The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, May 1913, by Various.

Transcriber’s Notes

This e-text is based on ‘The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine,’ from May 1913. Even though this edition includes an Index for the complete volume (May–October 1913), page links have been created for the May issue only.

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

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

THE CENTURY
ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY
MAGAZINE

THE HAYES-TILDEN CONTEST FOR THE PRESIDENCY

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

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

In the first administration of Mr. Cleveland, there were present at a dinner-table in Washington, the President being of the party, two leading Democrats and two leading Republicans who had sustained confidential relations to the principals and played important parts in the drama of the Disputed Succession. These latter had been long upon terms of personal intimacy. The occasion was informal and joyous, the good-fellowship of the heartiest. Inevitably the conversation drifted to the Electoral Commission, which had counted Tilden out and Hayes in, and of which each of the four had some story to tell. Beginning in banter, with interchanges of badinage, it presently fell into reminiscence, deepening as the interest of the listeners rose to what under different conditions might have been described as unguarded gaiety, if not imprudent garrulity. The little audience[Pg 4] was rapt. Finally, Mr. Cleveland raised both hands and exclaimed, “What would the people of this country think if the roof could be lifted from this house and they could hear these men!” And then one of the four, a gentleman noted for his wealth both of money and humor, replied, “But the roof is not going to be lifted from this house, and if any one repeats what I have said I will denounce him as a liar.”

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

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

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

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

Why persons occupying the most exalted positions should have ventured to compromise their reputations by this deliberate consummation of a series of crimes which struck at the very foundations of the Republic, is a question which still puzzles many of all parties who have no charity for the crimes themselves. I have already referred to the terrors and desperation with which the prospect of Tilden’s election inspired the great army of office-holders at the close of Grant’s administration. That army, numerous and formidable as it was, was comparatively limited. There was a much larger and justly influential class who were apprehensive that the return of the Democratic party to power threatened a reactionary policy at Washington, to the undoing of some or all the important results of the war. These apprehensions were inflamed by the party press until they were confined to no class, but more or less pervaded all the Northern States. The Electoral Tribunal, consisting mainly of men appointed to their positions by Republican[Pg 5] Presidents, or elected from strong Republican States, felt the pressure of this feeling, and from motives compounded in more or less varying proportions of dread of the Democrats, personal ambition, zeal for their party, and respect for their constituents, reached the conclusion that the exclusion of Tilden from the White House was an end which justified whatever means were necessary to accomplish it. They regarded it like the emancipation of the slaves, as a war measure.

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

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

Yet there were many and serious handicaps. The light and leading of the historic Democratic party which had issued from the South were in obscurity and abeyance, while most of those surviving who had been distinguished in the party conduct and counsels were disabled by act of Congress. Of the few prominent Democrats left at the North, many were tainted by what was called Copperheadism (sympathy with the Confederacy). To find a chieftain wholly free from this contamination, Democracy, having failed of success in presidential campaigns not only with Greeley but with McClellan and Seymour, was turning to such disaffected Republicans as Chase, Field, and Davis of the Supreme Court. At last Heaven seemed to smile from the clouds[Pg 7] upon the disordered ranks and to summon thence a man meeting the requirements of the time. This was Samuel Jones Tilden.

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

It was such a man whom, in 1874, the Democrats nominated for Governor of New York. To say truth, it was not thought by those making the nomination that he had much chance to win. He was himself so much better advised that months ahead he prefigured very near the[Pg 8] exact vote. The afternoon of the day of election one of the group of friends, who even thus early had the Presidency in mind, found him in his library confident and calm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

From a photograph owned by F. H. Meserve

THOMAS F. BAYARD
of Delaware

From a photograph by Brady

FRANCIS KERNAN
of New York

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell

ALLEN G. THURMAN
of Ohio

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell

JOSEPH E. MCDONALD
of Indiana

From a photograph by Brady

JOHN W. STEVENSON
of Kentucky

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

❏
LARGER IMAGE

Luck was with me. It went with a bang—not, however, wholly without [Pg 10]detection. The Indianians, devoted to Hendricks, were very wroth. “See that fat man behind the hat telling him what to say,” said one to his neighbor, who answered, “Yes, and wrote it for him, too, I’ll be bound.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell

R. L. GIBSON
of Louisiana

From a photograph

WILLIAM S. HOLMAN
of Indiana

From a photograph by Sarony

HENRY WATTERSON
of Kentucky

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell

SAMUEL J. RANDALL
of Pennsylvania (Speaker)

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell

EPPA HUNTON
of Virginia

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell

L. Q. C. LAMAR
of Mississippi

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell

HENRY B. PAYNE
of Ohio

❏
LARGER IMAGE

After the early edition of the “Times” had gone to press certain members of the editorial staff were at supper, very much cast down by the returns, when a messenger brought a telegram from Senator Barnum of Connecticut, financial head of the Democratic National Committee, asking for the “Times’s” latest news from Oregon, Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina. But for that unlucky telegram [Pg 12]Tilden would probably have been inaugurated President of the United States.

The “Times” people, intense Republican partizans, at once saw an opportunity. If Barnum did not know, why might not a doubt be raised? At once the editorial in the first edition was revised to take a decisive tone and declare the election of Hayes. One of the editorial council, Mr. John C. Reid, hurried to Republican[Pg 13] Headquarters in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, which he found deserted, the triumph of Tilden having long before sent everybody to bed. Mr. Reid then sought the room of Senator Zachariah Chandler, Chairman of the National Republican Committee. While upon this errand he encountered in the hotel corridor “a small man wearing an enormous pair of goggles, his hat drawn over his ears, a greatcoat with a heavy military cloak, and carrying a gripsack and newspaper in his hand. The newspaper was the ‘New-York Tribune,’” announcing the election of Tilden and the defeat of Hayes. The new-comer was Mr. William E. Chandler, even then a very prominent Republican politician, just arrived from New Hampshire and very much exasperated by what he had read.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE Electoral Commission Bill was considered with great secrecy by the Joint Committees of the House and Senate. Its terms were in direct contravention of Mr. Tilden’s plan. This was simplicity itself. He was for asserting, by formal resolution, the conclusive right of the two Houses acting concurrently to count the electoral vote and determine what should be counted as electoral votes, and for denying, also by formal resolution, the pretension set up by the Republicans that the President of the Senate had lawful right to assume that function. He was for urging that issue in debate in both Houses and before the country. He thought that if the attempt should be made to usurp for the President of the Senate a power[Pg 18] to make the count, and thus practically to control the Presidential election, the scheme would break down in process of execution.

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

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

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

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

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

When the consideration of the disputed votes before the Commission had proceeded far enough to demonstrate the likelihood that its final decision would be for Hayes, a movement of obstruction and delay, “a filibuster,” was organized by about forty Democratic members of the House. It proved rather turbulent than effective. The South stood very nearly solid for carrying out the agreement in good faith. “Toward the close the filibuster received what appeared formidable reinforcement from the Louisiana Delegation.” This was in reality merely a[Pg 19] “bluff,” intended to induce the Hayes people to make certain concessions touching their State government. It had the desired effect. Satisfactory assurances having been given, the count proceeded to the end—a very bitter end, indeed, for the Democrats.

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

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

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

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

MR. TILDEN accepted the result with equanimity. “I was at his house,” says John Bigelow,[Pg 20] “when his exclusion was announced to him, and also on the fourth of March when Mr. Hayes was inaugurated, and it was impossible to remark any change in his manner, except perhaps that he was less absorbed than usual and more interested in current affairs.” His was an intensely serious mind; and he had come to regard the Presidency as rather a burden to be borne—an opportunity for public usefulness—involving a life of constant toil and care, than as an occasion for personal exploitation and rejoicing.

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

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

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

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

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

THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I beg your pardon,” he repeated,[Pg 22] “you mentioned, I believe, that you heard me thinking as you were passing on the street below?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I must not linger,” he said. “These are my hours for labor, and I have so much to do, so much, it will keep me busy for a thousand years. I have only begun. Perhaps some day I may discover the elixir of wisdom. Perhaps I may yet solve the secret of genius. Perhaps”—His voice lowered—“I shall one day unveil the secret of the soul. The vial I leave with you, for I see in your mind that you cannot reach a conclusion now. On the attached label you will find instructions for its use. Think, ponder, and be sure before you set out on that flowery backward way. Be sure that you want youth again, with all that youth means, before you start back to find it.” He laid his hand[Pg 25] in Carringford’s for an instant, and was gone.

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

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

Youth, life renewed, yes, that is what[Pg 26] it was, its very essence; to taste of that elixir, and start back along the flowery, sunlit way of which his guest had spoken; to feel the blood start more quickly in his veins, a new spring in his muscles; to know that a new bloom had come into his cheek, a new light into his eye.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CONDITION OF NEW YORK HALF A CENTURY AGO

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

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

Let us go back to the year following[Pg 32] the Civil War. The only paving in New York then was of cobblestones, and many streets were unpaved. All were in filthy condition, being irregularly cleaned by contractors, who shirked their work. There was no general system for the removal of ashes and garbage, and these were thrown loosely upon the streets. In three quarters of the city, cellars were in foul condition, often flooded with water and undrained. At that time, incredible as it may seem to the modern New Yorker, few houses were connected with sewers. Offensive trades, such as the boiling of bones, offal, and fat, were carried on without hindrance. There were numerous cesspools and cisterns overflowing with filth. Much of the city’s milk was obtained from cows kept in dark, crowded, ill-ventilated stables and fed upon swill from distilleries. The animals were diseased, and the milk was unclean, unwholesome, and frequently was watered.

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

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

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

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

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

It is apparent that in such a city Nature cannot be left to her own devices. When man deserts Nature, she promptly retaliates by deserting man. And, in substitution of so-called “natural” living, there[Pg 33] has been developed the present-day mode, built up of scientific analysis, skilful treatment, and thorough organization.

A NEW DEPARTURE

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

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

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

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

SAVING THE BABIES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The material agencies, efficient and[Pg 36] marvelous as they have become, have not been the chief aid in the reduction of the death-rate, especially among children. Public education has really had more to do with it. Even those in direct charge of the work in infant mortality do not assert that the entire credit for the satisfactory progress should be given to the milk stations, the dispensaries, and the hospitals. Pamphlets, lectures, newspaper articles, and school-room instruction are at the base of the advance. Publicity has proved to be a greater force than milk inspection. Certain popular newspapers in New York have the power to achieve definite radical reforms in modes of living whenever they choose to prosecute a vigorous campaign. Just as the newspapers can expose corruption in any of the city’s departments, so almost as readily they can uproot or at least substantially lessen certain sanitary evils. A case in point is their campaign against the fly last summer. By means of wide-spread and vigorous news articles and editorials they succeeded in so rousing the mass of the people that the fly pest was visibly reduced. Health Department officials testify readily to this.

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

THE STUDY OF SEX HYGIENE

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

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

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

THE FIGHT AGAINST TYPHOID GERMS

IN one more campaign the immediate future seems likely to yield great results perhaps almost as important as those resulting from the discovery of antitoxin. This will be from the use of the new anti-typhoid serum, which the Department of Health in December, 1912, decided to use as extensively as possible in New York. This decision followed close on the War Department’s public declaration that the anti-typhoid serum had proved a success, virtually eliminating the disease from the army. In 1909 there were more cases of typhoid in the United States than of the plague in India, despite the fact that India’s population is two and a half times[Pg 37] that of the United States. In 1907 there were more cases of typhoid in New York than of pellagra in Italy, though Italy’s population is six times that of New York. In this work, as in children’s diseases and in tuberculosis, New York is a pioneer, and yet New York is better off regarding typhoid than many other American cities, for it has a lower typhoid death-rate than Boston, Chicago, Washington, or Philadelphia; yet its typhoid death-rate is higher than that of London, Paris, Berlin, or Hamburg.

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

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

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

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

OPINIONS OF AN EXPERT

DR. LEDERLE, Health Commissioner of New York City, says that while typhoid vaccination is likely to prove of untold benefit, other specific improvements should be made. There should be a more perfect control of the milk-supply. At present there is no central testing-station. He recommends also an improved method of sewage disposal, either by treatment or by carrying it farther out to sea, thus preventing pollution of the harbor. There should be a drainage of surrounding land to do away with mosquitos; improved methods of street-cleaning that would result in the prevention of flying dust-clouds; and the open garbage receptacles and dumps should be abolished in favor of cremation of all refuse. The campaign against the fly must be carried on more vigorously every year, and immediate steps are to be taken for the protection of all foods from fly contamination. This will be an extension of the control of food, together with the proper filtration of the public water-supply. Dr. Lederle says further that increased hospital facilities for contagious diseases are needed. There will be further popular education in sanitary matters, special stress being laid on the need of fresh air in homes, schools, factories, offices, theaters, and churches; and a comprehensive publication will be made, chiefly for the aid of the poorer classes, of the comparative nutritive and cost values of foods; and further changes in the customs of the time, due to these plans and to other activities, will result in a simpler manner of living. This should render overeating less frequent and re[Pg 38]duce the consumption of alcohol and medicines.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not all of us would consider even Michelangelo’s arrogance entirely justified, but it is not only the Michelangelos who have had this belief in themselves. Apparently the confidence of progress has been as great in times that now seem to us[Pg 40] decadent as in times that we think of as truly progressive. The past, or at least the immediate past, has always seemed “out of date,” and each generation, as it made its entrance on the stage, has plumed itself upon its superiority to that which was leaving it. The architect of the most debased baroque grafted his “improvements” upon the buildings of the high Renaissance with an assurance not less than that with which David and his contemporaries banished the whole charming art of the eighteenth century. Van Orley and Frans Floris were as sure of their advance upon the ancient Flemish painting of the Van Eycks and of Memling as Rubens himself must have been of his advance upon them.

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

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

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

The art of architecture is later in its beginning than that of poetry, for it can exist only when men have learned to build solidly and permanently. A nomad may be a poet, but he cannot be an architect; a herdsman might have written the Book of Job, but the great builders are dwellers in cities. But since men first learned to build they have never quite forgotten how to do so. At all times there have been somewhere peoples who knew enough of building to mold its utility into forms of beauty, and the history of architecture may be read more continuously than that of any other art. It is a history of constant change and of continuous development, each people and each age forming out of the old elements a new style which should express its mind, and each style reaching its point of greatest distinctiveness only to begin a further transformation into something else; but is it a history of progress? Building, indeed, has progressed at one time or another. The Romans, with their domes and arches, were more scientific builders than the Greeks, with their simple post and lintel, but were they better architects? We of to-day, with our steel construction, can scrape the sky with erections that would have amazed the boldest of medieval[Pg 41] craftsmen; can we equal his art? If we ask where in the history of architecture do its masterpieces appear, the answer must be “Almost anywhere.” Wherever men have had the wealth and the energy to build greatly, they have builded beautifully, and the distinctions are less between style and style or epoch and epoch than between building and building. The masterpieces of one time are as the masterpieces of another, and no man may say that the nave of Amiens is finer than the Parthenon or that the Parthenon is nobler than the nave of Amiens. One may say only that each is perfect in its kind, a supreme expression of the human spirit.

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

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

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

Sculpture depends, as does architecture, upon certain laws of proportion in space which are analogous to the laws of proportion in time and in pitch upon which music is founded. But as sculpture represents the human figure, whereas architecture and music represent nothing, sculpture requires for its perfection the mastery of an additional science, which is the knowledge of the structure and movement of the human body. This knowledge may be acquired with some rapidity, especially in times and countries where man is often seen unclothed. So, in the history of civilizations, sculpture developed early, after poetry, but with architecture, and before painting and polyphonic music. It reached the greatest perfection of which it is capable in the age of Pericles, and from that time progress was impossible to it, and for a thousand years its movement was one of decline. After the dark ages sculpture was one of the first arts to revive, and again it develops rapidly, though not so rapidly as before, conditions of custom and climate being less favorable to it, until it reaches, in the first half of the sixteenth century, something near its former perfection. Again it can go no further; and since then it has changed, but has not progressed. In Phidias, by which name I would signify the sculptor of the pediments of the Parthenon, we have the coincidence of a superlatively great artist with the moment of technical and scientific perfection in the art, and a similar coincidence crowns the work of Michel[Pg 42]angelo with a peculiar glory. But, apart from the work of these two men, the essential value of a work of sculpture is by no means always equal to its technical and scientific completeness. There are archaic statues that are almost as nobly beautiful as any work by Phidias, and more beautiful than almost any work that has been done since his time. There are bits of Gothic sculpture that are more valuable expressions of human feeling than anything produced by the contemporaries of Buonarroti. Even in times of decadence a great artist has created finer things than could be accomplished by a mediocre talent of the great epochs, and the world could ill spare the “Victory” of Samothrace or the portrait busts of Houdon.

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

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

And just because there never has been a complete art of painting, entirely rounded and perfected, it is the clearer to us that the final value of a work in that art never has depended on its approach to such completion. There is no one supreme master of painting, but a long succession of masters of different yet equal glory. If the masterpieces of architecture are everywhere because there has often been a complete art of architecture, the masterpieces of painting are everywhere for the opposite reason. And if we do not always value a master the more as his art is more nearly complete, neither do we always value him especially who has placed new scientific conquests at the disposal of art. Palma Vecchio painted by the side of Titian, but he is only a minor master; Botticelli remained of the generation before Leonardo, but he is one of the immortal great. Paolo Ucello, by his study of perspective, made a distinct advance in pictorial science, but his interest for us is purely historic; Fra Angelico made no advance whatever, but he practised consummately the current art as he found it, and his work is eternally[Pg 43] delightful. At every stage of its development the art of painting has been a sufficient medium for the expression of a great man’s mind; and wherever and whenever a great man has practised it, the result has been a great and permanently valuable work of art.

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

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

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

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

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

Another of Washington’s war-horses, and the last to be mentioned, was “Nelson,” a light chestnut, sixteen hands high, with white face and legs. He was a gift from Governor Thomas Nelson of Virginia, and was named in his honor. He was used for the last time at the surrender of Lord Cornwallis, afterward leading a life of leisure at Mount Vernon and following Washington’s bier in the funeral procession. Before the Civil War, while on a visit to the general’s adopted son, Mr. Custis of Arlington, I was informed that when a youth he had ridden[Pg 46] “Buckskin” and “Nelson,” and that the handsome white horse that fell on the field of Monmouth was painted from memory by Colonel Trumbull. Mr. Custis said:

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

AT four o’clock on a June morning ninety-eight years ago, when Napoleon was defeated by Wellington in one of the sixteen decisive battles of the world, the illustrious English soldier mounted his[Pg 47] celebrated charger “Copenhagen,” remaining in the saddle for eighteen hours. “Copenhagen” was a powerful chestnut, grandson of the famous war-horse “Eclipse,” and the son of “Lady Catherine,” the charger ridden by Field-Marshal Lord Grosvenor at the siege of Copenhagen, when she was in foal with the colt which afterward carried Wellington at Waterloo. The war-horse cost him, in 1813, four hundred guineas. Two years later, when the famous victory was won, and Wellington had held his historic interview with Blücher, the duke dismounted at ten o’clock. As “Copenhagen” was led away by the groom, he playfully threw out his heels as a “good-night” salutation to his successful master. It was Wellington’s last act before leaving Strathfieldsaye for London on public or private business, to walk out to the adjacent paddock to pat his favorite charger, and to feed him with chocolate or other confectionery, of which he was inordinately fond.

For more than a dozen years before his death “Copenhagen,” leading the easy, comfortable career of a well-pensioned veteran who had retired from all the activities of life, was only twice surreptitiously saddled and ridden by the duke’s eldest son, the Marquis of Douro. The[Pg 48] second Duke of Wellington, who died in 1884, erected two monuments on the grounds of Strathfieldsaye, that fine estate of nearly seven thousand acres on which is situated Silchester, the site of a Roman station, presented to the “Iron Duke” by the British government for a day’s work at Waterloo. One of these, a superb and lofty marble column, is to the memory of his illustrious father, the other to that of “Copenhagen.” The former stands just outside the park at the point where, immediately in front of one of the lodges, the London road meets at right angles that which connects Reading with Basingstoke. A simple marble tombstone standing under the shadow of a spreading Turkish oak marks the spot where the brave steed was buried with military honors, and bears the following inscription from the pen of the second duke:

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

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

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

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

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

On the authority of his eldest son, who mentioned the circumstance to the writer, it may be stated in conclusion that the last time Wellington walked out of Wal[Pg 51]mer Castle, on the afternoon of the day previous to his death, it was to visit his stable and to give orders to the groom concerning his horses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Soon after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee and his army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, in April, 1865, “Cincinnati” was retired from active service, thereafter enjoying almost a decade of peace and comfort on Admiral Ammen’s Maryland estate near Washington until the end came in September,[Pg 53] 1874, and he then received honorable burial. The charger is fully entitled to a prominent place among the most celebrated chargers of the nineteenth century, which includes General Lee’s “Traveller,” General Sherman’s “Lexington,” and General Sheridan’s “Winchester,” which died in 1878, and was skilfully mounted by a taxidermist. “Winchester” is included among the relics of the Mexican and later wars in the interesting collection of the Military Service Institution on Governor’s Island, New York Harbor.

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

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

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

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

Soon after the close of the Civil War, Lee accepted the presidency of Washington and Lee University. For five years, until his death, he almost daily rode or fed his favorite charger. At the hero’s funeral, “Traveller” was equipped for service and placed close to the hearse. When the flower-covered coffin was carried out from the church, the faithful horse put his nose on it and whinnied! He survived his attached master for two years, when a nail penetrated his right forefoot while grazing in a field, and, although it was immediately removed, and everything possible was done to save him, lockjaw developed,[Pg 54] and he died during the summer of 1872. “Traveller’s” skeleton was preserved, and is to be seen at Lexington, Virginia, as well as Stonewall Jackson’s famous “Sorrel,” which was skilfully set up by a veteran taxidermist. “Traveller,” like Sheridan’s celebrated charger “Winchester,” enjoyed the very great distinction of having his illustrious master for a biographer. In the sketch Lee mentions his other horses, saying: “Of all, ‘Traveller’s’ companions in toil,—‘Richmond,’ ‘Brown Roan,’ ‘Ajax,’ and quiet ‘Lucy Long,’—he is the only one that retained his vigor. The first two expired under their onerous burdens, and the last two failed.” During the Mexican War, the general’s favorite was “Grace Darling,” a handsome and powerful chestnut, which was seven times wounded, but never seriously.

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

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

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

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

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

This comment I repeated at the Metropolitan Club luncheon which followed the unveiling of Saint-Gaudens’s equestrian statue of the illustrious soldier. While McKim, who designed the pedestal, the poet Stedman, and others smiled, the gifted sculptor looked solemn. The steed, whose feet are not all where Sherman[Pg 55] wished them to be, is supposed to be a counterfeit presentment of “Lexington.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Once back in New York, I took an early occasion to call on my friend Charles Longbow. I had always liked him ever since the day that I fished him, a shivering mite, out of the skating-pond at school. I[Pg 57] had been his chum thereafter until the end of my college course. Though I could not emulate his distinction in scholarship or public speaking, I could at least be useful to him, by virtue of my year’s seniority, in protecting him from the consequences of his mother’s celebrity. I even did him some service by pushing him into the thick of undergraduate life. I was really very fond of him, and I was sure he liked me.

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

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

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

Margaret, who was only a year older than Charles, never married. She was her mother’s secretary and a most devoted daughter. She received with her, traveled with her, labored for her without apparent repining. Whether she ever had time to think seriously of marrying, or of leaving her mother on other terms, always seemed to me doubtful. At all events, she said as much to me repeatedly when at the age of twenty-five I proposed to her. Without question, she had a great deal to do in helping Mrs. Longbow to transact efficiently the business of the universe. She was prettier than Helen, who grew large and stately by her thirtieth year and was of too bold and mustached an aquiline type for beauty. Margaret was fair, and retained the girlish lines of her slender figure until middle age. She was clever, too, like the rest of the family, and had seen much of the world in her mother’s company. She wrote stories that had considerable success, and she would have had[Pg 58] personal distinction as a member of any other family. My only reason for suspecting that she sometimes wearied of her filial rôle was a remark that she once made to me when I complimented her on a pretty novel she had published.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Margaret!” Charles exclaimed sharply.[Pg 59] “What would mother have said?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There’s one other possible plan,” I remarked.[Pg 60] “Haven’t you thought of it? Why shouldn’t the three of you collaborate in a life? It seems to me that might be the most suitable arrangement. All of you write; you have all been associated with your mother in her work. Why shouldn’t you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I shall have to look after her,” she went on.[Pg 61] “Charles can’t be depended on to do so. It is a great pity she has never married. A great deal will come on me, now that mother is gone. For instance, there is her biography. I must arrange for it without too much delay. I am aware that people will be waiting for it eagerly.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

During the simple dinner we talked pleasantly about a variety of things that were within the province of the Longbows: municipal reform, Tolstoy, labor-unions, a plain-spoken novel by Mrs. Vir[Pg 62]gin, Turkish misgovernment, the temperance movement. We did not mention Mrs. Longbow’s name, but we felt, I am sure, that her spirit hovered over us. I, at least, had an abiding sense of her immanence. When we went back to the drawing-room together, I expected that her virtues would become the topic of general conversation, and I dreaded the hour to follow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Only that you were too busy to write, my dear,” she remarked;[Pg 64] “that you had left it to less important members of the family.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Robert:

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

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

Ever sincerely yours,
MARGARET LONGBOW.

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

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

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

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

Mr. Edison first showed the world his completed invention at the world’s fair in Chicago in 1893; but it was nearly 1900 before this infant industry could be said to be fairly started, though one enterprising manager had a regular place of exhibition as early as 1894. Two years ago it was estimated that in a single year the country paid over a hundred million dollars in admissions. There are no defi[Pg 67]nite figures available, though the census officials contemplate gathering such statistics this year. It is probably safe, however, to place the present revenue from admissions at close to two hundred million dollars.

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

There is an ever-increasing demand for films, and many manufacturers are kept busy. From an original film about two hundred positives are usually reproduced and sent broadcast to the forty-five distributing agencies of the general company, which do the work formerly done by about one hun[Pg 68]dred and fifty independent exchanges in the various cities of the country. The reels were formerly sold; but are now leased to various theaters. Dates of exhibition are arranged with as much care and business acumen as are the great plays of the stage.

