivar, liberator of South America, and Sir Thomas Lawrence, English painter, died.

RULERS—United States, Andrew Jackson; Great Britain, George IV, died June 26, succeeded by William IV; France, Charles X, deposed, succeeded by Louis Philippe; Spain, Ferdinand VII; Prussia, Frederick William III; Russia, Nicholas I; Austria, Francis I; Pope, Pius VIII, died March 31. The Papacy remained vacant until the following year.

[Pg 261]

FROM THE COUNTRY PRESS.

Crumbs of Wit, Wisdom, and History That Have Been Dropped by Rural Scribes in
Whose Hands Pens Are Mightier Than Swords.

A CANADIAN VIEW OF PUNCH.

A copy of Punch's Almanac has been received at this office. It is England's leading exponent of humor. A member of this great journal's staff read it through carefully and studied every drawing. Then he went outside and kicked at a strange dog. The English brand of humor is sedate and stately. It is not intended to be laughed at. Laughter—that is, loud laughter—is excessively rude, don't you know. Punch's Almanac for 1906 is sixpen'orth of humor profundo. The man who would laugh at Punch would go into hysterics at a funeral. Punch's notion of humor is altogether too sublime for any place outside of an English drawing-room.—Bobcaygeon (Ontario) Independent.

CONCERNING MRS. TAYLOR.

Mrs. Herbert Taylor, who is a pleasant and estimable woman, and who can bake the finest cake ever made, having sent us some, and, therefore, making us a judge, and who has a family of nice, clean, polite children, and who plays the piano beautifully, and gives lessons to a few fortunate pupils in our little city, had a tooth pulled Friday.—Waitesburg (Missouri) Record.

A SUGGESTIVE FAREWELL.

An editor of a country paper thus humorously bids farewell to his readers: "The sheriff is waiting for us in the next room, so we have no opportunity to be pathetic. Major Nabbem says we are wanted and must go. Delinquent subscribers, you have much to answer for. Heaven may forgive you, but we never can."—Western Exchange.

A QUIET NIGHT IN PLUSH.

A very pleasant surprise party was given at the 7T Ranch about a week ago, at which every one had a very enjoyable time. Jeff Parish took all honors for the best dancer. Another party was given at Plush last Friday night; a large crowd attended and had a good time, without any fights. One or two bluffs were stirred about, but no hard blows were cast.—Plush correspondence Lakeview Examiner.

FASHION NOTES IN ARIZONA.

Every symptom points to a tendency to spread of style in Tombstone. Among other instances in this direction, the boys bought a pair of beautiful barber-pole suspenders and presented them to the amiable dispenser who shoves the amber extract of cheerfulness over the mahogany of the Parlor Saloon. He promptly donned the innovation, but claimed that he felt like he had a fence-rail on each shoulder. Then, when they became overburdensome, he would unbutton them and permit them to dangle in front, but he finally got them down fine enough to go to church in. Several old-timers, conspicuously court attendants from the other end of the county, have fallen into the habit of wearing boiled shirts, and it looks as if sky-blue overalls might be discarded as a full-dress costume. Getting "powerful tony" in town nowadays.—Tombstone (Arizona) Prospector.

MULE PAWNED FOR LICENSE.

James Richardson, of Roger Mills County, tendered a mule to-day as a chattel to a Cheyenne money-lender in order to get funds with which to get a marriage license and pay the preacher. He had ridden the mule in—eighteen miles—and expected to walk back home in time for the wedding.—Guthrie (Oklahoma) Gazette..

THE REASON.

Our fat friend, Henry Bowles, fell off his front porch Sunday, but was not injured. He landed on his stomach.—Leedsville (Colorado) Light.

IT WONT HAPPEN AGAIN.

Miss Mills, the school-teacher, asked for her salary last Friday night. Of course it created much surprise, but as it was her first offense, the board have decided to give her another trial.—Grafton (North Dakota) Record.[Pg 262]

GATHER YE ROSEBUDS.

A Famous English Lyric of the Seventeenth Century.

By ROBERT HERRICK.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674) has long been known to fame as a writer of some of the most graceful lyrics in the English language. "Merrie England" has had many a laughter-loving parson who, peeping over his Book of Common Prayer, has been unable to resist the temptation to flirt with muses who have been rather more at home in ballrooms, studios, and old-world taverns than in the atmosphere of a country parsonage, but that black-garbed company never sent forth a singer with a lilt so free or a heart so light as Robert Herrick's.

Of Herrick's life comparatively little is known. He took his degree at Cambridge in 1620, and in 1629 Charles I made him vicar of Dean Prior, in Devonshire. From this position he was ousted about the beginning of the Cromwell regime. He went to London then and published "Hesperides," a book of verses. There, it is supposed, he lived a bohemian sort of existence until he was returned to his Dean Prior living by Charles II. He continued there until he died at the age of eighty-four.

This old-time Devonshire vicar was a great worshiper at the shrine of feminine beauty, and was a fond lover of his garden and ale-tankard as well. Like Omar Khayyám, he believed in making hay while the sun shone, and it is this spirit that pervades the exquisite verses which are published herewith.

The Beginnings of Stage Careers.

By MATTHEW WHITE, Jr

A Series of Papers That Will Be Continued from Month to Month
and Will Include All Players of Note.

LACKAYE NEARLY A PRIEST.

On the Way to Rome to Prepare Himself
for Holy Orders He Was Stricken
with Stage Fever.

It is an interesting coincidence that Eben Plympton, now playing a bishop in "The Duel," should have been the unconscious means of keeping a young man out of the priesthood. It was away back in the early days of the Madison Square Theater, when "Esmeralda" was having its big run at that little playhouse and Plympton, as the hero, was a matinée favorite.

In the audience one day was a youth with big gray eyes, which were riveted in charmed attention on Plympton's every movement. The young man was with his father, and was on his way from his home in Washington to Rome, to attend there the school for acolytes, which was to pave the way for him to become a priest. His tomblike cell had already been selected for his occupancy, and, meantime, until the steamer sailed for Havre, the boy was going to the theater every night in New York with his father. He went in the afternoons, too, whenever there was a matinée.

"I wish the theaters were open in the morning," he said one day to his father, who began to wonder whether his son had not mistaken his vocation.

After this they went to see "Esmeralda," and then the sixteen-year-old youth issued his proclamation in these words:

"I have a vocation, but it is for the stage."

"Your vocation is the padded cell," replied his father tersely.

Trip to Rome Abandoned.

But they did not sail for Rome via Havre or any other way, but returned to Washington, and here Wilton Lackaye—for it was he—by way of compromise, began to study law. He gratified his theatrical cravings by joining an amateur dramatic club, of which he was speedily elected president, and which was known as the Lawrence Barrett Society.

Barrett himself was once induced to attend one of the performances, and he asked the young president if he wanted to go on the stage. This was like fire to gunpowder, and Mr. Barrett engaged him for utility work at twenty dollars a week.

The season ran for thirty weeks, so that he received for this period six hundred dollars. As he was obliged to buy his own costumes, and as they cost him seven hundred and twenty dollars in all, he discovered that the only way he could make money out of that company was to be discharged from it. However, his mother helped him. His father hadn't spoken to his son since he went on the stage.

After leaving the Barrett troupe, he went to New York to get another job. As an excuse to visit the agents' offices several times a day he used to write letters to himself in their care. As he was walking out with the letters, he would stop when near the door, and inquire over his shoulder, as though by an afterthought:

"Oh, by the way, have you anything for me to-day?"

He kept this up until the usual "Nothing," in the way of reply, was one day changed to:

"I think there is."

This "find" took him to a stock company in Dayton, Ohio, and after that he went from one company to another until he began to find solid footing at last with Fanny Davenport as Claudio in "Much Ado About Nothing." His first big success was in the title role of "Paul Kauvar" with Rose Coghlan.

Compliment for Brady.

His first part with Lawrence Barrett was one of Paolo's friends in "Francesca da Rimini," done at the Star Theater, New[Pg 264] York—now pulled down—in 1883. He was born in Virginia.

When he comes to play in "Les Misérables" this spring, and has so much to do with the priest in the story, I wonder if he will think many times of what might have been his career had he not gone to the theater so often while waiting for that ship to sail, back there in his 'teens!