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

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

The moral tone of the pictures now exhibited has been greatly benefited by the movement started in New York by those public-spirited citizens, headed by the late Mr. Charles Sprague-Smith, known as the National Board of Censorship, which wisely serves without compensation. The film-makers voluntarily submit their work, and are more than glad to have it reviewed, and it is said on good authority that no manufacturer has ever refused to destroy a film which did not receive the indorsement of the board. In a recent letter to “The Outlook,” Mr. Darrell Hibbard, director of boys’ work, Y. M. C. A., Indianapolis, discusses this phase of the subject. He writes:[Pg 69] “Why is it that from juvenile, divorce, and criminal courts we hear constant blame for wayward deeds laid on the ‘five-cent shows’? The one answer is the word ‘Greed.’” He adds that when a film has passed the National Board of Censors, copies of it go to distributing agencies, in whose hands “it can be made over uncensored, strips can be inserted, or any mutilation made that fancy or trade may dictate.... A so-called class of ‘pirated’ films are the extreme of irresponsibility.... They are either manufactured locally or smuggled in from Europe, and thus miss the National Board of Censors.... The only way that the people, and especially the children, can be safeguarded from the influence of evil pictures is by careful regulation of the places of exhibition.... The nation-wide supervision of public exhibitions should be under the Department of Education or Child Welfare at Washington.”

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

THE FILMS

THE smaller illustrations show the exact size of the pictures as they appear on the film. They are an inch wide and three quarters of an inch deep. A reel is usually a thousand feet long, and contains sixteen thousand pictures. On a screen twelve feet square, which is smaller than the usual size, there is surface enough to show twenty-seven thousand of the pictures side by side if they are reproduced without en[Pg 70]largement. Yet if every enlarged picture were shown on a separate twelve-foot screen, a single reel would require a stretch of canvas thirty-six miles long. Likewise a screen twenty feet square would accommodate over seventy-six thousand of the little pictures, and the stretch of canvas required for the enlarged pictures would be sixty miles long. After witnessing a performance, few realize that they have seen any such stretch of pictures as the figures show.

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

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

Mr. Paul Rainey has stated that his wonderful animal pictures, which showed his happenings from the unloading of his expedition from an Atlantic steamer on the coast of Africa, through the various hunts, and up to his departure, likewise cost fifty thousand dollars. Some of these wonderful films demonstrated how practical was his much-laughed-at theory that the Mississippi hounds used for hunting bear could successfully hunt the destructive African lion and the chetah. These pictures, which were taken with the idea of permitting Mr. Rainey’s friends at home to journey with him in spirit in his travels, were first shown publicly last winter at the National Geographic Society in Washington to illustrate a lecture[Pg 71] by Mr. Rainey. Those who then enjoyed them can feel only satisfaction to know that they have now been placed on public exhibition, to show to the people at large what Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, President of the American Museum of Natural History, has declared to be “the greatest contribution to natural history of the last decade.” The writer recently saw these pictures, and while the films are naturally not as perfect as when first shown in Washington, all the essentials are faithfully reproduced.

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

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

SCIENTIFIC AND EDUCATIONAL,—MICROCINEMATOGRAPH FILMS AND ROENTGENCINEMATOGRAPHY

THOUGH the work of the cinematograph is only in its infancy, the range of its possibilities seems almost boundless. When[Pg 72] the target-practice pictures mentioned above were taken, it was said that some of the pictures showed a twelve-inch shell actually in flight. The writer saw these pictures, and while he did not see this point illustrated, possibly due to the breaking and imperfect repairing of the film, the statement can be credited, as it is feasible to see this with the naked eye if the observer is well in the line of flight. Another remarkable instance which illustrates the capabilities and speed of the lens has been cited in the case of a picture which shows a rifle-bullet on the inside of a soap-bubble, from which it was learned that the bubble does not break until the bullet leaves the opposite side from which it entered.

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

By the use of the moving-picture, the St. Louis Medical Society has recently shown the method of inoculating animals with disease-germs and the effect of the germs on the blood. Circulation of the[Pg 73] blood and action of numerous species of bacilli were also illustrated. In a micro-cinematograph film showing the circulation of the blood in a living body, prepared by M. Camandon, a French scientist, and exhibited by MM. Pathe Frères, the London “Nature” states that the white corpuscles of the blood are shown gradually altering their shape and position and fulfilling one of their best-known functions in acting as scavengers and absorbing such abnormal substances as microbes, disease-cells, and granules of inert matter. “By reproducing at a slower pace the changes,” this journal continues, “the cinematograph can assist us to attain a clearer perception of the nature of the alteration as it takes place.... No amount of imagination can supply the clearness and comprehension which actual seeing can give. The cinematograph might well become a most sufficient aid to the teaching of very many biological and especially medical subjects.”

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

The peculiar opaqueness necessary for the X-ray is obtained by administering to a patient, who is in a fasting condition, two ounces of bismuth subcarbonate mixed with two glasses of buttermilk. Many radiographs are then made in rapid succession. These are reduced to cinematographic size and projected upon a screen,[Pg 74] giving a very graphic representation of the motions of the stomach during digestion. The films used in this paper were made by Dr. Lewis Gregory Cole, Radiologist to Cornell University Medical College, and were shown at a recent meeting of the American Medical Association, and published in the journal of that society and in the Archives of Roentgen Ray. This procedure is termed “Roentgencinematography” by Kaestle, Rieder, and Rosenthal, to whom Dr. Cole gives much credit for previous work along the same line. In the articles referred to above Dr. Cole advises this method of examination for determining the presence of cancers and ulcers of the stomach.

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

Over twenty years ago, Mr. Edison stated in his patent specification in referring to his ability to take forty-six photographs per second, “I have also been able to hold the tape at rest for nine tenths of the time.” It was probably not intended to convey the impression that he[Pg 75] could take anything approaching ten times the number of pictures, as it is of course necessary to provide for rest periods; but it is significant that very recently a machine has been perfected for portraying such rapid motion as projectiles in flight, etc., which takes the almost inconceivable number of two hundred and fifty pictures per second. Indeed, experiments are in progress which promise even four hundred per second.

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

TRICK FILMS

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

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

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

THE PHOTO-PLAY

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

The drama on the white sheet dates back to the autumn of 1894, when Alexander Black of New York brought out the first “picture-play” before a distinguished literary audience. This first picture-play, called “Miss Jerry,” like later white-sheet plays by the same author and artist, was accompanied by a spoken monologue giving all the speeches and covering all the transitions of the action. The pictures, the making of which was begun be[Pg 76]fore the appearance of the motion-picture device, were produced in series, indoors and out, from a living cast, as in the present plays, and were put on the screen with registered backgrounds by the aid of a double stereopticon at the rate of from three to five per minute, thus presenting stages of action—a prophecy of the continuous action perfected in the plays of to-day.

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

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

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

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

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

PICTURES IN NATURAL COLORS

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

The machine which now produces beautiful color pictures is known as the “kinemacolor.” It is the joint work of Mr. Charles Urban, an American who went to London a few years ago as a representative of manufacturers of an American motion-picture machine, and a London photographer. The machine differs from the ordinary cinematograph in several important particulars. The most noticeable difference is a rapidly driven, revolving skeleton frame known as a color-filter, which is located between the lens and the shutter. This color-filter is made up of different sections of specially prepared gelatin, two sections of which are colored, one red and the other green. The filter-screen is revolved while the pictures are taken, as well as when they are repro[Pg 77]duced, being so geared that the red section of the filter appears in line with the lens for one photograph, and the green section for the next.

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

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

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

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

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

After witnessing pictures so full of interest and so wonderful in color effect and action, one accustomed to democratic ideas could but wonder to see moving upon the screen, on a mechanically revolved table, so inanimate an object as a crown of jewels. Interest, however, was aroused when it was learned that the appearance of this picture was due to the fact that, as a mark of high appreciation of the coronation and durbar pictures, the king broke many precedents and permitted his crown[Pg 78] to be taken for photographing to the private studio of Mr. Urban, the inventor of the process. Incidentally, too, the crown was more wonderful than its appearance at a distance indicated; for the company informed the writer that it is made up of 6170 diamonds, 24 rubies, and 25 emeralds, the largest of which weighs thirty-four carats.

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

FROM BUD TO BLOSSOM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was such a dazzling host of things to be done that she could not begin to do anything. Her two big cowhide suitcases, standing in rather disdainful opulence beside the shabby chiffonier, invited her to unpack; but she dismissed the invitation with a toss of her head. How could she desecrate her first hour of freedom by putting clothing into bureau drawers? A mote-filled streak of sunshine, oblique with late afternoon, offered more congenial occupation. She let her eyes rest on it, and dreamed. It was pale[Pg 80] golden, like hope, like the turrets of castles in Spain, like the wealth awaiting claimants at the foot of a rainbow. For a long time she looked into it, and her face put off its first flush of exultation for the wistful doubtfulness of reverie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I didn’t exactly explain; my thoughts seemed to be all mixed up: I thought it would be better to write, after I’d thought a little more.” Again she allowed the glory of her eyes to be her best apologist. “I was going to write as soon as I’d had a talk with you. You see, I came away only two hours ago, and Harry—my husband—will just think I’ve gone to visit somewhere.” Her beauty made a[Pg 81] confident appeal that he would sanction her position.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You spoke of my breaking away from him,” she said, “and you called him a beastly artificial—I won’t repeat what you said.” The delicate curves of her cheeks warmed with the memory of the unfamiliar appellation, with faint doubt as to her first idea of its value.[Pg 82] “However, that’s neither here nor there. I wish to ask you a simple, straightforward question, Mr. Hallton: do you, or do you not, think it is right for persons to live their own lives?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Pg 84]

Drawn by André Castaigne

A DISTANT VIEW OF THE ACROPOLIS AT SUNSET

SKIRTING THE BALKAN PENINSULA

FROM TRIEST TO CONSTANTINOPLE

THIRD PAPER: THE ENVIRONS OF ATHENS

BY ROBERT HICHENS

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

WITH PICTURES BY JULES GUÉRIN AND PHOTOGRAPHS

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

It is evident to any one who examines this great theater carefully that the Greeks considered it important for the body to be at ease while the mind was at work; for not only are the seats perfectly adapted to their purpose, but ample room is given for the feet of the spectators, the distance between each tier and the tier above it being wide enough to do away with all fear of crowding and inconvenience. The marble arm-chairs were assigned to priests, whose names are carved upon them. In the theater I saw one high arm-chair, like a throne, with lion’s feet. This is Roman, and was the seat of a Roman general. The fronts of the seats are pierced with small holes, which allow the rain-water to escape. Below the stage there are some sculptured figures, most of them headless. One which is not is a very striking and[Pg 85] powerful, though almost sinister, old man, in a crouching posture. His rather round forehead resembles the very characteristic foreheads of the Montenegrins.

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

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

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

The outer walls are barbarically huge and heavy, and superb in color. They gleam with a fierce-red gold, and are conspicuous from afar. The almost monstrous, but impressive, solidity of Rome, heavy and bold, indeed almost crudely imperious, is shown forth by them—a solidity absolutely different from the Greek massiveness, which you can study in the Doric temples, and far less beautiful. When you pass beyond and this towering façade, which might well be a section of the Colosseum transferred from gladiatorial Rome to intellectual Athens, you find yourself in a theater which looks oddly, indeed, almost meanly, small and pale and graceful. With a sort of fragile timidity it seems to be cowering behind the flamboyant walls. When all its blanched marble seats were crowded with spectators it contained five thousand persons. As you approach the outer walls, you expect to find a building that might accommodate perhaps twenty-five thou[Pg 86]sand. There is something bizarre in the two colors, fierce and pale, in the two sizes, huge and comparatively small, that are united in the odeum. Though very remarkable, it seems to me to be one of the most inharmonious ruins in Greece.

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

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

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

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

Greece, though sparsely inhabited, is in the main a very cheerful-looking country. The loneliness of much of it is not depressing, the bareness of much of it is not sad. I began to understand this on the day when I went to the plain of Marathon, which, fortunately, lies away from railroads. One must go there by carriage or motor or on horseback. The road is bad both for beasts and machinery, but it passes through country which is typical of Greece, and through which it would be foolish to go in haste. Go quietly to Marathon, spend two hours there, or more, and when you return in the evening to Athens you will have tasted a new joy. You will have lived for a little while in an exquisite pastoral—a pastoral through which, it is true, no pipes of Pan have fluted to you,—I heard little music in Greece,—but which has been full of that lightness, brightness, simplicity, [Pg 89] and delicacy peculiar to Greece. The soil of the land is light, and, I believe, though Hellenes have told me that in this I am wrong, that the heart of the people is light. Certainly the heart of one traveler was as he made his way to Marathon along a white road thickly powdered with dust.

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

Marathon that day was a pastoral of yellow and blue, of pines and sea. On the way I passed through great olive-groves,[Pg 90] in one of which long since some countrymen of mine were taken by brigands and carried away to be done to death. And there were mighty fig-trees, and mulberry-trees, and acres and acres of vines, with here and there an almost black cypress among them. But the pines, more yellow than green, and the bright blue sea made the picture that lives in my memory.

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

What is the magic of pastoral Greece? What is it that gives to you a sensation of being gently released from the cares of life and the boredom of modern civilization, with its often unmeaning complications, its unnecessary luxuries, its noisy self-satisfactions? This is not the tremendous, the spectacular release of the desert, an almost savage tearing away of bonds. Nothing in the Greece I saw is savage; scarcely anything is spectacular. But, oh, the bright simplicity of the life and the country along the way to Marathon! It was like an early world. One looked, and[Pg 92] longed to live in those happy woods like the Turkish Gipsies. Could life offer anything better? The pines are small, exquisitely shaped, with foliage that looks almost as though it had been deftly arranged by a consummate artist. They curl over the slopes with a lightness almost of foam cresting a wave. Their color is quite lovely. The ancient Egyptians had a love color: well, the little pine-trees of Greece are the color of happiness. You smile involuntarily when you see them. And when, descending among them, you are greeted by the shining of the brilliant-blue sea, which stretches along the edge of the plain of Marathon, you know radiance purged of fierceness.

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

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

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

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

In the very height of summer, I am told, the Athenians do condescend to go to the pine-woods. They sleep during part of the day, and stay out of doors at night, often driving into the country, and eating under the trees or by the sea. But even in[Pg 95] the heat of a rainless September, if I may judge by my own experience, they prefer Constitution Square and “the Dardanelles” to any more pastoral pleasures.

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

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

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

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

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

When I reached the village, I found it a cheery little place of small white, yellow, and rose-colored houses, among which[Pg 96] a few cypress-trees grow. Although one of the most ancient places in Greece, it now looks very modern. And it is difficult to believe, as one glances at the chimneys of the soap factory, and at two or three black and dingy steamers lying just off the works to take in cargo, that here Demeter was worshiped with mysterious rites at the great festival of the Eleusinia. Yet, according to the legend, it was here that she came, disguised as an old hag, in search of her lost Persephone; here that she taught Triptolemus how to sow the plain, and to reap the first harvest of yellow wheat, as a reward for the hospitable welcome given to her by his father Celeus.

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

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

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

The shores of this beautiful inclosed bit of sea are wild. The water is wonderfully clear, and is shot with all sorts of exquisite colors. The strip of mainland, against which the liquid maze of greens and blues and purples seems to lie motionless, like a painted marvel, is a tangle of wild myrtle and dwarf shrubs growing in a sandy soil interspersed with rocks. Gently the land curves, forming a series of little shallow bays and inlets, each one of which seems more delicious than the last as you coast along in a fisherman’s boat.[Pg 97] But, unfortunately, the war-ships of Greece often lie snug in harbor in the shadow of Salamis not far from the arsenal, and, as I have hinted already, their commander-in-chief has little sympathy with the inquiring traveler. I shall not easily forget the expression that came into his face when, in reply to his question, “What did you come here for?” I said, “To visit the scene of the celebrated battle.” A weary incredulity made him suddenly look very old; and I believe it was then that, taking a pen, he wrote on the margin of his report about me that I was “a very suspicious person.”

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

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

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

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

Almost all the ruins I saw in Greece were weather-stained. Their original color was mottled with browns and grays, with saffron, with gold and red gold. But the columns of Sunium have kept their brilliant whiteness, although they stand on a great, bare cliff above the sea, exposed to the glare of the sun and to the buffeting of every wind of heaven. They are raised not merely on this natural height, but also on a great platform of the famous Poros-stone. In the time of Byron there were sixteen columns standing. There are now eleven, with a good deal of architrave. These columns are Doric, and are about twenty feet in height. They have not the majesty of the Parthenon columns, but, on the contrary, have a[Pg 98] peculiar delicacy and even grace, which is lacking both in the Parthenon and in the Theseum. They do not move you to awe or overwhelm you; they charm and delight you. In their ivory-white simplicity, standing out against the brilliant blue of sea and sky on the white and gray platform, there is something that allures.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For Furnace Second were no invitations[Pg 100] to Professor Surd’s house. Seventy of the class supped in delegations around the periphery of the professor’s tea-table. The seventy-first knew nothing of the charms of that perfect ellipse, with its twin bunches of fuchsias and geraniums in gorgeous precision at the two foci.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I could stand his mocking no longer. I stumbled mechanically out of the room and out of the house. I even forgot my hat and gloves. For an hour I walked in the moonlight. Gradually I succeeded to a more hopeful frame of mind. This was due to my ignorance of mathematics. Had I understood the real meaning of what he[Pg 102] asked, I should have been utterly despondent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Creditors!” gasped Rivarol.[Pg 103] “I have learned no such word in your very admirable language. He who will allow his soul to be vexed by creditors is a relic of an imperfect civilization. Of what use is science if it cannot avail a man who has accounts current? Listen. The moment you or any one else enters the outside door this little electric bell sounds me warning. Every successive step on Mrs. Grimler’s staircase is a spy and informer vigilant for my benefit. The first step is trod upon. That trusty first step immediately telegraphs your weight. Nothing could be simpler. It is exactly like any platform scale. The weight is registered up here upon this dial. The second step records the size of my visitor’s feet. The third his height, the fourth his complexion, and so on. By the time he reaches the top of the first flight I have a pretty accurate description of him right here at my elbow, and quite a margin of time for deliberation and action. Do you follow me? It is plain enough. Only the A B C of my science.”

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

Rivarol laughed softly. “I will tell you. You shall see what becomes of any poor devil who goes to demand money of me—of a man of science. Ha! ha! It pleases me. I was seven weeks perfecting my Dun-Suppressor. Did you know,” he whispered exultingly—[Pg 104]“did you know that there is a hole through the earth’s center? Physicists have long suspected it; I was the first to find it. You have read how Rhuyghens, the Dutch navigator, discovered in Kerguellen’s Land an abysmal pit which fourteen hundred fathoms of plumb-line failed to sound. Herr Tom, that hole has no bottom! It runs from one surface of the earth to the antipodal surface. It is diametric. But where is the antipodal spot? You stand upon it. I learned this by the merest chance. I was deep-digging in Mrs. Grimler’s cellar to bury a poor cat I had sacrificed in a galvanic experiment, when the earth under my spade crumbled, caved in, and, wonder-stricken, I stood upon the brink of a yawning shaft. I dropped a coal-hod in. It went down, down, down, bounding and rebounding. In two hours and a quarter that coal-hod came up again. I caught it, and restored it to the angry Grimler. Just think a minute. The coal-hod went down faster and faster, till it reached the center of the earth. There it would stop were it not for acquired momentum. Beyond the center its journey was relatively upward, toward the opposite surface of the globe. So, losing the velocity, it went slower and slower till it reached that surface. Here it came to rest for a second, and then fell back again, eight thousand odd miles, into my hands. Had I not interfered with it, it would have repeated its journey time after time, each trip of shorter extent, like the diminishing oscillations of a pendulum, till it finally came to eternal rest at the center of the sphere. I am not slow to give a practical application to any such grand discovery. My Dun-Suppressor was born of it. A trap just outside my chamber door, a spring in here, a creditor on the trap—need I say more?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Tut! tut! not that! I mean did it ever occur to you on such an occasion that absolutely you were moving faster than the train? The train passes the telegraph-poles at the rate of thirty miles an hour, say. You walk toward the smoking-car at the rate of four miles an hour. Then you pass the telegraph-poles at the rate of thirty-four miles. Your absolute speed is the speed of the engine, plus the speed of your own locomotion. Do you follow me?”

“Very well. Let us advance a step. Your addition to the speed of the engine is trivial, and the space in which you can exercise it, limited. Now, suppose two stations, A and B, two miles distant by the track. Imagine a train of platform cars, the last car resting at station A. The train is a mile long, say. The engine is therefore within a mile of station B. Say the train can move a mile in ten minutes. The last car, having two miles to go, would reach B in twenty minutes, but the engine, a mile ahead, would get there in ten. You jump on the last car at A in a prodigious hurry to reach Abscissa, who is at B. If you stay on the last car, it will be twenty long minutes before you see her. But the engine reaches B and the fair lady in ten. You will be a stupid reasoner and an indifferent lover if you don’t put for the engine over those platform cars as fast as your legs will carry you. You can run a mile, the length of the train, in ten minutes. Therefore you reach Abscissa when the engine does, or in ten minutes—ten minutes sooner than if you had lazily sat down upon the rear car and talked politics with the brakeman. You have diminished the time by one half. You have added your speed to that of the locomotive to some purpose. Nicht wahr?”

I saw it perfectly; much plainer, perhaps, for his putting in the clause about Abscissa.

“This illustration, though a slow one, leads up to a principle which may be carried to any extent. Our first anxiety will be to spare your legs and wind. Let us suppose that the two miles of track are perfectly straight, and make our train one platform car, a mile long, with parallel rails laid upon its top. Put a little dummy engine on these rails, and let it run to and fro along the platform car, while the platform car is pulled along the ground track. Catch the idea? The dummy takes your place. But it can run its mile much faster. Fancy that our locomotive is strong enough to pull the platform car over the two miles in two minutes. The dummy can attain the same speed. When the engine reaches B in one minute, the dummy, having gone a mile atop the platform car, reaches B also. We have so combined the speeds of those two engines as to accomplish two miles in one minute. Is this all we can do? Prepare to exercise your imagination.”

“Still two miles of straight track between A and B. On the track a long platform car, reaching from A to within a quarter of a mile of B. We will now discard ordinary locomotives and adopt as our motive power a series of compact magnetic engines, distributed underneath the platform car all along its length.”

“Well, each of them consists of a great iron horseshoe, rendered alternately a magnet and not a magnet by an intermittent current of electricity from a battery, this current in its turn regulated by clockwork. When the horseshoe is in the circuit, it is a magnet, and it pulls its clapper toward it with enormous power. When it is out of the circuit, the next second, it is not a magnet, and it lets the clapper go. The clapper, oscillating to and fro, imparts a rotatory motion to a fly-wheel, which transmits it to the drivers on the rails. Such are our motors. They are no novelty, for trial has proved them practicable.

“With a magnetic engine for every truck of wheels, we can reasonably expect to move our immense car, and to drive it along at a speed, say, of a mile a minute.

“The forward end, having but a quarter of a mile to go, will reach B in fifteen seconds. We will call this platform car number I. On top of number I are laid rails on which another platform car, number II, a quarter of a mile shorter than number I, is moved in precisely the same way. Number II, in its turn, is surmounted by number III, moving independently of the tiers beneath, and a quarter of a mile shorter than number II. Number II is a mile and a half long; number III a mile and a quarter. Above, on successive levels, are number IV, a mile long; number V, three quarters of a mile; number VI, half a mile; number VII, a quarter of a mile, and number VIII, a short passenger-car on top of all.

“Each car moves upon the car beneath it, independently of all the others, at the[Pg 107] rate of a mile a minute. Each car has its own magnetic engines. Well, the train being drawn up with the latter end of each car resting against a lofty bumping-post at A, Tom Furnace, the gentlemanly conductor, and Jean-Marie Rivarol, engineer, mount by a long ladder to the exalted number VIII. The complicated mechanism is set in motion. What happens?

“Number VIII runs a quarter of a mile in fifteen seconds, and reaches the end of number VII. Meanwhile number VII has run a quarter of a mile in the same time, and reached the end of number VI; number VI, a quarter of a mile in fifteen seconds, and reached the end of number V; number V, the end of number IV; number IV, of number III; number III, of number II; number II, of number I. And number I, in fifteen seconds, has gone its quarter of a mile along the ground track, and has reached station B. All this has been done in fifteen seconds. Wherefore, numbers I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, and VIII come to rest against the bumping-post at B, at precisely the same second. We, in number VIII, reach B just when number I reaches it. In other words, we accomplish two miles in fifteen seconds. Each of the eight cars, moving at the rate of a mile a minute, has contributed a quarter of a mile to our journey, and has done its work in fifteen seconds. All the eight did their work at once, during the same fifteen seconds. Consequently we have been whizzed through the air at the somewhat startling speed of seven and a half seconds to the mile. This is the Tachypomp. Does it justify the name?”

Although a little bewildered by the complexity of cars, I apprehended the general principle of the machine. I made a diagram, and understood it much better. “You have merely improved on the idea of my moving faster than the train when I was going to the smoking-car?” I said.

“Precisely. So far we have kept within the bounds of the practicable. To satisfy the professor, you can theorize in something after this fashion: if we double the number of cars, thus decreasing by one half the distance which each has to go, we shall attain twice the speed. Each of the sixteen cars will have but one eighth of a mile to go. At the uniform rate we have adopted, the two miles can be done in seven and a half instead of fifteen seconds. With thirty-two cars, and a sixteenth of a mile, or twenty rods difference in their length, we arrive at the speed of a mile in less than two seconds; with sixty-four cars, each traveling but ten rods, a mile under the second. More than sixty miles a minute! If this isn’t rapid enough for the professor, tell him to go on increasing the number of his cars and diminishing the distance each one has to run. If sixty-four cars yield a speed of a mile inside the second, let him fancy a Tachypomp of six hundred and forty cars, and amuse himself calculating the rate of car number 640. Just whisper to him that when he has an infinite number of cars with an infinitesimal difference in their lengths, he will have obtained that infinite speed for which he seems to yearn. Then demand Abscissa.”

I wrung my friend’s hand in silent and grateful admiration. I could say nothing.