Apropos of the production of "Les Misérables," Lackaye was asked some years ago if he had yet found a manager to bring it out for him.

"Bring it out?" he repeated. "I have yet to find one who can pronounce it."

Which, now, in the sequel, is an implied compliment for William A. Brady.

At one stage of his career, Lackaye's chief claim to distinction was his refusal, while a member of Daly's company, to accept a part to which Mr. Daly had assigned him. The part was Oliver in "As You Like It," given to him after he had made a hit as O'Donnell Don in "The Great Unknown."

It was the joking remark made at the time, that for the Oliver Mr. Daly offered him, Lackaye handed him a Roland in the shape of his resignation.

ROYLE TOOK MANY BUFFETS.

Author of "The Squaw Man" Has a Run
of Ill-Luck to Thank for His
Success as a Playwright.

Edwin Milton Royle, author of "The Squaw Man," is another of that countless army brought up to the law and who sidetracked themselves to the stage. He spent his youth in a place that seems to breed actors so freely—Salt Lake City—where he attended the same Presbyterian school as Maude Adams. He is now on the sunny side of fifty, having graduated from Princeton in 1883.

Amateur theatricals at college are responsible for the lure that drew him to the professional footlights. After Princeton he went to continue his studies in Edinburgh, and there he took prominent part in a great performance of the students that had among its spectators some of the most prominent men in Great Britain.

On his return to America he set about studying law in New York, but he did not really settle down to it. The inclination toward the stage had by this time become too strong to be resisted. He began to make a tour of the manager's offices in search of an opening.

In this he had no better luck than usually falls to the lot of the unknown. Men in power along the Rialto did not know what he could do, and it was not to be expected that many of them would take the time to let him prove his abilities. At last, however, he secured, through Eugene W. Presbrey, an interview with the late A.M. Palmer, who gave him the small part of the boy in "Young Mrs. Winthrop," at the Madison Square Theater. From that he drifted to other small parts in the company of Edwin Booth, while the latter was at the Fifth Avenue Theater, and the next season he was with Booth and Barrett during their engagement at the Broadway.

Short on Words.

"You can imagine the nature of my rôles," said Mr. Royle, in relating to me this portion of his career, "by the following incident: At the end of the season it was decided to bring out a souvenir of the engagement, with signatures by all the people in the company. Each signature was to be accompanied by a line from his or her part. When it came my turn to write, my part was so short that all I had to say in the piece went down as my contribution, in the shape of—

"'Oh, Cæsar! No, by no means!'"

And here began the apparent strokes of ill luck which in the end have proved blessings in disguise. The first one was the failure of Mrs. Potter to come to this country for a tour on one occasion when Royle had been engaged in her support. He did not know that he was free until September, when it was too late to seek other positions.

Thrown out of a job, he turned his attention to playwriting, having at one time thought seriously of taking up literature as a profession. He wrote "Friends," and brought it out in New York the next summer, with a capital furnished by a Western uncle.

The play made a hit after a rather slow start, and he played it on the road for some seasons, following it with another, "Captain Impudence," and later by a farce, "My Wife's Husbands." The latter made a decided hit, but Mr. Royle was unable to obtain road bookings for it owing to a glut of attractions kept out of New York by the unfinished condition of two theaters which should have been ready for them. Shows booked for them, with companies all engaged, had to be placed somewhere pending the completion of the Lyceum and the Hudson, so that the dates were all filled by the time it[Pg 265] was known that "My Wife's Husbands" had caught on. In this crisis, Nat Goodwin, who had just come a cropper with a new offering of his own, rose up and bought the rights to the play, but failed to make good in the part himself and shelved it after two weeks' trial.

Meanwhile, one night when he couldn't sleep, Royle got to thinking about the Indians he used to see when a boy at the Indian reservation not far from Salt Lake. And then there formed in his mind the germ idea of "The Squaw Man"—the Englishman tied to the Indian wife when the way was clear for him otherwise to go back home.

The next morning he told his wife—Selena Fetter—of the scheme, adding that he thought of making a play out of it.

"Oh, don't," she begged him. "Can't you think of something pleasanter? You know 'Friends' gained all its success out of the comedy there was in it."

So he did nothing in the matter then, but later, when he was asked to write a skit for the Lambs' Gambol, he used this idea for a short piece, which went so well that it was used afterward at the annual public gambol, where it repeated its hit.

Royle was now in vaudeville, having cut down "Captain Impudence" to the required time limits. He decided to follow this with "The Squaw Man," and here is where once more his good luck in the guise of bad stepped upon the scene.

A Fortunate Rejection.

The vaudeville managers refused positively to consider a sketch containing more than four people; Royle could not cut "The Squaw Man" to fewer than ten. Had either he or they given way, the four-act play that has proved one of the big New York hits of the season might have remained a sketch and spent its life on the road, instead of tarrying for six months on Broadway.

In this deadlock it occurred to Royle that he would expand the play and try it in a new field, but even after this was done he failed to find a purchaser. Nat Goodwin, to whom he sent it first, turned it down, and Charles Frohman could not read it within the time limit set.

But Royle had active agents in his brother actors, who had seen the thing in its Lambs' Club performance, and who were all anxious to play the leading part. Whenever they got the chance they spoke of the piece to their respective managers, and in this way Royle finally got four of these gentlemen to consent to listen to a reading of the play. The result was the purchase of the rights by Mr. Tyler, of the Liebler Company, on terms which have netted Mr. Royle royalties amounting close to a thousand dollars a week.

HOPPER WAS AN "ANGEL."

The Tall Comedian Exchanged His Inheritance
for a Bowl of Thespian Pottage,
but Doesn't Regret It.

De Wolf Hopper's father was a Philadelphia lawyer, and it was intended that Will (his real name) should follow in the paternal footsteps so far as his career was concerned. And, by the way, more men have turned away from the sheepskin to the footlights than from any other one vocation. Reckon them up and you would have a sufficiency of leading men to outfit plays for every theater in New York, oversupplied as that city is with them.

But to return to Hopper.

At the crucial period, the elder Hopper died and the son inherited some money. As there were no automobiles in those days for him to blow it in on, he invested in a much more foolish and infinitely more hazardous luxury—a dramatic company of his own. He had the itch to act, and, being unable to get on the stages controlled by others, he decided that now was his chance to manage a stage of his own.

And what do you suppose he sent himself out in? Nothing less than Robertson's "Caste," with "little Willie" as Eccles! Of course the troupe went to smash, but young Hopper had tasted of the life, and there was no staying him now, not even the Quaker blood in his veins. As a matter of fact, the gulf that was dug between himself and his family in those days has never been bridged, a rare exception nowadays, when even the most austere stand ready to forgive theatrical connection—provided the prodigal has sown success along with his wild oats.

The boy—he was scarcely out of his 'teens—contrived to obtain a job as Pittacus Green in "Hazel Kirke," and a song he sang off stage inspired Annie Louise Cary with the belief that he might do well in opera. He actually studied for some time with the Metropolitan in view, and then compromised by taking the barytone part with McCaull in the Sousa opera, "Desirée." Mark Smith fell ill at a critical moment, and, as it is easier to replace a singer than a comedian, Hopper[Pg 266] was put in his place, and has worked his legs and his antics in excess of his singing voice ever since.

He began his career as a star in "Castles in the Air," not much of a success, but followed it with "Wang," which set him on his feet good and hard.

"Wang" lasted him two seasons, and he followed it with "Panjandrums," to my mind a far more entertaining hodge-podge of music and nonsense. In that view the public did not agree with me, for Hopper lost several thousand dollars in pushing the thing to a long run in New York. After that he became Dr. Syntax in a musical version of "Cinderella at School," which he soon exchanged for the biggest hit in his career—"El Capitan."

MISS ALLEN BEGAN AT TOP.

Essayed Rôle of Leading Woman at Sixteen
in a Play in Which Her Real
and Stage Father Were One.

In one sense of the term, Viola Allen never began at all. She plunged right into the midst of her career. To put it differently, she has been a leading woman from the first time she set foot upon the stage.

Her father and mother were both in the profession. Her father, C. Leslie Allen, is acting yet, being with his daughter in "The Toast of the Town." He was doing the father—a specialty of his—in "Esmeralda" at the Madison Square Theater, when Annie Russell, the leading woman, fell ill.

Viola Allen was at that time barely sixteen—just the age of the character. She had been about the theater a good deal with her father, and in the sudden emergency it was suggested that she should play the part.

"They came to me with the proposition," said Miss Allen, in describing the incident, "and I was so absorbed in the story that I began with all eagerness to study the part, without seeming to realize all that it meant to play it. I shall never forget my sensations on that first night when I walked out on the stage in response to the cue, which, as it happens, was given to me by my own father.

"At rehearsals, of course, the auditorium had been dark and empty. Now it was a glow of light and a sea of faces. This is what I should have expected, but somehow I had failed to do so, and now, being confronted with the thing, my wits seemed to fail me.

"My lines went from my memory, but luckily I did not have to speak them until I was close to my father. He, realizing that I must have stage fright, whispered the words to me, and as soon as I heard them I was all right again. I plunged back into my absorption in the story I was helping to depict, and went through to the end without any further trouble."

With "Joe" Jefferson.

After her term in "Esmeralda," Miss Allen played Shakespeare leads with John McCullough and the elder Salvini, and then became first assistant to Joseph Jefferson in "The Rivals" and "The Heir at Law." From this she passed under the management of Charles Frohman, and helped lay the foundations of his fortunes, along with Henry Miller, in "Shenandoah," and from its second season and for many years thereafter these two were closely identified with the conspicuous position won for the stock company at the Empire, where Miss Allen's Rosamund in "Sowing the Wind" took the town by storm.

In this connection, it is an odd circumstance that the part Miss Allen most enjoyed playing in the whole Empire list was that of Audrie Lisden in Henry Arthus Jones's "Michael and his Lost Angel," a play that ran for only twelve nights in New York, and had been no more successful in London.

Miss Allen handed in her resignation from the company after the production of "The Conquerors," a play of which she wholly disapproved, and she was then starred by the Lieblers in "The Christian," the dramatizing of which was her own suggestion, and from which several people reaped fortunes. When, three years ago, she deliberately cut loose from the Hall Caine type of drama in order to follow her own personal inclinations and take up Shakespeare, she was looked upon almost as a martyr to the cause of art.

Monotony the Bane of the Footlights.

And yet the outcome would seem to prove that she was only a shrewd woman of good common sense, after all. Her managers followed "The Eternal City" with Hall Caine's "Prodigal Son," and lost mighty sums upon it.

It is interesting to recall that before Miss Allen finally decided on "The Christian" with which to inaugurate her stellar career she was minded to use a version of Longfellow's "Courtship of Miles Standish". She is very bookishly inclined, and has said that there are two things she pre[Pg 267]fers to acting—to be an author or to serve as a trained nurse.

Nine years ago, when she was at the height of her success at the Empire, she was asked by a certain paper to state what in her opinion was the one drawback to the full enjoyment of life on the stage, and her prompt answer was "Monotony, the deadly routine engendered by the long run."

WILSON CAME WITH CLOGS.

Comedian Might Have Gone in for Tragedy
Had the Wind Not Blown His
Credentials Into a River.

According to a story current some years since, which may or may not be a press-agent yarn, the only reason Francis Wilson is not a tragedian is because a gust of wind blew into the Schuylkill his letter of introduction to the late E.L. Davenport. Like Hopper, Wilson is a native of Philadelphia, where he was born in 1854. The nimbleness of his legs sent him to the stage, where he began as a clog-dancer with a minstrel troupe in the farce, "The Virginia Mummy."

It was during this engagement that he conceived the ambition for the legitimate and obtained from his manager the letter to Davenport, which blew out of his hand as he was reading it on a bridge in Fairmount Park. He claims he hadn't the courage to ask for another one, but struck out for better things later on in a different direction. But this was after he had formed a partnership with James Mackin, with whom he toured the country as one of a song-and-dance team. The two played a long engagement in New York with the San Francisco Minstrels at their "opera house," now the Princess Theater.

Instructor in Fencing.

Around the Centennial year he returned to Philadelphia and set about realizing his aspirations by obtaining an engagement in very small parts at Mrs. John Drew's Arch Street Theater. This brought him in only ten dollars a week against the fifty he had been getting for clog work. But he made himself popular with the members of the company, and eked out his pay by giving them lessons in fencing and boxing, arts in which he was specially proficient. Indeed, he had just won in a contest, at what is now Madison Square Garden, the title of amateur champion swordsman of America.

These friends in the Drew company aided him in obtaining better parts, and the next year he was engaged as utility man at the Chestnut Street Theater, which then had a stock company. A year with Annie Pixley and another as the Baron in "Our Goblins" brought him up to his engagement as comedian by McCaull for the Casino troupe, where he made his notable hit as Cadeaux, one of the two thieves in "Erminie."

It was but natural that his prodigious success should suggest the idea to Wilson of striking out for himself. He had saved a great deal of money, and the year after Hopper became a star Wilson launched out at the same theater—the Broadway—in "The Oolah."

Snatched Victory from Defeat.

The curtain fell on what even the actors were forced to admit to themselves and one another was a failure. Gloom thick as night pervaded the region behind. For a while Wilson sat there with his head in his hands; then his indomitable courage asserted itself, and he sprang up with the exclamation:

"We have got to make this go. Let's get to work at it."

His company stood nobly by him. His leading woman, Marie Jansen, and the other principals, begged him not to consider them in the alterations, but to give the public more of himself. With much cutting and slashing of the book and innumerable rehearsals, the thing was whipped into shape, and turned out one of the successes of the season. It was followed the next year by "The Merry Monarch," which placed Wilson securely on the throne he continued to occupy until last year, when he decided to step down—or rather up, as no doubt he would prefer to put it, from musical to straight comedy.

Apropos of Wilson's beginnings, a well-known writer on dramatic topics was "reminiscing" some time since, and recalled the wigging he had received in his early days—along in '72 or '73—when he was a very young city editor of the Buffalo Evening Post. He had gone to Dan Shelby's Terrace Theater, and devoted considerable space the next day to praising the work of two men who took part in the variety show there current, and it was for this eulogy he had been called down by his chief. One of the men was Denman Thompson, who was using "Uncle Josh" in its crude, one-act form; the other was Francis Wilson, who was doubling song and dance with Jimmie Mackin.[Pg 268]

TWO IMMORTAL HYMNS.

Interesting Stories of the Origin of World-famous Sacred Lyrics Which Have Been Sung in Every Country on the Globe.

The two favorite hymns, "Lead, Kindly Light," and "Abide With Me," were each written in circumstances which lend them peculiar significance. In 1833 John Henry Newman, afterward Cardinal Newman, left England in extreme ill-health. "My servant thought I was dying," he relates, "and begged for my last directions. I gave them as he wished; but I said: 'I shall not die, for I have not sinned against light, I have not sinned against light!' I never have been able to make out at all what I meant." This was just before he started upon his journey. He was still in a very feeble state, suffering from bodily weakness and mental depression, when one June evening he was becalmed in an orange-boat on the Mediterranean, in sight of Garibaldi's home on the island of Caprera. As he lay there he composed the beautiful hymn "Lead, Kindly Light."

Did the language of his fevered mind flash back upon him as he saw the shore lights on Caprera? The lights led the boat safely to harbor, and he returned to England. The mental darkness with which he had been struggling also cleared for him, for it was just after his return that the Oxford Movement began. He was a leader in that movement until he went over to the Church of Rome in 1845.

Henry Francis Lyte, curate of Brixham, in Devonshire, England, from 1823 until his death, in 1847, wrote many "hymns for his little ones, and hymns for his hardy fishermen, and hymns for sufferers like himself." His health declined as the years passed, and it was seen that the climate of the Devon coast was too harsh for his frail constitution. But he was loath to leave his parishioners, and, lingering at his post, could not be persuaded to go to Italy until it was too late for the change to save him.

He held a last communion service and delivered his solemn, pathetic parting words. Then, dragging himself wearily to his room, he wrote the hymn "Abide With Me," a most affecting expression of the faith of a dying man. Not long afterward he died at Nice, France. Of all his hymns, "Abide With Me" is best remembered. Like "Lead, Kindly Light," it is a hymn of comfort and help. Always the most helpful words have come from those who have themselves most felt the need of help.

LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT.