“You have listened to the man of theory,” he said proudly. “You shall now behold the practical engineer. We will go to the west of the Mississippi and find some suitably level locality. We will erect thereon a model Tachypomp. We will summon thereunto the professor, his daughter, and why not his fair sister Jocasta as well? We will take them on a journey which shall much astonish the venerable Surd. He shall place Abscissa’s digits in yours and bless you both with an algebraic formula. Jocasta shall contemplate with wonder the genius of Rivarol. But we have much to do. We must ship to St. Joseph the vast amount of material to be employed in the construction of the Tachypomp. We must engage a small army of workmen to effect that construction, for we are to annihilate time and space. Perhaps you had better see your bankers.”

“Stop! stop! Um Gottes Willen, stop!” shrieked Rivarol. “I launched my butcher this morning and I haven’t bolted the—”

But it was too late. I was upon the trap. It swung open with a crash, and I was plunged down, down, down! I felt as though I were falling through illimitable space. I remember wondering, as I rushed through the darkness, whether I should reach Kerguellen’s Land or stop at the center. It seemed an eternity. Then my course was suddenly and painfully arrested.

I opened my eyes. Around me were the walls of Professor Surd’s study. Under me was a hard, unyielding plane which I knew too well was Professor Surd’s study floor. Behind me was the black, slippery haircloth chair which had belched me forth much as the whale served Jonah. In front of me stood Professor Surd himself, looking down with a not unpleasant smile.

“Good evening, Mr. Furnace. Let me help you up. You look tired, sir. No wonder you fell asleep when I kept you so long waiting. Shall I get you a glass of wine? No? By the way, since receiving your letter I find that you are a son of my old friend Judge Furnace. I have made inquiries, and see no reason why you should not make Abscissa a good husband.”

Still, I can see no reason why the Tachypomp should not have succeeded. Can you?

NO part of our tariff has been more scathingly denounced in Congress and by the press than what is known as “Schedule K.” No schedule that has received half the attention bestowed on Schedule K has managed to withstand the fierce onslaughts of the united tariff reformers of both political parties so successfully as the schedule covering wool and its manufactures. Repeatedly raised during the Civil War, when the urgent need of additional revenue was the sole motive of frequent tariff revision, slightly reduced in 1872 and 1883, scaled down still more in the Democratic Wilson act of 1894, it managed in the intervals between these acts to recover lost ground and, since 1897, to eclipse all previous records for high-tariff climbing.

The secret of this exceptional record in our tariff history is not far to seek. It lies in the peculiar interlacing of interests between the sheep-grower of the West and the manufacturer of the East, which has no parallel in other industries. Most of the farm products are either left on the free list, like cotton, or, if protected by a duty, are not affected by it. Thus we have duties on corn, wheat, oats, rye, and meat, but no one familiar with the situation has ever seriously maintained that the duty has been more than a convenient embellishment of our tariff for the use of campaign spellbinders in farm districts. As long as we produce more cereals, meats, and other farm products than we consume, and send the surplus to the world’s markets, the prices of these products, under free competition at home, will be regulated by conditions of world supply and demand, leaving the duties a dead letter on the statute-books. Wool is a conspicuous exception in the list of American farm products. After half a century of exceptionally high protection, fixed by the beneficiaries of the tariff themselves, the American wool-grower still falls short in his output to the extent of more than one third of the domestic demand. The deficit must be covered by importation from foreign countries, the price of imported wool being enhanced by the amount of the duty. Under these conditions the duty on raw wool acts as a powerful lever in increasing the price of the domestic wool furnishing the remaining two thirds of our consumption. No wonder that the wool-grower has always been an enthusiastic advocate of a duty on raw wool.

On the other hand, the New England manufacturer, himself a believer in high duties on woolen goods, has been rather skeptical as to the merits of a duty on a raw material of which we have never been able to produce enough, and are producing an ever diminishing share. Hence the New England woolen manufacturer has been as enthusiastic for free wool as the New England shoe manufacturer is for free hides, without losing at the same time his faith in high duties on woolen goods. However, the manufacturers discovered at an early stage in the game that unless they were willing to acquiesce in a duty on their raw material, the representatives from the wool-growing States in Congress could not see any advantage in high duties on woolens. This is what led to the powerful combination of these two great interests to which the late Senator Dolliver, in his memorable speech in the Senate in the extra session of Congress in 1909, referred as[Pg 112] “that ceremony when the shepherd’s crook and the weaver’s distaff were joined together in the joyous wedlock which no man has been able to put asunder.” At that joint meeting of the representatives of wool-growers and woolen-cloth manufacturers held at Syracuse in December, 1865, when it was supposed that, with the disappearance of the need for extraordinary revenue, the war duties would be reduced, “it was agreed between them,” in the words of the late John Sherman, who had a great deal to do with the shaping of the tariff, “after full discussion, that the rates of duty reported by the Senate bill should be given them, and they were satisfied with them, and have never called them in question.”

It remained for a long-suffering public finally to call those rates in question. And when a Republican President called Congress in extraordinary session in March, 1909, to fulfil the pledges of his party for a downward revision, he found, to use his own words, uttered in the now famous Winona speech, that “Mr. Payne, in the House, and Mr. Aldrich, in the Senate, although both favored reduction in the schedule, found that in the Republican party the interests of the wool-growers of the far West and the interests of the woolen manufacturers in the East and in other States, reflected through their representatives in Congress, was sufficiently strong to defeat any attempt to change the woolen tariff, and that, had it been attempted, it would have beaten the bill reported from either committee.”

However, the President thought that Schedule K should receive the attention of Congress after the newly created Tariff Board had made a thorough investigation of the woolen industry. Taking the President at his word, the country waited two years more with great impatience for the result of the findings of his board. But once more was the country baffled by the united beneficiaries of Schedule K in its efforts looking to the lowering of the rates. When a majority in Congress composed of Democrats and Republican insurgents laid aside party differences in a common effort to reduce the woolen duties, the same leaders of whose tactics President Taft had complained were able to persuade him that the revised schedule was so much at variance with the findings of the Tariff Board as to justify his veto. Thus the country is facing the new situation in the extraordinary session of the Sixty-third Congress, with Schedule K still proudly holding the fort on the pinnacle of the American tariff wall. The present is, therefore, just the time for an analysis of the situation in which the claims of the conflicting interests may be reviewed in the light of now well-established facts.

WOOLENS AND WORSTEDS

ANY one who has traveled abroad or had occasion to compare foreign prices of cloths and dress-goods with those prevailing in this country knows that on the average they can be bought in Europe, particularly in free-trade England, at about half the price usually asked for similar goods at home. As the investigation of the Tariff Board has shown, there are many cloths on which the difference in price is not so great, particularly on the finer grades, while, on the other hand, the American price is more than double the English on some of the medium and cheap grades of cloth. But, on the whole, it is safe to state that our prices on woolen and worsted cloths are about double those in England. The difference in price represents largely the toll paid by ninety-odd million Americans for the support of the half-century-old infant worsted and the century-old woolen industry. We have all been vaguely aware of that fact, and yet have submitted to it for the ultimate good of creating a raw-wool supply and a fine woolen and worsted industry that would make us independent of the rest of the world and give employment to American labor at American wages. Not until the two wings of the industry, the woolen and the worsted, fell out among themselves, and the carded-wool manufacturers showed to an astonished public that the tariff, as it stood, throttled an important branch of the industry, instead of building it up, was the layman given an opportunity of getting a deeper insight into the workings of Schedule K.

The woolen industry in the United States is as old as the country itself. Carried on first as a household industry among the early colonists, it entered the factory stage with the introduction of mechanical power, first in connection with carding-machines in 1794, then with its application to spinning between 1810 and 1820, and later to weaving in the following decade.

Before the Civil War, all woolens were made by what is known as the carded-woolen process, which produces a cloth with a rough surface. Such cloths as tweeds, cheviots, cassimeres, meltons, and kerseys are among the best-known types of woolen cloth. Just before the Civil War the worsted industry made its appearance in this country. The worsted fabric differs from the woolen cloth in being made of combed yarn, as distinguished from the carded yarn which goes into the woolen cloth. The combing process involves, to a greater or less extent, the use of finer and longer grades of wool, and yields a fabric with a smooth surface, on which the weave is plainly visible. Among the best-known types of these cloths are the serges and the unfinished clay worsteds, which constitute the plain varieties, and the so-called fancy worsteds, showing a distinct pattern produced by the weave and the use of colored yarn.

How different the course of these two branches of the woolen industry has been, since the adoption of Schedule K substantially in its present form, is shown very strikingly by the figures of the United States Census. In 1859, the last census year preceding the adoption of Schedule K virtually in its present form, the value of the products of the woolen industry was nearly $62,000,000, while the worsted could boast of less than three and three quarter millions. In 1909, exactly half a century later, the woolen industry produced $107,000,000 worth of cloth, while the value of the worsteds exceeded $312,000,000. Put in another form, while fifty years ago the worsted industry was only one twentieth the size of the woolen, to-day it is three times as large as its older rival. Nor does this tell the whole story. The decline of the woolen industry has been not only relative, but absolute. Thus, after increasing from $62,000,000 in 1859 to $161,000,000 in 1879, it dropped to $134,000,000 in 1889, to $118,000,000 in 1899, and to $107,000,000 in 1909. On the other hand, the worsted industry showed a marked increase in each succeeding decade, beating all previous records in the first decade of the present century, when the value of its output rose from $120,000,000 in 1899 to more than $312,000,000 in 1909.

A large part of the growth of the worsted industry at the expense of the woolen is said to be due to change in fashion and taste, people generally preferring the smooth, smart-looking worsteds to the rough woolens. While this is, no doubt, true, the woolen-goods manufacturers assert that the change of fashion is only partly responsible for the decline of their industry. They insist that but for the unfair discrimination of the tariff against their industry in favor of the worsted it would continue to increase with the growth of population, since it alone can turn out an all-wool cloth that is within the means of poor people.

A feature which goes far to explain the superior advantage which the worsted industry has over the woolen is that the former is essentially the big capitalist’s field, while the woolen mills are still run to a large extent by people of moderate means. According to the last census report, in 1909 the average output per mill in the worsted industry was nearly one million dollars, which was more than five times as large as that of the average woolen mill. The prevailing type in the former is the large corporation, managed by high-salaried officials; in the latter, the typical mill is a comparatively small establishment, personally managed by the owner or owners, who form a partnership which in many cases has come down from earlier generations in the family and has not improved much on the old ways.

The great factor in the worsted industry to-day is the American Woolen Company, popularly known as the Woolen Trust, which was said to control sixty per cent. of the country’s output at the time of its formation in 1899, and can boast of the largest and best-equipped mills not only in the United States, but in the entire world. Outside of the so-called trust are other large concerns, such as the Arlington Mills, largely owned by Mr. William Whitman, the most conspicuous figure in the industry, who has probably had more to do with the shaping of Schedule K than any other man in the country, and who has amassed a large fortune in the business, most of the capital invested in his mill having been built up from the profits of the business.

If the quarrel between the woolen and worsted manufacturers had no other consequences than to affect our fashions, the[Pg 114] rest of us could well afford to let the rival forces fight it out among themselves. But it affects the consumer very vitally, and particularly that part of the consuming public that can ill afford to pay high prices for its clothes. For woolen is distinctly the poor man’s cloth, while worsted is the cloth of the well-to-do. As will be shown presently, our tariff on raw wool is designed to keep out of this country the cheap, short staple wools which our woolen industry could use to great advantage. The tariff thus artificially restricts the manufacture of woolens, while stimulating the production of worsteds, and, as the poor man cannot afford a genuine worsted cloth, it has to be adulterated with cotton to the extent of at least one half. Many of the “cotton worsteds” contain only a small fraction of wool, most of the material being cotton. It is this aspect of the effect of the tariff on the consumer that has made the family quarrel between the two branches of the wool manufacturing industry a matter of national concern.

THE DUTIES ON RAW WOOL

THE root of all the evils springing from Schedule K is the specific duty of eleven cents a pound on all clothing wools used by the woolen industry and most of the wools used by the worsted industry. Wools differ greatly in value. They may be long or short, fine or coarse, comparatively clean, or so full of grease and dirt, which the sheep accumulates in its shaggy coat while roaming in the fields, as to shrink to one fifth of its purchased weight after it has been washed and scoured in the mill.

Yet all of these wools, when brought to the gates of the United States custom-house, would have to pay the same duty of eleven cents per pound. On fine English wool, which contains only ten per cent. of grease and dirt, this is equivalent to a little over twelve cents a pound of clean wool. On a wool shrinking in weight, in the course of scouring, to only one fifth of its raw weight, the eleven-cents duty is equivalent to fifty-five cents per pound of clean wool, a figure which no manufacturer can afford to pay, and which, therefore, keeps the wool out of this country. Taken in connection with the price of wool, the discrimination against the coarse, heavy-shrinking wools used primarily by the woolen industry appears even more striking. Thus, on the finer grades of wool quoted in London at forty-seven cents per pound, the duty of eleven cents would be equivalent to twenty-three per cent. ad valorem; while on the lower-priced wools, the only kind that is available for the poor man’s cloth, the eleven-cents duty would be equivalent to the prohibitive figure of anywhere from one hundred to five hundred and fifty per cent. The result is that the durable, weather-proof, and health-protecting cheap woolen cloth which the English and Continental working-man can afford to wear, must give way to the short-lived but dressy cotton worsted, which leaves the American workman, compelled to work outdoors in all sorts of weather, poorly protected against its inclemencies.

THE DUTY ON CLOTH

SO much for the raw wool, which does not concern the consumer directly, but which he must consider in order to understand the conditions under which the woolen manufacturer is laboring.

When we come to cloth, the discrimination against the woolen manufacturer and the burden imposed upon the consumer is no less striking.

On the theory that all wool in this country is enhanced in price to the extent of the duty,—a theory, by the way, which every protectionist stoutly combats when discussing the effect of the tariff on domestic prices,—the manufacturer of cloth is allowed not only a protective duty of from fifty to fifty-five per cent. of the value of the imported cloth, but, in addition to that, a “compensatory” duty on account of the duty on raw wool. This compensatory duty is fixed at forty-four cents per pound of cloth on most of the cloths imported into this country.

It is based on the assumption that it takes four pounds of raw wool to make one pound of cloth. This compensatory duty adds to the discrimination against the woolen manufacturer in favor of the worsted manufacturer in several ways.

In the first place, as already explained, the wool used by the worsted manufacturer does not shrink as much as that which[Pg 115] goes into the cloth produced by the woolen manufacturer. Yet the compensatory duty is fixed at a uniform rate for both cloths, which is equivalent to giving to the worsted manufacturer about twice as much “compensation” as to his less fortunate rival, and giving him, in most cases, compensation for a greater loss than he actually sustains.

In the second place, the law takes no account of the admixture of materials other than wool of which the cloth is made. A cotton worsted may contain cotton to the extent of one half or more of its total weight, yet the worsted manufacturer is allowed forty-four cents a pound “compensation” on the entire weight of the cloth. Mr. Dale, editor of “The Textile World Record,” quotes a typical instance of a cotton worsted. In turning out 8750 pounds of this cloth, 3125 pounds of raw wool were used, the remainder being cotton. Assuming that the price of the wool in this country was enhanced to the extent of the duty of eleven cents a pound, the manufacturer would be entitled to a compensatory duty of 3125 times eleven, or $343.75. But the law, on the four-to-one theory, allows a compensatory duty of forty-four cents per pound of cloth, or 8750 times forty-four, which is equal to $3850. The manufacturer is thus granted an extra protection of more than three and one half thousand dollars in the guise of compensation for the duty on wool which never entered the cloth.

In the discussion of the question in Congress, the stand-pat senators stoutly maintained that the four-to-one ratio was only a fair compensation to the American manufacturer. But the report of the Tariff Board, which no one has yet accused of being unfair to the manufacturers, has settled this point authoritatively by sustaining in most emphatic terms every charge made here against the system of levying duties under Schedule K.

In addition to the so-called compensatory duties, the tariff provides a distinct protective duty of from fifty to fifty-five per cent. on cloths. High as this duty appears in comparison with protective duties in most of the European countries, it is not exceptionally high as compared with the rates under other schedules of our tariff. It is only when taken in combination with the compensatory duties, which the official report of the Tariff Board has shown to be largely protective, that the prohibitive character of the duties in Schedule K comes to light. The figures of annual imports published by the Bureau of Statistics throw an interesting light on this aspect of the case. They show, for instance, that the duties on blankets in the fiscal year 1911 ranged from sixty-eight to one hundred and sixty-nine per cent. of their foreign selling price; on carpets, from fifty to seventy-two per cent., being the lowest duties imposed on any manufactures of wool; on women’s dress-goods the duties varied from ninety-four to one hundred and fifty-eight per cent.; on flannels, from seventy-one to one hundred and twenty-one per cent.; on woolen and worsted cloths, from ninety-four to one hundred and fifty per cent.; on knit fabrics, from ninety-five to one hundred and fifty-three per cent.; on plushes and pile fabrics, from one hundred to one hundred and twenty-two per cent.

None of these rates tells the whole story: they all understate the duties to which foreign goods are subject under the law; for they represent the duties on goods that were able to get into this country over our tariff wall. In some cases the imports represent vanishing quantities, only a few dollars’ worth, being probably the personal purchases of returning travelers. The duties that are high enough to keep foreign goods out of the country naturally do not find their way into the returns of the Bureau of Statistics. An illustration of this feature is furnished by the report of the Tariff Board. The duties upon woolen and worsted cloths just cited from the report of the Bureau of Statistics are shown to vary from ninety-four to one hundred and fifty per cent. The Tariff Board, in making a comparative study of the industry at home and abroad, obtained a set of representative samples of English cloths with prices at which they are sold in England, the duty they would have to pay if imported into the United States, and the prices at which similar cloths are sold in the United States. Sixteen of the samples, representing the cheapest cloths sold in England at prices of from twelve to fifty-four cents a yard, are not imported into the United States at all, owing to prohibitive duties[Pg 116] ranging from one hundred and thirty-two to two hundred and sixty per cent. Thirteen out of the sixteen samples would have paid duties higher than the highest rate of one hundred and fifty per cent. given in the report of the Bureau of Statistics for cloths actually imported. This illustration will suffice to explain why the rates quoted above for various woolen products from the report of the Bureau of Statistics are understatements of the duties imposed under Schedule K.

An invariable feature of this schedule is that the duties rise in inverse ratio to the value of the commodities, so that the poor man’s grades pay the highest rates, while those intended for people who can best afford to pay the duties are subject to the lowest rates. In the set of English samples collected by the board, the cheapest cloth selling in England for twelve cents a yard would pay a duty in the United States equal to two hundred per cent. ad valorem, while the highest-priced fabric selling at $1.68 a yard would pay a duty of only eighty-seven per cent.

Small wonder that under the fostering care of Schedule K imports have been reduced to next to nothing. With a total domestic consumption of women’s dress-goods valued at more than $105,000,000, we imported six and one third million dollars’ worth of these goods in 1911. The imports of woolen and worsted cloth were only two and one half per cent. of the total domestic consumption. We imported blankets and flannels in 1909 worth $125,000 as against a domestic production of more than $10,500,000, making the imports only slightly more than one per cent. of our total consumption; even in carpets, which are subject to the lowest rates of duty imposed on manufactures under Schedule K, our imports were only $195,000 worth against a domestic production of $45,475,889, making the imports less than one half of one per cent. of our own production.

THE STATE OF THE AMERICAN WOOL INDUSTRY

AFTER enjoying for nearly half a century a protection averaging forty-five per cent. and amounting to from one hundred to five hundred and fifty per cent. on the cheaper grades of wool, the American wool-grower is not able to satisfy as great a part of the national demand for his product as he was at the time of the Civil War. During the sixties we had to depend upon imports to the extent of little over one fourth (26.8 per cent.) of our total consumption of wool. To-day nearly one half of our needs have to be covered by foreign wools (about forty-five per cent. in 1910). When wool was placed on the free list under the Wilson Bill in 1894, it was charged that the abolition of the duty was responsible for the increase in our imports. But our growing dependence on imported wool despite the restoration of the duty under the Dingley Act, in 1897, goes to show that the tariff is no remedy for the shortage.

The wool-grower argues, however, that wool can be produced so much cheaper in Argentina and Australia that, if admitted free of duty to the United States, it would bring about the total disappearance of the American wool industry. The latest available figures given in the report of the Tariff Board show a world production of about 2,500,000,000 pounds of wool, of which the United States produces about one eighth. The world supply would furnish less than a pound of clean wool per head of population, not enough to give each of us more than one suit in three years. Of course the latter estimates are only approximate, but they are not far from the truth. If it were not for the plentiful admixture of cotton and shoddy to the annual stock of new wool, there would not be enough wool to clothe the people of the earth. Under these conditions, there is no danger of the world failing to make use of American wool. Any considerable curtailment in the production of American wool would have the tendency of raising the world’s price of wool to such an extent as to offer renewed encouragement to the American wool-grower. So much for that. But is it true that it costs so much to raise wool in the United States?

The Tariff Board reported that the average cost of production of wool in this country is about three times as high as in Australia and about double that in South America. On that basis our present duty is ridiculously low, and it is a wonder that our wool industry has not long gone out of existence. What is the secret of its miraculous escape from total extinction?

The Tariff Board average represents widely different conditions of production. A large part of the wool grown in this country—no less than eleven per cent. of the wool covered by the board’s investigation—is raised without any cost whatever to the wool-grower; in fact, he gets “a net credit,” to quote the board, or a premium, with each pound of wool coming from his sheep’s back. This is true of sheep-growers who are employing up-to-date methods in their business and have substituted the cross-bred merino sheep for the old-type pure merino. The cross-bred sheep is raised primarily to meet the enormous and rapidly growing demand for mutton. The price realized from the sale of mutton is sufficient not only to cover the entire expense of raising the sheep, but leaves the farmer a net profit, before he has sold a pound of his wool, which has become a by-product with him, and the proceeds from which represent a clear gain. It will be easily seen that the up-to-date mutton-sheep breeder can do very well without any duty on wool.

The mutton-sheep has come to stay, because we are fast getting to be a mutton-eating people. Despite the enormous increase in population, fewer cattle and hogs are being slaughtered to-day than twenty years ago, while the number of sheep killed has more than doubled in the same period. In 1880, for every sheep slaughtered at the Chicago stock-yards, four heads of cattle and twenty-one hogs were killed. In 1900 the number of sheep received at the stock-yards exceeded that of cattle, and in 1911, for every sheep slaughtered, there was only one half of a beef carcass and one and one quarter of a hog. The rapid increase in the demand for and supply of sheep out of all proportion to other animals is in itself the best refutation of the cry that sheep-growing is unprofitable. In his recent book on “Sheep Breeding in America,” Mr. Wing, one of the foremost authorities on the subject in this country, who investigated the sheep-breeding industry for the Tariff Board in every part of the country where it is carried on, as well as abroad, says that sheep-breeding is profitable despite the woefully neglectful manner in which it is conducted in the United States. Unlike some United States senators who have grown rich in the business of raising sheep, Mr. Wing remains cheerful at the prospect of a reduction of wool duties, and even their total abolition has no terrors for him. His attitude is very significant, when it is considered that he is a practical sheep-grower, still engaged in that business, in addition to writing on the subject, and that all his interests, both business and literary, are intimately wound up with the sheep industry.

Not all growers, it is true, have adopted modern methods. The report of the board shows five additional groups of farmers whose cost of production of wool varies from less than five cents a pound to more than twenty. Accepting these figures at their face-value, although they are only approximate, and assuming that a raw material like wool of which we cannot produce enough to satisfy our needs is a proper object of protection, the question still remains whether the tariff is to be high enough to afford protection to every man in the business, even when the results obtained by his neighbors show that he has his own inefficiency or backwardness to blame for his high costs, or whether the duty is to measure the difference between the cost of production of our efficient producers and that of their foreign competitors. If the former be taken as a standard, then the present duty on raw wool is not sufficiently high, and should be greatly increased; if the latter be accepted as a basis in tariff-making, then, there being no cost in raising wool on up-to-date American ranches, there seems to be no valid reason for any duty, except possibly one of a transitory nature, to allow sufficient time to the sheep-growers who need it to adjust themselves to modern conditions of business.

MILL EFFICIENCY

THE same general considerations which apply to raw wool hold good as to its manufactures. There is no such thing as an average cost of production of woolen cloth in the United States. The enormous variety of cloths produced in the same mill proved an insuperable obstacle to the Tariff Board, which gave up the attempt to ascertain the actual cost of production. Instead, it undertook to obtain estimates from manufacturers of the cost of producing cloths, samples of which were furnished to them by the board. As[Pg 118]suming that all the estimates were made in good faith and that the agents of the board were all competent and equal to the task of checking them with the meager means at their command, the average costs even by the board represent widely differing conditions of industrial efficiency.

Industrial efficiency depends on a great many conditions an adequate discussion of which would take in far afield. One fact, however, stands out preëminently, and must be emphasized until it is seared into the consciousness and conscience of the American citizen, and that is that industrial efficiency, which is synonymous with low-labor cost, does not mean, or depend upon, low wages. Yet the lower wages in Europe constitute the stock argument in every plea for protection that is dinned into the ears of Congress.

Not being in a position to make a comprehensive inquiry into the efficiency of American mills in the woolen industry, the Tariff Board made a study of labor efficiency in the various process of wool manufacture in connection with output and wages paid. Almost invariably the mill paying higher wages per hour showed lower costs than its competitor with lower wages.

Thus, in wool scouring the lowest average wages paid to machine-operatives in the thirty mills examined was found to be 12.16 cents per hour, and the highest 17.79. Yet the low-wage mill showed a labor cost of twenty-one cents per hundred pounds of wool, while the high-wage mill had a cost of only fifteen cents. One of the reasons for this puzzling situation was that the low-wage mill paid nine cents per hundred pounds for supervisory labor, such as foremen, etc., while the high-wage mill paid only six cents. Apparently well-paid labor needs less driving and supervising than low-paid labor.

In the carding department of seventeen worsted mills the mill paying its machine-operatives an average wage of 13.18 cents per hour had a machine labor cost of four cents per hundred pounds, while the mill paying its machine-operatives only 11.86 cents per hour had a cost of twenty-five cents per hundred pounds. This was due largely to the fact that the lower-cost-high-wage mill had machinery enabling every operator to turn out more than 326 pounds per hour, while the high-cost-low-wage mill it turning out less than forty-eight pounds per hour.