By CARDINAL NEWMAN.

ABIDE WITH ME.

By HENRY FRANCIS LYTE.

FROM THE LIPS OF ANANIAS.

A Collection of Tales for Which Belief is Respectfully Solicited, But Which Sophisticated
Readers are Likely to Cite as Evidence of the Fact That Truth Has Lost
Much of Her Youthful Charm and Many Admirers.

SPEAKING OF FLOODS.

An old soldier, whose cherished name was that of two of our presidents, died here in Washington recently, and his passing reminds me of a story I once heard him tell. Veteran of '61 as he was, he had listened patiently to the very long story a youthful veteran of the Spanish War told. The account of hardships left him unmoved.

"Just after the Johnstown flood, my boy," said he, "there was a man in the next world who went about telling everybody how that Johnstown affair had sent him where he was.

"His listeners hung on his words—all of them, that is, except a quiet looking little man who seemed so little impressed that every time the Johnstown man got through he merely looked bored and said, 'Oh, shucks!'

"The Johnstown man got tired of it after a while. It got on his nerves to have anybody act as if what happened at Johnstown wasn't of any importance. No matter how he told his story, the quiet looking little man merely said, 'Oh, shucks.'

"At last the Johnstown man spoke to a fellow who had been there a long time about it.

"'Say,' said he, 'who is that little man who keeps saying "shucks?"'

"'Who?' said the man who had been there a long time. 'Do you mean the fellow over there? Why his name's Noah.'"—Washington Post.

STRONG WATER.

Mr. Edison was once asked to send a phonographic cylinder to a fair. He sent this reply:

"You ask me to send you a phonographic cylinder and to say a few words to the audience. I do not think the audience would take any interest in dry scientific subjects, but perhaps they might be interested in a little story that a man sent me on a phonographic cylinder the other day from San Francisco. In the year 1873 a man from Massachusetts came to California with a chronic liver complaint. He searched all over the coast for a mineral spring to cure the disease, and finally he found, down in the San Joaquin valley, a spring the waters of which almost instantly cured him. He therefore started a sanitarium, and people all over the world came and were quickly cured. Last year this man died, and so powerful had been the action of the waters that they had to take his liver out and kill it with a club.—Edison."—Woman's Home Companion.

A SILVER-PLATED CAT.

A remarkable freak of lightning occurred some time ago near the small village of New Salem, Vermont. Arent S. Vandyck occupies an old mansion, in the parlor of which hung a collection of Revolutionary swords, one of which was heavily plated with silver. On the night in question a terrific thunderstorm burst, and one particularly heavy crash stunned every one in the house.

Quickly recovering, the family hastened to see what damage had been done. Suddenly the youngest Vandyck pointed to an old-fashioned sofa. There lay what seemed to be a silver cat, curled up as comfortable as could be. Each glittering hair was separate and distinct, and each silvery bristle of the whiskers described as graceful a curve as if in life.

Turning to the sword on the wall just above the sofa, father and son remarked that the plated sword had been stripped of all its silver, the scabbard was a strip of blackened steel and the hilt had gone altogether.

The family cat had been electroplated by lightning. A round hole in the window-pane, about the size of a half-crown, showed where the electric fluid had entered. There was a charred streak showing the path of the lightning as it made its way to the sword, down which it passed to the sofa, carrying with it the fused silver, which it scientifically deposited on that magnetic animal, the cat.

Of course, the cat was instantly killed,[Pg 271] and therefore remained in the position in which the lightning found her peacefully sleeping. It is thought the plating of the cat's surface will prevent decay, and that she may be retained permanently among the family curiosities. Local scientists, the Bostonians say, are quite puzzled by the occurrence, and the electroplated cat is being investigated by a member of the Albany Institute.—Newtowne Calendar.

A SUPERSENSITIVE HEN.

"Yas," declared a new man on the country court jury, to his companions the other noon, "I maintain that hens has souls jest as does human bein's. Mebbe not all on 'em, but now an' then you strike a bird that has reasonin' faculties an' feelin' an' 'motions jest as you an' me. They has their joys and their sorrers. So, I says, they has souls. Now here's proof.

"I had a fine Plymouth Rock what was a master layer. When th' other hens was takin' a vacation she was 'tendin' ter business an' layin' aigs. Well, one day she come out a-cacklin' an' I went in ter git th' aig.

"It 'pears that while she was tellin' me about it, my boy, Willum, took th' aig an' put a hard-boiled one in its place. Did it fer a joke on me, ye know. I noticed the aig looked kinder queer an' cracked her open. Well, if ever ye see a hen look dumfounded! She thought she'd layed it.

"I thought nothin' 'bout it till I looked down, an' hanged if she wasn't cryin'. Big tears was rollin' down her furrered cheeks an' I tried ter tell her that she was all right, that 'twas some of Willum's horseplay, but she jest sighed kinder human like an' walked slowly off. Th' next day she didn't lay, but moped 'round the' yard sad an' homesick like. Well, it went on fer a week an' still nary an aig.

"Then I noticed she was quittin' th' feed I was givin' her, an' tryin' ter pick up a livin'. She had a conscience, ye see, an' wouldn't eat boughten food 'less she could repay me in the right kind of aigs.

"She knowed she wan't looked to ter lay hard-boiled aigs as she thought she'd done. 'Father,' says Willum one day, 'I guess we're goin' ter lose that hen. She's thinkin' up something desperate. I just caught her 'xamin' a scythe out back of th' barn.'

"Well, we tried our best ter cheer her up, but 'twan't no use. One day I found her in the tool-house, dead. She had dragged her neck across a scythe, cuttin' her throat.

"Over in one corner was a aig jest left ter show me that she intended ter do what's right. But if ever I see'd a clear case of suicide, her death was one. So, I says, some' hens has feelin's jest as does a human bein', an' therefore I 'low they has souls."—Rochester Post-Express.

PEWTER'S INDUSTRIAL BUGS.

Silas Pewter, of Hendricks township, Chautauqua County, who discovered the adamant bug, is getting rich fast off his discovery. It was in August when he discovered the bugs, and several weeks had passed away before he could get things shaped up to "colonize" them properly.

He now has at least a dozen different "herds" of them. Some are removing the stone from fields for farmers by eating it into sand and letting it go back into the soil when the ground is plowed. Pewter gets two dollars an acre for this.

One herd is working on the road in Harrison township cutting the rock out of the hills. Several herds are at work in the sandpaper factory between Elgin and Hewins.

Mr. Pewter says his sandpaper mill has paid well, but thinks he will close it down during the spring months because so many road overseers want the bugs for spring road-work.

He says he is about to close a contract with the Santa Fé for the mastication of the big boulders along its tracks west of Elgin. This, he says, will give the bugs work all season.—Kansas City Journal.

A HAIR-RAISING TALE.

"The 'beauty doctor' told a good story about her hair-restorer," said a well-known Akron business man Monday, "but I know a better one. With several other men I was associated, several years ago, in the manufacture of a restorer. We had a fakir selling the remedy, and this was one of his tales:

"'A woman came to me the other day for her eighth bottle. She said she liked the taste of it so well. I was frightened and took her into a private office and told her to show me her tongue. She stuck it out and there was a half-inch of hair on it. To keep from hurting the business we had to feed her camphor balls all that summer to keep the moth out of her stomach.'"—Akron (Ohio) Times-Democrat.[Pg 272]

The Stolen Letter.

By WILKIE COLLINS.

I served my time—never mind in whose office—and I started in business for myself in one of our English country towns, I decline stating which. I hadn't a farthing of capital, and my friends in the neighborhood were poor and useless enough, with one exception. That exception was Mr. Frank Gatliffe, son of Mr. Gatliffe, member for the county, the richest man and the proudest for many a mile round about our parts.

Stop a bit, Mr. Artist, you needn't perk up and look knowing. You won't trace any particulars by the name of Gatliffe. I am not bound to commit myself or anybody else by mentioning names. I have given you the first that came into my head.

Well, Mr. Frank was a stanch friend of mine, and ready to recommend me whenever he got the chance. I had contrived to get him a little timely help—for a consideration, of course—in borrowing money at a fair rate of interest; in fact, I had saved him from the Jews.

The money was borrowed while Mr. Frank was at college. He came back from college, and stopped at home a little while, and then there got spread about all our neighborhood a report that he had fallen in love, as the saying is, with his young sister's governess, and that his mind was made up to marry her.

What! you're at it again, Mr. Artist! You want to know her name, don't you? What do you think of Smith?

Speaking as a lawyer, I consider report, in a general way, to be a fool and a liar. But in this case report turned out to be something very different. Mr. Frank told me he was really in love, and said upon his honor (an absurd expres[Pg 273]sion which young chaps of his age are always using) he was determined to marry Smith, the governess—the sweet, darling girl, as he called her; but I'm not sentimental, and I call her Smith, the governess.

Well, Mr. Frank's father, being as proud as Lucifer, said "No," as to marrying the governess, when Mr. Frank wanted him to say "Yes." He was a man of business, was old Gatliffe, and he took the proper business course. He sent the governess away with a first-rate character and a spanking present, and then he looked about him to get something for Mr. Frank to do.

While he was looking about Mr. Frank bolted to London after the governess, who had nobody alive belonging to her to go to but an aunt—her father's sister. The aunt refuses to let Mr. Frank in without the squire's permission. Mr. Frank writes to his father, and says he will marry the girl as soon as he is of age, or shoot himself.

Up to town come the squire and his wife and his daughter, and a lot of sentimentality, not in the slightest degree material to the present statement, takes place among them; and the upshot of it is that old Gatliffe is forced into withdrawing the word No and substituting the word Yes.

I don't believe he would ever have done it, though, but for one lucky peculiarity in the case. The governess's father was a man of good family—pretty nigh as good as Gatliffe's own. He had been in the army; had sold out; set up as a wine merchant—failed—died; ditto his wife, as to the dying part of it. No relation, in fact, left for the squire to make inquiries about but the father's sister—who had behaved, as old Gatliffe said, like a thoroughbred gentlewoman in shutting the door against Mr. Frank in the first instance.

So, to cut the matter short, things were at last made up pleasant enough. The time was fixed for the wedding, and an announcement about it—Marriage in High Life and all that—put into the county paper. There was a regular biography, besides, of the governess's father, so as to stop people from talking—a great flourish about his pedigree, and a long account of his services in the army; but not a word, mind ye, of his having turned wine merchant afterward. Oh, no—not a word about that!

I knew it, though, for Mr. Frank told me. He hadn't a bit of pride about him. He introduced me to his future wife one day when I met him out walking, and asked me if I did not think he was a lucky fellow. I don't mind admitting that I did, and that I told him so.

Ah! but she was one of my sort, was that governess. Stood, to the best of my recollection, five feet four. Good lissom figure, that looked as if it had never been boxed up in a pair of stays. Eyes that made me feel as if I was under a pretty stiff cross-examination the moment she looked at me. Fine red, kiss-and-come-again sort of lips. Cheeks and complexion——

No, Mr. Artist, you wouldn't identify her by her cheeks and complexion, if I drew you a picture of them this very moment. She has had a family of children since the time I'm talking of; and her cheeks are a trifle fatter, and her complexion is a shade or two redder now than when I first met her out walking with Mr. Frank.

The marriage was to take place on a Wednesday. I decline mentioning the year or the month. I had started as an attorney on my own account—say six weeks, more or less, and was sitting alone in my office on the Monday morning before the wedding-day, trying to see my way clear before me and not succeeding particularly well, when Mr. Frank suddenly bursts in, as white as any ghost that ever was painted, and says he's got the most dreadful case for me to advise on, and not an hour to lose in acting on my advice.

"Is this in the way of business, Mr. Frank?" says I, stopping him just as he was beginning to get sentimental. "Yes or no, Mr. Frank?" rapping my new office paper-knife on the table, to pull him up short all the sooner.

"My dear fellow"—he was always familiar with me—"it's in the way of business, certainly; but friendship——"

I was obliged to pull him up short again, and regularly examine him as if he had been in the witness-box, or he would have kept me talking to no purpose half the day.[Pg 274]

"Now, Mr. Frank," says I, "I can't have any sentimentality mixed up with business matters. You please to stop talking, and let me ask questions. Answer in the fewest words you can use. Nod when nodding will do instead of words."

I fixed him with my eye for about three seconds, as he sat groaning and wriggling in his chair. When I'd done fixing him I gave another rap with my paper-knife on the table to startle him up a bit. Then I went on.

"From what you have been stating up to the present time," says I, "I gather that you are in a scrape which is likely to interfere seriously with your marriage on Wednesday?"

He nodded, and I cut in again before he could say a word:

"The scrape affects your young lady, and goes back to the period of a transaction in which her late father was engaged, doesn't it?"

He nods, and I cut in once more:

"There is a party, who turned up after seeing the announcement of your marriage in the paper, who is cognizant of what he oughtn't to know, and who is prepared to use his knowledge of the same to the prejudice of the young lady and of your marriage, unless he receives a sum of money to quiet him? Very well. Now, first of all, Mr. Frank, state what you have been told by the young lady herself about the transaction of her late father. How did you first come to have any knowledge of it?"

"She was talking to me about her father one day so tenderly and prettily, that she quite excited my interest about him," begins Mr. Frank; "and I asked her, among other things, what had occasioned his death. She said she believed it was distress of mind in the first instance; and added that this distress was connected with a shocking secret, which she and her mother had kept from everybody, but which she could not keep from me, because she was determined to begin her married life by having no secrets from her husband."

Here Mr. Frank began to get sentimental again, and I pulled him up short once more with the paper-knife.

"She told me," Mr. Frank went on, "that the great mistake of her father's life was his selling out of the army and taking to the wine-trade. He had no talent for business; things went wrong with him from the first. His clerk, it was strongly suspected, cheated him——"

"Stop a bit," says I. "What was that suspected clerk's name?"

"Davager," says he.

"Davager," says I, making a note of it. "Go on, Mr. Frank."

"His affairs got more and more entangled," says Mr. Frank; "he was pressed for money in all directions; bankruptcy, and consequent dishonor (as he considered it), stared him in the face. His mind was so affected by his troubles that both his wife and daughter, toward the last, considered him to be hardly responsible for his own acts. In this state of desperation and misery, he——" Here Mr. Frank began to hesitate.

We have two ways in the law of drawing evidence off nice and clear from an unwilling client or witness. We give him a fright, or we treat him to a joke. I treated Mr. Frank to a joke.

"Ah!" says I, "I know what he did. He had a signature to write; and, by the most natural mistake in the world, he wrote another gentleman's name instead of his own—eh?"

"It was to a bill," says Mr. Frank, looking very crestfallen, instead of taking the joke. "His principal creditor wouldn't wait till he could raise the money, or the greater part of it. But he was resolved, if he sold off everything, to get the amount and repay——"

"Of course," says I; "drop that. The forgery was discovered. When?"

"Before even the first attempt was made to negotiate the bill. He had done the whole thing in the most absurdly and innocently wrong way. The person whose name he had used was a stanch friend of his and a relation of his wife's—a good man as well as a rich one. He had influence with the chief creditor, and he used it nobly. He had a real affection for the unfortunate man's wife, and he proved it generously."

"Come to the point," says I. "What did he do? In a business way, what did he do?"

"He put the false bill into the fire, drew a bill of his own to replace it, and[Pg 275] then—only then—told my dear girl and her mother all that had happened. Can you imagine anything nobler?" asks Mr. Frank.

"Speaking in my professional capacity, I can't imagine anything greener," says I. "Where was the father? Off, I suppose?"

"Ill in bed," says Mr. Frank, coloring. "But he mustered strength enough to write a contrite and grateful letter the same day, promising to prove himself worthy of the noble moderation and forgiveness extended to him, by selling off everything he possessed to repay his money debt. He did sell off everything, down to some old family pictures that were heirlooms; down to the little plate he had; down to the very tables and chairs that furnished his drawing-room. Every farthing of the debt was paid; and he was left to begin the world again, with the kindest promises of help from the generous man who had forgiven him. It was too late. His crime of one rash moment—atoned for though it had been—preyed upon his mind. He became possessed with the idea that he had lowered himself forever in the estimation of his wife and daughter, and——"

"He died," I cut in. "Yes, yes, we know that. Let's go back for a minute to the contrite and grateful letter that he wrote. My experience in the law, Mr. Frank, has convinced me that if everybody burned everybody else's letters, half the courts of justice in this country might shut up shop. Do you happen to know whether the letter we are now speaking of contained anything like an avowal or confession of the forgery?"