The same tendency was observed in the carding departments of twenty-six woolen mills. The mill with the highest machine output per man per hour, namely 57.7 pounds, had a machinery-labor cost of twenty-three cents per hundred pounds, while the mill with a machine output of only six pounds per operative per hour had a cost of $1.64 per hundred pounds. Yet this mill, with a cost seven times higher than the other, paid its operatives only 9.86 cents per hour, as against 13.09 cents paid by its more successful competitor.

These examples could be repeated for every department of woolen and worsted mills, but will suffice to illustrate the point that higher wages do not necessarily mean higher costs. They show that mill efficiency depends more on a liberal use of the most improved machinery than on low wages. Thoughtful planning in arranging the machinery to save unnecessary steps to the employees, careful buying of raw materials, the efficient organization and utilization of the labor force in the mill, systematic watching of the thousands of details, each affecting the cost of manufacture, will reduce costs to an astonishing degree. When the board, therefore, states that the labor cost of production in this country is on the average, about double that in foreign countries, we must bear in mind the difference in costs in our own country, and the causes to which high costs are due. The fact is that the woolen industry, being one of the best, if not the best, protected industry in the country, shows an exceptional disposition to cling to old methods and to use machinery which long ago should have been consigned to the scrap-heap. That is where the chief cause of the comparatively high cost of production in a large part of the industry is to be looked for.

But, disregarding the question of efficiency, let us accept the figure of the Tariff Board, which found the labor cost in England to be one half that here, taking the manufacture from the time the wool enters the mill until it is turned out as finished cloth. The entire labor cost varies from twenty to fifty per cent. of the total cost of making cloth, according to the character of the cloth, and but seldom exceeds or approaches fifty per cent. If the protec[Pg 119]tive duty is to measure the difference in labor cost, it should be fixed at not above twenty-five per cent. of the cost, that being the highest difference between the American and English labor cost. As against that, we now have a duty of about fifty-five per cent. of the selling price of the foreign cloth, in addition to the concealed protection in the so-called compensatory duty.

For decades we have been assured that all the manufacturer wanted was a duty high enough to compensate him for the higher wages paid in this country. In 1908 the Republican party laid down the formula that the tariff is to measure the difference in the cost of production at home and abroad, including a “reasonable profit to the manufacturer.” To-day the party has advocates of all kinds of protection, from those who wish the tariff to measure the difference in labor cost of the most efficient mills in this and foreign countries, as advocated by Senator LaFollette, to those who wish a tariff high enough to keep out foreign importations.

Whatever may be done with Schedule K by the Democratic Congress, it is time that we dismiss the hoary legend that the duties are maintained solely in the interest of the highly paid American working-man. The assertion comes with specially poor grace from the woolen and worsted industry, the most highly protected industry in the United States, paying the lowest wages to skilled labor. With the earnings of the great bulk of its employees averaging through the year less than ten dollars a week, while wages are about double that figure in less protected industries; with its workmen compelled to send their wives and children to the mills as an alternative to starvation on the man’s earnings; with the horrors of living conditions of the Lawrence mill-workers still ringing in our ears, it is time that we face the situation squarely and, whatever degree of protection we decide to maintain, that we frankly admit that it is primarily for the benefit of the capital invested in our industries.

Russia, Germany, and France do so frankly, and free-trade England manages to compete with them in the markets of the world, while paying higher wages to its employees. In turn we beat these nations, in their own and in the world’s markets, in the products of the very industries in which we pay the highest wages.

Author of “In the Tennessee Mountains,” “Where the Battle was Fought,” etc.

HAIR snow-white, the drifts of many a winter, eyes sunken amid a network of wrinkles, hands hardened and veinous, shoulders bent, and step laggard and feeble, the old lovers were as beautiful to each other, and as enthralled by mutual devotion, as on their wedding-day forty-five years before. They were beautiful also to more discerning eyes—to a wandering artist in quest of material, who painted them both in divers poses, and carried off his canvases. As a recompense of some sort, he left a masterly depiction of the god of love burned in the wood of the broad, smooth board of the mantelpiece above the hearth, where the fickle little deity, though furnished with wings for swiftest flight, had long presided in constancy.

Doubtless some such sentiment had prompted the pyrography, but its significance failed to percolate through the dense ignorance of the old mountain woman.

“Folks from the summer hotel over yander nigh the bluffs air always powerful tickled over that leetle critter,” she was wont to reply to an admiring comment, “but he ‘pears ter me some similar ter a flying-squirrel. I never seen no baby dee-formed with wings nohow, an’ I tol’ the painter-man at the time that them legs war too fat ter be plumb genteel. But, lawsy! I jes hed ter let him keep on workin’. He war powerful saaft-spoken an’ perlite, though I war afeared he’d disfigure every plain piece o’ wood about the house afore he tuk hisself away.”

Years before, the romance of the old couple had been the idyl of the country-side. They had indeed been lovers as children. They had made pilgrimages to their trysting-place when the breadth of the dooryard was a long journey. They had plighted their vows as they sat in juvenile content, plump, tow-headed, bare-footed among the chips of the wood pile. As they grew older it was the object of their lives to save their treasures to bestow on each other. A big apple, a chunk of maple-sugar, a buckeye of abnormal proportions, attained a certain dignity regarded as gages d’amour. They were never parted for a day till Editha was seventeen years old, when she was summoned to the care of a paralytic aunt who dwelt in Shaftesville, twelve miles distant, and who, in the death of her husband, had been left peculiarly helpless and alone.

The separation was a dreary affliction to the lovers, but it proved the busiest year of Benjamin Casey’s life, signalized by his preparations for the home-coming of the bride to be. All the country-side took a share in the “house-raising,” and the stanch log cabin went up like magic on the rocky bit of land on the bluff, thus utilized to reserve for the plow the arable spaces of the little farm. Every article of the rude furniture common to the region was in its appropriate place when Editha first stood on her own threshold and gazed into the glowing fire aflare upon her own hearth; and humble though it was, she confronted the very genius of home.

The guests who danced at the wedding and afterward at the infare felt that the lifelong romance was a sort of community interest, and for many a year its details were familiarized by repetition about the fire-side or to the casual stranger. But Time is ever the mocker. The generation which had known the pair in the bloom and freshness of their beauty had in great part passed away. Their idyl of devotion and constancy gradually became farcical as the years imposed their blight. “Them old moth-eaten lovyers” was a phrase so apt in derisive description that it commended itself for general use to a community of later date and newer ideals. What a zest of jovial ridicule would the iconoclasts have enjoyed had it been known that it[Pg 121] was only when one was sixty-five years of age and the other sixty-three that there had occurred their first experience of a lovers’ quarrel! For Benjie and Editha now were seriously regarded only by themselves.

A steady, sober man was Benjamin Casey, of a peculiarly sane and reliable judgment, but it occasioned an outburst of unhallowed mirth in the vicinity when it was bruited abroad that he had been chosen on the venire for the petit jury at the next term of the court.

“I’ll bet Editha goes, too,” exclaimed a gossip at the cross-roads store, delighted with the incongruity of the idea.

“Sure,” acceded his interlocutor. “Benjie can’t serve on no panel ’thout Editha sets on the jury, too.”

And, in fact, when the great day came for the journey to the county town, the rickety little wagon with the old white mare stood harnessed before the porch for an hour while Editha, in the toils of perplexity, decided on the details of her toilet for the momentous occasion, and Benjie bent the whole capacity of his substantial mind in the effort to aid her. The finishing touch to her costume of staid, brown homespun had a suggestion of sacrilege in the estimation of each.

“I’d lament it ef it war ter git sp’iled anyways, Benjie,” she concluded at length, “but I dunno ez I will ever hev a more especial occasion ter wear this big silk neckerchief what that painter-man sent me in a letter from Glaston—I reckon fer hevin’ let him mark up my mantel-shelf so scandalous. Jus’ the color of the sky it is, an’ ez big ez a shoulder-shawl, an’ thick an’ glossy in the weave fer true. See! I hev honed ter view how I would look in it, but I hev never made bold ter put it on. Still, considerin’ I ain’t been in Shaftesvul sence the year I spent thar forty-six years ago, I don’t want ter look tacky in nowise; an’, then, I’ll he interjuced ter all them gentlemen of the jury, too.”

Benjie solemnly averred himself of like opinion, and this important question thus settled, the afternoon brought them to Shaftesville, where they spent the night with relatives of Editha.

The criminal court-room of the old brick court-house was a revelation of a new and awesome phase of life to the old couple when the jury was impaneled early the next morning. Editha, decorous, though flushed and breathless with excitement, sat among the spectators, who were ranged on each side of the elevated and railed space inclosing the bar, and Benjie, conspicuous among the jury, exercised the high privilege, which most of his colleagues had sought to shirk, of aiding in the administration of his country’s laws.

Although the taking of testimony occupied only two or three hours during the morning, the rest of the jury obviously wearied at times and grew inattentive, but Benjie continued alert, fresh, intent on a true understanding of the case. More than once he held up his hand for permission to speak, after the etiquette acquired as a boy at the little district school, and when the judge accorded the boon of a question, the point was so well taken and cut so trenchantly into the perplexities involved, that both the arguments of the lawyers and the charge from the bench were inadvertently addressed chiefly to this single juryman, whose native capacity discounted the value of the better-trained minds of the rest of the panel.

When the jury were about to retire to consider their verdict, the unsophisticated pair were surprised to discover that Editha was not to be allowed to sit with Benjie in the jury-room and aid the deliberations of the panel. She had stood up expectantly in her place as the jury began to file out toward an inner apartment, and had known by intuition the import of Benjie’s remark to the constable in charge, happily sotto voce, or it might have fractured the decorum of the court-room beyond the possibility of repair. At the reply, Benjie paused for a moment, looking dumfounded; then catching her eye, he slowly shook his white head. The constable, young, pert, and brisk, hastily circled about his “good and lawful men” with much the style of a small and officious dog rounding up a few recalcitrant head of cattle. The door closed inexorably behind them, and the old couple were separated on the most significant instance in their quiet and eventless lives.

For a few minutes Editha stood at a loss; then her interest in the judicial proceedings having ceased with the retirement of Benjie from the court-room, she drifted softly through the halls and thence to the[Pg 122] street. There had been many changes in Shaftesville since the twelvemonth she had spent there forty-six years before, and she presently developed the ardor of a discoverer in touring the town with this large liberty of leisure while her husband was engrossed in the public service.

As he sat constrained to the deliberations of the jury, Benjie was beset with certain doubts and fears as to the dangers that might betide her. Through the window beside him once he saw her passing on the opposite side of the square, still safe, wavering to and fro before the display of a dry-goods store, evidently amazed at the glories of the fripperies of the fashion on view at the door.

Benjie sprang to his feet, then, realizing the exigencies of the situation, sank back in his chair.

“Thar,” he said suddenly to his colleagues, waving his hand pridefully toward the distant figure—“thar is Mis’ Casey, my wife, by Christian name Editha.”

The jury, despite the untimeliness of the interruption, had the good grace and the good manners to acknowledge this introduction, so to speak, in the spirit in which it was tendered.

“Taking in the town, I suppose,” said the foreman, a well-known grocer of the place.

“Jes so, jes so,” said the beaming Casey. “I war determinated that Mis’ Casey should visit Shaftesvul an’, ef so minded, take in the town.”

Editha vanished within the store, and Benjie’s mind was free to revert to the matter in hand. It was not altogether a usual experience even for one more habituated to jury service. The deliberations started with some unanimity of opinion, the first three ballots showing eleven to one, Benjie holding out in a stanch minority that bade fair to prevent agreement, and enabling the foreman to perpetrate the time-honored joke in the demand for supper.

“Constable,” he roared, “order a meal of victuals for eleven men and a bale of hay for a mule.”

Later, however, Benjie was all a-tingle with pride when the foreman, with a knitted brow at a crisis of the discussion observed, “There is something worth considering in one point of Mr. Casey’s contention.”

This impression grew until the jury called in the constable from his station at the door to convey their request for instruction upon a matter of law. Although long after nightfall, the court was still in session, owing to the crowded state of the docket, and when the jury were led into the court-room to receive from the bench an explanation of the point in question, Benjie was elated to find that the information they had sought aided and elucidated his position. The first ballot taken after returning to the jury-room resulted in ten of the jurors supporting his insistence against only two, and of these the foreman was one. They balloted once more just before they started to go to the hotel to bed, still guarded by the constable, who kept them, in a compact body, from any communication with the public. On this ballot only the foreman was in the opposition.

When they were standing in the hallway of the upper story of the hotel, and the officer was assigning them to their rooms and explaining to the foreman that he would be within call if anything was needed, Benjie, now in high spirits, was moved to exclaim, “Never fear, sonny; a muel is always ekal ter a good loud bray.”

All the jury applauded this turning of the tables, and laughed at the foreman, and one demanded of Benjie what he fed on “up in the sticks to get so all-fired sharp.”

The next morning, to the old mountaineer’s great satisfaction, the foreman, having slept on his perplexities, awoke to Benjie’s way of thinking, and when they were once more in the court-room he pridefully stated that they had reached an agreement and found the prisoner “Not guilty.” The crowd in the court-room cheered; in one moment the prisoner looked like another man, and genially shook hands with each of the jury; the judge thanked them before discharging them from further duty; and as Benjie pushed out of the court-room in the crowd all this was on the tip of his tongue to narrate for the eager wonderment and interest of Editha.

An immediate start for home was essential in order not to tax old Whitey too severely, for the clay roads were heavy as the result of a recent rainfall, and they must reach the mountain before sunset, in view of the steep and dangerous ascent. Therefore he sent word to Editha to meet him at a certain corner, while he repaired to the livery-stable for his vehicle; for he had happened to encounter her hostess, a kinswoman, on his way from the court-room, and had taken ceremonious leave of her on the street.

“I don’t want no more hand-shakin’ an’ farewells,” he said to himself, flustered and eager for the start, so delighted was he to be homeward-bound with Editha and fairly launched on the recital of his wondrous experiences while serving on the jury.

His lips were vaguely moving, now with a word, now with a pleased smile, formulating the sequences of his story, as he jogged along in his little wagon and[Pg 124] suddenly caught sight of his wife awaiting him at the appointed corner.

At the first glance he remarked the change. It was Editha in semblance, but not the Editha he knew or had ever known.

“Editha!” he murmured faintly, all his being resolved into eyes, as he checked old Whitey and drew up close to the curb.

No meager old woman this, wont to hold herself a trifle stoop-shouldered, to walk with a slow, shuffling gait. Her thin figure was braced alertly, like some slender girl’s. She stepped briskly, lightly, from the high curb, and with two motions, as the soldiers say, she put her foot on the hub of the wheel and was seated beside him in the wagon. Then he saw her face, through the tunnel of her dark-blue sunbonnet, suffused with a pink bloom as delicate as a peach-blossom. Her eyes were as blue and as lustrous as the silk muffler, which the artist had doubtless selected with a realization of the accord of these fine tints. A curl of her silky, white hair lay on her forehead, and another much longer hung down beneath the curtain of her bonnet, scarcely more suggestive of age than if it had been discreetly powdered. Her lips were red, and there was a vibration of joyous excitement in her voice.

“Waal, sir, Shaftesvul!” she exclaimed, turning to survey the vanishing town, for it had required scarcely a moment to whisk them beyond its limited precincts. “It’s the beauty-spot of the whole world, sure. But,” she added as she settled herself straight on the seat and turned her face toward the ranges in the distance, “we must try ter put up with the mountings. One good thing is that we air used ter them, else hevin’ ter go back arter this trip would be powerful’ hard on us, sure. Benjie, who do ye reckon I met up with in Shaftesvul? Now, who?”

“I dunno,” faltered Benjie, all ajee and out of his reckoning. Luckily old Whitey knew the way home, for the reins lay slack on her back. “War it yer Cousin Lucindy Jane?” Benjie ventured.

“Cousin Lucindy Jane!” Editha echoed with a tone closely resembling contempt. “Of course I met up with Cousin Lucindy Jane, an’ war interjuced ter her cow an’ all her chickens. Cousin Lucindy Jane!” she repeated slightingly. Then essaying no further to foster his lame guesswork, “Benjie,” she laid her hand impressively on his arm, “I met up with Leroy Tresmon’!”

She gazed at him with wide, bright eyes, challenging his outbreak of surprise. But Benjie only dully fumbled with the name. “Leroy Tresmon’?” he repeated blankly. “Who’s him?”

“Hesh, Benjie!” cried Editha in a girlish gush of laughter. “Don’t ye let on ez I hev never mentioned Leroy Tresmon’s name ter you-’uns. Gracious me! Keep that secret in the sole of yer shoe. He’d never git over it ef he war ter find that out, vain an’ perky ez he be.”

“Why, that year ’way back yander when I lived with Aunt Dor’thy in Shaftesvul. My! my! my! why, ’Roy war ez reg’lar ez the town clock in comin’ ter see me. But, lawsy! it be forty-six year’ ago now. I never would hev dreampt of the critter remembering me arter all these years.” She bridled into a graceful erectness, and threw her beautiful eyes upward in ridicule of the idea as she went on: “I war viewin’ the show-windows of that big dry-goods store. They call it ‘the palace’”—Benjie remembered that he had seen her at that very moment—“an’ it war all so enticin’ ter the eye that I went inside to look closer at some of the pretties; an’ ez I teetered up an’ down the aisle I noticed arter awhile a man old ez you-’uns, Benjie, but mighty fine an’ fixed up an’ scornful an’ perky, an’ jes gazin’ an’ gazin’ at me. But I passed on heedless, an’ presently, ez I war about ter turn ter leave, a clerk stepped up ter me—I hed noticed out of the corner of my eye the boss-man whisper ter him—an’ this whipper-snapper he say, ‘Excuse me, Lady, but did you give yer name ter hev any goods sent up?’ An’ I say, ‘I hev bought no goods; I be a stranger jes viewin’ the town.’ Then ez I started toward the door this boss-man suddint kem out from behind his desk an’ appeared before me. ‘Surely,’ he said, smiling—he hed the whitest teeth, Benjie, an’ a-many of ’em, ez reg’lar ez grains of corn—”

Benjie instinctively closed his lips quickly over his own dental vacancies and ruins as Editha resumed her recital:

“‘Surely,’ he said, smiling,[Pg 125] ‘thar never war two sech pairs of eyes—made out of heaven’s own blue. Ain’t this Editha Bruce?’

“An’ I determinated ter skeer him a leetle, fer he war majorin’ round powerful’ brash; so I said ez cool ez a cucumber, ‘Mis’ Benjamin Casey.’

“But, shucks! the critter knowed my voice ez well ez my eyes. He jes snatched both my hands, an’ ef he said ‘Editha! Editha! Editha!’ once, he said it a dozen times, like he would bu’st out crying an’ sheddin’ tears in two minutes. He don’t call my name like you do, Benjie, short-like, ‘’Ditha.’ He says it ‘Eeditha,’ drawn out, saaft, an’ sweet. Oh, lawsy! I plumb felt like a fool or a gal seventeen year’ old—same thing. Fer it hed jes kem ter me who he war, but I purtended ter hev knowed him all along. The conceits of the town ways of Shaftesvul hev made me plumb tricky an’ deceitful; I tell ye now, Benjie.” She gave a jocose little nudge of her elbow into his thin, old ribs, and so strangely forlorn had Benjie begun to feel that he was grateful even for this equivocal attention.

“Then ‘Roy Tresmon’ say—Now, Benjie, I dunno whether ye will think I done the perlite thing, fer I didn’t rightly know what ter do myself—he say, ‘Editha, fer old sake’s sake choose su’thin’ fer a gift o’ remembrance outen my stock.’

“I never seen no cattle, so I s’posed he war talkin’ sorter townified about his goods in the store. But I jes laffed an’ say, ‘My husband is a man with a free hand, though not a very fat purse, an’ I prefer ter spen’ a few dollars with ye, ez I expected ter do when I drifted in hyar a stranger.’ Ye notice them lies, Benjie. I reckon I kin explain them somehow at the las’ day, but they served my turn ez faithful ez the truth yestiddy. I say, ‘Ye kin take one penny out of the change an’ put a hole through it fer remembrance, an’ let old sake’s sake go at that.’” Once more her caroling, girlish laughter echoed along the lonely road.

“Though I really hedn’t expected ter spen’ a cent, I bought me some thread an’ buttons, an’ some checked gingham fer aperns, an’ a leetle woolen shoulder-shawl, an’ paid fer them, meanin’ of course ter tote ’em along with me under my arm; but ’Roy gin the clerk a look, an’ that spry limber-jack whisked them all away, an’ remarked, ‘The goods will be sent up immejetly ter Mrs. Jarney’s, whar ye say ye be stoppin’.’ An’, Benjie, whenst Cousin Sophy Jarney an’ me opened that parcel las’ night, what d’ ye s’pose we f’und?” She gave Benjie a clutch on the wrist of the hand that held the reins; and feeling them tighten, old Whitey mended her pace.

“Ye oughter been more keerful than ter hev lef’ the things at the store arter payin’ cash money fer ’em,” rejoined Benjie, sagely, not that he was suspicious of temperament, but unsophisticated of training.

“Shucks!” cried Editha, with a rallying laugh. “All them common things that I bought war thar, an’ more besides, wuth trible the money, Benjie. A fancy comb fer the hair—looks some similar ter a crown, though jet-black an’ shiny—an’ a necklace o’ beads ter match. O Benjie!” she gave his hand an ecstatic pressure. “I’ll show ’em ter ye when we gits home—every one. They air in my kyarpet-bag thar in the back of the wagon. An’ thar war besides a leetle lace cape with leetle black jet beads winkin’ at ye all over it, an’ a pair o’ silk gloves, not like mittens, but with separate fingers. Cousin Sophy Jarney she jes squealed. She say, ‘I wish I hed a beau like that!’ Ned Jarney, standin’ by, watchin’ me open the parcel, he say, ‘Ladies hev ter be ez beautisome ez Cousin Editha ter hev beaus at command at her time of life.’ Oh, my! Oh, my! Cousin Sophy she say, ‘Cousin Editha is yit, ez she always war, a tremenjious flirt. I think I’ll try ter practise a leetle bit ter git my hand in, ef ever I should hev occasion ter try.’ Oh, my! I’ll never furgit this visit ter Shaftesvul, the beauty-spot of the nation.”

Editha’s admired eyes, alight with all the fervors of retrospection, were fixed unseeing upon the majestic range of mountains, now turning from blue to amethyst with a cast of the westering sun. The fences had failed along the roadside, and for miles it had run between shadowy stretches of forest that, save for now and again a break of fields or pasture-lands, cut off the alluring view. A lovely stream had given the wayfarers its company, flowing beside the highway, clear as crystal, and when once more it expanded into shallows the road ran down to the margin to essay a ford. Here, as old Whitey paused[Pg 126] to drink from the lustrous depths, the reflection of the deep-green, overhanging boughs, the beetling, gray rocks, and the blue sky painted a picture on the surface too refreshingly vivid and sweet for the senses to discriminate at once all its keen sources of joy.

Old Whitey had seemed to drink her fill, but as Benjie was about to gather up the reins anew she bowed her pendulous lips once more to the shining surface.

“Fust off,” resumed Mrs. Casey, with a touch of gravity,[Pg 127] “I felt plumb mortified about them presents. I knowed all that stuff had cost ’Roy an onpleasing price of money. But, then, I reminded myself I hed no accountability. He done it of his own accord, an’ he could well afford it. I remembered when I war fust acquainted with ’Roy, when I war jes a young gal an’ he nuthin’ but a peart cockerel, he hed then the name of bein’ one of the richest men in Shaftesvul. His dad bein’ dead, ’Roy owned what he hed his own self. An’ jedgin’ by his ‘stock,’ ez he called it, an’ his ‘palace,’ he must hev been makin’ money hand over hand ever sence. So I made up my mind ter enjoy the treat whenst he invited me an’ Sophy an’ her husband, Ned Jarney, ter go ter the pictur’-show last night an’ eat supper arterward. An’, Benjie, I never seen sech fine men-folks’s clothes ez ’Roy Tresmon’ stepped out in. He hed on a b’iled shirt stiff ez a board; he mought hev leaned up ag’in’ it ef he felt tired. His white collar war ekally stiff, an’ ez high ez a staked-an’-ridered fence. Whenst he looked over it he ’peared some similar ter a jumpin’ muel in a high paddock. He hed leetle, tiny, shiny buttons in his shirt-front,—Sophy said they war pure gold,—an’ his weskit war cut down jes so—lem me show ye how.”

She had turned to take hold of Benjie’s humble jeans clothing to illustrate the fashion of the garb of the merchant prince of Shaftesville when her hand faltered on the lapel of his coat. “Why, Benjie,” she cried sharply, “what makes ye look so plumb pale an’ peaked? Air ye ailin’ anyways?”

“Naw, naw.” Benjie testily repudiated the suggestion. “Tell on yer tale.” Then by way of excuse or explanation he added, “I ain’t sick, but settin’ on a jury is a wearin’ business.”

“Mought be ter the britches, but not ter the health,” Editha rejoined. Then she burst out laughing at her jest, and it brought to her mind a new phase of her triumphs. “’Roy Tresmon’ he said I war the wittiest lady he ever seen. He meant plumb jokified,” she explained tolerantly. “An’ sure’ I did keep him on the grin. He ’lowed it war wuth twice the price of his entertainment ter escort me ter the pictur’-show an’ theater-supper arterward; fer when the show war over, me an’ him an’ Sophy an’ Jarney went ter an eatin’-store, whar they hed a whole passel o’ leetle tables set out in the floor an’ the biggest lookin’-glass I ever see on the wall. But, lawsy! Benjie, be ye a-goin’ ter let that old mare stand slobberin’ in the river plumb till sunset? Git up, Whitey!”

“But I tell ye now, Benjie, ’Roy Tresmon’ didn’t do all the fine dressin’. I cut a dash myself. Sophy begged me ter wear a dress of hern ter the pictur’-show an’ the theater-supper, ez they called it, arterward, which I war crazy ter do all the time, though I kep’ on sayin’ ter her, ‘What differ do it make what a’ old mounting woman wears?’ But I let myself be persuaded into a white muslin frock with black spots, an’, Benjie, with the lace cape an’ the jet necklace, an’ the fancy jet comb in my hair, I made that man’s eyes shine ekal ter them gold buttons in his shirt-front. Lem me show ye how Sophy did up my hair. I scarcely dared turn my head on the pillow las’ night fer fear of gittin’ it outen fix, an’ I never teched comb nor bresh ter it this mornin’ so ez ye mought hev some idee how it looked.”