"Of course it did," says he. "Could the writer express his contrition without making some such confession?"

"Quite easy, if he had been a lawyer," says I. "But never mind that; I'm going to make a guess—a desperate guess, mind. Should I be altogether in error if I thought that this letter had been stolen; and that the fingers of Mr. Davager, of suspicious commercial celebrity, might possibly be the fingers which took it?"

"That is exactly what I wanted to make you understand," cried Mr. Frank.

"How did he communicate the interesting fact of the theft to you?"

"He has not ventured into my presence. The scoundrel actually had the audacity——"

"Aha!" says I. "The young lady herself! Sharp practitioner, Mr. Davager."

"Early this morning, when she was walking alone in the shrubbery," Mr. Frank goes on, "he had the assurance to approach her, and to say that he had been watching his opportunity of getting a private interview for days past. He then showed her—actually showed her—her unfortunate father's letter; put into her hands another letter directed to me; bowed, and walked off, leaving her half dead with astonishment and terror. If I had only happened to be there at the time!" says Mr. Frank, shaking his fist murderously in the air, by way of a finish.

"It's the greatest luck in the world that you were not," says I. "Have you got that other letter?"

He handed it to me. It was so remarkably humorous and short, that I remember every word of it at this distance of time. It began in this way:

"A clever fellow that," says I, putting the letter into my private drawer.

"Clever!" cries Mr. Frank, "he ought to be horsewhipped within an inch of his life. I would have done it myself; but she made me promise, before she told me a word of the matter, to come straight to you."

"That was one of the wisest promises you ever made," says I. "We can't afford to bully this fellow, whatever else we may do with him. Do you think I[Pg 276] am saying anything libelous against your excellent father's character when I assert that if he saw the letter he would certainly insist on your marriage being put off, at the very least?"

"Feeling as my father does about my marriage, he would insist on its being dropped altogether, if he saw this letter," says Mr. Frank with a groan. "But even that is not the worst of it. The generous, noble girl herself says that if the letter appears in the paper, with all the unanswerable comments this scoundrel would be sure to add to it, she would rather die than hold me to my engagement, even if my father would let me keep it."

As he said this his eyes began to water. He was a weak young fellow, and ridiculously fond of her. I brought him back to business with another rap of the paper-knife.

"Hold up, Mr. Frank," says I. "I have a question or two more. Did you think of asking the young lady whether, to the best of her knowledge, this infernal letter was the only written evidence of the forgery now in existence?"

"Yes, I did think directly of asking her that," says he; "and she told me she was quite certain that there was no written evidence of the forgery except that one letter."

"Will you give Mr. Davager his price for it?" says I.

"Yes," says Mr. Frank, quite peevish with me for asking him such a question. He was an easy young chap in money matters, and talked of hundreds as most men talk of sixpences.

"Mr. Frank," says I, "you came here to get my help and advice in this extremely ticklish business, and you are ready, as I know without asking, to remunerate me for all and any of my services at the usual professional rate. Now, I've made up my mind to act boldly—desperately, if you like—on the hit or miss, win all or lose all principle—in dealing with this matter.

"Here is my proposal. I'm going to try if I can't do Mr. Davager out of his letter. If I don't succeed before to-morrow afternoon, you hand him the money, and I charge you nothing for professional services. If I do succeed, I hand you the letter instead of Mr. Davager, and you give me the money instead of giving it to him. It's a precious risk for me, but I'm ready to run it. You must pay your five hundred anyway. What do you say to my plan? Is it Yes, Mr. Frank, or No?"

"Hang your questions!" cries Mr. Frank, jumping up; "you know it's Yes ten thousand times over. Only you earn the money and——"

"And you will be too glad to give it to me. Very good. Now go home. Comfort the young lady—don't let Mr. Davager so much as set eyes on you—keep quiet—leave everything to me—and feel as certain as you please that all the letters in the world can't stop your being married on Wednesday."

With these words I hustled him off out of the office, for I wanted to be left alone to make my mind up about what I should do.

The first thing, of course, was to have a look at the enemy. I wrote to Mr. Davager, telling him that I was privately appointed to arrange the little business matter between himself and "another party" (no names!) on friendly terms; and begging him to call on me at his earliest convenience.

At the very beginning of the case, Mr. Davager bothered me. His answer was, that it would not be convenient to him to call till between six and seven in the evening. In this way, you see, he contrived to make me lose several precious hours, at a time when minutes almost were of importance. I had nothing for it but to be patient, and to give certain instructions, before Mr. Davager came, to my boy Tom.

There never was such a sharp boy of fourteen before, and there never will be again, as my boy Tom. A spy to look after Mr. Davager was, of course, the first requisite in a case of this kind; and Tom was the smallest, quickest, quietest, sharpest, stealthiest little snake of a chap that ever dogged a gentleman's steps and kept cleverly out of range of a gentleman's eyes.

I settled it with the boy that he was not to show at all when Mr. Davager came; and that he was to wait to hear me ring the bell when Mr. Davager left. If I rang twice, he was to show the gentleman out. If I rang once, he was to[Pg 277] keep out of the way, and follow the gentleman wherever he went till he got back to the inn. Those were the only preparations I could make to begin with; being obliged to wait, and let myself be guided by what turned up.

About a quarter to seven my gentleman came.

In the profession of the law we get somehow quite remarkably mixed up with ugly people, blackguard people, and dirty people. But far away the ugliest and dirtiest blackguard I ever saw in my life was Mr. Alfred Davager. He had greasy, white hair and a mottled face. He was low in the forehead, fat in the stomach, hoarse in the voice, and weak in the legs. Both his eyes were bloodshot, and one was fixed in his head. He smelled of spirits, and carried a toothpick in his mouth.

"How are you? I've just done dinner," says he; and he lights a cigar, sits down with his legs crossed, and winks at me.

I tried at first to take the measure of him in a wheedling, confidential way; but it was no good. I asked him, in a facetious, smiling manner, how he had got hold of the letter. He only told me in answer that he had been in the confidential employment of the writer of it, and that he had always been famous since infancy for a sharp eye to his own interests.

I paid him some compliments; but he was not to be flattered. I tried to make him lose his temper; but he kept it in spite of me. It ended in his driving me to my last resource—I made an attempt to frighten him.

"Before we say a word about the money," I began, "let me put a case, Mr. Davager. The pull you have on Mr. Francis Gatliffe is, that you can hinder his marriage on Wednesday. Now, suppose I have got a magistrate's warrant to apprehend you in my pocket? Suppose I have a constable to execute it in the next room? Suppose I bring you up to-morrow—the day before the marriage—charge you only generally with an attempt to extort money, and apply for a day's remand to complete the case? Suppose, as a suspicious stranger, you can't get bail in this town? Suppose——"

"Stop a bit," says Mr. Davager. "Suppose I should not be the greenest fool that ever stood in shoes? Suppose I should not carry the letter about me? Suppose I should have given a certain envelope to a certain friend of mine in a certain place in this town? Suppose the letter should be inside that envelope, directed to old Gatliffe, side by side with a copy of the letter directed to the editor of the local paper? Suppose my friend should be instructed to open the envelope, and take the letters to their right addresses, if I don't appear to claim them from him this evening? In short, my dear sir, suppose you were born yesterday, and suppose I wasn't?" says Mr. Davager, and winks at me again.

He didn't take me by surprise, for I never expected that he had the letter about him. I made a pretense of being very much taken aback, and of being quite ready to give in. We settled our business about delivering the letter, and handing over the money, in no time.

I was to draw out a document, which he was to sign. He knew the document was stuff and nonsense, just as well as I did, and told me I was only proposing it to swell my client's bill. Sharp as he was, he was wrong there. The document was not to be drawn out to gain money from Mr. Frank, but to gain time from Mr. Davager. It served me as an excuse to put off the payment of the five hundred pounds till three o'clock on the Tuesday afternoon. The Tuesday morning Mr. Davager said he should devote to his amusement, and asked me what sights were to be seen in the neighborhood of the town. When I had told him, he pitched his toothpick into my grate, yawned, and went out.