With the word she removed her sunbonnet with gingerly care and sat smiling at him, expectant of plaudits. In fact, the snow-white redundancy of her locks, piled into crafty puffs and coiled in heavy curls by the designing and ambitious Sophy, a close student of the fashion items as revealed in the patent inside of the county paper, achieved a coiffure that might have won even discriminating encomiums. But Benjie looked at her dully and drearily as she sat, all rejuvenated by the artifices of the mode, roseate and bland and suavely smiling. A sudden shadow crossed her face.

“Why, Benjie,” she cried anxiously, “what kin ail you-’uns? Ye look plumb desolated.”

“Oh, you g’ long, g’ long!” cried the goaded Benjie. Luckily she imagined the adjuration addressed to the old mare, now beginning the long, steep ascent of the mountain to their home on the bluff, and thus took no exceptions to the discourtesy.

“I’ll be bound ye eat su’thin’ ez disagreed with you in the town-folk’s victuals. I expec’ I’ll hev ter give ye some yarb tea afore ye feel right peart ag’in. Ye would hev a right to the indigestion ef ye hed been feedin’ like me nigh on ter midnight. I be goin’ ter tell ye about the pictur’-show arter I finish about ’Roy Tresmon’ an’ me. That supper—waal, sir, he invited Sophy an’ Ned Jarney, too, an’ paid fer us all, though some o’ them knickknacks war likely ter hev been paid fer with thar lives. Toadstools did them misguided sinners eat with thar chicken, an’ I expected them presently ter be laid out stiff in death. I never teched the rank p’ison, nor the wine nuther. I say ter ’Roy ez I never could abide traffickin’ with corn-juice. An’ he grinned an’ say, ‘This is grape-juice, Editha.’ But ye mought know it warn’t no common grape-juice. The waiter kep’ a folded napkin round the bottle ez it poured, an’ the sniff of that liquor war tremenjious fine. It war like a whole flower-gyardin full of perfume. Them two men, ’Roy an’ Jarney, war breakin’ the dry-town law, I believe. They kep’ lookin’ at each other an’ laffin’, an’ axin’ which brand of soft drinks war the mos’ satisfyin’. An’ the man what kep’ the eatin’-store looked p’intedly skeered as he said ter the waiter, ‘Ye needn’t put that bottle on the table.’ An’ they got gay fer true; my best cherry-bounce couldn’t hev made ’Roy mo’ glib than he war. An’ ’Roy hed no sense lef’ nuther. Sophy she say she seen the bill the waiter laid by his plate,-ye know how keen them leetle, squinched-up eyes of hern be,—an’ she say it war over ten dollars. Lawsy!—lawsy! what a thing it is ter be rich! ’Roy Tresmon’ jes stepped up ter the counter an’ paid it ’thout battin’ an eye.”

The old couple had left the wagon now, and were walking up a particularly steep and stony stretch of the road to lighten the load on old Whitey, dutifully pulling the rattling, rickety vehicle along with scant guidance. Editha kept in advance, swinging her sunbonnet by the string, her elaborately coiffed head still on display. Now and then as she recalled an item of interest to detail, she paused and stepped backward after a nonchalant girlish fashion, while Benjie, old and battered and broken, found it an arduous task to plod along with laggard, dislocated, and irregular gait at the tail-board of the wagon. They were in the midst of the sunset now. It lay in a broad, dusky-red splendor over all the far, green valleys, and the mountains had garbed themselves in richest purple. Sweets were in the air, seeming more than fragrance; the inhalation was like the quaffing of some delicious elixir, filling the veins with a sort of ethereal ecstasy. The balsam firs imbued the atmosphere with subtle strength, and the lungs expanded to garner it. Flowers under foot, the fresh tinkle of a crystal rill, the cry of a belated bird, all the bliss of home-coming in his thrilling note as he winged his way over the crest—these were the incidents of the climb.

“I tell ye, Benjie,”—Editha once more turned to walk slowly backward, swinging her bonnet by the string,—“it’s a big thing ter be rich.”

“Oh,” suddenly cried the anguished Benjie, with a poignant wail, his fortitude collapsing at last, “I wish you war rich! That be what ye keer fer; I know it now. I wish ye could hev hed riches—yer heart’s desire! I wish I hed never seen you-’uns, an’ ye hed never seen me!”

Editha stood stock-still in the road as though petrified. Old Whitey, her progress barred, paused not unwillingly, and the rattle of the wagon ceased for the nonce. Benjie, doubly disconsolate in the consciousness of his self-betrayal, leaned heavily against the motionless wheel and gazed shrinkingly at the visible wrath gathering in his helpmate’s eyes.

“Man,” she cried, and Benjie felt as though the mountain had fallen on him, “hev ye plumb turned fool? Now,” she went on with a stern intonation, “ye tell me what ye mean by that sayin’, else I’ll fling ye over the bluff or die tryin’.”

“Oh, nuthin’, nuthin’, ’Ditha,” said the miserable Benjie, all the cherished values of his life falling about him in undiscriminated wreck.

“Then I’ll make my own understandin’ outen yer words, an’ I’ll hold the gredge ag’in’ ye ez long ez I live,” she protested.

“Waal, then,” snarled Benjie, “ye take heed ye make the words jes like I said ’em. I’ll stand ter ’em. I never f’und out how ter tell lies in Shaftesvul. I’ll stand ter my words.”

“Ye wished I could hev hed riches,” Editha ponderingly recapitulated his phrases. Then she looked up, her blue eyes severe and her flushed face set. “An’ will ye tell me what’s the reason I couldn’t hev hed riches—old Tom fool!”

“You-’uns, ’Ditha?” Benjie faltered, bewildered by the incongruity of the idea. “You, riches?”

“I could hev hed long ago sech riches ez ’Roy Tresmon’ hev got, sartain sure,” she declared. “An’ considerin’ ye hev kem in yer old age ter wish ye hed never seen me, ’pears like it mought hev been better ef I hed thought twice afore I turned him off forty-six year’ ago.”

“Turned off ’Roy Tresmon’! Forty-six year’ ago! What did ye do that fer, ’Ditha?” Benjie bungled, aghast. He had a confused, flustered sentiment of rebuke: what had possessed Editha in her youth to have discarded this brilliant opportunity!

“An’ now, oh, ’Ditha, that we hev kem so nigh the eend of life’s journey ye air sorry fer it,” wailed Benjie. “But I never knowed ez ye hed the chance.”

Editha tossed her head. “The chance! I hed the chance three times whenst he war young an’ personable an’ mighty nigh ez rich ez he be now.” She began to check off the occasions on her fingers. “Fust, at the big barn dance, when the Dimmycrats hed a speakin’ an’ a percession. Then one night whenst we-’uns war kemin’ home together from prayer-meetin’ he tol’ ag’in ‘his tale of love,’ ez he called it,” she burst forth in a shrill cackle of derision. “Then that Christmus I spent in Shaftesvul the year I stayed with Aunt Dor’thy he begged me ter kem out ter the gate jes at sun-up ter receive my present, which war his heart; an’ I tol’ him ez I war much obleeged, but I wouldn’t deprive him of it. Ha! ha! ha! Lawsy! we-’uns war talkin’ ’bout them old times all ’twixt the plays at the pictur’-show, an’ he declared he hed stayed a bachelor all these years fer my sake. I tol’ him that ef I war forty-five years younger I’d hev more manners than ter listen ter sech talk ez that, ha! ha! ha! ’T war all mighty funny an’ gamesome, an’ I laffed an’ laffed.”

“’Ditha,” said the contrite Benjie, taking heart of grace from her relaxing seriousness, “I love ye so well that it hurts me to think I cut ye out of any good thing.”

“Waal, ye done it, sure,” said the uncompromising Editha. “But fer you-’uns I would hev married that man and owned all he hev got from his ‘palace’ ter his store teeth.”

“Did—did you-’uns say his teeth war jes store teeth?” demanded Benjie, excitedly.

“Did you-’uns expec’ the critter ter cut a new set of teeth at his time of life?” laughed Editha.

“O ’Ditha, I felt so cheap whenst ye tol’ ’bout his fine clothes,” Benjie began.

“He used ter wear jes ez fine clothes forty-five years ago,” interrupted Editha, “an’ he war then ez supple a jumping-jack ez ever ye see, not a hirpling old codger; but, lawsy! I oughtn’t ter laff at his rheumatics, remembering all them beads on that cape.”

As they climbed into the wagon, the ascent being completed, and resumed their homeward way, Benjie was moved to seek to impress his own merits. “I hed considerable attention paid ter my words whenst settin’ on the jury, ’Ditha. They all kem round ter my way of thinkin’ whenst they heard me talk.”

“Waal, I don’t follow thar example,” Editha retorted. “The more I hear ye talk, the bigger fool ye seem ter be. Hyar ye air now thinkin’ it will make me set more store by ye ter know that eleven slack-twisted town-men hearkened ter yer speech. Ye suits me, an’ always did. I’d think of ye jes the same if every juryman hed turned ag’in’ ye, stiddier seein’ the wisdom of yer words.”

A genial glow sprang up in Benjie’s heart, responsive to the brusk sincerities of this fling, and when the house was reached, and the flames again flared, red and yellow from the hickory logs in the deep chimney-place, the strings of scarlet peppers swinging from the ceiling, the gaily flowered curtains fluttering at the windows, the dogs fawning about their feet on the hearthstone, Editha’s exclamation seemed the natural sequence of their arrival.

“Home fer sure!” she cried with a joyous nesting instinct, and reckless of inconsistency. “An’, lawsy! don’t it look good an’ sensible! ’Pears like Shaftesvul is away, away off yander in a dream, an’ ’Roy Tresmon’, with his big white teeth an’ fine clothes an’ rheumatic teeter, is some similar ter a nightmare, though I oughter hev manners enough ter remember them beads on that cape, an’ speak accordin’. I be done with travelin’, Benjie, an’ nex’ time ye set on a jury ye’ll hev ter do it by yer lone.”

The firelight showed the cheery radiance of the smile with which the old “moth-eaten lovyers” gazed at each other, and the quizzical expression of the little Cupid delineated on the mantelpiece, peering out at them from beneath the bandage of his eyes, his useless wings spread above the hearth he hallowed.

CHAPTER XV

TO employ the figure of Burrill, Tembarom was indeed “as pleased as Punch.” He was one of the large number of men who, apart from all sentimental relations, are made particularly happy by the kindly society of women; who expand with quite unconscious rejoicing when a women begins to take care of them in one way or another. The unconsciousness is a touching part of the condition. The feminine nearness supplies a primeval human need. The most complete of men, as well as the weaklings, feel it. It is a survival of days when warm arms held and protected, warm hands served, and affectionate voices soothed. An accomplished male servant may perform every domestic service perfectly, but the fact that he cannot be a women leaves a sense of lack. An accustomed feminine warmth in the surrounding daily atmosphere has caused many a man to marry his housekeeper or even his cook, as circumstances prompted.

Tembarom had known no woman well until he had met Little Ann. His feeling for Mrs. Bowse herself had verged on affection, because he would have been fond of any woman of decent temper and kindliness, especially if she gave him opportunities to do friendly service. Little Ann had seemed the apotheosis of the feminine, the warmly helpful, the subtly supporting, the kind. She had been to him an amazement and a revelation. She had continually surprised him by revealing new characteristics which seemed to him nicer things than he had ever known before, but which, if he had been aware of it, were not really surprising at all. They were only the characteristics of a very nice young feminine creature.

The presence of Miss Alicia, with the long-belated fashion of her ringlets and her little cap, was delightful to him. He felt as though he would like to take her in his arms and hug her. He thought perhaps it was partly because she was a little[Pg 131] like Ann, and kept repeating his name in Ann’s formal little way. Her delicate terror of presuming or intruding he felt in its every shade. Mentally she touched him enormously. He wanted to make her feel that she need not be afraid of him in the least, that he liked her, that in his opinion she had more right in the house than he had. He was a little frightened lest through ignorance he should say things the wrong way, as he had said that thing about wanting to know what she expected him to do. What he ought to have said was, “You’re not expecting me to let that sort of thing go on.” It had made him sick when he saw what a break he’d made and that she thought he was sort of insulting her. The room seemed all right now that she was in it. Small and unassuming as she was, she seemed to make it less over-sized. He didn’t so much mind the loftiness of the ceiling, the depth and size of the windows, and the walls covered with thousands of books he knew nothing whatever about. The innumerable books had been an oppressing feature. If he had been one of those “college guys” who never could get enough of books, what a “cinch” the place would have been for him—good as the Astor Library! He hadn’t a word to say against books,—good Lord! no,—but even if he’d had the education and the time to read, he didn’t believe he was naturally that kind, anyhow. You had to be “that kind” to know about books. He didn’t suppose she—meaning Miss Alicia—was learned enough to make you throw a fit. She didn’t look that way, and he was mighty glad of it, because perhaps she wouldn’t like him much if she was. It would worry her when she tried to talk to him and found out he didn’t know a darned thing he ought to.

They’d get on together easier if they could just chin about common sort of every-day things. But though she didn’t look like the Vassar sort, he guessed that she was not like himself: she had lived in libraries before, and books didn’t frighten her. She’d been born among people who read lots of them and maybe could talk about them. That was why she somehow seemed to fit into the room. He was aware that, timid as she was and shabby as her neat dress looked, she fitted into the whole place, as he did not. She’d been a poor relative and had been afraid to death of old Temple Barholm, but she’d not been afraid of him because she wasn’t his sort. She was a lady; that was what was the matter with her. It was what made thing harder for her, too. It was what made her voice tremble when she’d tried to seem so contented and polite when she’d talked about going into one of those “decayed almshouses.” As if the old ladies were vegetables that had gone wrong, by gee! he thought.

He liked her little, modest, delicate old face and her curls and her little cap with the ribbons so much that he smiled with a twinkling eye every time he looked at her. He wanted to suggest something he thought would be mighty comfortable, but he was half afraid he might be asking her to do something which wasn’t “her job,” and it might hurt her feelings. But he ventured to hint at it.

“Has Burrill got to come back and pour that out?” he asked, with an awkward gesture toward the tea-tray.

“Oh, no, unless you wish it,” she answered. “Shall—may I give it to you?”

“Will you?” he exclaimed delightedly. “That would be fine. I shall feel like a regular Clarence.”

She was going to sit at the table in a straight-backed chair, but he sprang at her.

“This big one is more comfortable,” he said, and he dragged it forward and made her sit in it. “You ought to have a footstool,” he added, and he got one and put it under her feet. “There, that’s all right.”

A footstool, as though she were a royal personage and he were a gentleman in waiting, only probably gentlemen in waiting did not jump about and look so pleased. The cheerful content of his boyish face when he himself sat down near the table was delightful.

She filled the tea-pot and held it for a moment, and then set it down as though her feelings were too much for her.

“But it’s a nice one, ain’t it?” he answered.[Pg 132] “I feel as if I was in two. Sitting here in this big room with all these fine things about me, and having afternoon tea with a relation! It just about suits me. It didn’t feel like this yesterday, you bet your life!”

“Does it seem—nicer than yesterday?” she ventured. “Really, Mr. Temple Barholm?”

It was beyond all belief. He was speaking as though the advantage, the relief, the happiness, were all on his side. She longed to enlighten him.

“But you can’t realize what it is to me,” she said gratefully, “to sit here, not terrified and homeless and—a beggar any more, with your kind face before me. Do forgive me for saying it. You have such a kind young face, Mr. Temple Barholm. And to have an easy-chair and cushions, and actually a buffet brought for your feet!” She suddenly recollected herself. “Oh, I mustn’t let your tea get cold,” she added, taking up the tea-pot apologetically. “Do you take cream and sugar, and is it to be one lump or two?”

“I take everything in sight,” he replied joyously, “and two lumps, please.”

She prepared the cup of tea with as delicate a care as though it had been a sacramental chalice, and when she handed it to him she smiled wistfully.

“No one but you ever thought of such a thing as bringing a buffet for my feet—no one except poor little Jem,” she said, and her voice was wistful as well as her smile.

She was obviously unaware that she was introducing an entirely new acquaintance to him. Poor little Jem was supposed to be some one whose whole history he knew.

“Jem?” he repeated, carefully transferring a piece of hot buttered crumpet to his plate.

“Jem Temple Barholm,” she answered. “I say little Jem because I remember him only as a child. I never saw him after he was eleven years old.”

“Who was he?” he asked. The tone of her voice and her manner of speaking made him feel that he wanted to hear something more.

She looked rather startled by his ignorance. “Have you—have you never heard of him?” she inquired.

Her hesitation caused him to neglect his crumpet, to look up at her. He saw at once that she wore the air of a sensitive and beautifully mannered elderly lady who was afraid she had made a mistake and said something awkward.

“I am so sorry,” she apologized. “Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned him.”

She was embarrassed. She evidently wished she had not spoken, but breeding demanded that she should ignore the awkwardness of the situation, if awkwardness existed.

“Of course—I hope your tea is quite as you like it—of course there is no real reason. But—shall I give you some more cream? No? You see, if he hadn’t died, he—he would have inherited Temple Barholm.”

“Instead of me?” he asked, to make sure. She endeavored not to show embarrassment and told herself it didn’t really matter—to a thoroughly nice person. But—

“He was the next of kin—before you. I’m so sorry I didn’t know you hadn’t heard of him. It seemed natural that Mr. Palford should have mentioned him.”

“He did say that there was a young fellow who had died, but he didn’t tell me about him. I guess I didn’t ask. There were such a lot of other things. I’d like to hear about him. You say you knew him?”

“Only when he was a little fellow. Never after he grew up. Something happened which displeased my father. I’m afraid papa was very easily displeased. Mr. Temple Barholm disliked him, too. He would not have him at Temple Barholm.”

“He had no luck with any one. I seemed to be the only person who was fond of him, and of course I didn’t count.”

“I do think I did. Both his parents died quite soon after he was born, and people who ought to have cared for him were rather jealous because he stood so near to Temple Barholm. If Mr. Temple Barholm had not been so eccentric and bitter, everything would have been done for him; but as it was, he seemed to belong to no one. When he came to the vicarage it used to make me so happy. He used to call me Aunt Alicia, and he had such pretty ways.” She hesitated and looked quite tenderly at the tea-pot, a sort of shyness in her face. “I am sure,” she burst forth, “I feel quite sure that you will understand and won’t think it indelicate; but I had thought so often that I should like to have a little boy—if I had married,” she added in hasty tribute to propriety.

Tembarom’s eyes rested on her in a thoughtfulness openly touched with affection. He put out his hand and patted hers two or three times in encouraging sympathy.

“Say,” he said frankly, “I just believe every woman that’s the real thing’d like to have a little boy—or a little girl—or a little something or other. That’s why pet cats and dogs have such a cinch of it. And there’s men that’s the same way. It’s sort of nature.”

“He had such a high spirit and such pretty ways,” she said again. “One of his pretty ways was remembering to do little things to make one comfortable, like thinking of giving one a cushion or a buffet for one’s feet. I noticed so much because I had never seen boys or men wait upon women. My own dear papa was used to having women wait upon him—bring his slippers, you know, and give him the best chair. He didn’t like Jem’s ways. He said he liked a boy who was a boy and not an affected nincompoop. He wasn’t really quite just.” She paused regretfully and sighed as she looked back into a past doubtlessly enriched with many similar memories of “dear papa.” “Poor Jem! Poor Jem!” she breathed softly.

Tembarom thought that she must have felt the boy’s loss very much, almost as much as though she had really been his mother; perhaps more pathetically because she had not been his mother or anybody’s mother. He could see what a good little mother she would have made, looking after her children and doing everything on earth to make them happy and comfortable, just the kind of mother Ann would make, though she had not Ann’s steady wonder of a little head or her shrewd far-sightedness. Jem would have been in luck if he had been her son. It was a darned pity he hadn’t been. If he had, perhaps he would not have died young.

“Yes,” he answered sympathetically, “it’s hard for a young fellow to die. How old was he, anyhow? I don’t know.”

“Not much older than you are now. It was seven years ago. And if he had only died, poor dear! There are things so much worse than death.”

“Awful disgrace is worse,” she faltered. She was plainly trying to keep moisture out of her eyes.

“Did he get into some bad mix-up, poor fellow?” If there had been anything like that, no wonder it broke her up to think of him.

“The cruel thing was that he didn’t really do what he was accused of,” she said.

“No; but he was a ruined man, and he went away to the Klondike because he could not stay in England. And he was killed—killed, poor boy! And afterward it was found out that he was innocent—too late.”

“Gee!” Tembarom gasped, feeling hot and cold. “Could you beat that for rotten luck! What was he accused of?”

Miss Alicia leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. It was too dreadful to speak of aloud.

“Cheating at cards—a gentleman playing with gentlemen. You know what that means.”

Tembarom grew hotter and colder. No wonder she looked that way, poor little thing!

“But,”—He hesitated before he spoke,—“but he wasn’t that kind, was he? Of course he wasn’t.”

“No, no. But, you see,”—She hesitated herself here,—“everything looked so much against him. He had been rather wild.” She dropped her voice even lower in making the admission.

“He was so much in debt. He knew he was to be rich in the future, and he was poor just in those reckless young days when it seemed unfair. And he had played a great deal and had been very lucky. He was so lucky that sometimes his luck seemed uncanny. Men who had played with him were horrible about it afterward.”

“They would be,” put in Tembarom. “They’d be sore about it, and bring it up.”

They both forgot their tea. Miss Alicia forgot everything as she poured forth her story in the manner of a woman who had been forced to keep silent and was glad to put her case into words. It was her case. To tell the truth of this forgotten wrong was again to offer justification of poor handsome Jem whom everybody seemed to have dropped talk of, and even preferred not to hear mentioned.

“There were such piteously cruel things about it,” she went on. “He had fallen very much in love, and he meant to marry and settle down. Though we had not seen each other for years, he actually wrote to me and told me about it. His letter made me cry. He said I would understand and care about the thing which seemed to have changed everything and made him a new man. He was so sorry that he had not been better and more careful. He was going to try all over again. He was not going to play at all after this one evening when he was obliged to keep an engagement he had made months before to give his revenge to a man he had won a great deal of money from. The very night the awful thing happened he had told Lady Joan, before he went into the card-room, that this was to be his last game.”

Tembarom had looked deeply interested from the first, but at her last words a new alertness added itself.

“She was the girl he was so much in love with. Her name was Lady Joan Fayre.”

He recalled Ann’s reflective consideration of him before she had said, “She’ll come after you.” He replied now: “Some one spoke of her to me this morning. They say she’s a beauty and as proud as Lucifer.”

“She didn’t believe it, did she?” he put in hastily. “She didn’t throw him down?”

“No one knew what happened between them afterward. She was in the card-room, looking on, when the awful thing took place.”

She stopped, as though to go on was almost unbearable. She had been so overwhelmed by the past shame of it that even after the passing of years the anguish was a living thing. Her small hands clung hard together as they rested on the edge of the table. Tembarom waited in thrilled suspense. She spoke in a whisper again:

“He won a great deal of money—a great deal. He had that uncanny luck again, and of course people in the other rooms heard what was going on, and a number drifted in to look on. The man he had promised to give his revenge to almost showed signs of having to make an effort to conceal his irritation and disappointment. Of course, as he was a gentleman, he was as cool as possible; but just at the most exciting moment, the height of the game, Jem made a quick movement, and—and something fell out of his sleeve.”

“It”—Her voice was a sob of woe—“it was a marked card. The man he was playing against snatched it and held it up. And he laughed out loud.”

“Holy cats!” burst from Tembarom; but the remarkable exclamation was one of genuine horror, and he turned pale, got up from his seat, and took two or three strides across the room, as though he could not sit still.

“Yes, he laughed—quite loudly,” repeated Miss Alicia, “as if he had guessed it all the time. Papa heard the whole story from some one who was present.”

“What could he do? There was a dead silence. People moved just a little nearer to the table and stood and stared, merely waiting. They say it was awful to see his face—awful. He sprang up and stood still, and slowly became as white as if he were dying before their eyes. Some one thought Lady Joan Fayre took a step toward him, but no one was quite sure. He never uttered one word, but walked out of the room and down the stairs and out of the house.”

“He disappeared. No one knew where at first, and then there was a rumor that he had gone to the Klondike and had been killed there. And a year later—only a year! Oh, if he had only waited in England!—a worthless villain of a valet he had discharged for stealing met with an accident, and because he thought he was going to die, got horribly frightened, and confessed to the clergyman that he had tucked the card in poor Jem’s sleeve himself just to pay him off. He said he did it on the chance that it would drop out where some one would see it, and a marked card dropping out of a man’s sleeve anywhere would look black enough, whether he was playing or not. But poor Jem was in his grave, and no one seemed to care, though every one had been interested enough in the scandal. People talked about that for weeks.”

“It makes me sort of strangle,” he said. “You’ve got to stand your own bad luck, but to hear of a chap that’s had to lie down and take the worst that could come to him and know it wasn’t his—just know it! And die before he’s cleared! That knocks me out.”

Almost every sentence he uttered had a mystical sound to Miss Alicia, but she knew how he was taking it, with what hot, young human sympathy and indignation. She loved the way he took it, and she loved the feeling in his next words:

“I never met her, and I know very little of her; but she has never married.”

“I’m glad of that,” he said. “I’m darned glad of it. How could she?” Ann wouldn’t, he knew. Ann would have gone to her grave unmarried. But she would have done things first to clear her man’s name. Somehow she would have cleared him, if she’d had to fight tooth and nail till she was eighty.

“They say she has grown very bitter and haughty in her manner. I’m afraid Lady Mallowe is a very worldly woman. One hears they don’t get on together, and that she is bitterly disappointed because her daughter has not made a good match. It appears that she might have made several, but she is so hard and cynical that men are afraid of her. I wish I had known her a little—if she really loved Jem.”

Tembarom had thrust his hands into his pockets, and was standing deep in thought, looking at the huge bank of red coals in the fire-grate. Miss Alicia hastily wiped her eyes.