I rang the bell once—waited till he had passed the window—and then looked after Tom. There was my jewel of a boy on the opposite side of the street, just setting his top going in the most playful manner possible. Mr. Davager walked away up the street toward the market-place. Tom whipped his top up the street toward the market-place, too.

In a quarter of an hour he came back, with all his evidence collected in a beautifully clear and compact state. Mr.[Pg 278] Davager had walked to a public-house just outside the town, in a lane leading to the highroad.

On a bench outside the public-house there sat a man smoking. He said, "All right?" and gave a letter to Mr. Davager, who answered "All right!" and walked back to the inn. In the hall he ordered hot rum-and-water, cigars, slippers, and a fire to be lit in his room. After that he went up-stairs, and Tom came away.

I now saw my road clear before me—not very far on, but still clear. I had housed the letter, in all probability for that night, at the Gatliffe Arms. After tipping Tom, I gave him directions to play about the door of the inn, and refresh himself when he was tired at the tart-shop opposite, eating as much as he pleased on the understanding that he crammed all the time with his eye on the window. If Mr. Davager went out, or Mr. Davager's friend called on him, Tom was to let me know. He was also to take a little note from me to the head chambermaid—an old friend of mine—asking her to step over to my office, on a private matter of business, as soon as her work was done for that night.

After settling these little matters, having half an hour to spare, I turned to and did myself a bloater at the office fire, and had a drop of gin-and-water hot, and felt comparatively happy.

When the head chambermaid came, it turned out, as good luck would have it, that Mr. Davager had drawn her attention rather too closely to his ugliness, by offering her testimony of his regard in the shape of a kiss.

I no sooner mentioned him than she flew into a passion; and when I added, by way of clinching the matter, that I was retained to defend the interests of a very beautiful and deserving young lady (name not referred to, of course) against the most cruel underhand treachery on the part of Mr. Davager, the head chambermaid was ready to go any lengths that she could safely to serve my cause.

In a few words I discovered that Boots was to call Mr. Davager at eight the next morning, and was to take his clothes down-stairs to brush as usual. If Mr. D—— had not emptied his own pockets overnight, we arranged that Boots was to forget to empty them for him, and was to bring the clothes down-stairs just as he found them. If Mr. D——'s pockets were emptied, then of course, it would be necessary to transfer the searching process to Mr. D——'s room. Under any circumstances, I was certain of the head chambermaid; and under any circumstances, also, the head chambermaid was certain of Boots.

I waited till Tom came home, looking very puffy and bilious about the face; but as to his intellect, if anything, rather sharper than ever. His report was uncommonly short and pleasant. The inn was shutting up; Mr. Davager was going to bed in rather a drunken condition; Mr. Davager's friend had never appeared.

I sent Tom (properly instructed about keeping our man in view all the next morning) to his shake-down behind the office-desk, where I heard him hiccoughing half the night, as even the best boys will, when overexcited and too full of tarts.

At half-past seven next morning I slipped quietly into Boots's pantry.

Down came the clothes. No pockets in trousers. Waistcoat pockets empty. Coat pockets with something in them. First, handkerchief; secondly, bunch of keys; thirdly, cigar-case; fourthly, pocketbook. Of course I wasn't such a fool as to expect to find the letter there, but I opened the pocketbook with a certain curiosity, notwithstanding.

Nothing in the two pockets of the book but some old advertisements cut out of newspapers, a lock of hair tied round with a dirty bit of ribbon, a circular letter about a loan society, and some copies of verses not likely to suit any company that was not of an extremely free-and-easy description. On the leaves of the pocketbook, people's addresses scrawled in pencil, and bets jotted down in red ink. On one leaf, by itself, this queer inscription:

"Mem. 5 Along. 4 Across."

I understood everything but those words and figures, so of course I copied them out into my own book.

Then I waited in the pantry till Boots had brushed the clothes, and had taken[Pg 279] them up-stairs. His report when he came down was, that Mr. D—— had asked if it was a fine morning. Being told that it was, he had ordered breakfast at nine and a saddle-horse to be at the door at ten, to take him to Grimwith Abbey—one of the sights in our neighborhood which I had told him of the evening before.

"I'll be here, coming in by the back way, at half-past ten," says I to the head chambermaid.

"What for?" says she.

"To take the responsibility of making Mr. Davager's bed off your hands for this morning only," says I.

"Any more orders?" says she.

"One more," says I. "I want to hire Sam for the morning. Put it down in the order-book that he's to be brought round to my office at ten."

In case you should think Sam was a man, I'd better perhaps tell you he was a pony. I'd made up my mind that it would be beneficial to Tom's health, after the tarts, if he took a constitutional airing on a nice hard saddle in the direction of Grimwith Abbey.

"Anything else?" said the head chambermaid.

"Only one more favor," says I. "Would my boy Tom be very much in the way if he came, from now till ten, to help with the boots and shoes, and stood at his work close by this window which looks out on the staircase?"

"Not a bit," says the head chambermaid.

"Thank you," says I; and stepped back to my office directly.

When I had sent Tom off to help with the boots and shoes, I reviewed the whole case exactly as it stood.

There were three things Mr. Davager might do with the letter. He might give it to his friend again before ten—in which case Tom would most likely see the said friend on the stairs. He might take it to his friend, or to some other friend, after ten—in which case Tom was ready to follow him on Sam the pony. And, lastly, he might leave it hidden somewhere in his room at the inn—in which case I was all ready for him with a search-warrant of my own granting, under favor always of my friend the head chambermaid.

So far as I had my business arrangements all gathered up nice and compact in my own hands. Only two things bothered me—the terrible shortness of the time at my disposal, in case I failed in my first experiments for getting hold of the letter, and that queer inscription which I had copied out of the pocketbook:

"Mem. 5 Along. 4 Across."

It was the measurement most likely of something, and he was afraid of forgetting it; therefore it was something important. Query—something about himself? Say "5" (inches) "along"—he doesn't wear a wig. Say "5" (feet) "along"—it can't be coat, waistcoat, trousers, or underclothing. Say "5" (yards) "along"—it can't be anything about himself, unless he wears round his body the rope that he's sure to be hanged with one of these days. Then it is not something about himself.

What do I know of that is important to him besides? I know of nothing but the Letter. Can the memorandum be connected with that? Say, yes. What do "5 along" and "4 across" mean, then? The measurement of something he carries about with him? or the measurement of something in his room? I could get pretty satisfactorily to myself as far as that; but I could get no further.

Tom came back to the office, and reported him mounted for his ride. His friend had never appeared. I sent the boy off, with his proper instructions, on Sam's back—wrote an encouraging letter to Mr. Frank to keep him quiet—then slipped into the inn by the back way a little before half-past ten. The head chambermaid gave me a signal when the landing was clear. I got into his room without a soul but her seeing me, and locked the door immediately.

The case was, to a certain extent, simplified now. Either Mr. Davager had ridden out with the letter about him, or he had left it in some safe hiding-place in his room. I suspected it to be in his room, for a reason that will a little astonish you—his trunk, his dressing-case, and all the drawers and cupboards, were left open. I knew my customer, and I thought this extraordinary carelessness on his part rather suspicious.[Pg 280]

Mr. Davager had taken one of the best bedrooms at the Gatliffe Arms. Floor carpeted all over, walls beautifully papered, four-poster, and general furniture first-rate. I searched, to begin with, on the usual plan, examining everything in every possible way, and taking more than an hour about it. No discovery.

Then I pulled out a carpenter's rule which I had brought with me. Was there anything in the room which—either in inches, feet, or yards—answered to "5 along" and "4 across"? Nothing. I put the rule back in my pocket—measurement was no good, evidently. Was there anything in the room that would count up to 5 one way and 4 another, seeing that nothing would measure up to it?

I had got obstinately persuaded by this time that the letter must be in the room—principally because of the trouble I had had in looking after it. And persuading myself of that, I took it into my head next, just as obstinately, that "5 along" and "4 across" must be the right clue to find the letter by—principally because I hadn't left myself, after all my searching and thinking, even so much as the ghost of another guide to go by.

"Five along"—where could I count five along the room, in any part of it?