“I’ll excuse you all right,” he replied, still looking into the coals. “I guess I shouldn’t excuse you as much if you didn’t.” He let her cry in her gentle way while he stared, lost in reflection.

“And if he hadn’t fired that valet chap, he would be here with you now—instead of me. Instead of me,” he repeated.

And Miss Alicia did not know what to say in reply. There seemed to be nothing which, with propriety and natural feeling, one could say.

“IT makes me feel just fine to know I’m not going to have my dinner all by myself,” he said to her before she left the library.

She had a way of blushing about things he noticed, when she was shy or moved or didn’t know exactly what to say. Though she must have been sixty, she did it as though she were sixteen. And she did it when he said this, and looked as though suddenly she was in some sort of trouble.

“You are going to have dinner with me,” he said, seeing that she hesitated—“dinner and breakfast and lunch and tea and supper and every old thing that goes. You can’t turn me down after me staking out that claim.”

“I’m afraid—” she said.[Pg 136] “You see, I have lived such a secluded life. I scarcely ever left my rooms except to take a walk. I’m sure you understand. It would not have been necessary even if I could have afforded it, which I really couldn’t—I’m afraid I have nothing—quite suitable—for evening wear.”

“You haven’t!” he exclaimed gleefully. “I don’t know what is suitable for evening wear, but I haven’t got it either. Pearson told me so with tears in his eyes. It never was necessary for me either. I’ve got to get some things to quiet Pearson down, but until I do I’ve got to eat my dinner in a tweed cutaway; and what I’ve caught on to is that it’s unsuitable enough to throw a man into jail. That little black dress you’ve got on and that little cap are just ’way out of sight, they’re so becoming. Come down just like you are.”

She felt a little as Pearson had felt when confronting his new employer’s entire cheerfulness in face of a situation as exotically hopeless as the tweed cutaway, and nothing else by way of resource. But there was something so nice about him, something which was almost as though he was actually a gentleman, something which absolutely, if one could go so far, stood in the place of his being a gentleman. It was impossible to help liking him more and more at every queer speech he made. Still, there were of course things he did not realize, and perhaps one ought in kindness to give him a delicate hint.

“I’m afraid,” she began quite apologetically. “I’m afraid that the servants, Burrill and the footmen, you know, will be—will think—”

“Say,” he took her up, “let’s give Burrill and the footmen the Willies out and out. If they can’t stand it, they can write home to their mothers and tell ’em they’ve got to take ’em away. Burrill and the footmen needn’t worry. They’re suitable enough, and it’s none of their funeral, anyhow.”

He wasn’t upset in the least. Miss Alicia, who, as a timid dependent either upon “poor dear papa” or Mr. Temple Barholm, had been secretly, in her sensitive, ladylike little way, afraid of superior servants all her life, knowing that they realized her utterly insignificant helplessness, and resented giving her attention because she was not able to show her appreciation of their services in the proper manner—Miss Alicia saw that it had not occurred to him to endeavor to propitiate them in the least, because somehow it all seemed a joke to him, and he didn’t care. After the first moment of being startled, she regarded him with a novel feeling, almost a kind of admiration. Tentatively she dared to wonder if there was not something even rather—rather aristocratic in his utter indifference.

If he had been a duke, he would not have regarded the servants’ point of view; it wouldn’t have mattered what they thought. Perhaps, she hastily decided, he was like this because, though he was not a duke, and boot-blacking in New York notwithstanding, he was a Temple Barholm. There were few dukes as old of blood as a Temple Barholm. That must be it. She was relieved.

Whatsoever lay at the root of his being what he was and as he was, he somehow changed the aspect of things for her, and without doing anything but be himself, cleared the atmosphere of her dread of the surprise and mental reservations of the footmen and Burrill when she came down to dinner in her high-necked, much-cleaned, and much-repaired black silk, and with no more distinguishing change in her toilet than a white lace cap instead of a black one, and with “poor dear mama’s” hair bracelet with the gold clasp on her wrist, and a weeping-willow made of “poor dear papa’s” hair in a brooch at her collar.

It was so curious, though still “nice,” but he did not offer her his arm when they were going into the dining-room, and he took hold of hers with his hand and affectionately half led, half pushed, her along with him as they went. And he himself drew back her chair for her at the end of the table opposite his own. He did not let a footman do it, and he stood behind it, talking in his cheerful way all the time, and he moved it to exactly the right place, and then actually bent down and looked under the table.

“Here,” he said to the nearest man-servant, “where’s there a footstool? Get one, please,” in that odd, simple, almost aristocratic way. It was not a rude or dictatorial way, but a casual way, as though he knew the man was there to do things, and he didn’t expect any time to be wasted.

And it was he himself who arranged the footstool, making it comfortable for her, and then he went to his own chair at the head of the table and sat down, smiling at her joyfully across the glass and silver and flowers.

“Push that thing in the middle on one side, Burrill,” he said. “It’s too high. I can’t see Miss Alicia.”

“Is that what it’s called, an apern? That’s a new one on me. Yes, that’s what I mean. Push the apern over.”

“Shall I remove it from the table, sir?” Burrill steeled himself to exact civility. Of what use to behave otherwise? There always remained the liberty to give notice if the worst came to the worst, though what the worst might eventually prove to be it required a lurid imagination to depict. The epergne was a beautiful thing of crystal and gold, a celebrated work of art, regarded as an exquisite possession. It was almost remarkable that Mr. Temple Barholm had not said, “Shove it on one side,” but Burrill had been spared the poignant indignity of being required to “shove.”

“Yes, suppose you do. It’s a fine enough thing when it isn’t in the way, but I’ve got to see you while I talk, Miss Alicia,” said Mr. Temple Barholm. The episode of the epergne—Burrill’s expression, and the rigidly restrained mouths of Henry and James as the decoration was removed, leaving a painfully blank space of table-cloth until Burrill silently filled it with flowers in a low bowl—these things temporarily flurried Miss Alicia somewhat, but the pleased smile at the head of the table calmed even that trying moment.

Then what a delightful meal it was, to be sure! How entertaining and cheerful and full of interesting conversation! Miss Alicia had always admired what she reverently termed “conversation.” She had read of the houses of brilliant people where they had it at table, at dinner and supper parties, and in drawing-rooms. The French, especially the French ladies, were brilliant conversationalists. They held “salons” in which the conversation was wonderful—Mme. de Staël and Mme. Roland, for instance; and in England, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Sydney Smith, and Horace Walpole, and surely Miss Fanny Burney, and no doubt L. E. L., whose real name was Miss Letitia Elizabeth Landon—what conversation they must have delighted their friends with and how instructive it must have been even to sit in the most obscure corner and listen!

Such gifted persons seemed to have been chosen by Providence to delight and inspire every one privileged to hear them. Such privileges had been omitted from the scheme of Miss Alicia’s existence. She did not know, she would have felt it sacrilegious to admit it even if the fact had dawned upon her, that “dear papa” had been a heartlessly arrogant, utterly selfish, and tyrannical old blackguard of the most pronounced type. He had been of an absolute morality as far as social laws were concerned. He had written and delivered a denunciatory sermon a week, and had made unbearable by his ministrations the suffering hours and the last moments of his parishioners during the long years of his pastorate. When Miss Alicia, in reading records of the helpful relationship of the male progenitors of the Brontes, Jane Austen, Fanny Burney, and Mrs. Browning, was frequently reminded of him, she revealed a perception of which she was not aware. He had combined the virile qualities of all of them. Consequently, brilliancy of conversation at table had not been the attractive habit of the household; “poor dear papa” had confined himself to scathing criticisms of the incompetence of females who could not teach their menials to “cook a dinner which was not a disgrace to any decent household.” When not virulently aspersing the mutton, he was expressing his opinion of muddle-headed weakness which would permit household bills to mount in a manner which could only bring ruin and disaster upon a minister of the gospel who throughout a protracted career of usefulness had sapped his intellectual manhood in the useless effort to support in silly idleness a family of brainless and maddening fools. Miss Alicia had heard her character, her unsuccessful physical appearance, her mind, and her pitiful efforts at table-talk, described in detail with a choice of adjective and adverb which had broken into terrified fragments every atom of courage and will with which she had been sparsely dowered.

So, not having herself been gifted with conversational powers to begin with, and never having enjoyed the exhibition of such powers in others, her ideals had been[Pg 138] high. She was not sure that Mr. Temple Barholm’s fluent and cheerful talk could be with exactness termed “conversation.” It was perhaps not sufficiently lofty and intellectual, and did not confine itself rigorously to one exalted subject. But how it did raise one’s spirits and open up curious vistas! And how good tempered and humorous it was, even though sometimes the humor was a little bewildering! During the whole dinner there never occurred even one of those dreadful pauses in which dead silence fell, and one tried, like a frightened hen flying from side to side of a coop, to think of something to say which would not sound silly, but perhaps might divert attention from dangerous topics. She had often thought it would be so interesting to hear a Spaniard or a native Hindu talk about himself and his own country in English. Tembarom talked about New York and its people and atmosphere, and he did not know how foreign it all was. He described the streets—Fifth Avenue and Broadway and Sixth Avenue—and the street-cars and the elevated railroad, and the way “fellows” had to “hustle” “to put it over.” He spoke of a boarding-house kept by a certain Mrs. Bowse, and a presidential campaign, and the election of a mayor, and a quick-lunch counter, and when President Garfield had been assassinated, and a department store, and the electric lights, and the way he had of making a sort of picture of everything was really instructive and, well, fascinating. She felt as though she had been taken about the city in one of the vehicles the conductor of which described things through a megaphone.

Not that Mr. Temple Barholm suggested a megaphone, whatsoever that might be, but he merely made you feel as if you had seen things. Never had she been so entertained and enlightened. If she had been a beautiful girl, he could not have seemed more as though in amusing her he was also really pleasing himself. He was so very funny sometimes that she could not help laughing in a way which was almost unladylike, because she could not stop, and was obliged to put her handkerchief up to her face and wipe away actual tears of mirth.

Though once Burrill himself was obliged to turn hastily away, and twice she heard him severely reprove an overpowered young footman in a rapid undertone.

Tembarom at least felt that the unlifting heaviness of atmosphere which had surrounded him while enjoying the companionship of Mr. Palford was a thing of the past.

The thrilled interest, the surprise and delight, of Miss Alicia would have stimulated a man in a comatose condition, it seemed to him.

The little thing just loved every bit of it—she just “eat it up.” She asked question after question, sometimes questions which would have made him shout with laughter if he had not been afraid of hurting her feelings. She knew as little of New York as he knew of Temple Barholm, and was, it made him grin to see, allured by it as by some illicit fascination.

She did not know what to make of it, and sometimes she was obliged hastily to conceal a fear that it was a sort of Sodom and Gomorrah; but she wanted to hear more about it, and still more.

And she brightened up until she actually did not look frightened, and ate her dinner with an excellent appetite.

“I really never enjoyed a dinner so much in my life,” she said when they went into the drawing-room to have their coffee. “It was the conversation which made it so delightful. Conversation is such a stimulating thing!”

She had almost decided that it was “conversation,” or at least a wonderful substitute.

When she said good night to him and went beaming to bed, looking forward immensely to breakfast next morning, he watched her go up the staircase, feeling wonderfully normal and happy.

“Some of these nights, when she’s used to me,” he said as he stuffed tobacco into his last pipe in the library—“some of these nights I’m darned if I sha’n’t catch hold of the sweet, little old thing and hug her in spite of myself. I sha’n’t be able to help it.” He lit his pipe, and puffed it even excitedly. “Lord!” he said, “there’s some blame’ fool going about the world right now that might have married her. And he’ll never know what a break he made when he didn’t.”

CHAPTER XVI

A FUGITIVE fine day which had strayed into the month from the approaching spring appeared the next morning, and Miss Alicia was uplifted by the enrapturing suggestion that she should join her new relative in taking a walk, in fact that it should be she who took him to walk and showed him some of his possessions. This, it had revealed itself to him, she could do in a special way of her own, because during her life at Temple Barholm she had felt it her duty to “try to do a little good” among the villagers. She and her long-dead mother and sister had of course been working adjuncts of the vicarage, and had numerous somewhat trying tasks to perform in the way of improving upon “dear papa’s” harrying them into attending church, chivying, the mothers into sending their children to Sunday-school, and being unsparing in severity of any conduct which might be construed into implying lack of appreciation of the vicar or respect for his eloquence.

It had been necessary for them as members of the vicar’s family—always, of course, without adding a sixpence to the household bills—to supply bowls of nourishing broth and arrowroot to invalids and to bestow the aid and encouragement which result in a man of God’s being regarded with affection and gratitude by his parishioners. Many a man’s career in the church, “dear papa” had frequently observed, had been ruined by lack of intelligence and effort on the part of the female members of his family.

“No man could achieve proper results,” he had said, “if he was hampered by the selfish influence and foolishness of his womenkind. Success in the church depends in one sense very much upon the conduct of a man’s female relatives.”

After the deaths of her mother and sister, Miss Alicia had toiled on patiently, fading day by day from a slim, plain, sweet-faced girl to a slim, even plainer and sweeter-faced middle-aged and at last elderly woman. She had by that time read aloud by bedsides a great many chapters in the Bible, had given a good many tracts, and bestowed as much arrowroot, barley-water, and beef-tea as she could possibly encompass without domestic disaster. She had given a large amount of conscientious, if not too intelligent, advice, and had never failed to preside over her Sunday-school class or at mothers’ meetings. But her timid unimpressiveness had not aroused enthusiasm or awakened comprehension. “Miss Alicia,” the cottage women said, “she’s well meanin’, but she’s not one with a head.” “She reminds me,” one of them[Pg 140] had summed her up, “of a hen that lays a’ egg every day, but it’s too small for a meal, and it ’u’d never hatch into anythin’.”

During her stay at Temple Barholm she had tentatively tried to do a little “parish work,” but she had had nothing to give, and she was always afraid that if Mr. Temple Barholm found her out, he would be angry, because he would think she was presuming. She was aware that the villagers knew that she was an object of charity herself, and a person who was “a lady” and yet an object of charity was, so to speak, poaching upon their own legitimate preserves. The rector and his wife were rather grand people, and condescended to her greatly on the few occasions of their accidental meetings. She was neither smart nor influential enough to be considered as an asset.

It was she who “conversed” during their walk, and while she trotted by Tembarom’s side, looking more early-Victorian than ever in a neat, fringed mantle and a small black bonnet of a fashion long decently interred by a changing world, Tembarom had never seen anything resembling it in New York; but he liked it and her increasingly at every moment.

It was he who made her converse. He led her on by asking her questions and being greatly interested in every response she made. In fact, though he was quite unaware of the situation, she was creating for him such an atmosphere as he might have found in a book, if he had had the habit of books. Everything she told him was new and quaint and very often rather touching. She remembered things about herself and her poor little past without knowing she was doing it. Before they had talked an hour he had an astonishing clear idea of “poor dear papa” and “dearest Emily” and “poor darling mama” and existence at Rowcroft Vicarage. He “caught on to” the fact that though she was very much given to the word “dear,”—people were “dear,” and so were things and places,—she never even by chance slipped into saying “dear Rowcroft,” which she would certainly have done if she had ever spent a happy moment in it. As she talked to him he realized that her simple accustomedness to English village life and its accompaniments of county surroundings would teach him anything and everything he might want to know. Her obscurity had been surrounded by stately magnificence, with which she had become familiar without touching the merest outskirts of its privileges. She knew names and customs and families and things to be cultivated or avoided, and though she would be a little startled and much mystified by his total ignorance of all she had breathed in since her birth, he felt sure that she would not regard him either with private contempt or with a lessened liking because he was a vandal pure and simple.

And she had such a nice, little, old polite way of saying things. When, in passing a group of children, he failed to understand that their hasty bobbing up and down meant that they were doing obeisance to him as lord of the manor, she spoke with the prettiest apologetic courtesy.

“I’m sure you won’t mind touching your hat when they make their little curtsies, or when a villager touches his forehead,” she said.

“Good Lord! no,” he said, starting. “Ought I? I didn’t know they were doing it at me.” And he turned round and made a handsome bow and grinned almost affectionately at the small, amazed party, first puzzling, and then delighting, them, because he looked so extraordinarily friendly. A gentleman who laughed at you like that ought to be equal to a miscellaneous distribution of pennies in the future, if not on the spot. They themselves grinned and chuckled and nudged one another, with stares and giggles.

“I am sorry to say that in a great many places the villagers are not nearly so respectful as they used to be,” Miss Alicia explained. “In Rowcroft the children were very remiss about curtseying. It’s quite sad. But Mr. Temple Barholm was very strict indeed in the matter of demanding proper respectfulness. He has turned men off their farms for incivility. The villagers of Temple Barholm have much better manners than some even a few miles away.”

“If you please. It really seems kinder. You—you needn’t quite lift it, as you did to the children just now. If you just touch the brim lightly with your hand in a sort of military salute—that is what they are accustomed to.”

After they had passed through the village street she paused at the end of a short lane and looked up at him doubtfully.

He had not the remotest idea of any reason why he should go into a cottage inhabited by people who were entire strangers to him, and Miss Alicia felt a trifle awkward at having to explain anything so wholly natural.

“But perhaps they mightn’t like it. It might make ’em mad,” he argued. “If their water-pipes had busted, and they’d asked me to come and look at them or anything; but they don’t know me yet. They might think I was Mr. Buttinski.”

“I don’t quite—” she began. “Buttinski is a foreign name; it sounds Russian or Polish. I’m afraid I don’t quite understand why they should mistake you for him.”

Then he laughed—a boyish shout of laughter which brought a cottager to the nearest window to peep over the pots of fuchsias and geraniums blooming profusely against the diamond panes.

“Say,” he apologized, “don’t be mad because I laughed. I’m laughing at myself as much as at anything. It’s a way of saying that they might think I was ‘butting in’ too much—pushing in where I wasn’t asked. See? I said they might think I was Mr. Butt-in-ski! It’s just a bit of fool slang. You’re not mad, are you?”

“Oh, no!” she said. “Dear me! no. It is very funny, of course. I’m afraid I’m extremely ignorant about—about foreign humor.” It seemed more delicate to say “foreign” than merely “American.” But her gentle little countenance for a few seconds wore a baffled expression, and she said softly to herself, “Mr. Buttinski, Butt-in—to intrude. It sounds quite Polish; I think even more Polish than Russian.”

He was afraid he would yell with glee, but he did not. Herculean effort enabled him to restrain his feelings, and present to her only an ordinary-sized smile.

“I shouldn’t know one from the other,” he said; “but if you say it sounds more Polish, I bet it does.”

“Would you like to go into a cottage?” she inquired. “I think it might be as well. They will like the attention.”

“Will they? Of course I’ll go if you think that. What shall I say?” he asked somewhat anxiously.

“If you think the cottage looks clean, you might tell them so, and ask a few questions about things. And you must be sure to inquire about Susan Hibblethwaite’s legs.”

“Susan Hibblethwaite’s legs,” she replied in mild explanation. “Susan is Mrs. Hibblethwaite’s unmarried sister, and she has very bad legs. It is a thing one notices continually among village people, more especially the women, that they complain of what they call ‘bad legs.’ I never quite know what they mean, whether it is rheumatism or something different, but the trouble is always spoken of as ‘bad legs.’ And they like you to inquire about them, so that they can tell you their symptoms.”

“I don’t know, I’m sure. They take a good deal of medicine when they can afford it. I think they like to take it. They’re very pleased when the doctor gives them ‘a bottle o’ summat,’ as they call it. Oh, I mustn’t forget to tell you that most of them speak rather broad Lancashire.”

“Shall I understand them?” Tembarom asked, anxious again. “Is it a sort of Dago talk?”

“It is the English the working-classes speak in Lancashire. ‘Summat’ means ‘something.’ ‘Whoam’ means ‘home.’ But I should think you would be very clever at understanding things.”

“I’m scared stiff,” said Tembarom, not in the least uncourageously; “but I want to go into a cottage and hear some of it. Which one shall we go into?”

There were several whitewashed cottages in the lane, each in its own bit of garden and behind its own hawthorn hedge, now bare and wholly unsuggestive of white blossoms and almond scent to the uninitiated. Miss Alicia hesitated a moment.

“We will go into this one, where the Hibblethwaites live,” she decided. “They are quite clean, civil people. They have a naughty, queer, little crippled boy, but I suppose they can’t keep him in order because he is an invalid. He’s rather rude, I’m sorry to say, but he’s rather sharp and clever, too. He seems to lie on his sofa and collect all the gossip of the village.”

They went together up the bricked path, and Miss Alicia knocked at the low door with her knuckles. A stout, apple-faced woman opened it, looking a shade nervous.

“Good morning, Mrs. Hibblethwaite,” said Miss Alicia in a kind but remote manner. “The new Mr. Temple Barholm has been kind enough to come to see you. It’s very good of him to come so soon, isn’t it?”

“It is that,” Mrs. Hibblethwaite answered rapidly, looking him over. “Wilt tha coom in, sir?”

Tembarom accepted the invitation, feeling extremely awkward because Miss Alicia’s initiatory comment upon his goodness in showing himself had “rattled” him. It had made him feel that he must appear condescending, and he had never condescended to any one in the whole course of his existence. He had, indeed, not even been condescended to. He had met with slanging and bullying, indifference and brutality of manner, but he had not met with condescension.

“I deceive ma looks a good bit, sir,” she answered. “Mony a day ma legs is nigh as bad as Susan’s.”

“Tha ’rt jealous o’ Susan’s legs,” barked out a sharp voice from a corner by the fire.

The room had a flagged floor, clean with recent scrubbing with sandstone; the whitewashed walls were decorated with pictures cut from illustrated papers; there was a big fireplace, and by it was a hard-looking sofa covered with blue-and-white checked cotton stuff. A boy of about ten was lying on it, propped up with a pillow. He had a big head and a keen, ferret-eyed face, and just now was looking round the end of his sofa at the visitors.

“I wun not howd it,” Tummas answered. “Ma tongue’s the on’y thing about me as works right, an’ I’m noan goin’ to stop it.”

“He’s a young nowt,” his mother explained; “but he’s a cripple, an’ we conna do owt wi’ him.”

“Say,” he began with jocular intent, “you’ve got a grouch on, ain’t you?”

Tummas turned on him eyes which bored. An analytical observer or a painter might have seen that he had a burning curiousness of look, a sort of investigatory fever of expression.

“I dun not know what tha means,” he said. “Happen tha ’rt talkin’ ’Merican?”

Tembarom sat down near him. The boy turned over against his pillow and put his chin in the hollow of his palm and stared.

“I’ve wanted to see thee,” he remarked. “I’ve made mother an’ Aunt Susan an’ feyther tell me every bit they’ve heared about thee in the village. Theer was a lot of it. Tha coom fro’ ’Meriker?”

“Gi’ me that theer book,” the boy said, pointing to a small table heaped with a miscellaneous jumble of things and standing not far from him. “It’s a’ atlas,” he added as Tembarom gave it to him. “Yo’ con find places in it.” He turned the leaves until he found a map of the world. “Theer’s ’Meriker,” he said, pointing to the United States. “That theer’s north and that theer’s south. All the real ’Merikens comes from the North, wheer New York is.”

“Tha wert born i’ the workhouse, tha run about the streets i’ rags, tha pretty nigh clemmed to death, tha blacked boots, tha sold newspapers, tha feyther was a common workin’-mon—and now tha’s coom into Temple Barholm an’ sixty thousand a year.”

“The last part’s true all right,” Tem[Pg 143]barom owned, “but there’s some mistakes in the first part. I wasn’t born in the workhouse, and though I’ve been hungry enough, I never starved to death—if that’s what ‘clemmed’ means.”

“Well, let them tell it that way if they like it best. That’s not going to worry me,” Tembarom replied uncombatively. Tummas’s eyes bored deeper into him.

“Tha ’rt not a bit like one o’ the gentry,” said Tummas. “Tha ’rt quite a common chap. Tha ’rt as common as me, for aw tha foine clothes.”

“People are common enough, anyhow,” said Tembarom. “There’s nothing much commoner, is there? There’s millions of ’em everywhere—billions of ’em. None of us need put on airs.”

“Tha ’rt as common as me,” said Tummas, reflectively. “An’ yet tha owns Temple Barholm an’ aw that brass. I conna mak’ out how the loike happens.”

“It does na happen i’ ’Meriker,” exulted Tummas. “Everybody’s equal theer.”

He forgot that the age of Tummas was ten. It was impossible not to forget it. He was, in fact, ten hundred, if those of his generation had been aware of the truth. But there he sat, having spent only a decade of his most recent incarnation in a whitewashed cottage, deprived of the use of his legs.

Miss Alicia, seeing that Tembarom was interested in the boy, entered into domestic conversation with Mrs. Hibblethwaite at the other side of the room. Mrs. Hibblethwaite was soon explaining the uncertainty of Susan’s temper on wash-days, when it was necessary to depend on her legs.

“Can’t you walk at all?” Tembarom asked. Tummas shook his head. “How long have you been lame?”

“Ever since I weer born. It’s summat like rickets. I’ve been lyin’ here aw my days. I look on at foak an’ think ’em over. I’ve got to do summat. That’s why I loike the atlas. Little Ann Hutchinson gave it to me onct when she come to see her grandmother.”

“Well, if she says she does, she does. An’ if she does, then you an’ me’ll be friends.” He stopped a moment, and seemed to be taking Tembarom in with thoroughness. “I could get a lot out o’ thee,” he said after the inspection.

“A lot o’ things I want to know about. I wish I’d lived the life tha’s lived, clemmin’ or no clemmin’. Tha’s seen things goin’ on every day o’ thy loife.”

“I’ve been lying here for ten year’,” said Tummas, savagely. “An’ I’ve had nowt i’ the world to do an’ nowt to think on but what I could mak’ foak tell me about the village. But nowt happens but this chap gettin’ drunk an’ that chap deein’ or losin’ his place, or wenches gettin’ married or havin’ childer. I know everything that happens, but it’s nowt but a lot o’ women clackin’. If I’d not been a cripple, I’d ha’ been at work for mony a year by now, ’arnin’ money to save by an’ go to ’Meriker.”

“I dun not loike it nor yet not loike it, but I’ve heard a bit more about it than I have about the other places on the map. Foak goes there to seek their fortune, an’ it seems loike there’s a good bit doin’.”

“Do you like to read newspapers?” said Tembarom, inspired to his query by a recollection of the vision of things “doin’” in the Sunday “Earth.”

“Wheer’d I get papers from?” the boy asked testily. “Foak like us hasn’t got the brass for ’em.”

“I’ll bring you some New York papers,” promised Tembarom, grinning a little in anticipation. “And we’ll talk about the news that’s in them. The Sunday ‘Earth’ is full of pictures. I used to work on that paper myself.”

“Tha did?” he cried excitedly. “Did tha help to print it, or was it the one tha sold i’ the streets?”

“Wrote some of the stuff in it? Wrote it thaself? How could tha, a common chap like thee?” he asked, more excited still, his ferret eyes snapping.

“I don’t know how I did it,” Tembarom answered, with increased cheer and interest in the situation. “It wasn’t high-brow sort of work.”

“I guess they wouldn’t have done it if they’d been Lancashire,” Tembarom answered. “But they hadn’t much more sense than I had. They paid me twenty-five dollars a week—that’s five pounds.”

“I dun not believe thee,” said Tummas, and leaned back on his pillow short of breath.

“I didn’t believe it myself till I’d paid my board two weeks and bought a suit of clothes with it,” was Tembarom’s answer, and he chuckled as he made it.

But Tummas did believe it. This, after he had recovered from the shock, became evident. The curiosity in his face intensified itself; his eagerness was even vaguely tinged with something remotely resembling respect. It was not, however, respect for the money which had been earned, but for the store of things “doin’” which must have been acquired. It was impossible that this chap knew things undreamed of.

“Eh, I’m sorry for that. I wished tha’d been to the Klondike. I want to be towd about it,” he sighed. He pulled the atlas toward him and found a place in it.

“That theer’s Dawson,” he announced. Tembarom saw that the region of the Klondike had been much studied. It was even rather faded with the frequent passage of searching fingers, as though it had been pored over with special curiosity.

“There’s gowd-moines theer,” revealed Tummas. “An’ theer’s welly nowt else but snow an’ ice. A young chap as set out fro’ here to get theer froze to death on the way.”

“Ann she browt me a paper onct.” He dug under his pillow, and brought out a piece of newspaper, worn and frayed and cut with age and usage. “This heer’s what’s left of it.” Tembarom saw that it was a fragment from an old American sheet and that a column was headed “The Rush for the Klondike.”

“Why didn’t tha go theer?” demanded Tummas. He looked up from his fragment and asked his question with a sudden reflectiveness, as though a new and interesting aspect of things had presented itself to him.

“It’s a pity tha didn’t,” he said. “Happen tha’d never ha’ coom back.”

“I was na thinkin’ o’ thee,” he said in an impersonal tone. “I was thinkin’ o’ t’other chap. If tha’d gone i’stead o’ him, he’d ha’ been here i’stead o’ thee. Eh, but it’s funny.” And he drew a deep breath like a sigh having its birth in profundity of baffled thought.

Both he and his evident point of view were “funny” in the Lancashire sense, which does not imply humor, but strangeness and the unexplainable. Singular as the phrasing was, Tembarom knew what he meant, and that he was thinking of the oddity of chance. Tummas had obviously heard of “poor Jem” and had felt an interest in him.

“You’re talking about Jem Temple Barholm I guess,” he said. Perhaps the interest he himself had felt in the tragic story gave his voice a tone somewhat responsive to Tummas’s own mood, for Tummas, after one more boring glance, let himself go. His interest in this special subject was, it revealed itself, a sort of obsession. The history of Jem Temple[Pg 145] Barholm had been the one drama of his short life.

“Aye, I was thinkin’ o’ him,” he said. “I should na ha’ cared for the Klondike so much but for him.”

“The last toime he coom to Temple Barholm wur when I wur just born. Foak said he coom to ax owd Temple Barholm if he’d help him to pay his debts, an’ the owd chap awmost kicked him out o’ doors. Mother had just had me, an’ she was weak an’ poorly an’ sittin’ at the door wi’ me in her arms, an’ he passed by an’ saw her. He stopped an’ axed her how she was doin’. An when he was goin’ away, he gave her a gold sovereign, an’ he says, ‘Put it in the savin’s-bank for him, an’ keep it theer till he’s a big lad an’ wants it.’ It’s been in the savin’s-bank ever sin’. I’ve got a whole pound o’ ma own out at interest. There’s not many lads ha’ got that.”

“He must have been a good-natured fellow,” commented Tembarom. “It was darned bad luck him going to the Klondike.”

“Was it?” was Tembarom’s unbiased reply. “Well, I guess it was, one way or the other. I’m not kicking, anyhow.”

Tummas naturally did not know half he meant. He went on talking about Jem Temple Barholm, and as he talked his cheeks flushed and his eyes lighted.

“I would na spend that sovereign if I was starvin’. I’m going to leave it to Ann Hutchinson in ma will when I dee. I’ve axed questions about him reet and left ever sin’ I can remember, but theer’s nobody knows much. Mother says he was fine an’ handsome, an’ gentry through an’ through. If he’d coom into the property, he’d ha’ coom to see me again. I’ll lay a shillin’, because I’m a cripple an’ I cannot spend his sovereign. If he’d coom back from the Klondike, happen he’d ha’ towd me about it.” He pulled the atlas toward him, and laid his thin finger on the rubbed spot. “He mun ha’ been killed somewheer about here,” he sighed. “Somewheer here. Eh, it’s funny.”

Tembarom watched him. There was something that rather gave you the “Willies” in the way this little cripple seemed to have taken to the dead man and worried along all these years thinking him over and asking questions and studying up the Klondike because he was killed there. It was because he’d made a kind of story of it. He’d enjoyed it in the way people enjoy stories in a newspaper. You always had to give ’em a kind of story; you had to make a story even if you were telling about a milk-wagon running away. In newspaper offices you heard that was the secret of making good with what you wrote. Dish it up as if it was a sort of story.

He not infrequently arrived at astute enough conclusions concerning things. He had arrived at one now. Shut out even from the tame drama of village life, Tummas, born with an abnormal desire for action and a feverish curiosity, had hungered and thirsted for the story in any form whatsoever. He caught at fragments of happenings, and colored and dissected them for the satisfying of unfed cravings. The vanished man had been the one touch of pictorial form and color in his ten years of existence. Young and handsome and of the gentry, unfavored by the owner of the wealth which some day would be his own possession, stopping “gentry-way” at a cottage door to speak good-naturedly to a pale young mother, handing over the magnificence of a whole sovereign to be saved for a new-born child, going away to vaguely understood disgrace, leaving his own country to hide himself in distant lands, meeting death amid snow and ice and surrounded by gold-mines, leaving his empty place to be filled by a boot-black newsboy—true there was enough to lie and think over and to try to follow with the help of maps and excited questions.

“I wish I could ha’ seen him,” said Tummas. “I’d awmost gi’ my sovereign to get a look at that picture in the gallery at Temple Barholm.”

“There is na one o’ him, but there’s one o’ a lad as deed two hundred year’ ago as they say wur the spit an’ image on him when he wur a lad hissen. One o’ the owd servants towel mother it wur theer.”

“Which one is it? Jinks! I’d like to see it myself. Do you know which one it is? There’s hundreds of them.”

“No, I dun not know,” was Tummas’s dispirited answer, “an’ neither does mother. The woman as knew left when owd Temple Barholm deed.”

“Tummas,” broke in Mrs. Hibblethwaite from the other end of the room, to which she had returned after taking Miss Alicia out to complain about the copper in the “wash-’us’—” “Tummas, tha ’st been talkin’ like a magpie. Tha ’rt a lot too bold an’ ready wi’ tha tongue. The gentry’s noan comin’ to see thee if tha clacks the heads off theer showthers.”

“I’m afraid he always does talk more than is good for him,” said Miss Alicia. “He looks quite feverish.”

“He has been talking to me about Jem Temple Barholm,” explained Tembarom. “We’ve had a regular chin together. He thinks a heap of poor Jem.”

Miss Alicia looked startled, and Mrs. Hibblethwaite was plainly flustered tremendously. She quite lost her temper.

“Eh,” she exclaimed, “tha wants tha young yed knocked off, Tummas Hibblethwaite. He’s fair daft about the young gentleman as—as was killed. He axes questions mony a day till I’d give him the stick if he was na a cripple. He moithers me to death.”

“I’ll bring you some of those New York papers to look at,” Tembarom said to the boy as he went away.

He walked back through the village to Temple Barholm, holding Miss Alicia’s elbow in light, affectionate guidance and support, a little to her embarrassment and also a little to her delight. Until he had taken her into the dining-room the night before she had never seen such a thing done. There was no over-familiarity in the action. It merely seemed somehow to suggest liking and a wish to take care of her.

“That little fellow in the village,” he said after a silence in which it occurred to her that he seemed thoughtful, “what a little freak he is! He’s got an idea that there’s a picture in the gallery that’s said to look like Jem Temple Barholm when he was a boy. Have you ever heard anything about it? He says a servant told his mother it was there.”

“Yes, there is one,” Miss Alicia answered. “I sometimes go and look at it. But it makes me feel very sad. It is the handsome boy who was a page in the court of Charles II. He died in his teens. His name was Miles Hugo Charles James. Jem could see the likeness himself. Sometimes for a little joke I used to call him Miles Hugo.”

“I believe I remember him,” said Tembarom. “I believe I asked Palford his name. I must go and have a look at him again. He hadn’t much better luck than the fellow that looked like him, dying as young as that.”

WAR AGAINST WAR

THROUGH Matthew Arnold we have been made familiar with one of the figures clearly limned by Clarendon. It is that of Falkland, whose humane spirit and love of peace made the casting of his lot in the time of the civil war in England seem peculiarly tragic. Often in the course of that bitter and bloody conflict he was heard to “ingeminate” the word “peace.”

A similar feeling of grief and frustration in the presence of war is one of the distinguishing marks of our own day. The best and wisest in the world hold peace congresses and conferences on arbitration (as they are to do soon in St. Louis), and seem to gain painful inches only to have all their efforts made apparently vain by some inrush of the war spirit. The Hague Tribunal is founded and The Hague agreement solemnly entered into, but that does not prevent one of the covenanting nations from seizing another’s land by the sword. Projects for universal arbitration are mooted, amid the applause of Christendom, and plans for the judicial settlement of international disputes are ripening, at the very time when tens of thousands of men are about to be killed in battle.

So it is that peace seems to be to the civilized world only an unattainable longing. We think of war to-day, in the Scripture phrase, with groanings that cannot be uttered. Never so hated, it sometimes appears as if it were never so fated.

It is well for peace-lovers now and then to put the case thus strongly, in order that they may face the difficulty at its darkest. The fact that the evil they struggle against is persistent is but one argument more for their own persistence. Pacifists must be as ready and resourceful as the militarists. If ever it is right to learn from an enemy, it surely is in this instance. Something has been gained in this way. The late William James, for example, contended that we must admit that there are some good, human weapons in the hands of the war party, and that the peace men must study, not only how to appreciate them, but how to use them. Professor James would have sought in peaceful pursuits the equivalents of the appeal which war makes to certain manly qualities. Heroism in private life, in scientific pursuits, in exploration, in reform—this is what he urged. The patriotic impulse transmuted into great engineering works, vast plans for sanitation, campaigns against disease and misery—that is what peace can offer to ardent youth. All this is sound, and good as far as it goes; but the question arises to-day whether there is not need of something more positive and aggressive, whether the spirit of militarism cannot be turned against itself; whether, in a word, there should not be war against war.

The conduct of a military campaign calls for an enormous amount of preparation and organization. Let the advocates of peace take this to heart. They cannot win simply by wishing to win. It is for them, too, to be far-sighted, to lay careful plans, to enlist every modern method of working in unison to a definite end. War mobilizes men. Peace must muster ideas, sentiments, influences. In the Kriegspiel the strategist seeks to mass his troops upon the enemy’s weakest point. The tactics of peace should be similar. Argument and persuasion and appeal should be made to converge upon the exposed flank of the militarists. This may be found, at one moment, in the pressure of taxation, which needlessly swollen armaments would make unbearable. At another time, it may appear that the thing to hammer upon is the pressing need of social reforms, even attention to which will be endangered if all the available money and time are squandered upon preparing for a war that may never come. Let peace, too,[Pg 148] acquire a General Staff, whose duty it shall be to survey the whole field, to work out fruitful campaigns, to tell us where to strike and how, to lay down the principles of the grand strategy to be followed.

Nor need individual effort be ruled out. Despite the large and coördinated movements of soldiers in a modern battle, there yet remains room for personal initiative and daring. The shining moment comes when some one in the ranks or in command is called upon to risk all with the possibility of gaining all. And there are still “forlorn hopes” to be led. Why should not these methods and appeals of war be imitated by those who are fighting for peace? They can point to many services calling for volunteers. There is ridicule to be faced, unpopular opinion to be stood up for calmly in the teeth of opposition and even scorn, testimony to be borne, questions to be asked, protests to be made. There is, in short, every opportunity to import from war the heroic element and give it scope and effect in the propaganda of peace. The very wrath of man can be made to praise the growth of civilization.

War against war can be made very concrete and practical. Committees can be formed to watch the military authorities and Congress, and to elicit an expression of opinion when it will be most useful. It is a matter of frequent lamenting on the part of peace men in the House of Representatives that their hands are so feebly held up by the opponents of war. The other side is alert and active. When big-navy or big-army bills are pending, the mail of congressmen is loaded with requests—usually, of course, interested requests—to vote for them. The lovers of peace, on the other hand, appear to be smitten with writer’s cramp. They act as if they were indifferent. This state of things should not be permitted to go on. There should be minute-men of the cause all over the land ready to spring into action. That a sound opinion of the country exists, only needing concerted effort to call it forth, has been shown again and again. It was proved at the time when President Taft’s treaties of universal arbitration were pending in the Senate. In those days the desire of the best people of the United States came to Washington like the sound of the voice of many waters. Schools and colleges, chambers of commerce and churches, sent in petition piled on petition, and remonstrance heaped on protest. One of the senators who opposed ratification admitted to the President that he had never had so formidable a pressure from his own State as on this question.

That lesson should not be lost. By organization, by watchfulness, by determination, the peace spirit of the land can be given much more effective expression than it has yet had. The situation is not at all one that justifies discouragement; it simply calls for fresh and more intelligent action, with heightened resolution. If only the genius of a Von Moltke could be devoted to organizing and directing the forces that make against war, we might reasonably hope for a realization of the poet’s vision of peace lying like level shafts of light across the land.

THE GREAT FLOODS IN THE MIDDLE WEST

ONE cannot read of the recent disastrous overflow of the rivers of the Ohio Valley watershed without a sinking of the heart, to think how near is happiness to grief. That thousands, apparently through no fault of their own, should be overwhelmed by the relentless powers of nature, takes us back to a pagan conception of the universe, until we begin to sum up the unpagan-like solidarity in the sympathy of mankind, the touch of human nature that makes the whole world kin. Senator Root recently said that “the progress of civilization is marked by the destruction of isolation,” meaning, of course, by the drawing together of men through common ideas, interests, and even sorrows. It is no perfunctory thought that out of such calamities come many of the heroisms, the sacrifices, the lightning-like-flashes of spiritual revelation that ennoble humanity.

With becoming awe at what seems to have been unpreventable, it is sadly appropriate to inquire what might have been done in past years to lessen the recurrent tragedy of the western floods. To be sure, one cannot by a gesture bid the tempest stand, but nothing is more demon[Pg 149]strable than that the greed and neglect of man have greatly contributed to the destructiveness of floods. The devastation of the ax leads direct to the devastation of the waters. The excessive deforesting of Ohio and Indiana for a hundred years is no illusory or negligible factor in the crisis of death and desolation that has fallen upon those States.

In this magazine for August, 1912, in an article entitled “A Duty of the South to Itself,” written apropos of the Mississippi floods of last year, we renewed a suggestion which we first made in 1904 and have since several times repeated, looking toward the mitigation of the annual peril to the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. It presented the urgent necessity of setting on foot a policy of coöperation among the Eastern States to save from destruction the flood-restraining upper reaches of the entire Appalachian range. As a matter of public interest, this article was sent to all senators and members of Congress, to the Southern and other newspapers, and to the governors and Chambers of Commerce in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. Although the suggestion was in the plainest conformity with scientific opinion, it apparently fell upon deaf ears. The imagination of no governor or legislator has been roused to the point of action. After we have reckoned up the cost of the recent floods in lives and money, shall we lie down again to pleasant dreams, oblivious of the fact that to sow neglect is to reap calamity?

COMMON SENSE IN THE WHITE HOUSE

HE is a poor patriot who can wish a new administration anything but success—at least in policies unrelated to party differences—and it is creditable to the American people that the new President enters upon his difficult task amid general good-will. His lack of previous acquaintance with “the way the thing is done” in Washington, though it excited the apprehension of some of his warmest friends, proves to be a positive advantage. If precedents are broken they are not his, and sometimes the breaking is done with a naïveté just this side of innocence, as in the discountenancing of the time-honored but expensive and meaningless inaugural ball. The President evidently realizes his responsibilities and the conventional obstacles that must be cleared out of his path if he is to accomplish much for the good of the country. The idealism of his inaugural address, with its appeal for the coöperation of “honest, patriotic, and forward-looking men,” is already being supplemented by practical action so fraught with “saving common sense” as to seem revolutionary.

Seen in the retrospect, what could be done more wise or simple than the shunting of the office-seekers to the heads of departments? What more useful or self-respecting than the announced policy of disapproval of legislation carrying “riders”—of which, by the way, a flagrant example is found in the Panama tolls exemption, to which both the President and the Vice-President have announced their opposition? What more direct or reassuring than the kindly words of warning to Central American revolutionists? What more prompt than the announcement through the Secretary of State that the United States cannot ignore its responsibilities toward Cuba? or, again, through the Postmaster-General, that there is to be no wholesale looting of the offices, with the object-lesson of the retention or promotion of several public servants of marked efficiency? or, still again, the immediate action through the Secretary of War and the Attorney-General toward the safeguarding of the public interests in Niagara Falls? What more prudent than the disentanglement of our relations in the Far East from financial loans to China? These events, occurring in the first fortnight of the administration, display a point of view of government as an instrument of public service which, though it may do violence to traditions, makes thoughtful citizens exclaim, “Why not?”

It is not to be expected that we are to have another Era of Good Feeling, or that, when questions of party policy arise, Mr. Wilson’s opponents will yield their convictions. He cannot fail to meet with many a storm, within and without party lines; but he will do much to advance his ideas if he shall preserve the poise of direct and unsophisticated common sense which he has shown at the beginning.

LAWLESSNESS IN ART

THE recent admirably arranged exhibition in New York made by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, and including a full representation of the work of the Cubists and the Post-Impressionists, has proved in one respect a veritable success, namely, in point of attendance. If not, as one critic puts it, a succès de scandale, it has been a succès de curiosité. It contained pieces of historic work of great beauty by eminent painters of France and America—Ingres, Daumier, Puvis de Chavannes, Childe Hassam, Alden Weir, and others, but no great point was made of their inclusion and they were not the attraction for the crowds. What drew the curious were certain widely talked-of eccentricities, whimsicalities, distortions, crudities, puerilities, and madnesses, by which, while a few were nonplussed, most of the spectators were vastly amused.

At the spring exhibition of the National Academy of Design, which followed, one unaccustomed visitor was heard to say to another, “Oh, come on, Bill, there’s nothing to laugh at here.” It will be impossible to repeat the Parisian sensation another season; and, happily, the eccentricities have served to awaken a new interest in genuine types of art, both in and out of their own exhibition, and have furnished that element of contrast which is useful if not essential in the formation of a robust taste.

Meanwhile, for the benefit of the young and unthinking, it is well to keep on inculcating the fact that while art is not a formula, nor even a school, it is subject, whether in painting, sculpture, poetry, architecture, or music, to certain general principles tending to harmony, clarity, beauty, and the stimulus of the imagination. A fundamental error is that its laws are hampering, the fact being that it is only as one learns them that he can acquire the freedom of individual expression. The exploitation of a theory of discords, puzzles, uglinesses, and clinical details, is to art what anarchy is to society, and the practitioners need not so much a critic as an alienist. It is said that a well-known Russian musician has begun a new composition with (so to speak) a keynote of discord involving the entire musical scale, as a child might lay his hand sidewise upon all the notes of the piano it can cover. A counterpart of this could have been found in more than one ward of the recent exhibition. One can fancy the laughter over the absinthe in many a Latin Quarter café of those who are not mentally awry, but are merely imitators, poseurs, or charlatans, at learning that their monstrosities, which have exhausted the interest of Paris, have been seriously considered by some American observers. They have only been trying to see how far they could go in fooling the public. But he laughs best who laughs last, and we believe that Americans have too much sense of humor not to see the point of this colossal joke of eccentricity, or to endure its repetition.

NIAGARA AGAIN IN DANGER

ONE need not be afraid of exaggerating the peril to the beauty of Niagara in allowing its waters to be used for commercial purposes when a man of such moderation and public esteem as Senator Burton of Ohio says, as he did in the Senate on the fourth of March:

I want to say, Mr. President, that in all my experience in either house of Congress I have never known such an aggregation of persons to come here seeking to rob and to despoil as those who have come here after this power. If there is any one who wishes them to succeed he must answer to the country for it. They not only desired the water above the Falls, but they now desire to withdraw the waters below in the rapids, which are second in beauty only to the Falls themselves. Persons have come here under the guise of public spirit, or even of philanthropy, when it was but a thin veil to conceal a scheme to get possession of the waters of the Niagara River. We ask that for a year this law be continued to stay the hand of the despoiler.

The law referred to was the Burton Act under which for three years the assaults of the commercial interests have been stayed. Even with a concession to the companies of 250,000 horse-power in[Pg 151]stead of 160,000, Mr. Burton, owing to a filibuster by Senator O’Gorman, was not able to secure the desired extension, and the Falls seem to be at the mercy of those who are interested in turning great scenery into dividends. We are much mistaken if the new administration does not find some way of thwarting this form of vandalism. Meanwhile it is well that public opinion should be directed upon senators and representatives.

Of the damage that has already been done Senator Burton says: “... The ruthless hand of the promoter has been laid upon this river; and thus the cataract has been diminished in size and the scenic effect has been impaired not only by diminishing the flow and the quantity of the water, but by structures on the banks.” A question of jurisdiction has been raised as between the State of New York and the National Government, though the river as a boundary line has long been the subject of an international treaty. The fact that the taking of water for commercial purposes whether on the Canadian or the American side has virtually the same effect on the river makes joint action of the two countries imperative.

The willingness to destroy or impair great scenery by commercializing it, whether at Niagara or in the Yosemite National Park, makes it necessary that the fight for our natural treasures should be kept up with vigilance. Happily, the good judgment of the late Secretary of the Interior, Warren L. Fisher, has blocked the attempt of the city of San Francisco to destroy the wonderful Hetch Hetchy valley by converting it into a reservoir of water for drinking and power purposes,—which confessedly can be had elsewhere in the Sierra “by paying for it,”—the Secretary wisely holding that such a diversion of the valley from the original purpose of its reservation is too important a matter to be determined by any power but Congress. Three Secretaries of the Interior—Hitchcock, Ballinger, and Fisher—are thus on record against the ruthless project of the city authorities, and we believe it will not be more successful with Secretary Lane. Should its advocates go to Congress, it must be remembered that the same principle underlies the defense of Niagara and of Hetch Hetchy—the conservation of great scenery for the ultimate benefit of mankind.

ON THE COLLAPSE OF THE INTERNATIONAL CLUB

No, I have not become a pessimist. If I ever was an optimist, I am certainly one still. But to my mind the only use of being an optimist about the universe is that one can the more boldly be a pessimist about the world. That you may see I can discern the good signals as well as the bad, I will tell you three recent things with which I am thoroughly delighted. With brazen audacity, I will even put first the one topic you know all about and I know nothing about. I am thoroughly delighted with the election of the American President, with the election of the French President, and with the victory in the Balkans. You may think these three things have nothing to do with one another. Wait till I have done explaining things; it will not last long or hurt much.

Don’t imagine I have any newspaper illu[Pg 152]sions about any of the three. I am a journalist and never believe the newspapers. I know there will be a lot of merely fashionable fuss about the American and the French presidents; I know we shall hear how fond Mr. Wilson is of canaries or how interested M. Poincaré is in yachting. It is truer still, of course, about the Balkan War. I have been anti-Turk through times when nearly every one else was pro-Turk. I may therefore be entitled to say that much of the turnover of sympathy is pure snobbery. Silly fashions always follow the track of any victory. After 1870 our regiments adopted Prussian spikes on their helmets, as though the Prussians had fought with their heads, like bisons. Doubtless there will be a crop of the same sort of follies after the Balkan War. We shall see the altering of inscriptions, titles, and advertisements. Turkish baths may be called Bulgarian baths. The sweetmeat called Turkish Delight may probably be called Servian Delight. A Turkey carpet, very much kicked about and discolored, may be sold again as a Montenegro carpet. These cheap changes may easily occur, and in the same way the international world (which consists of hotels instead of homes) may easily make the same mistake about the French and American presidents. Thousands of Englishmen will read the American affair as a mere question of Colonel Roosevelt. Thousands will read of the Poincaré affair as a mere echo of the Dreyfus case. Thousands have never thought of the near East except as the sultan and Constantinople. For such masses of men Roosevelt is the only American there ever was. For them the Dreyfus question was the only French question there ever was. They had never heard that the Servians had a country, let alone an army.

The fact in which the three events meet is this: they are all realities on the spot. Most Englishmen have never heard of Mr. Woodrow Wilson; so they know that Americans really trust him. Most Englishmen have never heard of M. Poincaré; so they know that Frenchmen know he is a Frenchman. Neither is a member of the International Club, the members of which advertise one another.