Not on the paper. The pattern there was pillars of trellis-work and flowers, enclosing a plain green ground—only four pillars along the wall and only two across. The furniture? There were not five chairs or five separate pieces of any furniture in the room altogether. The fringes that hung from the cornice of the bed? Plenty of them, at any rate.

Up I jumped on the counterpane, with my pen-knife in my hand. Every way that "5 along" and "4 across" could be reckoned on those unlucky fringes I reckoned on them—probed with my pen-knife—scratched with my nails—crunched with my fingers. No use; not a sign of a letter; and the time was getting on—oh, Lord! how the time did get on in Mr. Davager's room that morning.

I jumped down from the bed, so desperate at my ill luck that I hardly cared whether anybody heard me or not. Quite a little cloud of dust rose at my feet as they thumped on the carpet.

"Hullo!" thought I, "my friend the head chambermaid takes it easy here. Nice state for a carpet to be in, in one of the best bedrooms at the Gatliffe Arms." Carpet! I had been jumping up on the bed, and staring up at the walls, but I had never so much as given a glance down at the carpet. Think of me pretending to be a lawyer, and not knowing how to look low enough!

The carpet! It had been a stout article in its time; had evidently began in a drawing-room; then descended to a coffee-room; then gone up-stairs altogether to a bedroom. The ground was brown, and the pattern was bunches of leaves and roses speckled over the ground at regular distances. I reckoned up the bunches. Ten along the room—eight across it. When I had stepped out five one way and four the other, and was down on my knees on the center bunch, as true as I sit on this chair I could hear my own heart beating so loud that it quite frightened me.

I looked narrowly all over the bunch, and felt all over it with the ends of my fingers, and nothing came of that. Then I scraped it over slowly and gently with my nails. My second finger-nail stuck a little at one place. I parted the pile of the carpet over that place, and saw a thin slit which had been hidden by the pile being smoothed over it—a slit about half an inch long, with a little end of brown thread, exactly the color of the carpet ground, sticking out about a quarter of an inch from the middle of it.

Just as I laid hold of the thread gently, I heard a footstep outside of the door.

It was only the head chambermaid. "Haven't you done yet?" she whispers.

"Give me two minutes," says I, "and don't let anybody come near the door—whatever you do, don't let anybody startle me again by coming near the door."

I took a little pull at the thread, and heard something rustle. I took a longer pull, and out came a piece of paper, rolled up tight like those candle-lighters that the ladies make. I unrolled it—and, by George there was the letter!

The original letter! I knew it by the[Pg 281] color of the ink. The letter that was worth five hundred pounds to me! It was all that I could do to keep myself at first from throwing my hat into the air and hurrahing like mad. I had to take a chair and sit quiet in it for a minute or two, before I could cool myself down to my proper business level. I knew I was safely down again when I found myself pondering how to let Mr. Davager know that he had been done by the innocent country attorney, after all.

It was not long before a nice little irritating plan occurred to me. I tore a blank leaf out of my pocketbook, wrote on it with my pencil, "Change for a five-hundred-pound note," folded up the paper, tied the thread to it, poked it back into the hiding-place, smoothed over the pile of the carpet, and then bolted off to Mr. Frank.

He in his turn bolted off to show the letter to the young lady, who first certified to its genuineness, then dropped it into the fire, and then took the initiative for the first time since her marriage engagement, by flinging her arms round his neck, kissing him with all her might, and going into hysterics in his arms.

So at least Mr. Frank told me.

It is evidence, however, that I saw them married with my own eyes on the Wednesday; and that while they went off in a carriage-and-four to spend the honeymoon, I went off on my own legs to open a credit at the Town and County Bank with a five-hundred-pound note in my pocket.

As to Mr. Davager, I can tell you nothing more about him, except what is derived from hearsay evidence, which is always unsatisfactory evidence.

My inestimable boy, Tom, although twice kicked off by Sam the pony, never lost hold of the bridle, and kept his man in sight from first to last. He had nothing particular to report except that on the way out to the Abbey Mr. Davager had stopped at a public-house, had spoken a word or two to his friend of the night before, and had handed him what looked like a bit of paper. This was no doubt a clue to the thread that held the letter, to be used in case of accidents.

In every other respect Mr. D. had ridden out and ridden in like an ordinary sightseer. Tom reported him to me as having dismounted at the hotel about two. At half-past I locked my office-door, nailed a card under the knocker with "not at home till to-morrow" written on it, and retired to a friend's house a mile or so out of the town for the rest of the day.

Mr. Davager, I have been since given to understand, left the Gatliffe Arms that same night with his best clothes on his back, and with all the valuable contents of his dressing-case in his pockets. I am not in a condition to state whether he ever went through the form of asking for his bill or not; but I can positively testify that he never paid it, and that the effects left in his bedroom did not pay it either.

When I add to these fragments of evidence that he and I have never met (luckily for me, you will say) since I jockeyed him out of his bank-note, I have about fulfilled my implied contract as maker of a statement with you, sir, as hearer of a statement. Observe the expression, will you? I said it was a Statement before I began; and I say it's a Statement now I've done. I defy you to prove it's a Story! How are you getting on with my portrait? I like you very well, Mr. Artist; but if you have been taking advantage of my talking to shirk your work, as sure as you're alive I'll split upon you to the Town Council!

Books.

[Pg 282]

A HOROSCOPE OF THE MONTHS.

By MARION Y. BUNNER.

THIRD INSTALMENT.

The Fate of Those Born Under the Sign "Taurus," Representing the Period Between
April 20 and May 19.

Compiled and edited for The Scrap Book.

TAURUS: THE BULL.
APRIL 20 to MAY 19.
CUSP: APRIL 19 to APRIL 25.

The constellation Taurus, the second sign of the zodiac, is the positive pole of the Earth Triplicity, governing the neck and throat. The higher attributes are secretiveness and will. It is a fixed, feminine, vernal, earthy sign.

A person born in the period of the cusp, when the sun is on the edge of the sign, does not receive the full benefits of the individuality of either sign, but partakes of the characteristics of Taurus and of Aries, the sign preceding.

This is a very hard sign to overcome. It endows those born under it with a stubborn disposition. It makes them rebellious to advice, abnormally proud, difficult of approach, and fond of opposition to the point of starting a controversy for the sole purpose of coming out ahead.

Slow to anger and slow to calm down, the subjects of Taurus will harbor a grudge and will be hard to reconcile. They are fearless, kind, and generous.

This sign gives its subjects a mind straightforward, just, inquisitive, and shrewd. It makes them hard to fathom, and endows them with the essential qualities of a diplomat. Their passions are fiery, but not persistent.

They are generally very much attached to their own sentiments and opinions; they are taciturn and tenacious; their will is steady, persevering, and determined to reach its purpose. They are fit to command, and have great power of concentration.

These people are usually broad-shouldered and of powerful build. The face is full, the complexion ruddy, the nose and mouth wide. The physical temperament will be bilious-sanguine in a southern latitude and lymphatic-nervous in the north. They will find their best friends among those born under Capricorn and Libra.

Their dominant faults are anger, cruelty, and stubbornness. When excited they are utterly unmanageable. Taurus people are exacting, domineering, and selfish in their demands.

The union of those born under Taurus and Capricorn is most auspicious; next best is Taurus and Libra. The children of the first union will be physically strong and robust, while those of the second will be very bright intellectually.

Most children born under this sign are obstinate and wilful. They have great powers of endurance, and are natural conquerors. They are quick to follow the example of their elders, and should be carefully guarded in such respects.

The governing planet of the month is Venus, and the gems are moss-agate and emerald. The astral colors are red and yellow; the flower, jonquil.

Friday is one of the fortunate days for a Taurus subject. May and July are his luckiest months. The ancient Hebraic tribe under which he would be classed was that of Asher, and the ruling angel of the sign is Asmodel.

May, the fifth month of our modern year, was the third of the old Roman calendar. The name is of doubtful origin. It was considered unlucky among the Romans to contract marriage during this month—a superstition which still survives. In the Roman Catholic Church May is known as "the month of Mary."

In England the first day of the month is called May Day, when, according to ancient custom, all ranks of the people rose at dawn and went "a Maying" to welcome the advent of spring.

In the United States, May 30 (Decoration Day) is a legal holiday in most of the States.

General Grant and the Duke of Wellington are good examples of the determination and endurance of the Taurus nature.