Do you know what I mean? Do you not know that International Club? Like many other secret societies, it is unaware of its own existence. But there is a sort of ring of celebrities known all over the world, and more important all over the world than any of them are at home. Even when they do not know one another, they talk about one another. Let me see if I can find a name that typifies them. Well, I have no thought of disrespect to the memory of a man I liked and admired personally, and who died with a tragic dignity fitted for one who had always longed to be a link between your country and mine; but I think the late W. T. Stead was the unconscious secretary of that unconscious International Club. The other members, roughly speaking, were Colonel Roosevelt, the German Emperor, Tolstoy, Cecil Rhodes, and somebody like Mr. Edison. In an interview with Roosevelt, Rhodes would be the most important man in England, the Kaiser (or Tolstoy) the most important man in Europe. In an interview with Rhodes, the Kaiser would be important, Mr. Edison more important, Mr. Stead rather important; Bulgaria and M. Poincaré not important at all. Interview the Kaiser, and you will probably find the only interviewer he remembers is Stead. Could Rhodes have been taken to Russia you would probably find the only Russian he had really heard of was Tolstoy. For the rest, the Nobel prize, the Harmsworth newspaper group, the Marconi inventions, the attempts at a universal language—all these strike the note. I forgot the British Empire, on which the sun never sets, a horribly unpoetical state of things. Think of having a native land without any sunsets!

This International Club is breaking up. Men are more and more trusting men they know to have been honest in a small way; men faithful in one city to rule over many cities. Imperialists like Roosevelt and Rhodes stood for unrealities. Please observe that I do not for one moment say insincerities. Tolstoy was splendidly sincere; but the cult of him was an unreality to this extent, that it left large masses in America and England with a general idea that he was the only Christian in the east of Europe. Since then we have seen Christianity on the march as it was in the Middle Ages, a thing of thousands, ready for pilgrimage and crusade. I don’t ask you to like it if you don’t like it. I only say it’s jolly different from Tolstoy, and equally sincere. It is a reality on the spot.

Well, just as Russia and the Slavs meant for us Tolstoy, so France and French literature meant for many of us Zola. Poincaré’s election represents a France that hates Zola more than the Balkans hate the Turk. The old definite, domestic, patriotic Frenchman has come to the top. I can’t help fancying that with you the old serious, self-governing, idealistic, and really republican American has come to the top, too. But there I speak of things I know not, and await your next letter with alarm.

ON HOW TO GET SOMETHING BY GIVING SOMETHING UP

Can a man go in for tobacco and do his duty by the United States Navy? Life seems to be getting more difficult every day. I can no longer enjoy my after-dinner cigar as I used to. The trouble is not physical. My nerves are in good condition. My heart behaves quite as it should, occasionally rising into my mouth with fear, sometimes sinking toward my diaphragm with anticipation, but for the most part going about its work without attracting notice. I sleep as soundly as I ever did. The quality of the tobacco they put into cigars nowadays may be deteriorating, but I am easy to please. No; the trouble is with my conscience. I simply find it impossible to smoke without feeling that I am recreant to my social obligations.

Don’t imagine I am referring to my family. It is old-fashioned practice to show how the money disbursed upon tobacco by the head of a household might buy a home in the suburbs and endowment insurance for the children. To-day the sociological implications of a box of cigars are much more serious. To-day no man of conscience can light his pipe without inflicting injury on the United States Navy. All the comfort goes out of a cigar when one reflects upon what one might be doing for the encouragement of education among the Southern mountaineers. Now and then I like the feel of a cigarette between my lips; but can a man go in for cigarettes as long as the country stands in such bitter need of a comprehensive system of internal waterways?

I imagine I am not making myself quite clear. What I mean is that there are so many good causes abroad nowadays, and the advocates of each and every cause have no trouble in showing how easily they might manage to attain the specific thing they are after if only you would consent to sacrifice something that your own heart is rather set upon. Just imagine if all the money that is burned up in tobacco were devoted to the expansion of the fleet! Can there be any doubt that within a year we should take first place among the naval powers? Provided, that is, the English and the Germans and the Japanese did not give up smoking at the same time that we did. It may seem far-fetched to argue any close connection between a ten-cent cigar and a ten-million-dollar dreadnought. That is what I have been trying to say to myself. But I cannot help feeling that if the day of Armageddon does arrive, and the Japanese fleet comes gliding out of Magdalena Bay, and the star of our national destiny goes down into defeat, I shall never be able to forgive myself for the cigar I insisted on lighting every night after the children had been put to bed. As it is, I suffer by anticipation. The Japanese fleet keeps popping out at me from my tobacco-jar.

You will say I am oversensitive to outside suggestion. Perhaps I am. The fact remains that the naval situation in the Pacific is what it is. And there are so many other national obligations. We do need a fifteen-foot channel from the lakes to the gulf. We do need free schools for the poor whites in the Tennessee mountains. We do need millions to rebuild our railroads. All these demands press upon me as I sit facing my wife across the table and timidly light my cigar. Yes, I smoke; but I look at my wife and wonder how she can live in unconscious proximity to such startling moral degradation.

Perhaps I am oversensitive, as you say, but these suggestions from the outside keep pouring in on one in an irresistible stream from many different directions. You simply cannot escape the logic of the comparative mathematicians. A naval officer of high rank shows that because of the wanton destruction of bird-life in the United States our farmers lose $800,000,000 a year from the ravages of insect pests; “so that good bird laws would enable us to sustain an enormous navy.” Not so big a navy as this distinguished officer imagines, of course, because the internal-waterways people will want a great deal of that bird money, and the Southern education people will ask for a handsome share. It does not matter that personally I have never slain birds either for their flesh or their plumage, but I share in the indirect responsibility. Instead of idling in my chair with a cigar, I ought to be writing to my congressman, demanding the enactment of adequate bird laws in the name[Pg 154] of our naval supremacy in the Pacific and the defense of the Panama Canal.

Such is the established mode of procedure to-day. If one is planning the expenditure of a very large amount of public money, let him point out how easily the money may be saved or earned by somebody else. If I have seemed to harp too much on the man with the cigar, it is because he is the classic type of the victim in the case. Just consider what a trifling favor one is asked for—merely to give up a nasty, unsanitary habit, and not only be happier oneself, but bring happiness to the big-navy man, the internal-waterways man, the Association for the Encouragement of Grand Opera among the Masses, the Society for the Pensioning of Decayed Journalists, the Society for Damming the Arctic Current on the Banks of Newfoundland, the Society for the Construction of Municipal Airships. These enthusiastic gentry find no habit too hard for the other man to break, no economy too difficult for the other man to adopt, and no remedy too complicated for the other man to put into effect. Smith is amazed that any one could refuse him $200,000,000 for the navy.

“You grudge me the money for a hundred-foot automobile highway from New York to San Francisco?” says Jones. “Why, consider your wasteful steam-engines, with their ridiculous loss of ninety-seven per cent. of the latent coal energy!”

“Double the efficiency of your steam-engines, and you have enough for a dozen automobile highways.”

You see, that is all that stands in the way, Harold, a mere trifle like doubling the efficiency of the steam-engine.

“I want $5,000,000 to build a monument twelve hundred feet high to Captain John Smith and Pocahontas,” says Robinson. “You can’t spare the money? Sir, take the revolving storm-doors in New York City alone, which now represent so much wasted human energy, and harness these doors to a series of storage batteries, and you will have your $5,000,000 back in the course of a year.”

Will some one kindly run out and electrify all the revolving doors in New York City?

I have a confession to make. My heart goes out to the shiftless American farmer. He is responsible for almost as many good causes dying of lack of nutrition as is the habitual smoker.

If the American farmer would plow deep instead of merely scratching the soil, we could blow Japan out of the water. If he would study the chemistry of soils, we could give free railroad rides to every man and woman in the United States between the ages of thirty and forty-five. If we would build decent roads, we could pay off the national debt.

In other words, if the American farmer could be persuaded to make his land produce, say, only ten times its present yield, the millennium would be here in a jump.

I sometimes think that to the truly social-minded person the most immoral spectacle in life is an unscientific American farmer smoking a five-cent cigar in a buggy mired up to the axle on a country road.

OLD DADDY DO-FUNNY’S WISDOM JINGLES

MAY, FROM MY WINDOW

LIFE’S ASPIRATION

(A more-than-symbolic sonnet for a picture of the same sort by George Wolfe Plank)

THE NEW ART

LIMERICKS

THE SOMNOLENT BIVALVE

THE OUNCE OF DETENTION

FOOTNOTES:

[1] At a meeting held at Chickering Hall on the evening of November 12, 1891, to sympathize with Governor Nichols’s war on the Louisiana lottery system, the late Abram S. Hewitt was one of the speakers. In the course of his remarks in denunciation of the lottery gambling in Louisiana, Mr. Hewitt said:

“I can’t find words strong enough to express my feelings regarding this brazen fraud.

“This scheme of plunder develops a weak spot in the government of the United States, which I would not mention were it not for the importance of the issue. We all know that a single State frequently determines the result of a presidential election. The State of Louisiana has determined the result of a presidential election. The vote of that State was offered to me for money, and I declined to buy it. But the vote of that State was sold for money!”

[2] Read before the joint meeting of The American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, December 13, 1912. Now first published.

[3] I doubt if “Winchester,” previously known as “Rienzi,” could have outwalked Sherman’s “Sam,” a terror to staff-officers, General Meade’s “Baldy,” or McClellan’s “Black Dan,” for it was asserted they could all walk five miles an hour.

[4] THE CENTURY for July, 1882.

[5] THE CENTURY for July, 1887.

[6] Federal Reporter, Vol. 110, page 660.

[7] Since this was written a device accomplishing the same purpose has been placed in public service.

[8] Reprinted from “Scribner’s Monthly” (now THE CENTURY) for March, 1874.

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BALLADE OF PROTEST, A	Carolyn Wells	476
BEGGAR, THE	James W. Foley	877
BELLE DAME SANS MERCI, LA	John Keats	388
Republished with pictures by Stanley M. Arthurs.
BLANK PAGE, FOR A	Austin Dobson	458
BROTHER MINGO MILLENYUM’S ORDINATION.	Ruth McEnery Stuart	475
CONTINUED IN THE ADS.	Sarah Redington	795
CUBIST ROMANCE, A	Oliver Herford	318
Picture by Oliver Herford.
DADDY DO-FUNNY’S, OLD, WISDOM JINGLES	Ruth McEnery Stuart	154
	319, 478
DOUBLE STAR, A	Leroy Titus Weeks	511
EMERGENCY.	William Rose Benét	916
EXPERIMENTERS, THE, TO	Charles Badger Clark, Jr.	43
FINIS.	William H. Hayne	295
GENTLE READER, THE	Arthur Davison Ficke	692
HOUSE-WITHOUT-ROOF.	Edith M. Thomas	339
HUSBAND SHOP, THE	Oliver Herford	956
Picture by Oliver Herford.
INVULNERABLE.	William Rose Benét	308
JUSTICE, AT THE CLOSED GATES OF	James D. Corrothers	272
LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE: NEW STYLE.	Anne O’Hagan	793
Picture by E. L. Blumenschein.
LAST FAUN, THE	Helen Minturn Seymour	717
Picture, printed in tint, by Charles A. Winter.
LAST MESSAGE, A	Grace Denio Litchfield	26
LIFE’S ASPIRATION.	Louis Untermeyer	156
Drawing by George Wolfe Plank.
LIMERICKS:
Text and pictures by Oliver Herford.
XXVII. The Somnolent Bivalve.		157
XXVIII. The Ounce of Detention.		158
XXIX. The Kind Armadillo.		320
XXX. The Gnat and the Gnu.		479
XXXI. The Sole-Hungering Camel.		480
XXXII. The Eternal Feminine.		639
XXXIII. Tra-la-Larceny.		640
XXXIV. The Conservative Owl.		799
XXXV. The Omnivorous Book-worm.		800
LITTLE PEOPLE, THE	Amelia Josephine Burr	387
MAETERLINCK, MAURICE	Stephen Phillips	467
MARVELOUS MUNCHAUSEN, THE	William Rose Benét	563
Pictures by Oliver Herford.
MAY, FROM MY WINDOW.	Frances Rose Benét	155
Drawing by Oliver Herford.
MESSAGE FROM ITALY, A	Margaret Widdemer	547
Drawing printed in tint by W. T. Benda.
MOTHER, THE	Timothy Cole	920
Picture by Alpheus Cole.
MY CONSCIENCE.	James Whitcomb Riley	331
Decoration by Oliver Herford.
MYSELF,” “I SING OF	Louis Untermeyer	960
NEW ART, THE	Corinne Rockwell Swain	156
[Pg viii] NOYES, ALFRED, TO	Edwin Markham	288
OFF CAPRI.	Sara Teasdale	223
PARENTS, OUR	Charles Irvin Junkin	959
Pictures by Harry Raleigh.
PRAYERS FOR THE LIVING.	Mary W. Plummer	367
RITUAL.	William Rose Benét	788
ROYAL MUMMY, TO A	Anna Glen Stoddard	631
RYMBELS:
Pictures by Oliver Herford.
The Girl and the Raspberry Ice.	Oliver Herford	637
The Yellow Vase.	Charles Hanson Towne	637
Tragedy.	Theodosia Garrison	638
“On Revient toujours à Son Premier Amour”.	Oliver Herford	638
A Rymbel of Rhymers.	Carolyn Wells	796
The Prudent Lover.	L. Frank Tooker	797
On a Portrait of Nancy.	Carolyn Wells	797
SAME OLD LURE, THE	Berton Braley	478
SCARLET TANAGER, TO A	Grace Hazard Conkling	28
SIERRA MADRE.	Henry Van Dyke	347
SOCRATIC ARGUMENT.	John Carver Alden	960
SUBMARINE MOUNTAINS.	Cale Young Rice	693
TRIOLET, A	Leroy Titus Weeks	636
WINE OF NIGHT, THE	Louis Untermeyer	119
WINGÈD VICTORY.	Victor Whitlock	596
Photograph and decoration.
WISE SAINT, THE	Herman Da Costa	798
Picture by W. T. Benda.
YOUNG HEART IN AGE, THE	Edith M. Thomas	78

		PAGE
ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY, IN RUSSIA. (Unpublished letters.)
Introduction and notes by Charles Francis Adams. Portraits of John Quincy Adams and Madame de Staël		250
AFTER-DINNER STORIES.
An Anecdote of McKinley.	Silas Harrison	319
AFTER-THE-WAR SERIES, THE CENTURY’S.
The Hayes-Tilden Contest for the Presidency.	Henry Watterson	3
Pictures from photographs and cartoons.
Another View of “The Hayes-Tilden Contest”.	George F. Edmunds	192
Portrait of Ex-Senator Edmunds.
AMERICANS, NEW-MADE. Drawings by	W. T. Benda
	Facing page 894
ARTISTS SERIES, AMERICAN, THE CENTURY’S.
John S. Sargent: Nonchalance.		44
Carl Marr: The Landscape-Painter.		110
Frank W. Benson: My Daughter.		264
AUTO-COMRADE, THE.	Robert Haven Schauffler	850
AVOCATS, LES DEUX. From the painting by	Honoré Daumier
	Facing page 654
BALKAN PENINSULA, SKIRTING THE	Robert Hichens
III. The Environs of Athens.		84
Pictures by Jules Guérin and from photographs.
IV. Delphi and Olympia.		224
Pictures by Jules Guérin and from photographs.
V. In Constantinople.		374
Pictures by Jules Guérin and from photographs.
VI. Stamboul, the City of Mosques.		519
Pictures by Jules Guérin, two printed in color.
BEELZEBUB CAME TO THE CONVENT, HOW	Ethel Watts Mumford	323
Picture by N. C. Wyeth.
“BLACK BLOOD.”	Edward Lyell Fox	213
Pictures by William H. Foster.
BOOK OF HIS HEART, THE	Allan Updegraff	701
Picture by Herman Pfeifer.
BORROWED LOVER, THE	L. Frank Tooker	348
BRITISH UNCOMMUNICATIVENESS.	A. C. Benson	567
BROTHER LEO.	Phyllis Bottome	181
Pictures by W. T. Benda.
BUSINESS IN THE ORIENT.	Harry A. Franck	475
CAMILLA’S FIRST AFFAIR.	Gertrude Hall	400
Pictures by Emil Pollak-Ottendorff.
[Pg iv] CARTOONS.
Noise Extracted without Pain.	Oliver Herford	155
Foreign Labor.	Oliver Herford	477
Ninety Degrees in the Shade.	J. R. Shaver	477
A Boy’s Best Friend.	May Wilson Preston	634
“The Fifth Avenue Girl” and “A Bit of Gossip.” Sculpture by	Ethel Myers	635
The Child de Luxe.	Boardman Robinson	636
The “Elite” Bathing-Dress.	Reginald Birch	797
From Grave to Gay.	C. F. Peters	798
Died: Rondeau Rymbel.	Oliver Herford	955
A Triumph for the Fresh Air Fund.	F. R. Gruger	957
Newport Note.	Reginald Birch	960
CASUS BELLI.		955
CENTURY, THE, THE SPIRIT OF	Editorial	789
CHOATE, JOSEPH H. From a charcoal portrait by	John S. Sargent
	Facing page 711
CHRISTMAS, ON ALLOWING THE EDITOR TO SHOP EARLY FOR	Leonard Hatch	473
CLOWN’S RUE.	Hugh Johnson	730
Picture, printed in tint, by H. C. Dunn.
COLE’S (TIMOTHY) ENGRAVINGS OF MASTERPIECES IN AMERICAN GALLERIES.
Une Dame Espagnole. From the painting by	Fortuny	2
COMING SNEEZE, THE	Harry Stillwell Edwards	368
Picture by F. R. Gruger.
COMMON SENSE IN THE WHITE HOUSE.	Editorial	149
COUNTRY ROADS OF NEW ENGLAND. Drawings by	Walter King Stone	668
DEVIL, THE, HIS DUE	Philip Curtiss	895
DINNER OF HERBS,” “BETTER IS A. Picture by	Edmund Dulac
	Facing page 801
DORMER-WINDOW, THE, THE COUNTRY OF	Henry Dwight Sedgwick	720
Pictures by W. T. Benda.
DOROTHY MCK——, PORTRAIT OF	Wilhelm Funk	211
DOWN-TOWN IN NEW YORK Drawings by	Herman Webster	697
ELEPHANT ROUND-UP, AN	D. P. B. Conkling	236
Pictures from photographs.
ELEPHANTS, WILD, NOOSING	Charles Moser	240
Pictures from photographs.
ELIXIR OF YOUTH, THE	Albert Bigelow Paine	21
Picture by O. F. Schmidt.
FLOODS, THE GREAT, IN THE MIDDLE WEST	Editorial	148
FRENCH ART, EXAMPLES OF CONTEMPORARY.
A Corner of the Table. From the painting by	Charles Chabas	83
GARAGE IN THE SUNSHINE, A	Joseph Ernest	921
Picture by Harry Raleigh.
GET SOMETHING BY GIVING SOMETHING UP, ON HOW TO	Simeon Strunsky	153
GHOSTS,” “DEY AIN’T NO	Ellis Parker Butler	837
Pictures by Charles Sarka.
GOING UP.	Frederick Lewis Allen	632
Picture by Reginald Birch.
GOLF, MIND VERSUS MUSCLE IN	Marshall Whitlatch	606
GOVERNMENT, THE CHANGING VIEW OF	Editorial	311
GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO, THE	Joseph Pennell	202
Six lithographs drawn from nature for “The Century.”
GUTTER-NICKEL, THE	Estelle Loomis	570
Picture by J. Montgomery Flagg.
HARD MONEY, THE RETURN TO	Charles A. Conant	439
Portraits, and cartoons by Thomas Nast.
HER OWN LIFE.	Allan Updegraff	79
HOME. I. AN ANONYMOUS NOVEL.		801
Illustrations by Reginald Birch.
[Pg v] HOMER AND HUMBUG.	Stephen Leacock	952
HYPERBOLE IN ADVERTISING, ON THE USE OF	Agnes Repplier	316
ILLUSION OF PROGRESS, THE	Kenyon Cox	39
IMPRACTICAL MAN, THE	Elliott Flower	549
Pictures by F. R. Gruger.
INTERNATIONAL CLUB, THE, ON THE COLLAPSE OF	G. K. Chesterton	151
JAPANESE CHILD, A, THE TRAINING OF	Frances Little	170
Pictures from photographs.
JAPAN, THE NEW, AMERICAN MAKERS OF	William Elliot Griffis	597
Pictures from photographs.
JEFFERSON, THOMAS. From the statue for the Jefferson Memorial in St. Louis by	Karl Bitter	27
JURYMAN, THE, THE MIND OF	Hugo Münsterberg	711
LADY AND HER BOOK, THE, ON	Helen Minturn Seymour	315
LAWLESSNESS IN ART.	Editorial	150
LIFE AFTER DEATH.	Maurice Maeterlinck	655
LITERATURE FACTORY.	E. P. Butler	638
LOUISE. Color-Tone, from the marble bust by	Evelyn Beatrice Longman
	Facing page 766
LOVE BY LIGHTNING.	Maria Thompson Daviess	641
Pictures, printed in tint, by F. R. Gruger.
MANNERING’S MEN.	Marjorie L. C. Pickthall	427
MAN WHO DID NOT GO TO HEAVEN ON TUESDAY, THE	Ellis Parker Butler	340
MILLET’S RETURN TO HIS OLD HOME.	Truman H. Bartlett	332
Pictures from pastels by Millet.
MONEY BEHIND THE GUN, THE	Editorial	470
MORGAN’S, MR., PERSONALITY	Joseph B. Gilder	459
Picture from photograph.
MOVING-PICTURE, THE, THE WIDENING FIELD OF	Charles B. Brewer	66
Pictures from photographs.
MRS. LONGBOW’S BIOGRAPHY.	Gordon Hall Gerould	56
NEMOURS: A TYPICAL FRENCH PROVINCIAL TOWN.	Roger Boutet de Monvel	844
Pictures by Bernard Boutet de Monvel.
NEWSPAPER INVASION OF PRIVACY.	Editorial	310
NIAGARA AGAIN IN DANGER.	Editorial	150
NOTEWORTHY STORIES OF THE LAST GENERATION.
The Tachypomp.	Edward P. Mitchell	99
Portrait of the author, and drawings by Reginald Birch.
Belles Demoiselles Plantation.	George W. Cable	273
With portrait of the author, and new pictures by W. M. Berger.
The New Minister’s Great Opportunity.	C. H. White	390
With portrait of the author, and new picture by Harry Townsend.
ONE WAY TO MAKE THINGS BETTER.	Editorial	471
OREGON MUDDLE,” “THE	Victor Rosewater	764
PADEREWSKI AT HOME.	Abbie H. C. Finck	900
Picture from a portrait by Emil Fuchs.
PARIS.	Theodore Dreiser	904
Pictures by W. J. Glackens.
“PEGGY.” From the marble bust by	Evelyn Beatrice Longman	362
POLO TEAM, UNDEFEATED AMERICAN, BRONZE GROUP OF THE	Herbert Hazeltine
	Facing page 641
PROGRESSIVE PARTY, THE	Theodore Roosevelt	826
Portrait of the author.
PUNS, A PAPER OF	Brander Matthews	290
Head-piece by Reginald Birch.
REMINGTON, FREDERIC, RECOLLECTIONS OF	Augustus Thomas	354
Pictures by Frederic Remington, and portrait.
ROMAIN ROLLAND.	Alvan F. Sanborn	512
Picture from portrait of Rolland from a drawing by Granié.
ST. BERNARD, THE GREAT	Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg	161
Pictures by André Castaigne.
[Pg vi] ST. ELIZABETH OF HUNGARY. By Francisco Zubarán. Engraved on wood by	Timothy Cole	437
SCARLET TANAGER, THE. Printed in color from the painting by	Alfred Brennan	29
“SCHEDULE K”.	N. I. Stone	111
“SCHEDULE K,” COMMENTS ON	Editorial	472
SCULPTURE.	Charles Keck	917
SENIOR WRANGLER THE		958
Snobbery—America vs. England. Our Tender Literary Celebrities.
SIGIRIYA, “THE LION’S ROCK” OF CEYLON.	Jennie Coker Gay	265
Pictures by Duncan Gay.
SOCIALISM IN THE COLLEGES.	Editorial	468
SPINSTER, AMERICAN, THE	Agnes Repplier	363
SUMMER HILLS,” THE, IN “THE CIRCUIT OF	John Burroughs	878
Portrait of the author by Alvin L. Coburn.
SUNSET ON THE MARSHES. From the painting by	George Inness
	Facing page 824
“THEM OLD MOTH-EATEN LOVYERS”.	Charles Egbert Craddock	120
Pictures by George Wright.
TRADE OF THE WORLD PAPERS, THE	James Davenport Whelpley
XVII. If Canada were to Annex the United States		534
Pictures from photographs.
XVIII. The Foreign Trade of the United States		886
T. TEMBAROM.	Frances Hodgson Burnett	130
Drawings by Charles S. Chapman.	296, 413, 610, 767, 929
TWO-BILLION-DOLLAR CONGRESS, THE	Editorial	313
UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELER, AN, IN LONDON	Theodore Dreiser	736
Pictures by W. J. Glackens.
UNDER WHICH FLAG, LADIES, ORDER OR ANARCHY?	Editorial	309
VENEZUELA DISPUTE, THE, THE MONROE DOCTRINE IN	Charles R. Miller	750
Cartoons from “Punch,” and a map.
VERITA’S STRATAGEM.	Anne Warner	430
VOYAGE OVER, THE FIRST	Theodore Dreiser	586
Pictures by W. J. Glackens.
WAGNER, RICHARD, IF, CAME BACK	Henry T. Finck	208
Portrait of Wagner from photograph.
WALL STREET, THE NEWS IN	James L. Ford	794
Pictures by Reginald Birch and May Wilson Preston.
WAR AGAINST WAR.	Editorial	147
WAR-HORSES OF FAMOUS GENERALS.	James Grant Wilson	45
Pictures from paintings and photographs.
WAR WORTH WAGING, A	Richard Barry	31
Picture by Jay Hambidge.
WASHINGTON, FRESH LIGHT ON		635
WATTERSON’S, COLONEL, REJOINDER TO EX-SENATOR EDMUNDS	Henry Watterson	285
Comments on “Another View of ‘The Hayes-Tilden Contest.’”
WHISTLER, A VISIT TO	Maria Torrilhon Buel	694
WHITE LINEN NURSE, THE	Eleanor Hallowell Abbott	483
Pictures, printed in tint, by Herman Pfeifer.	672, 857
WIDOW, THE. From the painting by	Couture	457
An example of French portraiture.
WORLD REFORMERS—AND DUSTERS.	The Senior Wrangler	792
Picture by Reginald Birch.
YEAR, THE MOST IMPORTANT	Editorial	951